Acid Mothers tonight

(Almost?) As cool as Kawabata: Acid Mothers Tsuyama and Higashi, above, taken last year at Pat's Pub by Femke Van Delft (not to be used without the photographer's permission). I didn't realize til after the Acid Mothers show at Pat's Pub last year that I'd previously seen Tsuyama with Ruins/Hatoba (a fusion of Ruins and Omoide Hatoba, featuring Yamamoto Seiichi of Boredoms fame) at Star Pines Cafe in Tokyo, back when I lived in Japan (1999-2002). He's got a fun personality - a mainstay of the Acid Mothers' tour roster the last few years, a member of Zoffy, a cool vocalist/bassist/"little instruments"-dude, and the prankster of the band onstage. He's on an uber-goofy project with Kawabata and Ruins mastermind Yoshida Tatsuya called Stones, Women & Records (by Acid Mothers Temple SWR, not the incarnation playing tonight; for a sense of how silly these guys can get, check Tsuyama and Yoshida out playing with their zippers as Akaten. Stones, Women & Records is a postmodern collage/nervous-jukebox-breakdown that is more orchestral, more hyperkinetic, and more (I guess) "serious" than that clip - but equally as zany. Music to bug out to). Higashi, meanwhile, has cool CDRs of solo electronica that he'll be selling at gigs; fans of Magneticring, BCVCO, or Sinoia Caves would get something out of these. Kawabata is the "star" of Acid Mothers and a very interesting musician and nice guy, but Higashi and Tsuyama are uber-cool too! (So, we assume, is Shimura Koji, whom I don't know as well; Forced Exposure tells me he's been in Splendor Mystic Solis, White Heaven, High Rise, Mainliner, and Miminokoto - pardon me if I leave you to track down your own links for those).

So obviously I'm plugging this gig, tonight at the Biltmore, by sticking this up, and I think any of you who like heavy psychedelic rock owe it to yourselves to go, especially if you've never seen them; but as I've said, live, the Acid Mothers just plain rock out too much for me. I mean, I don't blame them: performing musicians have to please their audience, and rock audiences in North America are simply not very subtle listeners (Kawabata and I discuss this in our interview, here, endless thanks to Alan Cummings for translating. May there never come a day when I don't feel like I need to include that statement - or don't remember to re-link to that interview when AMT are comin' to town). For the same reason, I have mixed feelings about seeing Sonic Youth live in North America. The one time I've seen them here, at least, at the Commodore on the Sonic Nurse tour, whenever the band got into their really subtle or out-there "noise" jams - exactly the part of their show that I'm most excited about listening to, and that I think they, as musicians, are themselves the most excited by - the audience chose to cheer, hoot, holler, and clap throughout, all of which are activities that interfere with careful listening and are so beside the point of what the band are actually doing that I wanted to run around the venue slapping people. (I recall no such problems the one time I saw Sonic Youth in Japan, note - or during any other concert I went to where there were lengthy quiet passages, like Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Liquid Room; people listened attentively, in a way you simply don't get at rock shows here). This sort of behaviour, of course, is just fine for a lot of bands; yelling between songs or even during them is just great at a Reverend Horton Heat show, a Motorhead show - or a Rebel Spell show, a Subhumans show, even a fucking Nomeansno show, jammy and musical as it is (that last link is to last week's concert - more on that from me in this week's Skinny, btw). There's a jazz-oriented tradition of cheering hot solos and enthusiastic performances whenever you too feel most enthusiastic about them - to kick out and let the spirit move you, and give whooping and welcome feedback to the artist; it just doesn't work in ALL situations. People who don't go to anything but rock concerts, however, may not have had the chance to figure this out; they've never seen minimal/ambient noise, or "free music," or vocal improv, or so forth performed before, and know neither how to listen to it or how to show appreciation without wrecking the show. Medeski Martin and Wood's audience is equally as bovine, really; I sincerely believe they'd be a much better band, live or otherwise, if they had a better audience.

This is a shame, though, because the Acid Mothers Temple - to return to them - can be really a fun project! They have some terrific recordings (of those available through FE, check out Univers Zen ou de Zero A Zero, say). And it's not like they don't occasionally try to get "out there" live. There was a moment last year where Tsuyama started to fuck around with vocal improv and little instrument stuff, in a kind of goofy Akaten way -- but one that could have led somewhere, if the band had had an attentive audience willing to follow where they went. Insteaad, the audience laughed, hooted, made sarcastic comments and so forth, until the gesture had to be dropped with a shrug and a smile: we now return to our regular scheduled programming of Kawabata hoisting up his guitar and laying into ripping rock solos. Kawabata is a helluva performer, don't get me wrong, but it's only part of what he does, and even in terms of guitar improvising, there's only so far "out there" he can get to stay within the "North American rock guitar solo idiom;" better to "give the people what they want," if you want to be able to tour in North America every year or so. I understand - but frankly, I'd rather stay home and listen to his brilliant and constantly engaging early electronic music (thanks, Dan) than sit thinking about how much better the show could be if only the audience weren't ignorant, drunk and stupid. Grr!

But they're touring all the way from Japan, they're really nice people, and even when they're rocking out, there are moments where it grabs me, you know? I would probably enjoy myself at least a little, and there might be... women... there; maybe even (shudder) women like me (I all but stiffen at the thought). Besides, what else am I gonna do tonight, stay home and do my taxes? Transcribe Ray Fulber, with my ear still infected? Hell no! I want to relax, to unwind. I've just spent the weekend in Maple Ridge and the day doing laundry, putting my apartment back together after bedbug fumigation, and spending a frustrating hour with Telus trying to get them to actually send me certain documents that I've been requesting since March 9th. It would probably be at least, oh, a little fun, if I got my cantankerous ass out of this chair. Now I know how my friends feel when I try to talk them into coming to concerts with me that they aren't really that excited about: I'm running some of the same arguments down on myself.

Frankly, I'd feel better about not going if I knew all my readers were going. Would you do me a favour?

I mean, you might really not be as anal or difficult to please as me! You should go!

Sigh.

--

....By the way, did you actually click the Zoffy link? They're performing "Smoke on the Water." If Captain Beefheart were Japanese...

Art Bergmann week postponed due to ear infection

So: I can't really hear so well with my left ear, and have a bit of pain and discomfort to contend with; the last thing I feel like doing is sticking on my headphones and transcribing my Ray Fulber interview, fascinating as it is. There is more to come on Art Bergmann, but not right now: I'm going to end my exhausting week of maniacal blogging, take a nap, go see a couple of shows, and then start getting my apartment ready for another bedbug fumigation tomorrow. There will be no blogging for a few days, folks. You need some time to catch up, anyhow, right?

In the meantime, have you actually gone out and bought the Lost Art Bergmann CD yet? Last I saw, Scratch had copies - maybe Red Cat and Zulu do, as well? You really should check it out. I'm also told, though Sexual Roulette is out of print, you can find it on i-Tunes or such; it's an excellent album and an ideal companion piece for the Lost Art CD, so if you don't know it, do yourself a favour. One hint, though: read the lyrics!

(Hey, Stinks - you gotta put the lyrics of "Who Will Ever Know" up, the previously-unreleased-in-any-format song on the Lost Art CD; it's an amazing statement about the neglect of non-mainstream popular culture - a Vancouver version of X's "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," with it's request for "the last American band to get played on the radio" to "please bring the flag...").

