discorder /) *2 € ^Thw C*jra*Tr ^^kjjfc 3' 3 ^ Ko ^B Bk » 12, jfl Hi -^ J ' B^. «"t *-* HWw HK. k3L < Bf^v L JM » a MjMij^BJB^tf^ ^L ^^T u> >s A ^W !^5jW^^Tn^B ■ 1. i *fl SS If 1 ^^jj ■ A St ) 1 \ 1 1 life**, ifl 1 II ^, ^ international j£j ^J e»§Fz COMMODORE BALLROOM 06/20 AMON TOBIN / i -• \ + Meta4 Collective T\\ /Ua ... 1 06/21 LITTLE FEAT + David Gogo 06/22 CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA + sekoya 06/23 K-OS + Kia Kadiri 4? PERFORMANCE WORKS henkell 06/24 ZAWINUL SYNDICATE + Lappelectro 06/21 Beady Belle 06/23 Adios 06/25 PLENA LIBRE + Rumba Calzada 06/26 ANTIBALAS AFR0BEAT ORCHESTRA + Shango Ashe 06/27 BLONDE REDHEAD HIGH TONE 06/24 Crowd Control Collective 06/26 sekoya 06/27 Smokey & Miho 06/28 Magic Malik Orchestra 06/29 Erik Truffaz 06/28 MR. SCRUFF SMOKEY & MIHO COASTALJAZZ.CA 06/29 ORCHESTRA BAOBAB jazz hotline 604-872-5200 + Magic Malik Orchestra TICKETS ASTER 604-2 80~4444 Canada" Music TO THE BEAT OF H9HTEYIHA A clu bvibes.com OOastalwJUT Wc set the stage. You set the du Maurier Jazz New Music Wasteland by Chris Eng p.l2 Young and Sexy by Emily Kendy p.l 5 Art Spread: Scooter Girl Showdown by Chynna Clugston-Major p. 16 Death Cab For Cutie by Merek Cooper p. 18 Gl Joe Killai by Shad McAllister p.20 Sinoia Caves by Paul Loughlean p.21 Mita Music Sucks p.6 Airhead p.7 Fucking Bullshit p.7 Panarticon p.8 Over My Shoulder p.8 Strut & Fret p.9 Vancouver Special p.10 Screw You and Your Pointy Shoes p.10 Under Review p.22 Real Live Action p.24 Leprechaun Colony p.26 Charts p.27 On the Dial p.28 Kickaround p.29 Datebook p.30 (BfiiMgfr Shannon Hemmett did the cove short notice. In the beginning \ take a picture, and she said al changed our minds about what she accommodated that. Then we just if she could do the whole thing this month on : asked her to •ight. Then we e wanted and ked her id okay. kers Then she turned in this beaut (featuring local Crystal Pistol) with time to spare. Now, that's pro Editor-ln-Chimp: Chris Eng Deputy Editor: Merek Cooper Ad Master: "Ay, Steve" DiPo Art Directors: Chris & Merek Editorial Assistant: Donovan Schaefer RLA Coordinator: Brian Piskorik Website Design: Esther Layout and Design: Chris & Merek (Like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, but we're not planning on dying in a Mexican bank robbery.) Production: Kimberly Day, Julie C, Doretta, Esther, Luke Meat, saelan, The Ubyssey (as per always) Masthead Photo: Stinkmitt On the Dial: Bryce Dunn/The Limey Charts: Luke Meat Datebook: The Limey Distribution: Matt Steffich US Distro: Frankie Rumbletone Publisher: Lydia Masemola "DiSCORDER" 2003 by the Student Re I rights reserved. Circulation 17,500. Subscript $15 for one year, to residents of the USA an (to cover postage, of course). Please make cheque DEADLINES: Copy deadline for the July lio Society of the Univer: 3ns, payable in advance, $15 US; $24 CDN elsev or money orders payable ti ty of British Columbia. All to Canadian residents are lere. Single copies are $2 DiSCORDER Magazi lable u iljur 25 a | be booked by calling Steve at 604.822.3017 ext. 3. Our rates are available upon request. DiSCORDER is not responsible for loss, damage, or any other injury to unsolicited manuscripts, unsolicited artwork (including but not limited to drawings, photographs and transparencies), or any other unsolicited material. I Material can be submitted on disc or in type. As always, English is preferred. Send email to DiSCORDER at | discorder@club.ams.ubc.ca. From UBC to Langley and Squamish to Bellingham, CiTR can be heard at 101.9 fM as well through all major cable systems in the Lower Mainland, except Shaw in White Rock. Call the | CiTR DJ Tine at 822.2487, our office at 822.3017 ext. 0, or our news and sports lines at 822.3017 t. 2. Fax us at 822.9364, e-mail us at: citrmgr@mail.ams.ubc.ca, visit our web site at www.citr.ca or just pick a goddamn pen and write #233-6138 SUB Blvd., Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, CANADA. Now I wanna sniff some glue, now I wanna have something to do. All the kids wanna sniff some glue, | the kids want something to do. 66 water st Vancouver be •^(w^ 604 683 6695 printed in Canada for more info on these shows and our complete calendar log onto www.sonar.bc.ca 3 DiSCORDER out June 10 14 tracks plus s|i www.dropkick: .com www.hell-cat.cojn www.epitaph.coin Itrxnb Epitaph //** •'v £► EUNK-OiRAMAS (}T?TmfWyT^!TrT^ J W^L The Distillers ^Death By Stereo] Bouncing Sculs^Matchbook Romance Jg NOFX ^Bad Religion^t Error Division of Laura Lee M*kara ^olt K F-Minus J Sage Francis | Refused Randy ^ The Black Keys ^Motion City Soundtrack Dropkick MurphysM Transplants^ ■ fltmosphere^^ ^menco^^^GuJt. ^7 No Fun fit RII^-^S rThe (International 1 Noise Conspiracy 4jC E23 2 cd set loaded with new and unreleased music JUiigh decibel low denomination double-disc abomination www.epltaph.com STRUNG OUT OUft rOOftTH RCtCrtSC IN THC "-lit ■* k »^ s. i .; jir.' -^ - 1U1, • you M#iy Neve* <ser ro see zrttoNc our rtAY o* Meer meui oit cvcn know what THCY COOK tIKC. WHO <Mt€&, cer this ftc<ofti> —IT ftOtCS! tr iN<tot>es sntuNts our <OMi< BOOK! NEW RELEASE 3 ON FAT WRECK CHORDS ONE MO : • , ...l L4 ' 1 4 • ,-. j\« \j-wr<=ct . • •" ILE UNDER BLACK NEW CD AND LP OUT JUNE 03 "an album that will ha en tne most something fresh, n been introduced to the genre. ^-Alternative Press M *wv^nemoreblackonJ CANADIAN -* SURUIUOR * TOUR -j 2003 M law fjjfcer\/ogt %if-i a 14 **' • *: -■ ^ J Tired of the same ol' same ol'? Looking for a club night with some real bite? This is the real dance underground, drawing simultaneously from the heavier and more electronic genres and rejecting the tired tunes of the mainstream, and delivering a mix of favourite classics and fat new tunes. Come dressed to the 9's in your swankiest or freakiest gear or come casual, and join the weekly worship - whether it's the simple experience of the music you're after, heavy consumption or incessant dancing, this is the best kept secret in town. Dfti PANDEMONIUM ALEFICENT S . *ELECTRO *RETRO *DARHWAVE *SVf"ITHPOP *inDUSTRIAL *ALTERnATIVE 'VRS AND .STILL GOING iSTRONG! 9PIVI-2AIV1 STILL ONLY $2 SUNDAYS THE PURPLE ONION IMMAICAMC editorializing by Chris Eng Ask people nicely. This my advice to you. , people nicely and see what kind of super-nice magic things happen. Send your favourite comic artist a letter saying how much you like her work and ask if she has any other art kicking around that she might want in print. She just might respond that no, she doesn't have anything on-hand, but she'll do up some original art ASAP. Which is more or less how it transpired that Chynna Clugston-Major ended up doing the centre art-spread in this issue. As the creator of the wildly successful Blue Monday comics—and her new series, Scooter Girl (right, and in the spread—both from Oni Press)—it's not like she has a lot of free time on her hand, but, like most people, a politely delivered "please" went a long way. So thanks, Chynna. And if all of this doesn't convince the non-believers to start reading comics, then there's nothing more I can do for you. Hide under a rock and enjoy your Jennifer Aniston movies, heathens. <www.onipress.com> MORRISSEY RISH HOUSE Bryce Dunn 3.oo Wells y^&ff k 2.36 CANS AND THE SOON-TO-BE FAMOUS BENNyTHEBy.OV JUKE BOX you bring em' ^ he'll play em' ■ rftg-i.r.i;i'«m t-ti.j i \A Icarair WHUTEHFU? Dear Sir or Madam, Write to comment on the first issue of "DISCORDER" 2003 I've seen. I loved the sound of spectacle by tobias, panarticon, actually. Canada must be proud. Bullshit by Christa Min, fucking bullshit, is another glowing moment immediately after reading REACHING FOR GOD'S BALLS. Next, book reviews by Doretta, over my shoulder; Here I end with "images endure". Canadians! The cherry on my cake was tour diaries, road worm and weary, by Jenny Smith. 'Toronto', as a subject. Last chance for Tim Horton's! Just kidding. My reader did not get most of this from me. El Aaiun beats Toronto. The music stuff went right past me. I didn't know any of the artists mentioned. I'm willing to wait one hundred years to see if anyone salted and stuck upon a hook to cure finds perfection with age. Okay. Skip the salt, if expense matters, but no rusty barbs. I thought about a subscription. Fifteen dollars is not unreasonable. The material reminded me of my own student period within University of California at Santa Cruz. The problem is that I need to buy rope this week e stump that That it makes you want to die seems inclined to slide into my wonder what could be so tragic Caves are more fun. Yours truly, J.A. Clardy (in the dark) ion. Makes you v life You have your savior on the cross While you sit on the throne Put youself up on that cross Put T (Written on the back of the photo—Here is a tribute for your efforts. Pink and Plastic should suffice. Better than Benz!) THREE FROM PLEE (There is no explanation for these, "plee" sent them to us and they appear as is. You figure it out.) "There is edge, anc e good, knowl- I, ignorance." youn "I wonder what can be so bad one..." your savior on the throne And I know It's hard to take what's happening And 1 know Life is tough sometimes And I know It seem like there's no hope for you And 1 know Your life is worth more than you can say It's hard to see beyond your pain When you feel so dead inside It's hard to see what you've been given It's hard to find a hope in life" it show this to any- here are three people who never get the credit they deserve: Julia Roberts, Kobe Bryant, and Clif Magness. Julia Roberts is the greatest living actress to never win a Juno Award. Kobe Bryant is the world's best basketball player without a penis sponsor. It is absolutely ridiculous. 1 believe that some day both Roberts's and Bryant's hard work will pay off. I don't think Clif Magness will ever be recognized for the genius that he is without my help. Clif Magness is the greatest songwriter of all time. He has written hits for DeBarge, Wilson Phillips, and Celine Dion. More recently, he has penned the majority of the songs on Avril Lavigne's debut album, including the masterpiece "Losing Grip." Magness was lucky enough to get some credit for his songwriting on the album. Lavigne insists that she and Magness 'co-wrote' the songs. This is completely false. Sure, she threw in a yodel here and there, but all she really did was cup Magness's balls while he came up with the melodies. That gave him inspiration. Nothing's more inspiring than a good old cupping of the balls. Anytime Avril's arm would get tired, he would say "Hey now, you're losing grip." 1 suppose the money Clif gets for every thousand times that song is played an hour is wrote for The White Stripes. He doesn't get a cut of the profits. He barely even gets a pat on the back from Jack and Meg. They're friends and all, but Jack and Meg know that they'll be more popular if everyone thinks their songs are truly authentic and Sure, Avril threw in a yodel here and there, but all she really did was cup Magness's balls while he came up with the melodies. credit enough for him, but I don't agree. In the music business, he has a reputation for being a 'Hit Machine.' Most of his songs are extremely overproduced. He isn't particularly happy with this, but once he sells a song, there's not much he can do. Some people think he's a sell-out, but the fact is he only sells the songs that don't mean anything to him. The songs he loves the most are reserved for The White Stripes. It's true. Avril Lavigne's songs and The White Stripes' songs are written by the same person. Of course, Clif doesn't get any credit for the songs he intensely personal, not written by a 46-year-old Texan with blonde highlights and a moustache. The strange thing is that Clif doesn't seem to mind at all. He told me that the joy he gets from the fetching shape of Meg White's boobs is enough for him. Sorry, Cliffy, but I think you deserve much more. Unlike Mike Patton (who secretly wrote most of Aaliyah's hits), no one thinks you're cool_. You don't have to worry about ruining your reputation. You don't have to worry about Meg thinking that you're a creep. She already knows you are. Avril told her. • -"HE LOCUST PlflGUC 5QUNDSCAPGS Hfl Mvtofr •mm : I jun EM 5D03 7 DiSCORDER tanarticon the sound of spectacle by tobias VACUOUS AND VICIOUS: VANCOUVER Flying back to BC was a lesson in depression. As soon as you cross the Rockies you can hear the world's largest vacuum cleaner performing its duties as the welcoming anthem to No Fun City. Suuucccckkkkk... Swooping in just in time to hear schoolmarm Anne Drennan advance the finger- wagging on iivmg-it-up if the Canucks pulled through, it was enough to hurl me straight through the remants of a once-beautiful city, deep management, paranoia, and brutality all collapsed into about 10 square blocks—the Downtown Eastside. it seems that despite the best efforts of COPE, Vancouver Police Chief Constable Jamie Graham has added an extra pillar to the Four Pillar strategy: aggression. Every iota of data collected in the past 10 years on reducing crime and dealing with the Vancouver Eastside drug problem in a humane and supporting manner has gone to tne fish (or what's left of those Pacific salmon). Moreover, Graham has succeeded in poiicmg efforts in implementing an uncalled for strategy of increased policing. To say this is disappointing only begins to recognise the power struggle in play between the public and the police. It is an old struggle, of course, between those with the blue and the badge and those without. It seems that it is time to consider another agenda for COPE, for what needs to be changed is the very way in which the constitution of the police department is determined. Why aren't Police Chiefs elected by the community in tandem with a weighted vote from other sectors, including the Police Department and the City Councillors? A balanced electoral process, while admittedly never being able to avoid the nepotism of democracy, would nonetheless ensure a degree of harmony and an alignment of vision between the public's support of various tactics—such as the overwhelming support for the Four Pillars plan—and the Police Department's aims. And when I mean aims, I don't mean the rhetorical bullshit on their website—<www.city.van couver.bc.ca/police/>. I mean fear, intimidation, detainment without arrest, harassment, surveillance (cameras or otherwise), violence—the tactics of the cop, the actual encounter between cop and citizen, and the fact that today, an over- 8June 2003 zealous and aggressive police could become the city's worst vice, in sabotaging efforts to open much-needed safe-injection sites and in presenting an atmosphere which, for some atmosphere for living. It is about creating a space for the ravages of capital to cruise out of control. It's about making the Governmenta -and ir vithv stronger, Libera rallei Any that ious powerplays by previous Councils and business—has resembled xenophobic smalltown wagon-circling more than the energy of a world- class city. (Come to think of it, Jamie Graham was Police Chief of Surrey. And Surrey turned out just fine, right? Right.) I don't mean post-Giuliani NYC as a model for Vancouver, nor do I mean the overblown hype of the Olympics. Something a little intangible that comes about through public partici- and fare-state or not—were to be "returned to" under Campbell is now having his doubts; and even the Libertarians, followers of Ayn Rand or no, are realising that the current Liberal Government is more solidly anchored as a State than ever, and is no closer to loosening up the deeply Puritan foundations of this Province that even hold back those hidden Supermen. Why aren't clubs Why are the police still passing out fines for wiggling ass in a cafe? Why are youth still being harassed for choking a joint? Why can't I carry alcohol in a backpack to my apartment during the fireworks? pation, through a relaxing of laws pertaining to the public's right of assembly, of inges- i of > jbsta. of ho: ing and creating events, art, music; of raising awareness of social issues that plague others in our neighborhoods and communities; of creating a ward system for improved regional representation—certainly none of this calls for the ruling decisions of an elite cabal, which means that the Vancouver City Councillors, Chief Jamie Graham, and the Provincial Liberals are on a collision course, a course that necessitates a few markers: think Berlin's reconstruction, Montreal's political negotiations... Imagine converting Vancouver's scenic backdrop beauty to a network node of the West Coast, a city on the flow of the Fraser—blow down the dam that holds this city and province confined to puri- tanism and big business. JACKBOOTDOWN, BC From mountain to ocean, the province has ushered in a new error. Everything is now in the hands of those clammy humans whose only earthly goal is the accumulation of fabricated interest, these strange, future- projected visions of profit, and what amounts to, in the end, the future of the CEO: holidays in Cancun. Which all boils down to—as water becomes privatized (don't worry BC, we'll get our Walkerton too)—the quest for power. The deregulation of the Province, while in some areas welcomed, is not about creatine an efficient .open til 4am? Why are the police still passing out fines for wiggling ass in a cafe? Why are youth still being harassed tor choking a joint? Why can't I carry alcohol in a backpack io my apartment during the fireworks? Why am I filmed by surveillance cameras on a daily basis in a relatively peaceful Central Business District? The petty issues, perhaps—as they are all signifiers of the major struggles being played out over the very lifeblood of the province: the working classes, a century and a half of what can only be understood as class and anti-racist/sexist struggle, and—for the first time in this history—the fault and failure of the institutional structure that has staged the fight: the Union. The Unions have, for better or for worse, had their Liberal dreams smashed. Kudos to the HEU for rejecting the downsizing and vicious "offer" from the BC Liberals. The time for negotiations is over; the time for collaboration—COPE and Unions vs. the Province—has come. If the Right can easily coalesce diverging splinter-factions to formulate effective strategies, so can the Left: the time for infighting is over, the time for thinking of effect has come: of ways to change the way people live in this Province, and that ting vith ing everyone like humans, world citizens—be they in the Downtown Eastside or letting loose a little dancing desire in a late-night cafe. Oust the Fuckers. • over mv book reviews by Doretta I SHALL WEAR THE BOTTOMS OF MY TROUSERS ROLLED The title of this coiumn has much more to do with growing old than it does with a fashion statement (points to my fellow nerds who got this and iast month's references to T.S. Eliot). Oh yes, I grow old, 1 grow old. If I'm not careful, I'm going to sit around moaning about taxes and how kids these days have no respect for their elders: I'm primed to become a curmudgeon and my friends are not far off with their preferences for wearing old men hats and inclinations to spend evenings playing shuffleboard. And as it is, I'm mourning the fact that Liz Phair has hired the same songwriting team that Avril Lavigne favours. (Is Ms. "Fuck and Run" now going to be singing about Sk8ter Boiz? a mortgage, a marriage and two kids are already in the picture. I mean, look at Reese Witherspoon. She's twenty- something with a family and a hot career, plus she's legally blonde. Oh yeah, she's also a Hollywood star, so her life really has no useful comparison of the world I'd be hitting the halfway point in my life: I'd be an official old maid. My parents would be lamenting the fact that they could never be rid of me at this ripe old age. There alter ) the "I don't know what I'm doing with my life and I'm chronically single" camp, but these are the first ones that come to mind. Oh! Give me disposable income, another student loan, an unful- filling job and the ability to choose to see such fine movies I've taken to leaving shows early, even in the middle of sets that I'm enjoying, because I need to go to sleep. There's only one conclusion for this behaviour: I'm making the transition into being Little Miss No Fun. I shudder when I think about it for longer than a few seconds.) I've even taken to leaving shows early, even in the middle of sets that I'm enjoying, because I need to go to sleep. There's only one conclusion for this behaviour: I'm making the transition into being Little Miss No Fun. Perhaps this is all happening because it's time for my very own quarter-life crisis. For the longest time, I made fun of other people's quarter-life crises and their what-should-l-do-with-my-life angst. Better to have the crisis now than have it at forty or fifty, I always thought. Carpe diem and all that noise. But lately, I've begun to wonder just what I'm going to do now that I'm supposed to be all grown up. I'm not liking it. This situation may be aggravated by the fact that I've recently moved back to my parents' house in the suburbs in order to save money before going to grad school in the fall. It might also have to do with the fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has ended and the show had been on air for the duration of my two undergraduate degrees. Oh, the passing of an era. I don't miss having to read Plato, and whatever will I do with my Tuesday nights now that I can't laugh at Andrew's antics and roll my eyes as Buffy gives yet another epic speech? But I digress. I should get back to this month's topics: growing old and the quarter- life crisis. For other people, hittine twentv-five means that as The Hot Chick over being responsible. Yes, give me more of the selfish lifestyle I lead. But the realization that maybe this whole extended tinue on until my thirties is a little depressing: Sex and the City is an amusing television show, but I don't want to live it, even if there's good shoes involved (I can't walk in heels anyway). To tell you the truth, I'm tired of customer service jobs and dealing with unscrupulous landlords. I really want to be able to start something big and finish it. All I can do at the moment is try to finish reading a book or two and not complain too often, because I've got it pretty g W.H. NEW Riverbook and Ocean (Oolichan) W.H. New teaches at UBC and his second year literature class was where 1 learned to ponder questions of landscape, race, class, and gender. During this time I also realized that he is one of Canada's pre-eminent scholars in Canadian Literature and he's responsible for a new way of reading CanLit and Canadian-ness. We have to thank him for giving us an alternative to Margaret Atwood's idea that CanLit is all about survival and Ontario. He also edited The Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, an excellent reference guide that has stirred up controversy in the literary community because various writers and reviewers felt that they either 1) should have been included, due to the fact that they are important people, or 2) should have a longer write up than so-and-so. Did 1 say controversy? I meant petty jealousies. In any case, Riverbook and Ocean is New's fourth book of poetry. You may have read a poem of his on the bus about cycling (have a look for the poem, it's a good one). This collection is divided into