by Miné Salkin | Oct 25, 2007 | live action
thursday october 25
Kevin Drew had the sniffles, but didn't let that get him down
@ commodore ballroom
Arts&Crafts veterans Broken Social Scene paid a little visit to Vancouver and played some beautiful music that night.
The last time I had seen them was a couple of years ago, and the two experiences to me proved the total dynamic and originality of sound that only the 19-person Toronto-based group can shape.
Kicking off their North American tour that night, the show was testosterone-charged set which only could have been induced by Kevin Drew setting up a competition for who could go the longest without taking a bath. Well, actually that was a direct stab at Justin Peroff, who was sweaty beyond belief and spraying it around by shaking his beard all over the place.
Playing a set list of their most recent album, Justin Peroff, Brenden Canning and James Shaw from Metric blasted their tunes distortedly charged and ultra-masculine sounding. There was also some fun sampling with a 30 second stab at “Love and Mathematics,” but Canning didn’t remember the bass part for it so they stopped and played “cause = time” in a way that couldn’t be larger or louder. Even Andrew Kenny from The American Analog set tagged along and treated everyone with the soft Texas-indie sounds of “Hard to Find.”
I felt bad for Kevin, who was hopped up on Sudafed and suffering from copious amounts of phlegm, but he gave it his all and wailed through a rocked-out version of “Lovers’ Spit,” and gave a supersexy throaty texture to the highest frequencies of “Superconnected.” I also particularly enjoyed James’ frantic gyrations; for some reason he’s the only person I’ve ever seen who can make those range of movements look good.
Actually, I’d venture to make the claim that Broken Social Scene can make anything look good, even influenza. But who am I to say?
by Miné Salkin | Sep 25, 2007 | live action
After a close friend described the current state of the Smashing Pumpkins as “washed out,” I was ready to defend the quartet despite their ostensibly lengthy, experimental, and not always well-received musical ventures.
Corgan: he
Why does everyone always make fun of Billy Corgan? Outside of his mass of supporters, I’ve heard people describe him as “that awkward bald guy”, with his “whiny sad voice,” who takes himself way too seriously. But let’s face it, there’s a reason why the Pumpkins have been around since they formed in Chicago 1988. Aside from his musical talent, Billy Corgan represents the most unlikeliest celebrity in the same spirit as Trent Reznor defiles the machine of commercialized music; he may be a musical God, but at least he tries to overcome it by staying humble.
The show ultimately proved that – the set was a well-balanced blend of all the best aspects of their career. Starting off with an explosively energized performance of “Doomsday Clock,” the debut track from their latest album Zeitgeist, the band rocked out with “Zero” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” among other quintessential Pumpkins tunes. It was the best of the past and the present, from “Down” and other Rotten Apples songs, and surprisingly enough, “To Sheila” and “Ava Adore” from their most radically experimental album Adore. While Corgan was missing his iconic Zero shirt, his long-sleeved stripes made us all remember the heavy psychadelic roots of the band. In humble appreciation, the band dedicated “1979” to Canada for being the world’s #1 fan – a sweet touch indeed. I also particarly liked the fact that James Iha and D’arcy were replaced by but another female bassist and asian guitarist. Did he think nobody would notice?
Now for something a little more substantial. Zeitgeist as an album explores many conceptions of nationality – particularly in reference to the band’s good old homeland, the United States, and the alienation that surrounds an individual when being attached to certain values and meanings simply based on their locality. It’s for this reason that the album in and of itself is so monumental: at all points in history there is indeed a “spirit of the time.” Hegel described this as a single historical figure who represents all aspects and values of that time, and eventually when such meanings are overturned, another Zeitgeist comes to be. Tracks such as “For God and Country” look at this phenomenological dialectic and describes how everything – including music is a subject to this temporality. At the end of the set, Corgan came out by himself and quite candidly laid bare his appreciation for the fans in Canada, who kept the Pumpkins at #1 on the charts when they were #2 in their own country. This is all making sense.
by Miné Salkin | Sep 9, 2007 | live action
I am deeply apologetic to everyone who couldn’t make it to see the Brian Jonestown Massacre show at the Commodore Ballroom on September 8th. Even if you aren’t a fan, or have ever heard of their music, that night will forever go down in history as possibly the last group’s venture above the border.
For those who haven’t heard of the BJM, they are the lesser-known musical rivals and lovers of the Dandy Warhols, who altogether pick apart social mores and fashion bubble-gum tunes to reflect modern-day trendy, social indoctrination. Being an existential pessimist I was hyped up on seeing the quintet rock out only two months after seeing the Dandy Warhols in the flesh.
