Movies (and a limited series) in review: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Killer, Nyad, and Prey

I have already said some of this on social media, but I'm up to pee and feed the cat and it always helps to take the brain for a walk before I try for sleep two. Here's a few recent-ish entertainments, recently consumed...

The limited series on Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, was entertaining and made clever use of Poe, though occasionally a bit overtly (a lot of Poe gets read aloud). I don't know Poe exhaustively so I couldn't name ALL the references, but they're constant and carefully interwoven; in terms of the Poe-I-know, I loved that it gave pride-of-place to one of my favourites of his stories, "The Cask of Amontillado," which has been under-mined cinematically, given how much Poe has been adapted for screen. Some nice use of Vancouver locations, too, though aside from the obvious use of St. Andrew's Wesleyan, you probably won't recognize any of them. Once the production's backstory came to my attention, I kept wondering what it would have been like if Frank Langella had been allowed to remain in the cast. I like Bruce Greenwood a lot -- and weirdly like him even more for having seen him just takin' the fuckin' bus in Vancouver, around when Meek's Cutoff had its theatrical run; something about celebrities who ride public transit (hi to David Suzuki, in this respect) appeals to me. But Greenwood generally presents as virtuous and sympathetic, while Langella could have brought some Boris-Balkan-style evil and Grand-Guignol excess to the role, which would have been quite appropriate. And Zach Gilford, the actor cast as a young Roderick Usher, looks a lot more like Langella than he does Greenwood; in fact, when I began watching the series, I had not recalled the Langella firing, and found myself wondering what the hell they were thinking, casting someone who looked nothing like Greenwood for the role (below: Langella-Gilford-Greenwood).

Of course, Langella was busted for alleged sexual misconduct; apparently he had a love scene with a character and was a bit spontaneous about where his hands went. Somehow, though, even in the #MeToo era, there's not a story out there about it that I've seen that wasn't framed sympathetically towards him. I was not on set, have only read these media-filtered reports, but they make it very easy to imagine that someone who came up as an actor in the 1970s might have been accustomed to playing by different rulebooks than a younger female co-star, framing him as a victim of changing times. On the other hand, if the actress in question DID feel uncomfortable, and Langella DID have direction that he did not follow (from the "intimacy coordinator"...?), what other option was there? I can only say that I think the series would have been better for his presence.

It was still very entertaining, but the best things about it were seeing Mark Hamill and Mary McDonell rendered pretty much unrecognizable, disappearing into roles unlike any I had seen them tackle before. I never thought much of Hamill as an actor, but do now; whereas I have long loved McDonell from her work with John Sayles (not to mention Donnie Darko), yet actually had to Google the cast to figure out who I was seeing -- she's THAT unrecognizable. So both actors gained quite a bit of respect from me.

Also on Netflix, David Fincher's new film, The Killer, was kind of empty, feeling like a somewhat less-stylish update of, maybe, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, about how emotionally demanding, cool, and dangerous it is to be a professional assassin, which, it turns out, has somehow become a yawnsome, hollow-feeling archetype for me; I think I began feeling this way with The Grey Man, also on Netflix, and may just swear off stylish existentialist lone assassin stories for the time being, as having no value worth mining.

The film, of course, is still visually pretty and easy enough to watch, and Tilda Swinton is always welcome on my screens, but when the high point ends up being a running gag about the title character using names from sitcoms as aliases -- where the moment in the film where my brain perked up the most was Googling "Reuben Kincaid," which character I had forgotten (unlike Howard Cunningham, Felix Unger, Oscar Madison, and Archibald Bunker, to name a few names that get dropped), there's something amiss, especially since the use of memorable and obvious aliases in fact undercuts the very nature of the character, who goes on about anonymity and professionalism and blah-blah-blah. One wonders if Fincher did it because he himself was bored to death with the material and wanted to make it all a bit more fun -- for himself as well as his audience? Certainly, once the story got going, besides waiting to see what the next alias would be, I found myself in no surprising places whatsoever. Sure, there's some good fight choreography and a couple of somewhat inventive tools of killing, but where the letdown really comes is afterwards: "Huh, there really was nothing worth thinking about there." Unlike The Fall of the House of Usher, say, which at least leaves you with the impression that you could understand new things about ambition, success, and the arc of your life if you bothered to do the work.

