Decembrists, Basement Sweets
I didn't want to write a journal about my move to Vancouver because I didn't want to cheapen what is a big, crazy, life-altering relocation by filling the internet with a half-assed travel log nobody would care about. It's good that I didn't, because the first three weeks had so many ups and downs that it would have sounded like the world's most manic-depressive bi-polar idiot on cocaine-laced prozac. So I'll keep the preamble brief:
Week 1 and 2 were fantastic. Everything was new and exciting, and all I did was find an apartment, find a job and spend money. Good times and sunny skies.
Week 3 I started the job. Keep in mind that I used to get paid to watch movies and read comic books, so the transition into real work was seriously difficult. I even went so far as to tell my boss I was quitting. I later smoothed things over and kept the job, because it's not really that hard, I'm just extremely soft. But fuck, I thought I was living in hell. The fact that I had no friends was also brought into sharp relief. Not my best week ever. In fact, probably my worst week in many years.
As for money, it's been disappearing fast because besides rent I only spend it on four things, but I can't seem to make myself stop spending on those four things.
1) Fast food -- This one's killing me. I gotta go buy some groceries. I've been eating all my meals from small restaurants and road-side vendors for two weeks. It adds up, but it's very easy and delicious.
2) Movies -- I don't have a tv, so the theatre it is. They have tons of great movies here that would never play back in Fredericton. Garden State, for example, which has one of the coolest trailers ever. I can't play it at this here internet cafe, but the one time I saw it was mesmeriffic.
3) Booze -- I've done pretty well on this one, mostly because I like drinking in combination with live music, and that was slow getting off the ground.
4) Bands -- This one is the most important, and is why I decided to re-activate this journal. Music is my salvation, and the fact that it took me so long to get out and see some bands is one of the things that made my third week so bad. In fact, mssing a particular band made that week much, much worse.
As soon as I got into town I started making notes about bands. I almost caught an all-ages hardcore show at the end of week 1. I just happened to see the poster and tried to find my way to the venue, but by the time I finally got there it was probably half over, though I don't know for sure, because I never actually did find the place. I knew I was in the vicinity, so I decided to try tracking it down later, for future reference. Which reminds me, I've still gotta do that.
Week 2 was a bust, because I knew nothing about local bands and could only go by what was listed in the free entertainment papers. Week 3 looked more promising. The Distillers were playing, but they wanted $25. That seemed crazy to me, being weaned on the Fredericton scene -- $4 to see four bands who you probably knew members of, that was the kinda scene I liked. So I was 50/50 on the Distillers thing. I would have had a good time, but $25 is a load of dough.
What I was really excited about was NoMeansNo, which was the day before The Distillers. It was only $12, and I ran out and bought a ticket right away. I first heard NoMeansNo around 1997, when they had already been together for six thousand years. Dan lent me Worldhood Of The World and I loved it. Humans is still one of my favorite songs. Also, the week before I moved, I was talking to Matte (or "Matty", as he likes to be called) about punk bands, and he told me about the time he saw NoMeansNo play, and the insane power they projected. So I was seriously stoked.
The day before the show was my orientation as a dishwasher at Fancy Restaurant, Inc., and my spirit was instantly trampled. NoMeansNo might have saved me, but my first official shift overlapped the show. As a final kick in the balls, I also had to work during The Distillers.
Man, did I hang my head on the way home that day. I found some kid with a Pennywise t-shirt at Broadway Station to take the NoMeansNo ticket; he wasn't old enough to get in, but he told me he'd find somebody who could us it. I don't know if he scalped it or gave it away or what, I just didn't want the ticket to go to waste. He was the closest thing to a punk I could find on such short notice.
After the brain-crushing of that whole week, I told my boss I was quitting before getting transferred to days instead. So work shouldn't interfere with any more bands. And on that note, the vehicle of my salvation... my first Vancouver show.
