Vancouver International Jazz Festival Night Two! (A weirdly new agey review)

(Photos pending!)



Back when I did "Life Skills Coaches' Training," a sort of weird, quasi-culty group therapy designed, in part, to put the participants in touch with their emotions, there was a concept that got batted around a lot, of congruency. If someone is visibly twitching with anger, but speaking softly and apologetically; or smiling while clenching their fists; or saying they feel fine whilst staring sadly into the distance - they are not congruent. Not really sure where the idea came from - Life Skills was a mixed bag of influences, from EST/"the Landmark Forum" to Fritz Perls to Reality Therapy to Native American spiritual practice - but it was very useful for the collective project we were engaged in; people would put up various layers of dissimulation to protect their emotional state, and if you wanted to "call" them on what they were really feeling, to acknowledge it and deal with it and get them thinking about it, then observing contradictions between things they said, or between their behaviours or body language and their words, was a pretty good way of going about it.

I still haven't seen Mats Gustafsson play this festival, but I realized last night that one of the things I really, really like about his playing is that he seems totally, utterly congruent. Everything about him fits together: his athleticism, his shooting, his love of garage punk and record collecting, even the way he devours barbeque all make perfect sense as aspects of his character, each piece obviously fitting with the next; and so with his music. If Mats Gustafsson were playing the soft, textural stuff one now finds on ECM, or country music, or Weezer-like geek rock, it really wouldn't make much sense. When you're listening to him perform, you get the sense that what he is doing is a perfect and natural expression of his character, part of who he is. It's all one thing, the various pieces fitting together to make the man, without spaces or jagged pointy bits that don't quite fit.

Though it may be an odd way to go about a concert review, I think that's the main reason I couldn't settle in to really enjoy Ab Baars with Ig Henneman, Ingibrigt Haker Flaten, and Paal Nilssen-Love last night; or the headliners, Free Fall, with Flaten, Atomic's Håvard Wiik, and Chicago clarinet player Ken Vandermark. I don't mean to fault the performances - I can't, really; all the musicians were phenomenally talented people, and played up a storm, and even if I could write about technique at length - which I can't, being a non-musician - I doubt I could find fault with anything they were doing on that level. However, Ab Baars presents as a fairly cerebral, fairly restrained, fairly controlled and observant human being, so when he opted for a hypermasculine* mode of powerhouse blowing, which dominated several of his numbers, both on saxophone and clarinet, it seemed, to me, just slightly out of place. I don't know the man, and I don't know his music that well, but what he played last night didn't seem like an expression of what I could see of his character; I enjoyed it a lot better when, during the same set, he opted for more intense, quieter, more perceptually dense music, often on clarinet or what I believe was a shakuhachi, using his playing to invoke and query the silence around the notes and investigating the other players' lines, as if inquiring why there should be music rather than nothing, and wondering what it meant; that fit, and, in fact, way much more intense. Much of what he played, tho', seemed like it was about something other than self-expression - be it a need to display his force, a compensation for something, a belief that free jazz "should" be played like a windstorm, or so forth. Some people do seem to think that, but there are so many ways that free jazz can be played - look at Ornette and Don Cherry, for instance - that it seems a shame to restrict oneself to the "onslaught" concept of improvisation; I'd rather get the sense - and maybe this is a romantic delusion on my part - that the music is emerging from the player as an organic, natural extension of who he or she is, and when I don't, it jars, blocks me, makes it harder to enter the performance.

As I say, this was only an issue sometimes with Baars, and with the other players, it wasn't an issue at all. When Ig Henneman used her viola to produce insecty* screeches, whipping them with frenzied bowing into a vast cloud of locusts that flew about the space with their mandibles chattering - which I liked a lot, by the way, in case that seems negative - you got the sense that this was, well, coming from Ig Henneman's deeper reaches; this was her music, slightly chilly, a tad quirky, extremely smart, and immensely accomplished, just like (one images) she might be... Congruency! Ditto with Nilssen-Love and, especially, Flaten, who was so intensely and physically connected to what he was playing that a) he started doing a Glenn Gould "humming and moaning" thing, making rather, er, horrible but delightful vocalisations to accompany himself; and b) he was full of movement that seemed absolutely superfluous to the playing of his music in a technical sense, but which was probably intimately connected to the playing of his music psychologically and emotionally, as he rose up and down above his double bass to accompany his gestures. This is a guy who plays bass with ALL of himself, not just his hands. He plays bass with his balls, with his intestines, with his whole goddamn body. You can't make a division between any aspects of what he's doing - he gets the Alienated in Vancouver "congruency" award for sure.

I'm going to get in trouble for this weird fucking review, I'm sure, but some of the same issues I had with Baars rose up watchin' Ken Vandermark: between numbers - he was chatty, funny, friendly, a very warm and engaging person - perhaps a bit nervous, he confessed, to be following an opening act of such stature and force. He made a joking announcement to start things off that "when we played here a couple of years ago, we were criticized for our poor interpretations of Jimmy Giuffre's music, so I thought I'd clarify: we don't play Jimmy Giuffre's music. We have similar instrumentation" - bass, piano, clarinet - "but we're playing our own compositions." The audience was already amused by this introduction, and laughed outright at his understated conclusion: "if you want to criticize us for poor interpretations of our music - that's okay." What a likable guy! The trio then opened with a rather amusingly-titled piece, "Accidents with Ladders." Given all the human warmth on display here, though, often his playing - while less difficult-to-process than Baars' approach - seemed rather abstract, neglecting, unless I just missed it, the apparently abundant playfulness in Vandermark's character; I wanted more of the guy who goofed around with us between songs to be in evidence! My favourite piece during their set was an immensely tuneful, cookin' number, rather self-deprecatingly (?) entitled "Music for Clocks," a title he explained was "not meant as a reference to the audience" (again, getting laughs). After starting that piece with an intense bass and piano workout, Wiik layed down a tuneful rhythm on piano that reminded me of an African-influenced piece Randy Weston once recorded, and Vandermark stepped in with the most fun music of the night, a veritably toe-tapping line on bass clarinet that was a joy (and a bit of a relief) to hear. Are free jazz musicians nervous about making music that could be described as "fun?" Vandermark even ended that piece on a screeching improvisation, as if to erase or apologize for what had gone before, lest he be judged too harshly for it; later, when various audience members walked out, he saluted them with his water bottle, advising them with a smirk to be careful on their way out. Which also seemed funny and likable, mind you - not hostile or snide in the least; but why would a man who wants his audience to like him between songs, be amused or proud when his actual playing alienates them? I ain't saying that either attitude is wrong, just that they don't add up.

I should clarify that I have nothing against powerhouse improvisation. It may sound like I do, but I have, for instance, eleven Brotzmann CDs at the moment. No, fuck, I have twelve - Mats Gustafsson convinced me I needed to buy Machine Gun. Admittedly, I'm rolling my eyes to see that there's a Brotzmann project kicking around the merch tables with Nilssen-Love and Japanese virtuoso koto player Michiyo Yagi, because I instantly coveted it, but really don't want to feel like I have to buy ANOTHER Brotzmann album - I'm not so diehard an enthusiast that I need a baker's dozen of his discs, and I overcame my completist tendencies years ago. The point is that Brotzmann is so goddamn good at being Brotzmann that I really don't need anyone else to play that way; and if someone IS going to opt for the powerhouse approach to things - like Mats, for instance - it really ought to be because they HAVE to play that way, because that's who they are. If it's not who they are - why play it? I've felt that way about quite a few shows I've seen at the jazz festival over the years, and I'm really happy to be able to put my finger on the logic of it.

So: night two not as fun as night one, tho' it was great to hear Flaten humming, and I really did like what Ig Henneman did, and I'm very curious what Vandermark will be like when he plays with The Thing on Monday. By the way, Henneman - who also plays with Canadians Lori Freedman and Marilyn Lerner in the Queen Mab Trio, tho' they're sadly not performing at this festival - will be at the Western Front today at 5:30 with Ab.

And fuck, I just realized, I forgot to count the Last Exit CD I have. I DO own 13 Brotzmann discs. Maybe that's bad luck, and I should buy a 14th just to even things out...? No, no, goddamn - I have ENOUGH BROTZMANN! ENOUGH! STOP! STOP! STOP!


