n: vb: the spice of imagination
For those who have been aware:
I received news this grey afternoon from Alvin, currently in Bangkok, confirming our worst fears.
Larisa Fayad, a friend and colleague, unfortunately did not survive the fatal plane crash last Sunday in Phuket, Thailand.
“… the National Mime Workers Association has asked Americans to observe a moment of noise tomorrow at noon in honor of French mime Marcel Marceau.”
Impossible, this last weekend, mythology in my bed, history approaching me blind, yet wonderful. L’shana tova! Ketiva v’chatima tova.
These are my Days of Awe:
The original Friday plan was a very loosely defined, “Go To Concert”, that began with stepping out from my apartment in time for a bus that would get me to the Railway Club at nine. Easy enough. Half way to the venue, however, a man was stabbed stepping off the bus. Right in the ribs. Welcome to the poorest postal code in Canada. The assailant ran off. No way to see who it was, no way to ever find out.
This being an insulated part of the world, no one else knew what to do with violence, and so sat uselessly back, looking too shocked to move, but Crackton is my old neighborhood. This sort of thing happens practically bi-weekly. Abandoning my things to the back of the bus, I began giving orders. “Who has a cell-phone? Did anyone see what happened? Call this in.” I got a pair of sterile plastic gloves from the driver and set in staunching the blood with a bunched strip of shirt torn from the wounded man and tried to keep him awake. Paramedics arrived twenty minutes later, (slower than pizza delivery), tell me he’ll be fine, and drop me off, late and shaky, outside the Railway Club.
Not the most auspicious beginning to a night out.
Shane‘s was the first table I found in the crowd. I saved a seat with them, tried to explain what I’d been doing, found myself suddenly in the middle of a conversation about trying to look professional in a miniskirt, gave up, and went looking to see who else had showed up. (Not that it isn’t possible, they seemed very sure). There was a row by the bar, another table in the very back, and a group out on the smoking deck. It was comforting, I’d only given people a day’s warning, and – yet here they were, a little bit of everywhere. One darling friend told me she hadn’t even checked what was playing, but merely came on my invitation. After my stressful transit adventure, her comment was a cliche ray of light in the murky pub darkness.
The concert, thankfully, was phenomenal. I parked myself up right against the stage and watched rapt for the entire show. That 1 Guy plays with an exuberant precision, like a holy embodiment of joyful, theatrical grace. It washed the entire medical emergency right out of my system. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think there is anything like it. His instrument is an intrepid midi-wired double-necked upright bass made out of pipe and studded with triggers, but not really. And while he sings and enthusiastically plays this poetic contraption, building intense, complex sample loops, he’s mucking elegantly about with three kick pedals, a snare drum, and a saw. It’s almost overwhelming, like watching a sound-cultivating conjurer with as much energy as a coke-high David Byrne. {check if he’s playing near you}
END OF PART ONE.
Saturday, September 22nd
12 noon to 12 midnight at The Chapel
(304 Dunlevy St. Vancouver)
THE BAD BOYS OF CANADIAN ART BRING LOUD LOWBROW TO FUNERAL CHAPEL
    Count on Canada’s crowned kings of Lowbrow art to choose The CHAPEL, a converted Downtown-Eastside funeral home as the location to mount the show that is destined to breathe new life into the corpse of Vancouver’s modern art scene.
THE ART!
    It is in these grand environs that I, Braineater and 12 Midnite will present an 8000 square foot show of the art that has kept these two at the front of the rat pack for the last two decades. From Braineater’s classic blockhead paintings or his buxom devil-girls and Midnite’s graffiti imagery and neon art to the newest work that’ll be so fresh it’ll still be sticky, fans old and new will get a chance to see Lowbrow as it was intended: really big and a little scary.
THE CARS!
