Here we are, April 24, 2011, in a strangely unsynchronized video (note Dec 21: we managed to correct it, reflected above!) recording capturing our performance of that eternal Bollywood surf-rock anthem, Jaan Pehechaan Ho. We’ve performed it more than a few times, though usually not in front of a camera. Alan Zisman kindly took video footage of pretty much the entire night, including spirited sets by headliners Maria in the Shower and Jason Webley (basically a perfect bill: maybe we can do it again sometime, guys?) It wasn’t a hugely successful show — we rented space for more bodies than we could draw, and a few parties had to take pay cuts. A friend was even caught after the fact red-handed tweeting “meh” sentiments during our set. But a few months after the fact, we noticed something curious.
Reviewing the video footage of the sets that night, total view counts of most of the performances had plateaued and would only continue to increment slowly thanks to the long tail. But our rendition of this song was pulling out well ahead of our other videos from that concert — even synchronized ones! It was being viewed more than the Maria in the Shower videos. Now, those gents work hard to Put On A Show (going so far as to accidentally drive a tricycle backwards into a table of adoring fans at this particular show) so that shouldn’t be happening. It was being viewed more than the Jason Webley videos! Now, that definitely shouldn’t be happening! (For the record, Jason dug our performance of that tune as well, getting to enjoy it over and over again during our elaborate sound check.)
Like many of you, I first learned of the song from its strategic placement at the front of Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 film Ghost World, setting an exuberant opening note of wonderful strangeness and strange wonderment that the film couldn’t entirely sustain. I had to know more, and learned of its origin in the 1965 movie Gumnaam, and its performance by Mohammed Rafi (and not, as the film suggests, Ted Lyons.) Maybe you haven’t seen Ghost World or Gumnaam, but you were one of the 8 million people to enjoy watching the Heineken advertisement “the Date.” Either which way, it definitely makes an impression. The impression it made on me was: “gosh, I’d love to learn to play that one! But it’ll take an elaborate arrangement — I’ll never convince the Planks!” Fortunately, I didn’t have to convince them: Phil & Kimla, longtime Plank supporters (what supports a Plank? a Beam?) requested for us to perform it at their Indo-Canadian wedding and finally we had the excuse we’d needed to put in the work needed to pick it up.
Now, we aren’t the only band who have had the great idea to cover this great song, but as far as we can tell, our new interpretation has been the most popular of the pack. Grinder Nova deliver a high-energy rendition, but in a grave injustice it’s been enjoyed under 2000 times.
Mexican Drug Patrol also give it a high-intensity instrumental take, and bafflingly, the Railway Club sign in the background of that footage indicates that we’ve got competition in the Jaan Pehechaan Ho category even in our own hometown! Their version is great, but due to the vagaries of surfers, ours has still been viewed a thousand times more.
Not only has our unsynchronized video performance of this song become the most popular cover version on YouTube (redeeming a complicated show for us — the audience for that particular performance is now a couple degrees of magnitude greater than the people who were in the crowd enjoying our set) but it has also risen to become the most popular video of all of our performances! This is great, because the internet has terrible taste. Our previous MPV (most played video, right?) was one of the very last times we performed our “faithful” version of Nine Inch Nails’ “closer” with its original lyrics before awesome(face)lyinfantalizing it — regrettably, the night some of our members decided to experiment with some improvised percussive multitasking for the first time ever. There are betterversions of us playing that song on YouTube, but that’s the one that ended up under the microscope on the fan forums at nin.com, where about the kindest thing anyone could say was that they could see that we were aspiring for an interesting re-interpretation. Very diplomatic, sir!
Also rapidly receding into the dust is our former 2nd-most-watched video, now barely on the podium, featuring an impromptu collaboration between us and Free Software guru Richard Stallman of a little Bulgarian ditty in 7/4. Oh, one of those! I’ve got to say, if we’ve got to be chiefly associated with one performance on YouTube, I’m glad it’s Jaan Pehechaan Ho instead of these two.
At this rate, it may soon overshadow all our achievements over the past seven years: its view count has grown by 300 since we discovered its new position as our number one video under a week ago on Twitter! (note Dec 21: and by some 2000 since we first made this blogpost!) We may have missed the golden opportunity for Planking we were born to fulfil, but we’ll just have to earn our virality some other way. We were in on the ground floor of the Zombie Walk “movement”, and I’m pleased to report that performing Jaan Pehechaan Ho requires a lot less sticky cadaver and gore make-up.
