The Spitfires - Live at the Pic and live at the Rickshaw! (plus ARGH!!, GRRL Circus, Bishops Green, and DOA)

1. Introducing the Introduction (by Allan MacInnis)

As I write this, the official word on the DOA Hardcore 81 anniversary show - what I *think* is the first local show, post-Polaris-prize win, for DOA - was that it was sold out, and no, I have no idea if more tickets will be released at the door. DOA themselves are reason enough for the show to be sold out, of course, but the addition of three great local bands to the bill - R.d. Cane's grrl circus (or is it GRRLCircus?), the Spitfires and Bishops Green - hardly helped with ticket availability, as did the fact that the latter two bands performed memorably great live sets at the Rickshaw a couple of years ago, opening for the Black Halos. Both those bands have new albums out - but in the case of the Spitfires, it's a bit of a strange thing, because their new album is a live album recorded nearly 20 years ago at the Piccadilly, in Vancouver, which I think I only ever knew as a strip bar (and not a very good one!). 

The thing is - though I have seen the Spitfires live a couple of times - including a memorable set where singer Jason Solyom nearly toppled off the Buddha stage, in apparently intoxicated exuberance, without it significantly impeding his vocal delivery - and have one of their previous albums, 1999's In Too Deep Again, I know someone who is much more steeped in the band's history and music than I am, who regards them - he keeps sayin' - as the finest rock band in Vancouver. This man can be found on Facebook as Nick Mitchum, also known as the drunk mailman and, for those of us who have been around for awhile, as ARGH!!, and while none of these are his real name (Ken Forster), he's a cartoonist and collagist best remembered by some as the man behind the DOA Colouring Book ("the drawings were just doodles for fun," he tells me, "Jim Cummins suggested putting them all together in a baggie with crayons... presto!...punk rock colouring fun book...sold a few at record stores... maybe made enough money to buy a case of beer...").

So Ken - I mean Nick - I mean the drunk mailman - can speak vastly more authoritatively than I can about the Spitfires. It seemed fitting to ask if he would write an introduction to the piece. What I got back was a poem by the drunk mailman, with instructions to not alter capitals or linebreaks or such, but to treat this in the vein of an e.e. cummings poem (...perhaps by way of Charles Bukowski and Nick Tosches). Fair enough - though short of my retyping the piece, Blogger doesn't allow me to preserve his formatting without making it dark-on-white, just like what happened with Nick's mate Ed Hurrell a few months back...

...but by way of introducing that introduction, I also want to explain one other thing I did here, which in retrospect may have been a mistake. Rather than ask a specific photographer to contribute photos, I asked the whole of Facebook - where half a dozen of my friends are local photographers - if they had anything I might share, particularly involving photogenic guitarist, Rob Matharu - AKA Shockk Mongoose - who also plays in another fantastic rock band in Vancouver, the SLIP~ons, and was my original contact point (this was originally just gonna be a tiny thing with Rob, but then people got excited, so I figured I'd best ask Jay as well). Turns out that people like to take pictures of the bands Rob has been in (also including Mongoose and the Bonitos and who-knows-who else), so within a day I had more than I needed, and within three I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'm including at least one shot by each contributing photographer, and turning the mic over to Ken/ Nick/ ARGH!!/ the drunk mailman. The interview with Jay and Rob will follow that. 

See you at the Rickshaw!

 

The Spitfires, by Rob Matharu (Shockk)

2. Introduction by the drunk mailman

the drunk mailman digs the spitfires allan has asked me to write something about why i think he thinks I am an authority on the band i really don’t know much about the band beyond the fact that I really like them live that got me wondering how to articulate favourite there was I time when I found it hard to choose between crispy crunch and oh henry! then they put peanut butter in the oh henry! now I have a favourite why? it’s the ingredients i was 9 when the beatles were on ed sullivan for the first time i was more excited to see allen and rossi hello dere i thought the beatles were for little girls i want to hold your hand yuck the rolling stones and the animals changed my mind the kinks and the who were the first to really wow me the troggs were my favourite why sound songs look attitude and especially the sneering vocals proto punk rock over the years some of my favourites have been the stooges alice cooper black sabbath why sound songs look attitude and sneering vocals In the 90s the place to see and hear the best fast and loud rock’roll bands in the city was the piccadilly pub i was a sucker for any band on crypt records and their ilk many of them played the pic so many times the morning after a great 3 band bill at the pic hungover i would think the spitfires were the best band on the bill they always made me smile more than the rest why sound songs look attitude sneering vocals plus an added dose of fun and mayhem and no pretense that always trumped all the rest i guess that’s what makes them the best imho now I have a souvenir the live album and a night to relive the past and see if i’m still right i think I am

[Allan here. Ken/ Nick/ ARGH!!/ the drunk mailman also told me to ask Jay about the connection between the Spitfires, Jay's mom, and Reg Presley of the aforementioned Troggs. I dutifully asked and Jay wrote back: "Reg is my father! Ken is fucking nuts ha ha."]