Nyad is also vastly richer in terms of applicability to life, even if, like almost all sports dramas, the final takeaway -- I guess I should offer a spoiler alert here -- is kind of predictable, because there are very few sports-themed movies about people whose determination to succeed ends up NOT paying off, y'know? The whole point of the long-odds-eventual-success-story trope is to banish the thought of failure and pump yourself up on the inevitable victory, even if that often is not how these stories end in the real world. What would the market value have been if the real life Diana Nyad had drowned or gotten eaten by a shark or stung to death by jellyfish or so forth (all of which it seems might have happened to her?). The project would likely never have gotten greenlighted; it would be like making a movie about casino gambling that ends with the main character going home in massive debt, or something -- who the hell wants to consume THAT experience? Whereas it's relatively easy to sell a film where the message is, if you don't give up, you will succeed.

Still, as inspiring true-life sports stories go, Nyad is a good one, based on the determination of a 60+ year old lesbian obsessed to realize her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida. Inevitable victory aside, the story is quite fresh and filled with real-life human emotion and insight (as well as archival footage) and places interesting emphasis on how it feels to be part of the support team for someone so determined. It's nice to see Annette Bening (whose last significant role I cannot recall; I've probably missed a bunch but have felt her too-absent from the screen for quite some time) and Jodie Foster (the only time I can recall seeing her play a queer character) getting meaty and interesting roles (Rhys Ifans gets a fine part, too). There's footage of the real-life people they play in case you want to see how perfectly all three were cast. For awhile, watching it, I found myself contemplating whether I would enjoy the film more if in the end, the main character just kept failing, or died. I can think of only one sports movie about an underdog trying something momentous that does NOT end in eventual, hard-won success, a very compelling documentary called Deep Water, about the Donald Crowhurst story -- also fictionalized in Robert Stone's novel Outerbridge Reach -- but one of the reasons that the Crowhurst story is so fascinating is how against-type it is (I guess those mountain climbing movies where half the characters die count, too, though some characters succeed there, too).

Where I really was left by Nyad -- rather than feeling empowered and motivated -- was contemplating what would it be like to have a sports movie that was about something OTHER than winning or losing, as with a movie I saw a VIFF ago, called The Mountain, which I would love to see again, which has a very different kind of athletic endeavour at its core, and ends up in a much richer, more interesting finale: it's not about how you may win or lose in your contest with nature, but rather, about how you will be transformed by the experience. That's a film I'll be thinking about years from now, and want to see again. Nyad, while fine, will pass through me like popcorn, easy come, easy go.

Ultimately, in terms of filmed entertainments consumed in the last while, the most fun I had -- the biggest moments of catharsis, the most visual pleasure -- was with Prey. I have a few reservations there, too, mind you: I wish it had been filmed in Comanche, not just peppered with a phrase here and there and then optionally dubbed into the language (though I like that this was done and appreciate that it's a historical moment in the preservation of indigenous languages; I hope it's even more than that, too, that somewhere there are Comanche-speaking elders who never learned English all that well -- if such people exist! -- who can now watch a movie in their first language, or that there are Comanche audiences watching it together and getting pumped up. I hope it's more than just a political gesture, y'know?). We tried the dubbed track, in fact, but it was too obviously dubbed -- the lips were out of synch with the voices, which further had that recorded-on-a-soundstage echo to them, so we just switched to the original English... which, it turns out, has problems of its own, as late in the film, there is a scene where a French trapper identifies the main character as Comanche, says he speaks lots of languages, and switches to what is meant to be her language, but is English (which would not have necessitated his comment about being polylingual, as other French trappers would also speak English, of course). We can accept as a price exacted by Hollywood the everyone-speaks-English effect up to that point, especially when you consider that there are probably a lot more Comanche actors who speak English as their first language than their historical tongue -- the cast members I looked up were not even Comanche by birth -- but when language itself becomes an overt issue for the film, you get taken out of the narrative for a moment, as you do with the hokey language shifts that you find in The Hunt for Red October or Judgement at Nuremberg, where you just wish that the dialogue had BEEN in Russian or German, respectively. If Mel Gibson can make a Christ story in Aramaic -- of if Werner Herzog could prepare equally good English and German versions of Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo -- it seems like it could have been at least possible to go further. Prey is good, and Comanche dubbing is laudable, but making the whole film IN Comanche would have been even better.