- they
Needless to say, the set was doomed from the very beginning. I have to say a word or two about how Icaught the end tail of the second opening band, The Hugs, only to find them to be a group of 18 year-old boys with peach fuzz and shitty guitars (never buy an Epiphone) that wouldn’t hold a tune. To be honest their set was a cacophony of angsty unsophisticated, and technically defunct tunes.
At that point I wasn’t too upset though, considering that the BJM was finally going to come on. But no. Those arrogant, but brilliant agents of musical genius didn’t come on until nearly half past 11, at this point causing mutinous stirrings in the crowd. One guy behind me yelled obscenities at the band, causing me to spill my beer all over another girl’s ankles. Shit. They finally started playing, opening up with a transcendent, psychedelic jam which bled into “Who?” from their albumTake It From The Man! Even though the music started flowing gorgeously, lead singer Anton’s back to the audience was an ominous foreshadowing of the aggression soon to come.
Contrary to what you, dear readers, may imagine to mediate the crowd’s tension, the music only exacerbated the feeling of getting ripped off at this show. Anton kept stepping backstage,leaving the rest of the band to hold down the situation by playing the same bleeding four chords for ten minute intervals. Anton, I love you, but why do you love the heroin so much? Anton comes back onstage and declares what a beautiful place Vancouver is, clearly getting increasingly fucked up as the night goes on.
At about ten minutes to one, some guy in the crowd threw a beer bottle at Anton’s back, causing him to scream death threats into the microphone, his middle fingers flying around. At this point the band left the stage, most likely the last time to present themselves on the Canadian concert scene indefinitely. But shit, you could taste the hatred and Anton’s wounded ego, who screamed at us all that we should all “humble ourselves.” Don’t misconstrue this, but this show was so bad that it paradoxically was so good; just don’t do heroin, OK kids?
by Miné Salkin | Jul 18, 2007 | live action
the taming of the shrew: elizabethan, western 21st century interpretations
I’m about as confused on this one as ever. Bard on the Beach presents Taming of the Shrew, but in a mish-mash of genres that don’t seem to fit very well together. Flamboyant suede chaps, Mexicans incognito, and deliberately awkward staging to reflect the current apathetical comedic modes… not to mention Katharina’s (Colleen Wheeler) breaking of the will, which essentailly violates every aspect of the great feminist movement.
While Petruchio (Bob Frazer) translates well into his macho, Marlboro man persona, series host Christopher Gaze’s british accent doesn’t bode well for someone trying to come off as a Mexican. Don’t get me wrong, as far as the theme of fiesty women and power and oppression reign, this play was in its right, but would have Shakespeare turning in his grave – to be honest I was actually thinking about how similar The Shrew is to that angsty late-90’s flick “10 Things I Hate About You.” Director James Fagan Tait begs “Kiss me, Kate!” But this isn’t what I learned in my Shakespeare class…. The ending was a familiar philosophical tangent reflecting on the power of the will, but the soft weaknesses of the body; a quintessential, Shakespearean mindfuck paradox.
Katharina throws away the entire reputation of women in a single swooping motion, to chuck off a hair decoration that her husband disproves of, but only says so in pursuit to win a bet. I wasn’t feeling the love tonight.
If you don’t like Shakespeare that much, or don’t understand him, GO SEE THIS PLAY. Mostly slapstick, anti-feminine sovereignty gags that don’t require the use of too many braincells… yeah.
bard round two: romeo and juliet
After my last visit to the Bard, I was desperately hoping for Dean Paul Gibson’s production of Romeo and Juliet to compensate for my earlier disappointments. Luckily, the performance tonight has redeemed the Festival after the last Western-styled desecration of Shakespeare, and had fucking style. With Kyle Rideout playing a love-struck, mascara-eyed, melancholy emo Romeo, I felt like I was in one of those engrossing GAP commercials. Tight black pants and collared white shirts, perfectly synchronised uniformity – the Apothecary’s sole grey shirt attracts both metaphoric and literal neutrality. Could this get any sweeter? There’s a naked ass in this play, restoring the Vancouverite liberalism we all thought was lost.
