Long Beach Led Zep

I initially viewed Long Beach Led Zep, a video piece showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery, with good humour. "Stairway to Heaven" and a sunset at Long Beach! How ironically droll!
It reminded me most of a time when I and a friend were filling in for a CiTR radio show (This Side of Monday) and we conspired to play the legendary classic rock song because we thoughtthis would be hilarious. Why would this be hilarious? Because it is a—no it is the—classic rock song and we were playing it on an indie rock radio show. This Side of Monday is dedicated to showcasing independent artists who (often) can't find financial success through traditional means. "Stairway to Heaven" was as out of place on this show as Miley Cyrus would be at Music Waste.
To accomplish this prank with maximum humour we had arranged for a fictitious classic rock radio DJ named Classic Rick to call in to the show. He was attempting to get his own show because the music he liked was lamentably underplayed on campus radio stations, particularly CiTR. So he called in stated his case and asked to dedicate the song to his old lady. We only played about half of it and we played it at 45 RPM to save time. If you bother to listen through This Side of Monday's archives you can find it, but I warn you that it's likely a better story than it was in actuality. The point of this whole stunt though was that it was delicious, delicious irony and we loved it and we all patted each other on the back a lot for pulling this off and then the host of This Side of Monday told me I was never allowed to host her show again, which was also funny. (She later relented.)
This is the spirit that I thought Long Beach Led Zep would embody when I walked into the darkened room where it was being projected onto a wall. In theory it sounded pretty funny. It featured the artist Kevin Schmidt standing on Long Beach during a beautiful sunset. He walks on screen, hooks an electric guitar into an amp and revs up a generator to get some power. Then, with his back to the surf, he rips into a solo instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin classic.
This sounded like a deliberate attempt to fuck with the art establishment by juxtaposing the high class VAG space with "low" art in the form of plebeian rock and roll and imagery that reminds one mostly of inspirational posters with words like "Hope" and "Perseverance" on them. Look at how terribly out of place this looks! Let's all laugh at it!
As I watched though it seemed less likely that this was Schmidt's goal. There was nothing to indicate a snide sense of irony. As I watched it gradually dawned on me that this was not a laughing at the irony of it all, but seemed very sincere. Maybe he was trying to point out that sunsets over picturesque beaches are beautiful and that "Stairway to Heaven," for all the cliches that surround it, is actually a stupendous song. Classic rock and inspirational landscape imagery together thumbing their nose at an art community that would never give them the time of day.
I might tend to listen to something obscure like tUnE-yArDs in my spare time, but that doesn't mean that Led Zep is any worse just because other people also appreciate it. A sunset is still beautiful even if it's the sort of beauty that everyone can appreciate—even snobs like me.
Image lifted from Kevin Schmidt's website.

Olio Festival

Music Waste is making it's choices for it's festival this year, but there are two new festivals in the works for this summer, that will be coming at things from very different angles. One of which I will tell you about today and another which I will save for later.

The first is the Olio Festival. Organized by a plethora of local promoters like Dani Vachon from Sealed With A Kiss, my!gay!husband! from Blast Ramp, Re-Up and Glory Days, Rachel Zottenberg of Grace Gallery and the Met and the comedy stylings of Cameron MacLeod and Conor Holler from Bronx Cheer and Sunday Service respectively. I'm actually doing all of the organizers a bit of a disservice by only mentioning a couple of the things they're involved in, all of them have had their hands in a lot of pies over the last few years and are responsible for a lot of great music, art and comedy events in the city.

The lineup isn't being announced until May, but I can give you a rundown of what the event will be like. In August from the 13th to the 16th the festival is going to move around town taking place in most major venues and a lot of smaller ones, too. Each day will take place in a different neighbourhood: Gastown, Main St., Downtown and on the final day everything will be at Second Beach in Stanley Park. As the fest moves to that neighbourhood there will be a bunch of events in that neighbourhood that will be within walking distance of each other.

They're modelling this fest after SXSW, which is a pretty good fest to model something on. There will be a mix of music, art and comedy. Can't wait for them to announce the lineup.

Image lifted from the Olio website.