The Decembrists w/ The Long Winters
May 28, 2004 - Richards on Richards - $15
Waiting in line outside, I started chatting with the two guys on either side of me. I will re-iterate that I have no friends, so if I see these guys again, I can at least say, "Hey, I met you at the Decembrists!" and properly introduce myself. Even if they become friends who I only see at shows, that's fine with me. We hit it off pretty well, and one guy told me that Richards was a good place to see my first band, because it's an excellent venue with the best sound in town. The name refers to the fact that it's on Richards street, by the way.
I got inside and he wasn't kidding. The place was beautiful, a good size without being huge, gorgeous woodwork and a big circular balcony around the dancefloor/theoretical pit. At first I felt a bit of a twinge of annoyance, because this is where NoMeansNo had played the week before. Until about halfway through the opening act I couldn't help envisioning them playing, and imagining all the head-nodding nerd-chic kids in attendance replaced with rowdy, moshing punks. Fuck. But The Long Winters suddenly played a song that really stood out from the rest of their set, and that finally snapped me into the coolness of the present. It's not often that a song can really fully grab you the first time you hear it, but that one did the trick. I didn't buy their CD, but that's because I had somehow already spent six thousand dollars that day.
I was introduced to The Decembrists by my friend Josh. I didn't get around to listening to them much before I left, but I knew he was mental for them, so I bought a ticket. I had made a bunch of mp3 CDs before I left Fredericton, and one of them had a Decembrist album buried deep within it, so I listened to it a bunch of times in preperation for the show. They started off with Leslie Ann Levine, which was my favorite song on that one album, so things were all downhill from there. Haha! I'm kidding! They played a pile of great songs I'd never heard, and I started to suspect that the album I had (Castaways and Cut-Outs) may be eclipsed by their other albums, because every song they played seemed to kick the fuck out of my ass.
I got to drink some booze and listen to some great music, and on the way home I felt
downright happy. I couldn't wait until the next time I had internet access so I could tell Josh all about it, which eventually turned into me writing this instead. Without his recommendation I never would have gone, so kudos to you, Josh! Internet friends: You can take them wherever you go, because you've never actually met them in the first place. Fabulous.
When I got home I fell straight asleep and slept for five or six hours. It was a shallow sleep, which made it easy to remember my dreams, and -- get this -- they were all about me hanging out downtown, drinking, going to shows and getting to know people. There was no deep symbolism in those dreams, folks. Before the Decembrists I felt like I was seriously lost at sea, a million miles from home and without a friend in the world. After the show, I was so energized and confident in my social potency that I was dreaming about how cool it was gonna be living in Vancouver. That's good stuff. Thank you, Decembrists. Best $15 I've spent all year.
Kids These Days w/ The Basement Sweets
May 29, 2004 - Pat's Pub - $5
I saw the poster for this show on a pole near my work, and it looked really cool -- All the show info was written of the various parts of a guy's hand, and then somebody took a picture of his hand. Take my word for it, it ruled. I had two choices for bands that evening, but the poster was enough to sell me. Sparta was also playing at Richards, and on the one hand I had fallen for the charm of Richards really quickly, and wanted to go back. But on the other hand, Richards puts on a lot of their shows, such as The Decembrists and Sparta, really early, so they can kick everyone out by 10:30pm and make some more money off the club hoppers. That kind of double booking rubbed me the wrong way, since I don't understand clubbers. I can't see going to a bar unless there's a band, it's just too weird. Even if you go to see a band in order to get a feel for the scene and hit on chicks, at least there's a band there to justify it. Going to a club for no reason but to hit on chicks is way too nakedly honest for me. And if the girls aren't biting, then what is there to fall back on? I could never figure out what the club scene is actually based around, since it's just a buncha cheesy dance music and the occasional disco ball. Maybe this is why I don't meet more chicks. But everybody waiting outside to get into Richards after the Decembrists show yesterday seemed like a real loser, so I didn't feel too bad about not being one of them.
Actually, with the early show I probably could have gone to both Sparta and Kids These Days, but Sparta wanted $18.50, and Wiretap Scars just wasn't that great. So it was back to the roots. Two bands I'd never heard of at some weird, run-down venue, for the low, low price of $5.