*For the record, I owe two adjectives in this piece to other people: hypermasculine and insecty. I'm thinkin' the people who provided these terms may not want to be credited for them, given the context.

Requiem for a Photobooth: Femke's new show at the JEM Gallery

The Skinny's photo editor, Femke van Delft - an amazingly hardworkin' and gifted photographer who has been documenting almost every punk and avant-garde show of note in Vancouver for the last while - has a new show at the JEM Gallery, 225 East Broadway; the opening will be on Thursday June 26th, from 7-11 pm, and is open to all who are interested (I guess this means Femke won't be coming to shoot the Reverend Horton Heat that night; ah, well!). The title for the project is Requiem for a Photobooth: 3 punk bands, 4 shots, 1 minute of silence; she's been working on it for awhile. I'm not entirely sure who will be in the shots displayed - I know that varied members of the Pointed Sticks, the Furies, the Dishrags, and various other local punk bands have participated in the project - but it sounds like her photobooth will be there. Here's Femke's blurb!

Years of ambivalence about working as a photographer led me to purchase a second hand photobooth, instantly dealing with a couple of issues. First, there is no photographer. Second, it returns the power [a self-portrait] and the property [no negative, but a paper positive photostrip] back to the subject, the only recipient of the only print. By removing myself from the process, I could explore the subversive role of this common photobooth experience to look at the ways that people mock their school pictures, their passport, their driver's license, security tags and mug shots. When the photobooth camera is pointed at us, we feel more comfortable, we laugh freely, but not with any other camera.

There is no other public place that allows this subversive kind of privacy. In a digital age focused on security and surveillance, this amazing mechanical booth is near extinction. So, who will go in, sit down, stick out their tongue and sing the requiem?

This will be your only opportunity for your own requiem shot in my photobooth!

Hope to see you there!

The Jazz Festival Commences

Atomic at the Western Front by Femke van Delft

The jazz festival began for me, yesterday, with my running from work to meet Swedish saxophone player Mats Gustafsson, photographer and artist Femke van Delft, and local bassist/drummer/songwriter/witty guy Dave Chokroun at Mats' hotel. I'd interviewed Mats for The Skinny and concocted a plan to take the man - noted for world class diskaholicism - to various used record stores of Vancouver. This was delightful fun, and will be the basis for an upcoming piece of writing ("Shopping with Mats," perhaps?). Things started out with sad news, however, something I didn't know until Mats told us: one of the festival's planned performances, e.s.t., set to open for the John Scofield Trio, was cancelled because the founder, Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson, died last week in a diving accident at age 44. We talked about this and about many other things - from Albert Ayler to straight edge punk to the prevalence of women with tattoos in Vancouver - while doing a loop from Zulu to Neptoon to Dandelion to Audiopile, gathering much choice moss along the way (Dandelion had the stuff Mats got most excited about, garage rock of yore, including a vintage Ugly Ducklings LP - sample them here). After chatting with Jeremy at Audiopile - he gave Mats a free Shearing Pinx single and the men discussed a special Fake Jazz Wednesdays in the offing - we stopped at Memphis Blues for barbeque, Mats telling us over beer and pork how some jazz musicians just have no sense of humour when it comes to The Thing's choice to wear Ruby's BBQ t-shirts when performing. I can't speak for Ruby's, never having been to Austin, but damn, Memphis Blues serves some fine meat.

Anyhow, Mats and I parted from Femke, who had other things to shoot, and transported our meat-and-beer-filled bodies to the Roundhouse to catch Evan Parker (saxes), Francois Houle (clarinet), and pianist Benoit Delbecq. The three men played as tuneful a set as imaginable without playing tunes, creating a gently interlaced tapestry of colours and sounds that was exploratory and free, but welcoming to more trepidatious listeners. Maybe I've misunderstood him in the past - I've never been a devotee of his music, though I've enjoyed performances I've seen - but I don't think I've heard Evan Parker play this way before. Usually I associate him with fairly abstract, somewhat chilly explorations of sound; last night, he offered soft, pulsing, almost mournfully blues-based lines that rather humbly surrendered the lead to the just-slightly-more-extroverted Houle, who also seemed very sensitive (I think of Houle as a bit of a show-stealer, but he wasn't last night). Gustafsson had pointed out in our interview that he was attracted primarily to the energy of punk or free jazz, and said - you can read this in the Skinny, at greater length - "energy doesn’t mean that it has to be loud; like, Derek Bailey playing really really silent can be extremely high energy, you know? For me, good music is always when there is energy inside of something. It doesn’t mean it has to come out, if you put a lid on. But you can’t play at 90%, you know? You have to give everything." The Houle/Parker/Delbecq set put me in mind of this quote. There were noisier passages later in the set, and Delbecq's prepared piano gave an appealing percussive quality to things, but it wasn't a catharsis; it was a focused, controlled performance, that felt like - I scribbled in my notebook - watching "three men having an impassioned but civilized conversation in a language you can't speak, but recognize the cadences of."

Between sets, I got to chat briefly with Masa Anzai in the audience. Masa has set aside his sax, I discover, to play electric bass in the metal band Bison ("I figure I'll always have time to get back to the sax when I'm older and can't play metal anymore," he shrugged, smiling. Funny how people who play such scary music are usually so warm and friendly). The last I saw Masa doing anything metalish, he was doing electronics for the intensely tribal-seemin', intimidating Goatsblood at the climax of a noise night at 1067. Bison, he reports, have just signed with Metal Blade records, something I'd missed. Unfortunately, his duties with Bison will preclude him seeing any of Mats Gustafsson's shows (The Thing, on Monday, is the one not to miss, for me); sounds like Masa's hoping to catch Tim Berne's Bloodcount, though.

Atomic, of course, features Gustafsson's rhythm section, bassist Ingibrigt Haker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love, though last night it was in fact Atomic/ School Days that performed - a melding of bands around these two men, who serve in both. School Days, in addition to Haker Flaten and Nilssen Love, features Ken Vandermark (bass clarinet, baritone sax), trombonist Jeb Bishop, and Swedish vibist Kjell Nordeson; Atomic adds Håvard Wiik (piano), Magnus Broo (trumpet) and Fredrik Ljungkvist (sax). (Photos illustrating this article are from Atomic's performance this year at the Western Front; Femke couldn't be there last night, but provided these in lieu). Unforunately - either because of my proximity to Nilssen-Love's kit, or, I suspect, because of a miking problem, I could barely hear Ingibrigt Haker Flaten's bass for the first half of the set, save where he solo'd or did a duo or trio with the other players. I could see him - see his head turning red with the intensity of his performance, could tell that he was putting out some amazing stuff, but it was sadly quite difficult to discern.

I had no such problems hearing the drums! Nilssen-Love is among the most amazing drummers I've seen; he carries a phenomenal amount of melody into his playing, and lays down lines of percussion so complex and rapid-fire as to guarantee that there will be no spaces in the music not propelled forward by rhythmic gesture; the spaces between each and every note are coloured in. With such dextrous players, the set was a pleasing, easily-ingested mixture of group improvisation, tuneful thematic statements, and rotating permutations of players, working off each other: one man would begin a solo passage, a second would join, then a third, and the three would play off each other for several minutes before the rest of the band kicked in. Then several players would drop off, again allowing space for individuals to stand out, or interact in small-group formation, before returning to some sort of variation on the theme (which seemed to shift with each playing). The most striking passage for me involved a lengthy and highly abstract trombone solo by Jeb Bishop, which was punctuated by rapid, short bursts of sound from the rest of the band; though it didn't seem designed to, it showcased their amazing musicianship, since - despite the lack of visible cues or obvious cadence in his solo, and the absence gestures from a "bandleader" - they timed each explosion perfectly, each player sitting silent as Bishop improvised, then suddenly simultaneously firing a loud BAP! into his line. Then returning to silent waiting. Given a stopwatch, handsignals, a click-track, and ten years to prepare myself, I couldn't have done the same thing. Ending with a tune by Ingibrigt - whom I could finally hear - called, pleasingly, "Irrational Ceremony" - the band started off the fest in fine form, and the packed audience at the Roundhouse Perfromance Centre were very appreciative. I'm looking forward to seeing Ingibrigt Haker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love again tonight, with Ab Baars and Ig Henneman. Other highlights are the Improv Power Play sets on Sunday, which will pit Mats Gustafsson against Francois Houle for a hockey-themed competition (this is actually just a warm up to the finished piece - a "training camp," Mats called it); The Thing on Monday; and then the Barry Guy New Orchestra. (Masa Anzai enthused about Barry Guy's powerful bass playing during our chat, come to think of it). There's a lot else to see, but this seems a good start.

