Hooray For Productivity

Were it not for eating, sleeping and breathing, I would've got nothing done today.

Actually, this is just what I needed.

Ok, Three Things:

1) The cab driver's first language was clearly english, yet I could not understand a word he said. And he talked. A lot.

2) "Master of the Universe" by Hawkwind is obviously the greatest song ever written.

3) Flirtation is important. Critical, even.

I Never Call Shotgun...

...because to me there are only two kinds of seat in a car. The kind that requires driving, and the kind that does not.

h_P-x: Experience Number One

I was already involved in the local music scene when the fest began in the early 90s. I didn't pay much attention to it then, because the term "pop" in the title implied to me that punk bands were not allowed, and that was the only kind of music I liked at the time. So I tended the view the entire event as a lot of in-crowdy self-congratulation by some local "cool kids" with no use for punk rock bands.

"Hey man, I was into punk... WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN! A-hyuk a-hyuk."

In retrospect, I was probably the narrow-sighted one. I missed out seeing a lot of bands I would go on to like years after the fact. Nevertheless, not a lot of punk bands played the event in its first few years.

My opinion started to change in 1996. I don't remember who was responsible, (maybe it was my good friends in this band) but somehow, Old Band got asked to play an all ages show at the fest, with some vaguely like-minded bands, no less. I got pretty excited, and I wondered why we had been granted this attention after three years together. But there was MORE! We even got on the cover of this magazine! What the hell?? I thought "those people" hated us! Well, whatever. We were going to take any attention we could get, and run with it. The title of that edition of the mag was both silly and ironic.

"Punk's not dead, it's gone back to COOL".

It was the publication's "back to school" edition. Hee hee!

The photo shoot was pretty weird. We went out behind Paper Chase and struck some poses. CM was quite decked out, and not surprisingly was featured most prominently in the winning shot. LR, myself and белорус Рикк were just blurs in the background, but we were fine with that. I didn't like to be photographed back then.

Anyway, these unexpected overtures from the indie rock community prompted me to make a similar gesture of mutual acceptance. And that was: me wearing something special in the photo shoot. It was a t-shirt I'd bought in grade eleven (some 8 years earlier) of a local band that featured two future members of the famous Hali-rock group Sl__n. The shirt was, by that time, a complete disaster. There had to have been at least a hundred small holes in it. I wore a flannel over the top. Hey, it's the 90s!

A really funny thing happened not long after. I was at the magazine's office for some fest-related reason (I think I was getting our passes), and who was there but a couple of the Sl__n guys. With piles of magazines lying around sporting my band's collective mug, I could not stop myself...

(some small talk about fest, to break the ice)

"y'KNOW... (points to mag)... I'm wearing a KLR shirt in that picture."

Oh god, what a stupid thing to say. I felt like such an ass-kisser after that. I should have played it more cool. I guess I was just blinded by the Halifame.

We played at Cafe-O with...hmm... this band, and some other pop punk bands. I was in AN at the time, and I remember breaking not one but TWO strings during the same song. And here's something about me: I NEVER stop in the middle of a song when a string breaks during a show. At a jam, yes, but not a show. If a string breaks, find a way to finish without it. Improvise! Two strings though, was quite a challenge. I think we were covering a HD (the HD from Mnnpls) song, and I was singing at the time. What a moment! I don't remember much about Old Band's set. There was a good crowd though, and people danced a lot. That was important to me at the time.

Anyway, after that I had a better attitude about the fest. There certainly were some good punk shows this year, and there have been many others in the past.

Next time, I'll get into more current h_P-x talk.

Experiences Numbers Two and Three

My second experience with exploding pop was in 2005 when GS played. I'm pretty proud of that show. We got on with a great band from Brooklyn, and the event ended up being voted second-best local show of the year by readers of the publication linked below. Tough to compete with a Pe__l J_m concert, I guess.

Which brings us to this year. GS did not apply, since local acts are seldom admitted two years in a row (understandably). BB did, and was accepted. We somehow managed to score TWO shows: one 19+ (Thursday night) and one all-ages. On Saturday we actually played twice in one night: an opening set at the Pav, then a headlining(-ish) set in Truro, one hour out of town.

Sound like a busy weekend? Well it was, especially after GS was brought in as a subsitute on Friday. Four shows for me in three nights.

