A Strange Dream I Had

I had a strange dream the other night.I was at a show in a small town. This was obvious by the fact that the band was playing on an outdoor,screened in veranda. The band reminded me of Berurier Noir, wearing clockwork orange gear, but with Chi Pig singing. Very serious stuff. Then there came a song where the band just stopped in the middle of the song and calmly set down their instruments and slowly start to file out of the porch into the night. Chi stays there, frozen in space, staring down the crowd with his best solo era Rollins gaze. As if on cue the crowd starts to leave too. After a couple of minutes every one is gone except me. I've had a couple and I've got a full one, very comfortable perched on the picnic table. Minutes pass and I realize that his eyes are on me staring me down so hard his eyebrows look like they are about to slam shut like a bear trap. I begin to become aware of someone to the side behind me. This petite woman in glasses and all kinds of tats ,approaches me and tells me I have to leave. I ask why.S he says that its the artists usual grand finale, representing each persons solitary fight against madness. Once he has stared down every one of his "demons" he can exit through the back of the hall and everyone will be allowed to re enter the club. I tell her that its the loopiest thing I've ever heard of. She insists that I have to leave to conclude the performance. I ask her if closing and covering my eyes while he made his escape would do. Finally she tells me shes willing to give me an autographed copy of a book written about Chi. I start to laugh and tell her that I'll give in and leave. As I exit through the front door the crowd has formed a wide arc and begin applauding. Confused I look for a escape route through the throng. They advance and begin to slap me on the back and rub my head. An acquaintance I don't recognize but somehow feel comfortable with,tells me I have set a new best time at 6:38 ...and I awake to this time on the clock.

Now the moral of this story might be don't take yourself or others too seriously. And the moral might be don't eat greasy shit before going to bed which my buddy Will blames strange dreams I remember on. Either way I wouldn't mind finding that club, nice fresh air, good beer and the smell of BBQ.

Killer Riffs, Rolled Up Cuffs And Beer That Tastes Like Crematory Ashes.

A buddy of mine put me onto a band he knew a few months ago. These guys are a Psychobilly (rockabilly songwriting with Misfits/ghoulish lyrics and themes)band from Victoria called the Switchblade Valentines. I checked out their Myspace page and found that the music was good and the production was great for an independent.
Later I find out they are doing a Canadian tour and would be coming to Montreal in September. Great. I set about getting more info on the band and the whole sub - culture. Found an old web site for the band that had the whole first album online for listening. Fun stuff. Digging into Psycho leads me to find out that Montreal, Calgary, and southern BC seem to be the hotbeds for this retro fitted, hot rod loving, roller derby obsessed, but otherwise harmless lifestyle. I won't call it a fad. There have always been billy scenes in every city. The ones today are just a little more jaded with punk backgrounds.
The show is at a small bar on St. Laurent & St. Catherine. Good size crowd out front smoking. Five clams to get in and stamped. The bar is set up like an older apartment. Open area with the bar in front, long hallway to the back, and another open space in the back where the stage is. More ink in here than at the Globe & Mail. The smell of denim and leather hits me in the face the way smoke used to. With the people outside the crowd seems to be about sixty deep. Best that can be expected for a Tuesday night. I had a couple of drinks and six or seven beer before leaving home so I'm glowing. Pitchers are $9 and come with four shots. We take Apple Jacks.
The band hits the stage with a fury that flattens the twenty odd people who make their way to the back to check out the music. First song, broken strings, knocked over drum kit and I know I'm definitely gonna need more beer. My buddy motions me to the bar. We knock the shots and chase with the beer while returning to the action. Somethings not right the beer goes down like one of those halfers you grab on Sunday morning only to discover there are two smokes inside. At first I figure its just the taste of the Apple Jacks fuckin with the taste of the micro brew. Nah the beer is really off.

This bunch of guys really kicks ass. I have never seen a drummer play standing up like that before. Well I have, but not while playing this fast. Too bad most of the crowd left when they started playing. Only about thirty people left in the whole place. Its the 25th of September, and we had an unusually hot day. The walls are melting in this little space and the singer isn't far behind. The boys are going breakneck now just trying to finish the set. They blaze through the last tune and run for smokes outside. I intercept the guitar player and chat for a minute ( he's from Hartland, down home, and a buddy told me to make sure to say Hi) and then make my way out and to the metro.
Good energy from the music and the crowd. Gonna make sure to check out more of the Psycho scene. Feel free to go check out the Switchblade Valentines at:
http://www.myspace.com/theswitchbladevalentines
and feel even freer to go check out any and all unsigned independent bands coming through your town. They are just hard working people like you and me that spend their vacations draggin' it across country to bring you the rock.

The Joys of Language.

Monday was a very relaxed day here in the Bell Province.The provincial election was on so there was no school, everyone was cutting work early, and it was generally a slow Monday.So to help kill time and begin to start helping them with their language skills,I decided to spend the day teaching some English to two of my co-workers.Both are new in Canada.Nur hails from Kyrgistan and Sizwed'lhami is from Swaziland.Don't worry I cant say it either.I just call him Sizzle.He's 18 and he's going to be a Hip Hop star and have all the womens in Canada after him.Sure he is.Soooo...as one of my first lessons I chose to work with education through music.No problem.Nixed the idea of starting with the national anthem.Happy birthday cruised by very quickly.Then for something a little more complex,New York,New York.Again painless and it was easy to tell that they were not only picking up the words ,but their relation to one another.So I chose to teach them the chorus to one of my favorite songs- Born With A Tail by the Supersuckers.Great little ditty,and it has a call and return pattern.Perfect for learning as a small group.Lyrics are as follows......

