Upcoming at the Cinematheque: Police, Adjective and more

I have heard very good things about the Romanian film Police, Adjective, which I hope to catch at the Pacific Cinematheque on Friday. It's playing as one of their Best Of The Decade series... which I quibble with on many counts, to be honest. Wendy And Lucy is a necessary and powerful film that everyone who cares about American cinema should have seen by now, but I have much more admiration for Kelly Reichardt's previous film, Old Joy, sadly not screening. Silent Light has some lovely images, but I simply couldn't get with its program, emotionally or philosophically (I have a hard time with Ordet, too), and don't really understand the fuss; is this just a matter of pretty photography? Children Of Men is simply not that significant as cinema - an effective action film, maybe, with some arrestingly bleak political and environmental predictions - but so what? It will be quickly forgotten; it contributes nothing vital to world cinema, is simply not an important film. Neither, in my opinion, is Pan's Labyrinth; it's visually splendid, and a crowd pleaser, but hardly a "best of" on the list of any discerning cinephile; truth be known, I vastly preferred Hellboy, which, while somewhat sillier and hardly a "best of the decade," either, has richer character development and engages in very entertaining and creative ways with noir's convention of the Byronic hero and with the superhero formula. It's simply more entertaining... Sokurov is an important filmmaker, but Russian Ark is basically an extended visual gimmick whose aesthetic value, aside from the paintings it showcases, seems marginal. The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu is an effective and powerful film that does have value, but there are easily fifty movies I'd put above it on my own personal "best of the decade" list, if I had time and energy enough for sufficient reflection. There are a few titles I haven't seen that will be playing, and a few that I don't quibble with at all (I vastly prefer Todd Haynes' homage to Sirk, Far From Heaven, to his Dylan film, I'm Not There, but the visual maginificence, cinematic innovation and sheer ambition of the latter film makes it essential viewing, and I'm glad Haynes ends up with two films on the programme). Cache, too, I have no quarrel with at all, and I suppose not A History Of Violence, either - though it's overrated, it does mark an important new direction in the work of David Cronenberg, and it's certainly one of the most widely-appreciated Canadian films of recent years. I understand its inclusion, put it that way.

Still, I have my own ideas about the best films of the last ten years. I'll restrict myself to North America - I don't have the stamina to consider world cinema in this light (plus my favourite foreign films of the last few years, like the Japanese Linda Linda Linda or the German False Confessor - also known as I Am Guilty, for the DVD release - wouldn't necessarily have a place on this list; much as I admire them, I can't objectively argue their overwhelming importance as cinema. I could argue - if I wanted to be perverse - that Hostel 2 has significance, but a bunch of people would roll their eyes and call me a troll, which is what I would be being, much as I appreciate that film. No; I'll be serious, and sober, and North American about things). Most significantly, Robinson Devor's Police Beat is being scandalously neglected here; it's by far the greatest accomplishment of American cinema in recent memory, even if it hasn't found a wide audience. It's nowhere as financially successful, but Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is more innovative, politically relevant, and accomplished than half the films above - certainly a more important film than Children Of Men. Malick's The New World, which I didn't like much at first, has finally grown on me and begs for inclusion - especially the longer cut. Some acknowledgement should really be made to mumblecore, too - an exciting development in American cinema, even if it doesn't prove long-lived; my favourite films associated with that "movement" are Quiet City and Baghead, but there may be even better ones that I've missed. And a personal favourite of mine from the last ten years, very sadly neglected commercially and critically but idea-rich, joyously funny, politically challenging and perfectly crafted, is Gregg Araki's pot comedy Smiley Face, which, to my knowledge, has never screened theatrically in Vancouver. It's certainly a film that deserves praise, even if it hasn't been widely recognized as yet. I feel certain that someday, when people look back on this decade, that will be a film that will be remembered and talked about, assuming that film criticism emerges from its present function as an adjunct of advertising... The Cinematheque's list seems to place too much weight on wide recognition - as if box office makes a film worthy of inclusion; while there's a safety in this approach, it's not a very risky list at all, nor particularly educational (at least they didn't include There Will Be Blood in their programme. It's kinda satisfying how utterly that film appears to have been forgotten, after all the skirt-lifting that attended it...).

Still, I've been told Police, Adjective is a really good film - a VIFF favourite of a couple of people I spoke to last fest - and the other films on the list that I haven't seen (like Tropical Malady, which I haven't even heard of) do seem to merit looking at, if only because they've been given a place here. (And yes, folks, I haven't seen My Winnipeg, it's true. Guy Maddin is the olive of Canadian cinema for me - there's no denying his potency but what he does when I bite in is often unsettling and overwhelming, and I just can't figure out how I feel about the experience). It's great to have a "best of the decade" recap, one way or another, however much I quibble...

A Noise Gig in No Fun City

I wonder - I know that there's a long tradition worldwide of having underground punk clubs and rave houses and such, but is it normal for the arts scene in major cities (not that Vancouver is one) to have experimental music venues with names like "The Secret Location," that only insiders can find? ...Or is this strictly a phenomenon for a city where the government does pretty much everything it can to discourage creative youth from getting together (unless they pay the right people off...?). It's hilarious that Vancouver has bent over backwards to create the Granville Atrocity Exhibition, inviting suburban UFC-watchin' drunk driving jocks'n'sluts and other assorted affluent, cultureless assholes to party all fuckin' night and smear their ugly money over several city blocks, creating a vast noisy weekend no-go zone for most locals and agreeing to make little of the odd drunk driving casualty, random assault, or bloody barfight, while harmless tucked away spaces in East Van where maybe a few dozen civilized and intelligent arts-oriented kids get together to socialize and enhance their perceptions (mostly) through entirely legal means, like, say, art and music and converation - exist in a state of peril, reduced to promoting events without giving their address??? I mean, how fucking SAD is this city, really? It happens that someone was venting to me at the Western Front just the other week about how he badly wanted to see a gig at the Secret Location where Nic of Shearing Pinx was going to play, but couldn't find out where the hell it was. Alas, I didn't know myself at the time (and now that I know, have been told to keep it off my blog, natch). Nic will be playing again there tomorrow, as N.213, if you can figure it out on your own, along with some touring Californians and varied well-liked locals (see poster!). Bands start at 8:00pm sharp, last act on at 11:30, cover is $5... Just try not to enjoy yourself too much, or the good vibe might attract negative attention...

Thoughts on Antichrist

Antichrist is a remarkable piece of cinema. I highly recommend it for a certain stripe of cinephile, though I have reservations, which I will get to. Bear in mind that I am still working through my reactions, having seen it for the first time earlier tonight.

The story - which I will offer at this point relatively spoiler-free: a husband and wife are making love when their young child topples to his death through an open window. The first section of the film - "Grief" - that follows this prologue focuses on the husband's attempt to draw his wife out from her protracted suffering over the loss of her child; he's a therapist, mistrustful of medication as a solution to his wife's trauma. He's well-intentioned, but acknowledges that he's breaking a rule - that therapy and family should not mix; and is perhaps somewhat too detached, too distant from his own feelings. His wife is anything but; even a month after the death, she is still hospitalized, overwhelmed with grief, incapacitated by it, stuck in it, her pain acute and ceaseless. In a bid to help her work her through her feelings, he brings her to a cabin in a forest (Eden) where she had worked on her thesis, a book on the persecution of witches entitled Gynocide; she confesses that she is now terrified of the place, which is why he brings her there. At first things seem to go well - though there are hallucinatory moments (a self-disembowelling fox that proclaims to Dafoe, "Chaos reigns," for instance) that stand as omens of worse things to come; but there is eventually some tenderness between the couple, and the sense that he is actually helping her - though this may be superficial, as things only turn for the worse after she declares herself healed.

The talking fox aside - a moment of excess that is more likely to produce chuckles than dread - everything in the above is remarkably well-crafted. Von Trier opts for a degree of stylization in his images that I don't think we've seen from him since Europa (or Zentropa, if you prefer); the film's dedication to Tarkovsky, positively assaulted as an unjustifiable act of arrogance by some, seems quite acceptable to me, based on the very intense engagement with the image von Trier generates, the very atmospheric and compelling use of sound, and the restrained but lucious palettes (which, like Stalker, emphasize human figures in muted colours situated in almost otherworldly fields of green. Also as with that film, the forest is granted a near-mystical potency laced with elements of uncertainty, threat, and foreboding, though perhaps of a darker, eviller sort than the metaphysically perilous Zone). So often do comparisons to Tarkovsky mean next to nothing in the mouths of critics - often signalling merely that a film is artful and in Russian - that I'm surprised to find myself on the opposite side of the fence, defending the drop of Tarkovsky's name against those who would say it has no place.

