Nomeansno's Rob Wright reads Martin Heidegger

Pretty fun.

Nomeansno play the Red Room April 4th, btw, and tickets are now being sold at the usual places. The great Canadian rock band. (Lotsa cool live stuff on Youtube, too).

The Tom Holliston/ Show Business Giants interview

Photos by Jillian "Jillo" King!

Okay, so his solo CDs, which I think are actually far better - and can be bought at Red Cat, locally - he caved and we ended up talking. This is the full text of the article that appears in this month's Nerve Magazine - or at least it will be the full text, once I get the whole thing transcribed. The first chunk follows!

See you at the Show Business Giants show on March 17th at the Anza Club, I hope!

Allan: That’s Tom Holliston?

Tom: Yes it is.

Allan: Hey, how are you doin’.

Tom: I’m a few minutes early. I wanted to ask you a favour, if you could possibly do it. Do you have a phone book? Cos I just moved, and we’ve realized we don’t have a phone book.

Allan: No problem. I’ll get it and be right back.

Tom: Thank you! A yellow pages. We want to order some food! We don’t really have everything set up – we want to get some Indian food but, jeez, there’s nowhere... no phone book here.

Allan: Okay – getting a yellow pages. (Sets the phone down).

Tom (is silent, waiting. I kinda hoped he’d say something cryptic into the tape for when I was transcribing it later).

Allan: (Opening phone book). Okay, so I’ve just flipped to the restaurant section. Uhm.

Tom: It’s the Sitar.

Allan: The Sitar? That’s the place in Gastown, is it?

Tom: Yeah.

Allan: Okay, here it is... 604-687-0049, and there’s a minimum order of $25. Do you want to call me back?

Tom: We’re okay for now. I’ll call them in about an hour. Thank you!

Allan: No problem – I may actually put that into the interview! Okay... so – you’re a really interesting songwriter. You seem to me a champion of the obscure – you dig into some very odd... Uh... I’m sorta trying to categorize your songs, and figure out where they fit. You have lots of songs about things people normally don’t care about – your slacks, bats, gingivitis...

Tom: Ford wrote the song about gingivitis. That’s the first song he ever wrote on a guitar, and I can’t take credit for that one, and the song “Bats,” the lyrics for that one were written by Rob Wright.

Allan: Ah! Okay. But... I think of you sort of like the Auteur of the Show Business Giants – I think in some way, all the songs have your stamp on them. Or no? I mean, how collective are the SBG?

Tom: I suppose Ford and John write toward the band’s style, which is originally myself and a fellow named Steve Bailey, who used to be in a band called the Neos, years and years and years ago. And we sort of had an idea that we’d have a band where it’d be us, cos we couldn’t find anybody else who wasn’t already in a band, so we thought, we’ll just have a band and get different people to play sometimes, and then it sort of developed like that, and then people sort of fit their attitude or their style, I guess, toward what we were trying to do, which... I don’t... It’s not wilfully obscure, but I’m not very good at writing love songs and stuff like that, and I’m really interested in encyclopedias and dictionaries and, y’know, arcane and word origins interest me. And so does celebrity or call to celebrity, because I grew up watching the Mike Douglas show a lot on TV in the 70’s, the early 70s, mid 70s Catskills comics were really at their peak, like, the days of Shecky Green, and that sort of celebrity is kind of gone. There’s a different style of celebrity, but I think it’s... nowadays I don’t think people actually have to do anything, y’know? I think Madonna is one of the most influential people of the 20th century, as far as I’m concerned, because she ushered in a whole new art and lifestyle where, if you change your trousers every twenty minutes you can stay on top, y’know. So that sort of interests me a lot.

Allan: I also grew up watching the Mike Douglas show and whatnot, but you sound like you’ve thought more about it than I have.

Tom: (laughs). I guess so! It’s not really that productive, in that sense.

Allan: How was this past notion of celebrity – are you being critical, do you think we’ve become shallower?

Tom: No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s an interesting study. Celebrity status is as common as asphalt, y’know, just from that perspective... although I think there’s certain things I don’t think people can do anymore. I mean, there’s certain, like – I don’t think it would be possible to make Valley of the Dolls anymore, because people just aren’t that big. People don’t have to act or don’t really do anything, they just have to be themselves. I think (back then) people still were expected to sing or act or do something, or have a quick, fast quip, y’know?

Allan: Hmmm?

Tom: Perhaps I’m just completely out of touch with what’s new and modern, but I just don’t see anybody out there to take the place of the old six people who used to be on The Match Game.

Allan: (Laughs)

Tom: There’s just sort of a different... there’s just not the same sort of shabbiness and trying really hard, but, y’know, to hide the fact that you have a one bedroom apartment. Even if it is in Beverley Hills, it’s still just a one bedroom apartment. I’m not very... I don’t explain myself so good...