That aside, Prey is a great little thriller: an empowering rite-of-passage movie and probably the best Predator movie ever (certainly the prettiest, in terms of its (Alberta) landscapes; I have great fondness, of course, for the first AVP film, as well, based wholly on the overt Lovecraft thing, but it's kind of inhabiting a franchise of its own). Amber Midthunder is a compelling lead and gives the film a grrl-power element, playing a tough young woman who is unwilling to bow to male-dominated ways of her tribe. Don't know if any of that is remotely historically accurate -- there is much about the film that is not. But it's a wholly entertaining, well-told tale, and has at least one really nice intertext with the other films in the series. I don't want to give it away, actually, but as you watch Prey, a moment will stand out: "Why are they emphasizing this?" The answer will be readily apparent if you follow up the film by watching Predator 2. That's the film in the franchise that feels most like an action packed b-movie, rather than an A-list production, but it turned out Erika had never seen it, so we went directly from finishing the one move to beginning the other, whereupon -- as Predator 2 drew to its climax -- we stumbled on this moment quite by accident and were very pleased. Call it a "throwback" moment! Nice to see Bill Paxton in the film; as with Boxing Helena, I had quite forgotten he was in the film, which I had not seen in some time.

We also watched The Bride of Frankenstein this weekend, and caught up on lost sleep (but in my case, this morning, not so much). I want to see Gods and Monsters soon. That's about all I've got...

Attention Modernettes & Los Popularos fans... and Fountains of Wayne ones?

Hey, Modernettes/ Los Popularos fans... you might want to get the new Big Takeover, wherein I talked about a bunch of stuff with John Armstrong apropos of the reissues of View from the Bottom and -- well, it's more than just a Born Free reissue that Porterhouse did, though there is also a very nice digital representation of that material; it's also a lot of demos and a bit of live stuff. And actually, it's more than just a reissue of View from the Bottom they did, too, but we mostly focus on the physical EP. Included are photos from Don Denton, Rd Cane, and Bev Davies. But that's just what I did and know about; I'm also particularly curious to see what the Fountains of Wayne material is. I'm more of a Traffic and Weather man than a Welcome Interstate Managers one, myself, but it seems like Welcome is the focus... 

Gig report: I didn't go

 Report on the cool shows that happened:

I missed all of it. I suggested Erika and I meet up for dinner at the Princeton -- I actually DID make it that far. But she had never planned to stay for music; she'd had an exhausting week at work, as usual, and I've been running around doing the Otway thing, the Clearcut thing, seeing Oxbow... and haven't had a night with more than five hours' sleep in weeks. Often I find myself going to bed at midnight and waking up to pee at 4 or 5am, then writing a bit, then going back to bed for an hour... that's been the pattern for weeks...

So having eaten, then there was the prospect of staying out for hours and going home on the bus, which would involve walking to a bus stop and standing there in the rain for half an hour, getting pissed on, versus getting a ride back to Burnaby... plus I had promised Erika I would walk her to the car because of this story about an attack in the area of the Princeton... was I really going to do that and walk back and wait half an hour for music and somehow find the mojo to see two bands and then walk to Green Auto...?

Nope. I wanted to be HOME. I wanted to go to BED. And I wanted A RIDE THERE.

So that's what I did. I came home with Erika. We watched an hour-long Netflix show about cats, which I slept through most of, then I took a sleeping pill, and was asleep in bed before 11:30. It was as lame-ass and old-man as can be.

But I slept through til 6:30AM, when the cat climbed onto my feet and traversed the length of me, parking on my ribcage for awhile. It's the longest sleep I have had in weeks, maybe months. I feel like a dork (and missed out on something extra special, I gather), but I needed it.

Hope y'all had a good time... weak ole man here... sorry...