The performances, too, are exceptional; Roger Ebert has tried to find meaning in the film by faulting the character played by Dafoe, but it must be said that Dafoe does a very good job of retaining our sympathies, while at times - as therapists will - seeming condescending, removed, and superior. Gainsbourg gives the really outstanding performance, though, as someone plunged in a bottomless abyss of grief. It's harrowing to be confronted by so believable a display of emotional pain. It makes Dafoe's detachment seem both inhumanly cold, on the one hand, and
a reasonable response, on the other - because someone in the relationship has to remain able to function. Dafoe and Gainsbourg represent, if you will, poles of human experience, in the face of loss - alternate strategies of coping, one of plunging into emotion and the other of trying to impose order on it and make it manageable; it is very tempting to see these as being figured as "male" and "female" approaches. (Tentatively, I'd like to suggest a possible meta-cinematic reading, as well, encouraged by the stylization of the film, which makes us consciously aware - again like Tarkovsky - that we are watching film as art, not merely moving through a narrative or thematic programme: by this reading, Dafoe and Gainsbourg represent two different levels at which the audience responds to cinema, with Dafoe as the rational, detached voyeur, viewing events from without and seeking their meaning, and Gainsbourg as the emotional, gut-level reaction, unmanageable and instinctive and scarily intense. There are many times during the film when our identifications toggle back and forth - from outside to inside, from male to female, from therapist to patient, from emotional reaction to thoughtful reflection, as we try to process our own feelings about life, death, grief, and the menacing aspect of nature - the main themes thus far raised; the film is at its best when challenging us to find our own position in between the extremes, and thus a comfortable location from which to view it - which we may never find).

Spoilers follow. At about the three-quarter mark, things turn for the worse, in a few ways. The ending of the film is definitely imperfectly realized, compared to the near-flawless first three quarters. Von Trier seems to lose confidence that he can convey what he wants to by sticking with the emotional development of his characters alone, and so throws in some rather muddled symbolism (the "Three Beggars" whose appearance heralds death; huh? Creepy animals is one thing, but a fucking constellation that doesn't exist, and exposition as to prophecy around it? Does this not feel a bit like a desperate tack-on?). There's also a somewhat surprising revisitation of an motif from Dogville (Dafoe being "hobbled" in a way that might remind one of what happens to Nicole Kidman); and a bit of Antichrist-for-Dummies thematic meditation, in which Dafoe and Gainsbourg discuss the nature of evil, Gainsbourg somehow coming to the conclusion that the female, identified most closely with nature, is a force of evil - something her liberal husband argues against, claiming his wife, in her self-hate, has gotten confused about her own thesis, that the witches burned at the stake and so forth were the victims of anti-female hysteria.

Or were they? Suddenly, the possibility that his wife IS evil is reinforced by the suggestion that she has been torturing her son by systematically putting his shoes on the wrong feet, as shown in photographs he discovers in the cabin. This discovery rather changes the rules that we've been playing by; we are no longer dealing with the problem of unconsolable grief and the element of pain/ "evil" in nature, but with a woman who may or may not have always been malignant, or at least a bit nuts - rendering whatever thinking the film has moved us to, up to that point, somewhat irrelevant. Almost as soon as Dafoe begins to regard his wife mistrusfully, she attacks him. She assaults his genitals - the consequence of her attack being shown in a horrific, bloody ejaculation - and attaches a weight to his leg by means gruesome and painful. He tries to crawl away, but is discovered, and she drags him back to the cabin, where she decides to punish herself in kind, cutting off her own clitoris with scissors, and producing a similarly bloody "ejaculate." There is the suggestion at this point - the climax of the film - that she either saw, or at least now imagines she saw, her son crawling towards his doom while she and her husband were having sex, giving her acts of violence against both their genitalia the aspect of highly focused punishment. At this point, Dafoe manages to remove the weight from his leg, freeing himself as Kidman did in Dogville to finally turn against the person he has been trying to help. As she tries to stab him with scissors, he strangles her to death, and limps away to find himself in a forest filled with what I assume are meant to be the bodies of dead women, the victims of the "gynocides" of history (there is actually no indication that the corpses that litter the hallucinatory landscape he limps through are women, but it would seem for the film to be coherent they would have to be; he has failed his wife and joined the ranks of female-murderers, his pretenses of therapy and liberal idealism having been no match for his wife's emotional maelstrom). In the epilogue - if I understood it correctly - these "ghosts" rise up to surround him, though they don't seem as intent on violence or retribution as one might hope...


Whether all of this is misogynist or not, I cannot say. The film certainly tables the theme of misogyny, quite explicitly - the "t" in the "Antichrist" of the titles and posters is the symbol for the female (though nature is also identified with evil in the film - and the female, to some extent, with nature). There is no sense - as at the end of Cronenberg's The Brood, for instance, where the protagonist, too, strangles the monstrous female - that Dafoe has done the right thing; in fact, he has failed to help his wife, becomes instead, at last resort, reduced to something he would have previously loathed, his whole endeavour previously now seeming an arrogant over-assertion of his faith in himself (I was rather disappointed that the ghosts of murdered women didn't actually dismember him, frankly, as the final image of the film - though I imagine it would have done nothing to ameliorate accusations of misogyny). The only truly suspect move von Trier makes - at least that I can recall now - is the suggestion that Gainsbourg had been systematically abusing their son before his death. The violence she does to her husband's and her own genitals can be justified as an extreme expression of her inability to forgive herself, or him, for their son's death, and the extremity of her emotions as a sincere attempt to figure something that is threatening to men about women - the intensity and unpredictability of their feelings, which Dafoe is further "punished" for failing to respect sufficiently... but the suggestion that she had been torturing her son throughout his life, for no reason that the film cares to delve into, does seem to raise the further possibility that women are monstrous, questions of pain and grief aside. This is not a possibility the film needs to table, if its purpose is just to query misogyny. A serious investigation of that phenomenon probably does not need to include among the theses it investigates the possibility that women really ARE evil, horrible critters. The film would be better off without the shoe business (or the clunky but unclear symbolism of the Three Beggars, or the highly direct exposition on misogyny) - would have been better just following the emotional arc of the characters, wherever it lead (perhaps even to genital mutilation and death!) - and then letting us figure it out. My main problem in the end with the film is not that it may be misogynist - since half of Hollywood cinema is misogynist, in ways less likely to invite discussion or reflection - but that von Trier doesn't quite live up to the promise of the project - the film, in its first half, sets a standard for itself that it does not ultimately live up to.

All that said, the film is aesthetically remarkable, compelling to watch, and, provided you can stomach the more disturbing images, will reward reflection sufficiently that I recommend it to anyone who cares about cinema. You might reject Antichrist, when its over, and that may be a reasonable reaction, but I suspect that attentive viewers will find enough of value en route to the troubling ending that they will appreciate having had a chance to reject it for themselves...

Canadian obituaries: Kate McGarrigle, Paul Quarrington

My only real association with Paul Quarrington is Whale Music; I'm familiar both with his novel and the delightful film made from it (starring the great Canadian character actor Maury Chaykin in a rare lead role, as a drug-addled, burned-out rockstar, loosely based on Brian Wilson, who finds himself drawn back into the human realm by a mysterious young female visitor). Cinephiles interested in Canadian films need to seek this one out, as an eminently likeable experience; tho' written in Toronto, certain familiar landmarks will give it away instantly as being filmed in Vancouver. The book is great fun, too! It's enough for me to want to take off my hat at Quarrington's passing - and I may pick up the solo album mentioned in that obit, to hear his song about the experience of dying ("Are You Ready"). Quarrington died at 56, after a brave battle with lung cancer, and kept working right to the end.

Also departed, also Canadian, also taken by cancer at too young an age: Kate McGarrigle, my primary association with whom is her charming rendition, with her sister, of "The Log Driver's Waltz," that accompanies the sweetly clumsy NFB animation of yore (talk about Canadiana!). And then there's Rufus Wainwright - shown here with Kate and Anna doing "Hard Times Come Again No More" - and Martha Wainwright, both mothered by Kate and fathered by Loudon Wainwright III, whom I gather is the "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" that is the subject of one of his daughter's songs. Yes, folks - I know Kate more from Loudon's songs about his troubled relationships more than I do her own music, and I won't try to fake it... but my condolences to those who knew her and knew her work better than I did...

With apologies to Kate, may I further direct interested parties to Loudon's interesting explanation for the Shakespearean inspiration for "Prince Hal's Dirge" - a song of his I've always liked...

