by Miné Salkin | Sep 14, 2008 | live action
Bad Religion
September 14 2008
Commodore Ballroom
It’s hard to imagine a 15 year-old frontman Greg Graffin and his school friends deciding to form Bad Religion, the most epic, accomplished and inspiring punk rock bands. How could one envision such libertarian punk fantasies, or such immaculate hardcore harmony at such a tender and suggestible age?
The night kicked off with two nondescript screamo bands that sucked so badly that no more mention shall be made of them. It was a Sunday night, and the angry punks in the crowd kept chugging back more beer, checking the time, and impatiently pushing up closer to the front, waiting for the show to start. There was a definite sense of growing frustration; the Commodore’s decision to downsize drinks from bottles to plastic cups coupled with the fact that it was they worst night of the week in which to hammered was on everyone’s mind. Finally the legendary sextet walked onto the stage, and the body of the crowd converged to a dense square-shaped mass of excitement.
They started the show with a highly energized performance of “21st Century Digital Boy” originally recorded for their fifth album Against the Grain (1990). It’s likely one of the best songs to start out with, not just because it’s infectious and catchy, but we can all relate to Graffin’ lament that “I don’t know how to live/ But I got a lot of toys.” It also brings to mind all of our mothers strung out on valium, an sad image that is surprisingly “effectual.” Selecting from a wide range of singles, and some not-so-common tracks like “Anesthesia,” BR gave a fantastic set list that sampled from the whole 28-year span of their discography.
Three of the six band members on stage were the original founding members, and they were easily spotted. Graffin delivered a vibrant, defiant performance: his iconic finger-pointing and unrelenting stare gave him an edge to his philosophical rants. Arguing for a rejection of consumerist culture and social conformity, usually guys this age come across as being pedantic or just full of it. Even those more sensitive of loud, distorted music should venture into the lyrical world of BR. Songwriter Graffin holds a Ph.D., and his understanding of politics, injustice, and individual suffering is delivered with poetic integrity, and reinvents the idea of social responsibility through critical thinking and non-conformity.
Bass guitarist Jay Bentley seemed to have the most fun on our Vancouver stage. He jumped around and sweated the most profusely, smiling demonically like some intense, disturbing fat kid eyeing your DQ Parfait on the bus. Speaking of which, lead guitarist Brian Baker looked terribly overheated, unfit, and generally sagged instead of rising to the occasion. While performing the quintessential punk song “Come Join Us” off the 1996 album The Gray Race, Baker hogged the one fan the entire time. Come on, Brian.
Overall the show was pretty fantastic. They may be getting older, but better in the same way as a wine slowly ages to perfection. A punk wine, that is.
by Miné Salkin | Aug 31, 2008 | live action
August 31, 2008
Day One
It was one of those lazy late summer afternoons that you could eat with a spoon. While most music festivals tend to have an anxious, apprehensive tension amongst the crowd, the grounds were covered by hippies, young parents, and even the occasional punk who were all sitting comfortably on the warm grass.
The Evaporators came on sharply, and started to stir up the crowd with their bare chested antics. Clad in white jumpsuits with red and blue stripes, Nardwuar the Human Serviette entreated us to a good larf, exposing his wooly chest, screaming lyrics about homelessness, and countless other acts of unconventional behavior. While the set list focused on their last album Gassy Jack & Other Tales, one could argue that what the band lacks in actual musical talent, they make up for in hilariously eccentric body play. Running through the crowd with maracas and a demented grin on his face, or climbing onto the audience to create a human piano stand, The Evaporators impressed us all with their relentless anarchist spirit.
After the thrash, Deerhoof of San Francisco changed the atmosphere with their quirky alt-rock sound delicately coupled with the little-girl voice of singer Satomi Matsuzaki. Rocky but sultry, the quartet rocked out with classic songs such as “Twin Killers” and other tunes from The Runners Four. Their aural quirkiness was matched by their physical gestures, as Greg Saunier and John Dietrich plucked and played in what seemed like borderline seizure-type motion.
Destroyer’s performance was weird and cacophonic, but not in the way that most people enjoy that musical experiment. Dan Bejar’s lyrics of love lost and spiritual confusion were cryptic and challenging, but his voice brings to mind a love-sick, drunken hobo. Coupled with the guitarist’s unreasonable use of tremolo, this act left much to be desired.