Jimmy Roy and Dennis Brock join the Mike Van Eyes Jamboree (with a contribution from Richard Chapman), plus the Lulu's, Crummy, and Me Bats

The rest of Vancouver is still buzzing from seeing the Hives, or moaning about having missed them, but here at Alienated, where we're just starting to get over a week of heavy John Otway/ Clearcut action, we're looking forward to seeing some local bands, especially if they involve (fellow Otwayphile) Ed Hurrell, Sex Bomb EddyD, and Bert Man (currently of Crummy and the Imperial, but also Strugglers and LGA alum), whose bands will be doing a gig tonight at the Princeton. Lulu Lisa Lloyd tells me that the Lulu's will will be the opening act, doing a set of Lou Reed cover tunes (including some new additions to their mostly-Transformer-centric repertoire); Ed informed me at a recent Rocket #9 gig that the Lulu's regular drummer, whom Tony Lee filled in for last time I saw them, will now be behind the kit, and apparently bringing a real Mo Tucker vibe to the night. 

The Lulu's last Princeton gig

I assume the next band up after the Lulu's will be Crummy (see here, where my favourite tune remains this terrific re-imagining of David Bowie's "Andy Warhol," and here, where I am partial to "Fucken Disaster" and of course "Ransack"). I might be ducking out a bit early to catch Night Court at Green Auto (more on which here) so I dunno how much of the Me Bats (AKA Stab'em in the Abdomen) that I'm going to see, but maybe I will catch a bit? Depends when they start!  

By the way, non-drinkers who still like the taste of beer should note that the Princeton has Phillips Iota, which for some dumb reason isn't at any grocery store and liquor store that I've explored; it is, for my money, the best-tasting non-alcoholic beer on the market. The Rickshaw is stocking it, too!  

Meantime, here's an interesting one for Saturday afternoon: the Mike Van Eyes Jamboree -- showcasing the boogie-woogie piano flourishes of Mike van Eyes, of course -- will be joined by guitarist Jimmy Roy (of Jimmy Roy's Five Star Cowboys, Ray Condo, and Petunia and the Vipers fame) and vocalist Dennis Brock, the whole of whose CV I do not know, but who sings in the Rocket Revellers, which also features Mike van Eyes and Jimmy Roy! 

I reached out to get some background on the shared history between Jimmy Roy and Mike Van Eyes and while the initial plan was to interact with Mike, it just did not happen. But Richard Chapman of Northern Electric filled in a few gaps, explaining that Roy and van Eyes "were bandmates in The Yo-dells (Herald Nix supergroup that also included Stephen Nikleva, Ian Tiles, Steve Taylor, Ronnie Hayward, Howard Rix, Daniel Lapp, Gary Comeau etc.) as well as a couple decades with The Stingin’ Hornets."

Jesus: Herald Nix and Howard Rix were in the same band? 

The following is from Richard, who knows his stuff way better than I do:

Jimmy Roy and Herald Nix came to Vancouver together as high school friends from Salmon Arm in early 70s and went to Art School (now Emily Carr). Mike, several years younger, asked to play with them and Herald incorporated him into his rockabilly band along with Reno Jack the Bear on bass and Russ the Bus on on drums. 

At this point Mike was a guitar player and Herald encouraged him to pick another instrument! That’s when he switched to piano. 

Another Fun Fact: Mike Thomas was getting frustrated with his nickname “Bugs” so Herald gave him a new name Mike Van Eyes (the eyes of Vancouver!). These guys, the Herald Nix band, would end up touring with The Clash as openers for Western Canadian dates along with transitioning away from rockabilly (due to success of Stray Cats which Herald wanted nothing to do with) to the countrified roots rock sound of their Fugitive Kind album (co-produced by Mike and Herald on Record Records), cited as the influence for Blue Rodeo, who followed Herald’s lead also transitioning from their rockabilly roots (The Hi Fi's) to their Blue Rodeo sound. (They played the entire Fugitive Kind album at The Roots n’ Blues Festival while they setup on Main Stage expressing to the crowd that this is what made them become Blue Rodeo). 

