Posted: November 29th, 2011 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: Big Blue House, Blackberry Wood, Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts, ESL, Tarran the Tailor | No Comments »
Friday night, Dec 2nd, we’re heading out to the Big Blue House (1624 Salisbury) to help an intimate private residence groove and gyrate to the vibrations only a dedicated crew of folk music misfits can coax out of their infernal contraptions. Also on the bill, we’re crossing paths with Tarran the Tailor again, plus ESL, the Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts puppet show, and our friends in Blackberry Wood, singlehandedly buoying up RIM stock this quarter with their infectious energy!
Posted: May 31st, 2010 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: Allan Macinnis, anniversary, Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts, Chloe Ziner, Deet Street Productions, Dennis Pimm Jamtacular Experience, drawings, Flogged Round the Fleet, Georgia Straight, Lara, Railway Club, Tamara Nile | No Comments »
The morning of the Cabaret of Wonders! we awoke to strange and marvelous news: the recording which we had debuted last June had garnered a positive review in Vancouver’s free weekly arts paper of record, the Georgia Straight!
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Attendees of early Creaking Planks shows—say, at the first Vancouver Zombiewalk after-party, where Rowan “Blackbox Squeezebeard” Lipkovits (accordion) and Lee Shoal (ukulele, kazoo) did somewhat halting covers of songs like the Kingston Trio’s “Zombie Jamboree”—could be forgiven for thinking the band a joke. A funny joke, and certainly an in-joke, but not a group you might turn to for the pleasures of polished musicianship, even of the jug-band variety.
Well, here’s a surprise: as if to illustrate the truth of the saying that a fool who persists in his folly shall become wise, the Planks have benefited from playing innumerable shows locally and throughout the Pacific Northwest. While still richly swathed in irony, the traditionals on this CD (European and/or Yiddish folkie fare like “Tanz Tanz Yidelekh” and “Moscow Nights” and the absurdly deadpan covers—including a new recording of Lipkovits’s delightful arrangement of the Minimalist Jug Band’s “Dead Man’s Pants”—are, in fact, quite beautifully conceived and credibly played. |
That night, at the gobsmacking
Cabaret of Wonders!, we sold our last two remaining copies of the suddenly-in-demand disc. Perhaps a reprinting will be in order — though we may have seen the last of the limited-edition stylish metal containers.
But enough resting on our laurels! Moving on from past glories, an increasingly rump Planks (blasted summer travels — and I’m up next!) will be wigglin’ and groovin’ tonight at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) from 9:15 on with our Deet Street friends, including the slam poetry of Lara, the “folk/rock/blues stylings of the Dennis Pimm Jamtacular Experience”, and our favorite — a puppet show entitled “The Tragic Tale of Pierrot” presented by Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts. $7/5 for Railway members!
Bonus! A doodle from Chloe Ziner of the Mind of a Snail puppet troupe!