Spitfires by Gord McCaw, not to be reused without permission

3. Interview with Jay (Jason) and Rob (Shockk) of the Spitfires

I started by asking Jay and Rob if they had any real history with DOA, because this is a DOA show, and I should at least pay lip service to Joe (I did ask if he wanted to do an interview). Jay, it turns out "tried out for them" when he was 18. "I didn’t make the cut but Joe kept asking me if I played hockey," he tells me. (You can imagine the hockey stuff *I* get from the guy, given my name - I could make "Hey, Al, how's your slapshot" in Keithley's distinct growl into a pretty fun ringtone, actually). 

"I think the current music climate owes a lot to what DOA started many years ago," Jay continues, :and it's kinda crazy how Joe still gets up there and goes for it and hasn’t missed a beat. I’ve got two close childhood friends in the DOA rhythm section these days so super excited to see this line up!" Rob has a little less history, though he also has friends who played in DOA at one time or another, and his old band Mongoose "opened for them years ago at Richards - that was a highlight!"

I never caught Mongoose. "We were around for ten years," Rob says, in their time doing "lots of tours including Japan." His bandmates named him Shockk in the 1990's ("I spell it with two K’s 'cause it’s more rock & roll!"). You can still find their old Myspace page, though good luck getting the songs to play...

Rob by Rd Cane, not to be reused without permission

Rob, while not on the Live at the Pic album - except on some of the inner sleeve photo collages - joined the Spitfires over ten years ago. "GG, the guitar player asked me to come down and jam, so I learned some of their songs. then they had a last minute opening spot for Steel Panther. They couldn’t get ahold of their other guitar player on the day of the gig, so I got the call and been in the band since. I guess I stole the other guitar players gig!"

Jay had seen Shockk perform with Mongoose a couple of times. "I was always floored by his playing, thought he was 18 years old turns out he was 45 ha ha … but yes, another great player and even better guy… Shockk learned our set in roughly four hours and knocked it out of the park."  

The Spitfires meet Rob, the night of the Steel Panther gig, lifted off the wall of Ed Hurrell - photographer TBD! 

Both Jay and Rob have history will Billy Hopeless, who had a hand in both gigs I caught them at. Rob "played in a band with Billy for about two minutes - he fired me for wearing a scarf on stage! ...We're all good buds," he adds. 

"Yeah, an old friend, heart of gold kinda guy," Jay writes. "I’ve had the pleasure of recording the Halos and the Bonitos in the past, He’s a dying breed, I guess, goes 100% in what he does, lives it and has seemed to have never lost the passion. Great lyricist and a complete madman, ha ha."  

What of Jay almost falling off the stage at the Buddha that time? Rob: "We start drinking right after soundcheck! You never know if  Jay's gonna fall or if I’ll unplug everyone's amp accidentally! It’s a miracle I never really injured my self on stage maybe I will this Saturday! ...Spitfires are always entertaining." Jay: "If its a Spitfires show, the whole gang will be sauced. We try to have the most fun we can when we get together and it always involves drink, it could always be the last party." 

Rob Matharu by Dballan Tyne, not to be reused without permission

So how does this Live at the Pic album come about? To me it's a curious thing, a local band releasing a live album of a set they did almost 20 years ago... but it's kind of genius. When did you decide to do it? (Was that always the plan, or did you discover live recordings?). Is this your first vinyl release? (This may have been a daft question given the answer that follows, but I don't think I've ever seen a Spitfires record in a store before the current one. CDs yes, vinyl no).

Jay: "No, we have a bunch of vinyl releases under Long Shot, Junk Records, Yeah Right, Estrus Records, Sonic Swirl, Twenty Stone Blat, not sure how many releases... I think four full lengths and a handful of 7” releases during our active years. As for the live record, it was recorded with the intentions of it seeing the light of day. I believe a label based in Australia released it as a bonus to a Spitfire compilation called Illustrious Career, a CD only release many years ago, but yeah myself and the band have always felt that this is the record that captures the band properly. In the studio we have either under-thought some of the recordings and overthought other recordings, but anything where we have got in a room put the mics up, get a buzz on have some laughs is what it takes, all members past and present have all been tight brotherly relationships so its important how we record." 

Jay from the Spitfires FB page - photographer uncredited? (I had too many shots of just Rob!). 

The live album includes one cover: "Muscle of Love" by Alice Cooper. What other covers do they do?

Jay: "In the beginning we did a Pretty Things cover, and 'I Need Lunch' by the Dead Boys and 'What’s This Shit Called Love' by the Pagans were always in the set, and 'Citadel' by the Stones." Jay "loves Alice to death, though: "just a childhood thing thats never stopped. My dad would hook me up to a lot of hard rock stuff when i was a toddler, and Alice stuck."

Anything special planned for the Rickshaw? Will your set include songs off the Spitfires live at the Pic?

Jay: "The set is mostly the songs from that record. We may be sober due to show time 9pm, might actually play ok ha ha."

Rob Matharu by Erik Iversen, not to be reused without permission

Thoughts about Mo's dilemma, having to have seats in the dance floor? Crazy weird, right?

"Yup, stupid weird rules  the common sense of it all is baffling, probably why our society has gone nuts … ban all social media ha ha , hoping we have a dinner table on the stage that we can sit at and play our set at!"

Thanks, Jay! See you and Rob at the Rickshaw! 