four sections: "Riverbook & Ocean," "Shorelines," "Garden Bed," and "Taking Turns." The most compelling section is the last, "Taking Turns," which is a series of poems about a cast of mostly marginalized characters—farmers, the elderly, juvenile delinquents and alcoholics—in British Columbia environments. New references the West End, Dundarave, Ambleside, White Rock, and Steveston. He also pays homage to the flora and fauna of our region, mentioning the Oregon grape and salal. By doing so, he adds to the growing cannon of Pacific Northwest literature and is helping to broaden the definition of Can Lit. As he writes in this last section: "But always somebody's claiming space/& privilege" and in these poems, he works to claim space for West Coast Canadians from different walks of life. To conclude, I quote my favourite lines in the collection: "You never see the other stories, though/the ones where life goes on:/ Boy picks scab in the park/Storekeeper opens door at 9,/Old man refuses to recollect his youth." Newspapers and history books are mostly concerned with big events and tragedies. The beauty of poetry is that it allows for the ordinary to be recorded alongside happenings that are considered by some as more important. New is successful in capturing the everyday and in leading us toward seeing our own landscapes and life stories as relevant as anyone else's. • Atrut and fret performance/art by Penelope Mulligan ELECTRIC COMPANY and THEATRE AT UBC The Fall Friday, April 11, 2003 The Factory Vancouver has been on a bit of a roll where stagecraft and site performance are concerned, but the Electric Company brought things to an insane crescendo when it located its latest production in half a million cubic feet of abandoned Finning Lands. Co-written by director Kim Collier and company members David Hudgms, Kevin Kerr and Jbnathon Young, The Fall is a thriller set in a 1950s factory crumbling under the weight of dames, doublecross, and an unsolved murder. Its pulp- noir seductiveness is actually a vehicle for the hefty ideas of anthropologist and historian Rene Girard—particularly the notion of "scapegoating" as a means of creating and maintaining social order (for a recent, real-life demonstration of the scapegoat ritual involving an entire nation as sacrificial victim, see Gulf War III)—but the show would have been just as enthralling if we hadn't known that. Collier's vision was enormous and I can't imagine it being realized more fully. The company's tendency to choke a good idea with too many embellishments wasn't so much held in check here as surrendered to the stupen- dousness of the place. They let every catwalk, crane, cubicle, pulley, portacabin, nook, cranny and loading bay show them what to do. Workers poked long poles into nasty-looking pits in the floor, a portable site office slid across the ceiling and bay doors opened to reveal killer views of the night sky. My eyes were out on stalks. The venue's sheer vastness made it feel that we were on a soundstage following an invisible film crew around as it shot each scene. Live video feed would suddenly appear like ghostly rushes on the factory walls and I occasionally had the sensation of tumbling into the movie as a passive observer. This was, without a doubt, the most cinematic live theatre experience I've ever had. Performances had better crack like whips if they're going to rise to this kind of production—and they did. As the brothers Buddy and Wayne, vying for control of the family business after their father's mysterious death, Jonathon Young and Andy Thompson were perfect opposites. Young is a hyperactive physical comedian and he left a jet stream of blue-collar sexual energy in his wake as he whizzed around the factory in an electric cart. Thompson was a knot of straight-arrow anxiety in a performance both subtle and hilarious and Kevin Kerr gave the wheelchair-bound watchman, Les, an insidious aura straight out of Fargo. As Betsy, the new recruit who rises quickly to management but ends up taking "the fall" in a ghastly death at the hands of her co-workers, Erin Wells carried the story with layers of innocence, cunning and allure, and iced the cake with a perfectly-nailed New York debutante accent. The best supporting actor award goes to the "Broad Squad," a bevy of female factory drones whose chorus-like function crossed Greek tragedy with Broadway. Their Rosie the Riveter kerchiefs matched the red "No Smoking" signs in front of which they were constantly puffing and they always seemed on the verge of breaking into "Big Spender." Composer Patrick Penne- father played against plot and period with suspenseful down- tempo that was like airport music for the end of the world. It honoured the space and drove the production. Adrian Muir's lighting design was masterfully sinister and even made you suspect the worst about what you couldn't see. All right. I'll stop raving now. The year's top three list starts here. RADIX Sex Machine Friday, May 2,2003 Shelly Building Sometimes it's better if artists don't elaborate too much on the meaning and purpose of a particular project. When they do, I often find my experience of the piece at odds with their apparent intentions. Such was the case with Sex Machine, an exploration of the work of renegade psychotherapist and orgone box inventor, Wilhelm Reich. While Reich's ideas about the connection between sexual repression and institutionalized violence have always resonated, one has to wonder if his gadget-heavy clinical methods actually managed to liberate anything. This doubt is mirrored by the fact that, despite its being almost completely concerned with sex, the show didn't feel erotic. Nor did it seem to "examine our physical needs, our emotional defenses, and our spiritual longings." Instead, it played more like a gentle satire on our misguided obsession with these things. The production was set up as a tour of a Reichian research facility, and the Radix collective's stunning sense of place was all over it. Arriving at an old building on the fringes of downtown, we were escorted to a waiting room in , offic ind checked in like patients. The hushed discretion of the proceedings had the cozy audience of 12 in quiet fits of giggles which carried over into the orientation room. As we sat gazing at fluffy clouds and wiggling sperm projected onto the floor, a mellifluous, disembodied voice told us ti phrase "these a o repeat the e the days," if irmfortable or confused. Thereafter, things got we were led down hallways and into rooms to watch a dedicated team of researchers experiment with their labcoated libidos. Some took turns riding a kinky-looking vintage exercise bike. Others read out lists of sexual fantasies while wearing electrodes on their heads. Sometimes they weren't wearing anything at all. A scene in a psychiatrist's office started promisingly with the patient's steamy "confession," but then it became all about the analyst's repression issues and I lost interest. There was no promise of liberation here—only a parade of neuroses which began to feel a little oppressive. Sex, the star of the show as it were, was always one slinky, chuckling step out of reach. Not surprising, since only dead things stay still under a microscope. This was hinted at when someone on a gurney described their first sexual dreams at age four as "always containing a euphoric sensation of freedom." "Of course they did," I wanted to shout, "you hardly knew any words then!" I stopped feeling badly about getting off on the set decoration instead of just getting off, and took illicit pleasure in popping the blisters in the bubblewrap walls of a labyrinth (which ended in a tiny storeroom where absurdity, in all its wisdom, put things back on track). I felt drawn toward our guide, a mewling nutter who finally detonated in a fabulously gnarled dance solo that stopped the research in its tracks. What a relief. I liked this show a lot, though I suspect it might have been for the wrong reasons. But deep down, I know Radix will understand. • 9 DiSCORDER va Mcouve r adgc i a local reviews by Janis McKenzie Eminem and Shania Twain have 'people' who help them decide what songs to put on their CDs. Songwriters in bands have to win over their slick and stylish package, leaving the business of playing, recording, and singing the ten songs to about twenty experienced local fellov hard stares or merciless teasing in the practice space). But people who write songs, who have a capital-v Vision (and capital-d Drive) but no band, no co-writers, no live audiences and no record label, are left without any quality- control mechanism at all. This is just one problem facing Jon Doe's Innercity Meltdown CD (Tesla Records) and Anthony Seto's project, Lostsongs Lostdreams, by pseudo-band The Pseudos (Mattle Black Music). Another problem is figuring out who is going to perform the songs and give them that all-important sound. Jon Doe (not to be confused with other Jon and John Does—this one played guitar in the Subhumans, Modernettes, and the Scramblers) goes to one extreme, singing, playing (almost) all the instruments, and producing the whole CD himself. Anthony Seto—a confessed non- musician—goes the other way. He wrote the lyrics, came up with the concept, and put together the Of course, the results are quite different. Jon Doe's CD looks defiantly home-made and sounds, mostly, like the work of a stubborn punker who's been through it all. His voice (and I don't think I've ever heard him sing before) is snarly but more wrung-out than "rawk". He covers Dee Dee Ramone and Lou Reid with the audible reverence and familiarity of a Nashville star doing the Carter Family. It is still startling to me to think that punk is so old that someone who started playing it in his teens might now be sitting-down with his guitar and singing to an audience so wasted and indifferent that isn't paying any attention. But when I hear these 14 songs I find myself erasing the (so-so) rhythm section and envisioning some bar where heart-broken folks drink until their faces are flat on the little round tables and Jon Doe, all by himself on a low stage in the corner, is clearly wishing he was somewhere else. The Pseudos are from a dif ferent planet altogether. The individual performers (they're not members really) may have serious musician cred, but they don't have much to do with the entity that's pictured on the cover. (There's a voguish sexiness to the CD insert that's helped quite a bit by a couple of good-looking women who don't—to my knowledge—appear anywhere on the CD.) The songs themselves are sometimes elevated by the guest vocalists, as in the case of "Two Wrongs," sung by Linda McRae and Graham Brown, who sound great together. At other times the gimmick doesn't work, as when Siobhan Duvall duets with Bobby Bruce (aka—gasp!—Nearly Neil) on "Big Heart." As a live show, The Pseudos may just come off as a kind of all-star karaoke event. But if you're going to go to all this trouble, why stick to the songs of the untested Anthony Seto? It would defeat the whole purpose of course, but this is where a few well-chosen covers might be in order. • John Doe: <junglejirm99393@hotmail.com> The Pseudos: <www.thepseudos.com> LIBERATION - HOT WATER MUSIC Tii'ty GOOD RIDDANCE THE FAINT PROPAGANDHI DISTRICT 7 FRENZAL RHOMB STORY OF THE YEAR J THE EYELINERS ANTI-FUG DESPARACIDOS BIGWIG NOFX ...AND MANY MORJ! SCREW VOU and your pointy shoes. ^. DR. ROBOT ' CHIROPRACTOR Then common wisdom would suggest that you not do that... OL Ha ha... Doctor joke. Please, lay face down on the bench... Alright, relax your neck... I'm just going to roll your head... CM ^(ffl (To) v5l w yA [ Perfect! J ^^v% \Mh [ crop, j S / p Pi l fw METALLICA/CRUE/KI8S/GNR/P0IS0N/J0AN JETT/SKID ROW/JUDAS PREIST WE'RE DOING IT ONE LAST TIME WMrV il THE PURPLE ONION THURSDAY JUNE 12TH 20 03 9.00PM DRESS TRASHY TO WIN OUR DOOR PRIZES DJ THRUSHMUFFLER 15 WATER ST. GASTOWN 604.602.9442 NEW MUSIC WASTELAND CHRIS ENG DISCOVERS THAT MAY IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH AFTER FOUR DAYS AT NMW 77 THE NASTY ON CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF THE FEST: "They had taken over—rocking and drinking and cursing up a storm as they flailed blindly around and drank Crown Royal and wept' (Photo by Kimberley Day) The problem is that all music writing is self-serving. It's either serving the author, or it's serving the magazine (or website, radio station, TV channel or any other given medium)—but it's serving someone. At least one party benefits from the arrangement, and usually monetarily. If that happens to include the band, that's nice, but it's generally a happy accident. The author writes to secure his or her position at the magazine/paper, please the editor for a fat cash bonus, or jockey for an increase in status. The magazine runs the article in order to please the advertisers and bump up the circulation. It's all about money. The music itself doesn't really enter into it anywhere. Caught in the middle of this is the musician who wants to play his or her music. They want to get heard and cut an album. They want to be famous. If they're especially lucky, they might acquire their 15 minutes of local fame and then be offered the chance to play a major music industry festival like CMJ, Canadian Music Week (CMW), South By Southwest (SXSW), North By Northeast (NXNE) or New Music West (NMW). They'll have the opportunity to play for half an hour in front of industry executives. By the end, more than 95% of them will be chewed up and shit out. And I saw it all. (NB: I lost my notes for this, so when reconstructing the large that I couldn't remember, I improvised and made them up.) MAY 21,2003 "Cut it finer. Finer. Who did you learn to chop from? Leatherface? Fuck, give me the razor." Video Tokyo had just finished their set and I was busy trying to wrest control of the coke implements away from Matthew Good who was scuffling with me over them in the washroom of Richard's on Richards. Video Tokyo rocked with a decent supply of verve (aside from the disputes that emerged when they told the soundman to turn down Christa Min's guitar in the mix—Christa had told me before the show that she liked to hear herself "louder than God," and to that end had bribed the soundman to max her out—but no fistfights emerged and everyone simply retreated to disparate corners of the stage, offended and hurt), but afterthey finished the canned music started in and that was too much for me to take. I was determined that Sheryl Crowe was not going to put me into a soaking-up-the-sun-induced coma, and when I saw Matt Good anxiously and furtively heading for the bathroom, I followed close behind. "Look, your new album was really great. I liked it a lot, especially the video where that stuff turned into the other stuff, now let me do it." He stared at me quizzically, but let go of the razor after I stamped hard on his foot. "Damn rock stars..." I muttered, lining up the blow on a promotional mirror for Bruce, Almighty. 1 peered at him with disgust. "You carry this around with you for just this purpose? Goddamn, man, I hope you don't think you're gonna impress the ladies with Jim Carrey drug paraphernalia." One, two, three, four, five lines. "Oh, sorry, Matt. Forgot to save I blew downstairs mid-way through Notes From Underground, listening to them bullshit their way through something about missing the bus and needing twenty-five cents for fare. Pushing my way to the back I found my way to one of the tables where Derek Sterling Boone had set himself up like a Don, surrounded by a cadre of his closest female confidantes. "What is this?" he spat. "An indie jam band?" He nursed his beer and played with his pinkie ring as I stared at him. I wanted to say something in response, but I was wired beyond speech, so I sat there in silence, staring at the stage as I got hit by rush after rush, muscles locked tight as the set shot past. "Chris, what did you think of that?" I felt an elbow in my ribs as the canned music cut in again, Van Morrison warbling something interminable. 1 nodded and grunted, not wanting to move before The Cinch came on in case I took off like a rocket. I don't know what I'd had in the bathroom, but it had a long-acting chaser attached to it that was keeping me glued to my seat like PVC to an ugly dude at fetish night. And then, without warning, it was gone. The rush died and 1 slumped forward against the table, letting the music lull me as my extremities fell limply about me like the appendages of a punk rock rag doll. 1 pushed myself away from the table, stumbling and shambling toward the stairs. Where was Matt Good? I wanted more of what he had. I found him leaning into a conversation with an indie-cougar— forty-five at a guess, with bangs and a white belt. "You. Good. The washroom—now. C'mon, let's go." I put a friendly and forceful hand on his shoulder, steering him up and off toward the men's room, propping myself up in the process. "Line 'em up good. And you do it this time. I trust you. You're talented. You wrote that book. I didn't read it, but it was genius. 1 mean, you used pictures, right? Fucking brilliant." He cut up six lines and looked at me, our eyes locking behind our respective glasses: "Three of those are for me." I shrugged and inhaled the three lines in a single breath, bolting upright and staring at him, trying to hold it all in. "Wait," I said, peering at him intently. "You're not Matt Good, are you?" "I could be." "Yeah, you probably could be. But you're not." A wall of light barreled into me with the force of a Mack Truck pumped full of nitro. "And this isn't coke, is it?" I gasped. "It could be." "Fuck you," I ejaculated, as I staggered from the room. The Cinch were no longer playing. At some point they had left the stage and The Nasty On had taken over—rocking and drinking and cursing up a storm as they flailed blindly around and drank Crown Royal and wept. Jesus, how long had I been in that bathroom for? I avoided the dance floor and the coat-check and spun out into the rainy Vancouver night without a jacket. Fuck that: Stinkmitt were playing at the Purple Onion. I needed to see Stinkmitt. Betti Forde. I needed to see Betti Forde. She could help me. She could... was... hott... hott... rapp... sloppy sock... spinning... fuck... where the hell was I... Gastown?... the ground?... why was this puddle so warm... cozy... perfect place to sleep... shit... May 22,2003 Morning arrived like a SWAT team, kicking me in the face as I tried to maintain unconsciousness lying beside some Gastown train-tracks, sore and swaddled in a pool of my own sick. No, it wasn't pretty—it was about as ugly as it could be—but as it happened, that's the essence of rock journalism: bile, vomit, and boredom, heaped up on each other until individual elements are indistinguishable from each other and it transforms into a heaping mound of deadlines, two- facedness, and hurt feelings. Fuck, what time was it? Was it time for more music? 1 had to figure out the game plan for the day. I'd spent the previous evening in one spot, not particularly interested in roaming between the twenty-odd clubs that constituted the bulk of the music performances. Christ, who were these bands, anyway? I'd never heard of half of them. More than half, probably. Well, that wasn't surprising in and of itself—if there's anything worth hearing, the Music Editor, alone and inviolate in his ivory tower, is always the last to know—but it made the whole deal substantially less interesting. So, I'd stayed rooted in place, petrified by Matt Good's Mystery Nose Powder (of which a packet remained in my possession, purloined, no doubt, during the heart of my white light/white heat freakout in the bathroom). Was I missing out on the intent of the fest? Was the point not the big bands that played giant, prohibitively expensive shows, but to see as many of the up-and-comers as I was physically able? To acquaint myself not with bands who had already peaked, but with bands that hadn't even charted on the roadmap to local fame. Maybe. And if that was the case, I wasn't going to waste this opportunity. I was going to see as many bands as I could in as many venues as possible. Pulling myself into a vertical position, I wandered out of the train- yard. What time was it? With difficulty, I raised my watch to my face and peered at it until the numbers coalesced into something coherent. 9:15. Shit. 3 Inches of Blood started at nine. Still, 1 wasn't worried about being late. The bands started 45 minutes late the previous night. The music industry thrived on tardiness. It would shut down or consume itself or spontaneously combust if a show started on time. I was fine. The rain was coming down thick and heavy as I slogged through the streets of Gastown (disturbingly familiar to me as flashbacks of the previous night came in fits and bursts—a cat peeing on me, me wearing a Subway baggie on my head like a hat, me wearing a cat on my head like a hat) toward Sonar. 3 Inches of Blood was more than halfway through their set when I walked through the doors. Former DiSCORDER editrix Lyndsay Sung (who managed to make it about a month and a half before fleeing the post—a statement on either her lack of stamina or advanced survival instinct, I'm not sure which) stood in the doorway and exchanged pleasantries while growls and howls erupted in the background. Chad Ferris, an old confidante of mine from the Victoria days, stood near the stage, arms crossed and scowl fully in place. "Why do people think this is cool?" he barked at me over the music. "Do they think they're superheroes? They're not children—they're men and they're singing about ores! It's cripplingly sad." I shook my head at him. "Never mind. Just go think happy thoughts about Fleetwood Mac, you pathetic SOB." "Bite me." I was trying to figure out how to score free drinks but I hadn't quite cracked the formula, since I was pretty sure my "Delegate" pass wasn't going to get me any beer. It didn't get me into any of the premiere shows (Flaming Lips, Shawn Desman, et al.) either, and it certainly wasn't getting me any action (not that 1 was trying the seemingly infallible pickup line: "Hey baby, my pass is orange—that means I'm important."), so I figured free liquor probably wasn't on the agenda. I sat back and decided to enjoy myself sober. Five minutes later I was back out in the rain, desperately looking for anything cheap, substantial and alcoholic. I was desperate for some kind—any kind—of high. I was still riding an adrenaline wave from 3loB, but that was going to fade unless I found something fast. I settled for running five blocks to the T&T Asian Supermarket and literally choking back a bottle of salty cooking wine in a nearby alcove. I wandered into the Purple Onion sick and drunk, with my personality having re-achieved equilibrium with how I looked. I flashed my pass at the bouncer and he waved me in, seemingly to be rid of me. Fuck him, I was a Delegate. Amil, music editor for a rival weekly, bounced out of the Lounge arms spread wide, and then, getting a good look at me, shoved her hands in her pockets, reconsidering the hug. "Uh, Chris, how are you doing?" "Crappy. It's hell trying to get free booze in this town, you know?" "Yeah... right. So, what are you doing here? Not observing the boycott?" "Boycott on what?" "The festival." "Why? Aside from the obvious lack of free booze." "There was the huge blowup with the hip hop showcases. They claimed they weren't getting decent venues or getting treated with any respect, so they pulled out. Big thing, didn't hear about it?" "No, I'm the editor, I'm the last to hear about anything. So, what are you doing here?" "There's a good hip hop band playing tonight." "I'm not even going to try and figure that one out." I staggered back and into the Purple Onion proper where there was some pop band playing. Pop music in one room, hip hop in the other? Who was putting this together? Is someone coming in randomly from a 1964 London reject band likely to click with the new De La Soul or Fugees? Possible, I suppose, but pretty fucking unlikely. They'd be more likely to spit on the ground and cross themselves. Chad nudged me with his elbow. I wasn't surprised to see him here. Endearing Records was much more his speed. He was holding a beer in his fist. "Where did you get that?" I demanded. "The bar?" "Buy me one." "No. Watch the band." "Why? They were stale a decade before I was born." 1 shifted. The salt was making me anxious. 