No More Strangers: Kidnap Kids @ Funky Winkerbeans

I caught Kidnap Kids tonight at Funky Winkerbeans as part of No More Strangers. There are now four kids, as opposed to two, which adds a rhythm section to the lineup. These guys play the fucking cutest music you will see ever. They are like kittens playing with puppies in musical form.

If you haven't seen them before Kidnap Kids are fronted by two young ladies who banter excitedly with each other in between songs, which has them singing and playing guitar, keys and a xylophone. The girls singing is both folky and punk, but they have a rhythm in their voices and play off each other in a rapid well-practiced style. They sing about pedophilia, ghosts and having bits of your insides on your outside, but they do it in such a cute way that you can't help but feel uplifted after seeing them.

I missed Bible Belts, which was just Chris-a-riffic. He is usually pretty awesome to see.

The image is the first thing that turned up in a Google image search and may not have anything to do with the band. It's the cover of a book by Todd Strasser.

Died Young, Stayed Pretty

I made an appearance on Tracy Fuller's Arts Report show on CiTR 101.9FM where I discussed the movie Died Young, Stayed Pretty, which is a documentary about concert posters. The episode was podcast and you can find it here. I speak with Tracy in the last 10 minutes, however there is a whole episode of goodness so you can listen to the whole thing if you want.

Also of interest to you, dear reader, last weekend was Discorder Magazine's production weekend. If you want to grab a copy of it, it should be around Vancouver at fine purveyors of music, beverages and education. I am the editor and I assure you, it is full of goodness. Also this month especially it is full of history.

Dancing In Our Debt: Search Parties, Aaron Read, the Rub, Kellarissa & Rose Melbourg, Bible Belts

I went to Dancing In Our Debt at the Vancity near city hall last night. I won't get into too much detail as I suspect I will be reviewing it for Discorder next month. However to organize my thoughts for the review I will give you a brief note form rundown:
-better than the first one
-Rose Melberg and Kellarissa's duets were awesome, they did a cover from Nashville.
-speaking of cover's how about Bible Belts cover of "Superman" by the Crash Test Dummies. Also good.
-didn't hear Aaron Read at all because I didn't know he was playing. That bank is surprisingly soundproof.
-"There's no reason we can't do this stuff in Vancouver." —Harlan Shore from Search Parties

Kudos to VIVO and Signal & Noise for supporting the event.

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.

The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid

I recently finished reading Elizabeth Currid's analysis of New York's cultural economy, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York City. The book argues that creative industries drive the economy of New York as much as or more than conventionally recognized industries such as finance, real estate, etc.

Currid also points out that promoting social events, such as night life, is an effective way to promote the cultural economy. Though she plays up the networking aspect a lot, I think networking is helpful for most idea-based industries. A more important point is that night life is how cultural products get evaluated. Most people don't go to work and decide which band sounds good or whose painting you like, you go to a social event like a gallery opening or a concert and decide whether or not the artist has merit.

As the editor of a music magazine I can assert that I decide on what bands to cover by going out and seeing them, not sitting at my desk in my office. The workplace of most cultural employees is as much out at the events that promote the music, art, fashion, whatever as it is in offices. As such it is beneficial for the culture based economy for a city to encourage these sorts of events to happen.

Currid also points out that New York has such a successful cultural economy because it is such a dense grouping of creative types which encourages people in different mediums to cross-pollinate, expanding on the idea that artists do not create in a vacuum and arguing that the greatest come to their success through connections and collaborations with other people in the cultural world.

She backs up her arguments with a bundle of statistics and interviews with notable people such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Shepard Fairey, Aesop Rock and a tonne of other people. To be honest her ability use the statistics left a little to be desired as she seemed to misinterpret the very ones she used in her book from time to time, however, none of her misreadng of stats undercut her points much.

She gets into more detail and I'm not going to wax on about this too much, the book does have applications for thinking about Vancouver's creative scene though. If you're interested at this point you can either grab a copy of it, or if you know me and don't mind that I write in the margins of everything I read I'll loan it to you.

Book cover lifted from the Internetz. Thanks Google image search.

Search Parties, probably Golden Touch, Marcus Naslund @ the Showboat

Went down and caught most of this show before heading on. Search Parties were as good as when I'd last seen them. Epic with a dash of punk. Kids dig it, and I do mean kids. Standing above the show a girl asked me what school I went to and I told her I was graduated, but reflexively asked what school she went to expecting her to say UBC, Cap College, Emily Carr, etc. Only to get Such-in-such Secondary, Grade 10 as an answer. I felt old.

Search Parties are young, so it should not be surprising that they attract a young crowd. Lead singer Harlan Shore said he might be taking off for the summer and possibly next year so catch this band while you still can they're worth the effort.

The room they were playing in was narrow and it was a little hard to see the band though they sounded fine even if the acoustics of the event were an amp bouncing off cement. Openers were in short supply, B-Lines cancelled after the threat of rain almost stopped the night from happening, which is unfortunate I still haven't seen that band. Didn't see Dead Ghosts around though they may have played after Search Parties. Openers ended up being the surprise act Marcus Naslund (the band not the hockey player) and a band that was Marcus Naslund with a different drummer. I'm pretty sure this was Golden Touch, but don't quote me. These two bands sounded pretty similar, unsurprising given the similarities in their lineup. Both very fun in a pop-punky way, they could play their instruments well and everyone was into it, which was more than enough.

Photo of Search Parties courtesy of Gerald Deo.

Women, Nü Sensae, Kidnapping, etc. @ W.I.S.E. Hall

Oh what a good show. Calgary's Women came back through town to play out in Strathcona, and they were rad. Bridging the gap between sunny psychedelia and fuzzy noise sounds the band played a rushed set only to be called back on stage for an encore after they tried to end on time so the venue could close. (awful nice of the organizers to let them play an extra song though it would have been better if they'd just had more time to play ie. less openers). Women put out a great album last year and their live performance does not disappoint. They balance their performance well with pleasant sounding guitar riffs and little hooks that throw you off balance but still manage to rattle around in your skull. If you missed them, you missed out.

Nü Sensae was a good opener. This duo smacks people in the face with their sound, but they do it so well it's a positive experience. Andrea Lukic's voice is well suited for the ominous screaming and barking she uses to punctuate their songs. Andrea's vocals blast out overtop of her fuzzy bass playing and Daniel Pitout's heavy frenetic drumming. They were wearing that stuff football players wear under their eyes to prevent glare, with the lights that always shine directly onto a stage I'm more surprised that more musicians haven't thought of doing this than that Nü Sensae decided to. (I'm going to insert a shameless plug now. Nü Sensae are playing May 6 for Discorder at the Astoria)

Kidnapping was... ok. The lead singer's voice ruined it for me. Why is it so often the vocals that makes or breaks something? [/rhetoricals] I'm told it was Sean Orr singing, which if that is the case I like it when he sings in front of Taxes, but not this. If they had a different singer or no singer I think I would have enjoyed this. If you click their myspace link above you can hear what they sound like sans vocals.

Some other bands played before this, but I did not see them.

Photo of Women courtesy of Steve Louie.