All photos by Femke van Delft

A brief defense of M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan seems someone whom the critical establishment greatly enjoys assaulting, following some hostile (but still bovine) herd instinct. His newest film, The Happening (official site here), actually is managing to acquire a lower rating than Lady in the Water on Rotten Tomatoes, which is rather surprising, as it's the far more straightforward film, less likely to be punished for its ambitions. Granted, he makes it somewhat easy on his detractors; he's hopelessly earnest, at times embarrassingly unsubtle, and certainly doesn't appear to be able to direct actors very well - the performances in his current film being particulary weak. That aside, there are strikingly original moments in all his films, unsettling visual tableaux that have both an immediate and lasting impact.

In The Happening, these take on a more misanthropic cast than in any of his previous films - for instance, when a carload of protagonists turn down a suburban street to discover that a crew of landscapers have hanged themselves from the trees, or when - in the film's most striking moment - a suicidal man sets a large power mower running and then lies down in front of it, waiting passively as we watch from a distance for the blood to spray, which it does. The film - most people know this, I think - deals with an event that threatens to decimate humanity, with people killing themselves left-and-right, for reasons that we at first do not understand, but which will ultimately be connected to the environment. One particularly bloody image - the lawnmower guy, I believe - is followed by a shot of a real estate sign with the words "You Deserve It" writ large, suggesting that in his own New Agey environmentalist way, Shyamalan has quite the hate-on for certain segments of the population (in his previous film, his loathing seemed mostly restricted to movie critics). It's interesting to see him indulge his dark side; this is easily his darkest film since The Sixth Sense, though its nowhere as effective.

The Happening is not a great film, by far - it offers a simple in-group/ out-group moralizing message, that either you get on the side of the good guys or suffer a horrible fate - but it touches on very real paranoias, from the disintegration of the family (yep) to worries about bee disappearnces and a general sense that we have done great damage to the environment and must soon pay the cost. It's relevant, fairly creative, and sincere, and manages to have some genuinely unsettling, even upsetting, moments. I can't help but think - in an year where a morally bankrupt, smarmily cute, pandering FX-fest like Iron Man is a box office leader - that Shyamalan is being hated for exactly the things I like about him.

Smiley Face, Gregg Araki, and the fine art of autofellatio

I finally found and watched Gregg Araki's new comedy today, Smiley Face.

Araki fascinates me. My first experience of his cinema was The Living End, which I saw at least close to the year it was released (1992), I believe theatrically. I would have been about 24. I don't recall why I sought it out; probably just because I was exploring any independent cinema that I heard mention of, and read some positive press for it, but possibly also because I was interested in learning about gay cinema; I was watching Derek Jarman and Monika Treut films back then, too, for instance. These were the good old days in Maple Ridge, when I would commute by bus to Videomatica, rent five films or so, usually by a director I was trying to learn about, or maybe that I'd just heard something interesting about, and bring them back to the 'burbs, dub them onto my own VHS tapes during an all night session - sometimes three to a tape; remember EP mode? (or SLP, as it was sometimes known?) Then I'd return the rentals the next day, bussing all the way back into Kitsilano. I had no real cinematic map, more just a series of threads that I was following; I wouldn't have known - though I see it now - that The Living End is very much an exercise, stylistically, in Godard-worship (tho' now that I'm rewatching it, it reminds me more, formally, of another exercise in Godard-worship, Reg Harkema's Monkey Warfare, than Godard per se... perhaps because I am shamefully undereducated when it comes to Godard...). Anyhow, I heard about The Living End and I watched it and I really liked it.

I should mention that I stand in a strange relationship to the queer community. Despite having written for awhile for Xtra West, I can't really call myself gay, never having acted on any homoerotic impulse I might have had, unless you count the times I tried to fellate myself, or a couple of episodes from my childhood that were more about curiosity than sex, or certain thoughts that have flickered in my head from time to time, or that one time, that one time, I actually set out to meet this guy who offered to blow me, but couldn't find his address, which was kind of a relief... I don't think that these things give me the right to call myself "gay," whatever might go on in my head. The vast majority of my sexual thoughts are for the female of the species, and experimenting seems too complicated, too potentially identity-destablizing. Plus really I DO like the thought of going down on women WAYYYYY more than the thought of going down on guys. That's really what it boils down to, innit? I know very well what a penis does at the point of orgasm and I am quite happy not to have that happen in my mouth. It's bad enough having it all over my hand.

Though if the autofellatio thing had worked I probably would have gone for it.

(Okay, I can sense your curiosity, so, like - it's a yoga pose, modified. You gotta be pretty supple, but I think with enough practice, almost any man can learn how to blow himself, sort of. After a few months of regular yoga, and a warmup - because you could hurt yourself quite easily doing this - you lie with the top of your head about two feet from the wall, at a 90 degree angle, back on the floor, nice and straight, and raise your feet up over your head, so that they touch the wall; and then you "walk down the wall," toes pointing towards the floor, bending your knees so they head towards your ears, as your spine curves and you start to feel the blood pounding in your temples. With the weight of your folding body acting on you, gravity pushing your ass down further, your cock, if you're a male reader, will eventually be dangling just above your face, and if you crane your neck up, you can fit it between your lips. You can tongue the tip of it. You might even be able to get it so it's in your mouth. And then you'll discover the ultimate irony, the black joke at the end of the pretzel, because, with your cock in your mouth - something that, if you're at all like me, you have long wondered about - your back, neck, and head will be in such horrible discomfort, and your blood will be so oddly distributed in your body, that there will be no way in hell that you could get an erection, let alone come. The horse, led to water, blinks at you with his one eye, head hanging down, and your balls sure look ugly that close to your face, and after about fifteen minutes of screaming discomfort, you give up and unfurl, feeling sore and kind of pissed off. You will try it again three more times over the next few months to establish the futility of the endeavour, then give up and stop doing yoga; what fucking good is it?).

Anyhow, The Living End is a road movie and, really, a very dark comedy, about two HIV positive men - this made when AIDS was still spreading rampant through the gay community and killing people in vast numbers - whose mortality, their long lists of infected friends, and their awareness that the political and straight establishments don't much care, drive them to a sort of odd criminal freedom. A homophobe insults one of our (queer) heroes on the street, and so said hero beats the homophobe to death with a ghetto blaster; why the hell not? Why obey any law, respect any convention of a society that has turned its back on you? A title in the film labels it "an irresponsible movie by Gregg Araki," but it was very, very well-liked, angry for the right reasons, and - dark as it gets, is, I think, positive and funny and clear-headed. (It's also been reissued in DVD format - the first proper release - with a commentary by Araki, restored sound, and remixed audio, and it looks great). In the very straight suburbs, pretty insulated from the gay scene, most of the reason I liked it, aside from my being able to pin some sort of liberal-brownie-point-button to my chest for digging a queer film, was because I also felt an outsider sexually. As a geeky, overweight, cerebral, socially clueless, terrified and intense young man - who at that point in his life was dropping acid twice weekly, reading WAY too much Nietzsche, and - well, I think I'll leave some details out, but suffice it to say, women stayed VERY far away from me, and I felt pretty lost and unloved (by anyone but my parents and a few friends, mind you). Certainly I didn't get laid. So I felt good to see someone raising a cry for some other version of sexuality than the one that had disenfranchised me, even if he was speaking from some place rumour'd to have been Sodom, where I'd never actually been (I love that poem, by the way).

(Oh, well - actually, have I been to Sodom? This essay by Leo Bersani, "Is the Rectum a Grave," convinced me that I should "reclaim" my anus as a site of sexual pleasure and overcome whatever trepidation I felt about touching or penetrating it... but that was strictly a solo act, you understand. No, really, I'm not gay. Really. I hope Michael V. Smith doesn't read this - he'll tease me about it, I'm sure.)

