In the Belly of the Beautiful Beast

Excuse my absence, mes amis. The last few weeks have been a trip. One foot off the merry-go-round and two eyes trying to connect with the smeared horizon.

I'm currently on a train en route to Ottawa from Toronto, where I've spent the past three days. I traveled there on Saturday because I was presented with an incredible opportunity to meet some industry professionals in the big city. Long story short, I was in the right place at the right time and met the right person, who sent a few emails for me and got me meetings with music editors and journalists at Spinner.ca and The National Post. I also went to attend a friend's summer solstice costume party, Summerween. I met some amazing and beautiful people and had some incredible, eye-opening and sometimes bizarre experiences.

We arrived at the Summerween venue in Toronto's West end on Saturday around dinner hour. The news was on and showing images from that day's G20 protests downtown. An anarchist group had been vandalizing things in ill-willed protest of capitalism and such things. They had smashed most of the windows of store fronts on Queen St W -- Starbucks, American Apparel, jewelery stores, electronics stores, shoe stores. Some businesses had signs up in their windows that read "Please do not vandalize. We are a family business" but from what I heard they weren't all heeded.

My sister called me because she knew I was in the city. She told me how our other sister was standing on Queen and Spadina at that moment watching a police car go up in flames. "Apparently the group who are causing all the trouble are called the Black Block. They're wearing all black with black masks," she told me. Moments later, a guy walked in the house, an early party guest and one of the musicians performing that night. He came into the living room where I was and I saw he was wearing all black and had a black mask around his neck. His eyes were painted black. Racoon eyes. "I'll have to call you back."

Despite some of the guests' affiliation, the party was all sorts of cosmic fun. We danced and laughed and sweated, we scatted, rapped, sat on the roof smoking and howling at the moon. My friends and I settled on being Greek mythological figures. I was Dionysus, the god of intoxication. Needless to say it suited me that evening. I sat cross-legged with my best friends while we thought up crazy shit like we always do.
"We are going to write a ska rock opera. A skapra. To No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom."
"That's genius!"
"I know."

We stayed up until the rising sun threatened the end of the evening. We exhaled, admitted defeat and curled up on a few cushions on the floor to sleep.

Sunday was spent in recovery. We all lazed on the front porch all day long. At dusk, one of the neighbours saw us on his way home and stopped to chat. He had been detained for the past five hours after being trapped in a police blockade at Queen and Spadina. He told us the people were non-aggressive, singing Oh! Canada and waving peace signs. They waited for hours as the police arrested them one by one in the torrential rain. The rain lasted only about an hour, but it was the hardest I've ever seen it fall. At that time of the downpour I was getting off the subway after meeting my sister for dinner. Waiting outside the station I saw the sewer grates shooting out sewage as the pressure got too high for them to hold all the water in. I noted the situation's pathetic fallacy. The city appeared to be desperately overwhelmed, above and below ground.

The protesters were arrested one by one and detained for hours in cages in a film studio-turned detention center. Some people had been there since the protests the day before. Everyone looked exhausted and defeated. Seven hundred people had been arrested in that protest alone, and nine hundred throughout the whole day. What he told us made me cringe.

On Monday, I said goodbye to the actors, musicians, dancers and artists that live and lodge at the Summerween venue. I have never been in an environment with so many creative and free-spirited people coming and going or sleeping under that roof. It was a beautiful experience. I jumped in a cab and headed to the Drake Hotel an hour before I was supposed to meet Mr. Spinner to get a bit of work done. I had interviewed my neighbour Rolf Klausener, frontman of Ottawa's The Acorn, a few days before and was eager to get it transcribed.

After a chat with Spinner.ca's editor, I left the Drake and walked east towards downtown towards my sister's apartment, where I was staying that night. When I realized it was too far, I hopped on a streetcar, the first one I've ever taken in T.O I think. Three blocks down the road, a man began to seizure in the back and the car had to stop to wait for an ambulance. I got off and walked another ten blocks to my sister's apartment on the waterfront.