Phil Minton Sunday

There will be a free performance of Phil Minton's Feral Choir Sunday at the Ironworks, starting at 4:00. I honestly don't know if I'll be in a space to make it to the city that day, as big a fan of Phil as I am - I'd hoped to PARTICIPATE in the choir this time around, but this has proven impossible. However, I urge any of you with a taste for unusual but playful music to check it out. My big Phil Minton interview from Bixobal #2 is online here.

Bed Follies: Time To Buy A Futon

...So I ended up returning that king sized bed I'd bought, having discovered that my greedy addled impulses had not accounted for just how much goddamn space the thing would take up; it was like having a beluga in the bathtub. It cost me a couple hundred clams out of my refund to unload it, but doing so was a relief; I found myself quite happy to return to my air mattress - which was quite comfy, even if it looked like I was camping in the corner of the suite. I've been sleeping on it again for the last week or two, unproblematically - but the idea of buying a bed has never been far from my mind.

The main reason I want a bed, I think, is psychological: I want my space to feel like home. My old apartment had a bed and a futon - both of which were ultimately sacrificed to the bedbugs of the West End. The sense of missing them - of having a bed that was my own to lie in, man - has been slowly building up since I moved into my new suburban suite on October 1st. Not only does this town not really feel like home - not like Vancouver came to - but my own apartment doesn't feel like home. There's no clawfoot tub, no hardwood floor, no gas stove, no large kitchen - it's not a space I chose because I liked it, like my last one (before the mice and bedbugs showed up); it's a space I chose because it was available, affordable, and close to my parents, and to hell with the rest. I haven't even been able to put art on the walls in the living room, since the main space is very well lit, compared to my old, and I don't want my posters and such to end up getting sun-faded. I don't even have a record player, anymore, since it busted when I turned it upside down to shake any bedbugs out of it, when packing. And like I say, no futon, no bed. Tables, chairs, my TV, all that has survived or been acquired anew - but given all the other differences, sleeping on an air mattress in the corner was contributing to my sense of the strangeness of the space, that it wasn't really mine. A bed - or a futon - would make a big difference, I reasoned. This may seem like the whining of the overpriviliged, given that many people live in far less comfort than I do - but understand, this fall and winter have brought about some big changes in my life, which aren't made easier by the strangeness of the environment I come home to. I feel more at home in my Mom's new apartment than I do mine - I've done a much better job of setting up her space so it's comfortable and livable than I have my own.

A bus trip to Ikea in Port Coquitlam demonstrates that no cheap solution will be found there. I almost buy a $600 queen sized foam mattress, marked down to $199 in the As-Is section, going so far to clumsily load up two carts with the mattress and the requisite parts for the frame and getting in the long Ikea line... but I reconsider before I get to the cash. The whole thing - frame and mattress - will cost over $500 all told, which is a LOT of money for me right now. It's just too much of a commitment for a man who is not absolutely sure what he's doing; I don't want to make another mistake. The mattress - with no protective plastic around it - might get damp or damaged during delivery; it might not be comfortable; "as is" likely means no refunds, this time; plus there's something inherently questionable about paying $199 for a piece of friggin' foam, however fancy it may be. Plus what if the damage noted runs deeper than the few visible stains? I can't make myself go through with it - fearing that the impulsive desire to just have DONE with the bed issue is the main driving force behind my desire to buy it, just like my too-hasty king-sized purchase of a few weeks ago. I excuse myself, back out of line, and wheel everything back into place, before trying to figure out how to exit the store (Ikea is a bit of a maze; I'm not very practiced with big box stores). The trip, all told, takes five hours - most of it spent between a busy highway and a garbage-strewn ditch, waiting for a bus amidst a gaggle of Asian-Canadian youth crowded onto the narrow sidewalk.

On to Plan B: a futon. Futons have the great advantage of being foldable; if I don't like it as a bed, at least I've got a couch again! I email a bunch of people on Craigslist; the only one who writes back who still has a futon to sell is, again, in Port Coquitlam. He wants $175 - a bit much, given that some people have free ones on offer sometimes, but it's there and available and has the right specs for me: a hardwood frame, a firm queen-sized mattress, in supposedly great shape from a non-smoking, bedbug-free household. The only drag is that once I make it out there, there's not much room for changing up my mind - say, when I discover that the underside has several dog hairs on it from the family pet (it better fucking not have fleas...). The thing is - as a non-driver, I'm imposing on a friend with a van to help me transport it, so I basically have to either take it or leave it. Fuckit: I'm still not quite sure I'm making a good move, but I take it, pay the money, and we load it into her van, dog hairs and all. We have to disassemble it to fit it into the suite, which makes for a bit of a jigsaw-puzzle challenge for me to put it back together correctly on my own after my friend leaves, my first attempt being all wrong and requiring a complete reconfiguration... but I finally get it together and set it up as a bed and stretch out on it...

Hm. Well, it IS a bit on the firm side. A bit TOO firm, really: my lower back hurts just lying on it. Firm is supposed to be good for you, innit? Does it have to be the kind of good that hurts?

Anyhow, I guess I'll get used to it (having no choice in the matter). At least it suits the apartment. I can always make a couch of it and go back to my air mattress, I suppose. After which point, I guess, I'll be giving up the pursuit of a bed. I'd never realized how good I had it in Vancouver - my old bed I bought used through a friend, and it was great; the same friend gave me his futon, which I'd slept on many times before then and knew I liked. Never realized how much luck was on my side back then. I'm learning now, I hope.

...And there's still so much to clean up, to put away: boxes of stuff from my parents' suite... a closet full of keepsakes from my father, some still needing sorting... pots and pans and glasses and cups and plates that Mom didn't want anymore, given her new, smaller kitchen. Papers to organize, books to shelve, CDs to put away - the battle to make this place feel like home doesn't end with getting the furniture sorted; even though I threw away a third of my personal belongings when I came out here, the space feels like a cluttered, cramped mess. I need to put some time into imposing order on the chaos.

Guess it's time to see how it feels, sleeping on my new futon...

Antichrist at the Vancity Theatre

Antichrist opens later this week at the Vancity Theatre, brilliantly double-billed with Day Of Wrath. I simply need to see both these films on the screen. I have seen the Dreyer, about the persecution of an old woman as a witch, before; I have no way of knowing beforehand whether I will enjoy the experience of watching Antichrist, but I've found things to admire in every Lars von Trier film I've seen. As perverse and maddening as he can sometimes be, he is certainly one of the few larger-than-life auteurs that I'm aware of at work in cinema today, and many of his works (Zentropa, the original Kingdom TV series, and Dogville especially) I love deeply. The fact that this is a relatively large production starring two fine actors (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg), dealing with very ambitious themes (apparently death, grief, guilt, sex, misogyny, and violence), that it is nonetheless being described as a horror film, and that it has been praised for both the beauty and surreal impact of its images is more than enough to pique my curiosity - to say nothing of the astonishing image used to promote it (above). The controversy around the so-called "sexual violence" in the film - both male and female genitalia are wounded, I gather - neither disturbs nor interests me much, but I have nothing against boundary-pushing cinema (provided there is a certain seriousness to it - I'm not talkin' Cinema Sewer, here). Plus a friend of mine who is a fellow admirer of serious cinema - it was our mutual admiration for Ingmar Bergman that united us initially - has praised it, as has another friend who knows his horror, cult and exploitation fare; I would be very surprised NOT to be impressed by this movie, given all the above. I missed the VIFF screenings, couldn't make it to its too-short run at the Ridge, and an attempt to hail the director for an online interview predictably bore no fruit, so there's no way I can offer anything more than this to generate interest - which I would like to do, because I would like to see the still criminally-underattended Vancity Theatre flourish and because I'd like to encourage more people to see REAL CINEMA as opposed to Hollywood bullshit, that I might feel less alone in the world... It saddens me to think that the Friday show I plan to attend may be just as poorly-attended as Peter Watkins' astonishing Punishment Park was, last week (I counted seven other attendees, including the cinephile who'd come with me, the night I was there).

Then again, odds are that if there's only a handful of attendees, I won't have to be distracted by rustlings, coughs, feet thrust over seat-backs, whispered conversations, people kicking the back of my seat, inappropriate laughter, ringing cellphones, and assholes sending text messages in the theatre and such. In fact, fuckit, just stay home, you're probably not worthy of this film anyhow, you crass heathen brutes. Only come if you think you're aesthetically developed enough, okay? I have my doubts, but maybe y'all will surprise me. Try to comport yourselves like civilized people, tho', if you do show up: remember that some of us are there to receive communion.

There's a too-detailed, spoiler-ridden synopsis of the film on Wikipedia for those still unconvinced. I am so glad that this film is returning to the screen in Vancouver - I honestly thought I'd missed my chance to see it properly, projected. Thanks, Vancity Theatre! I'll be there, at least, and... I'll bring a friend!