SLIP~ons POST~script:

SLIP~ons by Art Perry, not to be reused without permission

Rob tells me, incidentally, that SLIP~ons "just finished 3 songs at Monarch Studios. I bought in some song ideas we wrote as a band (like the old days)I really think it’s our best stuff. Just got a mix from Dave 'Rave' Ogilvie. It sounds killer!" Brock Pytel, the singer of the SLIP~ons, also lets spill that Jay is involved in mixing at least one song, and that there is a gig planned with a delightfully disparate lineup, three great rock bands (or maybe four) playing the Rickshaw that sound nothing alike, other than all of them rocking... but I'll leave that a secret for now. The album is tentatively titled Trash Beach ("for our rehearsal space sidewalk hangout," Brock quips), with plans to put it out on Cursed Blessings, who are also releasing some of the new Black Halos material. Probably won't see the light of day until spring of 2022. 

Finally, for Shockk Mongoose fans, you might also want to know that Rob teaches at Neil Douglas Guitar  Shop in New West ("it’s the last ma and pop music shop left - it’s been there for 50yrs!"

Rob by Dballan Tyne, not to be reused without permission

Post script comment by Nick Mitchum:

re: injury on duty...i remember seeing The Spitfires...maybe the first time...maybe the pic...definitely too many beers...too many beers make all my memories maybes...jay was doing the roger daltrey microphone windmill spin thing and WHAM...guitarist dean o was down for the count...is he dead?...i don't think the band stopped playing...eventually dean got up looking like rocky and carried on rockin'...and the crowd watched his eye swell up and turn black as the band finished their set...rock'n'roll is dangerous business...

Also note: I have had confirmation that there will be NO MORE TICKETS released for this sow, due to the PHO's edict about seats. Sorry, folks! 

Rickshaw return! Unleash the Archers last night...

There were many unfamiliar feelings resulting from my return to the Rickshaw last night for Unleash the Archers, including simply going to the venue - last attended March 8th, 2020, over 20 months ago, for Paul Pigat and Coco Montoya - but the most striking was the number of times I had to say "Huh? What was that?" to my wife after I got back...! My ears are out of practice, I guess, and I completely forgot that I would have to compensate, trying foolishly to conduct a conversation with her from the kitchen, while she was in the living room - sure had to run back and forth between rooms more than I remembered. 

And as much as I've written about the PHO and seats previously, habit was more powerful than memory, and - having missed Apprentice, arriving early in Kosm's set - I still had to do a double-take when it came to seats; there I was, walking down the aisle, anticipating where I was going to stand, then being confronted with the unfamiliar expanse of folding chairs and having to remind myself all over: "Oh yeah, right!"

The circumstance was, of course, subject of some of the stage patter during the night, from Kosm's lead singer joking that she felt like she was playing a high school talent show to Brittney Slayes getting the audience going with a bit of patter that began, "is headbanging the same as dancing?" People could stand at their seats and bang their heads all they liked, and so they did... so they did... Brittney was in fine voice, seeming relaxed, confident, and grateful, thanking the audience many times for saving the band's butts by changing tickets; she was funny, too, asking in the buildup to "Tonight We Ride," "How many of you have to work tomorrow? Fuck work - everybody is playing hooky tomorrow: party at my house! ...Just kidding, my cat doesn't like strangers..."

There were some amazing guitar solos during the night - certainly the hottest, fastest, most brain-tingly deft solos that I've seen live since that Pigat/ Montoya double-header. Really fun to hear. And since my wife ended up with the last Unleash the Archers t-shirt I bought, I was happy that there were some super cool new designs. I guess they have retired their soloing Sasquatch shirt, coveted by me since I caught them at the Buddha, but there was a definite vintage-underground comic vibe to the one I bought last night, a "Conquest 2021" tour shirt that ended with the show tonight (last night's hadn't been added to the tour yet. See their new North American merch here). 

Maybe the image is dissimilar but there is something in the colour scheme that reminds me of this great Corben underground comic cover, for Fantagor #3:

...or maybe it's meant to evoke the colour scheme of the lights? There does seem to be a cellphone in the hand of the acolyte on the left side of the t-shirt image... Hm.

But hey, I am as bad as anyone else - I snapped a few photos, too. I hope my writing in support of the band gives me some license, here (I also tried to do the "close my eyes and listen" thing during a few of the night's ripping solos, which, as always, greatly enhanced the musical experience, but it is hard to do with a band this fun to watch). 

Anyhow, great night, very safe-feeling, and the annoyance of having to work around seats was more than made up for by having found GOOD seats, close to the stage (like I say in that Black Angels piece, I'm an old fart who is inclined to sit much of the night, anyhow). It also made a great practice run for DOA on Saturday - a show that I suspect will be much weirder with seats than Unleash the Archers was, because moshers wanna mosh, but... we'll see. I have seen no one so far behaving in a remotely unsafe way - a few people had masks off, but only so they could drink. Felt pretty safe! My one bit of advice here is that you'll want to arrive close to when doors are posted, because things really did start soon after people were in the venue, and you'll prolly want a good seat...

Welcome home to Unleash the Archers...

A Brittney Slayes mini-interview: Unleash the Archers 2nd show added, tomorrow (Thursday) at the Rickshaw!