Three conclusions are clear: first, Blackbox needs to phonetically learn the third verse instead of just singing the second one twice. Second, we’ll clearly need to track down the owner of the song and get permission to record it on our next album. Third, the Anonymous masses have made their demands clear: we’ll have to get it up to speed in time to perform again at our 7th anniversary party upcoming Wed Jan 18th at the Railway Club, with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan.
Well, on Sunday, November 6th — the day after our fantastic visit from the Accordion Babes — we had a rump Planks delegation visit the Roseblade house to help celebrate a bonafide 1st birthday party for a 40-year-old, busting out songs from the Planks’ feature set at the Cobalt’s “Ink” open mic five years ago or so.
Then, yesterday, Thurs Nov 24th, we were supposed to join David Roy Parsons (of “Beat Up Old Guitar” fame) for a set in Victoria at the Fort Cafe… but the hoary winter winds of a fierce seasonal storm put the kibosh on that ferry crossing after a very spirited afternoon spent sitting inside a wind-buffetted car. Well, what’s something that CAN go right?
Here’s something difficult to ruin (worse than it already is, at least) — a visual gag a long time in the conceptualising:
Editing some outrageous Creaking Planks live audio in Audacity…
okay, let’s clean this up a little bit…
and… voila. Wait — what?!
Thank heavens for the “undo” function, that’s all I can say. (”Accordion Insanity” photo by Jonathan Dy, and that “normal” band is Clyde Stacy and the Nightcaps. They probably sound all right!)
Not long after reporting that we were “open for business“, an order was placed — from a new fan in San Diego! How did they find us now, say, and not eight months ago when we were touring California? To make a hilarious story short, while researching pirate-themed artwork from “good girl art” illustrator “Coop“, they found a recent appearance of a pirate band on a radio station named “Co-op”. Strange but true!
Who knows, we thought, maybe we’ll find ourselves in demand in the internet market of the commons. Maybe stuffing envelopes with our sweat and voices will eventually become another humdrum chore, ultimately abstracting high art down to crass commerce. But not yet! Opening the long-neglected “mail art” drawer from back in the postcardx days, this, our first order, from someone who we’ve never even sat in the same room with, was fortified with seven essential vitamins and nutrients. Yes, our CD packaging is grand as it is. Yes, Peter Guindon’s liner notes artwork gives him a place in the “good girl art” pantheon of his very own. (One held up with chunky-thighed caryatids, please.) But there’s no package so great that it can’t be improved with some monkey stickers on the front, an old copy of Brad Yung’s “Stay As You Are” and a plastic alligator carefully packed in a cardboard sleeve marked “Bliss”.
Little did we realise that our new friend (who for reasons of privacy we will be referring to only as… “Tzar Ethers Eels“) was similarly inclined toward the mail artistic persuasion, where sending anything less than a package would be … slackage!
Now, because a picture is worth a thousand words, allow me to save everyone a whole lotta typing.
The package arrived, setting off both pets with its conspicuous disproportionality relative to the $20 it was expected to contain. Perhaps the postman accidentally delivered us someone else’s package? (But no, there’s my name, surrounded by flattering superlatives!) Maybe we had been paid the twenty dollars in loose change? (An impish urge ultimately a losing proposition by post, except in cases where postage has already been paid by the recipient corporation.) Surely the customs manifest would clarify. Hmm… postcards, a DVD… a map?! TOYS?!@#$%
Between shots, the lighting conditions changed and the pump organ became a better backdrop for our mad loot. (Beethoven doesn’t agree about the lighting conditions, hence the hat, but that stony-faced downer will be busted either way.)
First out of the package — our friend’s favorite movie, on DVD: Joe Versus the Volcano. Two burned CDs (the letter discusses the convoluted logic involved in pirating music from one indie band for another; sending music to a cover band is like sending it to a radio station — ultimately it’s a zero-sum compromise at worst and if the tunes catch, we all win.) And what’s that little card? Can we get a close-up?
It is difficult to imagine from what deck of cards that one originated, and what activities might be featured on the other face cards, but when a fortune-teller draws it from her Tarot deck, you know you’d best hop to it! But wait, this is just the tip of the iceberg! There’s more, much more, in that box!