Free event: Art's Birthday at the Western Front, Sunday

Jeffrey Allport at Solder And Sons, photo by Dan Kibke. Not to be reused without permission.

I've written about Jeffrey Allport before; Glaciers is a very exciting new project he's involved in, featuring the minimalist improvising percussionist performing with electronics guy Robert Pedersen of Main Street bookstore/ performance space Solder And Sons, and Lief Hall of the defunct avant-punk/ No Wave noise unit The Mutators, doing very intense and sometimes quite quiet vocal improv that has little obvious relation to her extroverted shrieking of yore. They're one of the most interesting avant-garde musical projects afoot in Vancouver at the moment, inviting and amply rewarding careful listening; I find an almost hypnotic degree of focus is generated by what they do, perhaps because they themselves are so attentive to the music they're making. They will be playing Art's Birthday on January 17th at the Western Front - a free event, also featuring French For Sled Dogs, whom I wrote about here, another very cool project featuring guitarist Chris Albanese, bassist Dave Chokroun, and Fond Of Tigers honcho Stephen Lyons, dropping his guitar to sit at the drumkit for this unit; this is mathier, jazzier, and perhaps a tad more noodly than Glaciers - though these are jarring, decentered noodles, filled with unexpected bends and breaks. Cubist noodles, maybe: like that. These are two very exciting projects, anyhow, and no doubt Prophecy Sun and Soressa Gardner will be doing interesting things as well... plus it's a free event! Come say Happy Birthday to Art*!

*No, not Art Bergmann. Art, like, as in art.

Good Engrish

Hah!

My father, Motorhead, DOA and Bev Davies: a brief note relating to Ox Fanzine

Well, Dad never got to see this one: I have my first cover story in a non-English-language magazine, a German feature on Motorhead, in the December/January issue of Ox Fanzine (a metal/punk zine of great quality, if you'll take a testimonial from someone who can't read German). It's based in part on the interview I did with Lemmy for The Skinny, to plug Motorhead's Vancouver appearance last October - but with photos from that gig, by Bev Davies and Femke Van Delft, and a Bev Davies portrait of Lemmy from backstage at the Vogue gracing the cover, all taken in time to plug Motorhead's December German tour. The article has been expanded and adapted for German readers, with Lemmy graciously agreeing to some follow-up questions, though it has a similar area of concern (war, Lemmy's fascination with Nazi iconography, and the darker side of Motorhead). My father read the Skinny article, and was impressed with Lemmy - one of the few people I've interviewed he said that about; in fact, at one point in the interview - talking about the leftover hatreds and resentments of history - I mentioned my father to Lemmy, how Dad never got over what happened to two men from his hometown who were psychologically destroyed by their time in Japanese prisoner of war camps. I can actually spot the reference in German to "mein vater," where I mention this to Lemmy; I wish Dad had been around to see it. When it was still in draft stage, I joked about it with him at the table in my parents' old apartment, reading him the section in English and saying "so you'll be famous in Germany," or something silly like that - and he laughed. That may well have been his last week before he went into the hospital.

I won't be posting any more of my Lemmy interview online (at least not in the forseeable future - I might be able to tidy it up and get an English language version into print elsewhere), but those curious about historical resentments should check out my Dad's feelings about the Japanese during World War II, from an interview I did with him awhile back. As I may or may not say there, my father's inability to forgive the Japanese for their cruelties in WWII was one of the things that actually made me interested in that country. He would later give a BC-crested coat to the young son of a teacher I worked with in Japan, saying that seeing this kid - innocent of the sins of history - helped redeem the Japanese for him, make it a little easier to get over his anger...

But to return to matters musical, this very issue of Ox also has another Vancouver connection, an interview with DOA... which reminds me that, speaking of Bev Davies - she has a 2010 all-DOA calendar for sale. Bev has taken some of the most dynamic photos of DOA ever, and my earliest exposure to her work was on the back of DOA album covers. More information about where and how to buy the calendar can probably be found on Bev's Facebook site; Facebook and I are having communication problems at the moment, so I won't be offerin' more specific or certain links on that, but see also here for my 2008 interview with Bev, or check out Bev's blog! (...and wow, she's posted a letter to her from Philip K. Dick, from 1972, I guess when Phil was drying out in Vancouver... holy shit! I know she knows Neil Young, but PK Dick? Maybe I'll shut up and read someone else's blog for a change...).

2009

It's been a bit of a year of loss, for both me and for the scene I've participated in in Vancouver.

I lost my father, and my mother lost her husband. Due to her stroke, she also lost her ability to speak, though she's gotten some of that back since. I didn't exactly lose my apartment while all this was going on - I moved out voluntarily, despite a concomitant decision of my landlord (AKA "the lying cocksucker") to end my lease - but I still have not made my new apartment into the comfortable home my old one was (it just feels like somewhere I'm living temporarily while I sort out my life - like a hotel you move into while your home is being repaired, except there is no other home, this is it). In the process of moving, I lost a friend of 15 years, who chose a singularly unforgivable time to decide to not be there for me. Plus I lost my bed and half my furniture, to lessen the risk of bringing West End bedbugs to my new locale. And while it wasn't an unproblematic identity for me - too much it allowed me to paper over and/or distract me from in my rather lame personal life - with the move, I lost my role as Vancouver scene chronicler and the ability to easily go to gigs or movies in the city.

That's a lot of loss for one year.

As for Vancouver, the music scene lost The Cobalt and Fake Jazz Wednesdays, Richards On Richards, and Slickety Jim's Chat'n'Chew, and (unless Dale has found a new locale that I don't know about) Noize To Go, which may not have been my favourite place to shop for records (it was kinda cramped!), but definitely was my favourite place to bullshit with a record store clerk. Various arts institutions lost their grants and any security in their futures in BC, and there's other budget-cut losses to our city's cultural institutions in the works as I write. Granville Street lost its lovely trees, and Vancouverites lost any connection to the Granville Street we used to know and like - now increasingly a wild-west barzone for obnoxious suburbanites and tourists, so different from what it was like ten years ago (remember the benches dotting the street? The Granville Book Company? The Capitol 6?). I know other losses have happened - I'm not trying to be comprehensive, here; there have been other musicians who died, other venues that closed up (and restaurants and coffee shops and other places of local colour and character that we will not see again), but these are the ones that *I* felt. Ultimately, in fact, I feel like *I lost Vancouver,* because when I go there now - not only does it no longer feel like home, it's like I'm visiting a different city, some place I don't really know. The mood is more Darwinistic, more aggressive - and several of my most significant points of reference on the city's map have been erased.

Possibly some readers of The Skinny might also include me on the list of the city's losses; it would be reasonable to do so, though a bit vain for me to mention it... what can I say, I'm not there anymore, and even if I do get the odd piece of writing done in the New Year - because I do have some old projects to put to rest - it will never be the same again.

It's been a pretty rough year, all told. I'm glad I won't be there for the February festivities; I think I'll just stay in Maple Ridge through that time, at this point not so much because of a feeling of angry boycott but because I'm feeling a bit bruised and don't need more punishment. Besides, there's a lot of rebuilding to be done.

At 11:58 tonight, still at my Mom's apartment, I shut off the TV (where every New Year's celebration had blaring bad music and loud crowds of beautiful people) and opened up her blinds and window so we could look out over Maple Ridge and see the fireworks - mostly coming from the Langley side of the Fraser River, it looked like, but visible through the trees and fog - and hear the people shouting and cheering. We said "Happy New Year" to each other and hugged and watched and listened for a few minutes. It was nice.

I might take a bit of a break from writing here for awhile (tho' usually when I say that, I put up three posts in the subsequent week, so don't hold me to it). If I'm absent, don't worry - I'm doing okay. Check out the Punishment Park links, the Phil Minton interview below. Hope your 2010 is better than my 2009. Happy New Year.

My Excessive Bed

Sigh. So, I haven't had a bed since October, been sleeping on an air mattress on the floor - quite comfortably, really (but what will people think?). Mom gave me $1000 to buy myself a bed for Christmas. Having comparison shopped a bit, my mind settled on a king size bed - I could get a decent new one for $800 at the Salvation Army, mattress and box springs and skip the frame, since - I reasoned - if I ever meet someone and couple up, we might want a bed for two, and this - going from a state of no-beddedness to a state of beddedness - would be the ideal time to plan for that eventuality. I could save money and waste in the future by buying a big bed now. In the meantime, I could roll about in the luxury of excess space.