Pat's Pub was not a bad place, it reminded me a lot of those pubs you always see in British movies. More like somebody's really big kitchen than a bar. It was connected to a hotel restaurant, so under BC law they had to stop serving alcohol at midnight, which was sorta weak. I did appreciate their pricing system, though: A single rum & coke was $3.50, but a double was only $4.50. That was music to my ears, because I usually get doubles and Richards charges $8.25, which is a serious kick in the nuts.
Pat's Pub is unfortunately located right in the middle of East Hastings street, otherwise known as Crackville. We used to call my neighborhood back in Fredericton "Crackton" as a joke, because once or twice a year there was a low-key drug bust. Take any rundown, graffiti covered shit-street you've ever seen in a movie, and that's Hastings. Bums and dealers and general weirdos wander the streets at all hours. Luckily that night it was raining, so that put a pretty good cramp in their numbers.
Vancouver's a weird city. It can change literally from block to block. You'll be walking down the crappiest crap street you've ever seen, and all of a sudden you'll stumble into a public park filled with laughing children. One street over from Hastings, on Pender, there's a mini Chinatown and a huge movie theatre that are both immaculate. It's like they have those dog collars with invisible fences to keep out all the vagrants and scumbags. Or maybe a system of serious beatings. Whatever it is, it seems to be working.
One of the guys I met at the Decembrists the day before mentioned how much he missed seeing smaller bands for low sums of money -- Apparently the heyday in Vancouver was 3-5 years ago, and all of the old venues have systematically shut down since then. He listed off a few places, but the only one I remember was The Starfish Room. So apparently bands need to find new places to play, and one of the members of Kids These Days mentioned that it was their first time playing Pat's Pub. The place wasn't packed, possibly due to the rain and the new venue, but it was still a pretty respectable turnout. I had kind of hoped that Vancouver would be such an insatiable hotbed of music fans that every single show of any kind would be teeming with people, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Which can be a good thing, because lack of numbers is how I met all the band members I knew back in Fredericton, and that theory held up here in Van.
Kids These Days were a five piece with four different singers, all of whom were pretty good. They sounded a bit like Modest Mouse, and they had a few moments of really kick ass stuff, as well as a few moments where it sounded like they had gotten lost, though that may have been deliberate. I found out their CD will be out in July, so if I'm not broke I'll give it a shot.
The highlight for me was the opening act, The Basement Sweets. They're a 3 piece and tonight was their CD release gig, so I bought a copy. At varying points throughout the evening I introduced myself to Jesse the guitar guy, Kevin the drum guy, and most importantly, Daphne the bass/keyboard girl. Just to save myself future repetition, I'm gonna state for the record that it only takes me about half an hour to tumble into a crush on any female musician, and if she's got black hair it only takes half that long. So about 15 minutes after they got on stage, I started thinking that this Daphne chick looked pretty swell.
They've got another show on Friday, so I'm gonna swing by and see if any of them remember me. I figure if I'm gonna make friends with people, they may as well be musicians. Because musicians are intrinsically cooler than other people. Don't question it.
My favorite song on The Basement Sweets cd is Minus Minus, which Daphne sings. Give yourself 10 points if you saw that coming.
So Long And Thanks For All The Shows
Posted to the Deleted Scene board, May 03 2004
This is Keith, the guy who used to work at the comic shop downtown. I'm taking off for B.C. tomorrow, and before I go I want to post a final message to thank everybody involved in Deleted Scene. I've been to some great shows and some not so great shows in Fredericton, but I wouldn't have been to half as many without DS.
Thanks to Sean and Tanya for getting this ball rolling, and to everybody I met along the way: Zach and the boys from Dionisus, Jon from El Diablo, Roger from the Argentos, Justin, Emo, Davey Danger and everyone else I gave a bruise to at some point.
Also Kora and Matte, for putting on the only shows I went to last year where my ears didn't ring the next morning, and Pimp Tea for teaching me the true meaning of having balls the size of watermellons.