There's a new Youtube clip up of Art, by the way: "Ill-Repute," which he dedicated to Gordon Campbell.

See y'all next week.

The Spores in Skyscraper 30!

Vancouver punks of the 1980's (or those hungry for smart, cool, fun punk songs that they haven't previously heard) should be advised that my interview with Danny Nowak (Spores lead singer, aka Danny Shmanny, and Hard Core Logo cinematographer) is in Skyscraper #30, now on the shelves at Scratch! You should buy the Spores' News Weather and Spores, new on Sudden Death, while you're at it! The Spores were eclipsed in their day by Slow, by their trailblazin' predecessors like DOA and the Subhumans, and by the grunge explosion that came later - though they sound more like the Dead Kennedys (or maybe the Dead Boys or Crucifucks) than anyone Vancouver or Seattle produced, really, due to Danny's strident (I mean that in a good way) vocal delivery and fast-paced babble of lyrics; but they're great - a witty, tuneful, inventive punk band (who, rumour has it, may just be re-uniting for a one-off concert this summer, by the way). The CD includes hidden video tracks like "Meat Bi-Product" and "Up the Boss," and the Sex Pistols-inspired "Expo in BC," the funniest and best Expo protest song ever written, reissued just in time for the Olympics! Yay Spores!

Last night at Blim, plus tonight at the Western Front!

Preamble to Blim review:

Dear Western Front:

I realize that you realize that I'm a nice guy, that I steal stuff from the net myself periodically, that we appear to be entering a post-copyright era, and that I would probably not object to you using Dan Kibke's image of Jeffrey Allport and Tyler Wilcox (seen previously on my blog, here) as the centerpiece of your composite picture promoting tonight's show, shown below:

I realize that you also realize that Dan, too, is a nice guy, and no less a friend to the Front than myself. The thing is, though, these photos are used on my blog by permission from the photographers, and I really must insist everyone observe protocol and ask the photographers ("I want to use your image from Al's blog - is it okay?"). I am more than happy to send on such requests: because, you see, I work primarily with three photographers, mostly (Dan Kibke, Femke van Delft, and Bev Davies; tho' sometimes there's something from John Chedsey, Jillian King, Susanne Tabata or others), and if any of them got annoyed with me for insufficiently protecting their work, say, it would sorely hurt my blog, and mean fewer photos for folks like you to lift in the future! (BTW, The Vancouver Sun apparently did this once, which I consider far more offensive; I support the Front and like what you do, but I'm totally indifferent to the Vancouver Sun, and my answer to them, if they'd troubled to ask, might well have been: pay me).

Having chastened you thus, I will proceed to plug tonight's show at the Front, by means of talking about last night's show at Blim.

(Commence Blim review)

Jeffrey Allport and Lief Hall at Blim, April 2nd. Photo by Dan Kibke. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

For their opening set at Blim last night, Lief Hall of Vancouver's former Mutators performed an ambitious set of improvised electro-acoustic music with percussionist Jeffrey Allport, electronics-guy Robert Pedersen, and, for their second piece, Bellingham's Tyler Wilcox on saxophone. Lief has apparently moved beyond the spastic shrieking menace of her former incarnation into something altogether more refined: weird, intense, unamplified screechy warbles that sort of sounded like the vocalisations of a lunatic squealing demonbaby gleefully sucking the withered teats of an angry, hissing granny. As I've seen Paul Dutton and other vocal improvisers do, she held her hands in front of her mouth in various configurations to modify the sounds, which were almost always fascinating (though I preferred her more complex "pure sound" screeches to her deeper, more singerly forays into voice, which were distractingly, um, voicelike). Chatting with her afterwards revealed that she's somewhat new to vocal improv of this sort and - like July Fourth Toilet's Jody Franklin - is approaching it from a more-or-less fresh perspective, creating the form whole for herself without really needing to be grounded in its high-art precedents (tho' I've suggested Maja Ratkje, in particular, would be useful for her to look at, and sent her links for webpages on Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton, Koichi Makigami and others). It's exciting to see her transition from noisy no wave spazz-punk to minimal improvised noise, and many passages with were sublime indeed (adjective used by permission of Dan Kibke).

For his part, Allport plays a drum kit like a highly sensitive alien being with no conception of hitting, striking, or keeping a beat might, having been given several years to come up with his own idiosyncractic approach ot the instrument. Allport bows the kit, rubs the skins with tinfoil, places the business end of a vibrating tuning fork against the skins, and so forth, to produce an unfathomable and fascinating array of sounds; the best "tools" he used last night were homemades consisting of brightly coloured rubber balls mounted on nail files, the "ball" part of which he rubbed on the skins to produce a deep resonant drone the likes of which I could never have imagined could be produced from a snare and a floor tom (though might have expected from an electronically processed cello, say). Pedersen's electronics were only occasionally hearable to me, as he was sitting to the side of the room that was facing my infected left ear, but when his sounds did surface in the mix - you remember the sounds that accompanied the tachyon-relayed "transmissions from the future" in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness? They reminded me a bit of those, tho' not quite so creepy.

Robert Pedersen and Tyler Wilcox at Blim, April 2nd. Photo by Dan Kibke. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

Wilcox, as well, played his instrument like it might not be an instrument, breath and spit and fingers producing something that you'd be more likely to hear the wind make spontaneously, blowing through an industrial park, rather than a man produce deliberately on a horn. Quiet, subtle, and experimental in the truest sense of that word, the musicians at Blim last night made sounds more listenable and daring and carefully wrought than anything I've heard, say, Evan Parker do at his sold out electroacoustic jazz fest appearances (even if Tyler didn't circular breathe for hours on end). The fact that this wasn't some high-end art show but a gathering of mostly fairly young people, mostly unheralded by the mainstream arts community in Vancouver, in a small venue that most of the big names in the jazz and new music scene here probably haven't even been to yet made it even more special... Scratching notes in my notebook, I was flummoxed to try to come up with apt descriptors of the sounds I heard - I would probably have done better to just close my eyes and listen (which can make music of this sort into an ecstatic/ transcendent experience). The closest I could come up with was thinking back to a recording Dan made on a train from Koyasan to Osaka during G42's Japanese tour last year, that he tells me he plans to release someday as a 3" CD - particularly when Allport and, more frequently, subsequent performer Gust Burns - playing a "piano board" of some sort, a homemade-lookin' instrument that I won't attempt to describe - would hold a stick so that one end was touching the surface of their instruments (the drumskin for Allport, or a contact mike on Burn's homemade, or just the wooden surface of the same) and move their hands in a steady rhythm, one hand sliding down the stick, the other following as the first hand got to the bottom and moved back to the top, generating a hypnotic, rhythmic noise. The analog fits best there: it sounded like nothing so much as the gentle repetition of a train's wheels, turning on the tracks, lulling the listener into a peaceful but attentive trance.

Perhaps one of the things I liked so much about last night's music was that the hand motions of many of the players were represented so clearly in the sounds we were hearing? When someone plays a horn or twiddles a dial on a synth, you have to sort of have a sense of the architecture of the instrument to be able to logically connect the hands you see with the sounds you hear, but that's less so when what you're hearing is the amplified, distorted sound of someone rubbing a stick... or a drum skin, or a cymbal or a gong or such - no matter what they're rubbing it with...

