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The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page

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The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page

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The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page

CONTENTS

07 23 20 26 26 25 29 58 31

Cheap Shotz Live Album Reviews DVD Film Books Video Games Crossword Comic

Features

Volume 8, Number 1, Issue #67

THE NERVE MAGAZINE

508 - 825 Granville St.,Vancouver, B.C.V6Z 1K9 604.734.1611 www.thenervemagazine.com info@thenervemagazine.com The Don (a/k/a Editor-In-Chief and Publisher) Bradley C. Damsgaard editor@thenervemagazine.com Wiseguy (a/k/a Music Editor) Adrian Mack mack@thenervemagazine.com Shotgun (a/k/a Film Editor) Michael Mann mann@thenervemagazine.com Launderer (a/k/a Book Editor) Devon Cody cody@thenervemagazine.com The Henchmen (a/k/a Design & Graphics) Dale De Ruiter, Kristy Sutor Weapons Cleaner (a/k/a Article Editor) Jon Azpiri Surveillance Team (a/k/a Photographers) Devon Cody, Dale De Ruiter, Miss Toby Marie The Muscle (a/k/a Staff Writers) AD MADGRAS, Jason Ainsworth, Cowboy TexAss, Chris Walter, Stephanie Heney, Adam Simpkins, Carl Spackler, David Bertrand, Herman Menervemanana, Ferdy Belland, Dave Von Bentley, Devon Cody, Dale De Ruiter, Derek Bolen, Ethyltron, Johnny Kroll, Andrew Molloy, Boy Howdy, Cameron Gordon, BRock Thiessen, Filmore Mescalito Holmes, Jenna James, Jenny C, Will Pedley

CONTENTS

Sections

12 THE NERVE’S BEST AND WORST MOMENTS OF ’06

The dummies who write for us reveal just how bad their taste really is - The Menagerie

18 THE BROUGHT LOW

...And we’re pleased to introduce the best band you didn’t hear in 2006 - Carl Spackler

14 BUDGIE

Just your standard two-page article on an obscure Welsh rock band from the ‘70s - Dave Bertrand

10 THE MODERNETTES

John Armstrong yaks about the sort-of reunion, Bob Dylan’s prayer book, and fleecing Steven Spielberg - Ferdy Belland

Plaster Caster (a/k/a Cover Design) Toby Bannister toby@thenervemagazine.com Fire Insurance (a/k/a Advertising) Brad Damsgaard advertise@thenervemagazine.com The Kid (a/k/a The Intern) INTERNSHIP AVAILABLE (email publisher above) Out-of-town Connections (a/k/a Distro & Street Team) Toronto: Rosina Tassone Montreal: Douglas Ko Calgary: Mike Taylor Edmonton: Freecloud Records, Bob Prodor Winnipeg: Margo Voncook Whitehorse: Jordi and Jeremy Jones Victoria/Whistler: Jono Jak, Lindsay Seattle/Bellingham: Frank Yahr The Nerve is published monthly by The Nerve Magazine Ltd. The opinions expressed by the writers and artists do not necessarily reflect those of The Nerve Magazine or its editors. The Nerve does not accept responsibility for content in advertisements. The Nerve reserves the right to refuse any advertisement or submission and accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

All content © Copyright The Nerve Magazine 2006.

Est. 1999

10 The Pointed Sticks 11 Jason Solyom 12 Hung Jury 12 Upper Canadian Blues 18 The Year in Racism 15 Reg Harkema

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page

PHOTO: THOM TSANG

CONTENTS

The Nerve Index, 06!!!

2006 (2005 numbers in brackets) Cocks: 1 (9) Vaginas: 0 (1) Tits: 3 (41) What the hell happened? According to Nerve Music Editor, Adrian Mack, “I stopped caring about sex.”

Contributors (Old Favourites Category): Chris Walter: Articles: 10 (17) Live Show Reviews: 5 (13) CD/DVD/Book Reviews: 62 (79) 15 in one issue alone.

Dave Bertrand: Articles: 8 (13.5) Live Show Reviews: 3 (4) CD/DVD/Book Reviews: 6 (34) (Newcomers Category): Cameron Gordon Articles: 13 Ferdy Belland: Articles: 17 Live Show Reviews: 2 CD/DVD/Book Reviews: 20 29 - Reviews written by David Von Bentley with references to his cock, bodily fluids and other nice stuff like that.

30 - Reviews written by David Von Bentley total (the one clean review was for a Faith No More greatest hits CD which he proclaimed to be the best album of the year, while simultaneously encouraging people not to buy it for some strange reason).

1 - Nerve contributors arrested by the DEA and thrown into a maximum-security prison in California. (0) 8 - Requests by D-Rock and Miss Kim of Skatespot to email them. (14) 0 - Emails received by D-Rock and Miss Kim from readers. (0) 5 - Tears shed as a result of mean caption underneath a picture of You Say Party! We Say Die! (Coincidentally it’s same number of people in You Say Party! We Say Die!) 3 - Threats of legal action against the Nerve from businesses in Mount Pleasant. (1) 0 - Actual lawsuits filed against the Nerve from businesses in Mount Pleasant. (0) 5 - Number of articles on Big Smash Film Festival.

4 - Number of attendees to Big Smash Film Festival.

0 - Number of offers of a ride to Seattle to see Jandek, received by Allan MacInnis, after asking for one in print.

2 - Number of sexual partners achieved through association with the Nerve (Von Bentley at Rock ‘n’ Roll Boat Cruise, Ainsworth at the Railway Club).

3 - Number of books reviewed by former Book Editor J. Pee Patchez in 2005 260 - Number of books reviewed by current Book Editor Devon (“The Foundation”) Cody 6 - Number of Nerve “readers” who ever made it through a book 1 - Number of Bo Diddley articles that resulted in

contributer resignation (0) 18 - Number of magazine subscriptions made out to Johnny Kroll by a disgruntled band, with instructions to “bill later”. (0) 8 - Number of potential suspects in the Kroll case - namely buckcherry, the Town Pants, Disturbed, Ronnie James Dio, Great Big Sea, the Wrecking Crew, Ani Kyd, and Northern Alliance (the band, not the extreme Muslim faction of Afghanistan). (0) 50 - Number of dollars it will take for us to reveal the identity of Johnny Kroll. Interesting offers also considered. Email: cheapshotz@thenervemagazine. com 28 - Number of times Adrian Mack successfully changed Dale DeRuiter’s name to Dale DeFruiter, without him noticing (2) 0 - number of small objects drunkenly hurled at staff members by Brad (30) Nerve Receives Phone Call 2006 has been a surprisingly slow year for stupid phone calls, so imagine our delight when somebody left the following, chilling message on our answer machine in the first week of November: Caller: “It’s Edgar Winter, idiots.” (click) What does our mystery caller mean by this? Is he referring to our interview with Johnny Winter, in the October issue of The Nerve? If so, that interview was with Johnny Winter, was all about Johnny Winter, previewed a show by Johnny Winter, and was - you know - all about Johnny Winter.

Not Edgar.

Asshole.

handed his feminine side by that brick shithouse from the North Side Kings a couple years back. Still, middle class dummies and their appalling CD collections have taken him under their wings, catapulting Black Aria II to the top of Billboard’s least interesting chart, where Danzig now rubs shoulders with the likes of Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Andrea Bocelli, and Sarah Brightman. And they’ve all taken turns beating the shit out of him.

Moon Child Not Present at Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes Wedding In 1947, L Ron Hubbard and rocket scientist Jack Parsons went into the desert in order to masturbate the Moon Child into existence. This little reported fact - which is oddly enough missing from much of the recruiting materials issued by the Church of Scientology - would make sense to anyone who read the 1980 Penthouse interview with Hubbard’s son, L. Ron Jr. “What a lot of people don’t realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period,” explains Junior. “To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it’s stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don’t see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology.” Using an occult ritual called the Babalon Working, Hubbard and Parsons attempted to manifest The Moon Child by playing with their knobs and chanting, or something.

The Moon Child was then meant to usher in the new Aeon of Horus, as predicted by Alistair Crowley.

Nobody knows if it actually worked or not. As of press time, Scientologist Beck Hansen had not responded to our numerous requests for a comment.

“We’re all going to die, dum-dum”

“That joke is starting to get pretty tired, dude... please don’t hit me.”

Glenn Danzig Enters Billboard Classical/ Crossover Chart.

Danzig’s Black Aria II is a symphonic treatment of the legend of Lillith - the first wife of the Biblical Adam who later ruined music with a chicks-only string of concerts in the mid-90s. Danzig is said to be embracing his feminine side with this 2006 release, although what actually happened was Danzig got

Vancouver Destroyed by Highly Secret Black Budget Operation The Boil Water advisory issued to Vancouverites after the massive rainfall in mid-November is the result of an extensive and secret weather modification program undertaken by the US, it has been confirmed by the little man who appears on my shoulder when I’m high. Reports the little man, “The situation was engineered in order to condition citizens to scarcity, and included a psy-op component and an effort to monitor the public reaction.”

Critics of the little man on my shoulder argue, “But they can’t just make it rain, little man, can they?”

In response, the little man points to a Vancouver sky festooned with criss-crossing chemtrails, and then points to US Senate Bill 517 for financing and oversight of weather modification (cloud seeding)

Upper Canadian Blues

PHOTO: THOM TSANG

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programs. “The bill took effect Oct. 1, 2005,” he says with a wink, before disappearing in a puff of fear.

whogives With Colonel J.D.Wilkes of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers What album is currently in your Stereo?

I’m really keen on the recordings of Doc Boggs. He’s an Appalachian banjo player.

What book are you currently reading or have most recently read?

A Little History of the World - by E. H. Gombrich. It’s a young adult primer for world history. It’s written like a story starting from the caveman all the way up to the atomic bomb.

What was the last movie you watched?

Walk the Line. I thought that was pretty good. Kinda corny. It was kind of a date flick. But I think they achieved what they set out to do.

Name one album, movie or book you consistently recommend to friends.

Jerry Lee Lewis’ Golden Cream of the Country.

Name one album, movie or book you would recommend to an enemy?

If you wanna subject yourself to some caterwaul, the musical documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. It’s a musical documentary about the South.

There’s some great moments, but if someone was out to get the wrong idea about things and everything that I stand for - which is something my enemy would be interested in - then seek out Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus.

What is a recent guilty pleasure?

Well… I’d say Walk the Line. I enjoyed the saccharine stuff and the acting and thought they did a great job.

What is your biggest pet peeve?

I don’t like alt-country music at all. I think it’s a poser genre.

Name one bad habit you are extremely proud of?

You’d think I was proud of picking my nose because I just do it in public all the time. I have a bad habit of picking my nose and not hiding it. I’m proud of it.

If you could hang out with any one person throughout history who would it be?

I don’t think they’d like me but I guess I’d like to hang out with perhaps Aristotle or Plato. I’d like to be witness to all that great thinking being born. I think that’d be great… to be witness to the birth of Western thought.

What is one thing you want to get done before you die?

I want to finish a graphic novel, sort out all my songs into an illustrated hymn book, finish this movie [Seven Signs of the Apocalyptic South, due out sometime next year], then maybe two more records and then I can croak. n

By Cameron Gordon

Music notes from in, out and around Toronto, ON

he streets of Toronto will soon be oozing once again with the music of Galore… and with a vaguely NYC-tinged aftertaste this time out. The glammy four-piece recently completed some sessions in New Yuck with Television guitar whiz Richard Lloyd and will use the efforts to cement sounds on a new full-length, due within the first part of 2007. In the meantime, the band is road testing the new tunes with some live dates, including a choice opening slot for Aussie scumbags Jet… He’s been getting some ink as of late in some other, less-important Canuck periodicals but truthfully, I can not help but to throw some words towards Jon-Rae Fletcher and his backing unit the River. The BC-expat has been touring the pants off his stellar Knows What You Need disc and Canada is starting to take notice. Ok, not really a news piece but whatever, it’s enough to make a brutha shout “Fucking A” 10 times over… Mad props to the

furry folks at the Toronto Public Library system for their recent two-spot of indie rock madness. Rock music at the library makes about as much sense as an ESL class at the Bovine but no matter, both gigs went off big time, featuring such local legends as Final Fantasy, the Great Lake Swimmers, Hank and the Creeping Nobodies, and all 100% free. Anything that might lure kids away from their computers and out into the bookstacks has gotta be a good idea… The Coast used to be called the July 26th Movement and their guitarist recently confronted me at a local Pizza Pizza, accusing me on being “lit up” (ironic, since I was anything but).

Anyway, these guys are starting to build a bit of buzz, which is great to see as they’re a supercool bunch and deserving of the attention. The band has signed an admissible recording contract with Aporia Records and will be gigging abroad more than soon, with some East coast stops planned for December

and some American action in early 2007… In other news from the tour bus, local faves the Sourkeys have just wrapped up a Maritimes tour, alongside ddmmyyyy, and they acquitted themselves quite nicely, all things being equal. Their latest full-length, The Spectacle, is available now via the Internet or their label, We Are Busy Bodies. It’s a clever, sorta complex stab at hard rock - plenty of start/stop action on this one…. Finally, a call to action for the next time you’re sifting through the artsy types and musty, ol’ scones at Futures Bakery on Bloor. Best nip next door and check out the Toronto Zine Library at the Tranzac. Every Saturday, from 1:003:00pm, you have the chance to check out hundreds of homemade zines in person, all while soaking up the collective ambiance. This is a total grassroots effort by passionate, admirable folks so please pay them a visit shortly. Keep tabs on the TZL at www. myspace.com/torontozinelibrary. n

The Nerve September 2006 Page

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page

CONTENTS

Jason Solyom The Next Bob Rock But Without the Money... or Fame... or Anything…

Half of these knobs don’t do anything, but it looks impressive

By Chris Walter

F

or years now, I’ve been seeing the same name on many local CD’s. At first, the name didn’t mean anything, but when I kept seeing it on a large number of high quality products, I began to take notice. There it was, at the bottom of the liner notes in small letters: Produced and engineered by Jason Solyom. It was then that I made the connection between the recording engineer and the rock singer, Jason Solyom.Yes, they were the same person, and I’ve been a Spitfires fan since I saw them blow everyone off the stage at the Commodore one muggy summer evening in the mid-’90s. Judging from the superb quality of his work, I assumed that Jason worked for a large professional firm, and when I found out that he worked from a homemade studio

in his basement, I was floored. How could anyone get such fantastic results without millions of dollars worth of equipment and a large, high-tech studio?

I was curious to find out, and then I remembered that I wrote for The Nerve - that I could ask all the questions I wanted under the guise of “professional journalism.” With my cover story squared away, I obtained his contact info and did some prying. The first thing I wanted to know was how long he’d been in the recording business, and how did he get started?

“I played more with tape recorders than toys growing up, but as far as business goes, don’t you have to make money to be in a business? I don’t think I’ve ever been in the business, but I’d sure like to be in the business. Maybe some of you big-time musicians

Maybe some of you big-time musicians who owe me money will consider paying me

who owe me money will consider paying me so I can be in the business.”

After hearing his answer, it occurred to me that collecting money from musicians must be like trying to sell books to punk rockers. But doesn’t he work full-time in the movie industry? How does he find time to produce, perform, and record? Doesn’t he have, like, a family and shit? “Family? No kids, just a wife and a couple of dogs. I work in film to finance recording gear. Every free bit I get is usually spent on recording. I’m really behind on some records I was supposed to have finished, like, last year. I’m trying.”

I was curious about the Flash Bastard album Bastard Radio, on which Jason actually played the drum tracks, but when I asked him about it, he only told me that they needed a drummer, he liked their music, and that it was a ton of fun. He’s about as talkative as Greg Huff from Alternate Action, which isn’t very.

He did have a few stories, however. I asked him if anything funny ever happens when he’s recording or producing. “Nothing I can think of, except stupid shit like Billy Hopeless (Black Halos) singing the theme for Gilligan’s Island - passionately, and taking himself very serious about the program’s theme. Greg Huff (Alternate Action) acting out a rape scene over the microphone. Not sure if that one’s funny… more disturbing really. The guys from Spreadeagle have got into a few fistfights with each other while recording, but that’s kinda expected.”

I wanted to know what Bob Rock has that he doesn’t, besides assloads of money. “An awesome snare tone - Metallica, Saint Anger - would you not agree? Maybe a smokin’ resume?” I figure that perhaps Jason needs a new name. What was the last name of that Jason in The Seven Voyages of Sinbad?

The Spitfires have a hard-drinking image (they had a drummer named Ryan Seven, for fuck’s sakes), and I wanted to know how much of it was just an illusion. “I like to drink whenever we play or when I go out. It makes me a bit more comfortable. I’m not into going to many parties, unless a good band is

playing. I don’t get out much, so when I do I love to have a drink. Not hard drinking, just social drinking.

I’ve never really been into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle thing. I’m a very cheap drunk, and easily amused as well!”

Of course, I had to know if he preferred the engineering booth or the stage. “Two completely different things. Both are great, depending on the situation. If CC (Voltage) is with us, then I’ll have to say the stage. Sometimes I’m a complete ass on stage, and I tend to feel a bit embarrassed the day after a show. I was attention-starved as a child. I’m really insecure. What are you getting at?”

As far as the pitfalls of the trade, Jason would only say, “Gear costs too much.”

How did he learn to twist the knobs? Did he go to school? “Yeah, I did go too school, but I dropped out and just started investing in gear and learning on my own. If you can operate a home stereo, you can run a very, very successful recording studio just like me. Just kidding. I love doing it, but technically, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

I asked him what happened when the Spitfires went to Toronto for the Battle of the Bands competition. I wondered why the Spitfires broke up right after that. “It wasn’t a Battle of the Bands, just a gig that got blown out of proportion. Somebody gave the band some drinks and the bar staff tried to take them away. Then the soundman became upset.

Then the promoter started to cry. Then our booking agent became cranky and yelled ‘IF YA CAN’T RUN WITH THE BIG DOGS, STAY ON THE FUCKING PORCH!’ We have lots of fun in Toronto. We actually broke up a couple weeks before the gig.”

Lastly, I wanted to know what projects he is currently working on. “New Spitfires record for Devil Doll Records, Riff Randells, Spreadeagle, Black Halos, the Hits, Alternate Action, and Nasty On. I have no idea, really…”

I can hardly fucking wait. Oh, and Jason, you know where to send that Spitfires record for review… n

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page

CONTENTS

John Armstrong! Buck Cherry! The Modernettes! Pachuco!

There’s New Life in the Old Beat-Beast Yet!

By Ferdy Belland

O

ne of the more exciting bits of news crackling forth from the current Vancouver rock community is the reappearance of one of the most memorable bands from the city’s early punk days: by cracky, it’s the Modernettes! YAY!!!

The new Modernettes will return to the Vancouver stage (for the first time since the filming of the punk rock pseudo-documentary Hard Core Logo) on Friday December 29th at Richard’s on Richards with the Manvils, Rich Hope, and Junior Major - holy shit!

Quadruple awesome or what?

CANADIAN PUNK HISTORY LESSON: Bursting onto the amazing Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret scene, out of the sardonically intelligent mind of ex-Active Dog guitarist-vocalist John Armstrong (known by his ‘nom-de-punk,’ Buck Cherry), the Modernettes were one of the first and best pop-punk bands Canada will ever see. A co-ed power trio, sonically akin to the Ramones, the Modernettes’ lineup was rounded out by the striking Amazonian bassist Mary-Jo Kopechne and bash-bash-bashful drummer John “Jughead” McAdams. The band was busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest at the turn of the 1980s, releasing classic EPs like Strictly Confidential,Teen City, a full-length LP Gone...but Not Forgotten, and the final EP View From the Bottom. A frantic West Coast touring schedule and growing frustration over the band’s unfathomable obscurity (in the shadow of better-known Van City exports such as the Pointed Sticks and DOA) lead to the Modernettes’ premature demise; John later formed the short-lived supergroup Los Popularos with his longtime friend Art Bergmann, but even a pop-punk demigod reaches a breaking point, and Cherry/Armstrong thought he had hung up his Cuban-heeled boots (and his splintery Gibson SG) for good. Not so.

“For all intents and purposes, I had retired from playing music,” Armstrong explains from the controlroom comfort of Paramount Recording Studio, where he currently resides as one of Vancouver’s prime underground recording engineers. “I still wanted to write and record songs, but I didn’t want to go out and tread the boards. But then I met the guys from (the local Vancouver band) the Philharmonic, around the time my partner Gord Nichol and I bought Paramount Studio here in the Downtown Eastside. We started talking about music, and we liked a lot of the same music. And we had the studio here. I’d been playing on other people’s records and was anxious to start doing some of my new songs. I got (guitarist) Adam Sabla and (bassist) Hayz Fisher, along with (New Pornographers drummer) Kurt Dahle together last winter and recorded 16 songs, plugging away at them and recording them live in the room. We took the Beatles approach, where we track them live and then go back and decide to work another part into it, or trim another part out. So we got the spontaneity of playing live, but then we fucked with it for a while. Most of the songs were recorded on the same day they all learned them. So it was all bang-and-crash threeand-a-half-chord symphonies.”

Armstrong goes on: “I thought I’d have an album in the can, and then I’d write another album, and that was where it was up until Joe Keithley got a hold of me about reissuing the Modernettes compilation that Zulu Records had done. And I said, ‘Sure, great!’ And then the next thing I heard was, ‘Here’s a cheque!’ and ‘Boy, you guys are selling a lot of records in Japan!’ I started playing music in 1975 when I quit high school and moved in with Art Bergmann, when we formed the Shits, and this was the first cheque I had ever gotten from a record company.”

