"You open up the doors": Bill Orcutt at the Pearl, with JP Carter and the Battery (and some photos of Emad Armoush a few weeks ago)

Bill Orcutt in blue light, by Allan MacInnis

I realize it's conventional to begin reviews by talking about the headliner. Here's a token line or two, for the impatient: Bill Orcutt is a singularity, a precious, unique, impossible-to-replicate phenomenon in the world of guitar. People might elect to play like Hendrix, to play like Zappa, to play like any of a number of bluesmen of yore. You could at least TRY, you know? You could probably even attempt to play like John Fahey, who seems vastly more relevant: the territory that Fahey staked out was pretty unique to him, and I haven't noticed many incursions into it, but I think one COULD play like Fahey, if one so chose. 

I don't think anyone but Bill Orcutt could play like Bill Orcutt, no matter how much they wanted to. He seems to put his whole being into his playing; there's so much of him in it that unless you are him, you won't be able to do it.  

So those of us in the audience last night were truly privileged. Not that there weren't, also, some issues -- technical ones, and an eccentric, provocative decision to work with them, rather than resolve them, though I guess working with an issue can also be a form of resolution... we'll get there. I want to write about the opening act first. Home team, then the visitors, you know? They were terrific, too. 

As JP Carter and the Battery played, a ghostly live animation doppleganger appeared on the curtain behind them, like a cartoon made out of smoke, shimmering and shifting with their movements. It was a very cool effect, one I had not seen before. I wonder if it is a feature of the lighting at the Pearl, or if the effect, and the tech to make it, travels with the band? 

The two drummers -- including John Brennan of Earthball, or Earth Ball (Jeremy told me how he likes it and I think it's the former but I keep seeing the latter so I dunno) -- laid down this veritable swamp of percussion: I thought first of the racket of frogsong (which would make JP, like, a dragonfly or something, hovering over the pond?) then revised my model to see the two drummers, the other being César Chew, as repping the various pulses and rhythms of the body, every thumping organ, creaking bone, clacking tooth, twitching nerve, as if somehow it was all amplified into pounding audibility, into a thick layer of noise, over, under, and through which the dreaming mind sailed. 

Bodies are actually really noisy things; you just can't usually hear them, if that makes sense. And if the body is an instrument, surely it's a percussive one?

JP was, of course, that dreaming mind, the ghost in the machine, with the coffee-can-muted trumpet, electronics, and (seemingly) effortless circular breathing (when I see people do this, I always expect a point where they stop and gasp for air, or maybe collapse, but it never comes). He was definitely more like a dreaming mind than a dragonfly -- there were no jagged zigzags, for example. I had forgotten to bring the copy of The Wire that I had promised him -- the one time I have been published by that magazine, in a Global Ear, which was for awhile online, but now appears not to be again (the link is just to a sampling of bands that got mentioned, including one of his). I have an extra copy around somewhere -- it transpired when I chatted with him at Emad's avant-garde flamenco show a few weeks ago that he'd never seen it. It was 2008, and we'd talked about 1067 and the Olympics; he was one of several Vancouver artists I interviewed, to create a portrait of a scene nervously eyeing the tide of development and renoviction that was visibly headed our way.

I think I saw Kenton in the audience last night, but I could have been wrong (the guy I thought was Alex Varty turned out, on closer examination, not to be). Darwin was there, though, and Josh (Magneticring Josh, not the other Joshes, who seem to have left town), and Barbara -- a few people I know. Lots of people I don't know, too, and in seats, no less. Tim had laid out seats! That was nice. Who wants to STAND for a jazz gig? I know someone who elected not to come because of the presumed lack of seats at the Pearl. I actually called him before things started to let him know ("Hey, there are seats!") but he'd resigned himself to giving up his ticket and had commenced on the cocktails, so he wasn't going out. Said ticket ended up going to Dave Bowes, who I will heretofore mention as "Dave."

Note to promoters: if you are putting seats in a usually non-seated venue, for a show where this is plainly a good idea, you should mention that far and wide in the promotional materials for the show, because NOT EVERYONE THINKS TO DO THAT. I had to stand for Magma, at the Pearl, back when it was the Venue. It made no fuckin' sense. Last night's seats made sense! 