Then I saw The Doom Generation, in a chopped up VHS release. It wasn't until I got to Japan that I'd realize how wonderful that film was, being able to view it more-or-less uncut. Araki very carefully contrives to set us up on a certain trajectory: a straight young couple of punked-up, nihilistic-seemin', but oddly innocent kids hook up with a sort of dark bisexual demon, an odd tempter who seems to have stepped out of The Living End with an even fiercer sense of purpose to obey no law but his own. He flirts with both of them. Their "ride" with this figure - because it's also a road movie of sorts - is a ride further and further out from "normalcy," including a safely hetero-normative world; just as we move to greater and greater acts of lawlessness, assenting when our heroes have to rob a convenience store or kill someone in self-defense, Araki slowly and intelligently teases us with the male-male flirtation in the film until we REALLY want to see them get it on. (SPOILERS FOLLOW, skip to the next paragraph if that's an issue). And then, at the peak of sexual tensions between the two men, a crew of fucked up homophobic jocks, who have surfaced now and then in the film to demonstrate how screwed up American youth's ideas of love and romance can be, burst onto the scene and castrate and kill the innocent young man whom the audience has most identified with up to that point, while the American flag waves and, if I recall correctly, the "Star Spangled Banner" plays. It's an amazing film, politically and morally. It's also really fuckin' fun to watch, as Araki pushes our buttons and winks at us. There's much more to it than I will even try to do justice to here.

It was also the last Araki film I really liked. I missed Nowhere, partially due to the format shift from VHS to DVD; I never got around to it when I had access to it, and now I don't even have a VHS player hooked up, were I to find a copy, which is not easy to do. (It's only available on DVD in Europe and Australia, to my knowledge; there's still no Region 1 release). Splendor and Mysterious Skin both seemed compromised in various ways - Splendor an attempt to get wider audience appeal, by making a too-too likable, toned down bisexual comedy for the youth market, while Mysterious Skin seemed a rather flat attempt to ingratiate himself with the arthouse crowd. As such, it worked, in that it was widely distributed and well-reviewed, but the best I can say for it was that it made me very curious about his next film; it had nothing of the toothy, razor-edged grin of the films of his I liked most, none of the perverse inventiveness. It just wasn't shit-disturbing enough. Araki seemed to be struggling to find a location for himself as a filmmaker, an audience, a mode of address that suited him and gave him a place in the mainstream. I preferred him as a cult taste.

About a year ago, I heard Araki had completed a new film, and got very excited about the prospect of interviewing him, perhaps for Xtra West, for whom I was still writing at that time. The film was some sort of pothead comedy with little-or-no queer content. I contacted the distributors to try to arrange an interview with Araki. To my amazement, they wouldn't set it up. It took me around a dozen emails to establish this. They weren't sure if they were going to bother with a theatrical release of the film; it might just get dumped onto DVD, and I guess they just didn't think it was worth it. They suggested I contact Araki's people through IMDBPro. They blew me off. Later I heard other stories, of a major film festival that wanted to play the film, and was denied a print. I didn't know what to assume: either Araki had made a film that was atrociously, unwatchably bad, an embarrassment to be associated with, or else he'd delivered something too politically dangerous to be a safe consumable. Something that scared the executives and led to their sabotaging the very film they were supposed to be distributing.

Which would mean, maybe, that he'd returned to form. The very burial of the film got me kind of excited about it. And I made a resolve to see it - though I also resolved not to try too hard. I figured that eventually it would cross my path.

It was released several months ago on DVD (I'm guessing on April 20th); I've attentively watched to see when people might acknowledge that the movie exists. This very week, copies finally made it into the rack at HMV. And yes, it's a return to form; it's a delight - it has all the energy and charm and passion of the best of Araki's early films, while being nowhere as dark; and the higher you are when you watch it, the better, REALLY. It is a shame that this film didn't find it's proper audience, was handled in such a cowardly and indifferent fashion. It's a dose of good medicine in dark times. It's on the side of the good guys. And there are delightful cameos - notably Harold and Kumar's John Cho. I won't say anything more about it right now, but trust me - especially if you smoke a bit now and then - it's a film to see, even better with friends. Make some special cupcakes and have a party.

Dennis Kucinich reads Bush Impeachment Articles to House of Representatives

It was by far the most remarkable public statement I have heard an American politician - ANY politician - make, something I did not think one could see delivered in an American government body: everything that intelligent people know and fear about the Bush regime was articulated with razor clarity and abundant examples in the House of Representatives yesterday by Rep. Dennis Kucinich. I spent over two hours watching C-Span last night, in awe, as he went point by point, from lying to the American people to get them embroiled in war, to Guantanamo and the process of extraordinary rendition - which he compared to "disappearing" in Latin American dictatorships, and illustrated by citing the Maher Arar case - to issues of illegal surveillance, violations of due process and the Geneva Conventions,reckless misspending in Iraq - the Halliburton no-bid contract... and much more. It went on for several hours. After each point, he said more or less the same thing - like a prayer, of sorts, which I copied out: "In all these actions and decisions, in violation of US and International law president George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander-in-Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, wherefore President George W. Bush, by such conduct is guilty of an impeachable offence, warranting removal from office." The list is not yet online that I can see, though you can probably find it in the next few days by checking the "Impeachment" link on this page. Right now there's just a PDF of his proposals to impeach Dick Cheney, which he read to the House in April. The Bush impeachment document is apparently some 50 pages long...

Nothing will come of this, of course, except that I will now follow the career and actions of Kucinich - who ran for the Democratic leadership earlier this year - with some curiosity, and I will no longer automatically assume that all American politicians are corrupt, contaminated creatures acting in the service of private interests. Kucinich appears to be virtuous, courageous man. In a way, it's horrifying that statements so transparently true can be read aloud in the House without it actually changing anything... but who knows...

Post-script: here's a measure of how remarkable (or ineffectual?) Kucinich's statement was: mainstream media stayed far, far away. No mention in the Independent, no mention in CNN - brief mention on Reuters saying that the action was not likely to amount to anything, which fails to detail any of Kucinich's more resonant charges against Bush, and ends with a White House denial... Too much honesty is bad for business, I guess, but the fact that this happened seems like news to me...

Japanese medical story

I personally had great experiences of medicine in Japan. When something I ate at an Izakaya caused severe kidney pains - I think it was the squid - I ended up getting X-rayed and blood tested and taken great care of until, slumped sweaty in a wheelchair, I puked explosively into a plastic bag; I remember Japanese nurses patting me on the back and actually HOLDING THE BAG, which is what I call service... On another occasion, when I dropped a drawer on my toe, the doctor patiently did exactly what was needed to stop me from losing the whole toenail, cutting a small hole in the nail to let the blood out from under it; western doctors hadn't known how to do that in my teen years, when I dropped a fucking barbell bar on myself, and ended up losing the whole nail, in a black and uncomfortable mess. Finally: I had this rotten wisdom tooth that needed pulling, that two Canadian doctors had refused to work on, saying that the fact that I could feel every slight cut they made in the gum was because I was "exceptionally squeamish," not because they couldn't find the artery or whatever that they needed to inject their goo into. The Japanese dentist I ended up seeing about it - after having lived there for three years, and delaying my visit, based on my Canadian experiences - was much more competent: not only did he have no trouble freezing me, but he cut the tooth in half and pulled it out with a minimum of tugging or struggle, unlike when I got my other three wisdom teeth removed here, which involved my dentist going to work with a wrench and elbow grease, actually putting his knee into my chest for leverage (or at least that's how I remember it).

Anyhow, based on my own experiences, I give Japanese medicine the thumbs up, despite the many horror stories I heard from other teachers over there. All the same, a story like this really amuses me. I love how they're not sure what the original colour of the towel was...

Tom Holliston tour dates added!

Tom in action, by Jillian King

...actually, so far there's only one confirmed: Tom will do a solo show at the Main, September 20th. Woo! My old Tom Holliston interview is here. There's actually a buncha stuff I never did transcribe from that conversation - maybe I'll stick it on my blog sometime before the September show...