katrina dunn presents julius caesar
My third venture to this year’s Bard on the Beach at Vanier Park was a much different experience from the last two. Not to slag off the creative and innovative world of directorial interpretation, but The Shrew’s Western reality still captures that awful taste in my mouth. In other words, Julius Caesar is minimalist, Roman attitude with no modern interpretive angles – Caesar (Allan Morgan) is old, and raging (just the way he’s supposed to be). Fuck, I thought his ghostly white hallucinating stare was going to make my eyes bleed. So bitingly cold…
The best part is Dunn’s slight Elizabethan, Renaissance undertones – making the story of betrayal and political injustice imparted as a shared value between the Elizabethans and the classical era of the Roman Republic. In fact, this bears more significance as Brutus (Scott Bellis) spirals into despair and self-perpetuated guilt over his betrayal, which is a classical tenet of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. Ultimately, Brutus’ hamartia of excessive ambition has a more lasting effect, that paradox of something being so good that it eventually defeats itself and turns to damage that otherwise perfect world. Some may call it shit disturbing, but this kind of stuff is really what makes Shakespeare worth reading or seeing in the flesh. It’s that delicate boundary where potency becomes decadent, and then unstable to implosive. I ate muffins in the audience and soaked this all in while Brutus suffered in soliloquial turmoil.
Overall, this play was the most impressive thus far, despite the fact that nearly three-quarters of the cast was made up of balding men, their cul-de-sacs more distinct against the shinyness of the skin underneath. Although there was much baldness tonight, the perfomances were grade A (I particularly marvelled at Gerry Mackay, who played the revolutionary zealot Cassius all too well), and had the intimacy which only the studio stage can capture.
Maybe this is really fucking petty but I can’t help but add that Craig Erickson (who played Marc Antony) did not look anything like his headshots from the programme. I felt like I’d been duped. Someone should tell him that it’s not honest to deceive others with uncharacteristically good photographs of himself.
by Miné Salkin | Jul 12, 2007 | Uncategorized
freud: revolutionized psychoanalysis but had little science to back it up
In the selection “Medusa’s Head,” psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud fleshes out his interpretation of the mythological image as a deep-seated sexual issue, stemming from the human fear of their mother’s genitals devouring their own. In his analysis of the metaphorical representation of female genitalia, Freud sheds light onto the paradox of heterosexual male desire – a force which is both terrifying and undeniably attractive. Despite the comical effects and his persuasive argumentation, Freud’s assertions ultimately fail to explain the complexities of human sexual relations, as they gravitate around an ignorant male view of women’s sexuality.
For Freud, sex is attached to an unspoken, irrational fear of castration, where the vagina represents a vortex of simultaneous pleasure and horror. In the style of third person narrative, Freud creates a situation where the “other” is identified – in this case, the body of the female, represented by Medusa’s decapitated head is the center of alterity through the mystification of female sensuality. Instead of exploring the idea of its multiple possibilities, Freud articulates one, monolithic, uniform kind of female sexuality. From this position, Freud is failing to substantiate his arguments, as they are clearly seen to stem from impossible fears, and a blatant lack of understanding the fairer sex.
Mystifying the organs of female sexuality have both an amusing and a maddening effect – Freud attaches the fear of castration in sex to a boy’s glimpse of his own mother’s vagina. Yet where does this fear originate? Freud lacks an explanation for how anyone would even associate sexual pleasure with the possibility of losing one’s penis. Perhaps the most absurd tenet of his interpretation of Medusa is the idea that the snakes in her hair are “a confirmation of of the technical rule according to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration.” The only technical rule which could be applied to Freud’s argumentation is that he defies every epistemological convention.
In short, Freud lacks understanding in the issue of sex – particularly of the female persuasion. However, his interpretation of the myth of Medusa and her sexual evaluations brings another, more philosophical issue to the surface. It is the displacement of social values which creates a dichotomy of sensuality: the ignorance towards the female body and its responses to sexual desire in turn becomes a symbol of both desire and fear, and even possibly hatred. According to Freud, the sight of Medusa’s head (and therefore the sapphic images associated with it) makes the man “stiff with terror…” yet at the same time “offers consolations… he is still in possession of a penis, and the stiffening reassures him of the fact.” This line is particularly absurd, since the spectator has an erection, how could he have ever feared for the loss of his member?
Ergo, Freud’s exploration of female sexuality through the literal and figurative interpretations of power in the myth of Medusa creates more ignorance on the topic instead of clarifying it. Even in this short selection, an envious, fearful misogyny resonates in this analysis. It is perhaps due to the social repression of women at this time in history that causes them to be “othered” to the point of being recognized as either a symbol of sexual desire, fear of castration, or both.
