2012-01-18: Don’t miss out!

We would have blacked out our site today in honour of the SOPA / PIPA protests, but as Cap’n Jack Spareribs said — here in Vancouver we had a white-out instead. Besides! There’s too much at stake! If we closed our doors today we might lose one last opportunity to remind you about our fabulous concert tonight tonight tonight, celebrating our 7th anniversary as a band, down at the Railway Club.

The West Ender didn’t forget…

(And thanks to Robin Hunt for snapping that shot back during the Steamer Tea Party in Feb 2010)

And we hope that you don’t forget either!

Now you can’t say that nobody reminded you. But wait, there’s more! Of course, our 9 pm show features the Creaking Planks, but also two other grand acts you don’t get many chances to enjoy in these parts — Raghu Lokanathan of Prince George, and Ana Bon-Bon visiting from London, England! If those names don’t mean much to you, perhaps you’d enjoy a refresher while you’re not killing your lunch hour surfing Wikipedia. We took over 4 hours on the air last week in promotion of this show and here’s two and a half of them for you to enjoy, resplendently chock-full of the music of Raghu, Ana, and even some relatively recent recordings by our very own Creaking Planks to bring you up to speed. First we devoted 60 minutes to canned tunes on Accordion Noir Wed the 11th, then on Fri the 13th we did much the same for 90 minutes on Sound Resistance — but this time with SpongeDev SquarePlanks joining in, allowing some spirited, if rump, dual-Plank performing live over the air.

We’ll have many more than two Planks on-stage tonight, with our lovely show running until midnight! Three swell acts will run you only $8 ($6 for Railway Club members!) and we look forward to you helping us with some ridiculous audience interaction antics.

2011-04-05: Planks at CabaRadio 2nd anniversary broadcast

Sometimes, the opportunities come so close together there just isn’t time to write them all up! Late the night of Apr 5th, a crew of five Planks , perhaps our biggest yet on the radio (including Dr. Stelhand’s debut on the chacharangi and Ludwicka LePearl’s debut on the beverage dispenser), joined Teddy Smooth and E-Roc (and practically a cast of thousands: Andrea Superstein formerly of the Marmaladies, Ligia Oancea, Jane Stanton, Suzy Shameless and Iona Beerwagon from the Terminal City Rollergirls, and Burgundy Brixx & the Purrfessor of Kitty Nights) to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of CabaRadio over at CiTR.

You can hear us here! Our first song, the Volga Boatmen birthday song, begins at 8:41 (CabaRadio enjoys great production values, and it enjoys them at its leisure), which we follow up with Psycho Killer at 9:40, our Kishka Anthem at 13:34, and Kiddie Closer again for kicks at 17:56.

Memories! Sights to rival the sounds from the CiTR lounge:

2011-01-26: Creaking Planks radio takeover on CaBaRadio and Accordion Noir!

In promotion of our fabulous 6-year-anniversary show next Monday night, we’ve hit the airwaves! Last night we joined Teddy Smooth and E-Roc at CaBaRadio again over at CiTR in the UBC student union building, where we played tunes and made strange innuendo late into the night. Always good times. We hadn’t confirmed the engagement with enough advance warning to let potential listeners know, but … in all honesty, how many of you would be tuned in to campus radio after midnight? (More than I expect, hopefully!)

We lifted a page from our friend Ryan Fletcher at CJSF’s Melodies in Mind and as guest troubadors took it upon ourselves to musically interpret some public service announcements the show wanted its listeners to know about, including a very special rendition of a song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, screening this weekend… well, you’ll get all the info in the recording. Also excitingly present, though you have to wait through the whole recording — a world exclusive sneak peek of some recent studio work we’ve been doing on Phaulonious J Knucklebones’ original songs, thanks to new friends made at the Orange Party! Admittedly this recording isn’t done yet, but it’s more than half-baked … and it’s been a very long time since we were committed to any permanent media in any form. A better representation of us, to be sure!

We managed to mine the Plankian portions of the show from its podcast and serve it up to you here; in the meantime, it’s not too late to catch the black wave of our promotional hype, as we’ll be on the air tonight down in the downtown eastside studios of CFRO Co-Op Radio at Accordion Noir, whose audience we haven’t joined since an Accordion Noir Festival promo appearance back in 2008. Excitingly, we’re hoping to take on the challenge to do our own version of their lovely theme song — and would encourage you to do the same!