If anybody from Fredericton is planning on being in Vancouver in the next year, drop me a line. Even if I never met you before, it's always good to have a connection. We can show those British Columbia fucks how it's done.
Keith McNally
keithmpire.com
keithmpire@hotmail.com
Week 1 and 2 were fantastic. Everything was new and exciting, and all I did was find an apartment, find a job and spend money. Good times and sunny skies.
Week 3 I started the job. Keep in mind that I used to get paid to watch movies and read comic books, so the transition into real work was seriously difficult. I even went so far as to tell my boss I was quitting. I later smoothed things over and kept the job, because it's not really that hard, I'm just extremely soft. But fuck, I thought I was living in hell. The fact that I had no friends was also brought into sharp relief. Not my best week ever. In fact, probably my worst week in many years.
As for money, it's been disappearing fast because besides rent I only spend it on four things, but I can't seem to make myself stop spending on those four things.
1) Fast food -- This one's killing me. I gotta go buy some groceries. I've been eating all my meals from small restaurants and road-side vendors for two weeks. It adds up, but it's very easy and delicious.
2) Movies -- I don't have a tv, so the theatre it is. They have tons of great movies here that would never play back in Fredericton. Garden State, for example, which has one of the coolest trailers ever. I can't play it at this here internet cafe, but the one time I saw it was mesmeriffic.
3) Booze -- I've done pretty well on this one, mostly because I like drinking in combination with live music, and that was slow getting off the ground.
4) Bands -- This one is the most important, and is why I decided to re-activate this journal. Music is my salvation, and the fact that it took me so long to get out and see some bands is one of the things that made my third week so bad. In fact, mssing a particular band made that week much, much worse.
As soon as I got into town I started making notes about bands. I almost caught an all-ages hardcore show at the end of week 1. I just happened to see the poster and tried to find my way to the venue, but by the time I finally got there it was probably half over, though I don't know for sure, because I never actually did find the place. I knew I was in the vicinity, so I decided to try tracking it down later, for future reference. Which reminds me, I've still gotta do that.
Week 2 was a bust, because I knew nothing about local bands and could only go by what was listed in the free entertainment papers. Week 3 looked more promising. The Distillers were playing, but they wanted $25. That seemed crazy to me, being weaned on the Fredericton scene -- $4 to see four bands who you probably knew members of, that was the kinda scene I liked. So I was 50/50 on the Distillers thing. I would have had a good time, but $25 is a load of dough.
What I was really excited about was NoMeansNo, which was the day before The Distillers. It was only $12, and I ran out and bought a ticket right away. I first heard NoMeansNo around 1997, when they had already been together for six thousand years. Dan lent me Worldhood Of The World and I loved it. Humans is still one of my favorite songs. Also, the week before I moved, I was talking to Matte (or "Matty", as he likes to be called) about punk bands, and he told me about the time he saw NoMeansNo play, and the insane power they projected. So I was seriously stoked.
The day before the show was my orientation as a dishwasher at Fancy Restaurant, Inc., and my spirit was instantly trampled. NoMeansNo might have saved me, but my first official shift overlapped the show. As a final kick in the balls, I also had to work during The Distillers.
Man, did I hang my head on the way home that day. I found some kid with a Pennywise t-shirt at Broadway Station to take the NoMeansNo ticket; he wasn't old enough to get in, but he told me he'd find somebody who could us it. I don't know if he scalped it or gave it away or what, I just didn't want the ticket to go to waste. He was the closest thing to a punk I could find on such short notice.
After the brain-crushing of that whole week, I told my boss I was quitting before getting transferred to days instead. So work shouldn't interfere with any more bands. And on that note, the vehicle of my salvation... my first Vancouver show.
The Decembrists w/ The Long Winters
May 28, 2004 - Richards on Richards - $15
Waiting in line outside, I started chatting with the two guys on either side of me. I will re-iterate that I have no friends, so if I see these guys again, I can at least say, "Hey, I met you at the Decembrists!" and properly introduce myself. Even if they become friends who I only see at shows, that's fine with me. We hit it off pretty well, and one guy told me that Richards was a good place to see my first band, because it's an excellent venue with the best sound in town. The name refers to the fact that it's on Richards street, by the way.