1 needed another drink. Anything would be fine: rye, beer, Coke, that puddle 1 slept in last night. "I have to go," I blurted. Back on the street the rain was coming down harder than ever. I walked along, thirsty as a motherfucker, gob open like the yawning maw of the Sarlacc, catching rain and bugging my eyes out at anyone that had the temerity to look in my direction. Shit, the Spitfires were going on soon. No way 1 was going to miss that. The water was running out of the sides of my mouth when I hit Dick's on Dicks, mostly because I kept forgetting to swallow. I spat it onto the sidewalk and flashed my pass at the bouncer, strolling in like the Delegate 1 was. The Spitfires were onstage, spitting beer onto the crowd. Good. Great minds think alike. "What a waste of a good fucking beer!" the lead singer yelled at the crowd, who yelled back gibberish. I took stock of my surroundings as The Spitfires launched back into a song about being drunk or having sex or having drunk sex. There were new decorations since the previous night, which seemed to be comprised of... rock banners. Rock banners upon rock banners upon rock banners advertising a radio station that I was pretty sure was not sending the concert out live (partially because I didn't see anything mentioning it, and partly because the between-song banter would probably contravene several different CRTC regulations at once). Why so many? I didn't know. It didn't make any sense to me, but then again I didn't listen to the radio. Shit, was that why 1 was always the last to know? Was it my fault? Was I to blame? I watch MuchMusic from time to time—do I need to listen to commercial radio, too? Hell, who fucking cared—the cooking wine cold-cocked me like a rubber bullet in the liver and I careened wildly off toward the washroom. Clear vomit swirled around the sink drain as I braced myself against the counter, lamenting my inability to make it to the toilet. "At least I made it up the stairs," I thought Why was I doing this to myself? Not the cooking wine—that was fine; the panting and the gasping and the sweating and the puking were just part and parcel with the experience, and I was definitely used to that—just the running around. If I wasn't running to the washroom, I was running from show to show to catch minutes of bands who deserved at least an hour. I was run ragged and run down with the stupidity of the whole thing. Who can compose a coherent review of the bands they see while maintaining a rag-tag schedule like this? No one. And at that moment—as my white-knuckled fingers clutched formica—the warmth of my music journalist's epiphany washed over me. With brutal clarity, 1 realized the truth about the entire music industry: lives were bought and sold, held aloft or dashed to pieces on the basis of five minutes of performance. Did the A&R dude score some good shit earlier? You're signed to a five album deal! He couldn't get his cock sucked? Screw you—you'll never work in this town again. And was I in any different situation? No. My sad, dried (and fresh) vomit-encrusted body was going to drag itself back to the office and pound out an assessment of every single band that I saw; moreover, I was going to judge them with my wine and coke-goggles on and set Well, if that's the way the game was played, I could play it. I was holding my own in the arena before, but nobody bothered to spell out all the rules for me. Now that I knew them, I was down for some serious five-card stud, and woe betide any motherfuckers that got in my way over the next few days. 1 threw the door to the bathroom open and strode out looking for anyone with a pass-card hanging around their neck. Check. "Hey, you—Luke Perry!" Some '90s pissant past his forties and a decade behind talking to a Boys From Brazil clone of Dave Matthews looked over at me as I shot him a shit-eating grin and double fingers. "Eat my ass, human scum!" Okay, it wasn't that good, but what the hell—it didn't have to be: my sense of purpose had just gotten a five-point overhaul and I was riding high on life. MAY 23,2003 I woke up in my own bed, rose when 1 felt like it, showered when 1 got around to it, poured myself a cup of coffee when I was ready for it. Life was never so good. 1 had given the finger to one music industry ass-wad the night before and now I had bigger plans. Give the finger to the whole damn industry. Over the course of the day seventy-odd performers would be playing at 19 venues. Seventy-odd bands and solo artists that would get up in front of stony-faced record-label Caesars who would proclaim, "Impress us or die!" Over 35 hours of music, laid out consecutively, performed by people with everything at stake to people who were above the idle whims of men. That's a lot of music. And I wasn't going to go to any of it. I had a different showcase to go see. One venue, six bands, and an audience that was guaranteed to give a shit. How could I pass it up? The Alf House was, by general standards, squalid. The regimen of antiseptic cleanliness effected by the Commodore was conspicuously absent here. Dirt lined the foyer and the place was in dire need of a paint-job. All the sightlines to the stage were bad and the dance-floor was cramped. On top of that, the washroom was unisex and the toilet was broken. But judging it in comparison to Sonar or The Royal was a futile gesture, because the Alf House had something that none of the other clubs had: occupants. A long-standing punk house on Vancouver's East Side, it is occupied by a rotating cast of characters involved in bands or friends with people in bands—people who love music and have a personal stake in what they hear or go out to listen to. And if they can arrange to have the bands play in their living room, it saves them a trip out to see them. I rolled up on the proceedings stone cold sober and figured that with the exception of the straight-edge folk in attendance, I might be the only one. I wasn't sure that was the state 1 wanted to be in, but this was a different forum, so I felt obliged to give it ten minutes before I started scrambling for Matt Good's Magic Stash. Last month's half-naked DiSCORDER poster children, Paper Lanterns, were rocking the cramped room as 1 made my way inside. This despite bass player Dan's body shooting calcified rocks (otherwise known as kidney stones) out of his cock, and drummer Metal Steve's almost complete drunken paralysis due to it being his last day of school. But the punk rock train apparently makes no stops at Slouchvilie, and the boys weren't gonna take it lying down. The crowd, bouncing up and down like a sugar-high toddler on a Pogo-Ball, seemed to appreciate it. There was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to face my friend Deena. "Chris," she yelled at me over the wall of sound, "how's it going?" I shrugged, not wanting to waste my vocal cords making small talk over the music. "Wanna talk out back?" I nodded, following her through the narrow artery in the kitchen and emerging into a post-industrial landscape of broken furniture and broken pallets hovering next to a garden that hadn't begun to sprout. The back yard was about as populated as the front, but the crowd seemed more diverse: the dyed black hair and denim of the indie pose-rocker next to the neon cuteness of the thrift shopper standing shoulder to shoulder with the French-Canadian krusty-punx who were fighting for a stick with their dogs. "So, how have you been, Chris?" "Tired. Rock journalism is long, hard work." "New Music West?" "Such as it is." "Seen anything good?" "Don't know." "Can't you remember?" "Not with any degree of accuracy." "How will you review it, then?" "Make it up." "Can you do that?!" "Sure, people do it all the time. All of those CD reviews you read in any given magazine: 1 bet you dollars to donuts the reviewers never listened to them all the way through. I'll further bet you that they only listened to thirty seconds to a minute of each track before skipping to the next one. And the most efficient but least accurate of the bunch might not have listened to any of them at all." "That's kind of a cynical view, don't you think?" "Is it? Maybe. Generally true, though." "Do a review of Chuck Norris, then." "What?" "Chuck Norris, the band that's up next. Do a review of their show tonight." "Okay. Gimme a sec... All right: 'Playing the crowd like an adrenaline-powered violin, Chuck Norris brass-knuckled their way into the living room of the Alf House, stomped their way through the front hall, in through the kitchen and held a house meeting on the carcasses of the sweat-coated and mosh-weary. The new house rule: don't fuck with hardcore.' See. Sounds good without actually tying you down to meaning anything." "That's not really how people write reviews." "Gimme the rest of the bands. I'll write reviews right now off the top of my head and we'll see how accurate I am at the end of the night." "God, okay. Red Light Sting." "I don't really know their stuff. I mean, 1 know I've heard it, but I can't remember what they sound like." "That's not the deal. Come up with a review." "Fine. 'Ukrainian polka-trance artcore has finally managed to wend its way west. Coming off as a Cronenberg-esque genetic melding of My Bloody Valentine and Frankie Yankovic with fly-sized bits of Merzbow thrown in for good measure, they kept repeatedly stunning the crowd with their cattle prod-like time changes and accordion feedback." "I don't think they sound like that." "Whatever. Next." "Death From Above." "'Does flipping around spastically like you're covered in fire ants qualify you to do meth-induced straight-ahead rock 'n' fucking roll? No, but it doesn't hurt. Intense with a sound which filled the house from top to bottom, spilling out into the surrounding industrial neighbourhood and mingling with the sound of late-night machinery, Death From Above kicked unbelievers in the balls and then raided the fridge for beer and dumpstered soy milk.'" "Okay, The Crush Conspiracies." '"Lyrics that try for wit paired with cute keyboards are usually a combination that signal bile-inducing twee, or at least a fast-track to the K Records discount bin. It's a good thing then that The Crush Conspiracies have songs that are catchy, lyrics that are hilarious and bandmates that exude genuine charm. You could have danced and laughed, you stupid fuckers, but instead you were at the Brickyard and missed the best show of the fest.'" "Juls and Kahla." "Folk duo sings about hobos." "That's it?" "They're a folk duo with a song about hobos. In French. What else do you want me to say?!" "Nothing, I guess." "What time is it? Who's playing?" "I have no idea." "Let's find out. Say, do you have any beer?" The flames in the back-alley dumpster were licking out of the lid now, and the French-Canadian krusty-punx danced about it with glee. Deena and 1 had a perfect vantage point from the roof, where we reclined and watched the drama unfold, passing a carton of dumpstered soy milk back and forth. "I didn't think they actually had any of this stuff, you know? It was just a joke on my part." "Truth is stranger than fiction." One of the residents came rushing out with an enormous bucket of water and ran across the yard with all speed, leveling it at the dumpster and letting the contents fly in a watery arc, soaking the walls of the dumpster and some of the punx nearby. 13 DiSCORDER "Why you do dis?! You are not 'ardcore! You are 'ippy! No revolution in dis 'ouse. Pfft." I looked over at Deena. "So, how did I do with my reviews?" "Not so good with Red Light Sting." "Fuck them. My review was good, they fucked it up by not pushing the envelope." "How about The Crush Conspiracies? You don't really think that was the best show of the fest, do you?" "Don't I? That remains to be seen. There's still a day left." "Juls and Kahla?... I mean, how hard was that one?" "They played the hobo song, didn't they?" "Yeah." "Four out of five. I think that qualifies as a win." The occupant wrestled with the punx while the flames sputtered and a dog howled. 1 slugged back another shot of espresso soy milk. "You know, I made it through the entire night here totally sober." "That a good thing?" "I don't know. I feel sketchy, iike I need to run around the block or wear the skin of a bear or play Super Mario 3 for eight hours. Then again, I haven t had to deal with industry pus-heads or any degree of schmoozing. Maybe this is just withdrawal." "Maybe you should just get some sleep." "Maybe I've just been enjoying myself more here than at any point over the last two days." Deena took the carton and a sip. "Any plans for tomorrow?" "Uhhhh... shit. Yeah. Chad Kroeger's keynote address." Somewhere the punx had found a can of gasoline and the dumpster suddenly lit up the night in a cascade of orange and red. "Tonight was okay, but I don't think I'm gonna make it through tomorrow without chemical aid." MAY 24,2003 "Blankets. Blankets are the key for our dominion over the mole people." Chad's head disconnected itself from his body and floated aimlessly about the crowd on pinpoint beams of light. Not content to trust myself to the bottle of Mega-Flu Robitussin I drank before showing up at the Commodore (which had itself transformed into a Norse feasting hall of yore), I had also wholeheartedly snorted back the packet of Uncle Matty's Nose Tonic ten minutes prior and was now fully immersed in what Mr. Kroeger had to say. If this was his appraisal of the industry, then I was on board for his Five Year Plan. "Gentlemen, grab your adult diapers and repulse the invasion of battery-operated squirrels! 604 is MAGIC!" Cheering erupted throughout the room and the sound of warhammers being brought down on the great tables was nearly deafening. The head floated the length of the hall, past the Viking princes and out the door and I hurriedly scrambled after it, elbowing aside the tightly packed groups of handmaidens that littered my way and showered me with flowers as I emerged onto Granville Street. The sun was bright and unrelenting, and 1 suddenly realized three things: one, the head had disappeared; two, if Chad Kroeger's head wanted to remain discreet, it was not going to be found; and three, I was in no fit state to mingle amongst the industry jackals at the panels and conferences. All of the exclusive industry-only events/socials/schmooze- fests were scheduled for the weekend afternoons, but I'd scanned the schedule several times and the only thing remotely interesting was a panel discussion entitled: "Nelly Furtado: How Can We Make Another One?" My tolerance for the whole affair was waning and my increasing need to experiment pharmacologically was pushed to the outer limits by my proximity to it all. This wasn't going to end happily, and not even the smoking-jacketed tiger-men roaming the streets could make me believe otherwise. I needed this to be over with, and there was no way under the excessively bright and low-hanging sun i could handle being around cash grins and predator smiles for the rest of the day, let alone two. I'd been back at NMW for fifteen minutes and I needed to get the fuck out. Screw it, I was going to my happy place. "Starscream, you are a fool!" "But Megatron, I only did it to sen/eyou! Forgive me, PLEASE!" I looked over at the clock. 8:20. I had been shooting sideways glances at it for the past couple of hours, trying to convince myself that the bands would be more entertaining than the third of my Transformers videos. Fuck it, the bands would be good. I had already circumnavigated the business crap; only the music was left. Besides, Billy The Kid and The Lost Boys were playing, and they always put on a good show. There was also the Mint Records Showcase, and War Room later. It would be good times; I wouldn't have to talk to anyone from the industry. I'd go; I'd just go and have a good time. Now I just had to get up off the couch. Go. Go, already. Just go go go go gogogogogogogogo. I got up. It was only one night. I couldn't not enjoy myseif. Billy looked out at the throng with rapidly thinning enthusiasm. "Thanks for coming out. Hey, you know what's fun?! Dancing is fun." it was about the third time she'd said something to the same effect and she had a point. The audience had about as much receptivity as a collection of value-sized Easter Island moai. I had been bouncing up and down in place for the past twenty minutes (perhaps due in part to the rails of ephednne I'd lain out in the bathroom), but my motion was becoming decidediy conspicuous in a sea of dead faces. They ripped into a song and ploughed through another, then Billy looked around and leaned into the mic while the suits politely clapped. "Thanks again, we're Billy and the Lost Boys. We give our all every time we play. Audiences, well, maybe not so much." She was really probably only giving 75%—I'd seen her play before, 14 June 2003 running like a maniac back and forth across the stage with the guitar behind her head, and that was probably 100%. There was none of that tonight, but audiences get what they give and, with that in mind, they were probably getting more than they deserved. It made me wonder how the music industry supposedly had enough of a foothold to thrive here, trapped in a place where live music is something to be caged and prodded, looked at clinically and methodically, appraised but not enjoyed. The only people who seemed to regularly dance at shows were the people who enjoyed electronica, which was regularly derided by the rest of the industry and culture en masse for having no soul. Ironic. Three more songs, played masterfully but without zeal followed by a flat "Good night." I waited a minute and then pushed my way past the crowd backstage. "Billy, hi. Good set. Thanks for playing." She looked slightly confused for a second (which may have been in response to my body language being amplified by the drugstore pumping its way through my veins), but then let go and smiled. "Thank you. It's appreciated. Here," she reached into her bag and pulled something out. "Have a sticker!" She passed it over to me, and just for a second, our exchange captured the purity of an all-ages show—no pretense, nothing on a level other than the people that make the music and the people that love it. No bullshit interface, no falsity, just appreciation from both parties. I smiled, thanked her, and left her and her band to the packing up. I had other places to be. The Railway Club is probably the unofficial home of Mint Records, since at least every other week it seems to feature a show from Tennessee Twin, John Guliak, and Carolyn Mark. Arriving in the middle of Tennessee Twin's set, therefore, seemed more than appropriate. The crowd was packed and seated, though that was fine: it was country music and there wasn't much of a floor for slow dancing. Nobody seemed to have the cojones to sit near the front, though, so 1 plunked myself down in one of the empty seats and enjoyed the set. The lead singer, Cindy Wolfe, caught the gesture and smiled, playing out a set that ranged from sweet to bittersweet to her lifting up her skirt for a random cameraman. Cool. While they played I tried to reassess my opinions on my role at the festival. Maybe it wasn't to see as many bands as humanly possible for five minutes each, exposing myself to the new music inherent in the title, while stripping the humanity **«y2i and greater sense of scope from the performance. Qf - Maybe, rather, it was to see what I could, watch appreciatively and show my respect in a visible way for what the performers were doing—to let them know there was at least one person out there who was there for the music and not to be seen, chat up an exec, chat on his cell phone, or do any of a million disaffected and assholish things that had nothing to do with the band. At this point, I practically felt it was my duty to be the one person in the room who looked S^yHP^K like he gave a shit. Tennessee Twin wrapped up and I ™~~—■—~—~_^ clapped and cheered before making my way to the back room to see if anyone else was around. Indeed, the former editrix, Barbara, was enjoying beers in the company of her gentleman friend, Steve. Barbara wouldn't go near the DiSCORDER offices anymore—too many sleepless nights compounded by the passage of years made her shudder involuntarily when the subject was raised. She withdrew from the game and I couldn't blame her. A mere four days was turning me into a bitter crank. She looked up at me as I walked over. "Heyyyyyyyyy," she said, her general levels of alcohol probably approaching me for chemistry, "How's it going? You been making the rounds? Seen much?" "Hey, Barbara. Yeah, I've seen a bit." "Anything good?" "A few things." "Anything bad?" "The whole freakin' industry." She cocked an eyebrow at me. "It's a grotesque behemoth," I added. "I think I hate it." "Hear, hear." She raised her pint glass and toasted me before slamming it back. "Never did me any good either." "I don't think it does a lot of people any good. It's certainly not about the music." "You just figure that out?" "I'm a slow learner." "Hmm. You gonna see anything else this evening?" "Yeah. Operation Makeout's here. My friend Mandy's band War Room is playing at Sonar later. There's still a couple of things left." "Well, if you want to drop back, you know where I am." "At the back of the bar, far away from the music." "Exactly." I was standing at the front of the stage, saddened, horrified, and destroyed. War Room were tearing Sonar a new asshole with their usual brand of L7-inspired auditory terrorism and 1 was watching them, but I wasn't moving. I was standing rapt, staring at my friend Mandy. A bass virtuoso, her performance was flawless. Hitting every note without missing a beat—arm up, windmill, rock kick—she turned out the moves like a clockwork rock machine. But she was looking rough. I had been binging on any number of substances for the previous few days, allowing them to carpetbomb my system and beat me into submission. They had, in fact, done exactly what I wanted them to: get dele SfCTCC* Chris Disc Stilt Bng order or/ai me to the end of all of this. And standing before me was the shell of a girl who looked like she'd initiated a Blitzkrieg on herself as well, but not for the purposes of escaping the festival. Tired, baggy-eyed, wan, pale, and bloated, she was an eerie doppelganger of the girl I'd known a couple of years back whose