Blowin' Clams
Friday, March 23 2001
Posted by brockp
Whew !

We blew some big ol' clams tonight, I tell you. Thanks nevertheless to those of you who stuck around the Marine Club to hear them. There were some high moments as well, Simon leaping at the behest and prodding of a female heckler ("Jump up in the air more !!") comes to mind. This girl must have seen too many Doughboys shows. Poor Simon was suffering with some flu like thing and on various medications. He warned me when the clock moved past 11:30 or so that they were wearing off and we'd better get going.

Somehow reading Mike Watt's tour diary (from the J Mascis & the Fog "More Light" tour) kept me thinking about blowing clams and I had to laugh a bunch of times while on stage. Sometimes no matter how well you know a song you just can't make it come out right. That was the case for me in our opening tune of the evening, Alright.

Chris and I had a hypersensitive musician e-argument over me getting steamed at a rehearsal this week when the clams seemed pretty major. Pretty typical that I would then clam big time in the very first song on the next gig. Clam-o-rama.

Anyways, its late and I'm going to hop into a hot bath and then rest my aching bones. Those Marshall 4x12 cabinets don't get any lighter with age. I used to carry one by myself without too much trouble in the old days. Now I creak and groan even when helping somebody up the stairs with one. I think the real reason old rockers play acoustic guitars is because they get tired of hauling so much gear around.

Tonight we were packing up gear out of the space at the same time as Morning Maker were loading out down the stairs (we share rehearsal space) and I had to wonder about their quantity of gear. Its a good thing they have a big entourage of buddies and managers or whatever because they have a f*&# of a lot of gear. Even after they are done and gone there is a lot of gear left behind. They must tour in a bus because there is no way all of that fits in a van with four or five guys. Tonight I think they had more than one vehicle. I wonder if they blew any clams...

Hashimoto video
Thursday, March 22 2001
Posted by brockp
Hashimoto's rock video "Sidewalk Support Group", which premiered last summer on TV's MuchMusic, can now been seen online here at the mondolive.com website.

Gordon's April CD is still available in the brocksongs store.

Land claims & parking disputes
Tuesday, March 13 2001
Posted by brockp
OK, this one has really got me pissed off. I went shopping tonight with Clem to the office supply store and the drug store. We were in search of a grossly overpriced ink cartridge for my printer (try $38), a box of condoms, and some dental floss.

Pretty damn boring stuff to be writing about on a world wide web site, but the corporate man who sneaks into the story has really got to be stopped. I heard this week to my astonishment that there are no treaties with first nations bands for any of the land in BC. The article I read was in the context of the current provincial government having an interest in showing some done deals to validate over five years of negociations. If I understand this correctly, it essentially means no one even bothered to hand the first nations of this part of the world a bogus piece of paper before herding them onto reservations and into residential schools and generally commiting big time genocide.

There are probably a lot of places where an interested person can learn about this stuff. Some unlikely places too. I happenned to learn something about Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's official government policy towards the Plains Indians in a National Geographic. Grant was a president of the USA for you non-yanks out there. If its in a National Geographic, its hardly left wing contraversial stuff. The shocking part of that story was that it was part of US government policy at the time to wipe out the american bison so that the Plains Indian bands would be no more trouble. The number of bison in North America went from abut 30 million in 1800 to about 1000 in 1889. A span of ninety years to kill over 29 million bison.

Throckmorton of Texas summed up the administration's de facto policy with stark precision:"There is no question that, so long as there are millions of buffaloes in the West, so long the Indians cannot be controlled, even by the strong arm of the Government. I believe it would be a great step forward in the civilisation of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence."(Nat. Geographic vol. 186, no.5)

OK, so that was a pretty long digression, but my point is this stuff has been going on a long time. How the hell does it relate to my evening shopping with my son ? Well, consider that I was parked in the lot behind London Drug for ten minutes while trying to find the aforementioned items. Well I had already got the ink cartridge from Office Depot, where there is free parking on the roof. London Drug, by contrast, has free parking for one hour while you shop there, but if you don't buy a ticket first and somehow simultaneously leave it on your dash and bring it in to be validated, you will be ticketed. As I was. The time on my bill and the time on my "violation notice" both read 21:02. These guys must be hiding behind the dumpster waiting to leap out on your vehicle as soon as you leave. Vultures.

