Roger Daltrey's ears
Saturday, December 30 2000
Posted by brockp
I went to see snfu last night in Surrey after not having seen Muc or Ken in maybe 10 years. When I went into the band room, one of the first things I noticed was a sign gaffer taped to the back wall of the stage which read:

KEEP STAGE VOLUME DOWN, WE HAVE A P.A. FOR A REASON. P.S. ROGER DALTREY CALLED, HE WANTS HIS HEARING BACK. THANK YOU.

The band on stage at the time was Strong Like Tractor and I'm not sure if they were heeding the advice or not. Following their quite enjoyable boyrock set were the band all the teen punks were there to see, the Trenchrats. Complete with big fins and studs and pins, they were an Exploited wannabe band who were definitely not heeding the sign's advice. They kept asking for more of everything in the monitors while simultaneously turning up their amps. The sound man eventually informed them by his mic from the board that "Your stage volume is too loud to hear anything in the monitors." I doubt they had the slightest idea what he was talking about.

Snfu was a crowd pleaser as I remember them being years ago. By the time they took the stage the teen crowd had mysteriously been replaced by the over 21 crowd. Some highlights from the Ken box of stage props this time: an oversized rubber carrot, three out of four Kiss masks including Gene Simmons' tongue, a miniature rubber skeleton ("the bones of Karen Carpenter"), the head of Mr. T, and the ever present machine gun water pistol.

We won't mention names
Saturday, December 16 2000
Posted by brockp
Something happenned at rehearsal tonight which at the time seemed destined for the weblog. Now that I am writing I almost don't remember what it was all about and it certainly doesn't seem as funny as it did at the time, nevertheless, this writing is becoming a habit.

So for tonight I booked a room in a different practise space than we've been using lately. Vancouver is a town full of hourly rentals for bands to rehearse in, and a space where you can set up and leave your gear is called a "lockout". That's a term I usually associate with recording studios, but it seems most of these places were once just that. Maybe when they converted to jam spaces because business was slow, what with all the home ProTools users out there, they started saying "lockout" so bands felt real special paying monthly rent for the luxury of dumpy digs for their gear.

Anyways, as you can imagine, paying for your rehearsal time on an hourly basis adds up pretty quick, so tonight we tried out a different place that shall remain anonymous since we prolly will have to go back there. It was about 30% cheaper.

Normally with these places, you bring your guitars and amps and the drummer brings snare and cymbals and the room provides everything else (and sometimes coffee). Well, we've been working on some of the not-so-rock songs on the record, so we've also gotta bring along a harmonium, plus two guitars for Brock and a special stand for one so I can play it while sitting on the drum kit, as well as the other guitars, cables and what-have-you and Heather's big old Ampeg for the bass. Fine.

So we get all this stuff in to the space (after surviving roads with black ice and a broken ignition key) and start setting up. Jamie discovers his Marshall was not returned to the Junky Gods space (they're one of the lucky lockout bands in this place and I don't exactly know why we didn't just use their space) after his last recording session. He succeeds in borrowing another amp, no doubt the exact one alluded to in the Bionic song Peavey Youth. Chris enjoys a graffitti on the wall depicting a Marshall amp (not Jamie's I guess) beside the globe of the earth and a caption like "We will take over the world with our metal".

I am looking for the cymbal stands and a drum seat which I can actually sit on. There is one boom which seems more or less useable with a wing nut from my bag. I ask the employee where the cymbal stands are and he disappears only to turn up a minute or so later with one section from one that is bent into a subtle "s" shape. I turn to one of the "mic stands" which is actually the top part of a mic stand inserted into the bottom two thirds of a decent cymbal stand. I remove the mic part and try the "s" shaped piece in it, then decide I better see if I can help the employee. He is in the workroom area strewn with pieces of hardware, broken cymbals, bass drum pedals, and other presently useless stuff. I give up looking after about a minute and decide to use just the one cymbal tonight. Who needs a crash anyway. Fortunately the hihat stand works but after getting my hands covered in greasy soot trying to get the seat to a comfortable height, I need to find the employee again to learn the whereabouts of the bathroom so I can wash them before playing my Gibson (c'mon, its a '53, I'm not gonna get grease all over it - see my "not punk" rant if you are disappointed in me). As we are on our way, he jokes, "this'll really impress you..."