sprightly demeanor was a demolition crew in the face of any given scenesters reserved cool. "Mandy, are you okay?" "I... no. Not really... This scene is getting to me." "This scene gets to everyone." "Yeahhhhh... I need to get away." Her attention wavered and she watched a patch of floor near her feet. "Yeah, you do. Look, I know we haven't been hanging out a lot or anything, lately, but if you need help with anything, let me know all right?" "I'm fine, Chris... don't worry about me... It'll all come together eventually... I have to go." Sobriety has never been faster coming. Within seconds I had had my high forcibly removed and I felt a raw breathless heat wash over me, like I had been given the strap. War Room commanded the stage, working their way through a tight, technically brilliant set, but I had my eyes on Mandy the whole time, watching her choke back tears, going through the motions exhaustedly, devoid of passion. And if, at the end of the day, it was all about the music, then War "I was trying to figure out how to score free drinks but I hadn't quite cracked the formula, since I was pretty sure my "Delegate" pass wasn't going to get me any beer. It didn't get me into any of the premiere shows, and it certainly wasn't getting me any action, so I figured free liquor probably wasn't on the agenda." Room fulfilled the demands of the fest impeccably. If, in the end, it was just about music and the packaging thereof, then War Room delivered seamless product with nary a complaint. They were consummate professionals and didn't let anything intrude on what was important during their half-hour: playing music. But if, on the other hand, New Music West was about anything else, then Mandy mattered. Her dissociation from the music she was playing mattered; the fact that she was unable to find joy in it mattered; and the gross inhumanity of the scene mattered. The faceless crowd didn't care. They clapped when they were supposed to, giving the bare minimum of themselves necessary, and the music rolled on. Mandy cried herself to sleep and wondered why, in terms of her happiness, a needle had taken the place of her bass, and the music rolled on. Billy got frustrated and yelled at the crowd but still couldn't kindle a spark, and the music rolled on. The suits made their deals, checked their voice mail, slept like babies as their stock closed a quarter point higher, and the music rolled on. The musical-industrial revolution ground forward, occasionally catching a child in the gears, spitting them out—mangled, crippled, lost, dead—but that's fine: there's no short supply of them and exploitation of cheap labour is the name of the game. And the music rolled on. And me? I walked into NMW alone and inviolate on my ivory throne, determined of nothing but that I be allowed to make it through four days and experience everything it had to offer. I got that and found, at the end, two personal choices—one leading down the road to a career, writing fake reviews of Our Lady Peace shows while sipping double cappuccinos; the other steaming toward indignahce, aggravation, and bitterness at the way of the world. And after careful consideration, there is only one option: I'm heading back. I'll catch up with you where the road started— that place before innocence, infatuation, humanity and love were lost. I'll see you at the Alf House, 2nd Ave, the Triple Threat House, the Cool Club—wherever. And if, during The Crush Conspiracies' set, you save me a dance, I'd be honoured. • FEY FEY FEY. WIMPY WIMPY. FEY FEY YOUNG AND SEXY ARE INTO NELLY FURTADO AND THEY DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS Interview by Emily Kendy. Photo by Lara Jane Petelko PJ One of Vancouver's biggest little malcontent rock bands is, of all things, shy. Well, to say all the members of Young and Sexy are shy is inaccurate, especially since Lucy Brain, the one female in the five-piece group, had no problem saying out loud any old thing that popped into her head during a beer session (she chose a Crantini) outside of Subeez in Yaletown. Drummer Andre Lagace (also Brain's fiance) simply gave quiet one-liners in between saying "hello" to those he recognized on the sidewalk, while Paul Pittman turned red at almost every question put to him, chain-smoking his way through his apparently communal pack of Dunhills and wiping his face as though he was running on two hours' sleep. As for Ted Marcel Bois (piano) and Ron Teardrop (drummer)—who were AWOL for the interview—I can only speculate on their personalities... Not only was their last album, Stand up for your Mother, the object of much critical acclaim, the group that started as a drummer- less, bass-less three-piece in the late 90s has evolved so far that their performance at last year's North By Northeast music festival in Toronto earned them a top ten spot on a list of best newcomers to the Canadian indie-rock scene, while, perhaps more obscurely, their video for "Silent Film Star" was number 17 on the Bravo channel— ahead of Norah Jones—much to Pittman's amusement. Now, with less then two weeks left in the recording of their new album (tentatively entitled Life Through One Speaker), they seem ready to tackle a brand new year of live shows—which for shy people can be a nerve-wracking experience—and are also ready to divulge pre-stage jitters, guilty pleasures, the mock title they gave their new album, and why a member from Sloan was once turned away from a show. DiSCORDER: So, you guys are on Mint records, but where did you record this album? Paul Pittman: We recorded with JC/DC [John Collins and Dave Carswell—the former of The New Pornographers, the latter of The Smugglers, and both of The Evaporators]. Lucy Brain: It was at Galiano Island, at John's parents' place. We spent 14 days there; it was very idyllic. There was a big deck [where we could watch] eagles. When I recorded my vocals my view was of the ocean. When we weren't recording we could go play on the rocks. Not too much pressure, then? Brain: No, we feel pressure now, with the deadline in a week... What did you learn this time around, in regards to the recording process? Pittman: [With the first album] everything sounded good the first time. Now we're more critical. Brain: We have higher standards. Andre Lagace: We weren't recording in a dark and dingy basement... How do you compare this album to your first? Pittman: It's better. Brain: I'd like to think it's less sweet and twinkly. Pittman: It still sounds like us. Brain: There are a few more leads, more instrumentation. Lagace: We have better instruments. We have a real piano. There's more forethought. Brain: Last time we didn't really know what we were doing. [This time], as a band, we worked on songs, developing them together. What music did you listen to last year that might have influenced the direction of your music? Brain: We all have pretty different tastes. Ted's into space rock, which influences his playing. I really like Big Star. Pittman: I don't know, I listen to what I've always listened to: The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin—not that that you hear much of Zeppelin... Brain: I like the new Shins record. What's the most off-base description of your music that you've heard? Pittman: It's weird when people compare you to [stuff from] Britain. Like if you heard our first song on Stand Up For Your Mother you'd think we were weird New Order... Brain: I've heard us compared to St. Etienne, and I've never really listened to them before. Well, I like to think I'm a music critic but I've never heard of the terms "fey" and "twee." [Come by the DiSCORDER office—Merek plays that shit all the time, -ed.] What sort of gibberish are these words that are often ascribed to your music? Brain: Fey just means limp-wristed, no balls. Legace: Like Badfinger, Raspberries... Pittman: Nick Drake... literate, intellectual types. Lagace: Men who are in touch with their feminine side. Brain: It's not a bad thing, unless you want to be a rock band. Twee is sort of the same thing... Pittman: We were going to call our new album Fey Fey Fey, Wimpy Wimpy, Fey Fey. I read in an interview with Pittman that he called Vancouver a "fashion-conscious teenager," in regards to us tearing down old character buildings and replacing them with new buildings. Do you Right. At least tell me what recent places have closed that have bummed you out? Brain: The Pig and Whistle. Lagace: Luvafair, kinda.... Pittman: Aw, really? I guess the Starfish-Room. Lagace: The Marble Arch? Pittman: Oh, Aristocratic—do you know that place? It was an old diner, with huge windows, where Chapters is now on Broadway... What's the best live show you've played? Brain: The Commodore, with The New Pornographers, last year. And North By Northeast in Toronto. Pittman: One guy fainted at that show. Because of you guys? Pittman: Well, it was really hot, but still! Brain: That show was really hyped. Pittman: Yeah, it felt like we were a real band. Some guy from Sloan was turned away. Why, sold out? Pittman: Yeah, 1 guess. it the dress code. Brain: We could' write a novel about Ron. He's always tuning his drums, and he's always ordering food before we go on-stage—do you remember when he had that bowl of black bean soup he was eating between songs? And when he had the cheesecake and between the sets he yelled out, "Hey, can I get another slice of that cheesecake?" Paul also refuses to use an electric tuner, or tighten his mic stand. Pittman: Oh, that was because I was drunk. Brain: The mic kept spinning away from him... Pittman: I followed it... Brain: I guess you could say we all steal your cigarettes. What do you think before you go on stage? Brain: I hope Paul hasn't drunk too much. Pittman: Ohh... rock. Brain: We're all pretty nervous... I tend to hope we make it through with some sort of semblance of integrity. Pittman: I think the more nervous the better. When we played at The Commodore, I had so much adrenaline I don't even remember the show—I just remember thinking, "I'm so happy to be here." What music would people be surprised to know you listen to? Brain: Stevie Wonder... Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill... Pittman: That's Lucy. Lagace: Zeppelin. Pittman: Sabbath. We all like Sabbath. I wish I could say I liked the new Justin Timberlake, but 1 don't. Brain: Andre likes Eminem. Captain and Tenille. Paul loves Captain andTenille. Pittman: I know, oh, never mind, I can't even say it.... Brain: You have to! Say it! Pittman: I can't... Oh, I can't. If you don't tell us, I'll make something up, like Donnie Osmond. Pittman: Okay, there's this Nelly Furtado song. Brain: Ooohh... Pittman: I don't know, just one, it has nice piano. I mean, I think she's kind of gross but that one song... Listen, I think we should just cut out this guilty pleasure thing... Do you remember your first gig? Pittman: Yes, there were only three of us then [Pittman, Brain, and ex-member Colin McLean]. Brain: It was at Ms.T's. Pittman: We were opening for Jungle. Before the show— Brain: Colin was wearing his mom's cardigan, with pearls, and he wanted me to help him with his eyeliner. Pittman: I remember I wanted to play a song I'd just written, and you guys didn't know about it. What was it called? Pittman: "Herculean Bellboy." Actually, it's on the new album, but it's a lot different now. How passionate are you about this band? Lagace: We're here aren't we? Brain: I'm passionate about it. I'd like to make more albums. I think we're getting better. Paul's obsessed. He was recently told off at work [city hall] for always being on the phone or the computer with band stuff. Do you think they'll read this? Pittman: DiSCORDER? I don't think so—I mean, nothing personal. • 15 DiSCORDER ii PRETTY NORMAL DUDES I'd love to do what we do and be huge," says Death Cab For Cutie lead singer Ben Gibbard, speaking on the phone from his Seattle home, "but it's not like we have any plans for world domination. And anyway, there's no community at that level." Community, it turns out, is an important concept for Ben and his Death Cab For Cutie bandmates. My conversation with him is peppered with references to bands he likes and friends he has worked with. This admirable community spirit has served Ben well over the last few years. His name pops up again and again on records I own, whether it be a guest credit on an American Analog Set record or a simple thank-you in recognition of support, as appears on the just-released debut Thermals record. Most recently, a friendship with Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello lead to the formation of The Postal Service and the release of the duo's sublime debut album, Give Up. Named after the communication medium by which Gibbard and Tamborello traded musical ideas, The Postal Service will continue to produce music Gibbard assures me, but for now his main focus of attention has switched back to Death Cab for Cutie. Formed by Gibbard in Bellingham, Washington in 1997, Death Cab For Cutie have released three perfect albums, gone through three drummers, and become one of the most cherished bands on the American Indie scene. Their second album, We Have The Facts and We're Voting Yes, released in 2000, was hailed as an indie classic and The Photo Album, released just one year later, saw Gibbard tighten his already accomplished songwriting, and made a fan out of the man who discovered Oasis. Even Johnny Marr has professed a liking for them. As 1 spoke to the affable Mr. Gibbard, he was busy finishing up recording the new album, which is due to drop this fall, and hastily preparing for the short tour that takes them through Vancouver on June 10. DiSCORDER: How are things going? Ben Gibbard: Good, I just walked in the door. You're just coining back from recording your new album? Yeah, yeah. It's all coming together well; I'm really excited about getting it finished and getting it out there. Where are you recording this time? The Hall of Justice, the same studio we did the last one in. It's Chris' [Walla, Guitar] studio, here in Seattle. We've been recording off and on since December. We also did a large chunk of recording in San Francisco at Tiny Telephone Studios. I'm ringing from Vancouver and you're from not too far away— Bellingham, is that right? Yeah, for the most part. We're not all originally from Bellingham. We started playing in Bellingham when we were going to school there. Did you ever organize trips to Canada for cheap booze? Yeah, we used to, before we turned 21, but then as soon as you can walk down the street and drink it's not as appealing to go through a border crossing just to get some alcohol, you know? I'm gonna ask you a question that I know you really hate—but I think it really needs to be asked because I don't think people know. How did you get your name? I know that it's from [obscure late '60s comedy group] the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band... That's it, right there. I've never read that in any interviews with you, though—but I did read an interview that said you hate that question because you get asked it so much. Yeah, I hate that question, [laughs] It's like, how long do you have to be around until people don't ask you about the name anymore, you know? I think maybe at first we accepted that that's what you get for having such a silly name. But then after a while we were like, how many interviews do you have to do before people view it as common knowledge? A CONVERSATION WITH BEN GIBBARD OF DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE BY MEREK COOPER That's good that you.know the reference. It's very rare that anyone actually knows the album or knows the band. I think I know it because as a kid I used to love The Beatles, then I got into The Rutles [The Beatles spoof film featuring Eric Idle and Neil Innes] and then I just traced all of Neil Innes's career back to that first album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love The Rutles, too. My dad had it on VHS when I was a kid. 1 just loved it. I thought it was the fucking best. It came out on DVD last year and I picked it up. You have something else in common with another comedy band: Spinal Tap. You keep losing your drummers. Yeah, we have. I don't know what the deal with that is. I think there's always been the joke about the drummer always being the least stable person in the band, and for some reason in our band that's been somewhat true. We had one person who played with us for like a month or two, who was absolutely horrible on a number of levels. That was really early on. But our first real drummer, Nathan [Good], was in school. And unfortunately that was at a time when we were not making any money and not really at a level where it was feasible for someone with a shitload of student loans to go run around in a band. But we're still friends with him. And we parted ways with our last drummer [Michael Schorr] because... let's just call them creative differences. It was nothing sinister, evil or violent, so... No exploding drummers? No, no. Jason McGerr—who's playing with us now—we've known him since the Bellingham days. We go way, way back, and I may have said this before, but 1 definitely believe this will be the last drummer we'll ever have. It's kind of come full circle. It makes more sense having him than it has anyone else that's ever played with us. Will you be taking any new directions on this album? Erm, yeah, I would hope that people would view it as such. I mean, we're not busting out any new toys that are bleeding all over the record, or things like that. But unlike The Photo Album, I feel like this record is definitely more like a proper album. We've tried to construct it with transitions of songs going in and out of each other, and I think it's a little bit more expansive than the last record. We've made a conscious effort to make a record that we'll have to learn how to play live before we can ever tour it. And we've made a point of not trying to play this record together until we go out to tour it in the fall, just so it'll all be fresh to us. So you won't play any new songs at the Vancouver show? We're gonna play one or two. We've got three new songs and we'll probably play at least two of those, because they're the songs that are the easiest to play live and are definitely the more guitar-based ones on the record. We'll play the hits; so to speak—the big, glistening pop songs. A lot of people think that The Photo Album was a dip in form after We Have The Facts and We're Voting Yes. How do you view it? I don't know. I have to say that I'm proud of both records; records are like your kids—you never want to admit there is anything wrong with them. But with every record you make, there are always things you wish you had done differently. I feel that this record that we're making now is definitely more akin to We Have the Facts... than The Photo Album, in the sense that it's feeling more like an album than a collection of songs. We'll know when the record comes out. I wanted to ask you about your songwriting techniques— » whether it's a totally personal expression or if you put yourself in a certain character which you wish to explore? Take for an example the song "Styrofoam Plates". Is that sung from the perspective of a character or is that you? That's a character. It's based on people that are close to me, but it's not a biographical tune by any standards. I think it varies from song to song. There is a lot of material and it has to come from somewhere and, being that I live in my own skin, there tends to be elements of my life in everything that I write. I don't know—as I go down the list of songs on The Photo Album, it seems it's a half-arid-half kind of thing. You do a few cover songs: "All Is Full of Love" by Bjork and "This Charming Man" by The Smiths. I just wondered if the either Bjork or The Smiths have heard them and if you've had any feedback? I don't know about that. 1 do know that Chris just recorded some live sessions for Johnny Marr, and he turned out to be a Death Cab fan. And apparently he went so far as pulling out his iPod and showing him: "Yeah, I got your records in my iPod!!" Which was pretty exciting for all of us. That must be pretty pleasing. You're obviously a big Smiths fan? Yeah, of course. I don't know if he'd heard our version of "This Charming Man." It's such a butchered version, I think that maybe it would be a good idea if he didn't. But it's difficult to do good covers of Smiths songs. No one sings like Morrissey for a start. Oh, it's incredibly difficult, but we were very young and thought we could do anything. There was talk that last year you turned down signing to Alan Mcgee's Poptones label in England. You could have been the next Oasis or even the new Hives. 1 did. There was some talk a couple of years ago maybe to go with Poptones, but Fierce Panda has put out our last couple of records there. And I don't claim to know much about how the English scene works. It's pretty hype-based. Yeah, indie labels there can be very different from indie labels here. But you know, we're pretty pleased with what Fierce Panda is able to do for us. But we definitely don't have a world domination mentality and there's no real story for us. We're not gonna attract contemporary, fashionable people. There's no crazy backstage antics with Death Cab; it's probably gonna just be me drunk on whiskey at the end of the night, but that's about it. All of us have girlfriends, we're all pretty normal dudes so there's nothing to write about. You have pretty fanatical fans though, don't you? We have some, yeah. I've never run into any psychotic fans. It's interesting—especially after we hadn't played in the US for about a year—you're away from it and you kind of live with yourself and don't think of yourself as anybody other than a normal person who goes about his life doing normal things, and then, all of a sudden, you get on a stage and people are just going insane, [laugfhs] It's a weird juxtaposition of my normal life, my daily life, and what happens a couple of months of the year when \ I climb up on stage and play some songs. And what exactly is your normal life? You must be pretty busy with all your side projects? I've been busy this year. Last year, we did some stuff in the first half of the year, but for most of the rest of the year I was just kinda writing and finishing up this Postal Service record with my friend Jimmy [Tamborello, of Dntel and Figurine] and just kind of, you know, poking around. Working on songs. Hopelessly dating girls I shouldn't be dating. Errr... [laughs] So what's next for you? Well, right now we're putting the finishing touches on the record. I just went in and redid some little tiny vocal thing, and Chris is in the process of just deconstructing a whole song and putting it back together all crazy and it sounds great. I'm like [adopting the voice of an old time sea captain], "Arrr, it sounds great." I think the record's gonna be done June 1 and it's gonna come out in October. You've also got an American Analog Set/Death Cab split release coming out? Apparently. It came out on Tuesday and I haven't got a copy of it yet. Yeah, Ben Dickey, who runs this label Post-Parlo, he's kind of an indie rock renaissance man—he's in a band, he tour manages, he runs a label, he does all this stuff. He had this series of releases called "Home"; the theme is home and he asked me to do one last year, and I was like, "I'd love to." So me and Ken [Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set] did it. We each did four songs; three originals and a cover of each other. I did "Choir Vandals" from the last Analog Set record, Know By Heart. You appeared on that album, didn't you? Yeah. I did a bit of singing on it. We were just on tour together and he asked me: "Hey, do you wanna sing on this record?" We've been friends with them for a long time—since Death Cab's first national tour in the summer of 1999. We've kept in touch ever You seem to know so many people in the indie scene. Let me see: There's everybody at Barsuk (John Vanderslice, Kind of Like Spitting, The Long Winters and Rilo Kiley), The Analog Set and Jimmy Tamborello. Then, of course, The Thermals who you introduced to Subpop. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I think it's just a really great world to be involved with. We have bands sleeping on the floor two or three times a month, you know, friends that are coming through. It just feels like the closest thing to some '50s Beat Generation thing. People roll in for one day and hang out and everybody gets drunk and has a great time and catches up with each other and then they're out the door the next morning. Then you show up in their town and they take you in and feed you. It's nice, I like the nomadic life where people roll in for a day and you wildly discuss everything in your life and then they're out the door. There are no expectations of keeping in touch like normal people keep in touch. You just see them when they show up. We're all like war buddies. I recently read Michael Azerrad's book on the building of the American underground music scene in the '80s... Yeah, Our Band Could Be Your Life. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, and listening to you it seems that the network that Black Flag and their contemporaries built is still alive and well. I think it is. But it has obviously changed quite a bit. 1 mean, when I was reading that book, I was just like, "Man I can't believe what it must have been like to tour in 1981, having to book your own tour." Now it's so easy—email and cell phone have made booking so simple. Still, 1 think that those communities that began back then still really need to exist. Even in the age of cell phones and email, there is still a need for a community backbone to help everybody out. If we were a band like Coldplay or REM, there's no community at that level. I mean, we're playing this crazy show this weekend, the Sasquatch Music Festival, and Coldplay is headlining. And we were all making some jokes like: "Man, we'll get a chance to hang out with Coldplay." But they're not going to hang out, they're gonna show up a few minutes before they play, play and then leave. That's the way it works at that level. I think they're great, though—as far as big bands go. I own their records and 1 really like them. I just feel that I'm more proud of the community of friends and musicians that we exist with almost as much as the music we make itself. Just because it feels good like when somebody says, "Hey, I got my new record, I just did it!" I'm like, "Great, let me check it out." It's great just working on music with friends and hearing this whole community move forward and continue to make better music. It's really inspiring. You have to get inspiration from somebody and it may as well be your friend who only lives down the street. • (Death Cab For Cutie plays The Vogue Theatre on Tuesday, June 10 with The Dismemberment Plan, Enon and Gold Chains) From left to right: Incoming drummer Jason McGerr, Bassist Nick Harmer, Ben Gibbard and guitarist Chris Walla. Photo by by Justin Dylan Renney and Jenny Jimenez 19 DiSCORDER LAZER RAP APOCALYPSE THE G.I. JOE KILLAZ BUST PHAT BEATS ON THE BALANCE OF WORLD POWER Interview by Shad McAllister, Photo by Tele-Vipers 9* Gl Joe is the code name for America's daring, highly trained, special mission force. Its purpose is to defend freedom and justice against Cobra—an evil organization determined to rule the world." Millions of children during the '80s heard these words, committing them to memory and reciting them by rote. Some of the brighter ones even figured out the subtext of the message: The Joes were a bunch of reactionary pussies. Cobra had plans to take over the world; The Joes had plans to stop them. Were they trying to stop anyone else? It was never brought up. Whatever strengths they had—an aircraft carrier, hovercrafts, VTOL fighters—Gl Joe was always playing catch-up with Cobra. Today, a decade and a half on, nothing has changed other than the methods of dissemination. Operating from a secret bunker, Cobra now sends out hip hop messages in the hopes of convincing a new generation to join forces with the only team that matters in the New New Order. Destro and Stacy DeCobray (a.k.a. The Baroness), team staples of Cobra right from the beginning, kick rhymes as Cobra Commander does duty on beats. Their media empire is expanding by leaps and bounds, having achieved control of Eastern Canada and MTV2, Stateside. They are at work on a new album of songs for the politically malcontent and their website <www.gijoekillaz.com> just got a complete facelift. But is it worth picking up their CD? I dunno. Is it worth picking up your teeth as the jackboot of mediocrity smashes down onto your face and you think, "If only I'd hooked up with Cobra, they could have saved me from the tyranny of the majority." That's a call that you have to make. So, what happened after the downsizing of Cobra in the late '80s/ early '90s and the economic depression (which undoubtedly affected your stakes in the weapons industry) that inspired you to turn to music? Destro: Well, after our network TV show was cancelled, Cobra Commander became very depressed. He's very hungry for the spotlight, you know. Essentially, he'could take over the airwaves whenever he wanted—and every channel at that. But that's not the kind of thing that gets listed in TV Guide. With recording artists selling hundreds of millions of albums each year, he came up with this idea as an alternate way to reach the masses and spread our message. The on-again/off-again relationship between Destro and the Baroness has always been an open secret at best. Are you two still a couple? How is it different working together in a musical 20 June 2003 setting as opposed to a terrorist setting? Stacy: It's the sexual tension that keeps people cor more, so we can't reveal whether or not we are a i time. We don't want it to get boring like Sam and Dia or Joey and Dawson on Dawson's Creek. Since our r nothing more than a vehicle for our terrorism, ng back for mple at this e on Cheers, jsic is really lly not that different than our old work atmosphere, except with n Are you still in touch with the other members of Cobra, like Zartan, Major Bludd, or Firefly? Have any of them tried to branch out with their skills like you have? Destro: We're still in touch with everyone. You have to understand that Cobra is still in full effect. The organization is still running and we are still working every day at our ultimate goal of world domination. In fact, Major Bludd is one of our backup dancers. And 1 think Firefly tried out for American Idol, but Simon really tore into him and so I think he's taking some singing lessons now. He's the kind of guy that doesn't give up... Stacy: Man, I love that Simon! Do you respect any of the Gl joe team? If you do, who and why? Destro: What's to respect about a bunch of sleazy pedophiles? What if those were your kids playing near some fallen electrical wires that were still live and sparking—and some burly 40 year- old biker with a parrot on his shoulder started harassing them? Hey, kids are mischievous. I'd rather have them get a little shock and learn their lesson, instead of get groped by some weirdo. Stacy: Well, 1 really have to say that I have a great respect for Lady Jaye for singlehandedly bringing back the "femmullet." Oh wait, that was David Bowie. Screw Jaye. Global terrorism, over the last decade, has gotten a makeover as it stepped away from uniforms and laser rifles to dirty bombs and civilian casualties. Where does Cobra fit into the Bushs' New World Order? Stacy: Well, since we are trying to establish our own New World Order it wouldn't really serve our purposes to fit into someone else's New World Order. So we pretty much don't. Suffice it to say that Dubya doesn't fit into our New World Order, except as an attraction at the "people zoo." Also, in the last decade, advertising has taken a step away from the literal and focused on the emotional. When promoting a "ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world," is that an advantage? Destro: That "ruthless terrorist organization" stuff wasn't made up by us. That's a TV network marketing team labeling us with that. We like to call ourselves a group of "diabolical masterminds hell-bent on destroying the world's current social structure." But to answer your question—yes, it does help. Because generally, people are unhappy and what we're trying to do is make the world a better place. Are you comfortable with the term "terrorist" anymore? If that's not accurate, what would you prefer? Stacy: Personally, I prefer to be called a terrorista. I like to get a little girly when I'm bringing the terror. I know that he was cloned from the genetic material of several great world leaders, but let's face it—Serpentor sucked hard. Why did you follow him? Destro: I never liked the guy. 1 think he had an alcohol problem, I'm not sure. You have to understand, it costs an absurd amount of money to find and then rob the graves of history's most legendary tyrants. Not to mention clone their DNA and then create another human out of it. We wanted to get our money's worth, so we gave him a chance. Recently declassified documents revealed that the use of the name "Springfield" in The Simpsons was a last-ditch attempt by G.I.Joe to lessen the fear and respect inspired by your home-base. Are there any psy-ops or black ops that you pulled on the Joes that you have good memories of? Destro: Hell yeah! It's a little known fact that in the '80s, Cobra Commander posed nude for Playgirl. Unfortunately for the ladies, the photo spread (and I do emphasize the word "spread") never got published due to a disagreement over money. However, we did get the film negatives because Commander is weird like that. Anyway, it's a well known fact that the Joes love to play cards. We had all these Cobra Commander nude playing cards manufactured, then we secretly went in and replaced all of the Joes' regular decks with them. The next day when they sat down to play Poker, things turned ugly. There was mass confusion and anger at the Joe base, which enabled us to kidnap a few of the world's most powerful leaders with ease. A half-man/half-snake mutant in such compromising positions sure can cause some damage... What are the Killaz upcoming plans for the world? Destro: After we take over the music industry, we'll have Lazer Gun Rap on the radio 24/7. It will of course be full of subliminal messages to join our organization, and our growing power will eventually lead to us taking over the world. We will then destroy any semblance of society that you're currently familiar with and re-build things our own way. • EVERYTHING'S VINTAGE TALKING RETRO KEYBOARDS WITH JEREMY SCHMIDT OF SINOIA CAVES Interview by Paul Loughlean. Illustration by Lori Kiessling ff Tired of electronica? Secretly like folk, but not the folky kind? Prefer analog to digital? Jeremy Schmidt, aka Sinoia Caves, reveals all the secrets behind those spaced- out sounds in 1970s TV commercials while sitting down in the most rural setting we could find to talk about his album The Enchanter Persuaded and his mellotron (on loan to John Medeski at this year's Jazz Fest—go see it!). DiSCORDER: In your bio to the album, you write "file under mbient/psych/synth/pastoral/no age" Are you more connected to mu ic that was made in the past or to what going on now? Jeremy Schmidt: dor 't feel 1 fit into any conter nporary mus community. 1 gue ss 1 would have fit in pretty well with tr early '70s Germa cperimental rock scene. 1 feel more c an affinity with r ock music than electr onic mi sic, 1 guess. consider what 1 do to oe electronic musi :—mere ly because it -bu t I find most cor music is very urb an; whereas I'm more interes ed in evokin something very ru rai- -or outer space [la jghs]... non-urban. 1" not interested in i rba n imagery for this stuff. This album has a mix of song-oriented tracks and soundscapes. What did you set out to do? When I started making music alone, I was playing in bands, and what I wanted to do on my own was make more soundscape music, where I could put stuff together at home. I really wanted to make this kind of music—soundscapes. I was really into organs and synths and tone clusters, effects, drone-based music. I really wanted to extrapolate on that interest. I wanted to do long pieces with subtle harmonic changes but I also like to aspire to write songs. While 1 want to do something that's evocative of soundtrack music of the early '70s, I also like bands like The Flaming Lips or The Byrds who write melodic songs. I mentioned that a couple of songs on the album reminded me a little bit of Air, and that someone who is into Air would probably also appreciate Sinoia Caves. But then I was thinking that while you probably respect Air, you are actually approaching music in a different way. Can you see any comparisons at all? I can see a little bit of a comparison, maybe—like embellishing songs with old electronic sounds. I'd say that Air, is much more song-oriented than 1 am. I don't really know how much music is out there that's using vintage electronic sounds in the context of songs with folk elements. Combine acoustic guitar with synthesizers and people think of Air pretty quickly. The vocal songs on your album are really folky—nice acoustic Yeah, I really like what would be called psychedelic folk. I like the combination of a stripped down acoustic guitar songwriting method, combined with freaky, spacey synth sounds. Everyone knows you are the vintage gear king of the West Coast. What about the gear you used on this album? Sometimes with space rock, they love to list every piece of gear, right down to the pedals they used; did you think of listing the gear used on your liner notes? I thought about doing that. A lot of bands from the mid to late '90s, when vintange synths were really de rigeur, were making quite an effort to list all the vintage gear they used, but of course they didn't list all the slick digital tools they used as well. If they can use a moog for one little thing on the track, it gives them a license to list it in the liner notes, and I'm aware of that, and actually, when I look at liner notes, I kind of like looking at the list of gear they used. Like when Air do it, they painstakingly list everything they used on each song, and that's great, because the instruments contribute greatly to the character of the music; but, at the same time, I find it tedious when people do that. Sometimes they're just doing it to be fashionable or something, so in the end, I opted not to list them. But now that you are asking me! [laughs] For just about everything I used combo organs, like Farfisa, and Korg CX3, which is kind of like an analog Hammond simulator from the late '70s. I really like the churchy sounds of organ, and they're so conducive to drone. I also use tape delay for everything—the only processor I used on the album was tape echo. I used ARP synths a lot—also a Mellotron, and Taurus 2 bass pedals which Moog built. And an acoustic and electric guitar and a vocoder for the vocals. You've got a lot of old gear; do you have anything new? Actually, no, everything's vintage. Old instruments have a resonance, personally, with me, like growing up hearing weird synth sounds from a Halls commercial, or the soundtrack to Wild Wild World of Animals: that's very much part of my subconscious experience. A lot of the '70s electronic sound stuff is like somebody conducting planets [laughs], or something from outer space for me. It's like it didn't come from anywhere earthly. I've always loved that. Growing up, when did you decide to st; yourself? I guess my last year of high school and first year of art college, 1 started getting into stuff like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Spacemen 3, and thought, "I could maybe learn to do this." I was also into The Stooges and My Bloody Valentine, and from there I rediscovered prog and synth music. And an interesting thing was when I started acquiring gear, 1 discovered what the instruments were that actually made those sounds that I heard in commercials or albums I had. It's cool because the gear 1 use is obsolete but still capable of making sounds that it has always made. If you had to get rid of all your gear and keep one thing what would it be? The mellotron. That's definitely a holy grail type possession for And what's something you would love to have, but have never found, or can't get? A synth called a VCS3 or a synth E from a company in England called EMS. I hear them on all my favourite records. Brian Eno used one in Roxy Music and Tangerine Dream, in the early days, used them—Pink Floyd as well. They were the first portable, commercial modular synths. Why don't you have one? Well, they're quite rare. Somebody was years ago, but changed his mind—but I'd like to have a Theremin, too... • 21 DiSCORDER minnHEimHiii= JUNE under review ALL SYSTEMS GO Mon Chi Chi (Aquarius) Sometimes, when members of well established bands move on to form other bands, something worthwhile is created. Take the Kinsella brothers—or even Dave Grohl—for example. On the other hand, attempts to continue putting out quality music can faii miserably. The band All Systems Go, which contains former members of such bands as The Doughboys and Big Drill Car, makes a valiant effort with the album Mon Chi Chi, and almost achieves a decent sound. But not quite. Upon losing a member of the band after their last album release, the band recruited the front man from Toronto's The Carnations to play bass and share singing and songwriting duties. Thomas D'Arcy's contribution to the album is quit vident- sound almost i nt from the c ; his songs irely differ- acks. of the Jther .ngi b as if they should be on a punk compilation. The cover art on the album looks like that of a punk compilation, and the tracks are certainly the length of typical punk compilation songs. If this album were, in fact, a punk compilation, it wouid be a great success— except for the fact that songs like "Taking Up Space" and "Fascination Unknown" sound like Danko Jones without the attitude, which, as I'm sure you II agree, is not a good thing this all. The one great aspect about a i bun- whelm ing number of "bonus tracks" tacked on. There are 24 songs on Mon Chi Chi, and exactly one half of them are bonus tracks—mostly songs from the band's 1999 release, All 1 Want. With 24 songs on one album, there are bound to be a couple of decent tunes, and this is no exception. The two songs that stand out as anything more than decent are "Roll Your Eyes," a semi-mellow song with a nice melody, and "Motorbikes", which just has a very catchy tune. Although there is some evidence of thoughtfulness that must have gone into portions of the song- riting and creation of this album, the i Ting t on Mon Chi Chi do not stray far from the familiarity of generic pop rock. Kimberley Day A.R.E. WEAPONS s/t (Rough Trade) This is like Grand Buffet open- recorded media ing for Wesley Willis: not as monotonous, but funny only in confusion—and you leave wondering if you're annoyed or amazed. A.R.E. Weapons offers us industrial-ish, garage- ish, video game punk rap while bearing messages such as "Don't be scared, be cool!" in the opening track. I read a review of the duo that mentions "electro(ba)c(k)lash"—which is brilliant! A.R.E. Weapons seem to be a mockery of genre games and they seem to include every style possible in this album. Some stand-out tracks are "Strange Dust", which offers spy movie hip hop, and "Headbanger Face", which features a spooky, Rammstein- ish theme. "Street Gang" is like freestyling while playing Nintendo, while "Hey World" ends the album with a cheesy, New Wave, ballad-turned-stadium cheer song. I'm not sure whether to laugh or run madly around in a circle until I fall down and knock myself out while listening to this, but I'm sure both THE BAPTIST GENERALS No Silver/No Cold (Sub Pop) "Hey, little girl, 1 had a swell old time..." Awoke in Denton, Texas— on a hardwood floor; a cup of tea placed beside me. Then music from out back... 1 think I've been drugged. A cheap aluminium garage door rattles with the slow drums, and a guitar tight in rhythm. I walk barefoot on grass. Long day summer sun, and my hair is hung with sweat. Closer, close enough now so that I hear a voice. A creaking door of a voice, something bent and broken in that voice. Who are The Baptist Generals? Why does the American south frighten me so much?