Happer Easter to y'all.
What News!!
Two essential items for an Aussie on tour, and I got 'em both recently!! And to be honest, i'm not sure which I was more excited about!!
U2 are touring thru Vancouver on April 28th/29th, and when the tix went on sale in February, both concerts sold out in something like 16 minutes!! I was thinking it'd be pretty cool to catch them here, seeing as I missed both of the last two tours, PopMart and Elevation, but then discounted the idea when i heard they'd sold out so quickly.
But then a friend pointed me to 'ebay'....there were something like 200 or more auctions going on for Vancouver U2 tix!! So much for the officials trying to stop scalping! Anyway, I put down bids for at least 40 auctions, figuring I had to win at least one. I was right! And I didn't pay much above the retail price either - C$62 for a regular priced C$50 ticket. Woo-hoo!!
And last week I was doing my usual Safeway shopping, when what did I spy out of the corner of my eye?......the Aussie backpacker's Holy Grail - VEGEMITE!! Mind you, around C$5 for a 100gram jar was a bit steep, but I didn't care. I got VEGEMITE!!
This Easter weekend I was planning to go away somewhere in British Columbia, but I had to cancel those plans when my work contract was cut short by 10days and therefore I would be a little short on cashflow. I figured I'd be spending around C$200-250 over the 3-4day break, but didn't want to have a totally wasted long weekend, so as compensation for myself, I bought tickets to a couple of international touring bands for $40, one i'd never heard of before, Mono, from Japan, and one who I was a huge fan of, and was pretty excited about seeing, Low, from Minnesota, USA.
I also got away on Good Friday for another 1/2 day trip with the hiking club, at a local spot called the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area just out in the 'burbs, next to the Simon Fraser University. Not nearly as extensive or physically demanding as the Squamish hike (and even that was pretty easy), but still nice to get out into the bush for a 8Km walk. At the end of the hike we ended up in this open park at the top of the hill with some pretty speccy views over Van City and the Howe Sound, and with spring well and truly in full swing, the trees and flowers were in full bloom - can anyone guess that I had my camera out for some more nature snaps!!! ;-)
That night was the Mono gig at a small, intimate venue called The Media Club. Mono (www.mono-44.com) are a relatively famous in their own land, post-rock art-noise completely instrumental guitar band, kind of in the same vein as God Speed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, Hope Of The States, and Sigur Ros etc. In short, they're awesome.
I've taken the liberty of pasting in a review of one of their gigs here (courtesy of their website) - this author describes them in ways i could never begin to imagine.
"Mono's epic sound-scaping is on another level. It's in the pin drop quiet that accompanies their performance, allowing them to play quieter than a whisper and hold an awestruck audience's attention with apparent ease. It's in buildups that sweep you up, dragging you along in an atmospheric and apocalyptic undertow before spitting you out into a ball of furious rage, of brutal noise and ear-shattering distortion. There's violence, but it's a brutality that's shaped by music, a reflection of the world in aching guitars and warped noise, each note plucked or thrashed for a purpose. Importantly, it's not done purely for the sake of noise, but for poetry and beauty."
"Mono look anything but rock behemonths, yet it takes a mere five minute for this facade to be utterly destroyed by an unstoppable torrent of cataclysmic noise. When they reach the eye of the storm, the lull is inviting, but those that stray from earplug safety are swifty blown away by the return to earth-shaking bombast of a 15minute epic that truly tests the buildings foundations. They make 90 per cent bands you've ever seen look like woeful pretenders in the atmosphere stakes, giving a performance as heart-tugging as it was entertaining.And then they're gone, back to quiet normality, leaving only bewilderment and bleeding ears behind them."
"The Japanese foursome - bassist Tamaki, drummer Yasunori Takada and guitarists Taka Goto and Yoda - don't say a word and the songs are similary mute. Vocally, thats is, although the dynamics of just a couple of guitars, a set of drums and some occasional piano are exploited completely throughout. They're a cool-looking band - like refugees from a gritty Manga cartoon - and it's a pleasure just to stand, watch and listen. Raging from loud to quiet and back again, every moment was a highlight, but A Thousand Paper Cranes deserves posthumous mention. It's inspired by the tale of a girl who contracted leukaemia at Hiroshima and then proceeded to fold 1000 paper cranes in acoordance with an old legend that the gods would grant her wishes."
There you go.
Saturday night was the Low (http://www.chairkickers.com) gig. Now I know of one particular mate back in Melbourne who'd be supremely jealous of me now (g'day PB). This is a band that we've been following for a while now, and given that a) they are a relentless touring band, and b) they hail from the not-so-far-away city of Minnesota, it was a better-then-even chance they'd be touring thru Vancouver some time this year. I had tix the day after I found out they were coming!! The gig was at Richard's on Richards, the same venue I saw The Frames in, and is fast becoming my fave place to see bands in.
For some reason or another, it was an early show, with doors at 7pm, and first band on at 7.30pm. Low were supported by Pedro The Lion (http://www.pedrothelion.com), a band who i since learned are a headline act in their own right, from Seattle. In fact there were punters who left the show after they finished, claiming they were only interested in seeing them (they don't know what they were missing out on). I found the bassist from Pedro at the merchandise stall after their set and had a good chat. Unfortunately, for some reason or other (import charges, taxes) they couldn't get their own merchandise past the police and over the border from the US, so just had to settle on signing ticket stubs and handing out adverts for their albums.
Low were amazing. I knew they would be. They've just changed record labels, moving over to the seminal Sub Pop Records stable - former home of Nirvana among others. I'm guessing as a result of this, they have actually amped up their sound quite a bit, and have gone from a slow, intense, moody, spacey-brooding aesthetic, to a sometimes quite rocky and even poppy sound, creating a magnificent fury of noise, a new sonic territory even, all with their same trademark moody intensity maintained, of course. No more sadcore, they have clearly abandoned the 'play everything as slowly as possible' ethic from when they formed in 1994. At one early point in the show, the singer-guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, even briefly played a solo with his teeth!! I think he may have been venting some frustration as they seemed to be having some serious technical sound problems with the amps and mic's, ie they weren't loud enough! Alan looks like a rocker tho, he even has that rockabilly quiff - actually he looks remarkably like an older version of Danny Zuko's Greased Lightnin' sidekick (characters name escapes me) in Grease. The other two members are a female drummer, Mimi Parker, who maintains a hypnotic beat on the tom-drum, and the suave, quiet and mysterious looking Zak Sally on bass.
I'd bought their new release, The Great Destroyer at the merchandise stall, and after the show while i was milling about, soaking in what i had just witnessed, I spied the singer chatting with members of the audience. Emboldened by the sheer revelatory emotions I was feeling, I approached him to see if he could sign my Cdee. "Sure, you gotta pen?". I didn't. "Don't worry, come backstage with me, we've got a texta there I'm sure"....!!!!!!!!!!!!
I met the whole band, and got them all to sign it!! Talk about having a WOW moment! And the reason he was in the audience was that he was scoping for dope, so if only I'd had some of my meagre stash with me that night, I could've been havin' a puff with them all....Damn. Still, what a great night.
Anyway, that's it fer now.
Enjoy your choco binges this weekend,
Tony
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