“So we had this album completed, and were ready to get out and play out under a new band name, when all this Japanese attention happened,” Armstrong explains. “The promoters really wanted the Modernettes to come overseas to do these

shows, and I was of course agreeable to traveling to Japan for free…but, do we have to call it ‘The Modernettes?’ Jughead’s down in California and Mary-Jo’s up in some remote village in northern British Columbia, raising exotic housecats. What we’re traveling to Japan with is an entirely new, and entirely different band, so the plan is to tour Japan as ‘the New Modernettes,’ splitting the repertoire halfway between selections off the first three records, and half being new material. When we come back to Vancouver, we’ll continue as a new band: Pachuco.” Those of us who aren’t cholos are advised that a pachuco is a Mexican-American youth who dresses in flashy clothes and usually runs with a street gang.

Sabla explains the New Modernettes / Pachuco genesis from his viewpoint: “Hayz and I became friends with John. We started out barbecuing more than playing music, just hanging out over the summer we met, with a lot of beer and a lot of roasted chicken. I don’t know how exactly it came to be… we were at one of these barbecues one night, talking about the genius of Randy Newman, which might be one of the least punk rock topics of conversation going… we started hanging out and jamming, playing for fun.”

“When I first met Adam,” Armstrong explains, “He told me his two major musical influences were the Beatles and the Sex Pistols. I felt that anyone who can keep those two bands in the same heart is someone I have to play with.”

“Kurt was originally going to go to Japan with us,” notes Armstrong, about drummer Dahle, “but he’s already too busy with the New Pornographers.

Kurt’s been all around the world, all year long, reading paperbacks in airports. They’re still out there promoting Twin Cinema; they’re off to Australia shortly.” Consequently, The New Modernettes will take (Ex-Frequency Fall) drummer Ryan Betts for the Japanese tour, which covers seven shows in 10 days during March 2007, and will see Mssrs. Armstrong, Sabla, Fisher, et Betts rocking up classic Buck Cherry tunes like “Barbra” for the good people of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and other sprawling metropolises across the Land of the Rising Sun, with the type of fire and fury that hasn’t been seen since the Enola Gay took flight one cloudy August morning in 1945.

“I’m sorry we’re not playing the Budokan,” Armstrong laments. “I was hoping to find one of Bob Dylan’s old hymnals in the dressing room. But I believe we’re playing fair-sized venues, Commodore Ballroom-sized places, the same rooms the Pointed Sticks played. We’re using the same promoter who brought the Sticks over, and they did very well by all accounts – as they should. They didn’t book enough shows to meet their demand, and they sold everything out. I have no idea if this will open any inroads into the Fuji Rock Festival or anything… like everything else in my career, I’ve blundered into it unwittingly.You end up drunk in a basement, playing too loud, and the next thing you know, you’re making a record. And the next thing you know, you’re in a band, going to some other city. And then I quit all that for years and years, and you’d think I’d learned something, but it’s exactly what happened this time. It’s all been absolute happenstance and blind luck and ignorance.”

So what we have is the Modernettes and not-the Modernettes. Explains Armstrong, “I’m not comfortable with playing too many more Canadian shows as ‘the Modernettes’. That band name was a joke to begin with, just as ‘Buck Cherry’ was a joke name.

We were all on welfare and they’d kick you off of welfare if you used your real name. When that LA band buckcherry came out in the late ‘90s, it was great because they had to pay me a whole bunch of money! Rich Duguay (of Personality Crisis) was in town one day and picked up a copy of Rolling Stone, which had a ‘hot bands to watch’ feature, and

“It’s all been absolute happenstance and blind luck and ignorance.”

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 10

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“

s m W p

J t B “ h t c b p J M D f w w “ m a b e p i D

t g – d o J T a

Armstrong and Kopechne in guiltier times buckcherry was one of those bands. The only smart thing I’ve ever done in my entire musical career was that I didn’t get a showbiz lawyer; I got a trademarkand-copyright lawyer. I said, look, I’ve got a body of work here that spans a number of years, I’ve got a book, the book’s been optioned as a film, and the legal basis for any complaint like this would cause confusion in the marketplace. If I decided to call myself ‘Billie Holiday,’ the estate of Billie Holiday would have a pretty good case that I would be causing confusion in the marketplace… some old jazz snob saunters into HMV looking for Strange Fruit and ends up with another strange fruit. So I approached Dreamworks – and I smiled when I saw buckcherry was on Dreamworks; brand new big label with LOTS of money to spend – and the first thing the lawyer said when he took a look at the material we supplied them with was, ‘Is this a problem that money can solve?’ So I got a really nice payout in American dollars – being Steven Spielberg’s record label, what he paid me was the money he leaves on the bar table - and my lawyer earned every penny I paid him by saying, ‘Don’t sell them the name – LICENCE it to them. Allow them to use it and you can still use it. So I can’t print Buck Cherry as all lower-case, one word, and I can’t call the band ‘Buck Cherry,’ but I personally am Buck Cherry and have been for much longer than they’ve been around.”

One of John Armstrong’s many endearing traits is his seemingly bottomless well of anecdotes, vivid recollections, and just plain good stories, all laced with humour and poignancy. Not surprisingly, he’s a gifted writer. His must-read mini-opus Guilty of

Everything predated Joe Keithley’s uber-hyped backpatting session I, Shithead by two years and (in this writer’s opinion) better captures the sights, sounds, and smells of what Vancouver’s early punk days must have been like for those of us who weren’t there.

“The weirdest thing and the shittiest thing about punk rock was the jettisoning of all this really crucial musical history,” Armstrong says. “The idea that nobody had ever made a record before the MC5, the New York Dolls, or the Stooges. If it was a band that was sufficiently obscure, you were allowed to like them, but literally, you could never say that (Howlin’ Wolf sideman) Hubert Sumlin was a great guitar player.You weren’t allowed to say that your favourite guitarists were Tom Verlaine, Richard Thompson, and Ry Cooder. I got in to see Iggy and the Stooges on the Raw Power tour at the Pender Ballroom with my brand-new fake ID when I was 15, which I only knew about because I bought Rock Scene every month.

Greatest magazine ever; Bergmann said, ‘This is the perfect magazine because it’s all pictures and captions!’

And it looked like everybody in New York were all buddies. ‘Barbecue at David Johansen and Cyrindra Foxe’s apartment,’ and they’d have a hibachi on the fire escape, and there’d be Walter Lure and Richard Hell standing beside the record player, singing along and drunk off their asses. It was the most wonderful magazine, and it made it seem like if you could only get to New York, you could go to those parties too, because you knew all these people. It was a very small world for people who liked that shit. Sort of like here.” n

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Returning to Vancouver by Way of Japan

By Allan MacInnis

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Everybody knows about the ‘big in Japan’ cliché, but I think the Japanese take their pop culture pretty seriously. And since theirs agrees with mine, I’d say they have great taste!”

- Dale Wiese, Noize to Go! owner and Waiting for the Real Thing compilation producer Japanese promoter Toshio Iijima, of the collectors’ record chain Record Base (www.recordshopbase.com) “couldn’t believe (his) ears” when he heard, after long negotiations, that the Pointed Sticks had agreed to come to Japan for a reunion tour. The band’s energetic and cheerful brand of power pop makes them a favourite of Japanese punks, along with DOA, the Modernettes, the Subhumans and the Dishrags; the Japanese market accounts for 80 percent of the Sticks CD sales worldwide. Toshio had been conspiring with the band’s label owner, Joey “Shithead” Keithley, for a long time to make the tour a reality. We owe Toshio and Joe, and the bands’ Japanese fan base, a big debt of gratitude for their enthusiasm; the Pointed Sticks will be playing their first Vancouver concert* in over 25 years, on January 6th, 2007.

Doomo arigatoo gozaimasu, guys!

Details are unclear at press time, but I’m told there will likely be two shows, an afternoon all-ages gig and an evening one, both at Richard’s on Richards – the selfsame street where the band had their debut gig, at the Quadra Club, back in the summer of 1978. The band – including original members Nick Jones, Bill Napier-Hemy, Gord Nicholl, Ian Tiles, and Tony Bardach – are discussing possible future gigs, and have even talked about putting out a new single.

Pointed Sticks’ bassist Tony Bardach, instrumental in organizing the Vancouver show, was happy to talk to The Nerve about the bands’ experiences in Japan last July. “The most impressive thing to me was how prepared and aware the crowd was,” he told me.

“They knew all the words to all the songs and sang them in key – with a Japanese accent – which blew our minds completely. Then secondly, the places were jam-packed, to the rafters, and everyone was smiling.” The number of fans crammed into the smallish Japanese clubs was “a recipe for disaster,” but to Tony’s amazement, the band “had no problems at all. People were crowd-surfing and the crowd was just falling over itself and swaying all this way and that, and nobody got hurt. It was completely benevolent. No elbows, no tough guys, no bullshit – it was all just like pre-hardcore. It was like early punk, like it had never stopped.” The tour went by pretty quickly, but for Tony “it was wonderful being there. It’s a fantastic place, and the people are so stylish. Even the guys have all got great hair!”

Drummer Ian Tiles was similarly impressed. “The experience was so intense. We had a pretty tight schedule, though. We were like an amoeba, we did everything together!” The band managed a trip to Harajuku and to a temple, in-between concerts.

Bardach and Tiles’ history on the Vancouver punk scene dates back to the early days, before either DOA or the Pointed Sticks were formed.

“It was only about 100 people doing it, basically,

Tony Bardach after distastrous lip lifting surgery and 1000 people looking at it,” Tony reports. “We were all over the map – you can hear that by listing to the Vancouver Complication album. There was no paradigm - it was an every-person-for-their-ownidea kind of time.” Tony was introduced to the idea of punk when Ian arrived from Ottawa with a Sex Pistols single in tow. “We kinda listened to that and we thought, y’know, we gotta find some punk rockers, let’s get something going. They were hard to find, though. Finally we saw this show, ‘Punk Rock with the Skulls and Victorian Pork,’ at the Legion, so we went there.” The Skulls were Joey Keithley’s pre-DOA project, and Victorian Pork was their “fuck band” spinoff, involving most of the same members, playing different instruments. After a short time in their own band, the Tuney Loons, with Tiles singing and Chuck Biscuits on drums, Bardach and Tiles “amalgamated” with Victorian Pork. Brad Kent, Randy Rampage, and Dimwit were involved at various points, as well. DOA arose from this incestuous gaggle of punks, after a failed attempt by the Skulls to make it in Toronto; shortly later, the Pointed Sticks formed.

There are missing pieces to the puzzle – I haven’t had a chance to talk to Bill or Nick about their path to the band – but the original lineup was Nick, Bill, Tony, and Ian (Ernie Dick has been the drummer for a few practice sessions, before Ian took up his place at the kit).

Keyboardist Nicholl, who currently runs Paramount Studios with the Modernettes’ John Armstrong, would join up later. The band was still a four piece when they won the Battle of the Bands at the Commodore.

This led to the first single, “What Do You Want Me to Do,” produced by Bob Rock in 1979; Tiles would eventually pass the drumsticks on to Biscuits, who would pass them onto his brother, the much-missed Dimwit.

Tiles, still a key figure on Vancouver’s rockabilly scene and member of the Hard On People and Coal,

“It was like early punk. Like it had never stopped.”

tells me, “Playing with Bill changed my approach. Bill was brilliant. I was more attentive when I played with Bill – well, I tried to be, anyway!”

Bill Napier-Hemy teaches guitar to dyslexic children in real life, and is a calm, polite man with a warm smile; Japanese fans I talked to particularly took a liking to his moderate, Japanese-friendly self-presentation. I got a chance to ask Bill about his favourite gig from the band’s youth. “We got to open for the Buzzcocks in San Francisco, when they had decided to call it quits and played their last gig for about a decade. They were spectacular. The Dead Kennedys were also on the bill and they rocked.”

Tony filled me in on a surprising detail when I asked him if he had any special memories of that gig.

“Mostly I was thinking about Jonestown,” he chuckled. “It was at the Geary Street theatre. That was where Jimmy Jones used to have his parish... That was pretty cool!” The Sticks also opened for Devo, the Clash, and many others.

Every Stick you talk to has a different interpretation of why the band broke up. “I think we all wanted too much too quickly,” Tony offers (though he notes that he wasn’t actually in the band when they finally called it quits, in 1981). “Nobody had the patience, nobody had the foresight. We made a big mistake with Stiff, obviously, because we had no Canadian release [other than the independently produced Perfect Youth, on Quintessence, which disappeared when the label folded]. There was nothing guaranteed at all, and certainly no American release, whereas if we’d gone with Sire, you’d find us in the Value Village or the Sally Ann with a hole in the side of the record.

You know, there’d be tons of them, thousands of them, all over the place. Maybe in retrospect it was good, though, because if the record had been all over everywhere, who would give a shit about

it now?”

There was a lot more from Tony – including a terrific anecdote about being chased through London by angry, glue-sniffing skinheads (“they really reeked of the glue, too – it was just gross”) to play with the Soft Boys and the Psychedelic Furs in front of a “sea of Adam and the Ants fans” in full punk regalia at the Electric Ballroom, during the band’s one tour of England; but there is simply no more room.

Check my blog, alienatedinvancouver. blogspot.com, for more as the date approaches, and while you’re online, look for Torontonian Mike Ramone’s Pointed Sticks video clips on Youtube, of the band performing in Japan (Mike was at all three shows). Also be sure to check out Slowpoke and the Smoke, Tony’s solo project, where he sings as Tony Twilight. “It’s a mixture of doo wop and Frank Zappa.” (http://www.myspace.com/slowpokeandthesmoke). There are also two Pointed Sticks fan sites, one run with occasional participation from Nick Jones: http://www.myspace.com/pointedsticks One final note for Pointed Sticks fans: Todd Taylor, formerly of Flipside magazine and now the editor of Razorcake, has been a long-time fan of the “polished bone snap (with sweet candy marrow)” of Pointed Sticks songs. He will be devoting nine pages to an article on the band in Razorcake #36, due out in mid July; it includes indepth interviews with Nick, Bill, Ian, Toshio, Dale, and Joey, and reports from both Canadian and Japanese fans who saw them play during their brief overseas tour. Local record store-owners might want to take note and place orders now. Tony sends out a shout to Nardwuar, who also regularly publishes in Razorcake; Nardwuar has been a longtime Pointed Sticks advocate, tho’ he is not the author of the upcoming article. Thanks to Todd for permission to lift a couple of quotes as a teaser!

As for the Vancouver gig, Ian Tiles is delighted that it’s come together. “We’re excited as heck, we’re just really stoked!” he tells me over the phone. “It’s gonna be great!” * Okay, yeah, sure, Bill and Tony performed “The Marching Song” with the Dishrags on backup vocals at the Vancouver Complication gig last February. It was one song, it wasn’t the full band, and the Dishrags stole the show, anyhow! Don’t be anal.

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 11

through these guys setting up their gear for hours at a time instead of us.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of '06 Not running a certain Nerve writer’s scathing concert review of a Vancouver band, which will remain nameless, because it might ruffle a few too many tail-feathers. This is just one more example of why we should unionize.

- BRock Thiessen Three Best Albums Mastodon – Blood Mountain (Relapse) Who dares challenge the wisdom of the cycloptic yeti? NO ONE, that’s who. The best metal album of this or pretty much any year.

Budgie – Reissue series (Roadrunner) Every magnificent Budgified rock-a-roller is finally getting the remaster/reissue treatment, PLUS there’s two new double-discs of classic live material, PLUS the first new Budgie studio album in over 20 years! All in all an ejaculatory year for Budgie fans. Now how about a tour outside of the U.K., Mr. Shelley? OH PLEASE GIVE ME MY BUDGIE!!!

Comets on Fire – Avatar (Sub Pop) And the good Lord answers our riff-filled prayers with even more heavenly psychedelic overdrive, straight to the moon. Seventies drug rock hasn’t been this good since... the ‘70s. Hawkwind my ass.

Best Show of the Year Secret Chiefs 3/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum/Bend Sinister, Richard’s on Richards - Sinister and the Chiefs were great, but Sleepytime Gorilla Museum... holy Moses. It was some kinda King Crimson Grand Guignol; butcher’s gowns, guttural chants, homemade instruments, clanging percussive hellfire, outmoded philosophies gagged and vomited over a death march. It was beautiful. I think I found relijun.

Best Local Band That dude in front of the Bay at Georgia and Granville. Sure, he doesn’t have arms. Or legs. But he rocks that Casio keyboard like a severely crippled Don Airey.Vancouver’s most smiley one-torso band.

Worst Local Band P:ano - High school’s sissiest band class punching-bags yelped, “No way!” to squareville, bought themselves mandolins and accordions and learned to yodel. If you dig that, then please, come gather around the ‘P:ano’. What a treat.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 We should have sponsored a Spirit Bear. In the image of ‘Ainsworth’.

- David Bertrand

Three Best Albums Dirty Pretty Things - Waterloo to Anywhere (Universal) Carl Barat proves he was the real moxy behind the Libertines. That said, Dirty Pretty Things is a beyond-horrible name for a band.

The Dudes - Brain Heart Guitar (EMI) Smart, likable, no-BS power pop.

Mogwai - Mr. Beast (Matador) Another blistering additional to their pathos, with some increased range bleeding out from beneath the fur.

Best Show The Streets and Lady Sovereign, The Phoenix, Toronto – Year of the Oi celebrated six months early/late with two of the UK’s finest.

Best Local Band The Constantines – Hard working, earnest and seriously fucking talented, the Cons have grown up before our very eyes and continue to confound with their stilted take on indie rock.

Worst Local Band Our Lady Peace – Overwrought modern rock nonsense that’s about as deep as a Frisbee yet portrayed (by the band members) to be “thought provoking”.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 Devon Cody - I’d like to take a branch to his shinbone and luckily, I live 4000+ kilometers away from The Nerve HQ, so I can pick fights at random without any reason.

- Cameron Gordon

Three Best Albums Danielson – Ships (Secretly Canadian) I can’t believe people choose to listen to Sufjan over Daniel.

Actually, I can. People are stupid.

Liars – Drum’s Not Dead (Mute) These guys put their DVD movie with the CD version AND the vinyl version. Here is my thank you.

The Television Personalities – My Dark Places (Domino) Dude wrote these songs inside his head while on a prison barge. How rock ‘n’ roll is that?

Best Show of the Year Thanksgiving,Video-In – Tall, lanky kid with a bowl cut jumping around and screaming how he’s rockin’ his cock off makes for a real good time. Too bad only a dozen or so Vancouverites bothered to go out and see him.

Best Local Band Sipreano a.k.a. Kevin Howes – This guy put out one of the best and most important compilations of Canadian music ever. His Jamaica to Toronto comp should be required listening in every Canadian history class.

Worst Local Band The Winks – I never thought I’d say this, but thank God some people move to Montreal when Vancouver fails to be fruitful. Now Montreal has to sit

Three Best Albums Priestess - Hello Master (RCA) I know it was technically released last year, but RCA has picked them up and reissued the album, so I’ve got a loophole.

Hello Master is an absolutely contagious debut. Let’s hope label life with the likes of Clay Aiken and Kelly Clarkson doesn’t spoil them.

The Bronx - The Bronx II (White Drugs/Island De Jam) Aside from the opening bit of wank, this meaty sophomore release is as solid and explosive as an Albertan turd. Except it’s not a turd. It’s really quite good.

Tom Waits, Orphans (Epitaph) As I write this, it’s exactly one week before the official release of this 3-disc set. All I’ve heard are the 30-second song samples online, but I already know it’ll earn a spot here. I’m not biased… just obsessed.

Best Show of the Year Gogol Bordello, Bellingham - Perogies, polkas, and punk. It was enough to make me piddle a little. An honourable mention goes out to Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 12

Best Local Band Rich Hope and His Evil Doers - Still. Oh, and I have a new crush on the Smears too.

Worst Local Band Hedley - What do you get when you cross an annoying Canadian Idol loser with today’s most irritating form of popular music? In my case, a homicidal fucking headache.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 Last February’s Cheap Shotz, which caused people to blame me for the libelous remarks made toward The Foundation restaurant. Goddamned vegans are still shitting on my doorstep. Luckily, veggie shits don’t smell nearly as bad as us “dead flesh eater” shits.

- Devon Cody

Three Best Albums TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope) Unlike all those other indie bands that exploded two years ago, TOTR’s follow up to its debut Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is actually better, plus it totally makes girls horny. Win Win, right?

Into Eternity - Scattering of Ashes (Century Media) It’s a mixture of all the best aspects of metal, including power metal solos, black metal singing and metalcore rhythm guitar.

Ima Robot - Monument for the Masses (Virgin) Just when you thought your were done with powerpop indie, these guys come back with another album and you just can’t get that fucking song out of your head.

Would you even want to though?

Best Show of the Year DragonForce, CCC - Jesus fuck, this show was so goddamn good it’s like every awesome thing ever about power metal crammed into one band. I sweated through my clothes, standing still, trying not to get mauled by the two mosh pits.

Best Local Band Shearing Pinx - Those guys are doing some wicked experimental shit Worst Local Band Probably one of those intolerant art fag bands. Just pick one of the thousand that are running around hating on everyone because they’re not cool enough.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 I dunno… not paying its deliciously sexy staff. Or more importantly, not paying me. Fuck those other guys. They’re bums. Except for Mack. He’s alright.

-Dale De Ruiter

Three Best Albums Jello Biafra - In The Grip Of Official Treason (Alternative Tentacles) This is the most important spoken word album released since Bill Hicks died.

Venetian Snares - Cavalcade Of Glee & Dadaist Happy Harcore Pom Poms (Planet Mu) This is the most aggressive electronica you will ever hear. However, it’s not angry for no reason (that’s what mainstream drum and bass is for). This is the IDM nightmare that radio dance music pisses itself over. Winnipeg’s greatest export makes Alice In Chains sound like polka.

Rubin Steiner - Drum Major! (Platinum) I can’t listen to this album enough. This is the most fun I had all year. Rubin is at the total opposite of the mood spectrum from Venetian Snares, yet manages to remain safely intelligent. It’s as captivating and funky

as computer music gets.