I've written about Unleash the Archers a few times - here (2014, when I thought they really should have won the first Vancouver Wacken Metal Battle), here (2015), and here (2018, apropos of the release of their concept album Apex), for example. A Canadian power metal band that hails from Vancouver Island, I first saw them maybe ten years ago, a few blocks away from my former apartment in Maple Ridge, at a bizarre little venue - a tiny evangelical church on the Dewdney Trunk Road, formerly a pool hall, that briefly were open-minded enough to book metal shows (at least until Theocide played there, with Metal Mike being absolutely unable to resist throwing barbs from the stage at organized religion - "You do realize what Theocide MEANS, don't you?" - at the hapless church soundman, which I assume helped kill that venue for gigs; or maybe it was just too weird to have a circle pit in a church?). 

That would have been in 2011, when Unleash the Archers had just released Demons of the AstroWaste, which I bought on CD at that show, and was more than happy to listen to their tuneful and rousing anthems. I also liked that Brittney was approachable and friendly at the merch table, and extremely grateful for ANY good bands playing weird-ass tiny venues in Maple Ridge, since gigs don't happen often out that way. 

I was even more pleased that every subsequent show I saw Unleash the Archers at was bigger, better, and cooler: because - not counting their short set at the Wacken Metal Battle - the next time I caught them was at Funkys, then the Smilin' Buddha, then the Rickshaw. In the ten years that I've been following them, they've also signed to a European label, Napalm Records; toured China; and put out increasingly bigger'n better albums, like Time Stands Still, which has two songs I utterly adore on it, "Frozen Steel," about what it means to be a Canadian metal band, and "Test Your Metal," which exhorts other bands to push beyond their local bubbles and tour - a bit of preachin' that the band themselves have clearly been practicing, to great success. I had liked Demons of the AstroWaste, but this was next-level stuff, proof that I'd picked a great band to follow. 

The musical highpoint of the next album, Apex, was, for me, "The Matriarch," which I'm pretty sure Brittney and I talked about at some length in that final Straight interview I did with them, linked above. Mostly I just liked the idea of a female vocalist declaiming "She is the Matriarch!" while creating a badass female villain for her tale. However, the thing that was coolest about that album, Apex, was that it began an archetypally-loaded, coherent narrative. Also some pretty cool cover art, really! 

That is as far as I've gotten with Unleash the Archers catalogue; with abundant distractions, I have not yet caught up with their 2020 release, Abyss - though I did peek at a video from it, apparently about the hazards of playing live under the influence of powerful hallucinogens (I'm just kidding, but you'll see what I mean if you watch it). Seems like they're in great form - but I'm holding out really delving until I can buy it at their merch table tomorrow. 

And here's the thing - as you may have gathered, the PHO's apparent chair fetish has thrown the Rickshaw for a loop, with proprietor Mo Tarmohamed being told he could start selling to capacity, then being told something very different, which is why certain sold out shows, like Unleash the Archers' gig there on Friday,  have not had more tickets announced, and other shows (like Archspire's record release) have had to be moved to two dates, Nov. 25th and 26th. Unleash the Archers ALSO have added a date - this Thursday, the 18th - to accommodate that situation, with the band asking fans on Facebook to consider coming the earlier night. 

As Brittney explains it in an email to me, "we added another show because the Friday one straight up would not have been able to go forward at the current capacity. We would have had to cancel hundreds of tickets. We sold the show out because Bonnie Henry announced that venues could return to full capacity, and then a couple weeks later she reneged and said that she meant large venues like BC Place and Rogers Arena, not small clubs like the Rickshaw. Luckily, we had a hold on the day before (the 18th) just in case something like this happened, so we begged people to switch their tickets over and a lot did! Some tickets we did end up having to cancel but not nearly as many as if we had to try and stick to one night. Seated capacity is much less at Rickshaw than standing, so that is where that all came from. Small venues must be seated. Which is absolutely ridiculous! No other province has this restriction! Venues in Alberta have been open for weeks and their COVID numbers are going DOWN so that is proof that people that are going to live shows are not the ones spreading this bloody thing around still….!"

Now, this is a very pro-social, responsible thing for Unleash the Archers to have done, but also really terrific news for fans like me who had not been able to get tickets for the Friday gig. Tickets are still available for Thursday, so for people who want to support the Rickshaw, support killer local metal, and check out the openers. the proggy KOSM and melodic death metal band Apprentice - this is a great way to do it. 

Will the sets be different on Thursday and Friday? No. "We will play the same set list," Slayes explains. "People are expecting to hear the same show because it was supposed to be the same show. If it was two nights in a row at max capacity that people could attend twice then that is a different story, but people were forced to choose so we are not going to give the attendees something on one night that the others at the next night won’t get. Plus playing the same set is much easier on us, as we can be in perfect shape for every song. We don’t have time to know every song at the drop of a hat unfortunately lol! Maybe one day… ;)." 