It sounded great til I got it back to the apartment, which is when I realized just HOW BIG the bed is. Goddamn, do I now have one big bed! It's a good thing I made my bedroom into my office, because there's no way that that it would be fitting in here. The living room, now, is entirely dominated by the thing, huge and white and comical, lacking any sheets that will fit it.

Hm. Well. Maybe a queen sized would have done the trick. And what if I'm single for the rest of my life? I'll be eighty, lying alone with a mile of space on either side of me, thinking back to this moment of folly, my loneliness forever marked by the bed I never filled.

In the same spirit, the last time I got condoms I bought the jumbo box (it was the best deal!). I wonder how many will expire? ...at least when you by 24 rolls of toilet paper, you use them all...

Bigger Than Life (...but aren't all movies, really?)

Nicholas Ray is one of my favourite "Hollywood renegades" of the 1950's and 1960's. I was first impressed by his charasmatic performance as the one-eyed forger in Wim Wenders' The American Friend (which also was my "official introduction" to the work of Patricia Highsmith, on whose middle Ripley novels it is loosely based - though followers of this blog will know that I had a formative childhood encounter with a certain story of hers about giant man-eating snails. It doesn't quite count, as I didn't really know or care who Highsmith was at that point, as I was in elementary school and only in it for the snails). Also being a fan of Wenders' Im Lauf Der Zeit (Kings Of The Road), I was very curious to see The Lusty Men, which that film quotes, and was most impressed when I caught up with it. It tells a story of rodeo riders and the woman who loves them (who is much wiser and mature than any of the men-boys in the movie; great Susan Hayward performance, for fans of hers - worth seeking out); it's unavailable officially on DVD to my knowledge, but bootlegs of it can be found. Johnny Guitar was a bit over the top for me (though it would bear revisiting), and I haven't looked at Rebel Without a Cause in years - recalling its social commentary as being somewhat broad (though I do retain a vivid memory of Jim Backus' ass waggling in the kitchen as, housewife-like, he scrubs the floor; why do I remember that image?). His first film, They Live By Night, is a terrific and inventive "doomed lovers on the run" noir which makes striking use of helicopter shots, rare at the time; but by far my favourite film of Ray's is In A Lonely Place, with Humphrey Bogart as a helplessly self-destructive screenwriter, modeled in part on Ray himself (who is storied, if I've got this right, to have once thrown a movie projector out of a window to register his disagreement with a producer). There aren't many American filmmakers of the 1950's whose canon I am so familiar with; perhaps only Billy Wilder rivals Ray in terms of films I've sought out, with Douglas Sirk and Sam Fuller in distant third-and-fourth place).

Bigger Than Life - soon coming out on Criterion - is not exactly my favourite Ray film, but that's partially my own fault: the idea of James Mason as a professor in the 1950's who succumbs to drug-induced megalomania is so damn appealing to one such as myself that it interfered with my being actually able to appreciate the film on its own terms, the one time I saw it. Good news, then, that I have a shot at catching a theatrical screening: it's currently playing at the Cinematheque, alongside an Elia Kazan film that I have not seen. Cinephile followers of this blog are advised to check it out!

Nothing else to say. Today would have been my father's 76th birthday. I'm going to spend it with Mom. Over and out.

Scars and memories (...in which I buy a damaged Dead Kennedys record and wax nostalgiac for my teen years)

I found something really special at the Audiopile Boxing Day sale today - a copy of the Dead Kennedys' In God We Trust, Inc. Not a great album by that band, in my opinion - some of their most aggressively thrashy songs are on it, which makes it a bit special, I suppose, and there are great moments (mostly on side two; "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" is indubitably a classic, and I must admit singular fondness for the "Rawhide" cover), but most of it's too aggressive for its own good, Jello's lyrics racing by in a breathless power-rant and East Bay Ray choosing, rather than deft, precise guitar lines, to just play really noisily. Nothing on it is as captivating or catchy as the songs on Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables or Plastic Surgery Disasters, and for the most part its far less developed or musically satisfying than the later Frankenchrist. It's kind of creatively on par with Bedtime For Democracy - but much, much briefer. The cover is the high point, memorable and eloquent; showing a golden Christ nailed to a folded-dollar cross, it's not necessarily blasphemous, just a critique of the church and the exploitation of Christianity by capitalist interests, but it was startling enough back in 1981, when it came out (my parents certainly didn't much like the T-shirt, which I would later buy, probably at the DK's 1984/1985 York Theatre "Fall Of Canada" gig). I've seen used copies of the album before, and passed it up, but this particular copy I absolutely had to get, because there was a tear on the cover - a white spot where the surface of the album art was ripped away when tape was affixed to it and then removed. This made this copy very very special to me. The reasons why require some explaining:

1. In 1982, I was a young and none-too-worldy teenager, for whom rock music was a world of great mystery and adventure. I'd previously, with my guitarist friend Greg Terry - with whom I'd sort of formed a band called Epicurean Nightmare, with me writing the lyrics and him the music, our songs never performed, to my knowledge, outside his room - listened to a lot of metal, as the most rebellious, potent, and energetic music we could find here in suburbia. I'd seen Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and the original Van Halen lineup at the Coliseum at that point, I think with Greg. One day, though, he played me the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks - I don't know if it was a new discovery for him at that point, too - and it changed everything. I was still relatively new to cursing - profanity had lost none of its taboo - and "Bodies" was really a shocker, impressively so. There was no question that whatever danger and rebellion were present in metal were intensified exponentially and scarily by the Sex Pistols; there was something far more real, raw, and POWERFUL about punk, something I hadn't realized was out there in the world before Greg dropped the needle, and I needed to hear more. I don't remember if I bought the Pistols' album right away, or just listened to Greg's copy; as it was on a major label, it was one of the only punk albums you could find at mainstream record stores, which is all there were in Maple Ridge, or Coquitlam, or anywhere close by. I had yet to figure out about shops like Collectors RPM or Odyssey Imports or Quintessence (which I believe I actually would go into once, as a kid, during my early vinyl forays into Vancouver); I don't think I'd even put it together that you could find certain records in Vancouver, but not here, at that point.

2. But once I knew about the Pistols, I kept my ears open about punk; I read about it, connected a few dots from magazines and from Greg, and I gathered that there was a band called the Dead Kennedys that were even more rebellious and dangerous than the Sex Pistols. The name alone was compelling as hell. Neither Greg nor I knew where we could find such a thing as a Dead Kennedys record - this was long before the internet - and none of the record stores we knew could help us; they'd never heard of them (or DOA, or the Subhumans, or any of the other bands we asked about). Part of my deep desire to find one of their records, besides simple curiosity, was an adolescent manhood thing: I wanted to one-up Greg, by being the first to find a record by this seemingly mythical band, supposedly even more intense than the one he'd played me. Then one day, at D & G Collectors Records, on East Hastings across from the Kootenay Loop - a shop long gone, needless to say - I found In God We Trust, Inc., which I promptly snapped up, paying over $10 for it. A very high price for a record, in those days, but this was big stuff for me - almost akin to the first Playboy I bought, nervous as hell, at a Maple Ridge drugstore a couple of years previous. It was potentially dangerous stuff - the word "cunt" was even on the lyric sheet, right out there in view on the back cover! It would surely take Greg and I to the next level of our punkhood - a hard-won, long-sought initiation.

3. Now, it happens that on this day, I was on the way to the Pacific Coliseum, I believe to see the Blue Oyster Cult, on their Fire Of Unknown Origin tour. I had floor tickets - standing room; and for whatever reason - laziness, or fear that the record would get damaged or stolen if things got rowdy - I decided to leave it in the coat check rather than carry it with me into the crowd. The coat check person - glowering in disapproval at the artwork - affixed a tag with a number on it, and handed me a card with the same number; I could pick the album up after the show. While I barely remember the BOC - vague images of a giant Godzilla head blowing steam behind the drum riser - I have strikingly vivid memories of the experience after the concert, of going to collect my album and watching the coat check person take the number that was stuck to it with tape and RIP IT OFF, taking a generous chunk of the cover with it. I don't remember if I actually yelled or shouted in shock when this happened, but angry words got exchanged: they had permanently damaged my precious album, before I had even heard it! For years afterwards, while the record was still in my collection, I would feel a little shiver of dismay every time I contemplated the white patch on the front. It may well have hastened my selling the EP (probably to the late Ty Scammell, whom Jello used to buy records from when he was in town). Certainly by 1999, when I moved to Japan, it was gone - I had sold off almost all my records by then, as I didn't want to try to find a space to store them. I wouldn't start rebuilding my collection for ten years...