Best Show Of The Year Kid Koala, Dick’s on Dicks - Don’t think the turntable is an instrument? You haven’t seen this endearing Vancouver native live. All of those DMC champs are quite something, but the Kid is in a whole other league. Plus, the souvenir oven mitts are a nice touch.

Best Local Band The Foundation - Not the restaurant, but the band of the same name. May the funk be with you.

Worst Local Band DJ Czech - The biggest sausage in the scene today.

This is why electronica has a tough time getting respect.

Biggest Nerve Fuck-up Of The Year Losing the old retro cover font/look for the new power-pop type. Weak.

- Filmore Mescalito Holmes

Three Best Albums King Khan & BBQ Show - What’s For Dinner (In The Red) Absolutely perfect, melt in your mouth rock’n’roll!

Ray Reatard - Blood Visions (SSLD) A gorgeous sounding record! A personal best for Jay, wound up with destruction and splattered in blood!

Knaughty Knights - Tommy of The River (Shattered) I don’t care if its only a 7”, it needs to be on the list, it’s that damn good! You’ll play it so many times you won’t even notice it’s not a full-length!

Best Show of the Year Chicago Blackout, but if we’ve talking Vancouver…

The Black Lips at Richards. The Dirtbombs were there too.

Best Local Band Fuck Me Dead, but seeing as how they’ve parted ways (!@##!!), the golden bucket goes to No Feeling, hands down.

Worst Local Band Do I really get to answer this!?! Ladyhawk: Watching them play is like finding out your girlfriend doesn’t swallow - a real big disappointment.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 Having an office on the fifth floor when the elevator breaks down – those fucking stairs kicked my ass…all fifteen million hundred of them.

- Jenny C

Three Best Albums Party Party Party Party - Stop, Drop, Rock and Roll (Seppuku Gift Set) Knuckles Clenched White - Does It Hurt Yet? (Congested Prostate/Universal) Pedestrian Underpass - Vistavision Kaleidoscopic Samsara Chai Latte (One Knee Knocking) Best Show of the Year Mongoose / Manvils / Smears / Hot Little Rocket, The Lamplighter - Picture this shit: Mikey Manville & Co. dressed in seafaring ghostface-skeletal madness; Mikey struggling atop the PA speakers and jumping back into the midst of the onstage fray, tucking his

your favorite writers in the whole world tell you what the fuck you should like head down so he wouldn’t brain himself against the lighting rig. Classic. Or how about Mongoose, dressed to kill in bright crimson fury, delivering their tightest and fieriest set yet, neckties and sweat flying.

Fuck, those cats can rock. Then there’s the Smears, smearing the shit out of the room. Hot Little Rocket, making even me pay attention. There’s a lot of blonde women out there in Gastown, but I’m here to testify that there’s not a lot of natural blondes.

Not that I’m complaining. Fucking raddest night ever.

Best Local Band Vancouver’s best band also has Vancouver’s best band name: The Anger! The Power! The Fury! And the Filth! Why, you ask? Repeat after me: “Rock and roll soldiers / armed to the teeth / antitank missiles / and Flying V’s.” Pure fucking genius.

Worst Local Band Just about anything you see on a Magnetized Productions bill. If it’s from Surrey, start to worry.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of the Year Not hiring strippers for the Christmas party.

- Johnny Kroll

infected with tapeworm, and Andrew Lloyd Webster jerking off into a pile of cash.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 - Failing to find a cure for the female menstrual cycle. For the love of God, 51% of the world’s population bleeds from its genitals every month! What are you doing to stop this! Fuck Polio! Those cotton swabs shoved up there can only last for so long. We need a cure.

- David Von Bentley Three Best Albums Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat (Team Love) Evanescence – The Open Door (Wind-Up) Veruca Salt – IV (SFRI) Best Show Kid Congo Powers, Railway Club Best Local Band The Nervous Breakdowns - barely keeping their shit together since 2004 Worst Local Band The Deadcats without Scooter. How can it be the Deadcats without the guy with the bucket bass on fire?! Scooter WAS the Deadcats. Dude, these things should be outlawed (sorry Chopper).

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 The bar situation on the boat cruise. Queuing for an hour plus, to overpay for beer, does not make for a top night. Even Richard’s can manage a bucket of ice and someone selling bottles at $4 a go.

- Stephanie Heney

Three Best Albums Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Live at the Fillmore 1970 (Reprise) Cat Power - The Greatest (Matador) Comets on Fire – Avatar (Sub Pop) Best Show Ray Davies, Commodore Ballroom - His band kept speeding up.

Best Local Band Ummm… Black Bones Worst Local Band Destroyer - Is Destroyer still local? I love Destroyer.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 Turning down the Captain Beefheart interview.

- Adrian Mack

Three Best Albums Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist (Maverick) Outdoing themselves, again. It’s almost boring how awesome the Deftones are.

Ghostface Killah – Fishscale (Def Jam) Listening to dudes riff on coke is the worst, but Ghostface’s tales of moving 8-balls kills it.

The Knights of the New Crusade – A Challenge To The Cowards Of Christendom (Alternative Tentacles) The Holy Shit!

Best Show My drunk wife.

Best Local Band I suppose that would be Mothra, but I don’t get out too much.

Worst Local Band The Don’t Shit Where You Eats Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 Not printing my critically constructive, and completely justified review of a then local band in order to quell potential hurt feelings. Christa Min probably knows what I’m talking about, ask her.

- Adam Simpkins

Three Best Albums Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom (Ipecac) This is Mike Patton’s trip hop album that nobody liked but me. It was hard for me to digest this record, not because of the music, but because my nickname in high school was ‘Peeping Tom’. I received that name after all the jocks would throw me into the girls’ washroom and hold the door shut.

Lamb of God – Sacrament (Sony) Metal barely brings a sparkle to my one good eye these days. I used to rely on it to fuel my hate fuck sessions with transvestites after going to church, but these days it leaves me limp and sore. There is always the exception to the rule, however, and Lamb of God makes me hard. Thanks to Sacrament, it’s back to church and time for a rough reach-around fellas.

Dredg - Live at the Fillmore (Interscope) The name ‘Dredg’ sounds like Choda Fungai, which is never pleasant, but luckily the band is. Plus, they’re tighter than a seven-year old boy’s asshole after you twist his nipples and make him suck on a lemon. EEWW, gross!

Best Show The Nerve Boat Cruise - My charm and wit seduced several ladies while waiting in the beer line-up. Let’s face it ladies, once you lock eyes with me you’re going to surrender your panties and morals for a night of passion with Don Von Juan.

Best Local Band Nickelback - Chad Kroeger lives in Abbotsford, which happens to be the same ‘choose life’ town I’m from. So why Nickelback then? Because hopefully I can become his friend after writing this, and have a beer with him. Then we could hang at his place where tragically 247 bullets will penetrate his flesh in an accidental hunting accident.

Worst Local Band David Von Bentley presents CATS - It’s me performing all of CATS the musical with a kazoo; 38 alley cats

Three Best Albums Kill Cheerleader – All Hail (Spinerazor) Normally, I don’t go for this sort of hard rock wankery, but All Hail hits me in just the right spot. Well done, or in this case, medium-rare.

Matadors – Horrorbilly 9000 (Stereo Dynamite) Look out for this band. Until they came along, I didn’t really give a toss about horrorobilly. Thanks to these yahoos, I’ve been forced to find other things to not care about.

Subhumans – New Dark Age Parade (G7 Welcoming Committee) There are one or two tracks here that I don’t absolutely love, but other than that, it’s as solid as fuck. Not only that, but Jon Card gave me five bucks and promised not to beat me up.

Best Show JP5, Norton Neils & his Evil Band, Slickjacks, the Cobalt - This was my favourite show not because the music was flawlessly executed or the sound was perfect, but because it was great to see Gerry Jenn and Norton Neils, not dead, but up on stage kicking it. Maybe I was just in good mood that night, but everything was all right and it was good to be alive.

Sorry for being so wholesome.

Best Local Band Rebel Spell, same as last year. I don’t even need to give a reason, they simply rule.

Worst Local Band Gee, this is a tough one, so many worthy candidates.

All I have to do is flip through this magazine and pick one. Hell, you can do it for me.

Worst Nerve Fuck Up of 06 How would I know? You don’t think I read this rag, do you?

- Chris Walter

Three Best Albums Tool - 10,000 Years (Volcano) Yeah, yeah, they’re pretentious. So what? No one can make music like this. Bow down to their greatness.

Mastodon - Blood Mountain (Relapse) Faintly ludicrous lyrical themes aside, this is one of the best metal albums released in the last 10 years.

The Sword - Age of Winters (Kemado) This band takes great pride in the mighty power of ‘the riff’.

Fuck originality when you can rock out like this.

Best Show Jamie Lidell, the Commodore - This guy is a sickeningly talented individual. A man who sings to a cardboard cut out of himself deserves respect.

Best Local Band The Next Hundred Years - They should be signed.

Why aren’t they signed? Somebody sign them, dammit!

Worst Local Band Nickelback - I’m not one for condoning violence but for some people you just have to make exceptions.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of ‘06 Consistently allowing reviewers to make crass and frankly embarrassing references to genitalia and bodily fluids.

- Will Pedley

Three Best Albums All of them. Brook Hogan. Daughter of Hulk Hogan, who is a notorious homosexual, who had a long term homosexual relationship with Brutus “the Barber” Beefcake.

Best Show Guitar orgy, at fake jazz, at the Cobalt, about two weeks ago. Say… November 6 Best Local Band Vapid Worst Local Band God, all of them Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 Proof read my fucking columns.

- Ainsworth, Ainsworth, Ainsworth

Three Best Albums Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth (Crucial Blast) They’re a nerdy grindcore/electro three-piece.

Gil Mantera’s Party Dream - Blood Songs (Audio Eagle) They’re a homo-erotic electro/glamrock brother act.

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (Geffen) They’re a nerdy and homo-erotic glamrock/grindcore three-piece who are all brothers. Not really, but think how amazing the flow of this list would be if they were.

Best Show Psychic Ills and Blood on the Wall, Media Club - Me and Mack bonded. Discussed starting a band. Plans were scrapped when I realized I can’t sing or play an instrument. It was a nice dream while it lasted. Oh yeah, there was a really neat psyche-rock band playing with a band that sounds like the Pixies.

Best Local Band Fake Shark, Real Zombie - While performing on stage, the lead singer called the audience a bunch of nerds. He was right. We were a bunch of nerds. Then he proceeded to get into a fistfight with a member of the audience. He got like five good headshots in on the guy. The Dandi Wind shirt he was wearing was my clue that it was all theatrics, but I was still impressed.

Worst Local Band Ladyhawk - More over-hyped East Van bullshit perpetuated by a bunch of Mount Pleasant fanboys who have their jaws firmly wrapped around Steve McBean’s jock. Looking at a group photo of them is like staring at the evolution of a shitty East Van beard.

Biggest Nerve Fuck Up of 06 Doing away with Skatespot. I fucking loved that shit.

The Nerve will never be the same again.

- Michael Mann

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 13

Budgie

CONTENTS

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COX ALL RECE NT PHOTOS: PAUL

We’ve got all sorts here tonight - punks, hippies, rockers. What else?” - Burke Shelley, Radio Sessions 1978 What else, indeed? We all love lo-fi ‘70s riff rock, right? RIGHT!?!?!

Enter: Budgie – the most lovable shit-kicking Welsh rock trio to ever get lost in time. In my mind, the first six Budgie albums, from 1971’s Budgie through ‘76’s If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules are as essential to any rock fan’s collection as Ozzy-era Sabbath and pre-Coverdale Purple. And now, mercifully, the Budgie catalog is finally getting the full-out remaster treatment it deserves! Head to the official Budgie website at www.budgie.uk.com and order away - if you can afford those import prices. Them suckas are British only! Tossers!

The ol’ standby for Budgie is ‘Black Sabbath meets Rush’ – meaning battering ram riffs under singer/bassist Burke Shelley’s high-register warble.

But it deserves better than vague association - this is top-shelf tempo-shifting riff-ola! Check that switch from eerie psychedelia to storm-gate riffage in “The Author”, the massive funk bomb in “You’re Opening Doors”, the sweet, infectious acoustic interruptions (usually two per album) like “Slipaway”, or the protoSteve Harris gallop in “Hot as a Docker’s Armpit” – itself a good example of another Budgie trademark, the bizarre Welsh wit for unorthodox song names.

As a rule, Budgie steers clear of the usual pretentious rock’n’roll twaddle. No pre-teen pussy adoration, no Day-Glo limos: just gloss-free, stripped-down workingman’s riff rock. The way I like it!

But it ain’t all daisies. Commander-in-chief Burke Shelley – who I spoke with over the phone from Manchester – still has to work as a roadie in Cardiff to pay the bills. When I mention how I was first introduced to the Budge - like many young suburbanites - via a couple of choice Metallica covers, and how I thrilled when they opened shows with “Breadfan” (a Budgie classic), Shelley mumbles in reply, “I remember, cause I had to build them up.” In other words, he laboured on Metallica’s gargantuan set, while they played his song to the adoring legions. Brutal! It makes me wonder why Budgie never achieved the fame and fortune it deserved. “I dunno,” Shelley says. “We never use gimmicks. We don’t belong to any particular genre, movement, scene. We’re just musicians who play a lot of rock music, for a change.” He points out that where other rock monsters relied on grim-faced self-mythologizing, Budgie employed humour. Whatever it was that put a ceiling on Budgie’s legend, however, the bottom line is that Shelley got the fundamentals right. “I don’t like static audiences,” he tells me. “The older crowd’s down at the back, but if you’re in the mosh pit down at the front, well… If they get off on it, we get off on it.”

Burke is the only permanent fixture in the band he founded in 1967 with Ray Philips (drums) and Tony Bourge (guitar). Philips was out

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 14

By Dave Bertand

in 1973, after the awesome Never my first drummer. I don’t dislike Ray, I like him as a Turn Your Back on a Friend, followed person, but he put out a band and called it Six Ton briefly by Pete Boot. “But that was such a bad Budgie (Budgie’s original band name in the late ‘60s), mistake,” says Shelley. Steve Williams took the kit in which is a real piss-off for me. But at least he’s got ‘75, more or less rockin’ the bottom end ever since. some credence behind his claims, cause he plays on Tony Bourge quit after 1978’s Impeckable, replaced the first three Budgie albums. So that ain’t no big by the forgettably named John Thomas, and Budgie deal, but I don’t like Pete Boot at all.” Shelley realizes twisted toward the newly emerging New Wave of this is an interview goldmine. “There’s a classic for British Heavy Metal sound it helped inspire. 1982’s you Dave,” he hollers. “There’s a classic!”

Deliver Us From Evil was the last proper Budgie stuOkay! Moving on! In cock-teasing news for dio album. It followed Shelley’s then recent spiritual Budgiephiles, Tony Bourge has re-recorded some awakening, and the unfortunate hiring of full-time vintage Budgie with Burke and Steve for use as CD keyboardist Duncan Mackay. The result was awful bonus tracks. A spur of the moment thing, according ‘80s synth pop with a severe case of Argh! This Sucks! to Shelley: “Tony is a friend of mine. I see him now Aborted follow-ups were attempted – eventually and again. I said, ‘Come over,’ and he lives not far surfacing as 2004’s The Last Stage – but, “In the late away from me. So yeah, we just did it. He’s not play‘80s,” concludes Shelley, “The band split. My druming though anymore, really. He’s over music.” What? mer Steve left. We just drifted. And during the ‘90s I No classic Budgie reunion on the schedule? “Um... was married.” End of story! yeah,” Burke replies, as if I should know better, Almost.

After years of sporadic English pub tours, Budgie’s back with the first new album in a generation (see sideline for details)! Simon Lees – who’s recorded with original Judas Priest vocalist Al Atkins, among others – is the new guitarist.

He’s younger than his fellow Budgies, and whips a biting metal tone - making him to Tony Bourge what Steve Morse is to Ritchie Blackmore: a guitar school kid, raised on ‘80s “The ‘80s are gonna be awesome!” heroics, with every cliché memorized and never flubbing a note.

“He’s comfortable. He owns a company. He left in Oh – and an interesting story about that “mis1978, which is a long time ago… the band has a new take”, Pete Boot. Read Ferdy Belland’s accompanying guitarist. Why should I sack him just to move Tony article for the low-down, but basically, Boot has Bourge back in? NO.” But Budgie is back on top now, Parkinson’s disease, and plays gigs to raise money right? “Oh yeah,” Shelley replies, instantly, “I’m on a for research. Ferdy organized one such show in roll. Definitely, writing-wise. I’m writing more, listenVancouver two years ago. I innocently kidded Mr. ing more, and playing more. I’m going to be more Shelley that this was the closest Budgie ever came productive in the next couple of years, and just get to Vancouver. BAD MOVE. everything I can out, you know, before I keel over (he let’s out a hacking old-man cough). We’re gonna make great albums.”

Wonderful! But why did it take so bloody long?

“This band has been on the road now since about ‘99,” he continues, “seven or eight years. Basically, it took a while to get it up and running.” Fair enough.

But we sure haven’t seen Budgie in Vancouver in that time. Actually, has Budgie EVER been to Canada?

“Weelll. In the late ‘70s we were over there,” Shelley replies. “I was living in Toronto for a while. ‘77. But no, we didn’t go to Vancouver. The closest place we got is Thunder Bay.” Thunder fucking Bay! This is an injustice! In retaliation, a couple of us Nerve associates are vying to Burke: “No. No. No no no no no no no no. Pete organize the first ever Canadian Budgie tour. For Boot has absolutely nothing to do with Budgie real! If anyone in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonwhatsoever. I resent that man, and I dislike his conton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, or any other Canuckian nection with the band. Anything about Pete Boot is land is smitten by Budgiemania – send an email to bad news for me. He’s like my stalker. He’s a nasty me, Dave, at zombimedia@gmail.com, for a free man. I don’t like him at all, and I don’t often say that forearm smash. n about people, but that man played on an album in 1974 (In For the Kill), and I couldn’t get rid of him quick enough. And ever since 1974, that man has badmouthed me and tried to exploit his connection with Budgie, whilst at the same time going around telling everybody it was the worst thing that ever happened to him in his life. And I don’t understand him, I don’t want to know him, and every time his name is mentioned (Mr. Boot! Mr. Boot!), I get the creeps.”

At this point I apologize profusely.

“Well, you don’t have to be sorry, cause you don’t know,” Shelley continues, “But man, I’m telling you... I wouldn’t want anyone to think he has anything to do with me, or with my band. He trods around the fact that he was in Budgie all the time. Like Ray Phillips,

I’m on a roll. I’m going to be more productive in the next couple of years, before I keel over

CONTENTS

In Defence of Pete Boot

By Ferdy Belland

s

,

t

I

’m into Budgie the way Scientologists are into L. Ron Hubbard. Their 1974 , Top 40 album In for the Kill is one of my favourites, thanks in part to the Ginger Baker / Keith Moon-style drumming of Peter “Booty” Boot.

I met Booty online back in 2003 and was surprised to know that he’d been battling Parkinson’s disease for years. He organized an annual benefit concert (“Fill Your Head With Rock”) in his hometown of Willenhall, UK, and when I discovered there’s a tandem event in Austin TX, I thought of establishing a Canadian FYHWR chapter. Pierre Lortie, Steve Chase, and Wendy Thirteen allowed us gigs at Pub 340, the Brickyard, and the Cobalt; Bryce Dunn at CITR-FM gave us on-air live broadcasts; Pete and his wife Nancy flew over; and the “Pete Boot Allstars” (my idea, not Pete’s; he wanted the band unnamed) emerged – myself, bass/vocals; Paul Slater (Sir Hedgehog) lead guitar; Johnny Olson (STREETS), lead guitar; and Booty, drums and concussion.

Our set: “Breadfan,” “Parents,” “In for the Kill,” “Zoom Club,” and “Hammer and Tongs,” which covered the ’73-74 highlights of Booty’s Budgie-ness (we also played Cream’s “White Room” and “Politician,” as well as “Black Cat Bone” by Beck-Bogert-Appice). The shows were ramshackle yet exciting, and all who attended seemed happy to be there.

Peter Boot is kind and gentle, gracious and unassuming, with his workingclass British humour very much intact despite the toll Parkinson’s has taken; even with speech and stamina compromised, he was more solid on the drums than many drummers I see gigging Vancouver.

Booty was flattered and humbled when, shaking and dripping with sweat after the sets, all these wide-eyed Canadians came up to him with copies of IFTK for him to sign. I was very proud for him, and he didn’t ask for a penny of the thousand we raised for the PSBC. The “Pete Boot Allstars” experience is one of the most special moments in my musical life. Not often do you meet one of your obscure heroes.

Burke-vs.-Booty?’ What I got from Pete: Ray Philips was fired mid-‘73 by Burke Shelley

and Burke would pull off petulant stunts like ordering the venue to not mic Pete’s kit. Booty was apparently the only Budgie member who chatted with the fans after gigs, while Burke and Tony vanished backstage. When Burke finally fired Pete, it was a surprise, but somewhat of a relief for Booty; turns out Burke and Tony were secretly auditioning Steve Williams as the new drummer without Pete’s knowledge, and Pete unceremoniously got the (dare I say) boot.

One day I hope to hear Burke’s side of the story…that is, unless he considers me Booty by association.

To Pete Boot, Burke Shelley is a stuck-up, self-important asshole. There may be a streak of opportunism and exploitation to Booty milking his brief Budgie stint, but why deny him that right? It’s a notable achievement.

And if even half the shit he says about Budgie’s behind-the-scenes power trips is true, he earned the right to say: “I’m Pete Boot of Budgie.” Booty feels that Burke is the one doing the Budgie exploitation, especially since Metallica’s endorsement of the band’s early work has inspired Burke to continually roll out the oldies for the UK club circuit, April Wine-style.

Despite the soap opera shit, Pete never really came across as being bitter, or a deranged stalker.