Allan: No, no, it’s great, you just – after you speak, you may hear me sitting here sounding confused, rustling paper trying to figure out, okay, where do I go now?

Tom: Okay.

Allan: So do you consume a lot of media? Do you read tabloids or things like that?

Tom: No, not at all. I try to avoid them. I mean, I would just... I mean, I think... I don’t smoke, but if people aren’t allowed to smoke in public places, I think – I mean, I can’t help – I dwell on petty details and stuff like that, and I dwell on things, but I really don’t enjoy looking at supermarket tabloids, because I find them very fearful. I don’t know, just sort of thinking - folks who devour, I mean, who actually are absolutely fascinated by Jennifer Aniston – although, I mean, on the other side of the coin I’m really interested and fascinated by how well the Toronto Blue Jays are gonna do this year, so I guess its – people’s different passions. Allan: I mean – I was wondering if you were exploring things in a sort of scientific way. Do you watch television?
Tom: I don’t have cable. Once in a blue moon when I’m in a hotel room, or something like that, I watch TV for half an hour and I’m kind of – well, I am almost literally shocked about how bad it is, like, how trite, how embarrassingly shallow. TV’s the kind of thing I think I would watch behind closed doors and shut the blinds so nobody would see me, cos I find it – well, it’s partly because it’s not – you can’t – I think people now who are in their early 20’s, if they were at all interested, have really missed out at 11:00 on a Friday night, watching The Incredible Two Headed Transplant – that just doesn’t happen anymore? And I don’t think TV is very fun anymore, like, y’know... But then again – I think I’m such an utterly subjective person, I cannot – this is not how the world is, this is how I see the world, and so I think those are two very different things. I don’t think my opinion carries very much weight or counts for very much. But that’s just how I see things, and I just, sort of, write about ‘em. I can’t help it! (laughs)

Allan: Part of my thesis – the songs are often on obscure or misperceived things. You also have a lot of songs about, sort of, middleclass life, and people just sort of – “Carrying the Ball for Hair Design,” “I’m Always the Last One to Know,” “Big in Real Estate.” Lot of songs about everyday details – you make little fascinating novels out of them, these moments of human experience that no one would really care to notice or write about.

Tom: No, because they’re unimportant, but I mean, that’s like 95% of everything is... The fact is that if something great suddenly came out of the ground, the fact would be that the ground would have still been there for quite awhile, y’know? And why not document the ground, rather than the great thing that came out of it, because that’s what everybody else is doing? And, y’know, why at this place – I think – it doesn’t really matter to me so much what the end result is, it’s like, why did it happen here? How did it come to happen, I find, a lot more interesting. I think it’s quite boring, though. It’s a pretty boring way of looking at things.

Allan: I’m not entirely sure I understood any of that...

Tom: I have a tendency to speak in very poor analogies, and uh, it’s just – middle class, whatever, things like that are of little or no consequence. I mean, say, okay, you can look across the street, and an hour later, something else is there, and everybody is interested in what this thing is now, but no one was looking there before, and there could have been just as many things going on, or not going on. Like, end results – I just sort of think – end results – I like to find out about, I’m interested in things that happen before some great result. Backgrounds, the stuff that’s taken for granted. I think it probably has a lot to do, in my young teens, with listening a lot to the Village Green Preservation Society, which probably influenced me, as much as – besides maybe Chuck Berry - as much as any music at all.

Allan: I’m a Kinks fan, but I don’t know that one – I’m more of a Muswell Hillbillies man – Why Village Green?

Tom: I just love that record from when I first – I dunno, when I was 13 or 14 and got a hold of it, because it was out of print and didn’t sell very well, y’know, but the Kinks period, the Ray Davies period, from like 68 to – I think Muswell Hillbillies was the last really, truly great record that he wrote, in my opinion... but I just love the different approaches he has, like, you know, writing about something after its happened, rather than writing about the event happening.

Allan: Can you tie that to a specific song?

Tom: I just like sorta putting together songs like “Alcohol” and “Holiday,” y’know? Like, there’s one song about drinking and there’s another song about going on a holiday, but there’s not a song in-between about a binge, and then having to go on a holiday... Y’know, there’s not like a – the middle ground is left out.

Allan (guessing): They’re kind of slices of life?

Tom: Yeah, and I love that, because, y’know, I wish – I just love that style in approaching songs that way. I think anybody can come up with a better song than, y’know, “My Girl” by Bill Henderson and Chilliwack, y’know, and each and everyone one of us to try to do everything in our power to at least write something that’s not as bad! Cos I mean, I get mad and I have temper tantrums, if I go into a restaurant and order some food and a couple of minutes later someone puts on classic Clear Channel rock, and I just get up and leave because I didn’t pay to hear this, y’know? And I’d love to see more people do that, because I mean, I think I have a perfect right, because f we’re really loud the police come to our door and tell us to turn it down because of the decibel limit, but I think there’s also a bad taste, shit-limit... I mean, a lot of people say, “I just tune it out, it doesn’t really bother me,” but it bothers me because its invasive...