The astute among you will realize that this damaged patch was, at least to my memory, exactly the same as the one on the album I found at Audiopile today. I believe - I can't be 100% sure, but I believe - that this is the exact same copy of the DK's album that I first bought circa 1982. My first punk purchase on my own steam, which I never ever expected to see again, is now back in my collection. And suddenly, the torn white patch, which used to be a scar, a marker of an old wound, has become precious to me, because it's only by virtue of this scar that I recognized the record at all. If it hadn't been damaged in its own unique way, I would never have realized its imporantance - that it was in fact MY old record, come full circle. And suddenly the scar is a thing of great fondness.

Found me a signed Mojo Nixon, too.

...

Shame about the recent history of the Kennedys. If the Wikipedia page can be trusted, it looks like they may have finally stopped touring with their various ringer members. The title of their new "best of" album, Milking The Sacred Cow, is depressingly cynical, and seems to vindicate estranged, abused vocalist Jello Biafra in his various harsh comments about his former bandmates. Jello, meanwhile, has a strong, fun new album out, The Audacity Of Hype, with his new band the Guantanamo School Of Medicine. I gave it a slightly snarky review in the Straight - there's one song that flat out annoys me, and I sometimes find something in Jello's righteous manner that is akin to biting on tinfoil - but it's still a goddamn good album and will please any true punks out there (or people who just like good, smart rock). All of Jello's musical ventures since the Kennedys' broke up have been noteworthy, of course, and I'm particularly fond of "Full Metal Jackoff" on his album with DOA, Last Scream Of The Missing Neighbours, and all of Never Breathe What You Can't See, with the Melvins (the cover of "Halo Of Flies" off their next release is pretty damn special, too, even if the album is a bit "padded" with remixes of songs from the previous disc; it feels a bit like the Jelvins had a few leftover songs from the Never Breathe sessions and filled the album out with remixes and a live track...). Still, it's nice to see him with his own band; here's hoping there'll be a Vancouver show, eventually - they play Seattle and Portland in the next few days. Viva Jello!

Late Night Dining Options In Maple Ridge

I've spent the last four days spent intermittently moving my Mom upstairs - with the invaluable help of two good friends - and organizing/ outfitting her new apartment. Today the errands involved getting extension cords and a dish rack (since her dishwasher won't really fit in the new kitchen); rejigging some of the power bars and plugs in her apartment; and cooking dinner. Tonight, it was bison burgers; the last three days have been turkey leftovers from the feast Mom made our movin' helpers on Sunday, with Mom pushing aside the plate on the third day to announce she was sick of turkey. Pretty much everything that needs to be set up is set up; mostly the work left over involves going through the remnants of my parents' previous suite and deciding what is still useful, what should be boxed up, what should be taken to a thrift store, and what should be thrown away; but everything necessary to her life and comfort is upstairs already. I'm happy she's liking the new suite; it looks like this might work for awhile - she's independent and resourceful enough to maintain the space once I'm able to go back to work, and though she does make a few mistakes since her stroke, mostly they've involved forgetting which meds to take when, or getting confused about dates and numbers. She's quite able to take care of herself on her own (I think).

Tonight, tho' I'd planned to do more, the errand-running proved enough, and once dinner was done, after sharing America's Funniest Home Videos and a Family Feud, I found myself nodding off on the couch - I forget what was on TV at that point. She had a bingo game in the building to go to, anyhow, so I came home, read a bit, and passed out at 8pm, to wake up fully refreshed and unable to sleep further around 10:30, the bison burgers long since having been digested. Alas, my kitchen is bare, and my dining table cluttered with stuff I've moved back here; all my work has gone into Mom's place, lately, and I've been pretty much living there for well over a month, since my Dad went into the hospital, so I'm ill prepared to resume life in my suite. After killing an hour or so for my thyroid meds to go through my system, I faced a tough question: what's a guy to eat after midnight in Maple Ridge?

Since the Subway on 224th is closed, the options, far as I could tell, were:

1. A few different pizza places, all of which offer only the standard pizza toppings. Good luck finding sundried tomatoes, pesto, garlic, or carmelized onions in this town! I just had pizza last night, however, happily making it through 3/4's of a medium ham, pineapple and onion job until suddenly I felt the desire to gag. Which stopped my eating and greatly lessened my enthusiasm for having another pizza tonight.

2. The White Spot burger joint at the Chevron on Lougheed Highway, open all night. While it's greasy fast food of dubious nutritional value, I do eat at White Spot now and then and find it quite tasty, and there's no noticeable drop in quality between the Maple Ridge White Spot and the one I sometimes used to eat at in the Mac's on Davie Street. But it would have required a block's further walk on a very cold night, and I still have a bit of a limp from an old ankle injury, which left me to settle on:

3. Tim Horton's. This Tim Horton's location has made the news twice in recent years. One article suggests that it is used by local sex trade workers as a meeting place for prospective clients; alas, the john raped and brutally beat the woman in question in a nearby ravine after they met, getting a mere five years for the assault, hence the news story. More recently, a 24 year old was arrested after punching out said Tim's window. Reminds me of the guy who shattered the glass door of the video store I worked at years ago, a few blocks away - or the time, as a teen, that I put my own fist through a glass window to punch at a kid who was teasing me (I still have scars on my right wrist; it could have been very bad...). I've never really understood the appeal of Timmie's - the devotion that franchise spawns, as some sort of (formerly?) Canadian cultural institution, is rather beyond me, based on the quality of the food, coffee, and service, but one must learn to make do. The chicken salad sandwich, at least, is edible (I'm long since back to eating meat, thank God; I don't think vegetarian options exist at Tim's, unless you want to have a dinner of donuts). The chili, it transpires, is less so - it suggests low-grade meat shipped in in cannisters and heated up. After picking out the chunks of mushroom, I made a fair show of eating it, but then started to think about the stories about e. coli I'd seen in the doc Food, Inc, and decided to give it up. The worst part of the meal by far, tho', was the peppermint tea, which tasted like nothing so much as the plastic lid the Filipino worker so considerately put on the cup for me, though I had full intention of eating in and would have eschewed the unnecessary waste if given the chance. Plastic-flavoured tea - a holiday favourite. Mariah Carey Christmas music played overhead as I plodded through the meal and chased it down with a double chocolate donut, the adjective "joyless" coming to mind as I packed up my garbage and headed for the door... reminding me that when I lived in the suburbs of Tokyo, in Ageo-shi in the prefecture of Saitama - jokingly called "Dasaitama" by some, from the Japanese adjective "dasai," meaning something lacking in class or sophistication - just around the corner from my apartment was the Joyfull Restaurant (sic), also open 24 hours, and serving all manner of tasty dishes, both western and Asian. I used to enjoy their Salisbury steak, as I recall, and had plenty of teriyaki and yakisoba there, as well as slices of cheesecake with strawberries. Dasai or no, the suburbs of Tokyo make for better late night dining options than the suburbs of Vancouver. Go figure.

I think I need to buy some groceries.

Phil Minton's Feral Choir: Vancouver return

Phil Minton by Francesca Pfeffer, not to be reused without permission

With apologies to Paul Dutton, Koichi Makigami, Maja Ratkje, Jaap Blonk, and Maggie Nicols -vocal improvisers whose music has brought me great pleasure and whom I'm very happy to have met - my favourite vocal improviser is Phil Minton, especially if I get to see him at work live. I am thus utterly thrilled that Vancouver New Music is bringing Phil's Feral Choir (audio and video of which are at that link) back to town - tho' technically, most of the people who will be onstage are already here, as Mr. Minton will be organizing workshops and a performance for locals - musicians and otherwise - who might wish to participate chorally in this unusual art form (Ross Birdwise, are you receiving?). The sign-up date is mid-January and the performance will be January 24th. I'm pleased to promote it by posting my old Phil Minton interview, from Bixobal #2 - a fine little zine I dearly hope will get back on it's little webbed feet someday; for further reading, there's a fun Phil Minton anecdote in my recent piece about that Paul Dutton/ Alex Varty/ Coate Cook concert at 1067...

Meantime, I give you...

The Diminishing Doughnuts of Phil Minton
Interview by Allan MacInnis

One of the most remarkable performances I’ve seen was a small, free “Feral Choir” concert conducted in February of 2007 led by the UK’s Phil Minton at Vancouver’s Carnegie Center – located at Main and Hastings, the “Ground Zero” of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside slum. Various locals – often exhausted by a combination of poverty, drugs, alcohol, mental illness and misery – would shuffle into the tiny hall, filling up on free coffee and peering, occasionally, in various states of confusion and annoyance, at what was going on at front. Some stayed, and some left after about a minute shaking their heads. Of those, some came back to peer a little more intently a few minutes later, re-filling their coffees en route, as the bespectacled improviser led six Vancouver non-professionals through an ever-shifting series of trills, burbles, bleeps, moans, and chants. Each member of the choir – from a tiny plump white-haired woman adorned with brightly-coloured scarves and an expressive style that suggested Wallace Shawn, to a hugely bearded beanpole in a bandana – performed with his or her own distinct style, producing something organic, beautiful, and utterly bizarre over the course of a single thirty minute improv. The only false note was when one straightish woman attempted to inject a Bob and Doug McKenzie “cu-ru-cu-cu” into the proceedings; in the case of music already so infused with playfulness and joy, there isn’t much need to force humor onto the stage.