Well the bathroom actually wasn't much worse than the Jambox in Seattle, and maybe better than at Western & Vine, but maybe equal to the one at CBGB circa 1987, so I'm happy and I've got my hands washed (its minus five outside but hey, I don't need hot water) and we're almost ready to go when I realise I've forgotten my DI for the Gibson. Its a buffer EQ type thing which helps the very weak output from the piezo under the saddle (they didn't all have pickups in 1953). I ask the employee if they have a DI. He doesn't know what one is so I give a brief definition and go back with him into the workroom to look. Well remember what happenned last time when I was looking for a cymbal stand?

OK we're getting to the part I started off talking about. So the employee asks me if I want him to call the boss. I tell him why not and go back into the room. We plug the Gibson (for those of you who haven't figured this out yet, its an acoustic) into the PA and after swapping a bad cable and changing channels, we get a signal and the tinny non-pre-amped sound. OK, we'll make do with this too. We're about to start into Dear Friend John and the employee comes back in to say that the boss said its OK, we could just go straight in. I tell him we are doing so and he seems satisfied and leaves.

At this point I decide that I must write something about all of this in the weblog. It seems that the employee has misunderstood my desire for the DI, presuming I wish to preserve the integrity of their PA, and to me this seems funny because the PA is pretty much a hunk of &*%# and I am only wanting to improve the sound of the guitar. I guess all in all, you had to be there.

Configuration
Tuesday, December 12 2000
Posted by brockp
Well, no news is sometimes good news. Suffice to say, it has been busy of late moving from Seattle to Vancouver. See the blog page for my Canada comments.

Also worth noting is the appearance of Chris Kelly bass playing and otherwise impersonating Jonh Bond Head. Counting Jamie and myself, we are now a merry three and will be getting out onto stages just as soon as we don't totally suck. Chris also plays with another Vancouver band, Dorothy, and will be appearing with them at the Sugar Refinery on Granville St. this Wednesday.

Jamie has also been secretively recording with the Junky Gods and some of that may end up on the Scamindy pages if he ever lets me hear it.

O Canada
Monday, December 11 2000
Posted by brockp
Yes indeed. It has been a while since the last post here and why not add one now ?

I am back in Canada after seven years in the USA. Not quite seven years in Tibet but it might as well be for all the joy and relief of the return. Don't want to America bash, but for those of you who think that Canada and the US are pretty much the same, well, IMO they're not at all. To all of you Canadians who long to earn the good old greenback US dollar figuring everything is bigger and better there, I urge you to resist. Actually, you might as well just go and get it over with, but I bet you'll come to miss your homeland and get embarrassingly weepy when you happen to hear the national anthem or see a snippet of hockey news. And believe me, a snippet is about all you'll get in hockey news in the daily newspaper, unless you happen to live in, say, Minnesota or something. Or a city who's formerly Canadian owned team makes the playoffs.

A very odd thing how something like hockey can make a Canadian feel. A Canadian like me, anyway. I mean, its not like I'm a huge fan or anything, but well, for all of you who grew up somewhere where there was a neighbourhood rink outside every winter, you'll know what I mean when I talk about the tingle in your nose on a dry day in January, or carrying your skates home on the end of your stick just 'cause that's what you do. I wasn't even a good hockey player. But take someone like that and put them somewhere else, say, Seattle, where hockey is a weird sort of subculture and the young guys playing it worry more about how fast they can drop their gloves than how well they can skate, and eliminate the entire neighbourhood ice rink thing, and what you get is a sort of deeply unsettled person.

I mean you have no idea how my mind has settled down now that I've been to the local rink (OK in Vancouver they're indoors, but at least I can walk there in five minutes) a couple times and seen the Habs play the Senators on Hockey Night in Canada (The Sens won 4-2 but it was a tie up to 3 minutes left in the third and their last goal was on the open net).

I guess we tend to forget little things about home. The sound of sharp skates on freshly Zambonied ice (more than a half inch thick) or the sound of the puck hitting a tape wrapped stick blade, or pounding off of the boards all bring me back to being maybe eight years old, and that is a good thing. I don't know if I can say I love hockey, but I love Canada and its sure good to be home.