You Know! I'm in league with Satan
You Know!There is no debatin'
My Hellbound Trail
I was Born With a Tail !

Yahoo!Did that get yer blood up?Got me going.Nothing like a little fist pounding rock n roll to knock the corners off a day!Anyway, right from the get go big problems.Had to go to my dry erase grocery list board and start by explaining the difference between know and no,why we shorten words like debating, etc.Long story short after three or four brutal, stop/start, caterwauling renditions I can see by the glazed look that these two guys are just totally lost.They understand most of the words but they just cant piece them together in their heads.So I freeze for a moment and think,what would a teacher do?O.K. after excusing himself,running to the washrooms and sneaking a drink,what would a teacher do?I grasp at straws. "Any questions? ".The Russian guy wants to know why someone would want to play hockey with Father Christmas,Sizzle asks if his Mother is going to find out he was speaking of the Devil,and I decide that maybe its time to end the lesson for today.We work in silence for the last hour or so only chancing side to side darting glances at one another.By four pm., two of us were leaving and on the way to the bus I apologized to Nur if I confused him.He said "Don't worry.Many things are odd here.Why do I make the same sandwich for two hours on Friday?".Well Nur this is the joy of Language " One club,one club for two,one smoke meat,two more clubs,one no tomato,one extra cheese both with salad instead of fries,one no dressing,one fish and chip with a club ,brown bread....".

As it was in the begining...

Today I came to a huge personal revelation.When I left the sleepy hills to move to Montreal,I really didn't have a clear idea why I was doing it.Sure ,I wanted to be rescued from small town boredom by big city life.I could have found that anywhere.There were alot of people I knew living in Montreal.Good mates,and some became good freinds,but as they fell away and moved on,I remained.There was something I had to find here,something I was searching for.It wasn't a conscious thing,more of an peripheral itch.
I don't want to come across as if I have not enjoyed my 18 years here in Quebec.I've met a beautiful woman and been with her for 16 years.I have a good job which i find very gratifying.I've moved through several cliques of freinds and never had a problem being sociable,with french or english,hippie or tough.I love living here.I could just never figure out why.
For the past few weeks ivé been aboard the daunting task of filling up my 30 GB IPod.There is this old hold over mentality from mixed tapes and cdr's that you will always run out of space before you can finish your musical train of thought.No More.With 7000+ songs to play with all the essentials barely covered 3 gigs,then I started filling in album gaps,stuff that looks good if other people pick up your IPod,"Yeah,well,the thing about John Coltrane is...".What bullshit.Then you get to the point where you start to pick around for the quirky,dirty little secret stuff.I know Wall of Voodoo had more than one single,but monkey me if I can remember it.Alot of the mid to late eighties stuff I wanted I found on P2P sites.But some stuff I couldn't.I started making a list of things I felt I was missing and every day I would search the same nine or ten entries.From searching the list over and over I came to a realization.All of the artists on my list were Canadian.Most of them were from Montreal.
Thats when it hit me.Why I came here,what this music had in common.Brave New Waves.Starting in '84 or so,I started listening to the nations overnight radio show on CBC.Right away I fell into this show and its spirit.This was something that was not commercial,not censored,and aimed at that 15 % nerd share of the 15 to 35 year old demographic pie.If you wore something that identified you as different(skateboard,sketchpad,mohawk,camera etc.)you were tuning into the show.I would get home from school,do my homework and take a nap after supper so I could stay up til 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning.Then I would pop in a cassette to tape the next 45 minutes and listen to it on the bus on the way to school the next morning.
The host,Brent Bambury,was from my hometown and had one of those calming,hypnotic CBC voices.Once every couple of years he would come home and a beach BBQ would be organized.BNW fans were unique because they had a much wider social web than anyone else in high schools.Instead of the University radio format of a 2 hour block of punk,then 1 hour of hiphop,2hours of industrial etc,the genre was flipping almost as fast as genres were being invented in the 80's.If I was small town and wanted to hear some new Black Flag,I had to listen through Skinny Puppy and Joy division to get it.And I got it.I got it all.
What really stood out was the fact that while broadcast from Montreal,Brent,Ava Rave,KevinKamoda managed to highlight local acts as often as possible.but it wasn't just the music.It was the stories ..."As I was walking in to work tonight,..."or .."They'll be at Station 10 tommorow night.."There were weekend overnight shows as well called Nightlines,fron Winnepeg and later from Vancouver.Didn't have the same feel at all.
For me Montreal wasnt a music scene,it was a music family.Every artist spent as much time plugging other local bands as they did flogging their own product.Álmost as if all the bands in Montreal all lived in a big block apartment together that bled art and dripped party.
So now that I know what brought me here,the real search is about to begin.Scouring the Internet for whispers of S.c.u.m.,Genetic Control,the Asexuals,Three Oclock Train,Jerry Jerry,My Dog Popper,the Doughboys(at right) ,the Nils,Deja Voodoo(seen above),the Gruesomes,Ray Condo ...and many others.Those are just the ones that were already gone by the time I got here.
So now I have a new mission-to build a angloMontreal music archive of stuff from the 80s.It would have been so easy for these people to go and try to make it in T.O.But they stayed.And others came.By 1990-91 Montreal almost blew up.Seattle had better coffee and more overdoses.But it didn't have history.Or a voice in the night.