I spent the rest of the day meeting with friends and family who were available. At 4 pm, I went to the Common to meet Mr. National Post. As a result of some sort of miscommunication, he thought the meeting was the next day, when I would be on a train to Ottawa. He said I could come by his house anyway which was just around the corner. We chatted for only ten minutes because he was on his way out, but it was helpful and informative anyway.

After dinner with my father, I met three of my editors from Soundproof Magazine. After a year and a half of working together this was the first time we'd ever met in person. We got pitchers and nachos at Sneaky Dee's and discussed NXNE and the Polaris long list. It was great to talk with folks as submerged in Canadian music as I was.

One of the editors Adam said he had a contact at Warner Bros., the label that the Flaming Lips are on. My attempts to contact the Animal Wrangler have so far been unsuccessful, and I had no idea how to infiltrate a major label like Warner. Eleven more days before the Lips' show at Bluesfest and I gotta get on that stage.

V.R.



Police car photo courtesy of chris.huggins

Arcade Fire @ Théâtre Granada

Within twenty minutes of being on the road to Sherbrooke, QC to see Arcade Fire perform that evening at Théâtre Granada, Shane Dalke, driver and AF-enthusiast and myself were waved to the shoulder of Highway 400 by an OPP officer 100 yards ahead. We were going 119 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. Shane got tagged with a $270 ticket, double the fine because he was speeding in a construction zone.

"It's costing me $310 to see Arcade Fire tonight. Plus food and drink," Shane laughed. "This better be the best f*cking show we've ever seen!"

This was the motto of the trip before we even left Ottawa. The drive was 4 hours one-way (5 there with traffic), and we didn't expect to get home until 3-4 am. I had to work in the morning, and Shane had a full day ahead of him too. He had decided the day before he would drive to Vancouver in two days to work for his uncle building a house. He would have to tie up all his loose ends in Ottawa in 24 hours and then drive four days to Vancouver, stopping home in Morden, Manitoba on the way. But we committed to this show and the 9 hours of driving it would take to see it. It just better f**cking be worth it.

When we finally pulled into a parking lot in downtown Sherbrooke, we had already been lost three times, and still weren't entirely sure where the theater was. We climbed the sloped downtown street a little aimlessly. A woman dressed in a pink track suit sat on a curb outside of building. She cried "boo!" as we passed her, and then giggled when all Shane could say was "Oh."

We got in line and got increasingly more excited for the performance. We already had an idea of the setlist, and discussed it. This performance was supposed to be their first show in Quebec in three years, a last minute practice run before they hit the big-boy festival stages in Europe. Here they had home-field advantage; the crowd would adore them no matter if their new material wobbled. The woman in the pink jumpsuit walked by and cried "boo!" at us again, continuing down the sidewalk and spooking others in line with more boos.

The 8-piece baroque pop orkest played a private show in Montréal on Friday, June 4th at the Notman Mansion House for 50 invited guests, press and friends. Said the Gramophone posted a really lovely review of the show. After reading that, we knew that we'd be hearing their new material (though I suppose we knew that regardless) and their old gems. We knew they'd close with Wake Up, but only if we called them back out for it.

Inside the theater, Shane and I decided to sit on the balcony instead of stand on the floor. I wanted to be able to see all the musicians, and that would mean we'd need to be high enough to see the whole stage. Before the show, the ceiling was lit with an aquamarine blue, and eight globe shaped lamps, amber and orange coloured like a harvest moon, surrounded the room just below the ceiling. There were five on our left and three on our right. It felt like we were on a different planet.