Anyhow, this all reminds me that I never put photos of Emad's gig at Zameen into the world. Here are a couple! Chatted with Kenton about seeing him with Eugene Chadbourne, at that show; I believe I saw all three times he played with him. Kenton seemed in a very good mood that night! 

But to return to the Orcutt gig: through JP Carter and the Battery's set, until Bill Orcutt took the stage, Bill and Tim Reinert were up at the front of the house, hanging out at the merch table, where Bill was signing whatever people asked. A few people were borrowing a Sharpie I'd brought, so I just donated it to the cause. He seemed very chill, affable even, and in no rush to play, enjoying hanging out in Vancouver for the first time in 30 years (as Tim had told me in the Straight thing I did). I wonder what he and Tim talked about?

Bill seemed a softer, gentler, nicer man than I'd imagined from his music or photographs, where he seemed a lot more daunting and intense. He was very pleasant in my interactions with him, but I didn't want to stick a mic in his face, you know? I do want to talk to him about September, when he returns to Vancouver, but it seems unreasonable to corral people at the merch table. Performance-mind is not interview-mind. But I got a few records with his input. I told him I found Harry Pussy terrifying and he recommended I get the one with Chris Corsano, chuckling that people had described it as "unexpectedly musical." They also had the one I have most fallen in love with, How to Rescue Things. And Bill recommended Odds Against Tomorrow (named for a striking noir starring Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan, involving a black jazzman, if I recall correctly, who ends up part of a heist with a racist partner). 

I was happy to see Nathan Holiday buying a record. Hey, Tim, Nathan is this guy. 

Later, Tim would tell us that Bill had brought enough records for three dates  -- there were six stacks on the merch table at the start of the gig -- and ended up selling them all (did Tim say, "Sorry, Winnipeg" or "Suck it, Winnipeg"? I forget!). Pro tip: if you are jonesing for having missed out on Orcutt vinyl, there's a bunch of them on sale at Audiopile. But he won't have signed them. 

Is Audiopile the only record store in Vancouver that actually has an avant-garde section? They might be. I wonder if that's from Jeremy having worked there. (He was at the Orcutt show last night, too, btw). They had about a dozen of his titles the other day. Maybe they're all sold out now, too?

I milled about, waiting for Dave, who arrived about 9:15, just before Orcutt shambled onto the stage. "Shambled" feels appropriate; everything about this man seemed soft-edged, except for his playing. Which wasn't hard-edged -- it's not like if you're not one thing, you're the opposite -- but which was definitely not soft. Soulful, to be sure, but in a pass-the-strychnine, praise-the-Lord kind of way....

 

Orcutt wasted no time getting into it, once he began to play -- and really, listening now to the opening track from Odds Against Tomorrow, it could have been that very piece he was doing. Very soon after he began, he was rocking back and forth in his chair and yelping along with his playing, as his fingers flew up and down the neck, his occasional vocal parts seeming a mix of irrepressible Glenn-Gould trance-hum, serpent-tent glossolalia, and a smokin' bluesman's shouts.

There was definitely blues in what he did, though it wasn't THE blues. Less blues than Loren Mazzacane Connors, say... another singularity (could someone bring HIM to town next?). But more blues than Keiji Haino, for instance. I must also here confess that I thought of that soaring, impressionistic guitar solo Jerry Garcia recorded for Zabriskie Point's central "scorched hippie desert lovemaking scene," that only happened because John Fahey got in fisticuffs with Antonioni and lost the gig; except Orcutt doesn't play very much like Jerry Garcia -- "hippie romanticism" may have been an  ingredient somewhere in the mix of influences, but it was definitely not a predominant one; I suspect the comparison would invite derision from certain parties. Me, I love Zabriskie Point, even have the expanded soundtrack, but that's a digression. 

 

Anyhow, very early on, a barrier emerged between where we were, artist and audience alike, and where Orcutt wanted to take us, because the amp that was set up started to fritz out, replacing passages with unwanted, buzzing noise, like someone had thrown a blanket of steel wool over the stage; you could only barely hear the music under it. Someone tell that amp that it's not in the band?