Gust Burns at Blim, April 2nd. Photo by Dan Kibke. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

Jason Kahn at Blim, April 2nd. Photo by Dan Kibke. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

Zurich's Jason Kahn, too - who played alongside Burns and then was joined by Tyler - made fascinating electro-acoustic percussive sounds, with a large drum - bigger than the usual floor tom but the wrong orientation for a bass drum, so I'm really not sure what it was - wired to (Dan tells me) a Doepfer analog synth. He deftly manipulated cymbals and other objects on the surface of his drum with his right hand and adjusted patches and tweaked his synth with his left. It became nearly impossible to fully differentiate between the sounds he was making, and those of Burns - as everything flowed towards a Dionysian continuum of embracing, nurturing noise - but I was most impressed by his contribution to the evening, as well.

If you're feeling like you missed something, having read that: come to the Western Front tonight! (There's more than enough time before Nomeansno play - see below for the new location, since it ain't at the Anza no more). I'm not exactly sure who Blouse are or what Broken Sleep will be doing, but there will be a set between Allport, Wilcox, and Burns - with Burns, I'm told, playing a grand piano! - and also an appearance by LSDJ, aka Mark Gabriel, a local sound-collage guy whose CD on Thankless I really like. He'll be performing with "a live PA with radios and casio samplers," I'm told. Starts at 8; Nomeansno don't go on at the Royal Banquet Hall until midnight. You'll be fine.

Of course, you may already have plans to see Xenakis' Kraanerg. I respect that! Enjoy yourself...

Of Dreams and Ear Infections and Harry Smith

Just was awakened from a dream by a bizarre phone call -- someone asking for the "Alan McGavin Sports Center" - a real facility for sports medicine at UBC, whose phone number in no way resembles mine. The name of this supposed sports center is close enough to mine that, I suppose, in theory, someone might have gotten the two names mixed up when looking in a directory; except, heheh, if it were the name of a center, it would be listed under A, while I'd be listed under M - if I were listed, which I'm not. That means no one could make that mistake; but it surely can't be a coincidence - a wrong number for Alan McGavin for Allan MacInnis - can it? Was someone pretending to make that mistake - someone was calling me, then copped out at the last minute, substituing names, hoping I'd buy it as a wrong number? WTF?

Do I seem paranoid?

Went to bed last night with an ear infection, dosed on amoxcil and codeine and Advil. Woke up and it's still there - there's pressure and a persistent ringing in my left ear. I get 'em periodically - connected to my use of a CPAP machine, I think; scares the hell out of me, since I seem to be incrementally losing my hearing in that ear (tho' sometimes I can "blow out" my eustachean tube and get some of it back...). Was dreaming that I was at some sort of conference involving music, and there were all these people interested in pop music; I'd brought my buddy Michael along. And then suddenly Harry Smith turned up, and I got to hang out with him a bit. No one knew who he was, and he had body odor and was a little eccentric-seeming, so he was being left alone; he was more than grateful to have me fawning over him. I wrote down (in the dream) some of the more entertaining exchanges between us, but I don't remember what they were - there was something about how he still listens to music now, except when his wife called him to the phone. Anyhow, I got to introduce him to Michael - "You remember the Harry Smith Anthology?" Then at some point, Harry had gone away, and I was talking with some woman who was playing me a Sonic Youth song. I snuck off during the song to see if I could find Smith again, so maybe I could arrange a phone interview, thinking I'd ask him some questions pertaining to an article that (in real life) my friend Dan sent me. Trouble was, the article was about Al Neil, mentioning that he'd played in Vancouver with Don Cherry; my dreaming self seemed to get Al Neil and Harry Smith confused...

I've got too much work to do today. Sigh. I think I'll start by going for breakfast.

NOMEANSNO VENUE CHANGE!

Nomeansno at the Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, by Jillian King

Attention! I have just been told the Nomeansno gig tomorrow has had a CHANGE OF VENUE! This is confirmed on the Anza Club website (it's due to "massive ticket oversales," heheheh). It is now going to be held at the Royal Banquet Hall 2122 Kingsway between Nanaimo and Victoria. I'm told "more tix will be sold at the door, between 8pm and 9pm; beers are 3 something!"

SPREAD THE WORD, folks!

Update via Facebook:

Some of you have already heard (my how the grapevine grows in this town) and yes indeed it is true: the Nomeansno gig scheduled for tomorrow, Friday April 3rd at the Anza has been moved to The Royale Banquet Hall 2122 Kingsway at Victoria. Date is unchanged.

Because it is a bigger venue, THERE WILL NOW BE LIMITED TICKETS FOR SALE AT THE DOOR. All advance tickets will of course be honoured.

ALL tickets purchased on the website will be AT THE DOOR.

PLEASE DO NOT CALL THE VENUE.

Set times still as follows and still rigidly adhered to: Rio Bent 10pm, Potty Umbrella 11pm, Nomeansno 12am.

To avoid congestion at the door, we are encouraging early arrival. As an incentive, BEER WILL BE $3.25 (a buck cheaper than normal) from 8-10 pm.

More Testimony: Will S. on Art Bergmann

I spent much of the concert hanging out with my coworker, Will S., who had been (along with Teddy Stinks and Nick Jones) instrumental in my re-discovering and re-evaluating Art's 80's output. I knew Will had a great story about Art; here it is!

(Witness: Will S.)
If memory serves, this story takes place in 1980. I was in grade 8 at Magee high school (I know, I know). Anyway, the school had decided to put on a series of lunch hour concerts for the cultural benefit of its students, the first one was to be a band called the K-Tels.

I was lucky because the kids on my block were mostly a couple of years older than me and had pretty good taste in music, so as a result I was one of a couple people in my grade who actually knew who the K-Tels were and I was very excited about the show.

I arrived at the school auditorium as soon as I could and got a seat in the first row. I’m pretty sure the auditorium wasn’t full. There may have been about a hundred kids eating their bag lunches waiting for the band to come on.

When it did eventually come on the stage, the assault was full-on. I don’t think I had ever heard anything that loud in my life to that point. It was “Hawaii” and it was intense, fast, and furious. Art Bergmann was spitting and screaming and manic. I was loving it!

I’m not sure if it was the volume or the lyrics, but before that song was over, the school principal came running down the aisle from the back. You could literally see the steam shooting out of his ears as he gestured to the band to turn their amps down. Then Art did something I couldn’t believe, he gave the principal the finger!!! Oh my god it was awesome! What disrespect for authority! How perfectly punk! At this point the principal’s face turned completely purple just before his head exploded off of his shoulders. It only took him about a minute more to get the janitor to shut the power off to the auditorium and to put a permanent end to the lunch hour concert series.

A few other students and I left that day with a new understanding of how it could be fun to fuck with authority once in a while. Thanks to Art Bergmann, I’ll never forget that day, it probably caused me to get in trouble a few times more than I would have had I not seen that show, and in retrospect, that is probably a good thing.

_________________________

Thanks, Will!

Post-script:

(The following is a comment from a certain "Chris W." - whose identity may not be difficult to divine for the attentive. I've had to remove it from the comment section and repost it here, as I had to make a change to the initial post that required deleting and re-posting it. Blogger can be complicated...)

Chris W. adds:

The first rock band I saw was also in a school auditorium, and I still remember who great it was. Even though the band played "Smoke On the Water" and didn't give the principal the finger.