He made more money as a truck driver after the Budgie days and continued being an in-demand session drummer throughout the British Midlands up until the Parkinson’s hit.

He bore witness to a very cool period of British rock history, and I got to jam “Zoom Club” with him!

Only in Vancouver, people, do dreams really come true. n

To Pete Boot, Burke Shelley is a stuck-up, selfimportant asshole. for vague reasons. Booty was hired on, and Burke neglected to inform him that the drummer’s salary had been slashed: Ray got 50 quid a week, Pete got 20. Burke never accepted Pete as a full band-member, and Tony Bourge never stood up to Burke, either for himself or to back up Pete’s grievances. The mood was so bad for the one year Pete drummed for Budgie that oftentimes he would ride in the van of the support band (in those days, Judas Priest!),

Budgie You’re All Living in Cuckooland Noteworthy And now, in the mother of all strokes, the first new Budgie studio album in 20-plus years! Woooo!

The verdict? It’s a little dated, overall. A little cheesy. A little awesome. Sounds VERY turn of the decade (‘80s/’90s, that is...). “It’s definitely a rock album,” adds Burke Shelley, “It’s got lots of punchy rock tracks - five or six, maybe more. I’m a roughy sort of guitar writer. I like riffs. Roughy stuff. But once again we’ve got acoustic tracks on there.”

Sweet!

So here’s my skinny, track by track: Justice – Big riff! Very metal! Guitars are synthlayered (with an octave pedal?), sounding kinda like DFA 1979’s bass/keyboard thing, but as early ‘80s riff rock.

Dead Men Don’t Talk – Woah! It’s Motley Crue!

We’re All Living in Cuckooland – Cheesy, QM/FM-worthy ballad.

Falling – Nice verse line, layered harmony vocals, some massive funk guitar, and a sweet synth-tar solo straight outta Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”!

Hot shit, Mr. Lees!

Love is Enough – Burke Shelley’s pseudoMcCartney acoustic dittying returns! Sappy, but affecting.

Tell Me Tell Me – The wrenching powerchord riff in the chorus is Cuckooland’s most ‘modern’ sounding bit, in terms of ‘90s/millennial rock writing trends (but it’s good!). The opening of the solo RIPS so fucking hard, it made my dick shiver...

(Don’t Want to) Find that Girl – Got to love (bracket titles)! It’s like Tone-Loc’s “Wild Thing” with a “Honky Tonk Woman” cowbell. Distinctly in that big rock Budgie 1990 thing that’s gone on ‘till now. Kinda overblown. Has kids singing, “Na na na na na na,” with a lick from the solo. Weird!

Captain – “Captain, captain, won’t you take me ‘round the world with you?”

I Don’t Want to Throw You – One of those not-quite-there flange riffs that could float on forever... in the wee morning hours, I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great if this were Budgie’s ‘Egyptian/Persian/Indian’ song? Like Zep’s “Kashmir”, or Rainbow’s “Gates of Babylon”?

Wouldn’t it?

I’m Compressing the Comb on a Cockeral’s Head – Final eight-minute epic. Drums are very synthetic. Shelley sings dirty, dancy, and aggressive.

That main riff is repetitious, but stone solid, and there’s lots of staccato herk-jerk soloing, like someone’s flicking a Les Paul’s on-off switch. In fact, it all sounds um... a tiny bit... like... jeez... mid90s Michael Jackson mixed with medium-strength Audioslave. There! I fucking said it! And I like it!

There’s a cool chorus, and some black dude saying, “My heart ain’t broken, my bones are broken,” over the sound of marching feet. Great finish!

And lest we forget – Budgie’s M.I.A. mascot ‘the Budgieman’ has returned to grace the cover! As for the title... a sly political jab? “Do you live in the world?” Shelley sarcastically shoots back, “We’re all living in Cuckooland. I don’t want to get too political, but I hate the way the world is run. I don’t think it’s getting better anywhere else particularly, but in Britain, there’s a certain madness going on here.” Yes indeed. Take shelter, watch your back, and curl up with a Budgie.

- Dave Bertrand

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 15

PHOTO: KENDAL GREEN

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 16

PHOTO: KENDAL GREEN

CONTENTS MUSIC

“No homo or anything, but I’m really into seamen...”

What Would Jesus Do?

By Waltergeist

I

don’t know if you people have been under a rock or maybe just hanging out at home watching NBC’s lacklustre fall line-up, but if you haven’t heard of the band Hung Jury yet – well, you’re probably an idiot.

Hung Jury has only been around for about a year-and-a-half, but the relative youth of the band hasn’t troubled its reputation for trafficking in gritty psyche rock. Hung Jury also has simply amazing gig posters. Picture everything Detroit in the early ‘70s, by way of all things lunatic from Texas in the ‘60s, and that, to me, sums up Hung Jury pretty well.

After gigging around town for a spell, the band was gradually taken under the gentle, loving wing of Fireball Productions. With some subsequent high profile gigs in its pocket, Two Gallants and the Skull Skates 30th Anniversary show to name two, Hung Jury finally got its shit together for a CD release party at the Railway in late October, which – though I know I’m gonna sound biased - was one of the funnest shows I’ve been to in a long time (plus my band played with them). HJ rocked out its entire album and did a little encore, and it was pretty special to see the relief on the guys’ faces. A CD release party is a big step for a young band.

The self-titled album is a short but sweet trip.

Nine songs in about 30 minutes. Fuck all that epic shit (if you need more then four minutes to get your point across, write an essay). The recording was done at Maslianski’s over the course of two

weeks and was produced by Josh Stevenson from the Christina Min. The disc is what vocalist Malcolm Jack would describe as a concept album addressing topics such as alienation, (not the movie Alien Nation, you jerks), neglect and ignorance. “We wanted to do something that no one else was doing, and say something that nobody else was saying,” Jack explains, when I meet up with him at his secret, overground lair in the heart of Kitsilano Yoga country, “A lot of people are afraid to write edgy songs.”

To that end, Hung Jury seems to have a thing or

and there’s more out there besides cell phones, reality TV and getting drunk. Hung Jury is one of those things. Although I like getting drunk, too - as does Jesus, I’d wager. Jesus is a guy that lives in an a rather unorthodox fashion, somewhere in the vicinity of Jack’s garden. Jack calls him “the King of the Hobos” “He’s helped me out a lot with my writing,” he reveals. “He’s a revolutionary. He’s rad.”

It’s funny, but I started to write this article at the same time as the Hung Jury CD started playing in my computer, opening with “The Circle”, a great song that starts nice and sloppy, then moves on to a tight jam. I finish up to the sound of “Doesn’t Anything Not Mean Nothing” which is my second favourite and the last song on the disc. The droning chorus goes on and on, making my head spin. In between all that is much of what you’d expect, based on Jack’s rundown of Hung Jury’s raves. “Everyone in the band has pretty different influences,” he says, “which is kinda nice ‘cause there are a lot of different styles coming through. Some of my favourites are Golden Dawn, the Kinks, the Christa Min, etc. (guitarist) Dave’s more into the blues stuff like White Stripes, Hendrix, Eagles of Death Metal, and so on. Patrick (aka Perrin, bass) listens to yacht rock.” And drummer Owen? “Owen doesn’t listen to music.”

Go see Hung Jury and buy their CD for 10 bucks. If not, go eat a hot dog.

Now I’m spell checking to Billy Ocean. n

There’s a lot of weird shit happening right now two to say about Vancouver’s endlessly tiresome scene politics; things can get a little snooty here, and style often trumps lyrical content and artistic merit. “There’s a lot of weird shit happening right now,” Malcolm continues. “There are a few hip bands out there that are totally running the scene.

It’s like lots of people judge bands by who they are friends with. Hung Jury isn’t into the East Van dress code, but response has been good.” Hung Jury feels like there is a big change slowly taking place in the Vancouver music scene; a gradual move from party bands to outfits with a level of sincerity about them.

Not everything should be about entertainment,

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 17

CONTENTS

Feel the Heat!!!

By Carl Spackler

I

t was a dark and stormy night… wait, it was spring and it was beautiful! And an old hand reached out to me. A man who I hadn’t seen in a long time and whose pace of life made me marvel that he was still kickin’. He was loaded, and still of unsound mind and habits. But the blind do see, and the lame do walk! Hallelujah , brother! Here in this broken, drunken seer was knowlege of something truly cosmic and great; and strangely life altering.

“Hey, Carl.” His voice had the same sound as gravel being rubbed into the blacktop by a cowboy boot. A croak from the soon-to-be-beyond emanated from his head. “You need this,” he said. “It’s for you.”

He handed me a CD, smiled a wicked grin, and left. I stared at the CD, looking at the razor cuts in the top of jewel case, and white powder residue of lines that had recently been dealt on the cover. “The Brought Low, Right On Time,” it said. The artwork on the cover conjured images of The Great Gatsby, the great American novel, and little did I know, lo and behold, here in my hands was the next great American band. The Brought Low! I put it in a car stereo and suddenly was taken into the next dimension; the car couldn’t go fast enough, I flew across the Lion’s Gate bridge, windows down, whooping and yelling at the sky, blowing kisses to the ocean, and cooling off my sweaty testicles from the hot afternoon with a ice cold can of beer between my legs. I drove like a maniac to a little bar in Horseshoe Bay and consumed great amonts of drink and made the bartender play this music at top volume!

That was June and hear it is winter, and I’m still freakin’ out on this band! That’s a longer shelf life than many of my pharmacueticals! Who needs drugs when you got this?! Actually, let’s not go too far; it goes great with drugs! And what music it is. Rock ‘n’ roll played like I ain’t heard no one do in a long ass time! The real, round, brown sound! Boogie blues, country and western, soul riffage! these boys cook up this gumbo the way they used to do it, the essential ingredients like the Colonel’s recipe but this gumbo is UR gumbo! Primal. It goes deep, way back, bottomless, and yet totally reflective! Like a magic mirror for grownups! (The drugs are really helping now!) My whole frame is overcome with good times when a song like “Vernon Jackson” comes on the hi-

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 18

n r e h t r o N thern By

Sou

fi! My ass shakes, my head nods to the beat, my lips protrude and besides the occasional sing-a-long the only audible words that come out of my mouth are, “Fuck Yeah! Jesus Christ!”

I felt compelled in this time of giving to give y’all a great gift. Don’t bother with the fuckin’ ties for yer old man, ladies. Dig a little deeper into a man’s psyche. Give him the gift that will keep him living, breathing, and help him keep being a dude. Something that makes daily drudgery like a job or the other shit sandwiches he has to eat go down a fuck of a lot easier. This gift will also light up any Saturday nite like a billion Roman Candles! Hell, he’ll probably throw one into ya once the dancin’ is done! The Brought Low is the band, the record is Right on Time, and it is time to check out and check in with the best in the land, so look the fuck out!

I spoke to singer-guitarist Benjamin Howard Smith from his grind in New York City. I had to know how it was they came to be.

“Well,” he tells me, “We are all from New York, but we get tagged as the southern rock band from Brooklyn. But rock ‘n’ roll comes from the South, ya know?

Blues and country.

I mean, the first southern rock song was “Honky Tonk Woman”, dudes from England. Cowbell, multitracked guitar and lyrics about, well, honky tonks.”

The Brought Low also play with absolutely no irony or pretend shtick like so many bands who claim to be influenced by southern rock. “We’re not one of those bands puttin on cowboy hats and Confederate flags,” Smith asserts, “Puttin’ on a pose.” Smith and his partners – bassist Bob Russell, and drummer Nick Heller - make a sound that comes from deep in the ground, much the same

way Creedence did, and shit, none of those guys were from the Bayou. That southern rock tag can be misleading to many folks. Smith agrees. “If you tell people you like Skynyrd, people think they are dumb, redneck, racist, or it’s ironic, whatever. Like, ‘Yeah, Freebird!’ And it’s so wrong. Skynyrd is well written, well played, good honest songs. Ronnie Van Zant was a country songwriter, those are just country songs with hard rock guitars. And they follow in the country music tradition of telling stories. Working class values, good values, not dumb reactionary, red state family values bullshit! Listen to ‘Simple Man’. That’s good shit there, ya know?”

The Brought Low tell tales all their own; tales of booze, brawls, babes,and life in New York. A song like “Hail Mary” has a cast of characters right out of a Nick Tosches story - real people sweatin’ it out on the streets. “I grew up in New York and in the ‘80s,” Smith continues. “It was a drastically different place than what it is today. Shit, I was buyin beer at the age of 12, writin’ graffiti. When crack cocaine hit the town, it was like Dodge City. Shit, now I work near 42nd St. and it’s like Disney Mall.”

I ask about the fabled Deuce and what it was like. “Shit,” starts Smith, “Peep shows everywhere, packs of kids runnin’ wild… It was raw. It was somewhere you definitely had to watch out for. A lot of songs reference that. I always liked listening to Springsteen. He always wrote about his world, Jersey. We dig all kinds of music. We have a hip hop influence too, even though there is absolutley no hip hop in the Brought Low. But you couldn’t have grown up in New York in the ‘80s and not known those songs, from “Rapper’s Delight” to N.W.A. We took inspiration from that. Write what you know. People call it southern rock but we don’t

Shit, I was buyin beer at the age of 12, writin’ graffiti. When crack cocaine hit the town, it was like Dodge City

write songs about grandma’s whiskey farm or shit like that. We write about ridin’ the subway train or September 11th, or whatever. Nothin’ I wanted to make too clear, but that stuff definitely informs my songwriting. So many bands mine the territory of old school rock and treat it, like, ironically, and fuck that.

A few years ago the MC5 got really popular, and I think it was because they had afros.Ya’ know, people are like, ‘they look cool and they rock out,’ but the Five meant it! I really deplore irony in music.”

And bands without songs seem to be very prevalant these days, as well, I add.

“And bands without soul!”

The sheer volume of shit, the tsunami of turds that keep it hard to keep a hand on the wheel and navigate these fecal waves of music. Smith goes on, “There are good bands but they are few and far between. We’re a weird anomaly, or a throwback, espcially here in New York. We have these values as muscians that you see in early classic rock bands and early punk bands. We are all, definitely, dudes who all did time in punk rock bands. We dug bands who put it all into their shows, knew how to play and went for it. Now bands have no idea. We’re big, loud, hard rock band, but at the same time we listen to Bill Monroe and the Everly Brothers.”

The only thing ironic about the Brought Low is, here they are, one of the best bands around, and they can’t get major labels to listen or airplay at the big radio. Even though their music is of the same calibre as the greats - the James Gang, Faces, Stones, Burritos - the music industry doesn’t acknowledge their presence. “Well that’s cuz the music industry sucks,” Smith laughs. “I’m not bitter about it. I mean, what gets big? Young, cute, skinny guys. We’re grown ass men, we’ve been playin’ music for over 10 years, this is what we do. At the same time, we think the same thing; if people could just hear it, they’d dig it.

People still listen to classic rock records, why not listen to somethin’ new that’s got the same thing, that’s not like a parody, that has some heart and depth?

But at the same time, I’m not bothered. We do what we like. The next record might be a little different, but it will still have the same core values. The thing, ya’ know, it’s like Muddy Waters sang: ‘I love the life I live, live the life I love.’”

Amen brother, and Merry Xmas! n

reviews Live21

High On Fire, Archons, Pequod / Bonnie Prince Billy / Ready Set Die,Voltz, Day Release Program / JP5, Norton Neils, Slickjacks / Mico, In Flight Safety, Raising the Fawn / Unwanted, Knockarounds, Raiden...

Album22

IV Thieves, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead, Army of Anyone, Jello Biafra, Big Trouble in Little China, Birds of Wales, the Cheats, Converge, Cosmic Voodoo, Dredg, Enchanted 4ST, Everclear, Fable, the Golden Wedding Band, the Haunted, the Heart Attacks, Hung Jury, Bert Jansch, Joey Only Outlaw Band, the Johnstones, Keyboard, Kilbourne, New World on Fire, Killswitch Engage, Lonesome Kings, Ludicra, Madina Lake, Male Model Machine, the Memphis Morticians, Meshuggah, My Chemical Romance, Neu!, Nightstalkers, Pet, Norma Jean, the Prize Fighter Inferno, the Riverdales, Sex Pistols, Shinobu, the Shins, Sarah Slean, Swan Lake, Kim Taylor, Terra Diablo, The Whitest Boy Alive, Christopher Willits, the Who, and a Worst CD Bonanza, featuring Me First and the Gimme Gimmes!!!

d

dvd25

It turns out that Kiss had quite a visual component to its act....

d

s

Book27

The continuing mystery of Tom Waits, the passion of Al Goldstein, and the appalling lie that is the “War on Drugs�...

games

28

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Be all that you can be... and be them all, dude.

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 19

CONTENTS

REVIEWS IV Thieves If We Can’t Escape My Pretty New West Noel Gallagher has claimed that IV Thieves will be “one of the biggest bands in Britain.”

But, before the NME ‘Next Big Thing’ desk run excitedly to their typewriters, bear this in mind: a) IV Thieves is doing its utmost to sound like Oasis, and Noel probably enjoys the flattery, b) He also said this about the Bluetones, and c) He is known for excessive drug use. Borrowing heavily from the likes of Embrace, Puressence and one-week wonders JJ72, IV Thieves clearly intend to march ungratefully (and with an unfounded sense of entitlement) through the door kicked open by the Subways. With one foot in ‘pub rock’ and the other in ‘band you were in at school’, If We Can’t Escape My Pretty is a simplistic, over-literal, whiney voiced teenage poetry average rock band release. If this is Britain’s big hope then we’re all doomed.

Oh yeah and d) What would he know? He’s been doing the same thing over and over for years now.

- Stephanie Heney And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead So Divided Interscope So divided is right. At least that’s what the Trail of Dead’s fan base is going to be after this album hits the streets. With the exception of the bombastic lead off track “Stand In Silence”, the Austin quintet swaps its trademarked destroy-everything-in-sight mandate for a more grandiose and theatrical approach. Previous outing World’s Apart hinted at this artistic shift, albeit patchy and less focused, while So Divided solidifies the new direction (and possibly final destination) of this trail of dead. Balinese drumming (“Wasted State Of Mind”), takes on the British Invasion of today and yesteryear (“So Divided” and “Eight Days Of Hell”, respectively), and a just over the top, jawdropping epilogue that hints at a bitter yet unashamed farewell. Dismiss the nostalgic naysayers, TOD has made its definitive record for an already impressive canon, allowing them to (potentially) bow out with admirable form.

- Adam Simpkins Army of Anyone s/t Firm Music According to the Chinese calendar, this is the decade of the bland rock supergroup.

Everyone remembers how stoked we were about Audioslave, and even for Velvet Revolver. But everyone knows that in both cases, the results turned out to be boring yeast infections on the vagina of their past musical achievements. Now we get Army of Anyone, a band comprised of C grade musical celebrities that are destined to make music that pales beside anything from their collective past; namely, the Deleo brothers of STP and Richard Patrick, who wasn’t in Filter, but was in fact Filter, since no one else wrote that band’s dreadful industrial rock music.

This record sounds like a new Stone Temple Pilots album that was reworked so Richard Patrick’s shitty vocals could fit in place of Scott Weiland’s. And like the last few STP records, it’s boring, light, and needs to be put out of its misery with a heroin overdose or felony arrest on drug possession charges.

- David Von Bentley

the record, giving a tongue-in-cheek nod to the old Banzai label. Allegedly recorded at “the place where we store our empties,” and it sure as shit sounds like it... retro-modern Jack Endino-style production makes all four songs (“Revolver,” “John Saxon Blues,” “John School Dropout,” and “House of Exorcism”) sound like one of the best nights that hasn’t hit Pub 340 yet. The perfect 15-minute soundtrack to the crackpipe hit one takes in the Balmoral’s can before backhanding your best friend across his unsuspecting acnepitted face.

- Johnny Kroll Birds of Wales s/t CD-EP Independent I don’t know why the Robson Street girls squeal and faint over scruffy dingbats like James Blunt when they can exercise their Canadian freedoms of choice and squeal and faint instead over Morgan Ross and his Birds of Wales, namely, tasteful lead guitarist Mike Caputo, pianist Scott Christian, and the understated yet overwhelming rhythm section of drummer Paul Barry and bassist Mike Tersigni - 21st Century heart-throbs, all. Besides, once said Robson Street girls get comfy at their favourite Starbucks stall and sip their low-fat lattes and truly listen to the music and read the words of Birds of Wales, they’ll want to cast their bulging shopping bags aside and join Morgan Ross in a long walk along a gravel road at sunset.

Sigh. This six-song CD-EP ends before one knows it, and contains chestnuts like “Fall of the 49” and “My Lady; in July.” Vancouver will miss him, and Toronto better treat him well.

He always will know where home is - some lonely college girl’s book-strewn loft, near Robson and Nicola.

- Ferdy Belland The Cheats Life’s Short Da Cure What’s wrong with me? I’m the oldest reviewer at Nerve yet I review 90% of the punk stuff. I’m a 47-year-old man but my tastes haven’t matured and I still listen to the same three-chord punk rock that I listened to as a kid. I still wear the same punk costume and I just can’t seem to grow up. I still love punk bands like the Cheats and it doesn’t look as if that will ever change. Ha ha, I just wrote a CD review that hardly even mentions the band. My girlfriend says that readers will get sick of my arrogance but I think they’ll just laugh.Viva la punk rock!

- Chris Walter Converge No Heroes Epitaph Converge albums have never been for the faint of heart. In fact, it takes some durable ears and unwavering dedication to survive any of the band’s solid offerings, but the rewards are well worth the struggle. Where 2004’s You Fail Me ushered in a new gang of fans with its ferocious stop-start, polyangular compositions and marked deviation in sonic experimentation, No Heroes strips some of this away, while drawing back from a purer, hardcore sound. More akin to 2001’s Jane Doe, but far more genre-defining than anything Converge released before that point, the band’s sixth album is a powerful collection of where the band has been and where it is headed – open wounds and all.

