Care for Coffee ?
Friday, November 29 2002
Posted by brockp

Brock will be performing a short solo set tomorrow evening, Saturday, Nov. 30th, at the Myles Of Beans café in Burnaby. Also playing will be Shock and a derivative version of his band Roadbed. Brock should get going around about 8pm, and the music will end by just before 11pm. Myles Of Beans is located at 1-7010 Kingsway in Burnaby, BC.

New Boss Sampler
Thursday, November 21 2002
Posted by brockp

I've just received a small quantity of the new Boss Samplerage 3 release. This double CD features 56 songs from all the latest and forthcoming Boss Tuneage UK releases including tracks from The Nils, The Asexuals, The Pavers, Chino, Stand GT, Four Square, and of course Big Strong Love from yours truly. All for under US$7.

Order a copy from the store with your credit card. If you're in Canada, send CDN$10ppd, checque or well disguised cash.

Bionic with Bad Wizard
Monday, November 18 2002
Posted by brockp

Holy Smokes ! These Bionic shows are costing me a lot of Do Re Mi (as Jonathan would say). At least this time I didn't come back to the van to find a window smashed in and gear missing like last time. Unfortunately for me, I still got a ticket for not having bought enough parking.

This show reminded me of the Maxell guy. You know the dude on the Maxell logo who is sitting in an armchair with his hair being blown back by the music ? Well that was about the size of it at the Pic last night in Vancouver, and no doubt tonight in Victoria as well.

Opening the show were locals Spread Eagle. They were both tight and rawk and I found myself wondering if they were punk or not. It seems like today punk has a different connotation than in the eighties when I was a young 'un, but I'd say Spread Eagle would have qualified for an opening slot on the Monsters of Food Tour just fine. The best thing about them was their drummer, a gal who kept things punching along at a good clip, punctuating the guitar changes with tasty snare and crash cymbal combos. The band also gets credit for turning in a solid performance despite having a guitar robbed a half hour before the gig.

I'd talked a bit with Pat, the bass player for Bad Wizard, at the merch table earlier in the evening, and had a feeling they were going to be good. That plus the fact that their drummer had a green vistalite Ludwig kit had me on their side. Ian had also told me that one of their guitarists was a great rock 'n' roll player a la Chuck Berry so I was sharing the seeming anticipation of the crowd packed in from door to stage.

True to expectation, Bad Wizard delivered the goods in an MC5 meets the Allman brothers kind of way. Duelling guitars and powerful rhythm section with raw raw vocals on top (when you could hear them). I was probably alone in the crowd to feel let down by the frontman's summation of their song content though (drinking, f&*%ing, and cocaine). The lowest common denominator seemed to be at work here, and though the crowd responded well to occasional dousings with beer and general spirit of mayhem, I myself found that denominator a little too low. That being said, if you are a fan of this kind of stuff, Bad Wizard does not disappoint.

I was pretty sonically bludgeoned by the time Bionic took to the stage a bit after midnight, and found myself wondering if having two such in your face bands together was altogether a good thing. Nevertheless, thanks in part to Vern's solo stage diving and crowd surfing (yes this was the Pic Pub), pretty soon there were the beginnings of a pit in front of the stage and Bionic was upping the ante. I know Ian was tired from being on the road almost continuously since July, and Jonathan's eyes had a couple of layers of heavy bags underneath the bulging eyeballs, but the band turned in another solid set full of material mostly from their Deliverance record. There were a number of spontaneous outbursts in the pit area and a couple of cases of microphonus-knockem-downus, many caused by Vern and Merril. Nevertheless, much of the crowd remained true to their Vancouver reputations, and seemed to back away as the set progressed. An image which stood out in my mind was a long thread of saliva hanging down from the boom of one of Tim's cymbal stands. There was at least one new song in the set, something about Sweet Jesus coming down from the sky, among fine versions of Nobody to Blame, Little Mistake, and the always fun show ending Do it Now complete with Ian detuning his junior SG at his sawed-off Marshall combo and fifteen inch cab altar. For fun, he also switched off Jonathan's hot plate just before, resulting in even more searing guitar for Widalee's end of set soloing. Any audients without hearing protection who had survived to that point were surely nearer deafness. Judging by the apparent stunnedness off some people I met afterwards, I'm guessing this is not far off the mark.

Do go see this bill when it comes to your town. Do bring ear protection.