At first, Orcutt just tried to play past it -- like he was refusing to let it interfere with the trance he was entering, or something. I do confess wondering a couple of times if it was a deliberate effect -- but you could eventually see him glance over in irritation at times, which was a definite signifier that the noise was not intentional. He cut short his first piece, then hit a switch on his simple pedal setup (Dave Bowes, actually a musician, could explain what this was but duhh, I'm a dummy that way) and the noise seemed to stop, but so did much of the amplification, so he quickly turned it back on. Finally he just stopped the second piece and said from the stage, "Is there another amplifier available? I mean, it does sound interesting in a fucked up way, and I can play with it, but..." He chuckled. 

A tech came up and started connecting another amp, but then a curious thing happened: people in the audience started shouting that it sounded great, shouting their encouragements to continue. Maybe they were fans of the sounds of malfunctioning equipment? (Y'all know this HardTimes piece, right? "Emerging Harsh Noise Artist Revealed To Be Faulty Air Conditioning Unit"...?). Or maybe this was just a Polite Vancouver thing, reassuring the artist that we were not upset?  

If so, I would like to have a word with Polite Vancouver, briefly: I'd really rather have heard what Bill intended to play for us WITHOUT the unexpected contributions of a blown-out amp. He didn't need reassurance: he needed a new amp! And we mighta got one if y'all hadn't been so quick to tell him it was all okay.  

But while the tech teched, a shrugging Orcutt began a third piece, involving denser, more mathematical clusters of notes, more cerebral, that I think may have been partially about testing the scope of what the malfunctioning amp COULD still do, like he was learning what sounds it would make, treating it like a fellow player he was jamming with for the first time, getting to know its quirks. Whether he had arrived at happy medium or wanted to please the "sounds great" Politefolks, when the tech approached after piece #3 to say that he was ready to switch amps, Orcutt  just elected to work with the one he had going. 

Whatever exactly was going on up there, whyever Orcutt actually chose to keep working with the grievous equipment, from that point on, for the rest of the night, everything sounded totally deliberate. Orcutt had -- I guess -- learned the ways of his new "accompanist" and just plunged back into his trancelike, virtuosic, glossolalic blues-improv, having found his way to make it work "in spite of." I shot about six minutes of it, including some of those yelps. It all sounds intentional to me -- distorted, maybe, despite the lack of a distortion pedal -- but none of it, after the first couple pieces, sounded wrong. 

Dave and I chatted afterwards, about how curious it all ways. "I guess he just chose to work with the limitation?" Dave observed. "I mean, it's like a haiku or a sonnet, people choose to work with those limitations. What a curious thing..." 

Later, when taking the stage for his encore, Orcutt quipped, "I haven't quite finished destroying this amp yet..."  

Two things happened of note before that. One you can see at the tail end of my video: Orcutt reached a fever of playing and vocalization that culminated in his shouting "February second! February second!" twice, at which point, his guitar completely cut out. I was sitting close enough that I could still hear his strumming, but the recorder didn't pick it up at all. Later on, when it was all over and he came back to the stage to get his gear, I asked him what February 2nd was.

"My birthday!" Bill replied. 

"Was that also a cue for these guys to join you onstage?" (JP Carter and the Battery joined Bill for a single piece, immediately following, which is the second thing of note that happened). 

"No, it's stupid, I don't know why I did it, it just happened. You know, you open up the doors..." 

"Holy shit!" I said, laughing, and then I asked if he minded if I put the clip into the world, and he asked me what I meant, and I said "On Youtube" and he said he did not care, so there you go... that's a taste of what we saw last night. Do you not feel like scrolling up? It's here. 

The set with the Battery was also very cool, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I'm going to enjoy Odds Against Tomorrow and How to Rescue Things, I think. Thanks to Tim Reinert for having put on this magnificent, fascinating, and, as I say, singular show. See you all in September at the Rickshaw, when Orcutt returns? 

I mean, don't miss it, folks. There are still tickets, but it's gonna sell out, I think, even if I don't do press. 

I'm going to do more press nonetheless. And Steve says he'll talk Crucifucks. I'm curious indeed! 