    Of course, hot rods have always been a key ingredient in the Lowbrow culture and this show’s got them in spades. “One-man-hot-rod-gang” 12 Midnite will very fittingly, considering the venue, be unveiling his in-progress hot rod 1963 Pontiac “Boneville” Hearse along with a slew of his other cars in all their battle-worn and flat black glory, while not to be left in anyone’s exhaust cloud, “Lowbrow lout” Braineater will revive his 54 Desoto custom, “Draconia” for the occasion.
THE MUSIC!
    Both I,Braineater and 12 Midnite have always included musical performances in their art shows, and this one will certainly continue that tradition.
    I, Braineater is a musical chameleon so we can only guess at what form his music will take this time, be in sweaty glam-punk or cool electronica, it’ll be Braineater through and through.
    12 MIDNITE will be debuting songs off his soon to be released CD “Sweet Turns Sour” which will be available as a limited-edition pre-release at the show. This will also mark the professional debut of Midnite’s son, Harley Slade who will be playing guitar and keyboard in the band which will also include Pointed Stick Tony Bardach on bass and drummer Marc L’esperance.
Though the day-long show is free to attend and all ages are welcome, the evening performance will have a $5 cover charge from 8PM on and tickets will be available at the door.
Who lives in L.A.?
Your mission is as follows:
Obtain entry to the The Hollywood Knitting Factory this upcoming Sunday, September 23rd, for 7:30 pm.
Rock out.
(Tickets will be the most worthwhile $10 you’ve spent this year.)
People have been trying to make plans with me for this upcoming week. This is why I’m not.
this week only
Well, now it’s officially Tuesday and I’m still running on only two hours of sleep since Thursday night. There are many and various reasons for this particular act of madness, all of which are obscenely reasonable. I say obscene, because lawks a mercy, what am I doing still awake?
from bOINGbOING:
The Canadian Recording Industry Association (which represents multinational, US, and other non-Canadian record labels exclusively) has come out against the “private copying levy,” a tax on blank media that it lobbied hard for over the past 15 years. The levy is charged against blank media, and the money raised is paid to copyright holders in exchange for the right to copy music and other works onto the media. CRIA apparently fears that the levy can be used to legalize P2P music-trading in Canada (an activity whose legality is in dispute right now), thereby breaking the P2P deadlock, decriminalizing millions of music fans, and paying millions of dollars to their members. The record industry giants would prefer to go on suing music fans and technology companies — an activity that pays the record companies handsomely, while encouraging fans to defect from buying music in the future, and which does not pay one cent to any artist.
“The Canadian Recording Industry Association this week quietly filed documents in the Federal Court of Appeal that will likely shock many in the industry. CRIA, which spent more than 15 years lobbying for the creation of the private copying levy, is now fighting to eliminate the application of the levy on the Apple iPod since it believes that the Copyright Board of Canada’s recent decision to allow a proposed tariff on iPods to proceed “broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement.”
Given that CRIA’s members collect millions from the private copying levy, the decision to oppose its expansion may come as a surprise. Yet the move reflects a reality that CRIA has previously been loath to acknowledge – the Copyright Board has developed jurisprudence that provides a strong argument that downloading music on peer-to-peer networks is lawful in Canada. Indeed, CRIA President Graham Henderson provides a roadmap for the argument in his affidavit:
“First, the Board has stated, in obiter dicta, on several occasions that the Private Copying regime legalizes copying for the private use of the person making the copy, regardless of whether the source is non-infringing or not. Therefore, according to the Board, downloading an infringing track from the Internet is not infringing, as long as the downloaded copy is made onto an ‘audio recording medium’…”
HEY SEATTLE!
That 1 Guy is playing this evening at the Tractor Tavern. (watch the video) (listen to the music)
His gig here was so phenomenal that I can’t, in all reason, pass up the chance for a second show. It’s looking like I might be in attendance, so this is our chance to finally get down and shake some booty together. Who’s in?
Edit: Alright, there’s no “might be” anymore. “Might be” was before we spent 12 hours together. I’d have left with him this afternoon, but there’s no busses back, so Nicole and I are going instead. We’re leaving in an hour.