While I had Brittney's ear - or eye, as this was an email interview - I had to ask what touring the United States under COVID was like - if it was different from Canada, but also different from their past tours. "It was definitely different, yes. We had to be on constant guard. We never went anywhere without wearing our masks, we hand sanitized every time we came back on the bus, we took our temperatures every day to make sure no one was getting that signature fever that precedes all other symptoms. We were extremely careful. It sucked because we really like getting to hang out with our fans and chatting with them and we couldn’t really do that ☹. The shows were great though, and it was nice to be able to get back on stage regardless!"

Abyss, meanwhile, is a continuation of that same, ambitious Apex storyline, Slayes explains. "In Apex we were introduced to our main characters, The Matriarch and The Immortal. The Immortal is a powerful being that is cursed to serve whoever awakens him from his thousand-year slumbers, and in Apex he is awakened by The Matriarch – a power-hungry sorceress with a thirst for immortality. Needless to say, The Matriarch betrays The Immortal at the end of Apex, and in Abyss we see The Immortal finally taking his revenge with the help of a few other important characters..."

Unleash the Archers will be "hunkering down after our tour through the US in December to write new music, but other than that, we are just focusing on playing as many shows as we can ☺." 

See Unleash the Archers if you can - and if you're in Vancouver, consider coming on Thursday, to give some love to Mo and to show appreciation for the band doing a pretty cool thing to accommodate the Rickshaw in unusual circumstances...

(And a big thank you to Brittney Slayes for makin' it easy for me to make something cool of this blogpiece!).

A tangled tale of t-shirts, with Ian Tiles, the Pointed Sticks, the Vicious Cycles and Chaos, Disorder and Panic

So: Ian Tiles, Pointed Sticks drummer, has been selling t-shirts for awhile now as part of the sprawling open air market that one finds in the DTES. I believe the shirts he sells are all his own design; I could be wrong, but they're very cool, and made with an eye for the neighbourhood. Photographer Gord McCaw, who has been attentive to this and occasionally posting about it on Facebook, tells me that "Ian can be found at the NE corner of Main & Hastings, but I believe it's (for obvious reasons) pretty weather-dependent. He is usually there around 3pm for two or three hours. It's unfortunate he isn't on FB or some other social media because I'm sure there's lots of people who'd like to contact him about buying a shirt" (including people from other neighbourhoods, who might not otherwise want to head to Main and Hastings on the chance that Ian is there). Here are some of Gord's photos of Ian and his (deeply cool) t-shirts! 

Ian Tiles at work, courtesy Gord McCaw, not to be reused without permission

Well, when I arrived at the Chapel Arts free concert the other day, a few blocks from this storied intersection, the Pointed Sticks on the roof of the building, which was where they were originally scheduled to play, and Ian was chucking shirts to the crowd below. Nothing like throwing free stuff to people to get'em worked up for a show! I have no idea how many shirts he threw, but they seemed, as they rained down into the open arms of members of the crowd, like the bundles people were catching were suspiciously small to be adult-sized shirts.

Turns out they weren't. When I caught one - it was almost like Ian threw it directly to me, thunking into my chest and open arms - I quickly unraveled the bundle, held together with a rubber band, curious to see what I'd gotten. It was, naturally, a Pointed Sticks shirt, but - far from my preferred 3XL - it was about the size of a shirt that a five year old might wear. 

I am somewhat larger than a five year old, but what the heck, it was fun catching the shirt. I turned around to the crowd - which included a list of cool Vancouver music scene lifers, including Bud Luxford (he's photo-shy these days but hopefully doesn't mind my mentioning him); Zulu's Grant McDonagh; a generous helping of SexBombs, including EddyD, Tony Lee, and Jazzy; Richard Chapman and Kristina Mameli, who must have commuted in, like me; the Rickshaw's Mo Tarmohamed; Noelle of Chaos, Disorder and Panic - whom I interviewed here; ace photographer Bob Hanham; LGA alum Sonny Dean; and Robert of the Vicious Cycles, with his girlfriend. I saw no five year olds in the crowd - I think, given the average age of the crowd, all their kids are probably in university, minimum, but I held up the teeny orange shirt I'd caught: "Okay, who here is really small?" I shouted.

Rob-of-the-Vicious-Cycles-MC's girlfriend piped up, from about a foot away: "I am! I am!"

I looked her body up and down in a way that would, in other circumstances, have been an invitation for Robert to punch me, and said, "You sure? This shirt is pretty tiny!" 

She had t-shirt fever, though: "I'll take it!" 

Okay, 'nuff said - I passed it on, turned around and got my camera ready to shoot a little vid of the Pointed Sticks, who had come down from the roof, to everyone's surprise, and were right in front of us when the loading bay door rolled up. Sadly, their opening song - by far my fave Pointed Sticks song, "The Marching Song," which introduced the band to me on the Vancouver Complication album - was suffering from some unresolved sound issues, by which Nick Jones' vocals were all but inaudible. The problem persisted into the second song, with the band playing gamely on like they were on the clock (maybe they were? It was a short and sweet set). As Nick's vocals suddenly manifested, I got ready to shoot the next song, standing with Bob Hanham right up in front of the crowd, gathered on the blocked-off sidewalk; that was when a boomer couple with a giant, open umbrella stepped in front of me. It was barely even raining! I spent the rest of the show peeking under their umbrella or around their shoulders, wanting to cuss them out for their obnoxious display of entitlement, standing in the very first row with a huge fuckin' umbrella like there was no one behind them at all, except for all I knew they were good friends of the Pointed Sticks; hell, maybe they WERE entitled? I talked myself down from a brewing hissyfit and made the best of it, keeping to my spot. 