I got inside and he wasn't kidding. The place was beautiful, a good size without being huge, gorgeous woodwork and a big circular balcony around the dancefloor/theoretical pit. At first I felt a bit of a twinge of annoyance, because this is where NoMeansNo had played the week before. Until about halfway through the opening act I couldn't help envisioning them playing, and imagining all the head-nodding nerd-chic kids in attendance replaced with rowdy, moshing punks. Fuck. But The Long Winters suddenly played a song that really stood out from the rest of their set, and that finally snapped me into the coolness of the present. It's not often that a song can really fully grab you the first time you hear it, but that one did the trick. I didn't buy their CD, but that's because I had somehow already spent six thousand dollars that day.
I was introduced to The Decembrists by my friend Josh. I didn't get around to listening to them much before I left, but I knew he was mental for them, so I bought a ticket. I had made a bunch of mp3 CDs before I left Fredericton, and one of them had a Decembrist album buried deep within it, so I listened to it a bunch of times in preperation for the show. They started off with Leslie Ann Levine, which was my favorite song on that one album, so things were all downhill from there. Haha! I'm kidding! They played a pile of great songs I'd never heard, and I started to suspect that the album I had (Castaways and Cut-Outs) may be eclipsed by their other albums, because every song they played seemed to kick the fuck out of my ass.
I got to drink some booze and listen to some great music, and on the way home I felt
downright happy. I couldn't wait until the next time I had internet access so I could tell Josh all about it, which eventually turned into me writing this instead. Without his recommendation I never would have gone, so kudos to you, Josh! Internet friends: You can take them wherever you go, because you've never actually met them in the first place. Fabulous.
When I got home I fell straight asleep and slept for five or six hours. It was a shallow sleep, which made it easy to remember my dreams, and -- get this -- they were all about me hanging out downtown, drinking, going to shows and getting to know people. There was no deep symbolism in those dreams, folks. Before the Decembrists I felt like I was seriously lost at sea, a million miles from home and without a friend in the world. After the show, I was so energized and confident in my social potency that I was dreaming about how cool it was gonna be living in Vancouver. That's good stuff. Thank you, Decembrists. Best $15 I've spent all year.
Kids These Days w/ The Basement Sweets
May 29, 2004 - Pat's Pub - $5
I saw the poster for this show on a pole near my work, and it looked really cool -- All the show info was written of the various parts of a guy's hand, and then somebody took a picture of his hand. Take my word for it, it ruled. I had two choices for bands that evening, but the poster was enough to sell me. Sparta was also playing at Richards, and on the one hand I had fallen for the charm of Richards really quickly, and wanted to go back. But on the other hand, Richards puts on a lot of their shows, such as The Decembrists and Sparta, really early, so they can kick everyone out by 10:30pm and make some more money off the club hoppers. That kind of double booking rubbed me the wrong way, since I don't understand clubbers. I can't see going to a bar unless there's a band, it's just too weird. Even if you go to see a band in order to get a feel for the scene and hit on chicks, at least there's a band there to justify it. Going to a club for no reason but to hit on chicks is way too nakedly honest for me. And if the girls aren't biting, then what is there to fall back on? I could never figure out what the club scene is actually based around, since it's just a buncha cheesy dance music and the occasional disco ball. Maybe this is why I don't meet more chicks. But everybody waiting outside to get into Richards after the Decembrists show yesterday seemed like a real loser, so I didn't feel too bad about not being one of them.
Actually, with the early show I probably could have gone to both Sparta and Kids These Days, but Sparta wanted $18.50, and Wiretap Scars just wasn't that great. So it was back to the roots. Two bands I'd never heard of at some weird, run-down venue, for the low, low price of $5.