Death Sentence and the Ripcordz

Syd Savage front and centre for the Ripcordz

I don't feel like I was able to give the Ripcordz a fair shake last night. The sound was pretty rough at Funky's, with the guitar and especially the vocals somewhat buried; couldn't hear a word Paul sang, though I enjoyed his between-song patter and liked the vibe of the guy (anyone who titles an album
More Songs You'll Never Find On Spotify Because Fuck Those Guys is all right with me). 

And rough live mix or not, the band still got an energetic, positive pit going -- a fun pit to watch, and occasionally I pointed my phone at it when shooting vid. They played with enthusiasm and commitment and tho', yeah, it's one old guy and two young'uns, the bassist sure had charisma and fun tattoos! If I weren't stone broke, I'd actually think about goin' to see them again tonight at Bully's, where I think maybe the sound will be better. 

Truth is, though, Death Sentence kinda stole the show, at least for me; I knew the songs -- especially the killer delivery of "In Flames" -- so the sound quality wasn't so much of an issue, especially where two chugging, driving guitars were the main feature. I have seen the band about five times before, each time in a different configuration, so that helps... Actually, if I've seen them play with more fire than last night, I don't remember it; it would have been in the days of Pete Cleaver, if so, but that was a long time ago. Syd is in great form, really commanded the band (he had seemed a bit tentative, the first-gig-back, with "Betty Machete" in the Pete-role, but he's definitely the bandleader now). 

Shot some vid of that, too, but not "In Flames." That I wanted to dance for (but I avoided the pit, kinda tucked myself in between the stage and a pillar. I don't like bein' collided into!

Funky's toilet was also amazing. Best punk rock toilet in Vancouver? I posted about that on one of wendy's DOOR GAL DIARIES threads, which are always a fun augmentation of shows she's at. Someone named Travis Green had commented about the puke in the sink during the Funky's glory days, when wendy was booking the space (I suspect a lot of the graffiti is a leftover from those days). I replied that in fact, there was puke in the sink right then, as well. The rest of that exchange went like this: 

Travis: like for fuck sakes, there is a toilet right behind you! Why the sink?

Me: I would have to look in the toilet to answer that question.

Travis: oh for fuck sakes, Noooo!

Actually THAT INTERACTION was probably the high point of the night, but "In Flames" rocked, too. 

I'm actually still feeling swamped with gigs and writing-pressure and financial pressure and so forth, so I'm trying NOT to write about everything I see... but it's difficult. I also won't BE at Bully's. I have other commitments. But y'all should go. Especially if you live in New West! Bully's has done substantial remodeling, has a huge wide stage now, and I suspect the sound will be wayyyy better. You can walk there from Columbia Station, too! 

I, Braineater, the Scammers, and the Repossessors: photographic evidence and notes

I had never really watched the development of a major Jim Cummins live painting before. I've seen photos of them in action -- including a classic Bev photo of Cummins doing a painting behind the K-Tels with Wimpy and Jello visible in the pit. And I watched one Bowie Ball portrait being done. But it was nothing on the huge canvas that Jim was working behind the merch table at LanaLou's this past Friday, when I, Braineater headlined a gig with the Repossessors and the Scammers. 

It was interesting to watch him work, to check in on the painting -- a tapestry of the cartoonish damned -- over the course of the evening, in-between trips to the bar or the bathroom: how he did a fast sketch of the entire foreground, working left to right, then worked right to left doing a second pass, adding details, adding background faces, adding shadow and detail. The initial pass was crude and cartoonish, but very expressive and free. Things got more vivid each time I went by... 

These three detail shots were about half an hour in-between. I'm used to seeing Cummins' work quite worked-on, glossy and polished and "finished," but was surprised how much I found myself gravitating towards his "sketch." It got cooler by the hour. I don't know if the finished work is actually finished, but it's really delightful. Maybe it will be on display at his next home gallery show, August 16th? 