Also of note, as mentioned the other week - Mike, Herald and Ian played and recorded as The Undertakin’ Daddies (as heard on It Came From Canada Vol 2). Jimmy Roy and Mike have also played together in a number of other musical units - Kelly Haigh & The Murderbirds, Steve Taylor’s Drum Boogie, Jimmy Roy’s Five Star Hillbillies and many many more.

Apparently Herald did some woodcut gig posters for shows. This one, Richard explains, is "Mike re-imagined from a late night photo of Mike playing in a Edmonton hotel room":

So it sounds like it's going to be a really fun time, made even more fun by the surprising number of older locals who make it down to Lana's for these things to take their cowboy boots for a spin on the dance floor. Of course, not everyone will be able to make it out on a Saturday afternoon; so here's some good news -- if you can't make it out tomorrow, there's always TODAY, at the Terminal pub in New West, with no cover charge! 

I have no idea what's going on for bigger acts -- but I don't need to! But maybe I'll see you at the Princeton, Lanalou's, and/or Green Auto...

Night Court interview two! The Bride of Frankenstein, Bats, Frater Set, and a gig TONIGHT

As some of you remember I did a big feature on lo-fi pop-punks Night Court back in September when they were slated to open for the Pointed Sticks and the Avengers. Emilor made that gig, as an audience member, but the band did not play due to illness. I was bummed: I had really looked forward to seeing them, and at the Rickshaw, no less! 

Night Court by Daryl Gussin

Since that time, I have fallen deeply in love with one of the songs off their album HUMANS!, "What's It Like to Be a Bat, Man?" which ("Batman" reference aside) is inspired by an essay by philosopher Thomas Nagel. I still have not read that Nagel essay, but I have walked around the apartment singing "I've studied the facts, I see how they act, but I'll never know what it's like being a bat" -- surely one of the ear-wormier choruses I have encountered this century.  I am enjoying the rest of this album, too, but mostly I just want, when I've played the album through, to flip it over and listen to that song again. Understand that I have actually dreamed of being a bat (in the sense of a nocturnal fantasm, not a fervent wish), but I will, indeed, never really know what it's like to be one. 

(...And this bat will never know what it is like to be in Night Court)

Anyhoo, unless I missed a gig, tonight is your next chance to see Night Court perform. They are playing Green Auto as the last band on tonight's bill, going on around 11 or 11:30 (just late enough for me to make it to see the Lulu's and Crummy at the Princeton! Ironically, it looks like I will be forsaking the Me Bats to hear "What's it Like to Be a Bat, Man," which is a lot of bats for one night. Maybe I will ACTUALLY SEE A BAT on the walk between venues? I will flip). 

Night Court has also released a video for a new song for me to obsess over, "The Bride of Frankenstein," about a classic 1935 horror movie which you should see if you haven't, ideally after having watched the first Frankenstein. It is on their new EP, Frater Set; the video is made entirely of clips from this film, and the lyrics make multiple references to Frankenstein lore, as drawn from these two classic films ("we don't belong dead" is actually an inversion of "we belong dead," Frankenstein's tearjerking final declamation at the end of the movie, which he makes just before -- spoiler alert -- flipping the switch to destroy everything, after his big date with the bride goes bad. Who among us has not been there? 

Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein and his bride

Be aware as you watch this video that:

a) long before he played Frankenstein's monster, Boris Karloff was a day labourer in Vancouver, working on the PNE grounds, possibly helping construct our wooden roller coaster (my original source for this fun tidbit was Nardwuar the Human Serviette; thanks, Nardwuar!).

b)  The director of both Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale, was gay, which was the subject of a feature film called Gods and Monsters (itself adapted from a book called Father of Frankenstein). Sir Ian McKellen plays Whale in the film, while Brendan Fraser (AKA The Whale -- is this Darren Aronofsky's idea of an in-joke?) plays Whale's love interest.  