(To be continued...!)

Show Business Giants, Nomeansno - Vancouver shows

Photo by John Chedsey

Nomeansno fans ahoy: Nomeanswhatever webmaster Monsieur le Chedsey, last seen hereabouts in referee duds for the recent Hanson Brothers show, announced today that an April 4th Nomeansno gig is confirmed at a yet undisclosed venue for Vancouver, just before the band heads off to Europe. Fans should also note, if they've somehow missed it, that there will soon be a gig by the rarely-seen, playful-as-all-heck Show Business Giants, led by Nomeansno guitarist Tom Holliston (pictured above) and featuring John Wright on drums (and Ford Pier and Scott Henderson for this show). They'll be playing the Anza Club on March 17th. I'm rooting for Tom to do a few songs from his solo albums and workin' on getting an interview with him; those unfamiliar with his work outside Nomeansno may want to trundle down to Red Cat, where copies can still be found (I'm partial to his solo projects more than the Show Business Giants stuff, but he's a very perceptive, quirky, and entertaining songwriter, in either form - he has, as le Chedsey has put it, "the soul of a self-depracating frontman." I'm quite stoked to see what he does as leader!)

My enthusiasm for Nomeansno, of course, is boundless - the smartest and most musically adventurous of North American punk bands. If, somehow, you've missed it, part of my interview with Rob Wright is here; the rest of the same, very lengthy conversation made it into Skyscraper #23. See you at the shows...

A Nice Night at the Theatre with the Hanson Brothers

Is that a geoduck in your jockstrap, or are you happy to see me?

The Shittys are the perfect opening act for the Hanson Brothers. Nevermind that they share a member: they play self-consciously stooopid songs (all about "shit and living in Vancouver"), and take themselves none too seriously (bassist Craig Bougie only had two strings on his bass, and both were E's.) The thing is that, almost despite themselves, they play credibly enough that they had an enthusiastic moshpit going on (including two drunks in their apparent 30s and what John Chedsey said looked like a Megadeth fan, swinging his long blond hair to the music). Too bad my favourite tune by them was actually by the Dayglo Abortions ("Acting Like Black Sabbath" - hilarious: quoth the singer, "Quit applauding, we didn't write that one"). They're one of the few bands out there where chucking stuff at them onstage is a sign that you're on the same page with them.

The more ridiculous elements of the rock experience are also foregrounded for the Hanson Brothers: it takes very, very intelligent people to be so good at being morons. What's most amazing is that, somewhat (um) unlike the Shittys, they end up making REALLY POTENT MUSIC at the same time, perfectly distilled, tight, fast, and funny punk-pop numbers worthy of the Ramones they emulate. But it might as well be live theatre. Dig: Johnny Hanson spent most of the time between songs pretending to scream at the audience about what a moron Tommy Hanson was, or occasionally asking people if they liked cabbage, or promoting the "brand new album released three years ago." The pelvic thrusts he offered when singing "Comatose" put a definite new spin on the lyrics, too ("Yeah my baby's comatose, cos I gave my baby an overdose" - thrust thrust). Tommy mostly drooled, and had to be led offstage by referee Chedsey. Drummer Ernie Hanson stole Robbie's bass at one point, playing the riff from "Stickboy" (emblazoned on the back of his jersey. Get it - "Stickboy," for a drummer? Hahahaha!); he pouted when he had to give it back. And Robbie - well, he had the show stealer: he wore baggy jeans, with soiled white longjohns under them, and a fat jockstrap over them. His pants kept falling down, despite ref. Chedsey's earnest attempts to make them stay up, and by the end of the night he was just playing in his longjohns and jockstrap (and jersey and hockey mask, of course - that's Robbie pictured a few posts back, btw). Suddenly, something long and fleshy popped out and was dangling from his jockstrap, almost a foot down his thighs. It was disgusting and tapered and subhuman, with a brown tip. He waggled it at Johnny and the audience and continued to play his bass with the thing hanging there. Finally, he dug it out - it was a geoduck, pictured above, but few people knew this - and he tore chunks of it and threw them into the audience, including the long dangly bit, which was still on the floor after I left. It STUNK! Even the band was surprised by that one...

Anyhow, the Hanson Brothers are fuckin' hoot to listen to, ALMOST as much fun as they are to watch. I just wish I'd been able to get drunk. Five rum and cokes was enough to give me a hangover today... It should have worked better.