To avoid any frustration, repeated listens are suggested; it’s no simple task to fully appreciate this organized chaos with only a cursory listen. Remember: patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit. Amen.

- Adam Simpkins

which at times has that swirly, off-balance, illegally downloaded and filtered through a tin can kinda thing going on - no doubt a defect of the original recordings that have been resurrected here by Kaiser Records.

They’re not exactly reinventing the wheel, but it only takes one listen to realize how much Cosmic Voodoo influenced the groups that brought this genre slithering back a little closer to the mainstream.

- Devon Cody Dredg Live at the Fillmore Interscope Dredg is one of my favourite bands. They’ve made three fucking amazing records (yes, fucking amazing), and the best cuts are used to create this emotionally captivating live album. Continuing in the tradition of great Live at the Fillmore albums, Dredg pushes its sonic capabilities in this concert setting, replicating the studio album sound quality but expanding upon the songs. Packing in over 77 minutes of material, I can safely say this is their fourth great album and one of the best of the year. “Ode to the Sun”, “Triangle”, “Whoa is Me”, “Bug Eyes”, “The Canyon Behind Her”, and so many more songs that create painful erections in my emo girl jeans are performed for my pleasure and hopefully yours. The Dredg sound is unique: a blend of Morrissey vocals; chimey, Edge-esque guitars (when U2 was still good); and Zeppelin sounding/pounding rhythm section. I can’t praise it enough without sounding like I bought kneepads and had my gag reflex surgically removed (remember boys - on the face, not in the eyes). I don’t rant and rave or take bukkake facials for any old band, so trust me, Dredg must be pretty good.

- David Von Bentley Enchanted 4ST Synesthesia Independent This sure was one uninviting package. Brutal title. Puke artwork. Too much purple on the inlays. Charlie’s don’t pawn CDs like this no more, so I guess that means a review!

Moody. Loose. Inspired, synthetic drum tracks.Violins. It feels fleshy enough. Head ‘Enchanter’ Jake Rose sings in a croony, meandering attention-grabbing baritone, but it wears thin over Synesthesia’s looong 80 minutes (VINYL LENGTH RESTRICTIONS, PEOPLE! PLEASE!!!). It’s all a bit gloomy and ethereal - somewhere between Pere Ubu, the first album by Faithful Breath, Eno-era Bowie, current art-house indie minimalism, a sleepier Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and particularly sorrowful new wave. I’m kinda burned on conceptual-artsy-fartsy-mixedgender duos ever since my nasty experience with the Winks, but this heads-in-asses husband and wife team has promise. Give ‘em $50 000 in production support and we’ll have wonders. Right now, half that spacey reverb slapback is lost in a tinny-mixed swamp of mud. And that name... “Enchanted Forest”? Abbreviations? Phlegm. Hack! Puke.

- Dave Bertrand Everclear Welcome to the Drama Club Eleven Seven / Universal Who would have thought that an exaltern-arena-rocker could actually reinvent himself and do it well? It would seem that guitarist-vocalist Art Alexakis has done just that with this latest Everclear album. I used to write off this band as one of the many opportunistic goons who rang the deathknell of the brief early-90s alternative-rock explosion with their 1995 summer hit “Santa Monica,” but this revamped Everclear isn’t the sometimes-clunky power-trio who used to mix Kurt Cobain’s grunge-rock distortion with Tom Petty’s classic-rock values. Everclear is now a quintet, with an additional guitarist and a Hammond organist (!) thickening and widening the sound and the songs, and from the first few bars of the lead track “Under the Western Stars,” this is a braver Art Alexakis telling all of us to take it or leave it. I choose to take it, and I take it all, baby. Solid, winning hard-rock grooves: Everclear creates modern rock the way modern rock should be written, recorded, and released - as if disco, Euro-synth, gangsta rap, and Fred Durst’s California parka had all never happened.

-Ferdy Belland

Fable Get the “L” Out of Here RecordPlex Fable is a stoner rock band from Ontario that formed in 1975 and disbanded in 1979.

They went by the names Glen, Gary, and Phil.

They wore satin and loved to show off their glorious chest hair. There’s no doubt in my mind that they practiced epic rock poses in front of their mirrors in their parents’ basement. Their drummer had a moustache that could beat up your dad and they all had very bad hair. Their singer sounds like a really white, really Canadian Jimi Hendrix. Ronnie James Dio would probably love these guys.

They have a song called “Battle of the Neon Knights”. Awesome.

- Devon Cody The Golden Wedding Band My Best Friend Strathcona When modern music just doesn’t do it for you anymore, it seems nowadays you’ve really got only three options for salvation: start rapping; form a band, get real good at playing the skin flute for record execs, then go artsy as a means to heal your resulting emotional wounds; or, dig back into the past a few years for inspiration. In the case of the Golden Wedding Band, they went back about 80 of ‘em. Imagine the music of the ‘20s and ‘30s, steeped with an extreme distaste for Fleetwood Mac and a soft spot for punk rock, new wave, and jazz, and you’ll begin to form an idea of what the Golden Wedding Band is all about. Toss in Screamin’ Jay Hawkins vocals for almost half of the record and you’ve got something pretty special, and totally unique. The band is a tough one to top when it comes to their vitalizing live performances. One might worry that that quality might not be captured in a record, but it is… and then some.

- Devon Cody The Haunted The Dead Eye Century Media My first day of school seems like only yesterday. I had my Transformers lunch box displaying my hero to this day - Optimus Prime - and I had what I thought was a bright future ahead of me. On that infamous day in the winter of 1987, I was taught how to spell a single word, and that word was ‘THE’. I came home and spelled it about a hundred times for my grandma with my Optimus Prime toy in hand. It was my favourite word for years (seriously). Fast forward two decades. My future is about as bright as your asshole, my grandma is long dead, and my favourite word for years has been ‘Cunt’ (seriously). What does this have to do with the Haunted? Nothing really, other than this: 15 song titles starting with ‘THE’, from a band who’s name starts with ‘THE’, and an album title that starts with ‘THE’... Call me shallow, but things like that annoy the fuck out of me. Still, this is the Haunted, one of Sweden’s finest exports not manufactured by IKEA. Their thrash metal has destroyed my balls so much I believe my jizz has become demon-infested (or is that Hep C?). Unlike many of their peers from Valhalla, the Haunted have evolved and grown as songwriters, though sadly, the kick shit rhythms that guitarist Jensen axegrinded out have been left behind for some reason. I don’t know why because he always wrote the best songs (ie. “Hate Song”). In fact, he doesn’t get a single credit on this venture. Sounding mostly like a thrashy Tool in songs like “The Cynic”, “The Failure” or “The Fallout”, it makes me wonder who this is for? The Haunted may have grown up, much like I did, but in either case it’s not a pretty sight.

- David Von Bentley

might not be able to read it.

- Chris Walter Hung Jury s/t Independent Holy shit, this is GREAT. Texas psyche by way of Kitsilano, weirdly enough, with fried poetry leaking out. “You have to find relations in everything’s existence,” says “The Circle”. “Treacherous Machete” is Canned Heat minus the fat dead eunuch on vocals.

“Broken Dawn” is catchy to the point of ridiculous, due to a bass line lifted from “You’re the One That I Want” (by garage punk pioneers John Travolta and Olivia Newton John). On “Don’t Be Silly”, vocalist Malcolm Jack comes on with the lysergic soothsaying, admonishing us not to “become the things we buy,” echoed in “Flatscreen Dreams”, where “to consume is to rejoice”.

“Just Me and My Mind” is, presumably, the Jury’s statement of autonomy, which means – following the upside down logic of these things – a chorus with about a hundred people singing on it. And so it goes… kudos also for the evil blues harp, and eccentric packaging. Part of me wants this to sink without trace so that it has a maximum aura of mystery when future generations uncover the lost underwater city of Vancouver.

- Adrian Mack Bert Jansch Black Swan Drag City With Black Swan, folk legend Bert Jansch has teamed up with Drag City for his highestprofile release in years, and they couldn’t have done it better. On his latest album, Jansch’s reedy baritone and intricate guitar patterns carry as much weight as they did when he was wowing Neil Young and Nick Drake in the ‘60s. A few younger admirers have joined Jansch on this recording, such as Beth Orton, who sings on three of the album’s tracks, and the folks from Espers and Vetiver, who add some strings and some electronic warbles. Black Swan isn’t remarkably different than much of Jansch’s work, but this is a good thing. His somber formula of restrained vocals and plucked guitars has always been more than enough to make each album essential. This beautifully arranged album flows seamlessly from beginning to end, guaranteeing it a place among critics’ year-end lists.

- BRock Thiessen Joey Only Outlaw Band s/t Indie Pool What can I say about this minimalist folk band with socialist leanings? I’ll tell ya what I’ll say - I’ll say bravo! The Joey Only Outlaw Band has songs that deal with homelessness and poverty, and they do it in a way that is heartfelt and honest. But don’t let that turn you off; this CD brings to mind the lonely wistfulness of Hank Williams or maybe Tom Waits, but in a warped punk/ folk sort of way. If you smoke enough pot, you’ll swear that you’re out ridin’ the range with Joey Only and his band of outlaw freaks. Like Iron & Wine, this is another CD that would be a perfect soundtrack for Deadwood.

- Chris Walter The Johnstones Word is Bond Union Label This is it, I’m officially sick of the whole ska/punk pop thing. The Flatliners are as far as I’ll go, but the Johnstones are too poppy, with too much horn and not enough guitars.

Not only that, but the singer makes me want to eat broken glass. Hmmm… maybe if the singer ate broken glass his voice wouldn’t annoy me as much. Also, it says in the liner notes that the Johnstones are ladies men.

Why would they bother to say that? Isn’t it obvious that every guy in a band is a total slutbag? I mean, c’mon now!

- Chris Walter

ALBUM

Jello Biafra In The Grip Of Official Treason Alternative Tentacles Tell everyone you know about this album.

Jello’s first spoken word album since 2002’s Machine Gun In The Clown’s Hand has a sense of urgency to it you are free to ignore only at great personal peril. This is the former Dead Kennedy singer at his most horrifically truthful.

- Filmore Mescalito Holmes

Big Trouble in Little China s/t 7” No List Finally, I’m given some shit that’s worth listening to! Naming their band after one of the all time best 1980s movies kicks up my interest (and I’m not talking Terms of Endearment here). Raunchy, balls-thrumming garage rock that’s somewhere between Zeke and Mudhoney. Pink vinyl! I can’t tell if that’s faggy or daring. Perhaps both. Cool label on

Cosmic Voodoo Vertigo Kaiser Cosmic Voodoo was either seven years ahead of their time, or seven years behind.

These recordings came to be between 1992 and 1997 – right smack in the middle of psychobilly’s lag in popularity. Tiger Army’s self-titled debut was released on Hellcat in 1999, much to the glee of many a bored SoCal punk rocker. Then, five years later, the Horrorpops were featured in Vogue. Now, aesthetically speaking, the guys from Cosmic Voodoo would cause the pages of Vogue to spontaneously rot, but musically, this album is every bit as modern as the stuff coming out circa 2006, except for the sound quality,

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 20

The Heart Attacks Hellbound & Heartless Hellcat This is some pretty slick shit from the folks at Hellcat, but the riffs are there and the vocals are good so it’ll slide by under the radar. Due to the mainstream popularity of such acts, it’s getting to the point where I’m reluctant to admit that I listen to anything on Hellcat. But what the fuck, I gotta be honest about what I like and Hellbound & Heartless has the rock ‘n’ roll swagger that I’ve grown accustomed to. Say Lars, do you think you could put “Produced by Lars Fredickson” in bigger letters? I mean, people in outer space

Keyboard s/t Asian Man People like to rave that technology has leveled the playing field in music. It’s so easy to produce and record your own music.

And studios are for suckers, right? Just load some cheap program onto your Mac and BAM! You’re a professional. But people forget that this freedom allows annoying

CONTENTS REVIEWS little guys like Keyboard to release records.

His self-titled album is full of some of the worst karaoke-style sounds and vocals ever put on GarageBand. It’s probably ironic or some Wesley Willis thing or something, but whatever this is, it just made me puke on my Chucks. Thank God this album comes with liner notes I can use to wipe it up with.

- BRock Thiessen Kilbourne / New World on Fire split 7” No List As one of Calgary’s best bands ever, Kilbourne spring out of the flaming scarlet grooves of this cool little 7” (with the two songs “Rent” and “Big Trouble in Little Italy 2006”) as a more clenched-fist, clenchedteeth reworking of Billy and the Lost Boys... the raw-yet-thick production from ex-Lost Boy drummer Casey Lewis (a rising star in Western Canada’s indie engineering world) being partly the reason for this, perchance?

Probably just a coincidence. Actually, just when I think Kilbourne might be a little too Billyesque, along comes a brief psychedelic spoken-word intro, a Convergean metallichardcore break, and once again it’s all Kilbourne, all the time. I think I’m in love again, four times over. As for their vinyl copilots, New World on Fire? HOLY SHIT. If I haven’t mentioned Converge earlier, NWOF is easily one of Canada’s leading contenders to the Converge crown. Just when I think I’m going to hemmoraghe when another goddamned screamo band hits MuchMusic, the songs of a band like New World on Fire (in this case, “Aim Low,You’re Shooting Children Now,” “Wall Street Suicides,” and “Beware the Moon”) can scare the bejeezus out of me, eyes bugging out and jaw dangling wide, making me mouth the words “holy fuck” while I stare incredulously at my stereo speakers. I didn’t think bands could be angry and expressive and musical and progressive and individual anymore. Well, of course I still know this to be true, but still...HOLY SHIT. Get my earplugs and Old E in a brown bag - I’m off to the New World on Fire show!

A very impressive offering from No List Records, and I can’t wait for the next one.

- Ferdy Belland Killswitch Engage As Daylight Dies Roadrunner Oh no, Killswitch Engage. Why is it popular?

Why do you kids like this band? The heavy parts sound like every other Swedish metal export and the melodic parts sound like that Howard Jones dude in a Turkish bathhouse. Have you heard the last record (End of Heartache)? If you have, then you’ve heard this one also, so stop supporting bands that refuse to develop. Get something worthwhile like Mastodon’s Blood Mountain, or Intronaut’s Void. As Daylight Dies has great production, amazing musicianship, but nothing new to offer to the fans.You get the angry yells, the sensitive ass-grabbing choruses, and no grooves to speak of, because Killswitch Engage replaces grooves with polyrhythmic breakdowns. Those breakdowns go on to create awkward moments for the fans when they try to headbang, because of the irrational timing of the beats. When are the kids going to get to headbang to the power grooves of metal again? When are they going to pound their overweight goth girlfriend’s box to the coitally logical pulse of the eternal sexbeat, instead of awkwardly having to stop and adjust every time these wankers get fancy on the drums? Songs like “Desperate Times” (heh - no shit) will strip you of your erection, and bbw Wednesday Adams is gonna dump your white ass after your confusing performance to the strains of “Daylight Dies”.

- David Von Bentley

and is every bit as good. Lonesome Kings may well be the meanest, cleanest sounding band to ever wield an upright.You won’t find cartoon lyrics blabbering about zombies or boogiemen, here. Instead, singer Greg “King Sleaze” Lonesome howls out stories born in the horrifying recesses of the human psyche.

Couple that with three ridiculously skilled musicians whose sole purpose it seems is to make you cry with their sonic attack and you’ve got a band that makes Brian Setzer look about as dangerous as Paris Hilton… without the genital warts.

- Devon Cody Ludicra Fex Urbis, Lex Orbis Alternative Tentacles Ludicra’s third album is what you’ve come to expect from the San Francisco collective.

This is black metal served straight up. Led by the guttural growl of Laurie Sue Shanaman, the righteous riffage of John Cobbet, and Christy Cather backing up both, Fex Urbis, Lex Orbis is what Evanescence tries for and misses miserably when they’re not too busy ripping off Linkin Park (who wasn’t that great in the first place). All the Palmolive in the world ain’t gonna touch the sludge oozing from this release. It’s real mood music.

- Filmore Mescalito Holmes Madina Lake The Disappearance Of Adalin EP Roadrunner This is a teaser for Madina Lake’s anticipated full-length debut on the Roadrunner label.

Well, teasing the black eye shadow/nail polish suburban teenage crowd anyway, as this EP is made entirely of incredibly cleanly recorded, incredibly radio-friendly EMO. The lyrics, though occasionally screamed, lack the conviction of anyone who actually experienced the feelings they sing about.

That’s why this music appeals to yuppie children so much; they can identify more easily with bands struggling to fake struggle than bands who actually developed inside genuinely harsh circumstances.Your mom drives a Hummer H3, kids.You ain’t hardcore. Henry Rollins would shit these guys if he ever saw them.

- Filmore Mescalito Holmes Male Model Machine Played Out 12” Black Van This is the debut single for Vancouver’s Stephen F. and Alex D. on the fledgling Black Van Records. As such, it’s a solid start in forming a long overdue Canadian response to Germany’s techno conglomerate Kompakt. The 12” consists of the minimal static and chugging bassline of “Electro Is Played Out” and the menacing bad trip “Acid Is Played Out”, bolstered by three remixes of the former. Despite the remixes – “Chopstick”, in particular, adding suitable and appreciated warp, clarity, and clubfriendliness – I feel “Acid” to be the stronger original track, with more intelligent synth layering and a delicious breakbeat stutter halfway through the otherwise mechanical 4/4 beat. Then again, I was on acid when I wrote this review, so I may be a little jaded paded waded… Anyway, though neither track is particularly transcendent, they are a cut above what the average club DJ is spinning around here, let alone producing.

Kompakt, consider yourself answered.

- Filmore Mesalito Holmes

bass sound is so tasty, it’ll give you cavities.

Eat up kiddies! The Morticians are serving up a deadly feast.

- Devon Cody Meshuggah Nothing (Reissue) Nuclear Blast Meshuggah isn’t for everyone in your family.

It pretty much sounds like a combination of two things: our future overlord robots having sex, and the one dude who survived the onslaught but is sadly caught right in the middle of the fossil fuel soaked orgy.

And all he can do is pretty much scream bloody murder, poor bastard. In other words, Meshuggah is a harsh listen at all times, with the 2002 album Nothing without a doubt representing the cock smashing limits of tolerance. Built on low-end guitars (which forced them to fire the bass player), phlegmfilled, screaming bombastic vocals, and polyrhythmic madness from drummer Tomas Haake, Meshuggah rushed the recording process in order to finish Nothing before an Ozzfest summer tour. It was intended as the band’s first album to be recorded with eight string guitars, but they had to compromise and down-tune their seven string ones instead. So now in 2006 we get to hear Nothing as it was originally intended, with all the beastial-sounding axes re-recorded.

The difference is amazingly little, and not worth the re-purchase. Basically, you get a bit more mid and gain on the guitars for $20, which isn’t exactly the best way to spend your money. I guess you also get a DVD with four live tracks and four wacky music videos, which might help you feel less guilty about wasting your money, but you’re still wasting your money. The value of Nothing is virtually nothing, then, so let the robot overlords fuck in peace.

- David Von Bentley My Chemical Romance The Black Parade Reprise Posterboys for the disenfranchised teenage spooky goth generation MCR is back, with new hair and a new persona. That’s right, for this concept album we are to call them ‘The Black Parade’ (also the name of the album – pay attention), because clearly, they weren’t being pretentious enough up until now. The Black Parade is a theatrical take on mortality and all things morbid, but generally with the familiar shouty lame pop the kids know and love. Truly believing its own press, My Chemical Romance sees no irony in claiming that this is an album to change lives, but, to anyone over the age of 14, it comes across as hugely camp and self indulgent.

At least Meat Loaf (yes, The Black Parade is that melodramatic to warrant a comparison) and Marilyn Manson can be a bit tongue in cheek now and again.You have to think, as if teenagers don’t have it bad enough, now they have to listen to this s**t.

- Stephanie Heney Neu! s/t Gronland Gronland first re-issued Neu!’s debut album in 2001, almost 30 years after it first appeared. The surging interest in krautrock at the time meant that Neu! finally got a bigger piece of the action, graduating from small cult to less small cult. I guess a new Canadian distribution deal means that this, plus the two albums that followed, Neu! II and Neu! 75, will once again be sitting on the shelves of your local Zulu in short order.

Besides anticipating the whole exclamation mark fad by three decades, Neu! has been massively influential in all the places you’d expect, with Stereolab probably being the most shameless in its thieving. Neu! is defined by its long, tight, unbroken grooves and perfectly clean sounds, delivered with requisite German efficiency. Exactly what you’d expect from two former members of Kraftwerk and producer Conny Plank. Quite beautiful, really, and Gronland’s re-mastering is outstanding. Perhaps we should write them a letter to say thanks.

- Herman Menervemanana

Gutter Demons and you’ll get my drift.

The Nightstalkers are some scummy-ass dudes who play scummy-ass psychobilly.

Toxic Cesspool is greasy as shit, but it sure as hell ain’t slick. It’s more like the goop you’d find at the bottom of some farmer’s rusted out bagged-to-shit Delta 88 somewhere in Drumheller. I hear a lot of Barnyard Ballers in this, especially the hiccupy vocals and the punk sensibilities, as well as a heavy measure of the Meteors. “Catch of the Day” gets my vote for best track on the disc. They also cover The Sonics’ “The Witch” and, though many may disagree, I actually like the spazzed out, clunky version they do. Reminds me of Jerry Lee Lewis in an epileptic fit… on Fly Agaric… with electrodes on his testicles… and a Yankee feminist on the controls.

- Devon Cody Pet Player One Ready Grönland Pet is a one man project comprising of Andre Abshagen from Berlin with a few other disparate members lending vocals and various noises. Although Player One Ready was released in Europe back in 2004, the “retro vibe” is so contrived there’s no concerns about anything sounding dated.