Customs Japan and the Great Free Marijuana Giveaway

You know, Customs Japan was pretty lax when I was living there - I would get waved through without even having to open my bags, most of the time - but they never were this generous.

May 16th at the Cobalt: The Furies, The Green Hour, and Duvall Star

wendythirteen by Femke van Delft

You know it’s spring in Vancouver when the Cobalt starts to smell like a rotten apple stuffed into a dirty jockstrap. I slumped in at 10:30, slightly stoned and eager to blow off my week at work and attain some element of catharsis. Femke, Bev Davies, and Carola of the JEM Gallery and JEM Productions were sitting with John and Taylor of the Furies at the tables in the center of the bar, so, snagging a bottle of $3 Pacific - much less likely to produce a hangover than whatever’s on tap - I dropped my bag and sat down, as Siobahn Duvall, in an orange t-shirt with “New York City” on it, finished her soundcheck and started her set.

Siobahn Duvall by Femke van Delft

Tho’ it must surely seem like spoilsportism to say it, since Siobahn Duvall is clearly the real thing, and since the pool of Credible Women in Rock is fairly small, I can’t admit to any great enthusiasm for Duvall Star. Duvall enthusiastically slings a sort of tough-girl bubblegum guitar rock just this side of punk; it’s delivered with considerable charisma and not a trace of pretense, and, even in the stripped-down guitar-and-drums format we were offered at the ‘balt, got a couple of fans dancing. However, I'm a snob who doesn’t even own (no shit) any Ramones albums, because the songwriting is too simple and the lyrics too often stoopid. Duvall is anything but stupid, but you can seldom tell what the songs are about, for one - there is no strong central chorus to hook onto, no words you can make out as clearly as the snarl with which they’re delivered, no sense that they were crafted with utility in mind. Ain’t much you can do with ‘em but shake your ass, which I don’t generally do. It says something that of the three times I’ve seen the band, my favourite song they played was a cover (“Sonic Reducer” with Chris Arnett on additional guitar, a couple of years ago. Now THAT’s a song with an attention-grabbing chorus and abundant use-value! Who among us doesn’t want to be a pharaoh soon?).

Duvall Star by Femke van Delft

Funny moment: Siobahn made a comment about how she’d never noticed how bright the lights were at the Cobalt - she could really see how much she spits when she sings. Femke van Delft - who, like Bev, was documenting the night with her camera - called out, “Thank me!” Turns out Femke, arriving early, long-frustrated with the somewhat crappy lighting in the venue, did the DIY thing: she went down to the corner store, bought some brand-new home-variety lightbulbs, and installed them in the ‘balt’s spots. I wonder how many other bands will comment on the improved lighting in the next while... and how many other punk clubs across the continent owe their lighting to photographers tired of shooting in the dark?

The Green Hour, up next, scored a bit higher for songwriting, and a bit lower for authenticity; they’re another local band, with an upcoming eponymous CD to be distributed by Scratch. Great twin-guitar sound, a strong drummer, and an interesting variety of sources - ranging from early Pink Floyd to athletic Led Zeppelin, and covering a lot of UK psych-pop territory in between. I’m sure they have an audience, or will soon acquire one; personally, I couldn’t quite get past the elfish 60's haircuts, the floppy hobbit hats, and the odd paisley shirt, which combined to produce the effect of a band more interested in earnestly imitating their forbears and correctly mastering the cultural ephemera around a scene than in making anything particularly original. Which, I guess, is a silly objection to make in the oft-derivative, image-obsessed world of rock, especially in a city where recidivists like Black Mountain - for whom the Green Hour have opened - are the reigning champions; but at least Black Mountain dress in ordinary East Van attire. If Stephen McBean started getting onstage in a wizard hat and robes, say, I’d probably vomit. Here’s hoping the youthful Green Hour will become less green with age, and that the “force that drives the green fuse through the flower” will push them in more distinctive directions, as they build in confidence and courage. At this point, I can only say that they’re good enough that I’m sure they’re going to get better, weak praise tho’ it may be.

The Green Hour by Femke van Delft

But, I mean, fuck me: Adrian Mack likes them, and Chris Arnett of the Furies stood for their set and danced: that should be praise enough, because the Furies are the kings of no-bullshit; they’re the type of band that, when the guitarist breaks a string (unless he has Bill Napier-Hemy waiting in the wings to fix it), will say “fuck it” and keep going without sounding appreciably different... which, as a matter of fact, happened on this occasion. Arnett’s grimace, his shades (which are not bullshit so much as an ironic “bullshit catcher,” putting the bullshit right out in the open where you can see it and be amused by it, so you know that no one is trying to sneak anything by you) and the bulging veins in his arms delight me; it is a wonder that anyone with fingers as thick and meaty-lookin’ can play so fuckin’ hot as Chris. His solos - often played with his guitar slung below his knees, as he teetered at the edge of the stage, dripping sweat - sounded more and more like they were the reincarnation of the guitar sounds on White Light/ White Heat, veering as close as they could to the edge of anarchy without becoming an onslaught of noise; he's come a long way since the enthusiastic spazzouts I saw at the Vancouver Complication, now actually channeling his furies through his equipment, rather than assaulting his equipment with same.

The Furies by Femke van Delft

As steeped in The Tradition as Arnett may be, tho’ - because the VU, the Stooges, the MC5, the first Modern Lovers album, etc., all hover in the background of what the three-piece does - there is also something utterly unique about’em, some recombination of elements that is distinctly theirs. (Maybe I should reread T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Indivdual Talent" and apply it to the Furies' music; that would be fun, eh? "We dwell with satisfaction upon [Chris Arnett's] difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach [Chris Arnett] without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead [rock musicians], his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.") I didn't quite understand the references to Jimi Hendrix during the night, but no matter... The band didn’t so much as slow down when violence erupted in the moshpit, some guy knocking another down in a flurry of fists, which made a bit of extra space up front for seated folks like me to see the stage (I think it was wendythirteen I overheard saying, “there’s nothing like a bit of emo to thin the crowd.”) Looks like some people needed a more radical catharsis than I did...

Unflattering tho’ it may be, tho’, my favourite song in the Furies’ set is also a cover: their adaptation of a certain Moldy Peaches tune, “Vancouver is Like a Graveyard,” which - I think I’ve said this before - has gotta be THE song for the 2010 Olympics, the equivalent in wit and downtrodden moral righteousness of the Spores’ “Expo in BC.” Yeah, fuck these “tombstone skyscrapers” and Yuppie dreams: Arnett, with a troglodyte’s glee, provides a musical club with which to smash up some of the most contemptible of this city’s bullshit.

John Werner, Taylor Little, and Chris Arnett of the Furies, by Femke van Delft

After their set, a certain sometimes-editor of mine, his hair down and his breath smelling of eau du Cobalt, ranted outside the bar about wanting to leap around the venue slapping people: “DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LISTENING TO? DON’T YOU REALIZE WHO THIS IS? WAKE UP!” Yep. Bassist/drummer Dave Chokroun, leaning back with a smoke, commented that he’d never seen Furies’ bassist John Werner so animated. As I contemplated whether the Skytrain was still running, several of us were regaled with the random hostility of a Native woman who seemed to be growling at us, as she passed, that soon “the Europeans will be Gandhi.” (That’s what it sounded like she said; unless I was mishearing a word in her language, she must have meant that we’d be “gone,” tho’ frankly I can’t tell which is more unlikely - that we’ll all leave or start behaving like Gandhi. I wouldn’t hold my breath on either count). Given that the last time I’d seen Chris onstage, he was wearing a “No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land” shirt, I’d have to say that her rage, understandable as it may be, was misguided in its particulars; in fact, in the one new Furies’ song Chris debuted as part of his set, there was even a lyric about how “the Indians are out to kill the white man.” Though that’s all I could really make out, I can’t imagine it was sung without sympathy.

The Cobalt is a font of grubby virtue, in our increasingly shiny, happy, nihilistic little town - as long as you don’t mind the occasional punch up, the occasional ranting streetperson outside, or the florid crotchy smell. Too bad I had other things to do on the 23rd, or I'd have gone to see the Rebel Spell there too - another local favourite o' mine. Having jokingly compared them to primates in my Skinny review, I have to confess, compared to the brute passions of the Furies, they might as well be playin’ fuckin’ Bach...