While the fest had its share of eccentricity, Andrew Bird and Neko Case had an altruistic soothing effect to counteract it. Bird, the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist from Chicago Illinois was intoxicating as the twilight began to set in. Singing beautiful things about intuition amidst a backdrop of cello strings and pizzicato violin, Bird was one of the best acts of the night.
Following him was Neko Case, who played songs from her upcoming album due out in March 09. While she belts it out with The New Pornographers, Neko’s performance was humbling and sweet, a familiar country feeling where the singer croons softly and laughs at herself between songs. She sang “I wish I was the Moon tonight” in a way that brought to mind a modern day Patsy Cline. Sad but spirited, Neko’s voice was endearing and humble to the core, and her lyrical component was touching as it revealed the wisdom of an old soul caught in the commercialism of the 21st century.
by Miné Salkin | Jul 30, 2008 | live action
In many ways, this year’s Pemberton festival turned all of us concert-goers into experimental subjects for how a festival should be organized. During the past week, I’ve read several reviews in many of the local papers, but none of which captured the entire sentiment of the three-day gongshow than the headline for the 24hrs magazine which read: “traffic, dust, fun,” succinctly describing the order of the weekend’s most memorable elements.
After waiting in line for about 14 hours in a hot, inland dustbowl, I finally caught the Metric show on Friday afternoon. Emily Haines was decked out in a shimmery, almost space-age sliver minidress that reminded me of a futuristic Kubrickian vision. Later on that evening I enjoyed Wolfmother’s metallic rampage as the band ravaged Zeppelin’s hits and left the crowd begging for more distorted violence. Come nightfall, the Mount Currie stage ushered in Nine Inch Nails, the day’s headliners, and the shit hit the fan. I was about 40 feet away from the mosh pit but still got tossed about and burned by rogue cigarettes as the show peaked at “Closer.”
epitome shot
On Saturday morning we had a lovely omelette breakfast at the campsite and went back to see Black Mountain, The Tragically Hip and of course, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. During the show, Gordon Downie during entreated the crowd to his iconic shifty-eyed, but strangely friendly smiles while pretending to be an ape who didn’t comprehend the electronic capacities of his own microphone. Tom Petty at twilight was smooth and enchanting as the crowd metamorphosed into middle-aged rock veterans who didn’t have the heart to block your view of the stage. The Flaming Lips showed up with these big fucking balloon things full of confetti that complimented the band’s eccentric lyrical component. To add to the confusion, they had a chorus of Teletubbies on the left side dancing and singing, a bizarre combination of weird music and even more strange scenery to make a fantastic show. The verdict? Black Mountain offered far more energy live and attracted an exodus of smelly but chill hippies and modern bohemians. Man I just love that stuff way too much.
The downside of this all is that I had to leave and miss the entire last day due to complications and major pooning out by some of my companions. I don’t have anything else left to say except that getting to and from the show was a fucking nightmare, but the music was fabulous and a remedy for it all. If Pemberton hopes to be an annual event it better shape up its over-idealistic view of checking 10,000 people’s personal bags to see if they snuck in booze after they’ve been waiting around for hours. You just can’t treat people like that.
by Miné Salkin | Jun 22, 2008 | books
cobain: charismatic but troubled
[Riverhead Books, 2002]
Don’t read my diary when I’m gone.
OK, I’m going to work now, when you wake up this morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.
Perhaps it is a bit unusual to be seeing a reactionary review of Kurt Cobain’s Journals these days, but the lingering pain and sadness of Nirvana’s front man resonates strongly yet. Written in the author’s childish, chicken-scratch hand, Cobain’s honesty shines through as he narrates the course of the band’s history, their rise to fame, discussions of love and sex, and other deeply personal avenues of introspection. Spiritual and sprawling, Journals is an intimate posthumous look into the complicated balance between rock and roll, the personal alienation of fame, and the dark world of drug addiction.
The everlasting image of Cobain is that of a man tortured by the conflicted personalities he had to endure: the depressed, social outcast and the epitome of the new rock star, the dawning of the age of the grunge.
Aside from reading his first-hand accounts of living the life of a terminally-depressed heroin addict, Journals show Kurt’s struggle between the massive dichotomies he sets up in his own mind. Caught between right and wrong, fleeting happiness and self-induced torture, the rock star and the junkie, Cobain struggles to identify himself through these polar opposites. This theme is even prefaced on the first page of the diary as he writes:
“Don’t read my diary when I’m gone.