Chris Walter: Wrong

Chris Walter has a new book out, Wrong. I interviewed him awhile back for the Georgia Straight, before Wrong came out. I've just started the book - we're once again in the company of Dill, his junkie protagonist from Chris' earlier novel (still my fave), East Van. Dill is back on drugs and pissed off at the effects the Olympics (which are a little bit closer in the novel than they are right now) are having on the DTES. I thought the cover of Wrong was pretty striking - since it seems to have a big bald punk (not quite as profusely tattooed as Mr. Walter, but certainly ChrisWalterlike in his dimensions) holding a Molotov cocktail. This leads to an obvious question....


Allan: Do you support direct action against the Olympics?

Chris: As much as I feel the Olympics are an incredible waste of resources that are badly needed elsewhere, I am not in favour of direct action against the Games. I think it would be a mistake to give the masses a valid reason to dismiss all protesters as being violent, hot-headed thugs. I do, however, support demonstration and protest, but not through bombing or vandalism. Aside from the fact that innocent people could be hurt, direct action will send the wrong message. I urge everyone to look at the true cost of the Olympic Games, not just in dollars and cents, but in terms of human misery and suffering. We need homes before games.

Allan: Wrong is an interesting title. You used to be a band in Winnipeg called the Vacant Lot; there’s a punk band in Vacant Lot in New York that put out an album called Wrong. And now you’re a punk living in Vancouver, where Nomeansno are now based, and of course, their most famous album is called Wrong. Does any of this connect?

Chris: That’s just one of those strange coincidences and not even Nardwuar could string them together (but you know he’d try). I completely forgot about the Nomeansno album––even though it’s one of their best––and I’m too attached to the title to change it now. It fits the book so perfectly that I think even the Wright brothers would forgive me. I toyed with the idea of calling the book Talk – Action = 0 but I ran it by Joe Shithead and he told me that he would very unhappy if I did. God forbid I should make Joe unhappy, ha ha.


News flash - you can actually hear a streaming MP3 of Chris' old band, the Vacant Lot, singing their song "Ritz Chic," here! The story was that the song appeared on a compilation of Winnipeg underground music, but no one I talked to - here or in Winnipeg - knew anything about it - including Chris! If you do, tell us!

Art Bergmann Week Continues: Witness Testimony

Art Bergmann by Bev Davies, March 27th, 2009, Richards on Richards. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

First Witness: Bev Davies
Since the 1970's, Bev Davies has been documenting the Vancouver punk scene so well, and taken so many famous photographs, that I don’t really see much point in introducing her; if you don’t already know who she is, you probably don’t much care about punk rock in Vancouver - or else you need to do some serious homework! Her Flickr site is here; her website is here; and my big interview with her about her last calendar is here. Apparently Bev has been doing some blogging of her own lately, too! She graciously contributed the above photograph and chatted with me over the weekend about the Art Bergmann show at Richards on Richards last Thursday. Note: the photo of Bev is by her late friend Keith Kristmanson.

Allan: So I don’t really know where to start, but...

Bev: ...I’ve thought about it. You’re going to run the picture of Art Bergmann, right?

Allan: Yes.

Bev: So that’s what I thought I would talk about, is that choice of that photograph. The reason that I sent you that photograph - because I have other photographs; one has to go to The Skinny and I posted a couple on my Flickr site - but that one, I felt really strongly about it, because when I photograph people, I stand and I see and I perceive a certain way that people look... And sometimes I’m very surprised by how much better they look in pictures; that does surprise me, sometimes with people. But quite often it’s a matter of taking pictures and - now I can look at them of course, with them being digital - until I find a bunch that start to look the way I see the concert happening. There may be lights that I’m missing or things like that, and I look at the picture and go, “Wow, look how that comes out.” But mostly I’m trying to match the image of the person with the way that I saw the concert and I felt about the concert. So this picture of Art, to me, though it wouldn’t have been something I’d’ve sent to The Skinny, for mass consumption of people who hadn’t been at the show, it still for me really really represents what it felt like to be there; I would call it, “We’ve All Been Bitten By Art Bergmann.”

Allan: (laughs). The feeling or the photo or -

Bev: The feeling, the photo - you know, there was such intensity there. It wasn’t a “clean, nice” show. Everything wasn’t all tied in a little knot. There was an encore... but that picture comes the closest to how it actually felt to be there.

Allan: There’s a bit of pain in Art’s face in that photo, as well.

Bev: Yeah. What you’re not seeing is another photo, that a friend took of Art and I afterwards. It’s a humbling photograph, for me, and I can’t pass it on to you because it’s not my photograph, I didn’t take it of course - but I’m sitting beside Art out where he’s signing records and things like that, and in the photograph there’s Art, and you wonder - who’s that little old lady sitting beside him? So the reality of how young Art looks in the photograph, when juxtaposed with me, was a bit of an eye opening shock. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a photograph of Art and I together. In fact, that’s probably true of most people in the music scene, who I’ve known for so many years. I think it’s a little bit late to go around and get them taken, unless I have my hair done...

Allan: Did you get a chance to interact with Art much?

Bev: No, but Dougie was standing with him while he was signing autographs and then, Dougie said, “Say hi to Art!” and I said, “Hi, Art,” and he just turned and said, “Bev!” and then he grabbed a hold of my hand and shook my hand. Not shaking my hand, but - he held on to my hand for awhile. And then my friend came up and said, “Oh, can I take a picture of the two of you?" And so he took two of Art and the little old lady. Who happens to be me.

Allan: I would love to see this photo... Does your friend have a Flickr site or a page he’s going to put it on?

Bev (laughs): I hope not!

Allan: You were sort of little-old-lady-ish on the bus on Nardwuar’s album cover.

Bev: That was The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.

Allan: (laughs).

Bev: That’s what I always call that woman sitting there. She got stuck on the Vancouver bus by mistake.

Allan: Anything that you want to say to Art, or...

Bev: Just thank him for the concert and the obvious time and energy that went into it. We really appreciate it. I mean, I really appreciate it; I’m sure lots of other people did. I came home and watched fucking “Hawaii” on the video, because I just really wanted to hear one of those songs.

Allan: Were you disappointed or surprised that Art didn’t play any of his Young Canadians songs?

Bev: No, I didn't expect him to; I'd been forewarned that he wasn't going to do that. It's kind of maybe better that they didn't play "Hawaii."

Allan: Yeah.

Bev: What was amazing - like, I was right at the front for quite a while, and then I left and walked around the house and got a better mix of the sound, than right at the front - but the young people behind me, who I didn't know, were singing along to every word of every song.

Allan: Right on.

Bev: I thought, that's cool; that's so cool. And it was nice to see Rampage there, and to see the people that were there. I think it's better to count who was there than who wasn't there. I heard a lot of, "Why wasn't John Armstrong there? He's only in Chilliwack!"

Allan: (laughs)

Bev: But it was nice to see the people that were there.

Allan: Now, is there anything of yours I should plug? Calendars, books, shows...

Bev: No, just remind people of shows coming up - like the Acid Mothers Temple (at the Biltmore on the 7th)!

Allan: Okay, thank you very much, Bev...

Bev: Oh, no, wait - I do have to plug something! Anton and the Brian Jonestown Massacre have a new record coming out, and for anyone who may have thought that they were going to grab for the gold ring and really head into the mainstream, it's totally disspelled by the name of the album, which is called Smoking Acid.