Of course, there were also the opening bands to enjoy: the Scammers were a trio of South Korean street punks who were so enjoyable they merit their own article, which I will link here when it's up. I'd see them again in a minute! They did originals and covers ranging from the Varukers to Rux and Crying Nut. I shot a clip of their last two songs here, but it doesn't capture the hints of reggae or rockabilly that crept into their music. Everybody I talked to was pleasantly delighted. The photos here are mine, but Art Perry was there, too, if anyone is looking for professional-level images...

Then the Repossessors -- who I was surprised to learn are a two-piece -- took the stage. Aaron Brown and Dave Bowes could be heard to joke that it was a hell of a name for a band to take in a live music context, suggesting guys from Long and McQuade showing up to confiscate your amp. The singer's Repo Man shirt was fitting and fun to see -- wonder where he got it? They did a few flavours of punk, and even a cover of Link Wray's "Rumble." Then near the end of their set, after a brief bass-drum snafu, they launched into the most hardcore song of the night, called "Hardcore." Talesha had been up front dancing and was quickly shunted to the side by the Koreans and their entourage. Exuberant moshpits are not usually a feature of the LanaLou's experience, so that was real fun to see. Talesha observed later that it was "rude" to suddenly have her territory taken over but she still thought the Scammers were excellent, when they weren't colliding into her. I documented the whole episode here. 

By the time I, Braineater took the stage, I was satiated and aware that my wife hasn't been sleeping well; I wanted to get home by 12:30, which meant sneaking out around 11:45... which I did. But -- peering over Talesha's shoulder -- I shot my favourite new Braineater song before I went: "Bunny." I've seen I, Braineater more in the last year than in the course of some 40 years prior. It's interesting to realize that -- since I have no memory at all of the Bags of Dirt, which makes me think I may have missed them -- Jim is quite possibly the first punk performer I ever saw, back when he opened (along with Bill of Rights and House of Commons) for the Dead Kennedys on the Fall of Canada tour, October 20th, 1984. 

We talk about that time in the issue of Big Takeover I mentioned in the previous post (now with added Art Bergmann). Alas, I won't be able to be at Jim's space on the 16th -- I'm booked up! -- but if you haven't done a Braineater show, he's an integral part of Vancouver's musical history. (He'll also be sharing a bill with JOHN OTWAY next March, when Otway returns to Vancouver! More to come on that). 

Now I better get my Scammers feature squared away... someone book that band again soon! 

I, Braineater tonight at LanaLou's - plus the Mt. Lehman Grease Band backstory and more

Myself, Chris Crud, and Jim Cummins by Cat Ashbee; we're talking about Bev's photos of Chris onstage with Braineater, previously discussed here

Now with ADDED ART BERGMANN comment (after Jim's story)

So if I had to list a top-10 favourite local punk albums -- the ones most important to me -- well, it would probably take a couple hours sorting out the last six of them. But four albums would come easily, without the slightest hestitation: Incorrect Thoughts, Something Better Change, the Vancouver Complication... and I Here, Where You! by I, Braineater -- his first full length in 1983. I found that in the mid-1980s in a Value Village in Maple Ridge (it was already hard to find at places like Collector's RPM). You can hear the whole album here (probably without Jim's involvement or blessing). It's not really a full-band experience, and not really close to what I, Braineater sounds like lately (which is closer to the garage-punk of Artist, Poet, Thief -- which is a fun album, but sounds more like a band; I love the "basement weirdo" quality of the earlier album, which sounds like a work sprung from deep in the brain of an isolated eccentric in the process of self-invention). 

I got to interview Jim Cummins about the early years of Braineater for Big Takeover #96, which is still on a few Chapters stands now. Everyone, I think, ended up happy with the piece. I was a bit bummed that they didn't run anything from Cat Ashbee's visit to Jim's house for his last art show -- she got some great shots -- but it's hard to complain when the competition was photos by Bev of the days when Art Bergmann, Buck Cherry, Dave Gregg and Ian Tiles were in the band, or actual images of Jim's art. It's actually a really good read -- one of the best Vancouver stories I've done, up there with my Art Bergmann and John Armstrong interviews, over the last few issues...

But there were outtakes, and this is one. I, Braineater plays TONIGHT at LanaLou's with the Repossessors and the Scammers. Only 20 bucks! I found an outtake from Jim's early days -- a piece of the puzzle involving the Mt. Lehmann Grease Band. 

