Juggling two offers we couldn’t refuse, the Creaking Planks plan for a scorching Saturday night whipping down from playing at Phil + Kimla’s wedding up at SFU to open the second anniversary of JEff Younger’s night (third Tuesday of every month!) at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street, upstairs)! and he’s programmed some of his favorite acts from the series to join him on the stage there that night.
Here’s the lineup: in addition to having the jug band of the damned back for the opening slot at 10:30 pm, you get a wild and wacky set of unshorn spoken word from RC Weslowski, a set from Joseph Blood and the Blue Tick Houn’ Dogs, JEff Younger’s own inbred redneck orchestra The Family Stump, the WhiskeyDicks (who “blast their way through traditional tunes and modern hits with the spirit of the mad and the thirst of a sailor who just got kicked out of his metal band”) and finally (late into the night) Very Good, the band which won’t have too difficult a time surpassing their name.
Doors at 8:30, admission is $10, $8 for Railway Club members.
PS — pardon the slip in chronology — this show happens the day before the Car-Free Festival mentioned in the prior post.
Winters in Vancouver can be a gloomy, dreary affair. Even when we’re not snowbound and strangled by insidious mists (as we have been for weeks, now!) one can go for days, weeks and, yea, even months without seeing the sun. This contributes to a depressing psychological condition known as SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is often treated with exposure to a full-spectrum daylight lamp. Another treatment recommended by holistic and alternative health practitioners is exposure to AWESOME FACE. AWESOME FACE? AWESOME FACE is a local (or is that loco?) power performance poetry supergroup consisting of charismatic weirdoes par excellenceRC Weslowski, Brendan McLeod and Chris Gilpin (as Dr. WTF??) With a mandate as “the kids’ show for adults”, for their sophomore engagement at 9 pm this Friday they have boldly proclaimed a goal of nothing less than combating SAD. Poet Sasha Langford demonstrates:
Their method of engaging SAD is to throw a beach party at Cafe Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive). As such, the wearing of beachwear is encouraged, and will reduce admission from $8 to $5. Sasha demonstrates further:
To further audience involvement, AWESOME FACE have solicited contributions from their fans as lyrics for a new song, to be performed at this event, describing Jet Li kicking SAD’s ass (egregiously) at the beach. Similarly, the Planks, who are opening for this crew of well-intentioned miscreants, and whose greatest talent is inverting a song’s emotional content, aim to rustle up some lines from our fans also. The trademark macabre CP rendition of summer camp classic “Down By The Bay” debuted at Blackbox’s first performance as a Plank, at Miserylovescompany2: A night of sad songs at the old Blim April 23rd, 2005… and has only been performed likely once since (at that year’s Horace Phair celebration in Portland.) But in honour of the occasion we are digging deep into the vaults and pulling out an array of splendid tunes to relish in our love/hate relationship with SAD. If you could put on your thinking cap and send us your best faux-grim couplet for Down By The Bay (a sample from Lord Eel: “Have you ever seen a corpse / stabbed with ten thousand forks?”) we would find it most useful.
Also joining us will be a display of the ever-boggling talents of legerdemain and mentalism from the Planks’ steel guitarist, Dr. Steelhand.
The Planks are buffing their splinters for a filthy, filthy return to the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street at Seymour, upstairs) for the third time in two month (and the second time this week! a big change of pace from the nearly two-years’ gap prior!) Hopefully things will be almost-but-not-quite as off-the-hook as last week’s show, at which we took the stage of the sold-out Railway Club an hour late (Geoff Berner was well in his element — some kind of formaldehyde, I think — and on top of his game can halt a 10-piece band in its tracks with a well-timed anecdote!) well after 1 am. An hour later they didn’t want to let us leave the stage, though we’d exhausted the set. Roar! Finally, the crowds were beaten back by urging them to become members of Co-op radio and to revisit us six mere days later… at this occasion!
This time we’re all playing our hearts out to celebrate the launch of issue #7 of Memewar Magazine, with its focus on censorship (The Song Of The Count: censored!) and obscenity. (And really, what could be more obscene than a nerd on a squeezebox plaintively crooning songs about explicit matters of sexuality?) Also in the upcoming issue you may find an advertisement for our upcoming album release! (No, this isn’t it.) Other performances will include the Girls on Top burlesque troop (there are two words that don’t go together well!), an erotic poetry slam courtesy of R.C. Weslowski, C.J. Leon, Fernando Raguero and Jane “Break Your Freak” Panek with accompaniment from her companion (hm, or not!) There will be guest readings from the issue, possibly recited by acclaimed pottymouths Elaine Miller and Nathaniel Wolfe, and more musical performances from Bells Clanging and the Barcelona Chair, who will be surrounding our 11:15-starting set like a splinter sandwich.The show starts at 8:30 pm (your $10 admission gets you a complementary copy of the magazine!) and further boasts “more Cereal Junkies” (?!) and naughty prizes!