Allan, Bev: (laugh).

Bev: I laughed and laughed when I heard that, 'cos I thought - "Thank God he's not trying to go mainstream."

Allan: Can you actually smoke acid?

Bev: I don't know - you'd have to ask Anton!

(Two more of Bev's pics of Art last week can be seen here and here...)

Second Witness: Al Mader (photo by Femke van Delft)

Al Mader performs, as The Minimalist Jug Band, at Cafe Montmartre with Petunia on the second and fourth Sunday of each month. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that means April 11 and 25th, next month; a photodocument of a past show, with my comments, can be seen/read here, and another interview I did with him is here. Al will also perform at a birthday party for Rowan of the Creaking Planks on April 4th - more info on that here. Al used to sometimes share stages with Art when Art was based in Vancouver, hosting an open mike at the Gate that had been put together by Al's friend Chris Houston. Art would play a few songs on an acoustic guitar, then various open mike performers would get on stage and do their thing, including Al with his washtub. "It wasn't advertised or anything, but there was a higher 'hip quotient' in the crowd because Art and Chris were there..."

Al and I chatted a bit before the concert about how back then, it seemed like there were - quoth Al - "a certain number of people who wanted to see Art go over the edge, like with Shane McGowan and Billy Cowsill." Hard drinkers and drug users at shows would see Art as "one of us" and buy him drinks or dope; and indeed, during the show last Thursday, various people passed Art shooters from the audience. (Al was under the impression, as was I, that Art was a bit drunk by the time the night was over; probably a lot of what he and I were seeing as intoxication was simply Art's illness and the effects of pain meds that he's on, for his arthritis.) I called Al at work - he does the odd nightshift at a used book and record store I sometimes work at (and will be selling records at the upcoming record collector's meet on April 5th, I think...). We talked about the show in-between customers.

Allan: So I'm just curious what the Minimalist Jug Band made of the Art Bergmann concert.

Al: I don't know that I have anything too articulate to say. He certainly is mesmerizing. I found it eminently watchable. Y'know - there are songs I would have liked to have heard...

Allan: Young Canadians material, or...?

Al: I thought he would end with the song about getting together and having a relapse. "The Relapse Song," I guess...?

Allan: Oh, "The Hospital Song." Yeah, I was surprised that he left that out. That's nice - other people have said that they wish he'd played "Hawaii" or something, but I'm with you - I wish he'd played "The Hospital Song."

Al: Yeah, and it seemed so suitable at the end - we were all there having a relapse with him... It was sure nice to see the response he got just for comin' out. I felt like, to some extent, you're allowed to give a belated thanks to someone who has contributed, so that whether it sounds good or not, you're already glad to be there. And I don't think you could go away not being affected. You might have different takes on it, wishing he'd done this or that, but you still feel like you're watching somebody vulnerable up there.

Allan: Yeah - it took guts for him to do that, given how sick he's been. It was really powerful. Though it was interesting to see, when there were fuck ups, how he would scream, "No!" Ray compared him to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who used to sort of torture his actors on set to get more powerful performances from them.

Al: Ah! Yeah. Well, he did seem to go back and forth from being angry to being kinda conciliatory. And I guess some of it is just the creative tension... The interplay was interesting, but they all seemed to be genuinely in the moment and enjoying something about it.

Allan: Yeah, even Tony...

Al: I guess there was a certain affection for Art that came across, even with him not wanting to be yelled at in front of a sold out crowd (chuckles).

Allan: Any favourite Art Bergmann songs?

Al: Oh, there's just so many. I like the relapse song ("The Hospital Song," off Sexual Roulette). And "My Empty House." There's too many to think of. Art really is one of the better songwriters around - it's odd that you don't hear people covering his songs...

Third witness: Tony Bardach (plus a comment from Nick Jones).

Tony Bardach (not the same Tony as Tony Balony, note) plays bass with the Pointed Sticks and plays guitar and croons a bit with Slowpoke and the Smoke. He also does some really interesting fine arts work that doesn't so much as break boundaries as eliminate barriers, or, um... at least radically recontextualize them. I've done two interviews with him, here and here. The Pointed Sticks have new demos on their Myspace page, giving us a sneak preview of their new album, due this summer; and Slowpoke and the Smoke have a few gigs this week - at the Skinny party at Lugz (12th and Main) on April 1st, 9PM; and on April 3rd at Falconettis (9:30 PM; 1812 Commercial Drive).

Tony wrote me, when I asked his reactions to the show: "Wow, Al! We got to see something we hadn't seen from Art before - he was always expressive with his body and stances but now he is able to use his hands as well; this has greatly enhanced the theatricality of his performance and allows the audience to focus solely on his words, whereas in the past we also had his awesome guitar work to consider. I was very proud of him for pulling it off so well and glad to see such a big homey crowd there for him."

Nick Jones, the singer for the Pointed Sticks, couldn't be at the show - he was working out of town - but he had made an important contribution to my rediscovery of Art Bergmann. I'd kind of rejected both Crawl With Me and the much better Sexual Roulette, back in the day, because I couldn't get past the big radio-friendly, thumping commercial sound of them. I'd commented on this awhile ago to Nick, and he replied that it was true that those albums "suffer from 80's production... but both Crawl With Me and Sexual Roulette are loaded with great, great songs. And, trust me, it wasn't Art trying to make it safe for CFOX. Just listen to the lyrics - very dark. Also, on a good night at a packed Town Pump, he was amazing live." Nick, along with my buddy Theodore Stinks of the Art Bergmann fan site, has played an important role in helpin' me re-discover these albums - I can get through the production to the raw bleeding meat at the core of those discs, and it's amazing. Of course, Lost Art Bergmann - the new release from Bearwood Music, reviewed here - is more cohesive and passionate than either of them, but all three document the selfsame lineup we saw at Richards and the two Duke Street discs are well worthy of rediscovery/reissue. And Nick's right; the songs and the lyrics are fucking great.

Art Bergmann and Poisoned; photo provided by Ray Fulber. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

Fourth Witness: Danny Nowak

Zombie, Danny, Randy

A photo by Femke van Delft

(Art Bergmann was watching us as Femke took this pic at the Summer of Love Pointed Sticks show a few months ago)

Danny Nowak is someone Vancouverites should know better than they do - not just because he shows up at a fair number of gigs and horror movies about town, but because he fronted a great 1980's Vancouver punk band, The Spores - who have a new compilation CD of their best songs out on Sudden Death - and because he was the cinematographer on Hard Core Logo (which Art briefly appeared in, recall). He is also working with Susanne Tabata on her upcoming documentary on the Vancouver punk scene (more on which below). I have a feature on Danny in the upcoming spring 2009 issue of Skyscraper. Danny was among those kind of disappointed by the lack of K-Tels/ Young Canadians material in the night's set ("even if he'd done one song..."); so I decided to ask him one of the more troubling questions of the night...

Allan: What was your take on how abusive Art was to poor Tony Balony?

Danny: Was it abusive? Like, did you actually hear him? Because I saw him go over to Tony and it looked like he was saying nasty things, but Tony was laughing and throwing it back at him. I didn't actually hear what he said.

Allan: Well, at one point, he called him the "fuckin' ringer..."

Danny: Yeah, right. I did hear that.

Allan: But I don't know - I don't know their relationship.