OK, I’m going to work now, when you wake up this morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.”
Terrible, but poignant. It’s conceivable that most musicians become somewhat troubled by the cost of fame, but Kurt’s radical split makes the whole of Journals so incredibly fascinating as it samples from the multiply realizable extremes of his psychological states. Cobain’s need to be validated in some other way which seems unintelligible even to himself is something worthy of an Aronofsky film; beguilingly contradictory and amazing too.
Dancing between ideals of nihilism and an utopic Buddhist vision of the world, Kurt writes openly about other more personal matters in a way that simultaneously repulses and attracts. In one particularly gruesome entry he writes about a girl whom in junior high attempts to have intercourse with him. When he asks if she’s done it before she replies “many times, mainly with my cousin” which causes a frightened yet sexually curious adolescent boy to develop an unusual obsession with the female reproductive system and images of fetuses. Upon returning to school, he classmates call him the “retard f*cker,” and Cobain’s persona of the social reject is quickly adopted. It’s not hard to imagine how the lower-middle class Aberdeen youth who grew up in such a rural logging community could have become the beacon of tormented youth of America’s early 90’s era. This honesty pervades the entirety of Journals; Cobain’s poetic sensitivity is but a glimmer of optimism amongst a backdrop of the corporate American music industry, backed up with scribbles of recipes for fried chicken and french toast.
Cobain’s Journals, in view of his music creates the overall impression of a neglected, insecure musician becoming increasingly uneasy with his fame. The tattered journal entries parallel the conflict and confusion voiced in his music, a scrawny yet soulful individual who somehow represented the impotence of his own generation through the strained throaty textures of his punk-metal rock hybrid.
by Miné Salkin | Jun 18, 2008 | live action
the dandy warhols
richard’s on richards
june 18.08
Yes! Everytime the Dandy Warhols come to the city there’s a definitive buzz of excitment amongst the local hedonists and Vancouver hipster bohemians. Announced less than two weeks before the show, The Dandys decided to play four additional shows as a prelude to their world tour which begins in less than a month from now. Come September they’re releasing their seventh studio album Earth to the Dandy Warhols, which every rock-alternative music fan desperately needs to acquire.
Prior to the show, there was a bit of disappointment as the venue was changed last minute from the opulent setting of the Vogue theatre to Richard’s on Richards, however this proved to be a massive improvement in the end considering the intimacy that was produced by the bar’s compact space. Four rows away from Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s feet could feel the hot sweat and breath of the Oregon quartet as they ripped the stage with new unreleased songs. The show started up with an energetically charged performance of “Wasp in the Lotus,” a new Dandy’s classic with their trademark bubble-gummy completely enveloping guitar-heavy chorus. Amongst a set list of new songs, the band also rocked out to their older tunes, such as “You Were the Last High,” “Country Leaver” and of course, “Bohemian Like You.” 
Aside from their infectiously energetic musical performances, the attitude of the quartet is a cornerstone of their image as mid-90’s veteran alt-rockers who are still going strong. Courtney’s pouty lips and sultry swagger give the frontman an heroin-chic edge and a hard-to get attitude that leaves everyone wanting more. Lead guitarist Peter Holmstrom always starts out looking dark, sharp and shifty and ends up with mascara sweat all over his eyes.
The bottom line: The Dandy Warhols are fucking cool. They always leave us wanting more and they know it.
It’s hard to imagine a 15 year-old frontman Greg Graffin and his school friends deciding to form Bad Religion, the most epic, accomplished and inspiring punk rock bands. How could one envision such libertarian punk fantasies, or such immaculate hardcore harmony at such a tender and suggestible age?
Bass guitarist Jay Bentley seemed to have the most fun on our Vancouver stage. He jumped around and sweated the most profusely, smiling demonically like some intense, disturbing fat kid eyeing your DQ Parfait on the bus. Speaking of which, lead guitarist Brian Baker looked terribly overheated, unfit, and generally sagged instead of rising to the occasion. While performing the quintessential punk song “Come Join Us” off the 1996 album The Gray Race, Baker hogged the one fan the entire time. Come on, Brian.