Duvall Star, wendythirteen, et alia, at the Cobalt bar, by Femke van Delft

Holy fuck: I referenced Dylan Thomas and T. S. Eliot in a fucking Furies' review??? I need to stop this journalism shit and get back to my English lit studies, I think I'm getting restless or sumfin'.

Good news for Omar Khadr and for human rights

The Canadian supreme court has stopped just short of declaring Guantanamo Bay an illegal institution, but it's moving in the right direction. I personally would like our country to be on the right side of history on this issue.

Soundproof, Joolz, and the New Model Army: 1980's nostalgia on Youtube

So, actually, Justin Sullivan of the New Model Army is not such a hard man to get hold of after all. We spoke this weekend and I'm in the process of transcribing the interview (while paying a buddy to transcribe Nels Cline, so I can get that off ASAP... please don't even ask about the Her Jazz Noise Collective piece...). More on that later. With the NMA on my mind, I did some surfing on Youtube and found three clips of note:

A) The original trio, of Sullivan-Morrow-Heaton (RIP), playing "No Rest," in 1985. This very video clip was my first exposure in any form to the New Model Army, when it was played on Soundproof, the Shaw equivalent of Night Dreams, a 1980's cable-access TV show that I used to watch religiously. I must have seen it shortly after it was filmed - because I was still in high school, I know that, and I graduated in 1986; I taped it on my parents' VCR, and rushed into the city to buy as many of their LPs as possible (No Rest and Vengeance, at that point; I bought The Ghost of Cain when it came out). Having fallen utterly for their raw/ rough/ real look, I was so immensely put off by the professional, MTV-friendly video of "Stupid Questions" a few years later that I decided, good punk that I was, that the band had sold out - and stopped buying their albums for several years, only picking up Thunder and Consolation and all subsequent albums upon my return from Japan, in 2002; hard to believe, because it's just great (as are The Love of Hopeless Causes, Eight, and High, my three favourites of their later studio output). To Sullivan's credit, he looks uncomfortable in the extreme in the more polished video... seems to be trying to keep his back to the camera, and positively blushing in embarrassment when it finds him. The contrast between his self-presentation between these two clips, filmed within five years of each other, could not be more dramatic. (They're still an amazing live band, btw).

B) I've also been thinking of New Model Army affiliate Joolz Denby (Sullivan's partner, the cover artist for most of their albums and singles, and - among other things, a poet, novelist, and tattoo artist). She was another person to whom I was introduced via Soundproof, where I remember her reading poetry and showing off her tattoos, which were plentiful and striking even back then. Turns out that there's a clip of the various antics of the Soundproof veejays and guests on Youtube, and that Joolz appears in it, briefly popping up around 3:40 in to say the words "the womb of some ghetto virgin," from one of those readings that made such an impression (truth be known, Joolz and the New Model Army were the only bands that Soundproof really broke, for me - I already knew about most of the other bands they played, or would find out about them elsewise. The show was still invaluable - as a teeanger stuck in Maple Ridge, I seldom made it to gigs, which usually weren't all-ages and often ended after the last bus left for the 'burbs. By the way, the guy who says "I'm sober" just after the split-second of Joolz looks to be Limey Dave of Tupelo Chain Sex, who sorely need to have their back catalogue - especially Spot the Difference - re-issued on CD).

Anyhow, I hope to have something on the Furies' show last weekend up in a day or two. But then I think I need to work on some non-blog stuff, so I may be a bit invisible here for awhile.

Randi cops out on Canine Telepathy Challenge

I've always been skeptical of James Randi...

Cool Patricia Highsmith auctions on eBay

I love Patricia Highsmith (links herein are to either Wikipedia pages or auctions). Described variably as a misanthrope, an alcoholic, a bisexual, a lesbian, an antiSemite*, and/or a very strange, cruel, impossible person, Highsmith was unappreciated in her home country (she was born in Texas) and relocated to Europe, where many of her works appeared in translation before being published in English. Highsmith wrote dark, subversive tales of murder and crime, where usually the killers are the sympathetic ones; her best known book is The Talented Mr. Ripley - a subtle and rich novel somewhat dumbed-down for the film adaptation - but my favourites of hers are the early novel Deep Water - a finely-observed and psychologically rich tale of infidelity, publishing, murder and snails; her blackly funny The Cry of the Owl, in which an innocent man - who just happens to be a peeping Tom - is persecuted for crimes that he did not commit (but perhaps in some cases would have liked to); and her various stories in which pets and other "tame" animals rise up and kill their owners (in The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, for instance, but also in the stories "The Snail-Watcher" and - tho' the snails belong to no-one in this story - "The Quest for Blank Claverengi," both of which appear in a book most often titled Eleven, but originally published as The Snail Watcher. Anyone who has a motif in her work in which snails devour people is all right by me. If you haven't read it, you should check out my tale of a bizarre coincidence involving one of those stories). I have yet to read The Tremor of Forgery, considered her finest book by many. I'm saving it for a time when I need a really good book, and can do it justice...

Anyhow, there are a couple of really cool auctions on eBay at the moment for items pertaining to Highsmith. In the 1950's, she wrote a novel called The Price of Salt; it is usually described as the first lesbian novel in history to have a happy ending. Someone is selling a first edition of it here. There is also an auction for a Bulgarian edition of Strangers on a Train, her first book, famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock (tho' I gather substantial changes were made to the story). Weirdest and priciest, there is a watercolour for sale that is apparently by Patricia Highsmith's mother.

What I would really like, though - a copy of Miranda the Panda is on the Veranda, a children's book she wrote with Doris Sanders of illustrated nonsense-rhymes involving animals (yes, there is a snail - "a snail in a veil"). I do not know Highsmith's relationship with Sanders - she had many brief relationships in her life, few satisfying (kind of like, um, me); I'm not even sure which of the two illustrated it. Alas, it seldom comes up on eBay, and never on the cheap, and the affordable copies on the Abebooks link above sound like they are soiled and DJ-less, which is no good for me. Anyone shopping for me for Christmas should note how I covet this book. Alas, her bio is not very revealing about this particular work - which, apparently, she did the illustrations for, not the rhymes; nor does it mention her contribution to Exciting Comics, and tales of the superhero Black Terror...


Ahh, and here's a treat I haven't thought to seek out: Youtube footage of Highsmith, talking about her work! ... I'll leave y'all with an image of Black Terror engaged in an act of anti-Japanese propaganda, from those startling racist days of yore:

*Highsmith scores no points by me for being an antiSemite, but I still feel greater kinship with her than with almost any other human female I have heard tell of.

Standard Operating Procedure - a disappointment

What he said.

Music of the Week

What's been spinning this week:

Eugene Chadbourne: New Directions in Appalachian Music (pictured), with Phil Minton and Paul Lovens. Absolutely great. Am following it up at the moment with Della 5 Banger, some of his solo banjo rambles.

Diamanda Galas: Guilty, Guilty, Guilty (her new CD of songs/piano - the "Long Black Veil" cover works.

Brian Jonestown Massacre: My Bloody Underground. I can't figure out if I like this or not. Interesting sounds, interesting approach - but it almost feels like someone "faking" a sound, making weird music not as honest self-expression but as some sort of attempt to appeal to a demographic. I like bits of it, but I don't trust it. Yet. See "Just Like Kicking Jesus" on the link above (their Myspace).

Erin of Shearing Pinx and Her Jazz Noise Collective: Les Beyond. Proof that women can wank, too! (Solo electric guitar noise, some inspired bits of textural skronk and squiggling, and some stuff that just sounds like any ol' session of guitar noise. Really neat packaging, tho'!). Erin's touring with the Shearing Pinx right now, but those interested in Her Jazz stuff can come see i/i, with Peter Plett and Anju of Her Jazz, at Pub 340 tonight...

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten

Y'all are paying attention, right? The newest doc on Joe Strummer will soon be playing the Cinematheque.