Danny: Well, I thought Tony was magnificent that night. He's like, one of my alltime favourite guitarists anywhere in the world. He's not only great playing, he's also fantastic just to watch, y'know? I've often thought if I ever get another band together, he'd be the first guitarist I'd ask to play.

(Actually, I put that up there just for Tony. I enjoyed what he did, too!).

Fifth witness: Susanne Tabata

Art Bergmann and Susanne Tabata by Randy Rampage, March 27th, 2009, Richards on Richards. Note: photographs on this site are the property of the photographers and are not to be used without their permission.

Susanne Tabata has been working for a long time on a documentary on Vancouver punk. At the moment, it stands at the hub of a controversy as to the title: there has been a suggestion to call it Bloodied But Unbowed, borrowing from a classic DOA compilation. It's a great title that can be applied to most Vancouver punk bands, all of whom have gone through hard times, but in many cases are either still going strong, back with a vengeance, or at least refusing to go out with a whimper. The last few years have seen resurgences of the Subhumans, the Pointed Sticks, the Dishrags, the Modernettes (sort of), and now Art Bergmann. But not everyone likes the idea of naming the movie after one album from one band. Due to his longevity and his assertive nature, Joe has already had a huge portion of the attention apportioned to the Vancouver punk scene; people watching films like American Hardcore would be under the impression that DOA were the only punk band in Vancouver (since Joe is the only Vancouver punk represented). Calling the doc Bloodied But Unbowed could play into that tendency, and do an injustice to other bands here. What do people think? Leave a comment - if you like the title, say so, and if you don't like the title, can you suggest an even catchier, more creative alternative?

Anyhow, Susanne has been talking with lots of people for the film, and visited Art on his farm in Calgary. She had many interesting observations about his music (saying at one point that "Art reassures people that it is good to stand your ground. He appeals to people who want to be defiant," which I think is very true). But for the purposes of this piece, she preferred to submit a few sentences in writing. Quoth Susanne:

"Art is incomparable so everything he does is judged 'too good' or 'not good enough'. I think the audience was awestruck and expectations were high. Art delivered for Poisoned. And Tony (ouch! what a tough spot) delivered for Art. I would have liked to have heard a couple of the older songs which made him a legend. But for him to be 'in the house' and play to the tribe, the Laundromat (location of Hardcore 81) is a moment ne'er to forget."

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MORE TO COME AS ART BERGMANN WEEK CONTINUES... Next up Ray Fulber, talking about the demos, the rehearsals, and the show... Sometime in the next couple of days!

If you can't wait, join the Art Bergmann Facebook group!

Of Ron Mann, Films We Like, and the need to Know Your Mushrooms

Ron Mann's contributions to Canadian film culture deserve ample praise. For starters, he co- founded Films We Like, one of the most consistently interesting distributors of independent and arthouse cinema in Canada, back in 2003 along with promoter Gary Topp (whom I'll forever think of as "the man who brought Jandek to Canada" - I met Gary when I caught Jandek's Toronto gig, and liked him a lot, but I've never met Ron). Some of my favourite film experiences of the 21st century have been made possible through Films We Like's distro, and I've often thought, "Hey, these Films We Like people have GOOD TASTE!" Some of their titles (full list here) include Be Here to Love Me, the doc about Townes van Zandt; Aaron Katz' Dance Party USA and Quiet City, my two favourite (so-called) Mumblecore films - no offense to Andrew Bujalski, of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, or to Ronald's Bronstein, director of the rather gruelling but worthwhile Frownland, all three of which were mumblecore movies that they also distro'd. There's also that funky little doc on gig posters, Died Young Stayed Pretty; the amazing and beautiful Rivers and Tides, about Andy Goldsworthy, as well as director Riedelsheimer's subsequent film, Touch the Sound, which I have not seen; and the recent Examined Life and Jerichow, both of which I wrote about below. Oh, and don't forget Jandek on Corwood. That's a great fucking track record, and it's only a quarter of the films on the list. Films We Like is a Canadian company that deserves a loud round of applause for the films they get behind - a savvy, smart, creative distributor whose judgment is damn near trustworthy 100% of the time; even their lesser titles (like the rather embarrassing Incident At Loch Ness) have charm. Yay, Films We Like.

Some of you with a good sense of how reviews are structured are probably expecting a now amply qualified "but," and you're right to, because I'm about to go public about something that I have heretofore kept secret. Like my feeling, say, that Dylan van der Schyff hits too goddamn hard half the time, or that (sorry, Joe!) DOA hasn't put out a great (or even really good) record since War On 45, it's something I've kept to myself, because it seems unkind to say such a thing about people who (in some ways) contribute so much - but also because uttering it in public could hurt people's feelings and/or (what I'm really concerned about) get me in trouble. The thing is: I am not totally wild about Ron Mann's documentaries - the films he himself has made (IMDB here; there are quite a few).

Mind you, at least one of his movies kicks fucking ass, no doubt about it. The first film I ever saw of Ron Mann's was Poetry in Motion (1981), and it's incredible, well worth seeking out; links below are to inferior Youtube clips that I've sought out in the hopes you'll be inspired to buy the DVD or such. Mann caught on film performances and comments on poetics by some of the most significant American and Canadian poets of the day, including John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders, the Four Horsemen, Dianne diPrima, Robert Creeley, Christopher Dewdney, Charles Bukowski, Amiri Baraka, Michael Ondaatje, and even a few artists, like John Cage and Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs, who are not poets per se, but well worthy of inclusion. Helen Adam's cheery singsong about junkiedom amongst the rats and roaches will remain in your mind for a very long time, as will Allen Ginsberg's punk rock song (I forget the title - "Capitol Air?" - but he also was recorded singing it with the Clash; but the movie version is far better, and not on Youtube). The performances are brilliantly shot, presented without undue interference, and are often as interesting as the poems themselves; the commentary on poetics is revealing and often fun (and marked the first video footage I'd ever seen of Charles Bukowski, way back in the days before Barfly); and the poems chosen are often astoninishingly good - if you like beat poetry, that is, since it is pretty beat-centric. If this all sounds exciting to you, seek out the film, since it's exactly as good as I'm making it out to be: the best film about poetry that I've seen. If you know one better, tell me about it.

If you're a jazz fan, I'd also recommend checking out Imagine The Sound, Mann's 1981 documentary (and I believe his first feature) which features some memorable moments from a rather loopy Cecil Taylor, a subdued post-free-jazz Archie Shepp, and stuff on Paul Bley and Bill Dixon that has not lasted in my memory. I liked the film, but didn't love it; I wrote at some length about it here. I've missed many of Ron Mann's other films, like his generally well-liked Comic Book Confidential and Tales of the Rat Fink, since I'm not particularly a comic book guy, but it strikes me that they might be the sort of projects - based on his film about poetry and his obvious love of using animation and cartoony stuff in his films - that he could successfully pull off.