So I got to thinking as I was fuming in the car after having an unpleasantly predictable conversation with a sales person inside London Drug. These corporations, in this case, Imperial Parking Canada Corporation, are charging people like me $37.45 per "violation" and raising the hit to $69.55 if you neglect to fork out the plastic for more than seven days. And meanwhile, the provincial government of BC tries to negotiate land claims settlements with the people who lived here and on this very land now paved over with ashphalt and monitored by employees pissing behind the box compactor (Holy Crap ! there was someone behind the dumpster now that I think of it !!!)

The irony of it and the real injustice is hard to stomach. I'm not down on the government especially, but it just peeves me to think about the parking fatcats raking in rent on land they got from someone who stole it from the people who lived on it.

Yup, these are the kinds of things you think about when you're a thin skinned sensitive songwriter-type (Ha). Next time I oughta write a lyric, but I suppose its not too late...If I spent half as much time reading the signs at the parking lot and putting a loonie in the stupid machine as I've spent complaining to the parking company and blogging on the internet, I would be $37.45 richer.

Railway railway
Friday, March 9 2001
Posted by brockp
The Brock Pytel Band has been invited to play next week at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir St. Vancouver, BC) opening for Ron Hawkins and the Rusty Nails. Ron used to be the frontman for The Lowest of the Low. Set times should be around 10pm and 11pm.

Bob does it again
Sunday, March 4 2001
Posted by brockp
Got some email today including a few photos from last night at the Anza. Rather than post them up here, you can have a look at Bob's page on the KSER website, where he has done it all for me.

PS. Got the monitor back

Anza O'Lanza
Saturday, March 3 2001
Posted by brockp
Tonight was our big rock debut at the Anza. I will say that for a first gig it was just fine and almost dandy, despite a number of hilarious events. Some highlights include Never Sleep acoustic consisting alomost entirely of low-end feedback and vocal, Real Road v.1.0 being played by Simon and Chris simultaneously in two different keys, (v.1.2 was somewhat better) and shorting out the PA in the middle of Burning Bridges. Some of my personal favourite moments were noticing someone singing along to Numbered Days, seeing Chris having a near panic attack during the aforementioned Real Road incident, bumping into Dave Reese (a man brave enough to play drums in GG Allin's band once), and having someone present me with my grade four elementary school class photo.

That last one was by a girl who shared that very grade four (and five) class with me in Beacon Hill School in Beaconsfield, Quebec. I guess there are truly only so many people named Brock Pytel in the world. First a man approached me while I was eating cold miso soup and 18 piece sushi special from Chris's fave spot on Broadway & Cambie (Chris went for a food and extra monitor run while Simon and I were scrambling to put the PA together - more about that later). He asks, "Are you Brock Pytel ?" and when I reply in the affirmative, he leaves and a woman approaches next, presumably his partner, who presents the photo. Sorry, my friend, I have forgotten your name at the moment - maybe you would rather be anonymous anyway. Thanks for showing us the photo. I don't have one and Heather was probably happy to see it.

So more about the PA situation. Well, I 'll say straight off that I have played gigs where the situation is less favourable in the PA gear department. A certain one in Toledo I think comes to mind where the Descendents' extra guitar and bass cabs became the speakers for the PA. Nevertheless, I sensed we were in trouble when only Carl (drummer of Bombshell) was to be found in the club after we loaded-in. What I mean is, normally the first thing you do when you are a band loading in for sound check is to set up your drums and amps and tune your guitars and stuff. Then the band playing last usually checks first and the band playing first checks last and leaves their gear on the stage set up. In this case we were the early band, and not only could we not sound check because the other band was not yet present, but we had to set up the PA system so that when they finally did arrive there would be some microphones and stuff.

A good quote from Cash the guitar player/singer in Bombshell was something like, "Isn't there supposed to be someone here to do that stuff ?"