The band came on stage. They weren't wearing their classic 1940s wartime three-piece suits and skirts. Win Butler wore a blue button down shirt. He had an edgy asymmetrical haircut. His wife Régine Chassagne wore a silver-coloured sleeveless shirt and a full burgundy and blue skirt. Richard Reed Perry's hair had grown down nearly to his shoulders. They looked amazing. Their sound was so polished, their movements carved into their muscle activity after so many tours and festival circuits. Their older lyrics were sometime forgotten. They were like eight warhorses, on the road again under eight harvest moons.

They opened with their new single 'The Suburbs', a gloomy 60's psych-pop inspired tune, and then moved into 'Keep the Car Running' from their last release Neon Bible. The multi-instrumentalists kept the tables turning, vocalist to drummer, guitarist to pianist. Chassagne took her spot at stage front for 'Haiti', which the group transformed from a sparse little acoustic tribute on Funeral to a an incredible full-band anthem on the stage. It was the only song, unfortunately, that I didn't get a recording of. I did get a recording of the Théâtre Granada security telling me to "Turn off the device" 10-seconds into the song. It stayed off until their next song, 'Intervention', which was recorded from inside my purse. Those ten seconds of 'Haiti' however is enough to get me excited, nostalgic and a little regretful.

I still can picture the way Chassagne looked when she sang and danced to that song. Her motions were sometimes jaunty and sometimes fluid, all very beautiful and passionate. She shook her head of darks curls, and sang out to the audience in her unique soprano singing voice. Ah, Haiti. Mon pays. We were dazzled by her.

The music continued and so did the shifting musical roles for every musician on stage. There was not one role, not drum, guitar, bass, vocals, violin, piano or synthesizer that wasn't rotated at least once. It was pretty remarkable. These are eight incredibly adept and versatile musicians and songwriters. They're roles shift as readily as their sound and concept does from album to album. Everything was always on mark, with the exception of a few forgotten lyrics by Win Butler, but it hardly mattered to us.

After we called them out for an encore, they closed the evening with an acoustic version of their widely-adored song 'Wake Up'. Everyone who knew the words sang along. It was huge and so heartwarming. All of us contributed to that song, the entertainers and the entertained, in a one-night-only community of like-minded live music lovers. And that's what it's all about.

I love the recording I got of 'Wake Up'. At the beginning of the show, I told Shane to be quiet because I was taking recordings and it would pick up our voices before the music. But by the end, my recorder was jostled around in my purse while I clapped and stomped and exchanged excited words with my friend. On this recording you can hear us exclaiming, "He's got the drum!" because we knew what song they would play when Richard Reed Perry strapped on that marching drum. You can hear us both clapping our hands, not always on the beat. But you can't hear our voices singing, ours are lost in the sea of everyone else's in the audience.

Listen to the acoustic recording of 'Wake Up' HERE.

With the encore, the performance lasted one hour. We drove five to get there that evening, and we had another four ahead of us. But it was worth it. Now Arcade Fire are off to Europe, Shane is off to British Columbia. I miss them both.

Ecstatic words on ecstatic sounds,
V. Rocky Racoon

Surbub photo: delbz

Us kids know, No cars go

Off to Sherbrooke, QC today to see the Arcade Fire perform one of their last-minute scheduled dates at Theater Grenada. We'll be in the car today for 9 maybe 10 hours, with probably a 4-5 hour period of wonder and amazement sandwiched in.

I'll return with a few favourable words I'm sure, and probably a leg cramp. Thems the brakes.

If you haven't seen their live performance footage of the Arcade Fire with David Bowie, well then watch it right now damnit. It's more than a little bit inspiring. I still get shivers. And then you'll know why the drive there and back is looking like less of a hassle and more of a thrilling anticipatory AF-listening session and post-performance denouement.

Stay bloodthirsty my friends,
V. Rocky Racoon

Photo courtesy of caribb.

Contacting the Animal Wrangler

The Flaming Lips' Animal Wrangler, also known as Jake Harms, is the man in charge of finding "fanatical Lips lovers to dance on stage while the band plays," according to his Myspace. Under "Who I'd like to meet" he writes: "Girls with energy and enthusiasm to dance onstage when the Flaming Lips play." I'm a girl with energy and enthusiasm!