So far so good, but Mann has also made two films I did not hold high in my estimation. Go Further! is just plain fucking annoying - a whole bunch of beautiful and righteous upper middle class "beautiful people" and liberal celebrities rally around Woody Harrelson to celebrate their beautiful and righteous (and ever-so-enlightened) lifestyles, drop Ken Kesey's name, travel about in an eco-friendly bus, and ride bicycles: big woo. It might be a wet dream for a Birkenstock shareholder, but it made my ass itch at the theatre - I very nearly walked out so I could give it a proper scratching, which I would have likely found more satisfying than the film. There is no critical distance taken from its subject, or indeed anything that Mann brings to the plate that wasn't served to him hot and steamin' by his subjects; it appears rather, um, lazy - as if the methodology was just to take a camera to a place where a group of supposedly interesting people were gathering, capture what could be captured easily, without being too intrusive, and then edit it together and augment it to make it entertaining. It's a risky approach, since the interest value of a film made this way ends up tied to the interest value of the people in it; and while perhaps it's useful to have "ethical pop culture" figures for kids to emulate - maybe there are a whole bunch of people living more liberal enlightened lives because of their great Love of Woody - I have never given a shit about any celebrity endorsement of a cause, which strikes me as often involving a sort of moralistic egomania. I care about Woody Harrelson's politics like I care about Britney Spears' breasts or Kirstie Allie's diet, which is to say, not at all. Maybe if said celebrities actually put their celebrity asses on the line and took risks - as in FTA, with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and others getting rather confrontational about their politics while entertaining troops in Vietnam and elsewhere - it could mean something, but it would be a far less easily consumed thing. What we have in Go Further! is a revolution that the powers that be don't particularly need to feel threatened by, where the only "risk" anyone takes lies in the damage done to the egos of the people who partake in it - because that much vanity and self-righteousness can't be good for anyone. Woody is a damnsite less distasteful than Bono, to be sure - but I wouldn't want to see a film about Bono, either. About the only thing that could have redeemed this film would be for the Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles" (with its lyrics about how "zen fascists will control you/ 100% natural") to play as the credits rolled...

Grass - which Harrelson narrates - didn't piss me off like Go Further! did, but it is simply not a great documentary, or at least didn't seem like one when I saw it in 1999. (I read now that it won a Genie that year, but I don't place much stock in Genies, or Oscars or Grammys or the frigging Junos either). As I recall it, Grass was filled with cute video tricks - archival footage, animations, fun sound effects, humorous intertitles and so forth - that seemed to suggest its target audience was a stoned teenager with a short attention span. That's not totally a bad thing - there probably were a lot of stoned teenagers in the audience, and Mann's visual collage is deft and entertaining; one suspects Michael Moore probably learned/stole a lot more from Ron Mann than he did from Emile de Antonio. Still, you get the feeling that Grass is trying so hard to entertain and to reach a wide audience base that it somewhat loses track of what I take to be the primary objective of documentary filmmaking, to to inform its viewers about its subject matter. It was altogether too safe, light, and slight an approach to an important subject, and left me with a persistent sense of its insufficiency, after the credits rolled: what, that's it? I had expected so much more.

It is possible that I am perhaps a bit harder to please than the average filmgoer, mind you. I have no doubt that those of you who saw and enjoyed Grass might well enjoy Know Your Mushrooms, too; it opens in a couple of days at the Vancity Theatre, and I'd hope not to dissuade people from seeing it if it sounds like their thing. Trouble is, the things I didn't like about Go Further! and Grass are both very much present here: for the film, as with Go Further!, Mann once again makes a pilgrimage to a place where interesting people gather - in this case a mushroom pickers' festival in Telluride; he films what he easily can; and then, as with Grass, he augments the film with trippy visual effects, found footage, cute animations, and so forth, designed more to please a fairly general audience than to really educate. (There are these little cartoon shroom inserts in the form of multiple choice questions that at first seem like a fun way to present nifty fungus factoids - until you start to realize, after about the second one, that they will constitute the bulk of specialized information you're going to receive).

These are not the only similarities to Grass, because Mann obviously bears in mind throughout that at least some people in the audience will be there specifically to hear about psilocybin, and perhaps even under its influence - hence some of the visual tomfoolery one encounters, the use of Flaming Lips' songs, the abundant use of the word "magic," and snippets of archival footage of John Allegro and Terence McKenna that shows both men talking about their stranger theories (that mushrooms were actually Christ, or that they came from space to educate us). The people who chuckle at this sort of thing might actually be a bit let down to discover that there's little about either of these men's work, beyond these soundbites, in the film, though - and just as little about how to identify magic mushrooms, where or when to find them, information about different species, their actual effects on human neurochemistry, how to grow them, the legal issues around them, etc. I suspect, too, that if Mann were aware how bad a time people who eat amanitas could potentially have (because I've heard they're often not a pretty trip), he would have inserted a few warnings or such into the film, which, as it is, might inspire casual viewers to just gobble them up. You can find more useful information about magic mushrooms by spending fifteen minutes visiting the Shroomery than by watching the whole of Know Your Mushrooms.

There's the same poverty of information about other mushrooms, too - lots of mention of morels and chantrelles and such, and some cool footage of people picking them, but not much depth coverage; for instance, I'd have liked a bit of biochemical information as to how toxins in mushrooms work, or perhaps a discussion of why some mushrooms are edible and others not; do the edible mushrooms profit somehow in being eaten? Why have other species evolved to be so toxic, then? ...There are barbs, too, against commercial mushroom growers - as spreaders of disinformation and paranoia about the dangers of wild mushrooms - but I've been on a mushroom farm and found the way the mushrooms were grown - sprouting from hanging bags of decomposing paper - absolutely fascinating. Why not visit one? It's not like the film - barely 75 minutes long - is too long and ungainly to include a few extra scenes. Like Grass, Know Your Mushrooms takes a subject I'm genuinely interested in and produces a cute, light entertainment around it, with the great irony at the end of the film being that there is almost nothing I didn't already know about mushrooms contained in it.* Maybe I'm expecting too much, but if you're going to call a film Know Your Mushrooms and hope adults will go see it, isn't this a bit of a problem?

What Know Your Mushrooms has going for it, however, is that the mushroom pickers - and particularly Larry Evans, the main guy profiled (and the guy in the poster, above) - seem like really delightful human beings. Evans comes across as a curious, funny, smart hippie-type who apparently dresses for picking mushrooms 24/7. Gary Lincoff, another of the pickers profiled, tells some pretty fun stories, including one about a mushroom trip with a very strange character. Picking mushrooms seems to be as big a passion for both these men as collecting rare 78 RPM records is to Joe Bussard (subject of a great recent doc that Films We Like hasn't distro'd, Desperate Man Blues). They probably have dreams where they're in the forest harvesting them. I would have liked to know more about Lincoff and Evans - what they do for a living, how much of their day is spent on matters fungal, what their families think of their hobbies, and so forth. Larry Evans has even co-recorded a CD of educational songs about mushrooms - which the film either doesn't mention or does so so briefly that I missed it. Here too, then, the film falls short of gratifying the curiosities it invokes; but given a choice between watching Larry Evans cooking mushrooms (or relaying anecdotes about his Bolivian mushroom-photographing adventures), or watching Woody Harrelson ride a bike and declaim on the evils of rBGH and Monsanto, I'll take Larry every day. He'll be in attendance at the Vancity Theatre, I'm told. If someone goes, maybe you could ask for me if he ever has dreams about fungus? I'd like to know.

Ron Mann has done some great things for cinema in Canada in recent years, and he's definitely a skilled proponent of a certain kind of documentary filmmaking. He may someday make a film I will enjoy and respect as much as I did Poetry In Motion. Know Your Mushrooms isn't that film. It's not an offense to the eye, and might well entertain at least some of you, as a funny, sweet, engaging, and very easy-to-watch film. For me - having hoped to actually learn about the films proposed subject - it was kind of disappointing.