Thursday night, BB opened the show in Hell. The crowd fluctuated considerably (there was another show upstairs), but a small core of people stayed up front. I like the claustrophobia of engaging a large group of people when playing live. The resulting tension makes for an enjoyable performance, to me. I don't want to be comfortable up there, nor do I particularly want the audience to be. There's one BB song where I like to solo provocatively (if not flirtatiously) in front of a select audience member for a few seconds. I had a particular beneficiary in mind on this night, but could not find her. It was a good set. The instrumental we opened with will eventually have lyrics. I can't comment much on the rest of the show as I had to leave early. There was eventually an enormous crowd.

Friday night GS hit Stage Nine. That stage is higher than I'd like it to be (see above), but I can't really complain since all of our shows there have been really good. Ube did not "roll around in broken glass" this time (that's a GS urban myth anyway, heh heh), nor did he injure himself (or anyone else) by jumping onto the audience. The people seemed so far away I couldn't tell how many of them there were, or if they were enjoying themselves. We played really well though, I thought. A nice recovery after G-fest the other week. We might have been the punkest band at that gig, but we were probably the least so Friday night. The other bands were awesome.

Saturday BB rocked the local all-ages club in good form after our Thursday show. No major complaints there. I wore a bike helmet in addition to my usual mask because I felt I was having a bad hair day. It was interesting rocking out in a bike helmet. My neck hurt more, yet I felt oddly safer. I have no idea how the rest of that show went because we had to bail immediately.

Truro was awesome, as usual. Small town punk scenes take note: it's ok to like bands that aren't mainstream-modern-emo. Truro understands this. DMY were amazing and the audience knew it. Hell yeah. BB played our best show of the three; we were in the middle of the floor, surrounded by people. As per above, I really felt the power. It allowed me to dig deep and play hard. I almost had a funny experience with falling over. I was trying to step onto my amp in mid-song, with really mediocre results. It took me about 7-8 seconds to fully catch my balance, and I never stopped playing. It probably did not look very dynamic.

Satisfied, we drove home at the end of the night. I finished my radio show, with Ube having covered the first part for me. Thanks Ube!

Next week on the radio I will bug people for money. More on that later.

Job Well Done

Alright, all four shows are successfully completed. I'm beat. I'll write about this stuff in full when I have some time.

The Difference Between...

GS is a three-piece jigsaw puzzle (playing one show in the next three days).

BB is a four-ingredient soup (playing three shows in the next three days).

One of my next posts will be about my experiences with the h_P-x, past and present.

Screen Name

If I had one right now, it might be "Sick And Cultivating Sudoku Addiction".

No For An Answer

You can't pursue romance the way you would pursue other goals in this world. When I want something I tend to get super-focused on it, to the point of ignoring many other things around me. Obviously, that tactic is a non-starter. There are enough creeps out there already.

Because of the shortage of grey areas in my way of thinking, I find I'm overly cautious when I like a girl and am not sure if she feels the same (or to what degree). At the same time, I think I have a better grasp than ever on when it is good to take a chance. Refer to the garbage truck bit on this album. Just kidding, but that bit is hilarious.

I thought I had something profound to say here, but I was incorrect. Leave this blog now, people. Return to your cuddling or canoodling, or whatever.

The Bus

People whine about taking the bus, sometimes to the point of sounding very classist. Am I the only person on earth who has no problem taking the bus? The bus is great because I'm not driving it.

Smile!

If you ever take a picture of me, please don't ask me to smile. A smile is a very personal expression that cannot just be called up on demand. I can spot a fake a mile away. If you want me to smile, why not just do something funny? It's not that hard.

On a related note, I hope I never have to be in some stupid "family photo" again. There aren't many things tackier than a picture of a (fake smiling-) family in some ridiculous, unrealistic pose wearing clothes they would not otherwise be wearing, against some lame backdrop. I seriously hope no one ever puts me through that as an adult.

Hey, family pictures can be done nicely. Like a candid shot where they're all at a picnic, or building a snowman together or something. Something fun and joyful looking. No backdrops, no "Sunday suits", no choreographed hand-on-shoulder, no necks twisted ceilingward, no fake expressions, no all-looking-in-the-same-direction. There has to be a better way.

"If I were to walk through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
Well first I'd go to the room where they keep the Cezanne
But if I had by my side a girl friend
Then I could look through the paintings
I could look right through them"

- Jonathan Richman

Emøverride II

Playing live is a more emotional experience for me than it used to me. In GS particularly, I feel kind of naked up there. If people are smiling and getting knocked over (then getting up and smiling again), I could care less how tight or sloppy we are. We've done what we came to do. If the audience is cold to us I get really bummed out afterwards, whether we played well or not.