Euphemistically, they describe their vision as being “refined”. Imagine if Jarvis Cocker joined the Scissor Sisters, and both acts simultaneously lost all talent and creativity and did their utmost to sound ‘70s – this is what you’d get: boring camp electro pop with authentic Moog noises and T-Rex guitars. Quirky lyrics underpin attempts at being experimental, but it all comes across very bland, and where the aforementioned Scissor Sisters have proved a bit too odd to break the American market, Pet are just trying too hard to be odd.

- Stephanie Heney Norma Jean Redeemer Solid State Metalcore, or as I call it… metalsnore (I pat myself on the back for being so hilarious) almost always sucks the fluid out of the most soaking wet shit. Screaming skinny dudes who learn how to play annoying antimelody rhythms and technically make more noise than music is usually the formula for the ‘core. But as with any musical genre, you can always find a few good men to go to war with. That’s where Norma Jean comes in. Sounding like a blend of Dillinger Escape Plan madness smashed together with At The Drive-In’s manic melodies, Norma Jean breaks the mold and leaves the liquid in the shit. The metalcore elements are there, but the worst parts of it aren’t grinded into your temple by the sonic drill that this genre’s twat cutters always seem to possess. Part of it is the balanced production provided by Ross Robinson, which helps bring the band to life instead of drowning it in noise. Songs like “Blueprints for Future Homes” and “A Small Spark vs. a Great Forest” may be short in length (unlike their titles), but rock balls for the perfect amount of time before they get too irritating. Other metalcorers should take note of what Norma Jean has achieved with Redeemer. A balance of music/noise that doesn’t seal the sphincter and make your eyes swell out of your head like the ending of Total Recall.

- David Von Bentley The Riverdales s/t Asian Man The Riverdales haven’t toured since ’95 but apparently, Asian Man thought it would be good idea to reissue their debut album.

Despite the obvious Screeching Weasel and Ramones influences, this is a snappy little number that gets the blood flowing.

The reissue includes the original 12 tracks remastered, two previously released B-sides (“No Sense” and “I’m a Vegetable”), two never-before-heard outtakes (“Two-Headed Girl” and “I Won’t Forget You”), and eight live songs from the European leg of the Green Day tour. As that twit movie reviewer would say, I’ll give Riverdales two thumbs up.

Even if they do stand uncomfortably close to Green Day. - Chris Walter

So Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria has a side project. Apparently conceptualizing five albums worth of music based on a fictional multi-generational feud between three families in the future is not enough to keep this guy busy. The “Amory Wars” is the feud, and the Prize Fighter Inferno is directly attached to that story line. My Brother’s Blood Machine is told from the point of view of Jesse, the brother to the father of the main character of the Coheed and Cambria mythology. Don’t worry though, the story is self-contained and predates the Amory Wars. This album is actually amazing. Instead of the light metal style of Coheed and Cambria, Sanchez has opted to make a refreshing, vocal electronic indie album. Think Coheed meets Postal Service meets late ‘80s Michael Jackson, and then they all have a slow orgasm. The lyrics are written on tarot cards.

- Dale DeRuiter Sex Pistols Spunk Sanctuary This is the first official release of Spunk, the bootleg Pistols album that pre-empted Bollocks by a few weeks in ‘77. Spunk is significant because it’s taken from three recording sessions before bassist Glen Matlock was fed a liver and jizz sandwich, and then dumped for the monstrously untalented Sid Vicious. Aside from the smaller sound, and Matlock’s natural melodiousness, most of the versions here are basically the same (although opener “Seventeen” is sluggish). There are little to no overdubs, and the sound is thin, but it’s the closest we come to knowing what the original Pistols actually sounded like.

Standouts include “Nookie” (which became “Anarchy”) with a ferocious Rotten sounding like he’s locked in an outdoor toilet on a cold night, and “No Future” (“God Save the Queen”), thanks to Matlock’s inspired contribution. It’s not quite the conflagration heard on Bollocks, but then the value of Spunk is in hearing the band au naturel, with an emphasis on bass and drums. According to Chris Spedding, McLaren would try to mix the rhythm section out, and bury it all with guitar. Why? ‘Cause he hoped people would assume the Pistols couldn’t play.

Wanker. (The CD contains three demos, of which “No Fun” is killer, killer, killer.)

- Adrian Mack Shinobu Worstward, Ho! Asian Man Even if it had been around in the early ‘90s, an era from which Shinobu apparently draws most of its influence, it probably still would have only been comparable to lesser indie rock also-rans like Number One Cup, Butterglory, or Sammy (and even when Shinobu does sound more current, it’s a few below par of what Lawrence Arms and Weakerthans accomplish at their worst). So take that how you want: it’s not a suicide-inducing dis, but it certainly isn’t the sweetest of compliments. Worstward, Ho!, even despite its self-deprecating title, ends up coming across as overly contrived and formulaic. Slacker vocals, inconsistent levels, jangly guitars, tongue-in-cheek references to pop culture (“You should read my LiveJournal!”), it’s all there – but never quite gels and is rarely engaging or original. Back to indie rock school for you, pesky ninjas (or was that Shinobi?).

- Adam Simpkins

REVIEWS

Lonesome Kings Legendary Suffering Kaiser Bored of the standard Link Wray inspired instrumentals that are so often used as intros to psycho and rockabilly albums?

Well slap this puppy on and say a prayer because the intro to Legendary Suffering will peel your ears clean from your skull.

It really sets the tone for this ass-kicking sophomore album. Brutal and precise, Legendary Suffering hits a little harder than their previous release Shotgun Full of Blues

The Memphis Morticians Play Primitive Trashmen and 13 Other Love Songs Kaiser Though they’ll surely be lumped into the category of psychobilly, the Memphis Morticians are more like garage rock with an upright bass. But, if psychobilly’s where they’ll be filed, then so be it. This is the best band to hit the genre in a while. It’s great that, while they surely indulge in many of the clichés that you’ve come to expect in the genre (love ‘em or hate ‘em), the Morticians’ songs don’t just stick to the boring-a-billy formulas. They’re every bit as feral as you might expect, but they don’t forget the effectiveness of subtlety in their musicianship.

Prime example is the acoustic guitar that opens “Donner Party Boogie” and continues to accent the chugging, distorted guitar through the rest of the track. More often than not though, you’ll feel the fuzzed-out guitars deep down in your molars and the

Nightstalkers Toxic Cesspool Kaiser You know what I like about Canadian psychobilly? Muthafuckas ain’t no pretty boys. Take a look at the Deadcats, or the

The Prize Fighter Inferno My Brother’s Blood Machine Equal Vision

The Shins Wincing the Night Away Sub Pop After multiple delays, the Shins’ hugely anticipated LP, Wincing the Night Away, is coming. But will it “change your life?” Not likely. With their third album, these indierock flag-bearers retreat further from their humble beginnings and enter 2007 with an album too slick for comfort. Perhaps veteran producer Joe Chiccarelli (Hanson, U2) is somewhat to blame, but the Shins have dropped the ball on this one. The hip-hopflavoured “Sea Legs” begs for some madSugar-Ray scratchin’. The familiar mid-tempo shuffle of “Turn On Me” and “Girl Sailor” comes off limp. And James Mercer’s vocals overpower the band throughout. But for all the cringe-worthy tracks, there are a few gems here. The shoegazy opener “Sleeping Lessons” and the dark-pop of “Spilt

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 21

CONTENTS

Swan Lake Beast Moans Scratch With Swan Lake comes high expectations. And rightly so. Not everyday do you have three of the most prominent west-coast songwriters working together in the same room. But Dan Bejar, Spencer Krug and Carey Mercer didn’t just slap together songs left over from their day jobs with Destroyer, Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes. Instead they made Swan Lake into a cohesive unit with a sound of its own, partly by writing all songs exclusively for Beast Moans. All three take turns at vocals and production. And all three give songs that rank among their best, such as Bejar’s “The Freedom”, and Krug’s “Are You Swimming In Her Pools?” The mix of keyboards, guitars and drums behind the songs may play rough, but this comes off as charming, not sloppy. What you end up with is a recording that isn’t always pretty, but is always captivating. Be proud you don’t always have to look east for great sounds.

- BRock Thiessen Kim Taylor I Feel Like a Fading Light Don’t Darling Me It would be fair, albeit cynical, to state that the world really does not need yet another singer songwriter clone of Cat Power or Beth Orton (great as those acts are, they’ve kind of done the Cat Power and Beth Orton ‘thing’ already). And with an album title like I Feel Like a Fading Light, there really are self indulgent and poetry loving alarm bells going off. Kim Taylor even owns a café. How perfect! I bet she plays acoustic guitar while people eat tofu and wear hemp clothing.

Cynicism, stereotyping and market flooding aside, she isn’t that bad at what she does. Her atmospheric and raw vocals manage to be emotive and jazzy; smokey tunes would do well as a ponderous film soundtrack (more Almodóvar than Rocky IV, perhaps). In isolation each of the tunes keeps your attention, but listened to as a whole album, it kind of makes you forget you have a CD on at all. Perhaps one for the coffee table crowd, but not entirely without merit.

- Stephanie Heney Terra Diablo s/t Nocturnal FM-ready Modern Rock is a funny thing. The loosely defined, but easily disposable, aesthetic hasn’t matured in what seems like ages, yet its bands always seem to find a way of lingering in the top 40 for months on end by selling heaps of records to the easily sated masses.

Simple music for simple folk? A sound argument, but there are probably some more scientific formulas involved as well. Glasgow’s Terra Diablo basically sound how a Modern Rock band should sound. Taking cues from the cast of post-Nirvana Alternative Giants: Foo Fighters, Placebo, Garbage, Bush, the list is pretty much arbitrary and easy to fill in without ever having to hear a single note that this band plays: grunge-tinged, mid-tempo songs with occasionally memorable hooks and a mild hint of angst; well produced, and equally forgettable. Obviously all the trappings for a successful, unnecessary, band.

- Adam Simpkins V/A Compilation 7” Cum Sponge This is what happens when you grow up in podunk small towns in the provincial interiors of Western Canada and base your punk rock identities on the images seen in your troubled older brother’s wrinkled and yellow back issues of Maximum Rocknroll. This

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 22

shockingly nose-wrinkling black circle of wasted fossilfuels is now the latest accessory to your brand-new $30 Exploited T-shirt, no thanks to the combined IQs of the Rain Men behind Cum Sponge Records (I’d say 98, which makes them a high-end moron, like the main character of Flowers for Algernon). Cum Sponge Records: I guess if you lock a dozen tweaked-out bonobo monkeys into a vinyl pressing plant for a thousand years, eventually they would release a compilation 7” featuring this, the best amplified butt-trumpeting you’re ever gonna get from either the Hippie Critz, the Effigy, the Tups, and/or t.h.e. The only way these twits will convince me that they’re “punk” is if they all strut into Coquitlam’s Boone County Saloon on a payday weekend and inform the capacity crowd of surly suburban cowboys within that all punks loved Brokeback Mountain.

- Johnny Kroll V/A Soundtrack to Oblivion Kaiser Kaiser Records is a relatively new label that specializes in punk-leaning, garage-tinged, unconventional psychobilly bands. Their timing is perfect. Soundtrack to Oblivion is a generous compilation of music from bands out of Canada, USA, Britain and Europe.You can tell the folks at Kaiser Records are real fans of music, putting out albums for music fans. Rather than just regurgitating a bunch of tunes you may or may not already have on other albums, they’ve included a shitload of unreleased goodies for us. Of the 21 tracks, 16 are either previously unavailable versions or versions only previously available on vinyl. Bands of note are Lonesome Kings, Batmobile, Gutter Demons and Barnyard Ballers. The best thing about a good compilation though, is discovering groups you otherwise wouldn’t have heard of. Such was the case with Knock ‘Em Stiff - a badass lo-fi band with crippling double bass and the most authentic ornery early Misfits vocals I’ve heard amidst the hordes of mediocre psychobilly bands milking Danzig’s midget dink. Soundtrack to Oblivion is the perfect remedy for all the psychobilly schmucks out there that might as well be doing Revlon commercials.

- Devon Cody The Whitest Boy Alive Dreams Bubbles This is an undistinguished debut for the accurately named Erlend Øye (King Of Convenience) and Mercin Oz led band. Each track sounds roughly the same, to the point I actually had to check and make sure my Discman wasn’t on repeat. If you’re into imagining Keane like indie rock with one ball, you’ll probably dig this a lot. There is a mildly pleasant amount of punk funk here, but the whiteness is truly smothering.

- Filmore Mescalito Holmes Christopher Willits Surf Boundaries Ghostly International The pop world is a cruel one, yet many people are drawn to it everyday. Christopher Willits’ new album, Surf Boundaries, proves he’s one of them, although, thankfully, this electronic composer has kept his avantgrade roots in tow. Like the artist formerly known as Manitoba, Willits has opted for a more song-based approach on his new record, where he draws on elements of noise, shoegaze and jazz. And he has added some vocals along the way to remind listeners this is supposed to be a pop record. However, Willits still can’t help but fill a large chunk of the LP with cut-up blips and loops, which resemble many of his more experimental collaborations with Matmos and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Willits carefully weaves these instrumental segments into the mix and in the end strikes a perfect balance between the two. The result is cohesive album worthy of attention.

- BRock Thiessen The Who Endless Wire / Live at Lyons Polydor I like this 2-CD set very much, but the smirking purist in me can’t accept this modern-day revue as “The Who.” How can I? This historically magnificent band of working-class British intellecto-yobs based a huge chunk of its songwriting/performance chemistry on one of the most recklessly thunderous rhythm sections in all of rock’n’roll - and we all know that Keith Moon and John Entwhistle have both checked into that big Riot House in the sky. In the wind of their passing we have the grand old survivors Roger Daltrey and Peter Townshend, fronting an admittedly inspired band, and it’s the smartest thing they’ve pulled off in about a quarter-century. But as the crotchety old Scot said on the TV commercial: it’s nae oatmeal. Those wishing for huge smashing power chords will be disappointed.

Those looking for middle-aged, acoustic Shepherd’s Bush art rock will be pleased. Who purists will hate this album. Daltrey/Townshend fans will say this kicks way more ass than The Iron Giant.

- Ferdy Belland

WORST CDs OF THE YEAR Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Love Their Country Fat Wreck Chords Asshole bands like Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (like Dread Zeppelin before them and Hayseed Dixie after them) just keep on flogging their dumbass one-horse joke until everyone’s scrambling for the sweet mouth-inserted release of Daddy’s shotgun. The infuriating ‘concept’ behind the latest 25-minute diarrhea-spurt from this sadly overhyped ‘punk supergroup’ is Fat Mike’s boorish claim that “I just can’t stand how country artists use the same chord progressions over and over.” Excuse me?

Have you ever subjected the overwhelming majority of all punk rock of the past 35 years to such an insightful, cutting musical analysis? Yeah, thanks for coming, Mike. I don’t hear any fucking Coltrane matrixes spiralling away in anything written and recorded by any one of the Gimmes (sad, flabby losers who fuck around in boner-wilting sonic turdmongers like NOFX, Lagwagon, the Swingin’ Utters, and the fucking Foo Fighters, for Christ’s sake), which, when you get right down to it, is little more than a sad group of sadder old men who desperately need their own private ice-floe to be cast out into the Beaufort Sea upon. The songs they cover are so unimaginatively obvious (Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and Jerry Reed’s “Eastbound and Down” theme from Smokey and the Bandit, among others) and are given the same safe, polished, easily-marketed, post-Green Day non-punk rave-up treatment you’ve all come to expect from every dumbfuck disc pressed by Fat Wreck Chords. This ain’t no Supersuckers (Damsgaard will back me up on this), but it sure Super Sucks a Fat Dick on a Fat Mike. I hereby give-give an open challenge to this stupid band to make it through a full set at the Cobalt without at least two of them being pinned in the skull by a pissglass flung by an outraged Ashtrey. Then again, there’s differing definitions of what “West Coast punk” really means. Anyways, this EP is boring and lame and a waste of everyone’s time. It also proves once again how Fat Mike is nothing more a than a shrewd, callous businessman. I’m sure he considers himself the punk rock Gene Simmons, although Mike’s backstage conquests at the Warped Tour probably look more like Tommy Lee Jones than Shannon Tweed. Fat Mike not only continues to ignore his baldfaced cultural irrelevance, but he also continues to make his blackhearted living by fleecing the suburban-mall punks over and over and over again. Granted, suburbanmall punks deserve to be ripped off (hang around Metrotown for an afternoon and you’ll agree with me), but gimme gimme a fucking break already. Fuck this. And fuck y’all. Donkey says:YEE-HAW! - Johnny Kroll Europe Secret Society Sanctuary Y’know, Adrian Mack must be supremely pissed off at me for something. Why? Because he assigns me, ME - Johnny Kroll, of all people - to review the new album from , ready for this shit? Europe.Yup, Europe. The same halfassed Swedish pop-metal band that raped the ears and minds of millions of teenagers across the globe during the mid-80s with its Christ-fucking mulleteer anthem “The Final Countdown”; a song which made me despise synthesizers (and acid-washed denim) for more than a decade afterwards. But what goes up must come down, and almost immediately following the decline of “The Final Countdown” from the world’s Top 40 charts, the

career of Europe plummeted right after it. Irrelevant and buried under miles of musical sediment by glam-rock bands like Poison and street-sleazy hard rockers like Guns N’ Roses, Europe became forgotten at best and a joke at worst, and I, like countless others, breathed a sigh of rock’n’roll relief... until I was handed a freshly-minted copy of Secret Society by a certain smug-faced Nerve Magazine music editor. Sweet bleeding leaping Jesus. The fleet-fingered finger-tapping wank noodler John Norum is back behind the Ibanez RG-550. And Joey Tempest (yes, that’s right: Joey TEMPEST, for fuck’s sake) is preening his sub-Coverdale way behind the mic once again. There’s a crew of nameless assholes manning the rest of the stage risers these days, but who gives a shit? Back in Europe’s fleeting heyday, no one fucking cared to know the names of the original backing meatball-suckers, anyway. Secret Society, eh? I wonder what fiendish subversive cabal of cloaked Freemasonic CIA sadists, gathered in the bowels of Sanctuary Records (and why is it always Sanctuary Records or CMC International that unearths these deadass fuckwads?), decided it was a sound business move to make Europe ready for the 21st Century? I mean, this is a band that wrote a song named “Ninjas Survive.”

The amount of resources uselessly wasted to press the first-run promo copies of Secret Society could have saved the lives of thousands of starved refugees in the wastes of the Sudan. Their blood is on the hands of the executive directors of Sanctuary Records. May they all burn screaming in Hell, forever. What’s next? The latest comeback album from Pseudoecho? Fuck me.

- Johnny Kroll Krome s/t Shoreline / Loud Sound The best news I can muster about the self-titled debut from Krome (Coquitlam BC’s latest attempt at CFOXFM/604-Records supremacy) is its standardized heavymetal logo, which, if cut into a stencil and spray-painted onto alley walls behind the Brentwood Town Centre, would look cool for about a week or so. As for the 10 songs found Krome’s debut album... don’t bother wasting your time. There is absolutely nothing here that you haven’t heard before, and done much better, to boot.

Shawn Meehan (vocals, guitar) appears to be the brains of the operation, which in this case means he’s been paying careful attention to the vocal stylings of Chad “Kroeger” Turton (and James Hetfield’s post-1990 bullshit), and he can write the same sort of pointless macho swaggerings that Turton and Hetfield do. Meehan tries harder than, say, Default, to write lyrics of depth, mind you. “Dashboard Baby Jesus” takes on religious hypocrisy, “No One Gives” rails against human selfishness, etc., but any chance I tried at giving Krome the benefit of the doubt was fucked away on me with their godawful version of the Guess Who’s “No Time,” which is a downright lousy attempt to unnecessarily update a song which doesn’t need to be updated to sound like a 604-Records track, or something which can get spun on CFOX. And it’s only the third fucking song, too, which tells me that the he-men of Krome are completely insecure in their own songwriting capabilities and have to hide behind Paul Reed Smith guitars and Triple Rectifier half-stacks (and faggy mascara, if one bothers to check out their promo packs). Advice to Meehan and his cronies: don’t bother cutting Krome’s logo into a stencil. Stick to what you know best, which is checking the oil for your customers when they pull into the ‘Full Serve’ island at the PetroCan. - Johnny Kroll

PHOTO: DAVE BERTRAND

Needles” are experiments that pay off. And “Black Wave” gets mighty close to recapturing the ghostly vibe of “New Slang.” However, the few great tracks just aren’t enough to save this album.

- BRock Thiessen .

Sarah Slean Orphan Music Warner For those of you who’ve had a paper bag over your heads for the last few years, Sarah Slean is Canada’s answer to Tori Amos (if you’re wanting glib comparisons for quick reference). Slean is a classicallytrained musician with an other-worldly spiritualism that has garnered an army of die-hard fans yet no real chart success. A constant insistence from fans appears to be that Slean’s voice gets lost in the production and effects of her studio recordings, so it makes sense to release an album of live and pared-down no-nonsense versions of the songs. And what a voice she has too, with a clarity and raw tone that is both haunting and mystical - reminiscent of Edith Piaf or Marianne Faithfull (but actually sounding nice). Slean sounds at home with just a piano, and delivers intense performances of emotional and poetic tales, and the lack of production illustrates the strength of her songwriting.

- Stephanie Heney

LIVECONTENTS REVIEWS next band, the Voltz. When these crazy characters set up their Flight of the Navigator keyboards, the cougars and Crystal Pistol female fan club hit the floor.

Finally we had a crowd.

The sirens, the lights, the pleather, and the metallic blue shirts - it was all so overwhelmingly awesome I almost wet myself. The singer paraded around with a bright pink boa that matched his hair. This guy had to co-star with Jody Foster at one time or another. There is just so much to say and not enough words. I give these guys four Silence of the Lambs dick tucks out of four!