(Pointed Sticks by Allan MacInnis)

All the while, Gord McCaw was busy zipping all around, even taking a knee - he's probably the most physically engaged of the photographers I've seen at work since the days of the great, much-missed Femke van Delft (if she still takes photos at shows, I don't see'm, but back when she was shooting the Subhumans and the Rebel Spell and Bison and such, she'd climb shit, and once even went and bought new lightbulbs for the Cobalt, so as to get better pictures; gotta admire that commitment, since most photographers would just complain about the light not being good, without even thinking to DO something about it!). Bob has a fantastic eye, too, mind you, and might have taken a knee once or twice himself, but Gord was the only guy I saw routinely getting his pants damp, to say nothing of suddenly  manifesting behind the drumkit, then out on the sidewalk, then to the left, then to the right... he was kinda fun to watch at work. The vocal glitch with the first two songs aside, it was a great set, drawn from all phases of the band's career, including one of the new songs that I talked to Nick about a few posts back, and two songs that have yet to be released, "Pessimist's Son" (the chorus has a line about being "too tired to go to sleep"). The other new song, not played live, that will be coming out sometime before Christmas, is called "Snapshot," written by keyboardist Gord Nicholl ("it sounds like demented Schlager music," Jones quipped to me later. "We're not back in the studio until December 18th, and we have two small fixes to make on them," after which they will be downloadable or streamable on the Pointed Sticks' bandcamp). If you weren't there and want a sneak preview, you can hear "Pessimist's Son" in a video I shot, along with one of the band's standbys, "What Do You Want Me to Do." I mostly was able to get a window between the two boomers and below their umbrella, though I didn't get a lot of Gord or Ian... 

Anyhow, while I had his attention, I asked Nick why the band decide to play from the loading bay, and not the roof. "When we went on the roof the other day at 4, the wind was blowing pretty ferociously, and the Doppler radar was showing another big band of rain." (There had been a torrential downpour earlier). "I actually thought that, while not as exotic, the garage probably offered a better viewing experience for the crowd. We sure had fun!"

End set. Noelle came up to me to tell me of a recent gig at the Black Lab, where, despite being a bit of an underground/ off-the-radar venue, they are following provincial health orders and loading chairs into the pit; punks can be incredibly socially responsible people, against all the stereotypes about them. At some point, Ian walked up, and I joked with him, "That shirt you threw me wouldn't even fit her!" - pointing at the diminutive Noelle, simply by way of illustration - and he said something about deliberately trying to give people shirts they could give to kids (...start them young, I guess; clever!). But he did something I didn't expect, coming back to give Noelle a shirt that WOULD fit her, a small adult shirt in hot pink with Pointed Sticks! written on it. It was a very sweet, and unnecessary gesture, complicated by the fact that Noelle in no way would be caught dead in hot pink. So she gave it to me - not wanting to seem appreciative, but truly, this is NOT a hot pink kinda gal!

Later it occurred to me: wait a sec, the girl who was with Rob of the Vicious Cycles WOULD fit into the hot pink shirt, and the orange kid's shirt that I gave her would eventually (maybe in five years?) be wearable by my newborn nephew. (Erika and I had been talking about giving the hot pink to one of my nephew's older sisters, who I guess are my nieces-in-law, but they're teens and probably have their own ideas about what they want on their t-shirts. Rumi, on the other hand - my newborn nephew - would be more likely, when he grows into the shirt, to wear something by a band he's never heard of). Maybe Rob and I could swap? ...so I emailed Rob, and his girl was into it, so a couple days later we met up at Carson Books and Records on Main Street and made the exchange, beards sticking out of the bottom of our masks. 

Vicious Cycles MC don't have much news at present - no gigs lined up, though they are working on a record "for release in 2022 at some point," Rob tells me. Noelle, meanwhile - as Chaos, Disorder and Panic - will be playing as part of the Vine Fest Fuck Vancouverites concert at Grandview Park, going on at 5:20, on a bill with a few other artists, including the amusingly-named, highly tuneful punk band Bedwetters Anonymous, who are a bit more akin to the Pointed Sticks than Chaos, Disorder and Panic are. I wont be able to be there - now that my radioactivity is under control (it's a long story that I no doubt will get to elsewhere, related to my cancer treatment), I have puppies (and a nephew!) to visit - but here's hoping the rain lets up for the show today. If it doesn't, though, and boomers stand in front of you with an umbrella, snatch it from them and break it over your knee, okay? And if they complain, just say, "Fuck Vancouverites!"

...And look for another surprise Pointed Sticks gig in an unusual location, sometime in the near future; the guys had a great time the other day, so there may well be more to come! 

Where the Green Ants Dream, Clearcut, and the "white saved"

(Edited slightly in the wake of revisiting the film!)