I would give yesterday's set a B- or C+ (not terrible), but it seemed like we were beating our heads against a brick wall in terms of "feelin' the love". I felt pretty low afterward. I kept thinking how I needed a really, really long hug. In my 15 years of playing live I don't think I've ever thought that after a show. Not even after the final Cafe-O show, which was emotional as fuck.

So as I said, it was a lonely merch table.

a) Lonely Merch Table b) Ranting

Some people are good at hawking merch. Poison and Tobe are masters of this art. I'm terrible at it. I try.

"That comp is awesome!"

"That's a pretty good recording."

"We actually sound tight on the seven inch."

It's not that I don't want people to buy the stuff. Of course I do. I don't have good instincts for making people want to buy stuff. To me, the goodness of the merch goes without saying, since obviously I would never sell shitty merch. Doye.

I think GS (or even BB) should make more floppy disc singles and keep selling them for a dollar. Those are the easiest things to get people to buy.

Last night I sat at the merch table for much of the show. Save for our little 3" CDR, we had no CDs to sell. Just vinyl, tapes and floppy disks. We're going to put out a CD soon, we just found obscure formats more mystical and interesting to explore from the time we formed.

Now I'm not going to complain about people not buying our shit. That's their choice, and god knows we were a difficult sell last night. See, a big part of the band's charm is getting crazy and engaging the audience. That's what we do at every show. A respectable number of people have come to appreciate this, especially around H_x. Older people seem to understand us better. I don't know why that is, but I've been trying to figure it out ever since last night.

When I was in high school, I was attracted to the local music scene for probably the same reasons kids today are. But a big difference is that a "punk" scene in those days, by definition was pretty wild, noisy, way out there and/or sorta violent. There were no strata of really over-the-top punk bands vs punk bands that the jocks at my school would like. Punk scenes attracted people who by and large were into crazy stuff (music, culture, diy, etc), and the bands we went to see ultimately reflected this.

But because punk rock scenes are fun, they eventually began to garner a lot of mass media attention. Bands came along that could use this system to appeal to large numbers of people. It stands to reason that nowadays, a marketable-looking and -sounding band could be motivated by getting super-popular in the media. The possibility of stardom to me is a big thing that separates the punk scene of my teenage years from today. You know there are bands out there who are driven by this, whether they realize it or not. A punk band in the old days knew from the get-go that mass-media stardom was an impossibility, so it couldn't have been much of a driving factor in making their music. And I'm not talking so much about the original wave of punk bands here. Punk got mainstream attention then, but it was bad attention. Meaning, good attention. If BB got written up in Time because people rioted at all our shows, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I think a lot of people today don't make a distinction between punk rock that is "mainstream", or not. And no wonder... there's nowhere to draw a line. It's a world of grey areas, just like all other aspects of life. As was the case when I was a teenager, I want to be part of a music scene where I can say "this is ours, not theirs". Somewhere along the line I realized that the coolest music and culture are a little harder to find, and that much more rewarding when you do. Obscure things are often unique, and I like unique.

On the surface, punk is more popular now than it's ever been, but I think that's a facade. I think about the same number of people like music and culture that is truly "alternative", compared to 1982 or whenever. All the extra people are really into something else.

But I think a few of them will join us, eventually. That's why we need to keep reminding them we're out there.

Emøverride

There are a lot of emo bands out there.

A LOT.

Enough that you'd think there'd be a huge backlash against it. After all, young people have always brought music and rebellion together. Yet on this issue, there seems to be a large, unified front without a lot of dissention.

Personally, I find it unyouthlike. But then I'm just some old dude in some shitty punk bands. What the fuck do I know?

On a *ahem* unrelated note, I'll talk about the Sydney show soon.

Sounds about right.

Best Music To Listen To At Work

This. Yesterday I listened to a track that was just under two hours long.

Off topic: tomorrow GS is off to Gobblefest. We will wreck some shit and ruin Cape Breton forever.

Growler Headcount

Three in the fridge right now. And a fourth is coming soon.

Pumpkin Ale Party At My House

The PA is now available. Get some and meet me at my place Tuesday night, October 3rd. I plan to be back by 9pm, but others might be here earlier to let you in.

Giddy up!

I'm Gonna Go Make Me A Sandwich!

Fuck yeah!