With the regular drummer stuck waiting for a standby flight from Cowtown, Alberta - where country music artists fly first class and rock stars have to wait for an opening - there was some chaos circulating the Ready Set Die drum kit at the start of their set. With no available backup, the lead guitarist decided, “Fuck it! I’ll play the drums.” Video cameras were set up and the bass started to boom and the crowd went nuts. Now that’s what I call punk rock. The show must go on. I give them three band members out of four.

- Heather O’Brien

That’s your “sex face”?

High On Fire / Archons / Pequod The Red Room,Vancouver, BC Thursday, November 9th, 2006 Considering the grizzly, noisy leanings of tonight’s headliners, it comes as quite a shock when Pequod’s frontman starts singing in falsetto in the opening song.

Things continue in a decidedly fey mode with each number plodding along in a very underwhelming manner. This causes attention to lag somewhat, a problem that isn’t helped by little interaction between band and audience. At least the bass player looks like he’s enjoying himself, though sadly, it’s not until the last few songs that Pequod finally shakes lose, breaks out the riffs and starts ‘rocking’.

In stark contrast to the opening act, Archons is a stereotypically beefy heavy metal beast. The band looks exactly like they sound; burly, hard hitting and slightly lacking in imagination. Their fast paced rifforama is pretty uninspired but fairly well executed nonetheless. Some of the songs have synth intros that just sound cheesy instead of menacing. Not that you’d say any of this to their faces for fear of having the shit kicked out of you.

Starting proceedings with the perfect opener “Sons Of Thunder”, High On Fire quickly establishes a dominating presence. Playing a set largely culled from the band’s most recent album, Blessed Black Wings, their full power is only slightly marred by the fact that the guitar is sometimes difficult to hear over the rumbling of bass. Brilliant songs like “Face of Oblivion” and “Brother In The Wind” are played adeptly and with great passion.

Matt Pike is a consummate frontman and really looks like he enjoys what he does, his blistering solos accompanied by the requisite “guitar god sex face”. We’re even treated to old favourite “Baghdad” and the first airing of a brand new song.

Truly fucking monstrous.

- Will Pedley Bonnie “Prince” Billy / Some terrible fucking band that sucks so hard I don’t even know what they call themselves.

St. James Place,Vancouver, BC Saturday, November 11th, 2006 Bonnie “Prince” Billy is one of the world’s - that’s right, the world’s - most prolific songwriters. I mean, Johnny Cash covered

one of his songs for the love of God. All the stuff he does - Palace Brothers, Will Oldham, Sons of Rest - is all, without exception, really good at the very least.

That’s why seeing him at one of his three Vancouver dates was a grand experience.

I don’t know if any of you have been to a Church to see a show before, but it’s a bit crazy. The sound system is usually pretty gay and the sound itself is not that much straighter. But, St. James Place is the exception to the rule. Named after the patron Saint of Monopoly, the joint was packed to the hilt with bearded and nonbearded humans alike.

After bribing a small chinaman to hide some beers for me and downing a few weed brownies, Mr. Prince Billy took the stage. As stated above, I am not even going to mention that peice of shit band that opened for them. It was a total embarrassment.

B”P”B played with a slight band and preformed and joked around with the audience like they were all in his den, sipping eggnog and watched a video of a burning Yule log. He had us in the palms of his hands, he did. He played for about an hour-and-a-half, and then, like wild man beasts, we were released into the night with a thirst for partying and a place to do it: Darby’s Pub. We caused some trouble there and caught a great set by Mud River.Then ate pizza and convinced a friend not to drink and drive.

With the night’s cold sleet and the subtle wariness of Bonnie’s songs, there couldn’t have been a better tribute to our brave veterans. I’m not even joking, so stop smiling.

- Waltergeist

awesome than ever. From the brassy Amazon on bass guitar to bald juggernaut on drums, the JP5 is a rock ‘n’ roll spectacle to behold. Indeed, it was a nostalgic and beer-soaked performance, with all the lewdness and debauchery one might expect from Vancouver’s ambassadors of vice and sin. Somehow, Gerry Jenn manages to make a beer belly look sexy.

If Gerry Jenn and co. are the ambassadors of vice and sin, then Evil Norton Neils and his Evil Band are the ambassadors of cool. With his crew of seasoned musicians, including scene veteran Tony Bardach on bass, Evil Norton and his growly rasp could not have been more perfect for this spooky Halloween evening. Okay, it wasn’t technically Halloween, but we were celebrating early. Take your complaints to Evil Norton and his switchblade.

Opening the show was a fresh bunch of upstarts know as the Slickjacks. It was bassist’s Lisa’s birthday, and the party was ON. Ending each song with a bang, this fiery trio, led by the Addams Family’s Uncle Fester, did an admirable job of entertaining the lethargic zombies as they waited for the booze/coke/smack to kick in.Vancouver can expect more good things from this latest addition to the rockabilly family.

- Chris Walter Mico / In Flight Safety / Raising the Fawn The Lamplighter,Vancouver, BC Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 When you have to go out on the town two nights in a row, things get a little strange. Shapes and colours are different and the distance between the roof of the cab and your head don’t seem to

Unwanted / Knockarounds / Raiden The Cavern, Winnipeg, MB Saturday, November 11, 2006 So there I was, watching the latest incarnation of the Unwanted tear us all a new one. Only a day earlier, I’d been at home in Vancouver, but then Mitch Funk’s sister Cyndi bought me a plane ticket so I could watch Mitch join the Unwanted boys for couple of Personality Crisis numbers. Singer Norm is the only original member, but Teddy Simm, Lance McKenzie, and Doug Bell are all seasoned vets of the Winnipeg hardcore scene, and it sent shivers down my spine to see them rip through those Unwanted songs like it was 1982 again. Norm, of course, is the same ham he’s always been, and it was great to see him in his element again.

The sound sucked and I could hardly hear the vocals, but Mitch got up and sang “Mrs. Palmer” and “The Advocate.”

I won’t lie and say it was the same as it was when Mulroney was still Prime Minister, but it was good enough to leave

JP5

LIVE

Ready Set Die / Voltz / Day Release Program Richard’s on Richards,Vancouver, BC Friday, November 17, 2006 Day Release Program was first on the bill and not to my surprise Richards on Richards was populated by…NOBODY. DRP still entertained me with my own private dance. They bounced around on stage with such passion it was like REM and Sum 41 with massive sperm build up.

I would rate these guys two amazing blue ball orgasms out of four.

There is no smooth transition into the

Really good. They rocked out songs from their new CD with is out on G7. What a bunch of vegans. Respect your meats.

After Mico, In Flight Safety came on. They sound like they should have. I don’t really know. I was trying to buy cigarettes at the time and ran into an old friend who plays the violin for Mico.

We had stirring conversations about sad and beautiful topics in a newly minted Vancouver winter.I arrived back at the joint to catch the start of Raising the Fawn. I was pleasantly surprised by them.

They didn’t sound anything like what I expected. Kinda mellow, kinda nice. Sorry, but even I’m getting a bit bored with this review.

- Waltergeist

PHOTO: JEN DODDS

PHOTO: DAVE BERTRAND

HIGH ON FIRE

JP5 / Norton Neils and his Evil Band / Slickjacks The Cobalt,Vancouver, BC Saturday, Oct 28th, 2006 You can tell a lot about a band by its fans, and JP5 took the stage Saturday to the motliest crowd of geeks, freaks, drunks, punks, junkies, and porn stars this side of Hollywood Boulevard. Of all shapes and ages, they gathered ‘round for the fabulous train wreck that is JP5, spilling booze and talkin’ shit. Gerry Jenn, Vancouver’s answer to Courtney Love (except cooler and raunchier), was in fine form as she led the band through all those great songs they wrote when dinosaurs still walked this earth. JP5 is fortunate that guitarist Dirty Kurt has given up touring with the Real McKenzies for family life, because he was able to return to the fold more dynamic and

match up right. That was the shittiest part of this show. That and Mico’s terrible performance. Just joking.

The Lamplighter was not really that packed. I think it had to do with the cover, which was a bit high. Not that it matters for me. “I write for the fucking Nerve!” You can usually hear me scream at box offices everywhere. Usually followed by, “Me plus one! Me plus one!”

Sad. I’m a sad and petty little fellow.

Mico took the stage and played really good. The band is a Black Halos side project. Again, just joking. But, the front man, J.Stew is the Halo’s new guitarist. Not that it really matters. Mico was really tight and had a super fun sensibility. They also broke into a Cher tune, mid song. That one where she bangs the entire Nazi army in 1944. ‘Member that one?

me with an acute ache for those days when PC seemed poised to take over the world. If I’d been as drunk as many of the kids were, I could have closed my eyes and pretended that I was back at Wellingtons when Personality Crisis, the Stretch Marks, and the Unwanted gave me memories that will last a lifetime. As for the new kids, they got to see that our music didn’t sound like Lawrence Welk, and judging by the way they knocked each other around, they seemed to dig it. Speaking of Knockarounds, this local Oi! act did a fine job of warming up the crowd, even if they did play a bit too long.

Raiden, a very young punk act, was also good, with a fresh, original sound. Oh, Wayne Kerr, I’m glad you didn’t lose your books when they kicked your drunken ass out of the bar. I love ya, Winnipeg!

- Chris Walter

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 23

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 24

CONTENTS

Wild Years – The Music and Myth of Tom Waits

By Jay S. Jacobs Thunder’s Mouth Press “The bravest thing a person can do is stay course and hold on to his dreams and ideals.”

Jay S. Jacobs presents this charming notion in reference to Tom Waits’ admiration for the shabby nobility of a person persevering in a hard, cold world. It’s an example of one of the many energizing and eloquent statements he makes throughout the book, statements which lift Wild Years from the level of mere biography to something more thoughtful and substantial, something crafted closer to the heart.

Tom Waits is rumoured to be a stubborn man.

In fact, the title for his 1999 release Mule Variations was inspired by Kathleen Brennan (Waits’ wife and musical co-conspirator) as she often would say she hadn’t married a man, she’d married a mule. There is definitely a certain bravery in stubbornness, especially in a world that often puts out dreamers and idealists like cigarette butts, grinding them down until they submit to careers in air conditioning and refrigeration with notions of mortgages, long-term

The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

By Alfred W. McCoy Lawrence Hill Books We all know that the so-called “war on drugs” is a huge, expensive joke, but few of us, including myself, knew that the joke was in such incredibly poor taste.

Sure, we know that prisons are full to bursting, and that drugs seizures continue to climb as demand grows, but if the general public was aware of the staggering hypocrisy at work here, they’d be stunned, wouldn’t they? Perhaps this is the sort of thing that people don’t really want to know. I mean, what can we do about our American neighbours who fund foreign drug lords to fight covert wars, yet lock up their own citizens and throw away the key for 25 grams of crack? With clear, concise prose, Alfred McCoy documents how the CIA has consistently placed foreign policy over their desire to fight drug trafficking. If the CIA isn’t actually delivering opium crops to the market for allies in Southeast Asia, then they are turning a blind eye as drug lords

investment plans, and RRSPs. Thankfully Waits is the mule, and not the man who just chose to get behind one and plow.

Wild Years does a fine job of detailing the journey of a person who has found success and maintained his integrity by going his own way, very much against the grain. The title is a little misleading though, and I’ll have to admit I did expect more lowlife stories and tales of debauchery in these pages, but it is an entertaining read nonetheless.

You’ll come away knowing more about Waits the family man than Waits the sloshed-on-a-seedystreet-Shakespeare.You’ll even come to wonder how much of this persona actually seeped into his reality. It will either leave you with a greater appreciation for the myth and mystery surrounding the man or a greater appreciation for the imagination that brewed up the worlds in his songs.

Originally published in 2000, this edition of Wild Years has been revised to include Alice, Blood Money & Real Gone. In addition to what is surely the most thorough discography out there - with 40 pages listing Waits’ songs covered by other bands alone - there’s some interesting information served up here for the starving fan. For example; I never knew that - despite his great distaste for artists whoring themselves out to ad agencies - while severing ties with former manager Herb Cohen, Waits did a commercial for Purina Dog Food. And, I never imagined that someone with such an epic personality might be reduced to a stammering, awestruck fan, as was the case when Waits met his hero Bob Dylan - such is the story according to Dylan’s son Jakob. An intriguing B-story that runs throughout the book is the evolution of the relationship between Waits and his long time producer Bones Howe as they went their separate ways after recording the One From The Heart soundtrack. Another great thing about Wild Years is the extent to which it goes to reveal Waits’ musical interests and influences. Rather than on the couch, I took to reading this book next to the computer just so I could dig up audio samples by the likes of Kurt Weill and Lord Buckley.

Unlike many bios that tend to go sterile with their systematic excavation of information, there’s an earthy, dirt-under-the-fingernails quality to Wild Years. It’s is about as perfect a biography as any fan of Tom Waits would want to read.

- Devon Cody manufacture heroin right under their noses. And it isn’t just the Americans who are guilty of diverting drug money to their own causes. Governments all over the world have no qualms whatsoever about propping up their economy with narco bucks when things get a bit tight. As Henry Chinaski once wisely said, “It’s just the nature of the way things work.”

Though it weighs in at 707 pages, don’t let the size of this massive tome scare you. McCoy’s history into the complex machinations of the CIA is easy to read and very engrossing. The drug game, of course, is all about money and power, and those with the biggest armies continue to reap the enormous profits generated by drug trafficking. It’s ironic that the Americans actually created their domestic drug problems by allowing overseas drug dealers to flourish. Worse - when suppression actually worked, as it seemed to in the mid ‘70s - the drug market simply adapted to the shortage by finding alternate opium sources. When one pipeline shuts down, five more will pop up overnight. The reason for this, of course, is that where there is demand there will be supply, and you cannot declare war on a global commodity. Drug suppression efforts in the last 30 years have only made a bad problem worse.

Short of killing the author, the CIA tried everything they could think of to stop this book from being published, and when it first hit the shelves in 1972, they simply denied all complicity. In short, they are liars.

It was also interesting to connect the rise of a powerful drug lord named Khun Sa to the strength and availability of street heroin in Vancouver. Back in 1998, I had no way of knowing that American foreign policy was responsible for the smack that nearly killed me. Every lawmaker and politician should read this most remarkable book before they start bleating about tougher drug sentencing. In fact, everyone should read this book, just so they will have a better understanding of the dynamics at work here. Clearly, a different approach is needed if there is to be any change. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same things but expecting different results.

-Chris Walter

I, Goldstein - My Screwed Life

By Al Goldstein and Josh Alan Friedman Thunder’s Mouth Press Al Goldstein is a gross, corpulent, dirtbag. A smutpeddler with no friends. A lousy failure with a micro-dink. Or so the infamous former publisher of Screw tells us in this insane autobiography, which he presumably cobbled together to fend off another round of homelessness, after his empire crumbled around the same time as the twin towers. Regarding the description of Goldstein above: the pictures that are included with I, Goldstein - notably a photograph of Al being sucked off by Seka (the self-professed “platinum princess of porn”), and another of Al taking five with a Mexican whore - illustrate that Goldstein’s dink is hardly tiny, but actually quite plump. But he’s been obsessed with its size since he was a kid, we learn, and somewhere in the chaotic wiring of his fat, retarded brain, he conflates his Judaism with penile diminution. To this day, his hero is John Holmes, and his description of Johnny Wadd’s demise is surprisingly tender. For the most part, however, I Goldstein is remarkably tasteless, even by Goldstein’s standards, and he doesn’t really have much good to say about anyone, aside from his first wife. “She had the intelligence to walk out on me,” he writes. “I miss her terribly.”

Since Goldstein’s luck ended, he hasn’t received a whole lot of support from people that, conceivably, owe their own success to his pioneering use of the First Amendment, which he employed to satisfy an obsession with eating pussy and ass, or to otherwise defame a seemingly endless list of enemies; especially his second-to-last wife, who finally broke him. His Harvard-educated son subsequently disowned Goldstein, and he whines about it at length. It’s almost touching when he admits that he probably shouldn’t have run an obscene picture of the kid’s mother in Screw, “accusing her of introducing AIDS to America after sleeping with a Witch Doctor in Haiti…” Goldstein generally kept his family out of his skuzzy life. They lived in an Upper West Side townhouse next door to Goldstein’s ol’ buddy, Bill Cosby.

Goldstein supposes that the Funhouse on Coney Island formed his sexual imprints. A midget

DECEMBER 17

DOORS 8PM SHOW 9PM

would whack the girls asses with a dingbat when the air vent blew their skirts up, and then the little perv would grab their tits as they lost their balance.

Finally, he’d “poke them with an electric stinger…”

“How hot is that?” Goldstein asks.

Goldstein goes on to describe his journey from sex-obsessed pisher, to pussy-hungry beatnik, protopaparazzo, fearless, mobbed-up porn-king, fat guy, and, finally, homeless zero. A harassment conviction lands him in Rikers Island, amidst the “ceaseless farting of third world criminals.” He shits himself in protest. They medicate him with hallucinogens, and perform surgery without his consent. It’s the last of countless jaw-dropping tales. In between there are loving descriptions of his turds, more depraved sex than Caligula, a fervent wish to “get my tongue up Katie Couric’s asshole,” and Goldstein’s unflinchingly offensive pursuit of personal liberty and free speech.

As he gleefully writes about himself, “I am the ultimate test for anti-Semitism. If you can tolerate my fat, whining presence, you’ve seen the worst Jews have to offer.”

- Adrian Mack

DECEMBER 20

TICKETS ALSO AT SCRAPE AND HIGHLIFE TICKETS ALSO AT SCRATCH

RICHARD’S ON RICHARDS

QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE

SATURDAY JANUARY 20

BLACK LIPS WITH GUESTS

THE PARALLELS TICKETS ALSO AT SCRATCH AND RED CAT

RICHARD’S ON RICHARDS

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 25

CONTENTS

FILM

2006: The Year that Racism Broke

2

006 was a huge year for racism in Hollywood. And why not? Racism is freaking hilarious. But by that I mean it’s insensitive and not funny at all. Here’s a list of everyone who was racist, homophobic, sexist (or all three) in 2006 that you can direct your hatred at. But remember, being reverse-racist about racism is also a form of racism so you’re fucked.

-Any member of the Academy who didn’t vote for Brokeback Mountain to win best picture. Seriously, that story about two cowboys who bang in a tent in the woods was brilliant.

-Audience members of Late Night with David Letterman who laughed at Michael Richards’ when he was apologizing. Laughing at someone who’s trying to apologize for being racist is - you guessed it - racist.

-Borat for making a movie that promotes homophobia, anti-Semitism, and gypsy tossing.

-Mark Burnett, producer and host of Survivor, for putting all the contestants into different groups based on race.

-Naomi Campbell for calling her maid a ‘dumb Romanian.’ She should have used a better word like “pikey” or “Rumuneshty.”

-Dave Chapelle for putting out a movie that glorifies the stereotype that all black people wanna do is take to the streets and party, with his film Block Party.

-Stephen Colbert for consistently joking that he has no black friends.

That’s not funny at all.

-Jamie Fox for threatening to beat up Kramer, who actually isn’t racist and was just playing an elaborate Andy Kaufman-esque prank on us. Seriously, you’re gonna need a towel to wipe all the egg off your face when you find out this was all staged.

-Paul Greengrass for directing United 93 that portrays people of Arab decent hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. Not cool.

-Salma Hayek for accusing Hollywood of being racist. That’s a gross generalization which is also racist, you fucking racist.

-Ron Howard for promoting hatred towards albinos and Catholics with his film The Da Vinci Code.

-Mel Gibson for drunkenly ranting about the Jews and calling a female police officer “sugar tits.”

-Terrence Malick for othering Native Americans in his movie New World. How Pocahontas made my dick twitch was just plain cruel.

-Steve Martin for making fun of the frogs in his Pink Panther movie.

-Rupert Murdoch for kyboshing OJ Simpson’s book. Seriously, the guy was found innocent and I wanted to read that shit.

-Rosie O’Donnell for calling a hot piece of white ass like Kelly Ripa a homophobe. She also gives dykes a bad name by being a fat, ugly, useless cunt.

-Kelly Ripa for insinuating Clay Aiken had his hand up another man’s ass.

-M. Night Shyamalan for perpetuating the stereotype that women are horrible scary bitch monsters that can breath underwater in The Lady in the Water.

-David Slade for his movie Hard Candy that negatively portrayed people who like to have sex with pre-pubescent girls.

-Whoever the fuck made Snakes on a Plane. You made snakes out to be ruthless, poisonous, slithering killers, asshole. You also ruined the internet for me for months with this piece of shit movie.