Tommy Hanson, aka Tom Holliston, will have a Show Business Giants show on March 17th at the selfsame venue, the Anza Club. More to come; see also the Nomeanswhatever forum.

Checkout Time at The Tower

Been thinking about the Tower this week - in more than one form. Someone started a discussion of the song on the Nomeansno Forum, mostly focusing on the coolness of the music (much as my fellow Nomeansno fans are a savvier bunch than, say, the Nickelback crew, literary and religious allusions are not their strong suit; no one even commented when I pointed out the allusion to Yeats in "Rags and Bones." Rob Wright is a big fan of Irish literature, especially James Joyce; the fact that anyone can read Ulysses stuns me. I have tried; it defeats me, time and again, and I somehow don't think his suggestion that I take a shot of whiskey before reading each page will help). Anyhow, I always thought the song on Wrong was one of Nomeansno's most successful ventures; it combines clear references to the above card ("from a burning building/a man leaps to his death") with a seeming awe/horror at sheer throbbing thrust of phallocentric industry, inner fascism, POWER... The song is one big erect cock, sticking out there for all to see. The conventional meaning of the card is well-explained on this site, if you scan through the card names on the left; phallocentric lust is not the main theme explored, but the card resonates with me, much like the Three of Wands was doing awhile back. I don't give a damn for divination but Tarot can be a useful tool for focusing. Creating the soul, doesn't Jod say? From the aforementioned site:

When you believe material objects are more powerful than spirit and mind, you
start building up a Tower of falsehoods on a very unstable foundation. If, by
some miracle of engineering, it does not collapse under its own weight, you will
eventually push it over yourself. The Tower falls not because Fate says so but
because something within can no longer endure the strain it must bear. Sooner or
later it will give out. This is a humbling experience because its lesson is that
no one is invincible. The problem for most people is that they concentrate on
the negatives and ignore the great opportunity that has been given to them.

Anyhow: my own personal tower is startin' to become apparent. I overindulge in film, music, literature, shopping, and food to comfort and entertain myself and distract myself from my own problems - including an expanding waistline, a substantial debt, and a growing sense that I'd like to do something other than my current job (ESL was always intended as a stopgap measure, a way to get some sense of control in my life, in contrast to the sinking murk, fear, and rather more destructive overindulgences of my 20's; and tho' as jobs go I don't mind it, it ain't much of a challenge anymore). Writing is perhaps a productive way to some other occupation, but it can also be a dangerous way of creating "false order" in my life - organizing ideas and thoughts about things OTHER than my own dilemma, which could use some dealing with. Been trying to slow down a bit, to find my own ass so I can pull my head out; as fun as writing is, on some level, it feels a bit of a distraction. Glorified Free Cell. Order for its own sake.

Anyhow, I haven't been writing so much lately on this blog. I DO have a ton of things coming out in the December/January Nerve Magazine and Discorder, though:

- My monthly Discorder column, focusing on some pretty dark and unhappy films to balance out the false cheer of the holidays.

- An interview with punk novelist Chris Walter, in Discorder (I loved his East Van and "just liked" his more recent Welfare Wednesdays; I've been poking around his Winnipeg memoir, I was a Punk before You were a Punk, and it seems to have more energetic prose than either of those. The plan is to interview Chris Walter for Razorcake, at some point).

- An interview with various people about the Portland Hotel Society and the Black Crow Project, again in Discorder (local artists supporting community-building efforts in the DTES, mostly focusing on social housing).

- an interview with Tony Bardach of the Pointed Sticks will also be appearing in the December/January Nerve. (Neither Discorder nor Nerve publish in the first month of the New Year, so I had to get this finished a lot faster than I expected - I just found out last week that the band will be playing at Richards on Richards on January 6th, as the follow up to their Japanese reunion tour. If you don't know about that, I'd suggest checking out Razorcake #36, due out in January.

Alas, none of this is going to help me lose weight, get a new job, or pay off my debts. In fact, since writing such things takes up a fair chunk of my time, it could be said to INTERFERE with the above - unless, of course, somehow this becomes lucrative. I doubt it will; the people who publish the stuff I want to write generally don't pay, and the people who pay generally don't want to publish what I want to write.

In the meantime, to return to the topic of Towers, I was reading this great little Howard Zinn article on the current state of the US vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and stumbled on what's got to be the quotable quote of the month:

Don’t people join Alcoholics Anonymous so that they can stand up and be honest about themselves? Maybe we ought to have an organization called Imperialists Anonymous, you know, and have the leaders of the country get up there on national television and say, “Well, it’s time, you know -- time to tell the truth.” It would be -- I don’t expect it to happen, but it would be refreshing.

Thought I would share. It may be a little while before I post again, so enjoy the snow...