For those who haven't seen it, Where the Green Ants Dream, playing Nov. 11th at the Cinematheque, is a terrific, very interesting early English-language film of Werner Herzog's, shot in Australia in the  1980's. It's the sort of film you will remember and want to share and discuss with friends. The Cinematheque guide, linked above, rightly describes it in terms of its aboriginal involvement, and captures the film's content well, if briefly. If you want more information, there is no shortage of interesting writing online about the land claims case that inspired the narrative and provided two central cast members, or the limitations of Herzog's "use" of/ interest in the Aborigines. 

I do have a comment or two to add, but first, let me briefly wax lowbrow (and reveal my white suburban working class heritage) and give you a more familiar, more trivial reason to see it: Bruce Spence stars - the whirlybird guy from The Road Warrior! And he's great - playing a well-meaning but slightly clueless liberal geologist who is ultimately (spoiler!) inspired to reject Western Civilization and go back to the land (or the desert) to live in a saner way,. Some of the rants in the film about the west - "your civilization destroys everything, including itself," as one angry recluse declaims at Spence - are potent enough they could be coming from (so-called "anti-civilization advocate") Derrick Jensen. Have you ever contemplated whether western civilization was in fact a deeply destructive mistake, a disaster for the planet? Have you ever thought we should abandon ship and go back to being hunter-gatherers? This film will very much appeal to you, if so.

Apologies to Bruce Spence, but it's fun to point out two very similar expressions (the "gap-mouthed imbecile" look) between the two films, which just landed in my lap in a Google images search. He's great in both movies - I mean no disrespect! - and nowhere near as daft as the expression on his face here makes him seem:

But as the Cinematheque guide also notes, there are some reasons to be troubled by Where the Green Ants Dream - not reasons not to see it, but, say, some controversial things to discuss afterwards. On the one hand, it has some moments of remarkable sympathy, respect, and fondness for the Australian Aborigines cast in the film, and a considerable distaste for the white authority figures and racist workers on the other side of the film's central conflict. It stands in solidarity with aboriginal land claims, and, you sense, was made with the active creative involvement of the Aboriginal cast - they weren't just Navajo hired to play Cheyenne in some John Ford film, but participants in creating a very strange, funny, striking, and politically- and culturally-charged film (though to what extent Herzog was treating them as equals, I cannot say; some of their English line-readings are curiously flat, and I'd love to have subtitles for the things they say in their own language). I would hope that Herzog actively tried to make a film that his largely Aboriginal cast could enjoy and have fun with. There are various hints in the film, mostly in the performances of the Aboriginal actors, especially with Gary Williams in the role of Watson, the drunken former pilot, given to singing "My baby does the Hanky Panky" - where you get the feeling that might just be the case... but I have no idea... 

That said, speaking as a white liberal myself, it is impossible not to be disturbed that Herzog presumes to craft "new" mythology for his Aborigines. He creates beliefs for them, central to the film's plot, that are fabrications. The film has a semi-documentary feel, but even in his docs, Herzog has been known to "fictionalize" elements, as a form of artistic license. That alone might sit ill with some people, especially when the fictionalizations are imposed from above, by a white person, on peoples with far less power or cultural voice - even if he is intending to stand in solidarity with them. And there are quite possibly some stereotypes at work here - Watson is almost a stereotypical drunk, for instance, and there's an element of childish naivete to some of the things the Aboriginal characters do (their desire for the plane, and the silly, unworkable runway they construct, reminds me of the whole Cargo Cult phenomenon, which may well have been in Herzog's mind). 

Worse yet, you might not make the assumption - trusting in the respected authority of cinema and that documentary "feel" - that Herzog is just making shit up sometimes, that the whole plot device about dreaming green ants is an act of creative license (perhaps arrived at with the participation of his cast, which might make a difference - but perhaps not, and even if so, it still feels a bit weird, and presumptuous, and a cheat: "You mean none of that was true? The filmmaker just made it up?!"). I was certainly taken aback to discover this; for years, in VHS days, before the advent of commentary tracks, I actually did believe that dreaming green ants played a part in the belief system of Australian Aborigines! I just assumed that no one would make this stuff up. I was shocked to learn otherwise - mildly impressed by Herzog's chutzpah, but also pissed off that I'd believed him. To put it a slightly different way: if he had been able to fashion a story using the ACTUAL beliefs and ideas of Aborigines, can you imagine how much more powerful the film would be...? Instead, you're left not really understanding anything much about the actual people the film represents at all; they're almost like the comical "outsiders" Herzog favours, a tribal analogue to Bruno S. in Stroszek and Every Man for Himself and God Against All (AKA The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser). 

I am sure Werner Herzog might respond that he would also falsify elements of western culture to tell a story, to get at an intended meaning - that that is part of what fiction DOES...  and that he depicts the whites as being almost as ridiculous, for instance, with Spence musings about far-fetched scientific ideas ("How many ropes would we need to fix the earth in space, and what would we tie them to?") being every bit as weird as anything Bruno S. says...

...But the other thing the film does is use its fictive Aboriginal mythos in the service of the story of saving a white main character, the aforesaid Bruce Spence, who is by no means a white saviour, but is very much the hero and moral centre, our representative and identification point. The plot may revolve around a land claims case, but it's his character arc - what happens to the white person - that is at the heart of the story; the Aborigines, however vividly drawn they may be, are still figures in his redemption, not their own, and remain a mysterious outside force in the film, an alternative to western culture, but not one we really can grasp (especially with Herzog lying freely about their beliefs). 