Eventually Simon and I did get the PA working AND the monitors working (not bad for two buffoons) and Bombshell members 2 and 3 did show up with gear (an hour before the doors even !). Did I mention they already had their make up and leather & feathers on ? I remember thinking to myself at that point that I guess people can have radically different ideas of what is important. In their defense, the big bad H is probably a bit of a priority twister...

So a few more high points were KSER Bob and Linda driving from Seattle to make the show and shooting off the digital camera, laughing with Brent Belke in the "backstage" area hardly being able to hear due to the ear splitting ruckus, Ryan (of Dorothy) doing the heroic post gig load out and in, seeing the first two prize giveaways go to the very first (but for dawg & Linda) two people in the place (you guys know who you are...) and Simon managing to wrangle $100 out of Bombshell despite their emptying of the room in fairly short order and having somewhat more than that in hand.

I am tempted to say more because there were some very funny things said this eve but slander is bad manners - besides, A good time was had by all. Oh. Low-point. Coming home and writing your blog and realising that the extra monitor that Chris went to get is still at the club with a cable and probably will not be when you try to recover it tomorrow.

Thanks all who came out we hope to see you again soon !

Earthquake!!!!!
Thursday, March 1 2001
Posted by chrisk
Children of the Universe...

Once again I'm back from the beach. Cold tonight.

So as many people may have heard we had an earthquake here in Vancouver today. The actual epicenter was near Olympia Washington but it was still pretty strong up here. I was reading on the couch and it started to shake. I looked around and the computer monitor was shaking around the desk, the plants were shaking, everything was shaking. I looked out the window and the motortists didn't seem to notice. The windows on the building across the street were doing kind of a wavey thing. Hiedi was home sick in bed and came out saying "what the hell?". She told me she thought I had snuck into the bedroom and was hiding underneath the bed and shaking it. Guess it's time to stop with the practical jokes. If a were a certain music journalist in Vancouver (who shall remain unnamed) I would say something like "for those 5 seconds while the earth shook, the earth also stood still". But I digress.

In the half hour after the quake, I emailed my friend Mark in Toronto updates about what I'd heard on the radio and TV. I still am able to step back from situations and realize how odd life is. I've known Mark since we were around 4 years old and I often think in moments of special "lifeness" about this: Imagine if we were pulled aside sometime earlier in life and told some of the things that would happen to us. Like, "Chris, when you're 28 you will be living in Vancouver with a girl you used to ride the schoolbus with and you will experience a small earthquake and be able to type messages to a guy you went to nursery school with about every detail you find out. Also you will be playing in 2 bands with guys you really dig as musicians and beyond."

I still find the age of communication so cool. My father grew up on a farm without electricity or television until he was around 8 years old and here we are talkin on personal phones and everything else. It's crazy folks. I remember these books I was really into in grade 4 or 5 that depicted "what the future will be like" They had all these drawings of people walking on sidewalks that moved by themselves and doorlocks that read your handprint and lamps that turn on by talking to them and talking on phones with no cords. It was crazy folks.

In other neighborhood news, a store called Bill Gate Nutrition has now changed it's name to Red Flamboyant Nutrition. Now that's some nutrition.

So, we in Brock's band are looking forward to our show Friday. We had a shaky practice this week, during which I realized that I have to do some homework damnit! I think we'll do well though. Last night at practice Simon and Brock started working through some Replacements covers. I don't know many Replacements songs (I'm working on it) so I was able to see the situation from a detached point of view. The boys got so excited. I guess all musicians are music fans first, that's why they pick up and instrument in the first place, to emulate or whatever. It's just neat to see people get so excited. Hard to put into words I guess.

In Dorothy news, we spent last week in a studio with some free recording time. You gotta love that. There was a going away party for Cameron the singer and our friend Sara on Saturday. They set up a stage in the living room and people played songs all night. I think the highlight of the night was when our friend Kindra did a moving acoustic version of "2 Minutes to Midnight" by Iron Maiden. Brock and Heather came and brought Clem. He got really into watching everyone and picked up a guitar and strummed along all night. It is hard at the moment to tell every detail but it was a really fun party. We even played with balloons!

Forgive me, past english teachers....