Two postcards from “Lather Seer Zest”’s favorite historical period, the Harlem Renaissance, plus a kinky one celebrating Killer Shrimp! (He was just an ordinary shrimp until one salad roll pushed him too far…) Then there’s a two-page letter written on Bettie Page stationary, and finally an envelope containing a titillating hint of peep show.
And then there’s a world map, celebrating “Ester Ha Seltzer”’s favorite charity. But does the map have any secrets to reveal? Where’s the legend? Where is the treasure buried? By my ancestor’s bones, what spot does X mark?
And then there’s a whole other envelope in the box! From the sounds of things, a very submissive envelope trying to set terms for a bit of rough trade. It’s enormous! For comparison, here’s a full-sized banjo, to scale. (Just kidding! It’s another banjo ukulele, and it’s also not for sale.) What’s in it? Where are the alleged toys?
Sadly, our digital camera does not have a zoom function sufficient to demonstrate the full extent of the miniaturization of the itty bitty bottles of liquor which were contained within the padded envelope, the world’s smallest dram of Jamieson’s whiskey and an eighth of an eighth of Hendrick’s gin (and where is Rumblebucket to enjoy it with us?) They were like models for a doll-house of sin. They were like homeopathic hangover remedies for last night’s bender. They were like… well, we’ll take this opportunity to reiterate the stage banter from Blackbox’s first show as a Plank, at Blim’s Night of Sad Songs. “I used to think that the saddest thing in the world was animals smoking cigarettes, but after some reflection I can report that the saddest thing in the world is in fact drunk children.” Now you know that you can send booze internationally in the mail as long as you call it “toys” on the customs manifest. (Candy is dandy but…) We absolve ourselves of any of the numerous horrible potential consequences of your application of that forbidden knowledge. (Hence our obfuscation of our happy customer’s name, to, er, protect the guilty.)
And finally, flying around loose in the box, almost an afterthought, payment for the CD in American currency, helpfully indicating to us that their monetary designation has moved from dollars to Jays. (I always thought that it would be us here in BC who would move to using jays for currency first, but this is what happens when you get a brother in the White House.)
Here are some perplexed Planks at practice posing with a portion of our package’s portentious possessions. Blackbox and Daisy-Jones are holding the tiny bottles of liquor in their hands, lest a stiff breeze carry them away, while Ludwicka bears the whole world in her hands. This surprise interlude wasn’t just an exciting discovery but also educational: we learned some New Math for how to divide one shot of booze among a band of over a dozen people — put blueberry tea to shame and mix it with your pot of Bengal Spice to help give everyone a warm glow on the last night of winter. Breakfast tea of champions!
If these kinds of shenanigans are what operating a virtual storefront will entail, then we’ll be expecting a full return on our investment plus interest dividends yielded in whimsy! But we’ll spend so much time scheming surprise and documenting delight that our musical activities will necessarily grind to a halt. Perhaps it’s better to keep these extraordinary exchanges just that… that said, the bar has been set if anyone wants to surpass it!
Please note: accordion and banjo ukulele not for sale.
Hot off the Creaking Assembly Line ™, one more small batch of approximately 60 copies of that critically lauded album Flogged Round the Fleet, still with its swank original Peter Guindon-designed packaging for the last time — the etched tin case with so many uses (storing a slice of American processed cheese, ten cigarillos, or another band’s CD…) AND a free Planks sticker, to help share your love of our band with whatever bathroom stalls you may happen to encounter in your journeys.
But that’s not all! Just slightly over a year following Daisy Jones-Locher’s excellent lead in this department, the Creaking Planks have an exciting array of pin-backed one-and-a-quarter-inch buttons available for sale at shows (or, hey, talk to us about orders at thecreakingplanks at gmail dot com). I don’t know what the well-dressed hipster is wearing this season, but these are the right cut and style to fit neatly on a hat, instrument case, or courier bag strap!
And if you have any better ideas for button designs, we’re listening! Submit your own images and you could help dress and accessorize an entire cohort of stylish Creaking Planks fans!
Maybe you’re in a band or part of an organization that would also like to be represented in button form? We invested in the equipment (some elements among the Planks have a traditional affinity for buttons and button presses, the start of so many good things — like the Work Less party!) so we might well be able to help you button up. (Magnets also!) If not, we can at least tell you where to stick it.