Racism to thrive in 2007 Racism is currently gripping Hollywood with its sinister black hook-for-a-hand. Sadly, it doesn’t look like Hollywood is going to clue into how uncool racism really is in 2007, as a film adaptation of The Turner Diaries is slated for a summer release. We can’t wait to hear Mel Gibson, who is rumoured to be playing Turner, say the line “The people have had their share of the Jews and their tricks. If the Organization survives this contest, no Jew will - anywhere. We’ll go to the utmost ends of the Earth to hunt down the last of Satan’s spawn.” Gibson then reportedly lays down a vicious deathblow with a broadsword to a Jew. Again, awesome. But by that I mean not funny at all. n

CONTENTS

DVD REVIEWS

Kiss Kissology - the Ultimate Kiss Collection Vol. 1 1974-1977 DVD VH1 Classic

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 26

Kiss is a terrible band. Always was. Now that we’re clear on that, let’s take a look at Kissology. Awful title notwithstanding, this is incredible value for money, assuming that it only costs a few bob more than a nice meal, though it should be said that my free promo copy came sans sticker-price. For me and the other guy out there who actually sees through this tawdry nonsense, Kissology provides a peerless opportunity to sink into a warm bath of fascination mingled with hate. In other words, fans and critics alike can feast on the three and half hours of videos and TV performances that make up (heh heh “make up”) the three discs here. Buyer beware, however: this is Volume 1 of Kissology, meaning it represents the pre-Animalize period of Kiss, which might put some of you off. For those of us in the know, Kiss was pretty good up until about half way through the first album, and fortunately Kissology takes a few swings at “Nothing to Lose”, a song that I can’t find anything wrong with. The first is from ABC in Concert in ‘74, and there’s a big rainbow stretching across the stage. We’ll come back to that later. The fourth, faster and brighter version is from Budokan in ‘77, and it’s part of a whole concert. In fairness, Kiss has a handful of good songs: “Hard Luck Woman”, which is included here in the Don Kirshner segment from ‘77, “Do You Love Me”, from Budokan in ‘77, and, of course, “I Was Made for Loving You”, which

isn’t included here at all, fuckwit. Ace Frehley’s solo in “Calling Doctor Love” is also pretty great, and I’m sure he’s the one who actually did it, and not a guy under the stage. All the versions of “Black Diamond” (seven in total) get the thumbs up. A report on the band’s first trip to England, from the UK TV show So it Goes, is hilarious, as host Tony Wilson can’t help but take the piss, treating these bozos with the incredulousness that totally defined the British reaction to Kiss. An appearance on the aforementioned Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert retains Kirshner’s intro, in which he thrillingly talks a lot of incomprehensible shit. I skipped through every track on the Houston ‘77 concert, which is great fun because you get to hear Paul Stanley scream “Houston!!!” 18 times in a row. Also included is the famed Mike Douglas Show appearance, replete with unbelievably lousy version of “Firehouse” (the fire bell in this segment was apparently manned by a deaf stage hand), and a bit from a Paul Lynde TV special, from ‘76. A concert from the Winterland in SF in ‘75 is in glorious old monochrome video, and it’s easily the most ‘Alive’ of the many concerts included in the package (and yes, the repetition starts to wear pretty fuckin’ fast). There’s a couple of promo clips from that fake live album they put out, and a short (and very cool) documentary about the band’s visit to Cadillac, Michigan in 1975, to boost for a

high school football team. Kissology also includes a commentary track by Gene Simmons, but as if I’m going to listen to that. The accompanying booklet is pretty funny, if only because Simmons actually claims at one point that he never banged any underage girls.

This is a serious blow to the credibility of Kissology.

There’s also a bonus disc with a 1977 Madison Square Garden concert - in other words, there’s enough Kiss here to choke on, which brings us back to Paul Stanley and rainbows. Having so much Paul Stanley in one sitting is incredible, if you’re still not convinced that the closet is the busiest room in his house. Watching that man preen, mince, purse his lips, and get his tits out for three years straight eventually adds up to the biggest over-compensation mechanism the world has ever seen, up until Georgina W Bush mounted an aircraft carrier three years ago wearing his jock strap on the outside.

Marvellous. In conclusion, sisters, Kissology falls short of the Kiss coffin, but is way better than a pristine VHS copy of Phantom of the Park. It’s a typically lovely piece of packaging, and, finally, it comes with a fake backstage pass that you can put on your stupid hesher denim jacket, right next to where your buddy scrawled Iron Maiden with a Sharpie one night after you both finished huffing Pam and peeping on your sister while she took a whiz in the bushes.

- Adrian Mack

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CONTENTS

Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare

By Michael Mann

R

eg Harkema has basically edited every good Canadian movie ever made. Now he’s written and directed a good Canadian movie of his own. Monkey Warfare is tight, funny and low-budget story about a pinko couple (Don McKellar and Tracy Wright) who fled Vancouver after a Molotov cocktail incident went wrong. Now in Toronto, the couple live in a perpetual marijuana induced paranoid fear that they’re gonna get busted. They survive by selling shit they find in the trash and online and don’t own phones. When their dealer gets busted, an impressionable young girl with perky breasts and BC bud (Nadia Litz) comes to the rescue and Mckellar’s penis twitches for the first time in years. Shit goes haywire when Mckellar steals Litz a bike and she starts her own gang of militant bicyclists who like to torch SUVs. This is our last issue of the year and I’m burned out. Rather than be intelligent and do some research about his good little movie, I did none and cracked stupid jokes over the phone to him for 25 minutes.

To Reg’s credit, he laughed at these stupid jokes and didn’t hang up even though he probably should have. Once again, this goes to show that the coolest people in the film industry are the seemingly invisible nerds who edit the films.

Nerve: I understand you collect records and are into French New Wave films? I also understand you have a girlfriend.That’s a bit of a contradiction don’t you think?

Reg Harkema: [Laughs] My girlfriend collects records.

Nerve: So you’re not making the girlfriend part up then?

Reg Harkema: No, No. She hasn’t quite grabbed onto the French New Wave part. On one of the first dates we went on to see if we were gonna be able to handle each other, I made her go see my favourite movie,The Mother and the Whore, by Jean Eustache, which is about three hours of French intellectuals sitting around in cafes. She slept for about half an hour in the middle...

Nerve: Were you trying to sabotage this?

Reg Harkema: No, No, No. I saw her favourite movie, Shakes the Clown and I dug it.

Nerve: So let me ask you, what is Monkey Warfare?

Reg Harkema: I took it from Abbie Hoffman’s book, Steal this Book. He had a little section in there called Monkey Warfare which is all about low intensity methods of monkey wrenching the system. Rather than being a bomb maker and going underground, he said you can actually do these little things if you like, instead.

Nerve: Is that one of the things you’re trying to say with the film? Grassroots action seemed to be portrayed as hopeless and taking to the streets and smashing heads doesn’t work either.

Reg Harkema: One of the fun things about calling it Monkey Warfare is it’s less a title and more what the movie is actually doing. We’re not a big Hollywood film by any means. Just as radical political activists aren’t firmly ensconced in the seats of power in

electoral politics. Hopefully my little movie can stub the big toe of the Hollywood giant the way radical activists keep pouring salt in the wounds of the mainstream political powers.

Nerve: Your film is populated with young ignorant idealists and old experienced pessimists.

What category do you fall into?

Reg Harkema: I like to see myself as an old ignorant pessimist. [laughs] Nerve: Are we all just a bunch of apathetic pussies? Do we need to go out and start burning cars?

Reg Harkema: Well, you know if someone was inspired to start burning cars from my movie I think it’d be great. Just make sure you don’t let any of those gas fumes escape and get all over yourself and light yourself on fire.

Nerve: Well maybe you could tell me how to make a Molotov cocktail right now. Because I understand the Molotov cocktail safety instructor scene is cut out of the theatrical version.

Reg Harkema: If you go to our MySpace page you can actually see the scene that was cut out.

(Myspace.com/flowerpowerisdead). The rationale is that yeah, we’re actually showing how to make a Molotov cocktail. The whole point of that is we’re trying to show how to do it safely. But because, according to the lawyer, we’re showing a criminal act... Never mind that there’s 20 dozen ways that show how to kill someone in the latest Bond movie. Once again, it’s the powerful coming down on the weak.

Nerve: So how do you make a Molotov cocktail?

Reg Harkema: I don’t really know. It’s outlined in Hoffman’s book. We just used his instructions as kind of a jumping off point for an improvised performance by my man Flick Harrison who stars in that Molotov cocktail safety scene. I’ve actually had different older film critics point out to me that we’re missing some of the details. Apparently you’re supposed to take some styrofoam and soak it in the bottle.

Nerve: I got in trouble in high school for telling a younger kid that you can make LSD with lemon juice, Raid bug spray and paper. His mom was really pissed. So you gotta be careful.

Reg Harkema: The sequence is actually done in French. It was done for comedic value but lawyers have no sense of humour.

Nerve: Your movie’s shot in Toronto but you’re a Vancouver guy. Why’d you go and do a thing like that?

Reg Harkema: Well I live in Toronto. I’ve been there for 3.5 years. I’m a Vancouver guy in the sense that I was born and raised and grew up here. But only recently moved. The East Van cultural milieu permeates the entire core of my being. I obviously bring that as an influence to my film. I think of it as more of an East Van film than a Toronto film. The characters—even though they’re being played by a Toronto archetype like Don McKellar—are proto-typical East Van people who fled to Toronto.

Nerve: Do you think living in Toronto is punishment for the characters?

Reg Harkema: [Laughs] Well, I’m not into self-abuse.

...we’re actually showing how to make a Molotov cocktail.

The whole point of that is we’re trying to show how to do it safely.

Nerve: Well how I saw it was this: You had this couple and they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, Vancouver, and are being punished by being forced to live in Toronto.

Reg Harkema:You know, in this post-modernist age, everyone’s interpretation is valid. I’m very fluid in what I’m trying to say in that I’m never trying to say anything. I present situations and let people figure it out for themselves. If you read it that way, your particular reality is that Vancouver is a Garden of Eden....

Nerve: Well it’s not necessarily a Garden of Eden.

It’s just by comparison because Toronto is so shitty.

Reg Harkema:You know, I’m East Vancouver represent and all that but I’m not sure I would entirely agree. It’s not fucking raining like this in Toronto.

Nerve: What kind of bike do you ride?

Reg Harkema: I ride a, I think it’s called a Fiji or a Fuji. It’s a thin Italian street racing bike. I got it off a dope dealer, this guy Rod in the movie. He sold it to me. Because I’m 6’6” and he thought I was the only one who could fit it. I rode it like every day of the year in Toronto. It was fine until I had an encounter with some guys who, in a fit of road rage, wrenched the back of my wheel and it got bent... with the money I make from this movie of the week I’m currently working on, I might bite the bullet and buy a new one.

Nerve: Well, you could steal one?

Reg Harkema: No, I’m not into that.

Nerve: You’ve never stolen a bike?

Reg Harkema: Naw, I’m into liberating bikes. That’s the thing. When you ride the same route in Toronto you notice people abandon their bikes. They’re locked up and it’s got beer bottles on it and it’s just sitting there for three weeks. At that point you’re just like, “fuck it, let’s take this goddamn thing.” I’ve done that few times.

Nerve: Okay, well do you know who stole my bike? Because I’m kind of pissed off about that.

Reg Harkema: Well did you leave it in a place for a long time?

Nerve: No, not really. It was blue and I really miss it. Is there more bicycle theft in Toronto than here?

Reg Harkema: I read in the newspaper in Toronto that there’s been a recent rash in bicycle theft. But I think that sort of petty crime is probably more prominent in Vancouver because of the downtown eastside and the heroin.

Nerve: Will there be a big spike in bike theft after this movie comes out?

Reg Harkema: Bike liberation! There’s nothing worse than seeing a cool bike that someone has abandoned and are just letting it rust away. People have this internalized bullshit morality that if they take that bike they’re stealing. No, that’s saving.

Nerve: Are you one of those militant bicycle guys?

Reg Harkema: No not really. With the film coming out in festivals, I’m starting to be in contact with people who are involved with Critical Mass. It’s a whole world of people I’ve never met or dealt with.

Oh man, these people live the life. I’m a fucking poseur compared to these people.

Nerve: What do you think about Critical Mass?

I want them to fuck off already.The politics behind it seem so flawed. Cars burn more gas when they’re idling.

Reg Harkema: Well, I actually rode in my first Critical Mass a couple months ago... From what you’re saying, from a political standpoint, there might be something to that. But for the experience of actually riding in it, man that was awesome. It felt like I was in the Hell’s Angels or something. My dad watches it and he gets so hopping mad about it. People holding up traffic on Friday when everyone is trying to get home. On the other hand, to ride through traffic on a Friday afternoon in Toronto is taking your life into your own hands. Maybe slowing traffic down on a Friday afternoon is a good thing. n

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 27

CONTENTS

CONTENTS Underworld Dec 8+9. Trailer’s at www.sk8life.com , but can it match the authenticity of Thrashin’ ?

-D-Rock and Miss Kim. Email downspace@telus.net or check out www.downspace.com and www.theformlab. com

S

hreditorial:Turntablist or Existentialist?

Two contrasting videos make a point about skate culture: it’s yours to do with as you please, as an expression of your personality.

“Yesterday’s Future” from Underworld’s Alex Bastide and Jarvis Nigelsky is a glossy hip-hop mafia fantasy shot throughout North America. Lighting, cinematography, editing and street skating are top-notch. “Never Give Up” from Protest Skateboards’ Hippie Mike is a rough, gritty, Vancouver-shot underground vid starring a 2x4 and those fucked up highway spots that blur by your shitbox at 5am. “Future” finds skating everywhere, “Never” finds it nowhere; both valid statements from real skaters who give a crap. Underworld Best Part: across the board excellence, maybe Geoff Dermer’s lines. Protest Best Part: Jon Irvine fuses Gonz and J.Lee. (Hon. Mention to Cisco Gooding‘s fliptrick calculus and Jeff Cole’s undeniable style.)

By Dale DeRuiter Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Developer Raven Software Publisher Activision Lately I have been rediscovering my inner comic nerd by downloading comic book torrents off of the internet. The fantasy world of superhero myth is like crack and I ended up reading about 200 comic books in about a month. So when the new RPG marvel game was released I dumped some wages and picked it up. Which, by the by, has nothing to do with Marvel Ultimates, thank God because, for the record, that shit is gay. Here Marvel restarted some characters from scratch by changing their origin story a little bit and making the characters look a little different i.e. Nick Fury is African-American instead of Caucasian. It’s a slow-moving storyline that is a waste of time.

Read Civil War instead, you’ll crap your pants.

(Back to the game) The story doesn’t really matter for this title but if you must know, a bunch of bad guys got together and are doing bad shit.

Dr. Doom has enlisted a plethora of B-rate villains and some formidable opponents to take over the world or something. They’re called the Masters of Evil and you have to stop them or all of existence, as we know it, will be destroyed.

With comic book games the only two things that really matter are which characters you can be and who’s ass you get to kick. The cast is always number one in a deal like this and let me tell you at 140 characters, this game has the most ever assembled. The playable character list is 20, ranging from the typical X-Men and Avengers to some of

the ‘bad asses’ including Deadpool and Ghostrider (unlockable in chapter 2). The shitty thing about your characters is that you have to unlock a good size chunk of them throughout the game.

For certain characters you have to find items as in you find five DareDevil action figures and he is unlocked. To get other characters, you have to make a decision for; as in to get Ghost Rider you need to sacrifice one of your teammates... but don’t worry, you get your guy back.

The Customization aspect is where Ultimate Alliance falls short.You can only equip your characters with one accessory at a time and there are only four available suits for each hero.You can change the stats of the good guys and build up their powers, but there is no substantial change with the items you pick up throughout the levels.

This in turn does not offer you the motivation to comb the nooks and crannies of the worlds you visit as in other titles of the same genre.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance would be the first game released for every current system available on the market except the Nintendo DS and Gamecube versions were scrapped. Since the game is available for everything from PC to Gameboy advance (the latter being a side-scrolling combat module instead of the 3D action RPG the other formats boast) you can expect a lot of variations from system to system. Even though I got my hands on the PS2 version and not the 360 or PS3 one (I opted out of the shootings) the graphics are still pretty darn good with cut screens that will have all comic geeks adorned with sweaty palms and erections. n

China Creek, Leeside, and Dampened Spirits It’s been a busy month… there’s been plenty of attention for China Creek and Leeside in the newspapers and on the radio, the Vancouver Skateboard Coalition put on successful events in both places, and we talked to a few Parks Board planners and councillors. While we won’t know anything concrete about the status of The Creek until the meeting on December 5th, we do know

Chris, China Creek, Canadian blunt to fakie, in a sea of

On-line, not In-line mesh caps and toques. photo: Kim Glennie Old trick, new dog; this Spot’s going online. Watch the printed Nerve for special events and DVD that the park’s planners are no longer going to reviews; monthly Skatespot will be at www. recommend removing the bowls, opting instead to thenervemagazine.com and www.downspace.com. make a neutral presentation of the two options, Thanks to Jeff Chan, Jeff Cole and the Faulkners. which is about as much as we can expect at this point. By the time you read this, the decision has “Skate Life” Film Premiere probably been made, so you’re all getting drunk in Premiering at LBC on Nov. 30, this Canadian indy celebration or planning the last-stand China Creek doc looks at the skating and lives of Kris Foley, Chad sit-in over a bottle of rye whiskey. And Leeside?

Dickson, Dustin Montie, Alison Matasi, Mark Bajcar, The struggle to coordinate the needs of skaters, Silas Borsos and Jarvis Nigelsky. Also at the Whistler the city, and E-Comm continues ad nauseum. It’s Film Fest Dec. 1, and the Empire theatre across from incredible how long it can take to get approval to do something positive and constructive with a space that nobody uses.

So, lots happening on and around skating, but very little actual skating.

How about this weather? What a kick in the junk.

This is when the abscess left by the (temporary?) loss of RDS starts to fester with a vengeance. I have no idea how many kinds of bacteria and viruses got into that fucker, but right now it’s inflamed and oozing greenish pus with red lumps floating in it. I haven’t seen the likes of this since spending a month in a Cambodian leper colony on an island of garbage in a river of raw sewage. Sure, there’s a few miniramps around, but Skatelite-surfaced flatwall topped with metal coping? Come on. This must be what it’s like to be junk sick and have someone hand you a Tylenol.

- Jeff Chan “grand_ wazoo@hotmail.com”

Jeff Cole, Beanplant, some sketchy spot. photo:Tyler The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 28

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CONTENTS AINSWORTH

The Man That Matters

By Jason Ainsworth A Christmas with Bob Grenny.

My dear friend and paedophile Bob Grenny, who was interviewed a couple of months ago, was overwhelmed by the positive “feedback” and support he received from you readers! He really felt like he had as mass of friends! He struggles, you know, against anti-paedophile rasicsm, everyday.

He cried when he read the mail. He really cried. He was so happy!!! We always should be this happy… He had a little legal problem lately… I reckoned I’d have him back for another littler conversation about child sex. A friend, after all, is a friend till the end. Till the end. Forever. I love you man. I fucking love you.

Nerve: Dude….

Bob: Dude…. I love you, man.

Nerve: I fucking love you, man.

Bob: I fuckin’ LOVE you. I know you want to know about what happened, but I can’t tell you. My lawyer says I can’t say anything.

Nerve: Dude, I know. It’s okay.

Bob: Dude, this sucks….

Nerve: Dude, dude….

Bob: Fuck, dude, It was stupid….

Nerve: Dude…

Bob:Yeah, I fucked up…

Nerve: The mind is the best sex organ.

Bob: It’s wonderful when the more cerebral sex organs like the brain come together, to achieve… mind orgasms, I guess.

Nerve: It’s a closeness you can’t buy in the store… it means a lot more when there’s a little bit of love involved.

Bob:Yeah.

Nerve:Yeah.

Bob: Oh yeah…

Nerve: Dude, yeah.

Bob:Yeah….

Nerve: Um, so how about the survivor series this year?

Bob: Oh, yes, wrestling is one of the best ways to meet boys! Seriously!

Nerve: Triple H totally jobbed for the Ulitimate Warrior.

Bob: Fuck you.

Nerve: Fuck you. Back in 1992 he was fucking jobbing for the warrior like eggs were fucking oval….

Bob: Triple H never fuckin’ jobbed for nobody…

Nerve: Dude, he did, it’s there on paper…

Bob: Fuck you. Fuck you.

Nerve: Dude…

Bob: Anyway I think sex is ninety percent in the head, ninety percent at least…

Nerve: I fucken love it!!!

Bob: I love it, when I’m with a boy, young boy, it’s best when our cerebral organs come together… it means a lot more than just fucking, or sucking…

Nerve: That’s kind of unpleasant.

Bob: Fuck you.

Nerve: It’s a good thing you aren’t into fist fucking, because you’ve got fists like a fucking AIDS lumberjack.

Bob: Triple H did not fucking job for anyone, okay!!

Nerve:You’re some fucking paedophile….You totally want to fuck Triple H. Bob: I want to fuck… no.

Fucking no way. Shut up.

Nerve: A lot of people, when confronted with professional wrestling, Automatically take the “homoerotic” approach.They judge, they assume…

Bob: Assume, it just makes you an ass… (hahah)

Nerve: Dude, the court case…shhhh…. Shut UP! Bob: Oh to hell with it! I love wrestling!!!

Nerve: A lot of people, when confronted with professional wrestling, automatically take the “homoerotic” approach. They judge, they assume…

Bob: Assume, it just makes you an ass… (hahah) Nerve: No, seriously…

Bob : No, seriously, I’ve met a lot of lovely friends… at wrestling. It’s not a gay sport. It is a pederast friendly sport.Very sexy young men like wrestling.

And I like to take them there. Not just WWE, you know. There’s Stampede, ECCW, OVD… TNA… the new ECW…. Many au courant venues of reference to take young boys, for introduction, meeting, falling in love… romance….

Nerve:You want to suck off Triple H. My moustache is the same as his… you want my cock in your mouth??

Bob: …no, not at all…

Nerve: Take it all in… think about wrestling, and suck it… think about 5… fuuuuuuuck… just think,… oh man… man…

Bob: …no….

Nerve: Dude, you seduced an eleven-year old girl, and you lie about Triple H, and you still identify yourself as a gay man? A proud gay man?

Bob: Dude, first off, fuck off.

Second, you went to the Motorama show at pub 340, I fucking saw you, asshole, and you had your hands all over a girl.You kissed her.

Nerve: I am not a gay identified fucking paedophile though, am fucking I? Bob:You fucking kissed her.

Nerve: Fuck off.

Bob: She was really cute though.

Nerve: Look dude, take a stand. Be a Commissar, or be a fag, whatever, but be man enough to make a lifestyle choice.

Bob: I just like to lick a hairless boy like a fucking, fucking lollipop….

Nerve: Female self-lubrication isn’t a priority then, you racist. Nothing you say surprises me anymore.

Sorry, readers, this interview sucked. Bob Grenny can fuck off as far as I’m concerned. n

The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 29

The Nerve Dec./Jan. 2006/2007 Page 30

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digital & offset: cardz • posterz • stickerz • ticketz • brochurz • catalogz The Nerve Dec./Jan 2006/2007 Page 31