Pat's Pub was not a bad place, it reminded me a lot of those pubs you always see in British movies. More like somebody's really big kitchen than a bar. It was connected to a hotel restaurant, so under BC law they had to stop serving alcohol at midnight, which was sorta weak. I did appreciate their pricing system, though: A single rum & coke was $3.50, but a double was only $4.50. That was music to my ears, because I usually get doubles and Richards charges $8.25, which is a serious kick in the nuts.
Pat's Pub is unfortunately located right in the middle of East Hastings street, otherwise known as Crackville. We used to call my neighborhood back in Fredericton "Crackton" as a joke, because once or twice a year there was a low-key drug bust. Take any rundown, graffiti covered shit-street you've ever seen in a movie, and that's Hastings. Bums and dealers and general weirdos wander the streets at all hours. Luckily that night it was raining, so that put a pretty good cramp in their numbers.
Vancouver's a weird city. It can change literally from block to block. You'll be walking down the crappiest crap street you've ever seen, and all of a sudden you'll stumble into a public park filled with laughing children. One street over from Hastings, on Pender, there's a mini Chinatown and a huge movie theatre that are both immaculate. It's like they have those dog collars with invisible fences to keep out all the vagrants and scumbags. Or maybe a system of serious beatings. Whatever it is, it seems to be working.
One of the guys I met at the Decembrists the day before mentioned how much he missed seeing smaller bands for low sums of money -- Apparently the heyday in Vancouver was 3-5 years ago, and all of the old venues have systematically shut down since then. He listed off a few places, but the only one I remember was The Starfish Room. So apparently bands need to find new places to play, and one of the members of Kids These Days mentioned that it was their first time playing Pat's Pub. The place wasn't packed, possibly due to the rain and the new venue, but it was still a pretty respectable turnout. I had kind of hoped that Vancouver would be such an insatiable hotbed of music fans that every single show of any kind would be teeming with people, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Which can be a good thing, because lack of numbers is how I met all the band members I knew back in Fredericton, and that theory held up here in Van.
Kids These Days were a five piece with four different singers, all of whom were pretty good. They sounded a bit like Modest Mouse, and they had a few moments of really kick ass stuff, as well as a few moments where it sounded like they had gotten lost, though that may have been deliberate. I found out their CD will be out in July, so if I'm not broke I'll give it a shot.
The highlight for me was the opening act, The Basement Sweets. They're a 3 piece and tonight was their CD release gig, so I bought a copy. At varying points throughout the evening I introduced myself to Jesse the guitar guy, Kevin the drum guy, and most importantly, Daphne the bass/keyboard girl. Just to save myself future repetition, I'm gonna state for the record that it only takes me about half an hour to tumble into a crush on any female musician, and if she's got black hair it only takes half that long. So about 15 minutes after they got on stage, I started thinking that this Daphne chick looked pretty swell.
They've got another show on Friday, so I'm gonna swing by and see if any of them remember me. I figure if I'm gonna make friends with people, they may as well be musicians. Because musicians are intrinsically cooler than other people. Don't question it.
My favorite song on The Basement Sweets cd is Minus Minus, which Daphne sings. Give yourself 10 points if you saw that coming.
So Long And Thanks For All The Shows
Posted to the Deleted Scene board, May 03 2004
This is Keith, the guy who used to work at the comic shop downtown. I'm taking off for B.C. tomorrow, and before I go I want to post a final message to thank everybody involved in Deleted Scene. I've been to some great shows and some not so great shows in Fredericton, but I wouldn't have been to half as many without DS.
Thanks to Sean and Tanya for getting this ball rolling, and to everybody I met along the way: Zach and the boys from Dionisus, Jon from El Diablo, Roger from the Argentos, Justin, Emo, Davey Danger and everyone else I gave a bruise to at some point.
Also Kora and Matte, for putting on the only shows I went to last year where my ears didn't ring the next morning, and Pimp Tea for teaching me the true meaning of having balls the size of watermellons.
If anybody from Fredericton is planning on being in Vancouver in the next year, drop me a line. Even if I never met you before, it's always good to have a connection. We can show those British Columbia fucks how it's done.
Keith McNally
keithmpire.com
keithmpire@hotmail.com