Minton would perform again during that trip to Vancouver, at the Ironworks, as part of a rotating ensemble organized by Coastal Jazz and Blues (later edit: the Time Flies festival, which I neglected to name as such in the original article), modelled on Derek Bailey’s “company weeks,” in which varied combinations of gifted improvisers were mixed and matched over the course of several nights. Said company included violinist Eyvind Kang, UK saxophonist John Butcher, Toronto drummer Harris Eisenstadt, Dutch pianist Cor Fuhler, and Danish guitarist Hasse Poulsen (who more often than not played his guitar with a bow or a slinky). Local cellist Peggy Lee and transplanted bassist Torsten Muller rounded out the pool and did Vancouver proud. As gifted as these musicians are, when he took the stage, the seated Minton stole the show, performing at a remarkable level of physical intensity, his entire body called into play; anyone watching his twitches, jerks, leans and lolls in another context might assume that Minton was quite nuts, or perhaps attempting an eccentric form of theatre, but his physical immersion in producing sound really betokens nothing more than his total devotion to his craft.

Thanks to Coastal Jazz’s Ken Pickering (who is an aficionado of the art of vocal improv, and often brings exponents of the form to our jazz fest), I’d seen Minton several times previous, both as part of the Dedication Orchestra and in a small group improv with Muller, Lee, and the delightful Maggie Nicols (who says of Phil, “I adore him and he's easily my favourite male singer.”) I was too intimidated by Minton’s unique and oddly charismatic presence to approach him about an interview until the February concerts, but when we finally got talking, I found him warm and tolerant of my at-times overlong, intensely inquisitive questions. When I stumbled once in my nervousness – calling him “Mr. Dutton,” thinking of Canada’s own master of vocal improv, Paul Dutton – he responded with a bizarrely guttural, but playful, growl that will remain ever untranslatable (which is probably for the best!). What resulted was an interesting, but brief, glimpse into the career of a most unusual performer. Those wanting more are encouraged to visit Minton’s homepage, http://www.philminton.co.uk/.

By the way, we Canadians (- because this was being published in an American magazine, dig? - ) spell it “donut,” too. I have followed Mr. Minton’s lead.


Phil: Hullo there.

Allan: Hello, Mr. Minton, it’s Allan MacInnis calling.

Phil: Hullo, Allan.

Allan: Is now a good time?

Phil: Sure.

Allan: Great... Let me start by asking you about a quote from Paul Dutton in the liner notes to

your solo CD, A Doughnut in One Hand, that you “eschew personal emotions” in your work, but that nonetheless “there’s an emotional content of riveting intensity, an exploration of feelings that elude ready (or perhaps any) verbal articulation, feelings sensed but not seized.” Everyone playing last night seemed to be working primarily with sound, but because you’re a vocal artist, it’s really difficult not to see you as expressing emotion, as well.

Phil: Yeah.

Allan: How do you feel about that sort of thing?

Phil: Well, there are so many sort of subjective associations with vocal sounds... I’ve just got to listen to them in an abstract way. I can’t get involved with the emotional associations. Most sounds I find are pretty positive, actually – I don’t actually use many negative sounds. I’m just hearing it just as sound and music, actually. I have to disassociate myself from any of the emotional associations.

Allan: How do you feel about audiences imposing those things on you? Anyone who sees you may talk about stuttering or stammering or trying to articulate inexpressible things – I’ve read praises of your performances like this. Do you think they’re on the wrong track?

Phil (chuckles): I’m probably not hearing it as “stuttering” – I’m probably hearing it as some sort of rhythmic riff, almost completely musically!

Allan: What’s happening inside you when you’re performing? You become very physical – I gather when you were a younger man you used to writhe about onstage.

Phil (laughing): I did do a bit more moving about. I’ve seen some videos and stuff of myself, and – I don’t like myself when I’m standing up, actually. I use my body to get out all of the sounds. I can’t get those sounds unless I move my body in a certain way. That’s why I move.

Allan: It looks like you’re playing yourself – moving your feet, moving your hands, like they’re part of your instrument. It’s quite fascinating. What’s going on in your mind when you’re doing that? Are you lost to the world, or -?

Phil: Yeah, but there’s degrees of lostness...

Allan: Do you have to consciously stop and listen to what people are doing, or is it more of an intuitive process?

Phil: I’m listening all the time.

Allan: And consciously deciding to do this-or-that, or...?

Phil: I make the decisions at the time, it’s spontaneous. There’s a whole repertoire of stuff that I can find somewhere... I think my brain is like a synthesizer. I have to find the sound that I want. Often I don’t find it, so I take on like a physical... uh... like a deep breath, perhaps, and I’ll do the body manipulations to get a certain sound, from changing the shape of my mouth, the shape of my larynx, and putting the voice to a different area in my body...

Allan: Mm-hm?

Phil: And sometimes it doesn’t actually happen. I get something completely different from what I intended, and I have to work with that material. There’s a lot of the time when new things actually happen. But, uh – it’s all intuitive. I don’t have any set plan when I sit down, nothing at all.

Allan: You’ve said that improvising is the most honest form of performance.

Phil (laughs): Yeah! It can be, without any plans at all. If I ever have plans I forget them in the heat of the moment.

Allan: I read that you started out being interested in improvised music by looking at Jackson Pollock.

Phil: Yeah.

Allan: And you were goofing around in choir, doing strange things.

Phil: I was in church choirs, yeah. I sort of left that at quite an early age, as my voice broke – or I probably said my voice was breaking! (chuckles). When it ended, my voice was breaking. It didn’t suit me at all, being in choirs. I started to get interested in music again when I heard jazz, actually. Especially Coltrane, was very powerful – he had that incredible energy. And some friend of mine who was an art student showed me some photographs of Pollock’s paintings, you know, and it just seemed to have some of the same energy. It was really a challenging form. The music at the time was hard bop and that, it was very classically crafted music, and somehow I didn’t feel I wanted to get into that sort of world. I could hear something after that incredible discipline, y’know – that it was about finding things inside your own body and your own instrument. And Jackson Pollock seemed like the visual counterpart of the sounds I was seeing. You just sort of think, and then you wait til you find other people who are thinking the same things, you know, a few years later – and you meet up... Of course, then there was a whole movement...

Allan: Yeah.

Phil: But I was never particularly involved, in the very early days, actually, of the London improvising scene. I was living in Sweden, at this period, with a family, working in a dance band.

Allan: Playing trumpet?

Phil: Yeah, and singing covers.

Allan: Conventional songs.

Phil: Yeah.

Allan: When did you start doing vocal improv in a serious way?

Phil: I would say in the late 60s. I was playing trumpet and working with some Swedish musicians, in Northern Sweden. As I was working in the dance band, I was also playing with the free improvisers, around the area at the time. There was a fantastic sax player called Lars Göran Ulander. I did a recording with this group in 1969 (Blue Tower CD07, Up Umeå, released in 1999). I think that’s the first time you’ll hear me doing what might be called voice improvising.

Allan: And it was done alongside trumpet playing?

Phil: I did both. It sounds pretty conventional, these days.

Allan: Were there other people around who you saw as antecedents? Kurt Schwitters, or...?

Phil: I didn’t know anything about Kurt Schwitters. I think Paul Dutton was the first person to introduce me to Kurt Schwitters. That would have been in the early 1980’s. I didn’t know much about the sound poetry scene. I was more into listening to saxophone players than voices.

Allan: How did the Feral Choir get started?

Phil: Well, I started doing some workshops with young musicians in Sweden, I think. It must have been fifteen years ago. There’s some musicians, some dancers, some actors – and then I started to get asked to do more of these workshops. I’d been told by somebody years ago that I was sort of a “feral singer,” and I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I found out about it. I rather liked this idea. And then I was asked once to do a workshop and they said, “Could we do a concert afterwards?” And they said, “What could we call the choir?” and I said, “We’ll call it the Feral Choir.” And then it started from there. I’ve done about fifty or sixty now, workshops through the years.

Allan: Wow!