—such deep roots and bent ideals, and backwardness meshed with some misappropriated sophisticate pretense. A history almost profane and a culture rooted in honour—but defended with performance and lies. All grand gestures and drunken winks... I fell asleep on my floor listening to the gothic wail of aimless speculation. I fell asleep after I put on a record called No Silver/No Gold by The Baptist Generals, and slept in some drunken fever. The recording is a lo-fi garage masterpiece, a sound wearied with alcohol and shaky acoustics. A nervous embrace of dark tension, all centred—round the sickly bravado in Chris Flemmons' voice. The lyrics sustain a moment in the singer's confused inner narrative, there is no attempt to pretty up the poetics: it's all honest and walking dirty. Like picture frames hung empty and nervous on the wall, they can belie something more than was meant. The emptiness and convolution in the songs is yours; all that eerie strumming just casts long shadows you step in. I know this can't sound pleasant, but the music sounds of redemption. Not quite hopeless, not yet the moan and wail of some rickety mad Texan. The album begins with "Ay Distress"; a poignant whisper of a refrain: "the way you run your way is wrong/and you miss the song your heart is singing." Near the end of this track it breaks down with the ring of someone's cell phone, a modern intrusion that ruins a gentle gesture. Flemmons in disgust crashes something to the floor and, with it, any sense of roots-driven irony. The Baptist Generals are so desperately honest it settles you to the floor with a windy midnight chill. What follows after this wrenching moment is again all yours—lost love, dead children, late-night drunk, beaten mothers... take it all on. Wait until "Going Back Song" and let it all drift like a hat in some Texas zephyr. Derek Sterling Boone THE BLACK KEYS Thickfreakness (Fat Possum/Epitaph) Hotel Desk Clerk: "Welcome to the Down-And-Out Inn. What can I do for you fellas?" Black Keys: "We'd like a room, please, but, er, thing is, see... well, we don't have a lot of money. We've been on tour playing our broke-down blues holler for people all over the country, and we just hope you can spare us a bed for the night." HDC: "Shee-ooot! If I had a nickel for every time 1 heard that story! We is pretty full up right now as it is without you folk. We got some shady characters from Lee County holed up in here. Tried talking to 'em once—kept mumblin' how they be immortal or some nonsense—think they're in trouble with the law or sumpin'. Then we gots a couple of skinny white boys all the way from Motor City—call themselves The Soledad Brothers—but they don't look much alike to me. Anyway, what makes you think I'll take you in?" BK: "Well, sir, we may look young, but we've studied the blues, and play it like we mean it. I even took lessons from one of the great delta blues masters, T-Model Ford." HDC: "Well I'll be a monkey's uncle! If you boys say you can play, let's see ya sing for yer supper!" BK: "All right! Let's tear the roof off!" [Plays some tunes from new album.] HDC: "Mercy! That boy's got some voice! Sounds like he been swingin' in jukejoints his whole life! And that guitar has done gone been possessed by the devil hisself—it be smokin'! Woo-ee! And that beat, baby, is wild, I tell ya, crazy! Shakes the shingles right off this ol' shack! Lordy! All right, you boys have proved yo'selves. You can stay as long you need to... but do me a favour, would ya?" BK: "Sure, anything." HDC: "If you see that young couple stayin' in room 5B, the ones wearing the red and white get-ups, tell 'em if they don't pay up by tonight, they're gonna have my dirty bootprints all across their backsides, 'nuff said!" Sryce Dunn CUL DE SAC Death of the Sun (Strange Attractors Audio House) Together for nearly thirteen years, Death of the Sun is the first studio release by this electro-acoustic ensemble in four years (last year's Immortality Lessons was a live release). Esoteric but listenable, Cul de Sac's releases have always been highly regarded, even if their appeal is to that rather eccentric fringe which inhabits the often difficult territory between Dark, dreamy, at times with a tinge of quiet psychedelic shading, Death of the Sun neither falls into the emotionless, over- intellectualized trap of modern electro-acoustic art-music, nor the plethora of ambient elec- texture and rhythm than musicianship. Although the band touts the Velvet Underground and krautrock veterans Can as some of their influences (they toured with Can's Damo Suzuki), I find they have more in common with the work of guitarist Michael Brook or Jim O'Rourke. Cul de Sac's leanings are clearly towards the fidelity of acoustic instrumentation, but everything is augmented and whispers, clicks and clacks, buzzes, and layered, shifting soundscapes. The band even plays homemade instruments, hunting horns, and toy pianos as well as conventional guitars, sitars, and standing basses. New for the group is violinist Jonathan LeMaster—usually i :ello violin a ens mble like this is the kiss of death, but on this album the mythology of those instruments is never abused. Even my cat, an unrepentant violin-hater, will tolerate this recording. James Boldt CRADLE OF FILTH Damnation and a Day (Sony) This newest concept album from Cradle of Filth is pretty much what one expects of the British black-metal crew. A mix of stunningly gorgeous orchestral and choral segments overlaid with hook-laden, grinding metal guitars and drums, and—unfortunately—grunting, garbled vocals from Dani Filth. Admittedly, my bias is towards more melodic vocals, but I have noticed that throughout CoF's evolution they have added more melodic elements into their music, and I think it's time they made the vocals match. Besides, the lyrics are always so gorgeously poetic and filled with intelligent commentary—it's a shame they aren't more intelligible. But that's me and my bias. Damnation and a Day follows the story of the fall of Lucifer. Lucifer goes about messing around with humans, falls in love with an angelic woman named Faith (no transparency there), who then dies and ascends to Heaven, leaving Lucifer behind to be bitter and to eternally pine for his lost love—and his last chance at redemption. I find it suspicious that supposed Satanists like Cradle of Filth rely so heavily on Christian texts, and seem to be working within (and believing in) a Christian mythology. Then again, CoF are pretty ambiguous in their writing, and Lucifer is portrayed sympathetically: maybe their intent is to rot the mythology from the inside out. It can be read either way. So, with those quibbles out of the way, on to the music. CoF has brought in the whole range of their influences—from black metal to goth to classical and operatic. There are even more hooks on this CD than on the last one, Midian, and the orchestral and choral sections are quite well developed, setting up the mood of a given section of the CD perfectly. These sections have a sweeping, cinematic feel—as though they were actually soundtrack music. The percussion is fast, hard, and intricate—which always gets my attention. Even with my whining about the grunting vocals, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Damnation and a Day, particularly the tracks "Better to Reign in Hell", "Presents from the Poison- Hearted", "Doberman Pharoah", and "Babylon A.D." It seemed to me the album got better and better the further along it went, but it could just be that by then my ears had adjusted and the lyrics were more geared to Egyptian, Babylonian, and Crowleyan topics—which 1 find more palatable, anyway. I'm looking forward to seeing in July how Cradle of Filth is going to pull off this material live—it should be a pretty damn awesome show. Vampyra Draculea ELECTROCUTE A Tribute To Your Taste EP (Emperor Norton Records) This music is dirty. The debut EP from Berlin's (transplanted) Electrocute reeks of sex—and in sweet juxtaposition to lyr- lo' for daddies and candy-induced sugar buzzes. American-born Nicole Morier and Austrian Mia Dime found each other—just like true love—in the recesses of a cafe, and only one week before they began performing album feels iris feels like short skirts with no panties and a bottle of gin in your backpack. The fact that Dime sometimes serenades in German makes the whole trip feel a little bit more out of con trol ling v t she's saying means she could be saying anything, and you almost don't want to know what is going on. All 1 know for sure is that this music makes me want to dance. The cover art for this album depicts bizarre bunny sock puppets—in dresses and buttless chaps with flowers in pink hair. Set in a cityscape, this image is exactly a hint of what awaits once the album cellophane is removed and "Play" is pressed. There are guitars in the sounds, but this is not rock and roll. There are beats, but this is not electronica. There are two girls, but they are not naive (and definitely not chaste). Take these elements, fuck it up Electroclash-style and you may have a vague idea of the musical and ideological irony that awaits. sweetcheyanne EYES LIKE KNIVES S/tEP (Secret Fire Records) According to the press release which accompanied this album—as well as some friends of mine who would know- Eyes Like Knives sounds like Sonic Youth. I'm not usually one to perpetuate the "if you like this music, you'll love this other music" cop-out method of description, but I never really liked Sonic Youth, and I don't much like Eyes Like Knives. The sounds are heavy in guitars—noisy, but disappointingly generic. Much is made of the duel that is boy against girl, there being both a girl and a boy who sing and play guitar. As for the creative tension that is supposed to emerge between them, all I can say is that I prefer her (Rebekka Takamizu) over him (Scott Toomey), the fern' vocals edifying what is otherwise somewhat boring rock and roll. Listening to Eyes Like Knives' remastered and re-released debut (after being put out independently, initially—homemade packaging and all), it just couldn't hold my attention. The best part of the album is the last track, a complete departure from everything that precedes it—a stripped-down, almost haunting piano piece. And it is probably not a good thing when the best part of a rock album occurs when the guitars and drums fade away... sweetcheyanne IDLEWILD The Remote Part (Capitol) Idlewild came highly recommended to me by an individual whose tastes I often share, an honourable man who, happening also to be one of my profs, once gave me an A+ on an essay I wrote about Muppets. Despite this compelling evidence of a keen aesthetic sense on this individual's part, I'm afraid I can't share his enthusiasm for this band. First of all, half the songs are just no good—doughy samples of half-baked pop punk, removed from the oven prematurely; to the band's credit (and other long-term Idlewild fans have assured me that past efforts of this band merit at least some credit now) this is perhaps a hazard of being on a major label like Capitol: the company wants filler and the band must obey. Then the other songs sound like mid-90's pop mush. Not that they're bad pop mush: a handful of tracks—"Modern Way of Letting Go" and "I was Made to Think It" really stuck out—really do deliver the quality bounce. Donovan THE KILLS Keep on Your Mean Side (Rough Trade) I can't believe that The Kills' singer, Alison—1 mean "VV" (vroom vroom!)—used to sing for Discount! Happy poppiness has been exchanged for pouty, breathy grit with support from "Hotel." The Kills may be a band of one guy and one girl, with ($2) guitars, a drum machine, and such, but they are in no way associated with red and white striped novelties. Well, except for that guitar of Hotel's... This is bluesy, pulsing, raw, crunch rawk. 1 can chill to this but I can also imagine The Kills rocking out live. Natalie Vermeer MISS KITTEN Radio Caroline, Volume 1 (Emperor Norton Records) Caroline Herve—better known as Miss Kitten—has forged herself quite a reputation as a club DJ. However, she is mostly known for her collaborations with The Hacker and Felix the Housecat—in which her wry, deadpan vocals give a fun, Euro-Disco/Trash edge to the music. On Radio Caroline (named after the famous pirate radio station), Miss Kitten has compiled her favorite tunes by some well-known artists like Autechre, Panasonic, and Conrad Black, as well as lesser known ones such as Der Zyklus and Walking Endustries Stylistically, the tunes range from dreamy techno to a mild- ish dub to more upbeat raver Herve, in her classic deadpan way, offers her observations on life as the thread that binds the selected music together. This, unfortunately, ends up being the CD's weakest element. Her running commentary becomes quite annoying after repeated listening and reveals itself as inaneiy self-indulgent, disrupting the flo\ of the Overall, the first half of the CD is at best average; luckily, the quality picks up towards the end. "Mushrooms", by Noosa Heads, is OK, recounting a drug-induced dream (it can't hold water to "Z.N.S." by Einsturzende Neubauten, recorded many years earlier, whose take on that state of nuch r ;che Modelle' ing). "Mathen and "Hippies in da Houze" are pretty decent little pieces of minimalist electronica. Kinesthesia's "Flicklife" is a cool, downtempo number that is reminiscent of the sound of local label Upstairs Recordings. The best track is "Makee", performed by Walking Endustries. With heavy doses of sampled film noir movie dialogue, this slinky number is awesome and perhaps the only reason to get this otherwise mediocre CD. pes MARILYN MANSON The Golden Age of Grotesque (Nothing/Interscope) I've been eagerly awaiting this it was originally supposed to come out (usual record company bullshit), and it's well worth the wait. The last album completed a backwards trilogy, and so Marilyn Manson has now gone off in new musical directions his overall vision. This new CD has an experimental, exploratory feel to it. For this album, Manson was inspired by the Weimar Republic—the period of ultimate decadence in Germany after the end of World War 1 and before the Nazis came to power. The album mixes this dichotomy together well, playing with fascist (especially in the visuals and videos) and burlesque imagery. (No doubt this is partially inspired by Manson's relationship with burlesque dancer Dita von Teese.) Other influences are the subculture of dandyism in Britain during the same period—the wealthy young men of the era with nothing to occupy their time but looking good and being social butterflies and dilettantes—and Dadaism, the art movement of the teens and 20s that advocated going with instincts and just painting what came to you, even if it made no sense—eventually growing into a movement of "nonsense art" for the sake of reaching a purer artistic expression that often incorporated childish or ridiculous motives. Manson changes his persona slightly every album, and in keeping with these themes central to the new paradigm of The Golden Age of Grotesque, his new identity is the Arch Dandy of Dada. On the while retaining that distinctive Marilyn Manson timbre and feel—and the expected air of defia -thei and more energetic feel to most of this album—as if in the writing of the new material he was rediscovering the joy of playing around with music and just seeing where the experiments took him. It has a fresh yet timeless quality to it, and I think this is his best album yet. There are lots of catchy grooves and the usual hooks based on word-play; listening to it is great, but it's even better to listen while reading the lyrics pages because the spelling changes, new compound words, and double entendres do matter to interpretation. As for a favorite track, too soon to tell—I like them all. But even at this early stage some are starting to shine more than the others. My current favorites are "sAINT" and "Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth"—but i'm sure I'll have a different new one every week. It's all great, and I suspect this disc may well outsell even Mechanical Animals as more singles are released. At least six of the 15 tracks here have real hit potential. Commercial radio is about to greatly improve over the next few months if I'm right. Vampyra Draculea RANDY Welfare Problems (Burning Heart/Epitaph) I used to know this kid in high school named Randy; he was a smart guy with a habit for pulling pranks—like the time he pulled down the shorts of this other kid while he was rope- climbing in gym class—man, that was funny! Or the time he replaced a dribble glass for a coffee cup, and our social studies teacher spilled it all over his pants... Good times, good times. Or there was that other time when... Oh, wait—you mean I'm supposed to write about the band Randy? Well why didn't ya say so? Imagine the brattier cousin of The Hives messin' with all them books and manifestos and political mumbo jumbo of The (International) Noise Conspiracy, and you got yourselves four Swedes who can write a catchy punk song and still deliver a message, which is more than I can say about my friend Randy—he was still pulling stuff like he was doing in high school all through college and even after. What a dork. Bryce Dunn LUCINDA WILLIAMS World Without Tears (Lost Highway) They are all going to leave you, and truth is you will never hold onto them. Leftover memories of sweet days leave a bitter trace on the inside of my lips. only say the same things over and over again, I'll understand eventually—I'll never fucking understand. Lucinda, 1 miss her. If you see her—let her know. Monday morning—drink drank coffee. Thick smoke just hides these tears, and brings fear. Let it fill my lungs, and then speak in tongues. So I see you out the door constantly. How did I lose your eyes?; the photographs turn inside. The way you would light a smoke with that tortured glare. When all we had were bad jokes—and caught together sweaty, speechless kiss. I know it seems distant, but I can still taste you, and oh sweet lord this still haunts me. High priests and doctors sullen in confusion; they will never see the way, to cast all this away. Lately, my words have betrayed and now So Lucinda, I got your album and a bag of dope—drink on my nights out and refuse the girls that take my eyes. I sit on the floor with my dog, crying—listening to your voice. Pregnant pauses give birth to white noise, and the rushing vertigo of a still scene. Then music, oh, what damn transcendent music. So much sweet guitar and travelled dry voice. Guess what, darling? You don't know me, and I don't know you, but let's try it once more. We need to feed a late night. A sweet smile mystery, where a piano will play from across the hall. I can't believe how beautiful you are—I just lay on the floor and watch you on the ceiling. And you smiie, then begin to sing with a not of laughter. So let me try, try, try... I remember that late night back alley kiss. Lovesick, in the cinema of my rotten brain I replay that kiss, let it slow down and, in every moment, watch your closed eyes and your lips as they took mine. In a back alley with such glamorous cinematic beauty, and Lucinda you know this is all for her and not you. To everyone—all those you love will leave silently at night. Let them go, maybe find them again on a perfect Monday morning. So for those brokenhearted, go and find Lucinda. Walk down your street, any street—buy a bottle and a pack of smokes. Fuck the World Without Tears; let the struggle turn all my sorrow into long nights of sleepy dancing. Come on now, sensitive children, and let her hear you whistle. Put this album on the hi-fi, and let Lucinda tell you that eventually everyone gets fucked over. So suffer away with her, and then give the album to the one who left you. Derek Sterling Boone • IH5 wvwlle 1W*N£ A WENDY WNERL 2. taw 5. WAR.* fc.LOLDR\F\CS a AW oPfcJMIWc?'. q.CVJNT Vl.ReyN«w| £LMfBATHER MANNEQUIN CONMfcCUOir I5.w\emtwr (of RAJND rating CftWTlHEWN^K Zjd-*li 1 ANTIMATTER 7KLIM to£ic "fcrwo 23 DiSCORDER WH!S^ [PfflMIWQC ■ &UFrime13th &VBBILS BANDS TBA GASTOWN' 'Go's punk; / -TIEIKIIIILS ftGflRRGE!: HERE COMEf 9UMMERI!: I ROYAL GRAND PRIX - ORPHAN j ; RIFF RANDELLS - TIE CINCH i : FRI JUNE 6TH -W.I.S.E. HALLSpm : \ Juno 10th • !*' Los Furios : THE RAILWAY GLOB Baro"?a"r'i ,SQi 579' dunsmuir Yli\ Plow CO RELEASE PA J STAB COLLECTOR THE HOODWINKS SATURDAY JUNE 28™ - THE ROYAL real live acti DIVISION OF VITAMIN A INDUSTRIES, INC. JOHNNY MARR AND THE HEALERS PALO ALTO Thursday, May 1 Richard's on Richards I'm not quite sure how 1 ended up at this show, but being mysteriously given a media pass was one of the best chance happenings of my week. Not having heard either Palo Alto or Johnny Marr's solo music before, I was able to enter the club with a clear, unbiased mind and a willingness to absorb whatever I possibly could. Palo Alto's performance was fantastic. The melodic rock music and loud, wailing vocal harmonies left the crowd silently gazing at the band from California with sincere admiration. The sound was reminiscent of U2 back in the days when they were first getting their act together and creating powerful, Technical difficulties interfered with the first few songs of Johnny Marr and the Healers' set, but the former Smiths guitarist, along with three recruits including Kula Shaker bassist Alonza Bevan, did not let his constantly deteriorating set of earbuds keep him from pleasing his long time fans, or at least attempting to. Once the four musicians were able to begin playing smoothly, it was evident that Johnny Marr's solo project was not quite up to the standards of many Smiths fans, but rather delightful to fans of the more recent work of fellow UK band, Oasis. As a closet Oasis fan (there goes my secret), this was not necessarily a bad thing, and the crowd at Richard's on Richards did not seem to be the least bit disappointed. KimberleyDay THE RAPTURE HINT HINT Sonar Saturday, May 10 There are bands that put style before substance, and then there are bands that are so creatively, intellectually, and emotionally bankrupt that you feel angry and a little ill knowing that they got some portion of your ticket money. Hint Hint are unfortunately such a band. I had the displeasure of seeing them open up for Les Savy Fav in January, at which point they were only unremarkable latecomers to the dance-punk bandwagon. Now they've evolved into an efficient corpse-fucking machine, shamelessly aping both the past and their contemporaries, and once again they're opening up for an original, cutting-edge band that does everything right that they do wrong. Like fellow New Yorkers Les Savy Fav, The Rapture have been working for years to push the boundaries of modern and artistically ambitious punk rock while remaining totally conscious of the value of live music reviews pure danceability. Having been a long-time fan, I was initially leery of the steamroller of hype that's accompanied their collaboration with shit-hot production duo the DFA (in case you've been living under a rock, the Rapture's been featured in pretty much every American and UK music magazine over the last year), the first crossover dancefloor hit "House of Jealous Lovers." Their new sound leans heavily towards the rhythms and sounds of house music, and interviews have them referencing Primal Scream and The Happy Mondays as new influences, but within the first few songs of their set, it was apparent that they haven't abandoned the desperate, messy noise that attracted me to their oEPs. They kicked off with a muddy version of "Notes" and slogged through another tune before stopping to shout a few things at the soundman. After some technical problems were fixed, they dove into a rave- up rendition of the title track from their Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks EP, a driving, nervy rocker that started the crowd dancing. They thrashed enthusiastically through a few more old songs, demonstrating all their fabled strengths: Vitto Roccoforte's impeccably tight snare-and-hi-hat-focused drumming, Matty Safer's jumpy, propulsive bass lines, and Luke Jenner's impossible falsetto (the Robert Smith comparisons don't do him justice). Jaws dropped halfway through the set, however, as puzzled indie rockers watched Vitto leave his drum kit and head for a drum machine as the Rapture launched into their new material with "Olio" and "Sister Saviour," off their forthcoming album. Rubbery, pulsating synths echoed the past sounds of Chicago house music rather than the new wave reviv- alisms we've become used to, and they collided with slashing, minimal guitar and a stomping four-on-the-floor. This fusion seemed to confuse the audience and the dancing was temporarily relegated to a few hardcore fans. Disorientation peaked with "I Need Your Love", the band's most overtly house-y tune. The hook was Luke's stunning vocal range, however, and skeptics were soon won over by the aching warble of his upper register. The band morphed that song into an improv noise-breakdown that exploded without warning into "House of Jealous Lovers", at which point everyone in the house lost their shit at once and, to my slack-jawed amazement, a full-on mosh pit broke out at Sonar. The Rapture left the stage amidst hoarse and sweaty shouts and applause, and returned quickly to play "Heaven" and finish with a couple more new numbers. They managed to live up to their namesake and deliver on the promise made by a heavy burden of hype, and, if some of the most enthusiastic dancing I've ever seen from Vancouver ther weren't many leaving disappointed, saelan COLDPLAY THE MUSIC ISLEY Friday, May 23 Pontiac Theatre (GM Place) What's this, mainstream