See you tonight, Jim! 

I, Braineater 2025 (at Funkys, by me)

AM: I'm stunned to learn that you’re from Langley. I never realized. I’m from Maple Ridge! I can’t picture you in coveralls. 

JIM: During that period, I also had my first shows at the Brackendale Art Gallery [in Squamish, BC], where I built the big cement unicorn out front. And Thor Froslev had it then, and he was a great guy, who got me on board for all that; we did a number of shows there… And then another thing happened, basically when I was in high school in Langley, where I met this character named Dan Clark. He was a year older. He said, “Jim, I know this really cool bunch of guys, and they have this band called the Mount Lehman Grease Band; they were kind of like a Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet boogie woogie band, and all they sang was dirty blues songs: “You’re so ugly, baby/ You make the dogs all whine/ And I don’t know why they allow you on the street/ It’s cause you’re ugly, the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen/ You got a face like a monkey and sure do treat me mean!” Dan said, I can book something, and you’ve got the art, so you make the poster, we’ll get the booking and we’ll play. And down the street, a few blocks away, was a place called Fernridge Hall. So Dan gets the hall rented, I do the posters, silkscreens in the back art room of the school, with all these supplies that looked like they had been left for the last fifty years. We put them up, we do all that, and I’m not expecting too much. Dan says, “You take the money at the door.” Okay! And all of a sudden, truckloads of kids start showing up, like out of a movie scene: a one-ton truck with a big flatbed on it and thirty kids all just sitting on it, no seatbelts, no nothin’, y’know, with big gallon jugs of wine and stuff like this. And they’re coming into the place; some of them are paying – it was a dollar to see the show; and some of them are telling me to F off. And this hall was so small, and the next thing you know, we’ve got three hundred kids in there. It only held about a hundred or so! And Dan the promoter comes up and goes, “Jim, isn’t this fabulous! Look what’s happening! It’s it great! And I’m on three hits of acid!” I thought, “Oh, fuckit, I’m not doing the door anymore if you’re doing that!”

AM: Art Bergmann was on guitar?

JIM: And Dave Mitchell was the singer. Art had his brother Hans on a big old piano. And Murphy Farrell from Mud Bay Blues Band was drumming – he was 12 or 13 at the time. There was a guy named Tony on bass—I don’t remember too much about him. But they played this show. And usually, at shows out there, there would be a fight, but this show, there are 300 kids crammed into this thing and not an ounce of trouble. I guess you could call it “valley punk” – the roughest characters you ever saw, all from 15 to 21, having the greatest time. And they brought in this big plastic garbage container and everybody started pouring in all their booze and wine and what they had in their pockets, and you just get cups and drink this shit. We put on gigs like that all through halls out there when I was in high school. The last one we had was out at the Cloverdale Community Centre, 1500 kids. It was out of control, just amazing. Mitchell was an incredibly great frontman, because he was a weird combination between, basically, Groucho Marx meets Mick Jagger: bowler cap, orange, crazy big hair, torn jeans, vest and he had a cane, which he’d taunt the audience with. Boy, what a show. And Dan Clark was the person Art sang about, years later, in “The Final Cliché.”

AM: He had a boat…

JIM: And a station wagon, which was my 1954 Chevy Station Wagon, which I’d sold to him, which he used for that [his suicide]. Which was sad. Dan had had a lot of problems for a long time. When I first met him, he had no fear “cut-off button,” y’know? A wild man. I loved him, love him to this day, he was a great guy, always inspiring. But yeah, so… then Dave Mitchell goes to university, and Art decides to reform the Grease Band, but the name he wants now, is the Shmorgs. I remember they did a gig out in Aldergrove or Chilliwack, a big arena like we’d had in Cloverdale, where we’d had 1500 kids, type of thing. 20 kids. Nobody. Could never get an audience. There were maybe a couple of shows out in Cloverdale where friends showed up that were a bit better but basically nobody came to see them.