Phil: I do about three or four a year. Quite large groups sometimes – I have done up to about 200 kids. And now I’ve worked in lots and lots of situations with homeless people, people in prisons, and – people from quite unlikely backgrounds. I did one recently with postgraduate scientists, which was quite interesting.

Allan: Where was that?

Phil: That was in England... What I’ve been trying to do is broaden it out. There’s a word for it – outreach, it’s called, these days, where you take art into the community. Because I was feeling pretty isolated, going around the world, and doing these workshops for, well, quite interesting people, but they were all into the music, you know? They weren’t the general public, and I just wanted to open it up and do it with ordinary people from ordinary backgrounds. A lot of people have said how much they enjoyed being part of such a thing. It’s not hard, and it’s for people who can’t sing – or say they can’t sing. I think if anybody can make some sort of positive sounds, it’s singing, as far as I’m concerned.

Allan: There’s a really egalitarian nature to it – everyone has a mouth.

Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Allan: When working with prisoners – I know there’s not meant to be a cathartic or emotional element in your own singing, but do you ever try to tap into their emotions?

Phil: People do get quite emotional, yeah. I often start the workshops with laughter, because it’s like the most extreme thing the voice does, and it’s really vocally quite wild sometimes. So I start with laughter, and I start to explore what we do with our voices when we laugh, and a lot of people can get quite hysterical when we start on this.

Allan: Do you try to stick with more positive emotions, or do people ever explore screaming, primal scream, that sort of thing?

Phil: I don’t deal with that, no. People do it, though. I wouldn’t... I’ve never worked with psychotic people either, I wouldn’t trust myself on that level.

Allan: (laughs)

Phil: But for mildly neurotic people it seems great! People come up and say they hadn’t laughed for five years or things like that, or they’ve never tried to pitch a note before. They’ve never sung at all, hummed or anything, and they’ve started to do it after being in these workshops. There you go – for some people, it’s great. And it’s a great kick for me.

Allan: The performance seemed very liberating. There’s an element of play in it – it’s very serious, but so are the most earnest forms of play. When children are playing, for instance...

Phil: Yeah. I mean – it’s great. Seven middle aged and almost elderly people doing some of those things – God, I thought it was great! They were a great little bunch, actually, last night.

Allan: I was sitting in the audience, and quite a few of people listening were quite poor and down and out. There were some really different reactions around me. I could hear one rather gruff old man behind me saying, “Ah, they’re a bunch of cuckoos!”

Phil (laughs): Yeah...

Allan: But he stayed. And then there was this woman at the end who turned to me at the end and said, “I LIKED it,” but in this very, “I-don’t-care-what-anyone-thinks” kind of way.

Phil (laughs): Yeah, well... that’s rather good!

Allan: Do you do anything special to practice your singing?

Phil: I’m trying to do that all the time, much to the annoyance of my family. I’m yeah – it was – huuuuuummmnjoooe. I’m always aware of my voice! I can’t let it go. I practice in the middle of the night, apparently. Yeah.

Allan: Do you have any particular techniques that you use?

Phil: Just finding if I can hit things I’m hearing at a certain time. And I always use this yodel technique as a way of keeping my voice flexible. (Demonstrates): Eiuuuweuuuweeiuuu. Apparently I do this all the time at home, and I’m always being told off about it.

Allan: Is that something you devised specifically, or -?

Phil: It seems good for me. I don’t know if it’s good for other people.

Allan: But is it an actual official-type yodelling technique?

Phil: I don’t know if it’s “official.” I just always wanted to yodel as a kid. I’ve never heard of it as any particular practice for vocalists. If you want to yodel, practising yodelling – I don’t think it does much else.

Allan: Do you practice in public? Do you ever get funny looks from strangers?

Phil: Of course, yeah. All the time. I forget about it. And I’ve got to be careful in airports, especially in queues, when you’re not thinking about much, you know. I suddenly start with ooommmmmmuuuwooommuuuuuuwm or something. And I often mimic sounds around me – if I hear electronic stuff going on. (Whistles in imitation of an electronic beeping sound). Doing it along with it – different pitches that I hear all the time, I’m often joining in. Yeah.

Allan: Your whistling last night in performance was extraordinary to hear. You can do a lot more than most people with your mouth! I tried to imitate some of the sounds you were making, and I felt baffled by how developed your mouth is.

Phil: I don’t think it’s just the mouth... There’s a whole load of things going on.

Allan: Okay. Sorry! I don’t know what questions to ask, because it’s such a remarkable and small field, what you do...

Phil: There seems to be more people getting interested. There are people exploring these sort of things. I think I do it in a more – perhaps not an academic way, but there’s been some academic people researching voice sounds. I suppose I’m quite show-bizzy in that way, because I actually do it as performance, but I think other people are doing it in academic circles.

Allan: Have phoneticians or linguists ever shown interest in what you do?

Phil: Oh yeah... There’s a guy that’s written a book called 21st Century Voice, that sort of deals with this area of vocalese, or whatever it might be called.

Allan: And he spoke to you?

Phil: Yeah.

Allan: Okay... let me ask you about your solo voice albums, A Doughnut in Both Hands and A Doughnut in One Hand – is there a third doughnut album?

Phil: There will be: No Doughnuts in Hand. It’s a trilogy. I hope it will be released this year sometime.

Allan: Those albums are entirely untreated, right – no electronics?

Phil: Yeah, yeah.

Allan: Are there other vocal improvisers whose work you particularly like?
Phil: Of course, Maggie Nicols is great, and Jaap and Paul and David Moss, these guys.

Allan: How about performing with other vocal improvisers, versus other instruments? Do you have a preference?

Phil: Nope! Doesn’t matter what the instrument is.

Allan: Americans versus Europeans? You seem to be very European in your approach to improvising - there doesn’t seem to be a lot of the blues in what you’re doing?

Phil: Is the blues like, a flattened third interval? I don’t think I do any of those. But I don’t know if that is the definition of the blues, really... Ah... It’s sort of European, I suppose, but a lot of American improvisers don’t use the blues, either, I would say.

Allan: I’ve read critics say that a lot of Europeans are more interested in sound in a pure way, whereas blues scales are really pervasive in North America...

Phil: Well, last night – we were using stuff in between the notes as well. Stuff that can’t be notated, even – we’re not even on scales!

Allan: How do you feel about people like Maja Ratkje, who treats her voice with electronics?

Phil: I don’t know who she is...

Allan: She’s from Norway. She’s in Spunk and Fe-mail, and has done some vocal improv work with Jaap Blonk. How do you feel about electronics? Do you try to stay away from that?

Phil: Yeah, I’ll stick with my own stuff. It’s another instrument, it’s another way of thinking, but I’m trying to find sounds from my body... I couldn’t put it in a computer and store it and then try to find it. I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t want to do it. I have no interest in it... I find it hard enough to switch on a light!

Allan (laughs). Okay, well – one last question, then. You had said that you wanted to keep things positive, wherever possible, but... do you have any sort of philosophy of art, any particular effect you want to have on your audience?

Phil: I... (pauses; thinks, and states decisively): I want to be loved.

Allan, Phil: (laughter).

Phil: Just like everybody else, I think. It’s a strange way of going about it....



(Those interested should note that since this interview took place - in late 2007, I think - No Doughnuts In Hand has been released on the Emanem label. More information on that here).

RIP Robin Wood

I always had great regard for Canadian-based film critic Robin Wood, who died this week. His Hollywood From Vietnam To Reagan - subtitled "...And Beyond" for the revised edition - is one of my favourite, and most-referenced, books of film criticism. His chapter in The Shape Of Rage taking issue with the praises heaped on David Cronenberg and querying his ideology is the most thought-provoking and stimulating chapter in the book, and the short bit of back-and-forth between Cronenberg and Wood about Wood's criticisms is extremely revealing, in a way that the fawning (pseudo?)academic pose-striking that usually gets attached to Cronenberg never is. One of my proudest accomplishments as a writer has been to have my interview with Charles Mudede about Police Beat and Zoo appear in CineACTION!, a critical journal that Wood was intimately involved with and often appeared in -- I hope he read my article! (It's in issue 72, available for order online). As with any film critic, there are things he said that I disagree with, and I'm by no means a fan of all of the films he triumphed - he was very fond of Larry Cohen's It's Alive films, for example, but I find them almost entirely unwatchable, whatever Cohen's allegedly politically admirable intentions (...tho' I am quite fond of Q and various OTHER Larry Cohen movies; Wood just happened to have chosen some of his worst films to praise); but he was always thought-provoking and worth reading, and contributed much to my appreciation of cinema. Condolences to his family and partner and those who worked with him; film criticism is a poorer place without him.