There is also a nod to the title of this film in the song's lyrics. 

c) Elsa Lanchester, who played said Bride of Frankenstein, was (besides being a terrific actor in her own right), in fact married to another gay British filmmaker and actor, Charles Laughton. While not having any direct influence on the Frankenstein movies, Laughton did play a fay, sadistic Moreau in Island of Lost Souls, a fabulously decadent Nero in the Cecil B. DeMille pre-code masterwork Sign of the Cross, and co-starred with Karloff in another Whale feature, The Old Dark House (which is alone among the films mentioned in this post in its presence on Tubi). And of course, he also played Quasimodo in the second, I think, film adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, bringing a staggering amount of pathos to the role; Laughton, like Karloff, had great compassion for the monstrous, perhaps informed by his homosexuality, or perhaps by his not being the most physically beautiful man who ever lived.

(I mis-identified a pic in my initial draft; thanks to David M. of "If I Was a Bat" fame for the tip)

...none of which is necessarily relevant to why Night Court wrote a song called "The Bride of Frankenstein," but Karloff, Laughton and Lanchester have been on my mind in the last while, and the band does not leap on my attempts to unpack subtexts to this song, so I thought I'd help my readers out a bit. 

I didn't even ask about Bela Lugosi, but I've always been more of a Karloff man, myself. Hear the new Night Court EP, Frater Set, here! (It will apparently be for sale at the show, as well). 

Allan: What's a Frater Set?

Emilor: Frater Set is in honour of my father who passed away in April.

Allan: Anytime a group releases an EP within a year of an LP I figure that they were recorded in the same sessions -- that it's outtakes or such. Is this so?

Jiffy Marx: No but you’re not entirely wrong. We recorded the first track, "Bride of Frankenstein," during the same sessions as Nervous Birds One and Too. It was a song we thought deserved it’s own thing so after releasing those recordings then the Humans LP, we figured it was past due!

Dave-O: Other than Bride, the Frater Set recording was a separate session from HUMANS! We wanted to release a Halloween 7" and Dromedary Records was not only into it, but because it is a hand-cut record, we were able to actually release it the same year it was recorded (pressing it in a standard plant would have pushed the release to next year). We actually recorded 6 songs but could only fit 5 (as it is a one sided picture disc).

Allan: Aha! I wonder where the preference for super short songs comes from? I utterly loved "What's it Like to Be a Bat, Man?" on HUMANS! and now I love "Bride of Frankenstein," but they are over before I am ready for them to be over and I've found myself lifting the needle on the bat one and setting it back to the start of the song.

 
Dave-O: I guess we just think it's better to leave a listener wanting more vs boring them? We were listening to alot of Tony Molina when we started writing for Night Court and liked the idea of intense little packets of catchy/messy songs...I mean, Guided by Voices and the Descendents (and many others) have been putting out sub-two-minute gems for decades!

Jiffy Marx: These days if bands get paid anything at all they get paid per song not per minute so put that shit on repeat!

Allan: Who edited together the Bride video? What is your history with that film, Elsa Lanchester, James Whale, or Frankenstein in general, and what is the theme of the song? (You change the "we belong dead" to "we don't belong dead;" explain the deeper meaning there? Who does not belong dead?).

Jiffy Marx: All our videos are done by Jeffry Lee, we don’t know him he just makes our videos.

Allan: Talk about leaving me wanting more! But tell me about songwriting -- who wrote what?

Dave-O: We wish we wrote "Joey the Mechanical Boy" but the rest are monstrous accretions.

Jiffy Marx: Supreme collaboration between megalomaniac narcissistic doctors.

Emilor: Max Martin writes everything.

Allan: Anything to say about the gig, or the other bands on the bill? (I gather the dude from Talk is Cheap, the old Victoria punk store that kind of morphed into Cavity, is playing in Crom/Dam -- any history there, or with the other bands? Have you played Green Auto before?

Jiffy Marx: Rob from Mononegatives helped us out when we were in Ontario last year so we wanted to return the favour mostly because he’s a super nice dude but also we really want to see his band they’re awesome!

Emilor: First time playing Green Auto and we're really excited to see Mononegatives and its New Meds 1st show!

 
Dave-O: We should note that it is in the middle warehouse which will be different and cool.

Thanks to Night Court! Tickets here - doors at 8, bands at 9! See you there?

Oxbow, Whores, Psychic Trash and Disruptions live at Green Auto (in which I say almost nothing about the actual bands)

(I have added and now UPDATED an addendum at the endum and removed a few pics by request!)