in DiSCORDER? Read on, fair reader. Forget the mass amounts of money, forget the screaming 14-year old girls (there aren't as many as you'd think), forget your friend that would laugh if he knew you liked one of these bands. Maybe, just maybe, the kids are on to something. Opening in a packed theatre (it looked a lot more like a stadium then a theatre) was Isley, a charming group from Texas. I had to feel a bit sorry for them. They had talent and their songs were pleasant enough to make me consider getting the EP, yet ,as they had four young blond girls as their vocalists, guitarists and keyboardist, every few minutes the air was pierced by some drunken male comment or not- so modest proposal. Following Isley was The Music. Now, I'd never seen them before. Whenever I'd see their music video I'd quickly change the channel, assuming they were the same unoriginal shit you always see on MuchMusic. I didn't expect to be knocked off my smug, indie-lovin' pedestal. How to describe them? Think of vocals with a striking resemblance to Robert Plant's, or a riff-heavy, almost psychedelic Chemical Brothers. These guys were born to perform in arenas. Robert Harvey, lead singer and guitarist, blew me away. And he's quite the dancer. In fact, he inspired me with a gripping urge to stand up and break dance (not that 1 have a clue as to how), but I realized I'd be the only one besides the few awkward hippies. In fact, they were one of the best live acts I've ever seen, unmarred by the dead crowd (who were obviously mainly there for Coldplay.) Finally, Coldplay. Earlier in the day I was fortunate to be one of 12 permitted past the burly British security guards and into the empty stadium, into the grail of the music fan, the sound check. Damn, they are genuinely endowed with some sweet skills. This was confirmed at the actual show. Sometimes I didn't even mind the 30-something year old woman in front of me that danced like Elaine on Seinfeld, waving her hands in my view. Even if you don't like Coldplay's music, you have to respect their efforts to support the Fair Trade campaign, with handouts, signs, pamphlets, petitions, and videos that would warm or guilt-rid even the darkest of exploitative capitalists. And you have to respect the energy, effort and heart these guys put into their music. Don't dismiss that as a cheesy comment, it holds true for them more than a lot of bands out there. The highlight of my evening was hearing Chris Martin dedicate a song to the infamous Billy (a friend of Martin's I met earlier in the day), reminiscing of the days when it would "take 40 gigs to get thismany people to come to our shows." Coldplay ultimately is an indie success story. They were four poor, ignored guys a long time before they became a record company's wet dream. At the end of the night 1 left with mine eyes dazzled by a stunning light show, my ears ringing, my throat a little sore, my wallet a little lighter, and an overall tingling of content. Parmida Zarinkamar MY MORNING JACKET DETACHMENT KIT Friday, May 23 Richard's on Richards To continue the tradition of rushed Friday night shows at Richard's on Richards, the opening act for this New Music West show, Detachment Kit, was already playing as the doors were finally opened (late, of course). Aside from a couple of photographers up by the stage, the venue seemed virtually empty. This didn't keep Detachment Kit from playing a great set, how ever; the four-piece band from Chicago was able to impress the unfamiliar crowd with their strong vocals and appropriate balance of loud music and emotional vocals. To the dismay of several, the next band to come on stage was not Burning Brides, as they had been abandoned somewhere along the trek to Vancouver. Instead, My Morning Jacket jumped on stage in no time at all, and immediately erased whatever disappointment the crowd may have had from the lack of a second opening band. Now, if you've ever seen a band like, for example, Victoria's Hot Hot Heat, live and thought, "Man!, these guys have huge hair'.W", well, wait until you see My Morning Jacket. Not only do these guys have the largest hair-per-capita ratio since ZZ Top, but, unlike certain other big-haired bands, the styles are real and the live music is amazing. My Morning Jacket played an hour of beautiful songs, highlighted by "Bermuda Highway," obviously a crowd favourite. The levels and sound during their set were absolutely perfect, a shoeless Johnny Quaid's vocals were strong, and the show ended up going very smoothly despite the rushed start. Listening to the guys from My Morning Jacket up there on stage playing such great music with their faces entirely covered by giant manes of hair (except for the short-haired keyboardist who can only be asked one question: "what are you thinking?") has made me never want to wear shoes, ever again. KimberleyDay If you had a guitar stuck up your arse, you'd thrash about, too. (My Morning Jacket, Richard s.) Photo by Kimberley Day being 77 percent When the _OtCHtf id!? yeare^Srproven 'oil t~~ ~*1 #AO " „_^— <oon "^Assessment; Military Strategy and Operational Retirement,.-. ,,jentheres$ win i iu t« years the Ub available oil reierves, while ^MPfl ON TOUR! JESUS H! MIC ?,Jn„»er @ The «««* ** commentary, Mico offers music that is a cut above. " OttawaXpress "Mico is special - a conflagrant whirlwind of post-punk guitars, vibrant melodies, and genuine emotional depth. " Calgary Straight Collectively owned and operated. For more information on the sounds and ideas we put into the fucking isit www.g7welcomingcommittee.ci 25 DiSCORDER fflfo® £@$(?(^&®&® @@£®®^ j^ttig^n l HAVE NEWS ABOUT yoorX DAUGHTER. LUCY HAS SENT ME To CONTACT You IN HOPES THAT >fc/ CAM UELP HER ESCAPE From THE. AGo/S/y OF HER CURRENT EX(ST£T/VCE. WHAT? WHAT* is -this ASoor? coUo ARE,.. Listen: r cm oMiy manifest MYSELF lOA/G ENOUGH To TELL YoU THIS: ^HE SPCA, fN CoNSUNCTioN WITH TrAE RAND CoRpoRATio/M AND THE SAUCER PEOPLE... ..OA/Ly TREy KWO«d k)Hy YooR DAUGHTER WAS SINGLED OUT. WHAT/? MV DAUGHTER? I Do/vY HAVE A DAUGHTER! I THIMK yooVE got we wrong House. THE DEAD GfRL £IV£D NEXT DOOR. 3ES0S CHRIST? FOR TMIS X'M MlSStNG NlGHTLlhiE I? ;SLAM!cJ Sk I ULdLdui Wednesday 4th...Red Cat Records Night with guests Magic Ass Thursday 5th...Folk/Pop with The Honey Brown Band Friday 6th...Pete Campbell and His So Called Friends with Rodney DecRoo Saturday 7th..The Bumettes with Amy Honey Thursday 12th... Slide Guitar & Blues Harp with Scott Smith and Victor Polyik Friday 13th..RockabilIy, Surf and Country with Eldorado Saturday 14th...Airhorn Protocol CD Release/Launch/Fareweli Thursday19th...An evening with Doug Bennet (Doug and The Slugs) Friday 20th... Local Ait-Country Faves Bottleneck Saturday 21st. Ali the way from Winnipeg, Nathan & Greg McPherson (G7) Thursday.. 26th...Astray Boy with Guests Friday 27th..Ranchfest Preview w/ Tennesee Twin and Andrew Burden Saturday 28th..Locai Hip-Hop with Teach Your Own and Glenn Garinther 4210 Main St. Vancouver BC 604 709 8555 cover charge is a measly3- 5 bucks, why not support local music? Red Cat Records p^Vinyl * T Shirte * Panfips ph. 708 9422 * email buddysredeaiea cliartA what's being played at CiTR 101.9f June Long Vinyl June Short Vinyl June Charts 20 Years Back 1 New Pornies 2 Set Fire To Flames 3 Gossip 4 v/a 5 Turbonegro 6 Kinnie Starr 7 Tim Hecker 8 Erik Truffaz 9 Burquitlam Plaza 10 Be Good Tanyas 11 Skinjobs 12 STREETS 13 RJD2 14 Hot Hot Heat 15 Starlight Mints 16 Flaming Sideburns 17 Chains 18 JWAB 19 Goldfrapp 20 White Stripes 21 Speed To Kill 22 Subarachnoid... 23 Bitchin' Cameros 24 Red Snapper 25 Yo La Tengo 26 Martin Gore 27 Boy 28 Northern Chorus 29 Stinkmitt 30 Ikara Colt 31 The Dears 32 The User 33 Mouse on Mars 34 Cat Power 35 The Buzzcocks Electric Version Mint Telegraphs In Negative Alien8 Movement Kill Rock Stars Merzbow: Remixed Important Scandinavian Leather Epitaph Sun Again Violet Inch Radio Amor Mille Plateaux Walk of the Giant Big on Fall Chinatown Burn Your Rainbow Bo Bo Gnar Gnar The Horror Scenes 1-13 Built On Squares Sky Pilots On Top of Things Pyrokinesis Black Cherry Elephant s/t Also Rising s/t s/t Summer Sun Counterfeit 2 s/t Spirit Flags Smell The Mitt Basic Instructions EP No Cities Left Symphony #2 Glam You Are Free s/t Blue Note Hive-Fi Nettwerk Agitprop Global Symp. Defjux Ohev Pias Jet Set Get Hip Global Symp. Mute V2 Indie Strange Attractors Indie Lo Matador Reprise Indie Sonic Unyon Indie Epitaph Maple Music Asphodel Thrill Jockey Matador Merge 1 Gentlemen of Horror 2 Frog Eyes/JWAB 3 Destroyer 4 New Town Animals 5 The Spitfires 6 Kevin Blechdom 7 The Lollies 8 Kung Fu Killers 9 Cato Salsa Exp. 10 Get Hustle 11 Chromatics/Monitor 12 The Evaporators 13 Gene Defcon 14 Mirah 15 The Riffs 16 The Agenda 17 v/a 18 Rag Boosters 19 Veal 20 The Cheats Independent Global Symp. Independent Dirtnap Glazed Four States Fair Evil World TKO 5 Song 45 Split 5 Song 45 Fashion Fallout Jukebox High Jelly Donuts Channel Heaven s/t Picture Disc Emperor Norton Who Do You Love? Gravity Scat Split GSL Honk The Horn Nardwuar Baby Hallelujah Modern Radio Small Scale k Such a Bore TKO Are You Nervous? Kindercore Modern Radio Modern Radio Side Tracked ZVA I Hate Your Lipstick Six Shooter Save Yourself Longshot 1 Shriekback Care 2 Spear of Destiny Grapes of Wrath 3 The Undertones The Sin of Pride 4 The Members Uprhythm, Downbeat 5 Gun Club Death Party EP 6 Phil Smith The Phil Smith Album 7 Dead Kennedys Plastic Surgery Disasters 8 Eddie Grant Killer on the Rampage 9 The Birthday Party The Bad Seed EP 10 Rip Rig and Panic Attitude 11 Ramones Subterranean Jungle 12 New Order Power, Corruption and Lies 13 Echo and The Bunnymen Porcupine 14 Black Uhui 15 v/a 16 The Stranglers 17 The Violent Femmes 18 Tears For Fears 19 U2 20 The Blasters The Dub Factor Pillows and Prayers Feline s/t The Hurting War Non-Fiction c HOW THE CHARTS WORKJ The monthly charts are compiled based on the number of times a CD/ LP ("long vinyl"), 7" ("short vinyl"), or demo tape/CD ("indie home jobs") on CiTR's playlist was played by our DJs during the previous month (i.e., "June" charts reflect airplay over May). Weekly charts can be received via email. Send mail to "majordomo@unixg.ubc.ca" with the command: "subscribe citr-charts." • 27T>iSCORDER OM tUc: dial IIIIBIIIIIBHHal SUNDAY ARE YOU SERIOUS? MUSIC 9:00AM- 12:00PM All of time is measured by its art. This show presents the most recent new music from around the world. Ears open. THE ROCKERS SHOW 12:00PM-3:00PM Reggae inna all styles and fashion. BLOOD ON THE SADDLE 3:00PM-5:00PM Reakowshit- caught-in-yer-boots country. CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING alt. 5:00PM-6:00PM British pop music from all decades. SAINT TROPEZ alt. 5:00PM- 6:00PM International pop (Japanese, French, Swedish, British, US, etc.), '60s soundtracks and lounge. Book your jet set holiday now! QUEER FM 6:00PM-8:00PM Dedicated to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual communities of Vancouver. Lots of human interest features, background on RHYTHMSINDIA 8:00PM- 10:00PM Rhylhmslndia features a wide range of music from India, including popular music from Indian movies from the 1930s to the present, classical music, Ghazals and Bhajans, and also Qawwalis, pop and regional language numbers. TRANCENDANCE 10:00PM- 12:00AM Join us in practicing the ancient art of rising above common thought and ideas as your host DJ Smiley Mike lays down the latest trance cuts to propel us into the domain of the mystic- aktrancendance@hotmail.com> THE SHOW 12:O0AM-2:O0AM ANTELOPE FREEWAY 2:00AM- 6:00AM The Freeway Beckons! Offering new vistas, exotic folk, and old memories. With your host Ian at the wheel. Four hours of aged LP pleasure. Five stars all! MONDAY BBC WORLD SERVICE 6:00AM- 8:00AM BREAKFAST WITH THE BROWNS 8:00AM-11:00AM Your favou- rite brown-sters, James and Peter, offer a savoury blend of the familiar and exotic in a blend of aural delights! LOCAL KIDS MAKE GOOD alt. 11:00AM-1:00PM Local Mike and Local Dave bring you local music of all sorts. The program most likely to play your band! TANZEN IM 4-EK alt. 11:00AM-1:00PM Hopefully happy music to get us through these rough summer months. Proof that Germans make more than scary industrial music, too. PARTS UNKNOWN 1:00PM- 3:00PM Underground pop for the minuses with the occasional interview with your host, Chris. SANDBOX THEATRE 3:00PM- 4:00PM A show of radio drama orchestrated and hosted by UBC students, featuring independent works from local, national, and international theatre groups. We welcome your involvement. <sandboxtheatre@hotmail.com> ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS 4:00PM- 5:00PM A chance for new CiTR DJs flex thei, Surprises galore. WENER'S BARBEQUE 5:00PM- 6:00PM Join the sports dept. for their coverage of the T-Birds. CRASH THE POSE alt. 6:00PM- 7:30PM Hardcore/punk as fuck from beyond the grave. SOLARIZATION (on hiatus) alt. 6:00PM-6:30PM Current affairs with an edge. Kenneth Chan exposes issues that truly matter. None of that mainstream crap. Anybody say controversy? Email: <solarization@radio.fm> MY ASS alt. 6:30PM-7:30PM Phelps, Albini, V me. WIGFLUX RADIO 7:30PM- 9:00PM Listen to Selecta Krystabelle for your reggae education. THE JAZZ SHOW 9:00PM- 12:00AM Vancouver's longest running prime time jazz program. Hosted by the ever-suave Gavin Walker. Features at 1 1. June 2: Conflict is one of the most powerful jazz statements of the '60s. Little known and forgotten alto saxophonist/composer Jimmy Woods leads this mighty ensemble that includes Andrew Hill (piano), Elvin Jones (drums), Harold Land (tenor saxophone), and others. June 9: The whole program will be devoted to this year's Jazz Festival with Gavin's guest, festival media director John Orysik. June 16: Saxophonist/composer and jazz magician Wayne Shorter with the same band he'll be playing with at this year's jazz festival. Footprints Live. June 23: Newly discovered, a live performance by a swinging edition of pianist/composer/band leader Stan Kenton's orchestra at the Newport Jazz Festival. June 30: Drummer Dave Bailey leads a fine group that includes guitar great Grant Green and also features legendary tenor saxophonist Frank Haynes in one of his few recordings. Reaching Out. VENGEANCE IS MINE 12:00AM- 3:00AM Hosted by Trevor. It's punk rock, baby! Gone from the charts but not from our hearts— thank fucking Christ. PSYCHEDELIC AIRWAVES 3:00AM- &30AM DJ Christopher Schmidt also hosts Organix at Club 23 (23 West Cordova) every Friday. TUESDAY PACIFIC PICKIN' 6:30AM- 8:00AM Bluegrass, old-time music, and its derivatives with Arthur and "The Lovely Andrea" Berman. HIGHBRED VOICES 8:00AM- 9:30AM THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM 9:30AM-11:30AM Open your ears and prepare for a shock! A harmless note may make you a fan! Hear the menacing scourge that is Rock and Roll! Deadlier than the most dangerous criminal! ' <borninsixtynine@hotmail.com> . > Sunday Monday TUESDAY Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 6*m :l :i n 12pm 7 8 9 10 11 l 12pm 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12am| 1 2 3 4 5 REGGAE LINKUP ARE YOU SERIOUS? MUSIC K ROCKERS SHOW BLOOD ON THE L SADDLE I Po I SAINT I P~ I TROPEZ I BBC WORLD SERVICE BREAKFAST WITH THE BROWNS El LOCAL KIDS MAKE GOOD K- PARTS L UNKNOWN SANDBOX THEATRE(TK) ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS E PACIFIC PICKIN' HIGHBRED VOICES L- THIRD TIMES THE CHARM IE CIRCUIT TRACING MEAT EATING VEGAN(Ec) BBC WORLD SERVICE SUBURBAN JUNGLE FOOL'S PARADISE L EXQUISITE CORPSE THE SHAKE Ifi THE DIM SUM SHOW E MOTORDADDY/ RUMBLETONE RADIO RACHEL'S E SONG BBC WORLD SERVICE END OF THE WORLD NEWS PLANET E LOVETRON RHYMES & REASONS BBC WORLD SERVICE CAUGHT IN THE RED "E SKA-T'S SCENIC DRIVE w THESE ARE THE BREAKS LEO RAMIREZ K SHOW NARDWUAR L^ PRESENTS 5 6 :i 10 "I il •I 6 sic • Lo= lounge • Mt= metal • No= noise • Nw= Nardwuar • Po= pop • Pu= punk ■ pots » Sk = ska »So= soul » Sp= sports » Tk= talk • Wo= world ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ BBC WORLD SERVICE THE SATURDAY EDGE GENERATION [Pu~ ANNIHILATION POWERCHORD CODE BLUE | Rts 2PMI 1 l 2 :l I 10,000 VOICES (Tk) QUEER FM K CRASH THE POSE FLEX YOUR HEAD E A.S.W (Po/Ec) RHYTHMSINDIA WIGFLUX RADIO TRANCENDANCE THE JAZZ SHOW TZ SALARIO MINIMO BLUE MONDAY (Gl) OUT FOR KICKS E CITR NEWS AND ARTS(Tk) ELECTROLUX HOUR TK "^3 -£ ON AIR LEl WITH GREASED HAIR FAREASTSIDE SOUNDS VENUS FLYTRAP FOLK OASIS | Rts [Trn~ LIVE FROM... —' THUNDERBIRD HELL TK AFRICAN RYTHMS TK [Dc/Ec SYNAPTIC SANDWICH [vVo VENGEANCE IS MINE! HANS KLOSS' MISERY HOUR WORLD HEAT IE TE PLUTONIAN NIGHTS T* ANTELOPE FREEWAY AURAL TENTACLES H PSYCHEDELIC AIRWAVES FIRST FLOOR SOUND SYSTEM WIRELESS CRUELTY THE VAMPIRE'S BALL EARWAX REGGAE LINKUP "5 Hk= Hans Klos Cf= conscious and funky • Ch= children's • Dc= dance/electronic • Ec= eclectic • Fr= french language • Gi= goth/industrial • Hc= hardcore • Hh= hip Hk= Hans Kloss • Ki=Kids • Jz= jazz • Lm= live music • Lo= lounge • Mt= metal • No= noise • Nw= Nardwuar • Po= pop • Pu= punk Rq=reqgae • Rr- rock » Rts= roots * Sk = ska »So= soul • Sp= sports » Tk= talk • Wo= world THE NORTHERN WISH alt. 11:30AM- 1:00PM FILL-IN 11:30AM-12:30PM REEL TO REAL alt 12:30PM- 1:00PM Movie reviews and BEATUP RONIN 1:00PM-2:0OPM Where dead samurai can pro- CIRCUfT TRACING 2:00PM-3:30PM EN AVANT LA MUSIQUE ALT. 3:30PM-4:30PM ELECTRIC AVENUES alt. 3:30PM- 4:30PM Last Tuesday of every month, hosted by The Richmond Society For Community Living. A variety music and spoken word program with a focus on people with special needs and THE MEAT-EATING VEGAN 4:30PM-5:00PM 10,000 VOICES 5:00PM- 6:00PM Poetry, spoken word, FLEX YOUR HEAD 6:00PM- 8:00PM Up the punx, down the emo! Keepin' it real since 1989, yo. hrrp://flexyourhead.vancouverhar dcore.com/ SALARIO MINIMO 8:00PM- 10:00PM THE LOVE DEN alt. 10:00PM- 12:00 AM <loveden@hotmail.com> SSCAPISM alt. 10:00PM- 12.00AM es'cap'ism n: escape from the reality or routine of life by absorb- fantasy. Host: DJ Satyricon. <DJSatyricon@hotmail.com> AURAL TENTACLES 12:00AM- 6:00AM It could be punk, ethno, global, trance, spoken word, rock, the unusual and the weird, or it could be something different. Hosted by DJ Pierre. WEDNESDAY BBC WORLD SERVICE 6:00AM- 7:00 AM THE SUBURBAN JUNGLE 7:00AM-9:00AM Bringing you an entertaining and eclectic mix of new and old music live from the Jungle Room with your irreverent hosts Jack Velvet and Nick The Greek. R&B, disco, techno, soundtracks, Americana, Latin jazz, news, and gossip. A real gem! <suburbanjungle@channel8 FOOL'S PARADISE 9:00AM- 10:00AM Japanese music and talk. EXQUISITE CORPSE 10:00AM- 11:30 AM ANOIZE 11:30AM- 1:00PM Luke Meat irritates and educates through musical deconstruction. Recommended for the THE SHAKE 1:00PM-2:00PM THE DIM SUM SHOW alt. 2:00PM-3:00PM The theme is: there is no theme! Kat and Claire push around trolleys of alt-pop, alt-country, Canadian indie, electroclash and other delicious morsels. MOTORDADDY alt. 3:00PM- 5:00PM Cycle-riffic rawk and roll I RUMBLETONE RADIO alt. 3:00PM-5:00PM Primitive, fuzzed-out garage mayhem I RACHEL'S SONG 5:00PM- 6:30PM Sociopolitical, environmental activist news and spoken word with some music, too. www, n9C8»qryVQic8s,Qrg AND SOMETIMES WHY alt. 6:30PM-8:00PM (First Wednesday of every month.) BLUE MONDAY alt. 6:30PM- 8:00PM Vancouver's only indus- trial-electronic-retro-goth program. Music to schtomp to, hosted by Coreen. JUICEBOX 8:00PM-9:00PM FOLK OASIS 9:00PM-11:00PM Roots music for folkies and non-folkies... bluegrass, singer- songwriters,worldbeat, alt country and more. Not a mirage! <folkoasis@canada.com> HANS KLOSS' MISERY HOUR 11:00PM-2:00AM FIRST FLOOR SOUND SYSTEM 2:0OAM-6:O0AM THURSDAY BBC WORLD SERVICE 6:00AM- 8:00AM END OF THE WORLD NEWS 8:00 AM-10:00AM PLANET LOVETRON 10:00AM- 11:30AM Music inspired by Chocolate Thunder, Robert Robot drops electro past and present, hip hop and intergalactic funkman- ship. <rbotlove@yahoo.com> FILL-IN 11:30AM- 1:00PM STEVE AND MIKE 1:00PM- 2:00PM Crashing the boy's club in the pit. Hard and fast, heavy and slow (punk and hardcore). THE ONOMATOPOEIA SHOW 2:00PM-3:00PM Comix comix comix. Oh yeah, and some music with Robin. RHYMES AND REASONS 3:OOPM-5:OOPM LEGALLY HIP alt. 5:00PM-6:00PM PEDAL REVOLUTIONARY alt. 5:00PM-6:00PM Viva la Velorution! DJ Helmet Hair and Chainbreaker Jane give you all the bike news and views you need and even cruise around while doing it! www.bikesexual.org OUT FOR KICKS 6:00PM- 7:30PM No Birkenstocks, nothing politically correct. We don't get paid so you're damn right we have fun with it. Hosted by Chris B. ON AIR WITH GREASED HAIR 7:30PM-9:00PM The best in roots rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues from 1942-1962 with your snappily-attired host Gary Olsen. <ripitup55@aol.com> LIVE FROM THUNDERBIRD RADIO HELL 9:00PM- 11:00PM Local muzak from 9 til 10. Live bandz from 10 til 11 www.stepandahalf.com/rbirdhell WORLD HEAT 11:00PM- 1:00AM An old punk rock heart considers the oneness of all things and presents music of worlds near and far. Your host, the great Daryl-ani, seeks reassurance via <worldheat@hotmail.com>. WIRELESS CRUELTY 1:00AM- 6:00AM FRIDAYS BBC WORLD SERVICE 6:00AM- 8:00AM CAUGHT IN THE RED 8:00AM- 10:00AM Trawling the trash heap of over 50 years worth of real rock 'n' roll debris. SKAT'S SCENE-IK DRIVEI 10:00AM-12:00PM Email requests to:<diska_t@hotmail.com>. THESE ARE THE BREAKS 12:00PM-2:00PM Top notch crate diggers DJ Avi Shack and Promo mix the underground hip hop, old school classics and original breaks. THE LEO RAMIREZ SHOW 2:00PM-3:30PM The best mix of music, news, sports, and commentary from around the local and international Latin American communities. NARDWUAR THE HUMAN SERVIETTE PRESENTS... 3:30PM-5:00PM CiTR NEWS AND ARTS 5:00PM-6:00PM A voh produced, student and community newscast featuring news, sports and arts. Reports by people like you. "Become the Media." To get involved, visit www.c click "News Dept." FAR EAST SIDE SOUNDS alt. 6:00PM-9:00PM AFRICAN RHYTHMS alt. 6:00PM-9:00PM David Love Jones brings you the best new and old jazz, soul, Latin, samba, bossa, and African music from around the world. HOMEBASS 9:00PM- 12:00AM Hosted by DJ Noah: techno but also some trance, acid, tribal, etc. Guest Djs, interviews, retrospectives, giveaways, and I LIKE THE SCRIBBLES alt. 12:00AM-2:00AM THE ANTIDOTE alt. 12:00AM- 2:00 AM THE VAMPIRE'S BALL 2:00AM- 6:00AM Dark, sinister music of all genres to soothe the Dragon's soul. Hosted by Drake. SATURDAY BBC WORLD SERVICE 6:00AM- 8:00PM THE SATURDAY EDGE 8:00AM- 12:00PM Studio guests, new releases, British comedy sketches, folk music calendar, and ticket giveaways. 8AM-9AM: African/World roots. 