By this time, I’d dropped out of the Brackendale hippie scene, because there was no action there; everybody had gotten long in the tooth. I came to Vancouver and got a little apartment there. And I didn’t really get to go to a real live punk gig/ party thing until Buck Cherry moves into town. He moves down the street, and… it’s a long story, but Buck shows up at my place, and he’s got a bottle of rum, and he goes, “I know where a punk party is! Let’s drink this and go!” So off we went to that and had a great time, met Randy Rampage… That became my inspiration to start painting these big hyper-realistic paintings of punks and stuff like this. And Buck and me got an apartment in the basement of the Manhattan next to the boiler room. Thank God the Freddy Krueger movies weren’t out yet. We couldn’t have handled it – it was literally desperate living. And Buck’s working on his band stuff, going to form the Modernettes, and he says, “Jim, you’ve helped me out so much, you’ve been a great friend; I’m going to help your band out too.” And he says, “What are you going to call it?” Well, I was thinking about the character [Screaming] Lord Sutch, from England, but I didn’t know much about him. In those days you didn’t know much about anything, really. And I said, “I was thinking of calling it Monsuxx.” And he just looks at me deadpan: “No.” [laughs]. He says, “We’re going to be the Braineaters!” “Why the Braineaters?” “Can you imagine what parents are going to think when their kids say, “We’re going to see the Braineaters?”

And Bergmann was around on crazy Farfisa organ, Dave Gregg on guitar, Ian Tiles on drums. And we had a number of shows. We got everybody banned from performing or playing at the Russian Hall for about 40 years. They didn’t start doing anything back there until maybe about ten years ago, with some burlesque show, which is kind of ironic, because I happened to bring in paintings for the show. But… we were just trying to be the most notorious, New York Dolls-type band that you’d ever heard, in a punk rock way. It was tons of fun.

ART BERGMANN RESPONDS... (copied off FB)

beg pardon ; ye mis-remember! we played many crazed shows; btw Tony Pratt was bassist;

 When we played last Shmorgs' show w @DavidMitchell at Surrey Bear Creek Pavilion the place was so full, the gang-fighting took place outside the broken doors! the gig in Abbotsford Arena was so successful, Dan Clarke had a massive wad of cash we threw  around like a football...that is about it!

   the best tho' was beating barrels in the Mt Lehman forest courtesy Skantz family

  anyway, love you Jimmy Cummins

at Surrey Bear Creek "Mitzo" pretended to die; and was believed!

Tonight at LanaLou's!

PS Jim has a show August 16th!

Overextended!

So here's the thing, folks...

I'm broke! Not in any way that I haven't been broke before -- it's not an emergency or anything. But I splooged bigtime during the folk fest (signed records! food trucks!), dug a hole, and now...

...I have a few big-ticket shows to see in August and September, a roadtrip, and a birthday for my wife... and no big paydays are scheduled... any income in August and prolly September is SPOKEN FOR. As of now.

Plus I haven't bought tickets for a few shows yet that I definitely want to see... I ain't even factoring those in yet.

And typically, I am also over-extended in terms of my writing. I have made promises to people, have a couple big projects to clear, and NO TIME AT ALL for extra considerations. There are some articles I am just shifting to the back burner for now until I've cleared some space... stuff that interests me ("The Secret History of the Secret V's," now there's an article I'd like to do!) but that's just gonna have to wait. 

If I've already said yes, I'll do something... I'll do something. If I've made commitments, I'm committed (financial or writing-wise).

But if y'all are wanting me to do something I have not agreed to already, this is not the time.

I'm doing okay, actually -- been enjoying the summer. Need to get some swimming in. Need to get some dancin' shoes (I wore the others out). And if I don't have another commitment, I might try to catch Asian Persuasion All-Stars on Sunday at the Powell Street Festival (I can scrape up the cash for some food truck food). 

I'm only just wading through my to-do list, though, and man is it packed... would be a great time for a windfall to fall on me... but also seems like a great time to curl up with a book. Been re-reading Crichton's Jurassic Park, that's a real good read. It's kind of nice to subtract the Hollywood dumb-down element from things... read the story as written for grown-ups... it's still very similar but a lot more corporate intrigue, a lot more "chaos." It's a good read... 

...maybe I'll get back to it...