One of the great gigs of the 1990s I saw was TAD, Helmet and Love Battery at the Town Pump. I guess that would have been March 9, 1991, and TAD was touring what I still regard as the greatest grunge album of all time, 8 Way Santa, released just a month prior. Produced by Butch Vig, who scored a hit with Nirvana's Nevermind in September of that same year ("the year punk broke," y'know?), it balances heaviness with melodic pleasure in a way that still delights me and surprises me; one of my favourite alternate universe musings is to contemplate how the world might have developed if 8 Way Santa had been the record that busted through the logjam and started the grunge flood that followed. I mean, I don't even fucking own Nevermind on vinyl, y'know? But I have a few different versions of 8 Way Santa (if you don't know the story of its doomed original cover art, go here, the documentary about the band, if you have access to Prime. It's pretty funny). 

Truth is, besides knowing it was great, I don't remember much of that show at all, except for Tad Doyle, all 300-some pounds of him, gleefully stage diving (he doesn't like talking TAD now, much, but he did tell me a story of a time that his stage diving went horribly wrong when we spoke about eight years ago). It was weirdly empowering and intimidating: being a fat man myself, then as now, I would have thought stage diving was simply something people with bodies like ours did not, could not, should not do: inconsiderate and ill-advised. 

Tad blew that excuse out of the water. I still have never stage dived, but I was much impressed. Somewhere out there in Vancouver there is someone whose claim to fame is being stage-dived onto by Tad, can you imagine? 

There was no stage diving at Green Auto last night -- wasn't all that much of a stage, either! -- but musically, it was very much a throwback to that night in 1991. I had hemmed and hawed about going on Facebook, got plenty of urgings, and ultimately followed the advice of one Ford Pier, who had told me that Oxbow were a must-see when I was picking up my Dead Bob record at Red Cat. (Dead Bob is the new project by Nomeansno's John Wright; you know this, right? And that they have a gig December 1st, at the Pearl, which was formerly known as the Venue, which was formerly known as the Plaza...? Which is where I first saw Bison, more on whom below?). Despite Ford looking at me like I'd sprouted antennae when I suggested that Dead Bob's "No Tomorrows" reminds me of "The Love Song" by Marilyn Manson, and my knowing he genuinely values quirkier, more challenging stuff than I do (his favourite song on Life Like being the mathy, persistent, practically penetrative "One of You," for instance; or, like, consider the Rheostatics), he's steered me right on a number of occasions, like helping clue me into Selina Martin, whose "The Hottest Day" (incidentally) was spun without any input from me by Mark Bignell at the Otway gig (see below), but who will not be joining Dead Bob for the Vancouver show, note (she sings the female vocal part on the Dead Bob cover of Nomeansno's "Life Like.")

Where was I? Oh, yeah: Ford was the only person who, perceiving my hemming and hawing on Facebook -- "Should  I go to this gig? Is Green Auto a good space?" -- had anything caveat-like to offer about the venue, noting that there is a marked absence of seating; there is also, as I would discover without Ford's help, a very hard, veritably remorseless concrete floor (another reason not to stage dive, if you need them). Ford knows me, I guess, because that was, in fact, the only caveat worth offering (the smell of the chicken rendering plant down the block not actually wafting into the venue, though I guess that could be a fair concern during the summer). I have been in more physically comfortable venues, and standing around on concrete for a few hours is not generally my preferred mode of standing around. 

Anyhow, Ford's eyebrows raised a bit to see me: "You came!" I think he thought I would pussy out. I did not pussy out -- which I am very glad of, because look who the hell I ran into?

Yes, folks, MASA ANZAI (key subject of one of my favourite-ever concert photos at the top of this Bison thing I did) is going to gigs again! He's fit, happy-looking, and contemplating whether he should start doing the odd noise gig again ("I still have all my gear"). I have not seen Masa around since Bison played the Hindenburg (which had also been John Barleys and briefly, I think, a Cruel Elephant incarnation and maybe was a gay bar for awhile?) back in August of 2015 -- Shane Clark's first gig with Bison, replacing Masa, who nonetheless came out to support his friends (then disappeared from the scene for years). 