This resonates against my recent experiences with Dune, actually - a film which I have already mostly forgotten, but see my cranky review here, if you want. While some "white saviour" films - and especially ones set in fantastic/ otherworldly environments, like Dune and Avatar - end with the white person "saving" the aboriginal people, just as often - especially in more reality-based narratives - it's the aboriginal people who save the white people, in films that are still pegged as white saviour movies. I was actually struck by that in regard to Dances With Wolves, when Erika and I sat down to it a few months ago. I enjoyed it more than I expected, but - even though I poked at it a bit by calling my Dune review "Dances with Sandworms" - the thing that surprised me in watching it was that in fact, the white saviour, Kevin Costner, doesn't save the Lakota at all. He can't, and no film that even approaches the reality of settler/ Indigenous relations can, because SALVATION WAS NOT WHAT WE BROUGHT; any salvation offered in all but the most ahistorical film has to be temporary and tentative, because in the long run, we all know it didn't work out that way. You just can't credibly "save" a people, onscreen, whose culture and traditions were ultimately ransacked, subdued, or driven to total extinction by your people's encroachment, unless you detach from reality completely (Last of the Dogmen, anyone? Now there's a white fantasy for you). But Dances With Wolves doesn't, in fact, have Costner saving his new red friends; the film - the cut I saw, anyhow - ends with the Lakota fleeing soldiers, and taking the poor white guy with them. 

Costner is not a white saviour; he is the white saved.

And that got me thinking about my favourite Indigenous-themed film, Clearcut - which is, like Where the Green Ants Dream, remarkably potent at times, and maybe even a stronger attempt on the part of white authors to make a gesture in solidarity with Indigenous culture, and to show the failings of the legal system and of white liberals and maybe western civilization as a whole. Both films, while allowing some potent speechifying and powerful (and at times very darkly funny) commentary by their Indigenous actors, are really stories of a white liberal - Ron Lea in Clearcut, Bruce Spence in Where the Green Ants Dream - being saved (in kinda different ways, mind you) by the intercession of Indigenous people. Ron is saved from his hypocrisy and ineffectuality, Bruce is - it's implied, anyhow - saved from white civilization as a whole. Given that their mood - especially Clearcut's - is extremely different, with Clearcut being much angrier, much uglier, much harder on its protagonist than the Herzog film - it's interesting to note that they do have something in common, under the surface...

And I mean, how better for a white liberal, really, to prove that you are ultimately the Right Kind of White Liberal, than to be deemed worthy of salvation and respect by Indigenous people, even given what your people have done to them...? Just ask Justin Trudeau: it's a badge of status, not totally unrelated to the gesture of respect afforded Jeremiah Johnson or the drummed "salute" to the Brits at the end of Zulu. The approval of a romanticized, heroized Other feels good, even if maybe we're moving towards a world where it cannot but be politically problematic, especially depending on who that Other is, and what we've done to them in the past...

I actually think Clearcut - which is coming out soon on blu-ray for the first time as part of the Severin Folk Horror box set, All the Haunts Be Ours, and which WILL have my interview with director Ryszard Bugajski as a commentary track - is the better film, compared to Where the Green Ants Dream, and certainly the less presumptuous, but just like you have to accord Kevin Costner a little respect for the amount of care and good faith he put into the portrayal of the Lakota in Dances With Wolves - a film that is spoken of mostly in fond terms in Reel Injun, even though it is acknowledged that it's still a movie about a white guy - you also do have to give Werner Herzog credit here. And even if the motive force of the film is the salvation of a wrong-thinking white liberal from the deathwish of his civilization - there are some suckerpunch moments in the film that you will remember for as long as you live, and which spill out well beyond the confines of the plot and its functions. The most striking of these - distinctly Herzogian, and like nothing else you will see in cinema - is where a lone Aborigine, in court for a land claims trial, stands up and gives a passionate speech in his mother tongue. The judge asks the other Aborigines to explain what the man is saying, and is told that the man speaking is the last member of his tribe and the last one to speak their language, so no one actually understands him. He's classified as mute in the court records, because there is no one he can talk to. However much this is still a white man's movie - and however much a scene like that might be Herzog's own fictitious invention - it's still a helluva moment. 

There are several of them in the film, in fact, also including a great telling of a dream that has deep resonance for the Spence character ("Where's your lunchbox?" - it would make a helluva ringtone, actually, repeated over and over; it even feels like a dream I might have had). And there are some really resonant images - like the old woman camped at the mouth of a mine where her dog is lost, or many shots of the Australian landscape (Villeneuve, actually, probably inherited some of his love of landscape shots from Herzog, though Herzog had less technology to work with, which somehow makes his landscapes more impressive, to me, even though Villeneuve's are vastly more spectacular).  It's probably my second favourite Herzog fictional feature after Stroszek, actually. It may not be as authentic to the lives of its characters as a movie like Ten Canoes, say, but for a movie made by a German outsider to Australia, way back in 1984, it's pretty amazing. And like I say, to the extent that there are problems with what it does - they can lend to very fruitful discussion afterwards. Check it out...!