9AM-12PM: Celtic music and GENERATION ANNIHILATION 12:00PM-1:00PM Tune in for a full hour of old and new punk and Oi mayhem! POWERCHORD 1:00PM- 3:00PM Vancouver's only true metal show; local demo tapes, imports, and other rarities. Gerald RatHehead, Dwain, and Metal Ron do the damage. CODE BLUE 3:00PM- 5:00PM From backwoods delta low-down slide to urban harp honks, blues, and blues roots with your hosts Jim, Andy, and Paul. ELECTROLUX HOUR 5:00PM- 6:00PM SOUL TREE 6:00PM-9:00PM From doo-wop to hip hop, from the electric to the eclectic, host Michael Ingram goes beyond the call of gospel and takes to the nth degree. SYNAPTIC SANDWICH 9:00PM- 1 1:00PM PLUTONIAN NIGHTS 11:00PM- 1:00AM Cutting edge, progressive organ music with resident Haitchc and various guest performers/DJs. Bye-bye civilisation, keep smiling blue, where's me bloody anesthetic then? http://plut0nig.9rg EARWAX 1:00AM-4:30AM "noiz terror mindfuck hardcore like punk/beatz drop dem headz rock inna junglist mashup/distort da source full force with needlz on wax/my chaos runs rampant when I free da jazz..." Out. REGGAE LINKUP 4:30AM- 9:00AM Hardcore dancehall reggae that will make your mitochondria shake. Hosted by \(\0< ^Touf\c\ \or\c2oo3 29 DiSCORDER dateb ool ^HHHHiBhIhm SUBMISSIONS TO DATEBOOK ARE FREE. FOR THE JULY ISSUE, THE DEADLINE IS JUNE 11. FAX SHOW, FILM, EVENT AND VENUE LISTINGS TO 604.822.9364 OR EMAIL <DISCORDER@CLUB.AMS.UBC.CA> SUNDAY, JUNE 1 Finger Eleven, Voivod, Ozzy Osbourne@GM Place; 23rd Psalm Branch@Blinding Light!! TUE 3 Sum 41@Croatian Cultural Centre; Built to Spill, Draw@Richard's; Boom Bip, Four Tet@Sonar; In Medias Res, Sketch Brothers, Cornerstone@Brickyard; Amandasonic@Pic; Didcin'Around@Blinding Light!! WED 4 Sugar Ray, Matchbox 20@GM Place; Built to Spill, Draw@Richard's; Shawn Desman@Sonar; DJ Epine, Sarah Vain@Pic; Faces of Eve, 5 Way Radio, Junedog@Silvertone; Fryertuck, The Winks@Unit 20 Legion; Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story@Blinding Light!! THUR 5 Funkstorung@Atlantis; Ed Harcourt, Sondre Lerche@Richard's; Royal Grand Prix, Riff Randells, Cinch, Orphan@WISE Hall; Davis Trading, Six Block Radius, Distance, Kyle@The Brickyard; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; Building Heaven, Remembering Earth@Bfinding Light!! FRI 6 Lennon, Nazareth@Commodore; Powerclown, Tard, Evilive@Brickyard; Technicians, Dollarstorejesus® Silvertone; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; New Live Works by Loscil and Randy Jones@Blinding Light!! SAT 7 DJ Tiesto@Commodore; Witness Protection Program, Brute Medium, me, Wilmot Proviso@Seylynn Hall; Faces of Eve, 5 Way Radio@Studebakers; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; Cabinet of Dr. Ca/icj(an@Blinding Light!!; Joel R.L. Phelps, Secret Three@Pat's Pub SUN 8 DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; Cabinet of Dr. Ca/(gan'@Blinding Light!! MON 9 Foo Fighters, Pete Yom, The Special Goodness@Plaza of Nations; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque TUE 10 Death Cab For Cutie, The Dismemberment Plan, Enon, Gold Chains@The Vogue; Amandasonic@Pic; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; Okie Nood/tng@Blinding Light!! WED 11 Black Eyed Peas, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake@Pacific Coliseum; DJ Epine, Sarah Vain@Pic; Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep@Commodore; Musa, Jetstream NV, Detour, 80 Proof Yob@Brickyard; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; Okie Nood/tna@Blinding Light!! THUR 12 Counterfit, Moneen, Selfmademan@The Pic; Planet of the Drums: AK1200, DJ J-Messinian, Dara, Dieselboy@Sonar; DTES Film Festival@Pacific Cinematheque; BY08@Blinding Light!! FRI 13 Cinerama, The New Pornographers, The Organ@The Commodore; Counterfit, Moneen, Selfmademan@Video- In; 200 Mote/s@Blinding Light!! SAT 14 The Paperboys@Alcan Dragon Boat Festival; Brian Blade, Daniel Lanois@Richard's; Do Make Say Think@Sonar; Faces of Eve@Royal; 200 Motels@Blinding Light!! SUN 15 The Paperboys@Alcan Dragon Boat Festival; Goldfinger, Story Of The Year@Commodore; Yo La Tengo, The Clean@Vogue Theatre; Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart@WISE Hall; Jerry Cranelli: In the Moment@Blinding Light!! TUE 17 Amandasonic@Pic;P/asterCaster:ACockumentary@Blinding Light!! WED 18 Beck, Dashboard Confessional@Plaza of Nations; The Moody Blues@Queen Elizabeth Theatre; Fugazi's /nstrument@Blinding Light!! FRI 20 Amon Tobin@Jazz Festival; The Smugglers@The Royal; TV Carnage's Casual Fn'dqys@Blinding Light!! SAT 21 David Gogo, Little Feat@The Commodore; Blur@Vogue Theatre; TV Carnage's Casual Fridqys@Blinding Light!! SUN 22 Cinematic Orchestra, Medeski, Martin and Wood@Jazz Festival; Cesaria Evora@The Orpheum; Direct Animation Revolution Now!@Blinding Light!! MON 23 Reel Big Fish@Croatian Cultural Centre; Joshua Redman@Jazz Festival; Chore, The Ghosts of Modern Man@The Pic; Dredg@Richard's TUE 24 Joe Zawinul and and the Zawinul Syndicate@Commodore; Presrevation Hall Jazz Band@Vogue; Amandasonic@Pic; Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter@Blinding Light!! WED 25 Plena Libre@Jazz Festival; Zubot & Dawson@Performance Works; The Target Shoots Fi'rst@Blinding Light!! THUR 26 Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Patricia Barber@Jazz Festival; The Dears@Royal Hotel; Incident at Oglala and America's Mande/a@Blinding Light!! FRI 27 Blonde Redhead@Commodore; Chris Smither, John Scofield, Smokey and Miho@Jazz Festival; Tennessee Twin, Andrew Burden@Main; David Lee Roth, Flairs@Orpheum; Dan Bern@Richardis; Communique, Minus the Bear@Royal; The Narcoleptic Videographer 3@Blinding Light!! SAT 28 Karrin Allyson, Marcio Faraco, Mr. Scruff, Smokey and Miho@Jazz Festival; !!!, Out Hud@Richard's; The Narcoleptic Videographer3®Blinding Light!! SUN 29 Orchestra Baobab@Jazz Fest; Holly Cole@Orpheum; The Narcoleptic Videographer 3@Blinding Light!! MON 30 Aceyalone, Eyedea, Prince Paul@Commodore Apectaf eveiitA THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE FILM FESTIVAL JUNE 5-12 PACIFIC CINEMATHEQUE A whole week of movies about Eastside History. And you don't even have to go there, you cowardly sods. NAZARETH FRIDAY, JUNE 6 COMMODORE 30 years ago you might have been messing with a son of a bitch, but nowyou're messing with a $30 cover charge. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, THE DISMEMBERMENT PLAN, ENON, GOLD CHAINS TUESDAY, JUNE 10 THE VOGUE Don't go, so our fey Deputy Editor Merek can stand closer to the stage. LOADS OF AMAZING MUSIC NEARLY EVERY NIGHT IN THIS TOWN!! There are good shows going on all month, so if you keep whinging about No Fun City, we'll make you watch re-runs of Family Matters until you pee blood. place* f< y he active pass records 324 w. hasting 604.646.2411 pic pub 620 west pender 604.669.1556 bassix records 217 w. hastings 604.689.7734 railway club 579 dunsmuir 604.681.1625 beatstreet records 3-712 robson 604.683.3344 richard's on richards 1036 richards 604.687.6794 black swan records 3209 west broadway 604.734.2828 ridge cinema 3131 arbutus 604.738.6311 blinding light!! 36 powell 604.878.3366 red cat records 4305 main 604.708.9422 cellar 3611 west broadway 604.738.1959 royal 1029 granville club 23 23 west Cordova scrape records 17 west broadway 604.877.1676 commodore ballroon n 868 granville 604.739.4550 scratch records 726 richards 604.687.6355 crosstown music 518 west pender 604.683.8774 sonar 66 water 604.683.6695 futuristic flavour 1020 granville 604.681.1766 sugar refinery 1115 granville 604.331.1184 highlife records 1317 commercial 604.251.6964 legion of van 300 west pender teenage ramapage 19 west broadway 604.675.9227 lotus hotel 455 abbott Vancouver playhouse hamilton at dunsmuir 604.665.3050 the main cafe 4210 main 604.709.8555 video in studios 1965 main 604.872.8337 ms. t's cabaret 339 west pender western front 303 east 8th 604.876.9343 orpheum theatre smithe at seymour 604.665.3050 WISE club 1882adanac 604.254.5858 pacific cinemathequ ; 1131 howe 604.688.8202 yale 1300 granville 604.681.9253 pat's pub 403 east hastings 604.255.4301 zulu records 1972 west 4th 604.738.3232 VtmiMXi ESTILL THE *" BIGGEST AND THE BADDEST t Mltm. ALL PARTY*.. starring DJ CHICLET with the SUGARCOOKIES AS MISO NEEDADRINKEE « "* RtNKTASTK CHERRY BLOSSOMS MC VELVET K xk, «m.»ch/mn Ksa? i as PROFESSOR VON AHDUBEE ^jg$ 868TGRflnURl€ STR«T / 604-739-SHOUJ ti/(i/(U.^±^CD^-^DD±C.D^C LOOK DIVINE GET P I FRIDAY JUNE 13 I :0R BEST DISCO DUDS ... DISCO GEAR ENSURES PRIORITY EN1 | C0MM0P0IE BALUOOM r I DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE pop^S™ 1 DISMEMBERMENT PLAN sssss WITH SPECIAL GUESTS I ENON & GOLD CHAINS I TICKETS ALSO AT ZULU & SCRATCH CinDRORIQ Wi HH'll'MI'lilttl ■^^J COMM STORY OF THE YEAR -«gf Exithiside I C0MM0D01E BALUOOM f blur LIVE THINI I TICKETS AISO AT ZULU >'■ !!'«<■<».< AND HIS BAND \.y I JULY 10 r DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL "THE BLACK KEYS JUNE 23 [!■■ 121k jjM THE VANS WARPED TOUR CRASH & BURN! *S RANCID * PENNYWISE ' DROPKICK MURPHYS > SIMPLE PLAN * LESS THAN JAKE * THE USED * LIVE ON RELEASE * FACE TO FACE * ANDREW W.K. ' SUICIDE MACHINES ' THE ATARIS * GLASSJAW * POISON THE WELL * TAKING BACK SUNDAY * MEST • THRICE * DAMONE ' SLICK SHOES ' S.T.U.N. • UNSEEN • RUFIO • MAD CADDIES • VENDETTA RED TSUNAMI BOMB * MAXEEN ' I IN TEAM • THE HEATHENS * LETTER KILLS • WITHOUT SELF • WESTERN WASTE * PEPPER ? VAUX . THE DEARS wttkipwuigiMtiBniiiulefly \m> .■ BTTT1 I FRIDAY AUGUST 22 FULL SETS FROM BOTH ARTISTS ESP^S ^/praoufS l+Rs/E trRHH/i J COMMODORE BALLROOM I \ JULY 161 fiFraCGLTS AimeeJ^ Mann awst ■ riiMMnnntf R»i i »nnn ^^"uso atzum»hmhufe^rnMM(inntF RA,, gnnM | lotnIltiIn eE I QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE Jgj M THUNDERBIRD STADIUM \ wmsgBmgm FOUND MUSIC AT ZULU The Great, The Magnificent & The Usual Unusual. SIMPLY SAUCER: Cyborgs Revisited CD For many of us in Canada at the time, 1974 meant only Wayne and Schuster thick moustaches, a not yet insignificant manufacturing industry. Pierre Trudeau, and brown velour v-necked sweaters. Believe it or not, however, innovative rock and roll was also being produced in humble little Hamilton, Ontario. Inconceivable? Read on Simply Saucer were perhaps Canada's first proto-punk band, making forward-thinking music way out of step with the 1974 Canadian radio status quo of Terry Jacks and BTO. Sounding more like a masterful mixture of the Velvet Underground. Stooges. Modern Lovers, Can, Neu, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, and Syd Barrett, both with and without Pink Floyd, than MOR rock, Simply Saucer quietly became deservedly legendary. At long last, their music is again re- released on CD, this time to an informed Canada (and the world, too) better able to appreciate their expansive and innovative genius. Well worth the wait, Cyborgs Revisited is everything it's rumoured to be. Highly recommended. CD 16.98 NINANASTASIA Run To Ruin CD N astasias done a couple albums now for Chicago's Touch 'n Go label. The first was underground cult favorite, The Blackened Air Her plaintive tak on Americana treads pretty dark and brooding ground. Its emotional weight scared off a few timid listeners, even leaving some mainstream critics haplessly pointing to the catalog of P.J. Harvey, Cat Power, and Lucinda Williams for security. Of course, they're only half right; although just as good as her peers, Nastasia is uniquely on her own path. Today, Nastasia calls Manhattan home, but judging from the gritty realism of Run To Ruin, she hasn't bought into the fairy tale of New York. Instead, the songs on this recording are sharp, pointed and succinct, without romanticizing the "morose," a mistake typical of many lesser wanton troubadours. Recommended. AVAILABLE JUNE 3RD. CD 19.98 THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA Man With A Movie Camera CD/2LP By now you're probably familiar with the hybrid jazz-elec- tronica beauty of Jason Swimscoe's big band, The Cinematic Orchestra. Sitting pretty on Ninja Tune Records, his outfit seamlessly blends laidback down tempo beats with the stirring highlights of the Impulse jazz hay-day. Appropriately for this project's name, Swimcoe was asked by the Porto Film Festival to produce a soundtrack to the famous experimental silent film, Man With a Movie Camera. Shot in 1929, Dziga Vertov's classic film documents a day in the fife of Moscow, unified by the theme of labour. This film also demonstrates what Dziga described as an "absolute language of cinema," a language unique to film alone. With plans to re-release the film sometime this summer as a DVD with their new soundtrack, The Cinematic Orchestra's score also works well alone, perfectly conjuring the hustle and bustle of contemporary everyday urban life. AVAILABLE JUNE 3RD CD 16.98 2LP 19.98 DEAD MEADOW King And CD/2LP likeminded groups Acid lothers Temple and Kinski, Washington D.C.'s ferocious power trio, Dead Meadow, don't consider themselves "stoner rock." It's an insult. They're as sober as boards and decisive. After all, the flower children got fried and then created loose body music to the beat of the bongo drum am) winsome acoustic guitar, not the thick rock of power chords and lock-grooved riffs. Believe it, this shits like the excessive remain: der in the pipe, the ugty cousin in the ctoset The hippies didn't GET Sabbath - they were too scared, bummed out. To them, it was a sonic assault, meant to damage. But history has a way of distilling the truth. Hippies are consigned to the cliclvs of advertising and historical revisionism; so-called stoner rock sprouted a thousand new heads. Dead Meadow make high volume electric psychedelic rock'n'roll that you feel in your soul as it swallows the aural space of your mind. This isn't a eulogy for a failed hippy revolution - this music will not be cornered! CD 19.98 2LP 22.98 JACKIE-0 MOTHERFUCKER Europe 2002 2CD Laid out for a few days in an American hospital, Joshua Stevenson wondered, "What have I got myself into." He'd only been with the band for a year or so, and it already seemed set to consume his life (for example, a bank loan with interest in exchange for a release of some of the rawest music of the moment). Meanwhile, knowing the early signs of magic, Byron Coley was tearing up the highways of upstate New Vork in a rented Jaguar - the Brits didn't mess with this beast, nothing is toned down, and it's the only way to make it into Montreal, Quebec proper. Like Stevenson, the city was burning, running a fever Godspeed You Black Emperor was returning. One last gig, one last gig. Their American cousins with some skinny kid from Vancouver were opening; Jackie-0 Motherfucker. Their very name shoots a flag up at customs, but this revue won't be stopped. Eventually, this semi-delusional exchange took place: "Coley? Is that you?" "Yes." "There's hash in the poutine." "It's okay." "If ghosts sleep, do they dream?" "Probably." "I've lost the LAST two hours." "it's fine, sti okay." "Time has evaporated and is now condensing on the tent vilJage outside of the halt - it's everywhere." "Relax, let go." "It's Live and Recorded." "Right, both." Listen up. 2CD 16.98 MOGWAI Happy Songs For Happy People CDyiP Obviously, this title is a joke. Mogwai don't seem very happy; yet they don't seem very sad, either. What gives? What's the story with these shrouded, moody lads? Let's look at what we DO know: they play oceanic (mostly) instrumental rock, heavy with atmosphere and pathos. To the extent that Sigur Ros are light and angelic, Mogwai are thick and earthy. Could it be that the Scottish skies refract light differently? Could it be a differ- - ence in food and drink? Matador records, their label, has offered this observation to help explain the enigma of Mogwai: "Confronted with a music that has all the emotional impact of tie greatest rock, but few of its obvious signifiers, you're left struggling to make sense ol the nebulous, but powerful feelings they provoke." Hmm, yes, a good point, thanks. However, our advice is rooted more in the body, in the physical joy of pure, deep listening than merely the aesthetics of rock hubris and rhetoric: TURN THIS SHIT UP. AVAILABLE JUNE 1TTH PERNICE BROTHERS Yours, Mine & Ours CD 16.98 CD/IP 19.98 I'm thinking about making a documentary film about the brothers Joe and Bob Pernice. They've been around for quite a while and made a number of outstanding records. Their sound is pretty simple. Some call it a mixture of stark alternative country and ornate chamber pop. I figure it's just plainly honest, openhearted ballads - rich songs about the poorer moments in life. In each one there's always a charm, though, a hope that everyone can grasp. In the future, people will speak about the Pernice Brothers in the same way as Love, The Lett Banke. and Big Star. Not the capital "C" classics, just the lowercase ones, the sincerely good ones, no hype. Sound interesting? Filming starts soon. CD 16.98 THE TINDERSTICKS Waiting for the Moon CD/LP Finally, the buzzing back bulb went out, the last light hanging infinitesimaily in the air around us. On the grass behind our house, the night became clearer, the stars multiplied by the sudden darkness. Time, however, stood still. The moon was nowhere, lost. This was unusual, of course, even terrifying, but also entirely mesmerizing. The moonless sky was lit from within, flickering with ghostly stars, their twinkling signifying everything that was missing. We held hands and held our breath, waiting in the fantastic quiet of the endless, moonless night And in this waiting was everything, the absolute, but just like the stars, it was out of reach. Yet, although enigmatic, this eerie twilight was in the end completely welcome and comforting: a question whose answer is unwanted, an empty feeling that makes us full, the unstated providence;' the universe -the everlasting waiting for the moon. AVAILABLE JUNE 10TH CQ/LP 16.98 HERBERT Goodbye Swingtime CD Ambition is something Matthew Herbert has never been lacking. The jazzy downtempo producer has vaulted to the top of the K7 roster by continuously morphing his epic soundscape approach. For example, for this his latest genre-defying outing, Herbert coaxed a 16 piece jazz band into London's Abbey Road studios to record the organic backdrop for his chilled out vibe. Next. Herbert placed a collect call to Plaid and Mouse on Mars saying, "Pick up if you want to Collaborate." Without missing a beat, Herbert's ambitious program required a dispatch of emails to Arto Lindsay, Jamie Lidell and others. One by one the chips fell into place... Montreux Jazz Fest. Sonar 2003, etc further proof that Herbert can beat them and join them. CD 24.98 JEDI MIND TRICKS The Psychosocial Chemical... CD Never let it be said that Zulu records does not keep its collective ear to the (under)ground. Since its original release five years ago, Jedi Mind Tricks' debut album has slowly been gathering a reputation as a classic of post-Wu Tang hip-hop mysticism. This recent re-release suggests to us that it's finally time for these heads to be getting their long overdue props. And we think our customers will be only too willing to give up the respect when they are confronted with the task of decoding JMT's downright gnostic lyrical flow. Deep dark arcana, to be sure, but we're taking a chance on it and we think you should The Found Reading - Sunday June 15th at 4PM Join... DAVY ROTHBART editor of FOUND MAGAZINE and author of THE LONE SURFER OF MONTANA KANSAS. Musical accompaniment from Peter and Devon. MICHAEL TURNER author of HARDCORE LOGO reads some found' debris. MATTHEW DORRELL who writes for FORGETMAGAZINE! Plus MC LEE HENDERSON! CASSMcCOMB A CD Our soft spot for indie rock receives some welcome attention trom this (fairly) new singer-songwriter with some loose (if now former) affiliation to Portland, Oregon and Will Oldham. With wisps of Galaxie 500, East River Pipe, Clientele and even a little Belle and Sebastian, we think everyone should really love Cass McCombs. It's good stuff: the songs are thoughtful and Hkeably happy/sad - just the thing for repeated listening. Indeed, this record is so agreeable that it reminds us all here at Zulu of our good fortune: sometimes our job is great! Helping more people get into good music like Cass McCombs is immensely satisfying. Come on in and listen for yourself and we know you'll be convinced that we are right - and probably you'll also leave inspired to proselytize the good word "McCombs." Ah, the good life. CD 16.98 And if all that was not enough VARIOUS-CHANNE 2 CD BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE - Spacegiri & Other Favorites CO ESMERWE-If Only a Sweet Surrender... CD NEU MJCHAR HAGERTY-The Howling Hex CD/2LP S.T.R.E.E.T.S-WonnsCD MURDER CITY DEVILS-R.i.p CQ/2LP MOKA ONLY-Lowdown Suite CD/2LP ODD NOSOAM-No More Wig For Ohio CD/2LP ULYS-Precoltectjon CD .^afflBSiB ELECTRIC 6-Fire CD STARLIGHT MINTS- Built on Squares CD NATACHA ATIAS- Something Dangerous CD PIXIES-Classic Reissues!! CD T>tE FAINT- Danse Macabre Remixes CD LOU REED-NYC Man 2C0 SUPffiSILOfT- Supersilerrt 6 CO SCTFIRETOFUMES-Telegraphsln Negatjve/Mouths Trapped In Static 2CD/2LP THE LONESOME ORGANIST-Forms and Follies CD CD 16.98 KZCO*RV3 L* ■ BY POPULAR I DEMAND ^ZULU'S (SUMMER SHIRT.... JL z s s "Each morning the day ties like a fresh t-shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightfy woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up." -Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) "I go to every show. I walk around the parking lot, checking the groovy scene out. Floods. Long Hair. Leather. Whatever man. We are all wearing t-shirts you know. Mods, rockers, hippies, heads, its no different, we just came for the show. We just came to feel the music make us strange all over again'' -Bobby Nowhere (1968- ) Zulu Records 1972-1976 W 4th Ave Vancouver. BC tel 604.738.3232 www.zulurecords.com STORE HOURS Mon to Wed 10:30-7:00 Thurs and Fri 10:30-9:00 Sat 9:30-6:30 Sun 12:00-6:00
- Library Home /
- Search Collections /
- Open Collections /
- Browse Collections /
- Discorder /
- Discorder
Open Collections
Discorder
Discorder CITR-FM (Radio station : Vancouver, B.C.) 2003-06-01
jpg
Page Metadata
Item Metadata
Title | Discorder |
Creator |
CITR-FM (Radio station : Vancouver, B.C.) |
Publisher | Vancouver : Student Radio Society of the University of British Columbia |
Date Issued | 2003-06-01 |
Extent | 32 pages |
Subject |
Rock music--Periodicals |
Genre |
Periodicals |
Type |
Text |
FileFormat | application/pdf |
Language | English |
Identifier | ML3533.8 D472 ML3533_8_D472_2003_06 |
Collection |
Discorder |
Source | Original Format: Student Radio Society of University of British Columbia |
Date Available | 2015-03-11 |
Provider | Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library |
Rights | Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these recordings must be obtained from CiTR-FM: http://www.citr.ca |
CatalogueRecord | http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=1190017 |
AIPUUID | 343e74cc-f1e4-4d53-a0ab-d41233940b51 |
DOI | 10.14288/1.0050221 |
AggregatedSourceRepository | CONTENTdm |
Download
- Media
- discorder-1.0050221.pdf
- Metadata
- JSON: discorder-1.0050221.json
- JSON-LD: discorder-1.0050221-ld.json
- RDF/XML (Pretty): discorder-1.0050221-rdf.xml
- RDF/JSON: discorder-1.0050221-rdf.json
- Turtle: discorder-1.0050221-turtle.txt
- N-Triples: discorder-1.0050221-rdf-ntriples.txt
- Original Record: discorder-1.0050221-source.json
- Full Text
- discorder-1.0050221-fulltext.txt
- Citation
- discorder-1.0050221.ris
Full Text
Cite
Citation Scheme:
Usage Statistics
Share
Embed
Customize your widget with the following options, then copy and paste the code below into the HTML
of your page to embed this item in your website.
<div id="ubcOpenCollectionsWidgetDisplay">
<script id="ubcOpenCollectionsWidget"
src="{[{embed.src}]}"
data-item="{[{embed.item}]}"
data-collection="{[{embed.collection}]}"
data-metadata="{[{embed.showMetadata}]}"
data-width="{[{embed.width}]}"
data-media="{[{embed.selectedMedia}]}"
async >
</script>
</div>

https://iiif.library.ubc.ca/presentation/cdm.discorder.1-0050221/manifest