I didn't have myspace though, up until today. I made one because I found no other way to contact the feller.

I wrote to him, told him my hopes and dreams, asked him to check out the blog. With luck he'll take some interest in the project and contact me back!

Check out my brand spankin new myspace page, add me if you have one!

Doo doodle doo doo,
V. Rocky Racoon

Bomb Voyages

I've decided very impulsively yesterday that I'll be making two separate trips to Quebec this week. Montréal tomorrow night, where I may see the Brian Jonestown Massacre perform at La Tulipe. And on Monday, I'm driving with a friend to Sherbrooke, QC (4 hours one way) to watch Arcade Fire's first performance in three years at Theater Grenada. The group are performing two last-minute-scheduled shows in Sherbrooke June 7 and 8 before a short European festival circuit. They won't be performing again in North America until July. If you haven't heard the new single, title track of the forthcoming August-release The Suburbs, it's posted on their myspace.

So hopefully I'll have some tasty words to say about those performances next week.

Stay classy.

The UFO lands on the Dark Side of the Moon

I emailed my editor at Soundproof Magazine Cody the other day to see if he had any connections to the Flaming Lips. A part of me imagined it would be as easy as that, just sending an email or two. "I actually don't have a contact for the Flaming Lips. Sorry I can't be of help."

Oh.

And there's no contact information on their myspace or websites other than chat forums and comments sections. Whooo do I talk to?

Eventually I gave up looking for an email address and began reading about how other fans made it on stage at a Lips performance. Many said it wasn't all that easy. You had to get their super early, possibly help the stage crew blow up all the balloons. If you were lucky and didn't pass out you, and you found the guy they call the "Animal Wrangler", the one stage crew member who's in charge of picking dancers before the performance, you could get on stage. I could get on stage.

As for the 'Lips, their latest project, released only two months after the eccentric and bizarre Embryonic in October 2009, is an ambitious collaborative cover album with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Peaches and former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins. Which album did they choose to cover? Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. Ohh, baby.

They don't mess around much with the tracklist or structure, but if you're expecting it to sound even remotely like the original, well, you must not know the Flaming Lips very well.

They tear apart 'Breathe's tranquil madness with low-fi guitar scrawl and 'On The Run' is turned into a death-disco type dance beat. While the first half is at times pretty parodic, and 'Money' is downright silly (with a plunky, ambling bassline and talkbox robot vocals), 'Us and Them', 'Brain Damage' and 'Eclipse' close the record in hommage to the original, not mockery. My favourite cover on the album is the always colourful 'Any Colour You Like,' which the boys turn into a low-fi, Lips-style funk tune; in my opinion, it's the best example of paying tribute without messing around too much with the original. And I love the original.

Notably, Peaches did do a hell of a job singing that hell of a solo on 'Great Gig in the Sky'. However, I doubt it could melt faces like Clare Torry's infamous vocal contortions on the original Dark Side.

Alright, yeah I'm a bit of a critic. But they chose Dark Side of the Moon, for crying out loud. They knew what they were getting themselves into. And It's hardly about the actual covers anyway. It's more about the effort, the fact that they, one of today's most experimental and psychedelic groups still performing, covered Floyd, who easily held the same title in their day. What's more, Pink Floyd performances have always been known as not only a show but a spectacle, even from their first performances at San Francisco's Fillmore East when they mixed chemicals on a slide projector to cloud themselves in crazy shifting colours throughout their set. To have the 'Lips perform this album, marrying innovation in experimentalism and psychedelia from one generation to the next, is ambitious, exciting and pretty much meant to be.

So now you know why I want to be a part of whatever happens on July 10 when they take the stage at Bluesfest. Great Gig in the Sky, indeed.

Your devout Floydian,
V. Rocky Racoon

Balloon photo courtesy of brdwatchr1