I am deeply happy that I got to see the Mescaleros play Tokyo twice. Much further back, still in the 1980's, I'd guess, I saw Joe with the Pogues at the Commodore. And in my teen years, I even managed to squeeze in a "Cut the Crap" Clash concert (with Joe ridiculing the people sitting in the rafters of the Pacific Coliseum for being passive spectators, when the real action was on the floor; but I'd just scored an original pressing of Triumph of the Ignoroids for a mere $10 at that little collector's record shop that used to be across from the Kootenay Loop, and I wasn't about to take it down there with me). I am very happy to have seen him play as often as I have, and very, very sad that he's gone. I appreciated his later work - especially "Get Down Moses" and almost all of the first Mescaleros album - more than a lot of the Clash stuff, truth be known. Maybe I need to spin "Yalla Yalla" this weekend...

By the way, if the girl with the Joe Strummer tattoo who sometimes worked/ works at Foundation ever reads this, I never got to talk to you again to find out whether you liked the Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros Osaka bootleg I left for you, or if, indeed, you ever received it. I think your coworkers thought I was stalking you - they were very weirdly paranoid. Anyhow, hi.

What's wrong with this picture?

Thanks to Femke for sending this on (she took it, of course). In Seattle, for the New Model Army gig last month, wherever the hell that was.

Justin Sullivan is a hard fucking man to interview, you know that? Not that I need any new projects, but I am having no luck getting something set up with him. I think I give up.

It was still a good show.

Standard Operating Procedure opens Friday, May 9

More information can be found on Errol Morris' site. The film opens tomorrow at Cinemark Tinseltown.

A belated, corrected Daniel Johnston review

Hm. The Skinny #3 is on the streets, and alas, there are a few problems with my Daniel Johnston review as it ran. They omitted my paragraph breaks, turning it into one big block of text, and they also failed to run mention of Mr. Ford Pier, who was one of the local musicians backing Daniel up (Ford explained to me at Red Cat that the band were given a list of songs to choose from from Daniel's live favourites, spent time learning them before his arrival, and then played them in a quick rehearsal with Daniel before the show; or something very close to that process). The initial error was mine: I had somehow upfucked on recognizing Ford that night, maybe because there were no members of Nomeansno to be seen anywhere around, and I've only ever seen him play opening for that band, or with (Nomeansno guitarist) Tom Holliston's own project, the Show Business Giants. Anyhow, I didn't mention him at all in my first draft (nor any other members of the pick-up band, whose names, I admit, I don't have on hand now). Not sure what ultimately happened - Ferdy Belland, music editor, says he fully intended to give credit to Ford where due, and he's not sure where the glitch arose, but - the corrected version, acknowledging Mr. Pier, did not ultimately see print.

But let's do what we can: here's the correct version, as it was supposed to be read, with Ford-namecheck restored. Call it the "director's cut."

Daniel Johnston
Richards on Richards, April 19th


Never before has buying merch seemed so like a sacrament: people lined up to buy “Hi, How Are You” t-shirts at the sold out Daniel Johnston concert on the 19th like they were gathering to dip their hankies in the blood of a martyred saint. No other designs were on offer, just the froggy little guy with the stalk eyes, available in white, black, and a pale green: I immersed myself in the surge, wondering how many other people really just didn’t much care that Kurt Cobain once wore this design, too?

Daniel offered us something truly lovely that night. An audience member in a porkpie hat, up from LA, told me that it was his third time that he’d seen Daniel since the documentary - The Devil and Daniel Johnston - came out, and that he’d never been more confident. If there were any voyeurs come to watch the fragile singer-songwriter fall apart - a contingent that I suspect made up a very slight percentage of the audience, if any at all - they certainly didn’t get what they came for, because whatever his mental health issues, Daniel knew exactly what he was doing, and did it very, very well.

Through three permutations - solo, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist, and backed by a full pick-up band - including an energetic and happy Ford Pier on one of the guitars - Daniel sang powerfully, passionately, and with - of course - utter sincerity. This didn’t stop him from offering a couple of surprisingly showmanlike “How are you all doing tonights” in between songs, though; when the cheers he received in response threatened to freak him out, he raised a hand, in a clear boundary-drawing gesture, but he didn’t panic, and he didn’t flee the stage early, as he has been known to do. He joked between songs about having a dream where someone was sentenced to death for trying to commit suicide, “and it was me!” (laughter, applause all round); he shared an anecdote about shopping for comic books, because for him - oddly the saddest moment of the night - “Christmas is every day;” and he even offered a couple of prepared one-liners (“My mother makes pancakes that are so flat, they only have one side!”). When he ran out of jokes, he apologized to the audience, and someone called back, “That’s okay - the music is fantastic!”

Songs included an energetic “Speeding Motorcycle,” an upbeat “Casper,” and passionate versions of “Walking the Cow,” “Life in Vain,” “The Beatles,” and many more. There was even a cover, a moving reading of “a song by my friend, John Lennon,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” with Daniel belting out “Hey!” with surprising force. His hands shook, but his voice was strong.

By the time the encores came around - with Daniel inviting us to sing along with him for an unaccompanied “Devil Town” and promising that true love would find us in the end, the audience - rapt, enthusiastic, respectful, come not to gawk but to worship their own somewhat inaccessible, but abundantly sentimental hearts, as reflected back to them in Daniel’s songs - were obviously wholly satisfied. After he’d folded shut his white binder of lyrics and walked off for the final time, the Richards on Richards staff wisely left the lights down for a few minutes, so the singer could hear us chanting his name, applauding, hoping for even more.

It was nice to cheer and know that it really meant something to the person receiving it.

A sweeter night I have not had in years.

Her Jazz Noise Collective and Ghost Taco at VIVO

For fans of experimental music, noise, and weirdness: the Her Jazz Noise Collective will be performing as part of the all-female Women's Studies project at VIVO tonight. Ghost Taco, I gather, will be also on the bill, though I don't know if she'll be doing her "usual" routine (involving contact mikes and her vagina; Dan Kibke tells me that at the Shitstorm Noise Festival, her performance actually caused a speaker to catch fire); she's performing with Brooch Post. Vancouver New Music's Heather Jean McDermid, aka Lee Shoal, of Ejaculation Death Rattle and the Creaking Planks is on the bill, too, "doing solo stuff with banjo & saw." And as you see, there's a bunch more. The weird women of Vancouver unite! See you there - I believe things start around 8.

Taxi to the Dark Side, Standard Operating Procedure, and more

Finally watched Taxi to the Dark Side, playing at the Granville 7. It's yet another film where the content - Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and human rights abuses in the so-called war on terror - is important enough that it overshadows a ham-fisted presentation: the film has, like The Unforseen, a too-emotive soundtrack, and, more seriously, vastly overemphasizes the death of a single prisoner at Bagram Airforce Base in Iraq, using the old TV-news strategem of giving us a strong central character to identify with, in this case a victim. Alas, there is only so much the film has to say about the life and death of Dilawar, the taxi driver seized, imprisoned, and handcuffed with arms stretched to the ceiling, and beaten about the legs by US soldiers at Bagram until they turned to pulp: he was someone who didn't want to work on the farm, became a taxi driver, had a daughter, and, with no solid evidence even for imprisoning him, was killed by US soldiers who believed they were just doing what they were told, as part of interrogating him. He's no more or less important than the previous prisoner killed at Bagram, in roughly the same period, who is given about a minute of screentime, or any of the individuals tortured at Abu Ghraib, whose names are not mentioned; but we cut back to Dilawar's photograph again and again, to drill home some sort of emotional connection -- see? we killed this sweet-looking young man. See? It's a trite enough approach - condescending, really, as if we're too stupid to follow the story, or too apathetic to care about it, without one specific human tragedy to hook onto - that it distracts a bit from the amazing amount of information contained in this film, which connects the dots from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield to Gitmo and thence Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Though in the end I'd recommend Taxi to the Dark Side to anyone interested, I'm really hoping Errol Morris does a better job with his consideration of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, and what they mean: Standard Operating Procedure, not yet playing in Vancouver. I just bumped into an article co-written by Morris on Sabrina Harman, one of the reservists shown posing with her thumb up in the torture pics, posted to the right. She describes even this photo - why she is smiling, and how "bad it looks." (Wiki article on her here). She took many of the photos herself, and, I'm reading now in the Errol Morris interview in the new Cinema Scope, actually has images from Abu Ghraib tattooed on her arms. She seems a complex woman - she's also a lesbian, and, despite her grin in this picture, clearly knew what she was doing was wrong. I'm off to read the Morris article right now... I can understand his deep need to try to figure out what the hell these photographs mean.