In the meantime, here’s a log for our truncated CaBaRadio recording:

• Creaking Planks – Dead Man’s Pants (Al Mader) 3:39-5:54 (2m15)
• Creaking Planks Duo – announcements medley – LIVE! 6:56-10:37 (3m41)
• Creaking Planks Duo – The Girl In The Pink Canoe (Big Rude Jake) – LIVE! 16:14-19.25 (3m11)
• Creaking Planks Duo – Womanizer / Toxic medley (Britney Spears) – LIVE! 22.28-28.28 (6m00)
• Creaking Planks – Kishka Anthem (debut!) 32.06-34.57 (2m49)

We’ve also managed to skip the queue usually involved while waiting for the Accordion Noir folks to post their episodes online as a podcast. It’s here, 12 hours later, and though we don’t have a full track listing (edit: the AN folks do, up at their website, with creative song titling), here’s all the places you can hear four mighty Planks playing their hearts out:

• Creaking Planks Quartet – Accordion Noir theme (Andy Fielding) – LIVE! 0:00-2:32 (2m32)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Insane in the Membrane (Cypress Hill) – LIVE! 11:07-14:30 (3m23)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Flatbush Waltz (Andy Statman) – LIVE! 15:03-17:14 (2m13)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Tanz Tanz Yidelehk – LIVE! 23:47-27:33 (3m46)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Sometimes All Of The People Aren’t Here All Of The Time – LIVE! 29:39-32:49 (3m10)
• Creaking Planks – Kishka Anthem (studio mix) 33:04-35:53 (2m49)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Vanha Jatsi Station ID – LIVE! 42:52-43:38 (0m46)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Psycho Killer (Talking Heads) – LIVE! 44:00-47:41 (3m41)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – the Song of the Count / Bones Bones Bones (Sesame Street) – LIVE! 50:20-56:58 (6m38)

Also eminently worth mentioning — us welching on our word! We were going to take all January off to develop new material for our anniversary show, but we did join the cool cats at Bandidas again for their own anniversary back on Jan 6th. We didn’t promote it since it was their own private party of sorts, but we played the heck out of lots of great songs there. Many happy returns and hope to see you again there next January, Bandidas!

2010-09-28: Creaking Planks live on CaBaRadio

It was a cold, wet, late night at UBC, and as the witching hour approached we wondered if any of our fans would be hearing the three of us make merry music over the airwaves, courtesy of Teddy Smooth and E-roc at CiTR’s CaBaRadio. Maybe not. But still — there’s always the Internet’s long memory (sorry, tail) to fall back on. Thrill as we (eventually) reflect on our origins and quip regarding the recent Accordion Noir Festival! And enjoy three great tunes, including one recently exhumed while Stateside from the ancient past.

Here’s the recording! And here’s the playlist!

• Creaking Planks Trio – Insane in the Membrane (Cypress Hill): 12:57-16:30 (3:33)
• Creaking Planks Trio – CaBaRadio stinger: 16:31-16:40 (0:09)
• Creaking Planks Trio – Kiddie Closer (Nine Inch Nails): 16:41-20:34 (3:53)
• Creaking Planks Trio – (Hit Me) Baby One More Time (Britney Spears): 26:42-29:29 (2:47)

Bonus! Hear us simmer in the background as we promote a different radio station’s affairs!

2010 Winter/Spring — What We Missed Telling You About PLUS a homophonic side project

For a season, from mid-December to mid-April, we temporarily lost control of our domain name (in fact, it switched off while I was in the middle of composing a promotional draft here!) and information about the Planks was unavailable from this site. We still played lots of great shows, however, and this is just an attempt to keep the historical record in order. Just because nothing turned up on the website didn’t mean that we weren’t busy little buccaneers!

2009-12-26 – the Maclean’s Boxing Day party in Deep Cove.
2010-01-06 – at Bandidas’ anniversary party.

2010-01-12 – Blackbox Squeezebeard on Melodies in Mind.
2010-01-14 – at Trees Organic Coffee.
2010-01-15 – featured at Beats on Broadway.

2010-01-16 – at One Two One Studios‘ launch.

2010-01-22 – A Night of Pleasing Squeezing with Renee de la Prade and Amber Lee Baker (the Accordion Babes), Gerry O’Brien, and Jack Garton of Maria in the Shower at Cafe Montmartre.

2010-02-26 – Dollhouse Tea Party.

2010-02-28 – Another Night of Pleasing Squeezing with Jeff Andrew, Marie-Josee Houle, Jason Webley at the LMG.

2010-03-28 – with Convertible Kids at the LMG.

2010-04-08 – with Raghu Lokanathan trio at the LMG.

2010-04-15 – Can You Hear Me Now? F*Word fundraiser at the Railway Club.

2010-04-21 – at Ubuntu LoCo at the HD Lab.

We’ve enjoyed a couple of shows since that we’ve mostly been able to keep you abreast about here, and are on the verge of splitting for the summer (one more — set aside noon, June 13th!), but before we go we can tie some Plankian threads together with a Go-Your-Own-Waste presentation of the Music Waste festival featuring frequent CP collaborators Erin Graves and Ehren Salazar with bonafide Plank Eryn Holbrook (aka Daisy Jones-Locher of the santur) and marvelous improv outsider weirdo Aaron Read at the traditional Plank venue of the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th at Main). This Friday, June 4th! Only $5, and free for festival passholders! 8 pm ’til we’re done! The most homophonic bill of the year: Erin, Ehren, Eryn and Aaron in Err On: the Side of Caution. It’ll be a slice. (Actually, imagine a pizza divided into four slices, all of which are different flavours, and at least one slice of which isn’t even pizza… but maybe apple pie.)