In fact, my history with Masa goes back before Bison, seeing him on saxophone at the Sugar Refinery or doing a noise gig at VIVO, once. Always liked Masa! I remember chatting with him at a jazzfest gig before Earthbound even came out, where he told me about how he was going to hang up his sax for awhile and play bass in a heavy metal band; it was because of Masa that I even got INTO Bison, seeing them play the Plaza before they were signed to Metal Blade. So it was fun running into him again and making sure he knew about the Dead Bob gig -- which itself was fun, because Masa did a double take to learn that Ford Pier was in the band, such that I would, later in the night, have cause to put Masa and Ford together to chat about the gig, once I spotted Ford (I thought he was arriving after Psychic Trash had played but in fact he saw and enjoyed them!). We jawed about how Ford is having to learn trombone (!?) and trying to master playing keyboards like John Wright. which apparently is no easy thing. Putting those two together (and letting Masa know about Dead Bob) was the my-work-here-is-DONE moment of the gig, where I otherwise spent mostly taking photos and occasionally thrashing around to Whores (the band whose live presentation I enjoyed most, though I liked Psychic Trash a bunch too, and even Disruptions, who I saw, and photographed, but did not record a clip of; sorry! Oxbow I kinda actually preferred on record -- and they were the only band whose album I bought, this new Ipecac release -- though my aching calves may have had something to do with it, by that point. They're definitely deserving of a bigger audience: Downgraded from the Rickshaw? What?!).

Oh, and Masa was impressed that Oxbow had played with Peter Brotzmann, and told me of how Bison had once opened for them...

But I have nothing much to say about any of the bands last night besides this. I shot video of Psychic Trash, Whores, and Oxbow, and a bunch of photos, too. Green Auto is INDEED a great little venue -- it's just north of Hastings, in the alleyway BEFORE you get to Pandora. If you walk up Pandora and see the Green Auto sign, you have gone the wrong way and have to go back up to the alley and then down it. Do not beeline straight for the door, as I did: there is a booth where you are supposed to pay, right after you turn into the alley, which I completely missed and then had to go find ("I think I was supposed to pay here? Didn't even see you, sorry!").  

Oh, one fun story -- at the merch table after Psychic Trash, Sam, the drummer (who said hell yeah I should upload the video) explained that the song I'd shot was called "Odysseys Away," a "silly" title inspired by the fact that the band used to drive around in a Honda Odyssey, which kept breaking down, and which they were eventually glad to ditch: "We were like, Odysseys AWAY!" he said, gesticulating his dismissal of this apparently somewhat shitty car. 

I also shot vid of Whores doing what I think were "Playing Poor" and "Imposter Syndrome" and Oxbow doing "Curse" off their first EP, Fuckfest.  Eugene was hard to photograph, difficult to capture, maybe because they had incense burning that was wafting up into my eyes and camera? He's an imposing figure, well-muscled, with a body language all his own, and a hell of a singer (on record he often weirdly reminds me of David Thomas of Pere Ubu, but there's not much of that in his live presentation!). Thanks to Ford Pier for pointing me at them. 

I guess maybe touring acts are not noseblind to the rendering plant stink, so the incense was probably a good idea. Otherwise, I'm going to let my pictures do the talking. Awesome night!

Doesn't that thumb look like a giant talking dick with teeth? Whose idea was this? 

Addendum: apparently there is more than one performance area at Green Auto, including an outdoor area in the summer? Or so I am being told. Also, Green Auto Music seems to do something I wish every venue would do, maintaining a regular Facebook page that tells you every gig there. I have signed up. People sad to have missed Night Court when they hadda bail on that Pointed Sticks/ Avengers show (when I last wrote about them) have a chance to see them this Friday, if you're not at the Princeton (for LuLu's, Crummy, Stab'em in the MeBats). It seems to me that the two venues are close enough together that I might try to duck out for part of the Princeton gig for part of the Green Auto gig, but I am not committing (it depends when Night Court is playing; I have not ascertained this). 

BTW, Night Court has a new EP and a fun video for their new song "Bride of Frankenstein." Oh, and I'm being told that they play at 11:30. More to come! 

End addendum-at-the-endum!