There, I said it.

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*Actually, I'm exaggerating slightly. There were a couple of things I didn't know about mushrooms contained in the film, it's true. I did not know that there was a mushroom pickers' conference in Telluride, only that there was a film festival there; and I didn't know that there was such a thing as an insectivorous fungus. The latter was amazing to hear about, but was granted about 3 minutes of screentime, which really didn't do it justice, given how curious it got me.

Punk, avant garde, and otherwise adventuresome or entertaining gigs this week

A few notes on gigs that you might want to consider.

For those who just want to have a fun night out, Slowpoke and the Smoke play the Skinny's one year birthday bash at Lugz (2525 Main) on Wednesday! We like Tony Bardach. We were somewhat surprised to see just how many people made it out to that last Falconetti's gig - the place was packed - so it looks like there are other folks in town who like him, too. The Pointed Sticks, by the way, have put up new demos for their upcoming album, on their Myspace page...

For those interested in musical experiences that are more mind-altering than mood-lifting (musical experiences of the sort that require attentive listening), a group consisting of improvising percussionist Jeffrey Allport, Solder and Sons' Robert Pedersen, and the the Mutators' Lief Hall play at Blim on Thursday alongside Seattle's Gust Burns, and Zurich's Jason Kahn) - a gig which cancels out, for me, Ken Vandermark and Ab Baars at the Ironworks that same night, though if it ends early-ish, maybe I'll try to catch their second set. Ken and Ab both tend towards the more loud, aggro end of the free jazz spectrum - an end of the jazz pool which (with Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brotzmann and Albert Ayler as notable exceptions) that I spend little time swimming in these days (tho' I like Darren Williams and co., locally, I should note). Still, I have a powerful hankering for catharsis lately, and watching these guys blow their lungs out would probably help, if they were still onstage by the time I got there... Hmm.

Alternately, on the 2nd, you could go see the Ahna tour benefit show at Honey, with Robe & Allied, The Nihilist Party, SOLARS and DJ Vera... I will leave y'all to probe Myspace for some o' those links (can't find Robe and Allied), but here's the poster!

Of course, we will be goin' to see Nomeansno on Friday. That's gotta be well-past sold out by now. (My attempts to resist passing on Nomeansno's cherished disinformation about themselves have proven futile, since I am now being included in that disinformation - see their March 27th update.)

Of course, if you're more interested in avant-garde music, there's Xenakis' Kraanerg, which sounds remarkable indeed, at Christ Church Cathedral, that same night. It should be astonishing. Given that I've seen Nomeansno around ten times, I'm almost tempted... but no. I will not be welcome to mosh at Kraanerg, however lamely and briefly it may be, and I need to mosh at least a little.

For those of you who won't be doing either Nomeansno or Xenakis, there is no need to despair, since there will be a Fake Jazz Friday at the Front that very night which will be cheaper than either and likely very exciting. Actually, odds are you could start out there and make it to the Anza before Nomeansno even went onstage. They're almost walking distance from each other, on opposite sides of Main Street... Gotta think about that. The lineup includes a set by LSDJ, aka Mark Gabriel; I have a CD by him that is remarkable and likable and intensely listenable. His MO is to take a whole bunch of really cool records and create trippy, complex, intensely listenable sound collages from them. Names I recognize on the credits to the album I have include Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley, Jim O'Rourke, the Sun City Girls, Meredith Monk, Jean Michel Jarre (!), Graeme Kirkland, Andrea Goodman, and Robert Een. There are many others I do not know. Also on the bill that night: Blouse, Allport/Wilcox/Burns, Broken Sleep, and (once again) Jason Kahn...

Jeremy van Wyck, of course, is (with Bill Batt) the co-curator of all things Fake Jazz. Jeremy's more raucous rock band, Shearing Pinx, plays Saturday at the Biltmore with AIDS Wolf and Twin Crystals. I assume that my readers all have seen Shearing Pinx more than once - jagged straddling of No Wave and improv/noise that sorta reminds me of amped-up Confusion is Sex/ Kill Yr. Idols era Sonic Youth (as one easy reference point, if'n you don't know them). They're one of the best rocks bands in Vancouver right now, a must-see if you're (say) a punk yearnin' for somethin' a bit more creative, without wanting to lose any of punk's energy...

Then there's the Acid Mothers Temple, April 7.



A great show for those interested in out-there Japanese stuff or just fond of heavy psychedelic rock. My big interview with Kawabata is here, if you've missed it previously (and once again we thank Alan Cummings for his help with this piece). I like these guys, but as I've said elsewhere, I prefer their records (which tend more to musical experimentation) to their shows (which tend to see them rocking out). But were it not for other obligations, I would go see'em again. They usually have really cool rare stuff on their merch table, too, and y'all know how expensive Japanese imports can get...

Anyhow, those are a few gigs this week that seemed noteworthy... There's lots else, though. Check out Live Music Vancouver for even more options. It's amazing, given how determined the city seems to shut down venues, just how vital the Vancouver scene is...

Art Bergmann week at Alienated in Vancouver: trolling Youtube

I'll try to post something every day on Art for the next little while. Today just a brief note that someone has put a few clips on Youtube with damn good sound quality, relatively speaking (but awful video) - of "Dirge No. 1," which opened the show last Thursday; "My Empty House," which was more than halfway through, as I recall; and "Our Little Secret," which came damn near the end. Singing along to the "la la las" - which half the club was doing - was chilling, but this was one of the songs that the band didn't quite make it through unscathed...

Speaking of "Dirge No. 1," though, here's an alternate video of it that doesn't sound as good but shows us what Art was up to behind his lectern at the start, and has some great closeups of him and the band. You'll be able to spot the moment, I think, when Bev Davies took the photo you'll soon be seein'... in the next few days, I swear. For those who like "Dirge No. 1," here's another version, also with pretty good sound. Oh: did I already post a link to this "Junkie Don't Care?" (It's hard to believe Art is sick when you see the energy he puts out during this song - it's amazing. Is this the same clip as the one on the excellent Art Bergmann fansite? It seems somehow better there, if so).

Then there's a "Gambol," but the sound is horrifying.

While we're on Youtube, people looking for more Poisoned stuff should also check out Art's video for "Yeah I Guess," which we'll have Ray Fulber talkin' about soon (it's an earlier version of Poisoned, note). I'll leave you to search out your own Young Canadians/K-Tels stuff.

Would someone please post a live clip of "Bound For Vegas?"

Re: Art Bergmann, etc

More Art by Femke van Delft

(with the Pointed Sticks at Summer of Love '08)

...See a couple o' posts below for my "review" of the Art Bergmann show. I should add that some of what I took for inebriation on Art's part appears to have been simply that he's very sick. Like the Lost Art Bergmann CD, the show, I think, will continue to grow in my estimation - too bad that, unlike the CD, I can't relive it again and again (tho' I gather there's more footage surfacing on Youtube). I've just talked with Ray Fulber at some length - the man behind the CD release and the bass player at the concert - and will have an interview with him up sometime in the next week, as well as comments from people who were at the show.

However, this is going to take some time for me to get to. I've got lots else going on in my life right now, so it may take a week or so. Art Bergmann fans should WATCH THIS SPACE or sumfin'.

Looks like I won't be at Mecca Normal tonight. (How like me: plug a show and then not go). Hope y'all have fun.