The Unforseen is Worth Seeing

...though it's an imperfect film - too long, too digressive, with a rather overly-emotive soundtrack and a slightly overcooked earnestness (which actually gets in the way of the points it makes), I think people concerned with development in Vancouver, the Olympics, and the ways in which we are squandering what is left of this province's natural beauty and resources would find many things of interest and import in The Unforseen, playing at the Vancity Theatre for the next couple of days. It deals with the fight to save Barton Springs in Austin Texas against the short-term, money-oriented development interests that threaten it, which, of course, win out in the end. There is enough Malick-inspired beauty between the talking heads to keep in pleasing to watch, and the Wendell Berry poem that begins it will definitely perk up your ears.

Dig the turtle, too! It made the poster!

Dreams of Leeches and Burritos

So it starts out with some sort of war in classical times; we are armor-clad, buff warriors come in a boat to do battle, and somehow our strategy is to take large, hungry leeches from one area and introduce them to the waters our enemies swim in. My character emerges as one of two lower-level soldiers who somehow get stranded in the area where the leeches are being introduced. Unfortunately, the leeches multiply with lightning speed and soon are coming for us by the thousands. My friend and I - who have quickly turned into Cheech and Chong - have to climb these vast walls, crawling with leeches, to escape the area. The Chong character gets out first, but I'm stuck behind, as Cheech, naked, surrounded by leeches, trying to make it to this one little "doorway" at the top of the wall. There is some suspense: will I get there, or be devoured by leeches? They edge ever closer as I climb, I reach...

I make it, and get out, and suddenly - I'm in front of the building where I work; the ESL school where I teach is actually the building where the leeches are. It's breaktime and students are outside on the sidewalk out front. No longer Cheech, and I assume no longer naked, I check my pockets, find myself penniless, and look around to see if anyone will by me lunch. (I'm sure no one will believe me that the building is full of leeches, anyhow).

I see Will (his second appearance in one of my dreams). I ask him if he'll get me a burrito at Steamrollers. He says sure...

Cashew Auction on eBay

Priceless, but I wouldn't bid on it.

Dreams of McBean

...the fuck?

I wake up at 3AM from dreams of hanging out with Stephen McBean, of Black Mountain, Pink Mountaintops, Jerk with a Bomb, etc. There are a couple of other people there -- a bunch of us are sleeping in the same room; I'm crashing there on a narrow couch, in preparation for something that everyone is going to do the next day -- and the bearded, personable McBean and I are chatting about various things, only two items of which do I remember. Though I have not personally met the man, I did a brief phone interview with him a few months ago, about his early days on the Victoria punk scene and his job, alongside Brian Goble of the Subhumans, with the Portland Hotel Society. During that interview he mentioned - for real! - that he had Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA on, or at least near, his turntable. And I meant to follow that up with him, but I didn't - because people need to justify listening to Bruce, you know? So in the dream, I do ("What was with the Born in the USA thing?") and McBean admits that yeah, "usually the man kills the music" (ie, overpowering it, dominating it, etc). Then he tells me - this is the second thing I remember - that he has his entire record collection listed online at www.asyouvereceived.com - which, I have checked on waking, is not a functional URL, tho' it's a great domain name if anyone wants to get on it. A Yahoo search for "Stephen McBean's record collection" is also fruitless. At about this point, some motherly type comes in and starts helping make the beds, which are at weird angles to each other. Mine is so skinny I worry that I'm going to fall off.

Then I wake up.

Giorgio Magnanensi at 1067

Just got this from the 1067 mailing list. Giorgio is director of Vancouver New Music and a very exciting composer of avant garde music; this is a great opportunity to see him in an unsual and intimate setting, leading "a large electronic ensemble from UBC and VCC through an evening of excting improvisations":

Giorgio Magananensi with Large Improvising Ensemble
Saturday May 3, 2008
10:00 pm - 1:00 am

Iron Man: It's a Scam

I wonder how many media flunkies, toured around on junkets and corrupted into giving positive reviews of the films they see, or flat-out paid to do same, currently bepeople Rotten Tomatoes critics' roster? Tame dogs, sensitive to where advertising dollars come from, who roll over for whatever drek the industry is most hyped to promote? Because I'm really at a loss to explain why Iron Man should have a 96% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes; in a way, I would feel reassured about the state of what passes for film writing in the mainstream to discover that at least a generous helping of the yay-sayers were in some way influenced (bought, threatened, begged, whatever) to stick their thumbs up - compared to the alternative hypothesis, that the majority of these reviewers genuinely thought that this formulaic, smarmy little non-contender merited a positive review. "One of the hippest, best-written and best-directed superhero movies ever!" raves Lou Lumenick, a RT "Top Critic" affiliated with the New York Post. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald raves that Iron Man is "an absolute blast to watch, a consummate piece of popcorn entertainment made with wit and class, and it leaves you so pumped for a sequel that it is practically guaranteed to become a huge hit!" (tell me that that isn't written as advertising copy, folks; it's even trying to hype us on part two!). "One summer blockbuster that succeeds on brains, not bombast!" - this from the oddly named Colin Covert, of the Minneapolis Star Tribune... all for an empty, predictable comic-book action film, thin compared even with Robocop, bepeopled with one-dimensional, cardboard-cutout characters, formulaic plot devices, and predictable "funny moments" that telegraph themselves minutes in advance. (Robert Downey is trying on his "flight boots" for the first time; what do you want to bet that he'll be blasted into the back wall as soon as he flicks the switch?). About the only thing I had fun with was watching a vaguely Sterling-Haydenesque Jeff Bridges, trying on a new look, bald and bushy-bearded, as the bad guy. There were a few idle chuckles, the craft of the film suited its budget, and qua film - pretending it isn't accountable to a larger reality - there wasn't anything deeply objectionable about it, at least compared to most other Hollywood action films: but God knows it doesn't accomplish anything new or unusual... It's really hard to imagine 96% of this film's pre-release viewers being genuinely THAT enthusiastic about it.

...and when the issue of the wider reality in which the film participates is raised, the picture is even grimmer, because while the film DOES supposedly critique the American military-industrial complex, isn't it reasonable to ask that, at this juncture in history - with the US using, in recent memory, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, and napalm-by-another-name in its disastrous and ill-conceived military misadventures overseas - that the ultimate evil not be found resting on the shoulders of a "bad apple" breaking the rules; that the ultimate remedy not be through bigger and better weapons technology (the Iron Man suit); and that a government agency with the word HOMELAND in it - even if it's ultimately SHIELD, and not the Department of Homeland Security - not be numbered among the "good guys?" I mean, I realize we're talking about a comic book adaptation, here, but the film, in being partially set in Afghanistan, PRETENDS to deal with real issues, and probably represents the most thinking the majority of its viewers will do this week on the American weapons industry; isn't it reasonable to ask it to be just a little more honest, a little more provocative, a little more critical of the current administration than it is? I mean, it's no fucking wonder that George W. Bush got elected TWICE - if he did - if this is what people actually pay to consume in the United States; Goebbels himself couldn't do so well.

We can only hope, as the film enters wide release, the word-of-mouth will spread and the sharper-edged critics out there will speak up. It'd be interesting to see if the Tomatometer dips in the next few weeks, actually, as a wider audience gets out to see the film. My guess is that it will, but who knows?

The Rebel Spell - upcoming punk show of note

Still my favourite young poltical punk band, Vancouver's the Rebel Spell has a show coming up at the Cobalt, May 23rd... give a listen to their songs (that's their Myspace Link) and tell me there ain't somethin' special about'em...

Albert Hofmann passes on at 102: it is not dying

Without this guy, what would your life have been like? I mean, sure, there are other ways to explore the outer reaches - but it's pretty interesting to think just how much has come into this world, good and bad, due to one man.

(There's a thread on the Nomeanswhatever forum where you can share your "without Albert Hoffman, I never would have..." stories, btw).