You know my name (please don't look up my Facebook page)

A few months ago I moved from Vancouver to Maple Ridge for money-saving reasons. MR is two hours away from Van. Unfortunately what I'm now saving in dollars is what I'm losing in sanity due to this new rural lifestyle.

I'm used to dense throngs of pedestrians representing every race creed and culture milling about in a neighborhood filled with nearly nothing but independent stores and restaurants a block away from me, where we cross the street without looking, and if a car beeps its little horn, we stop in front of them and stare down the driver until a point is made; people first. Then yer little car.

Now it's a 20-minute walk from my townhouse-cluster (like an anthill for humans) to "the city" which is 90% white and there are more lifted pickup trucks and A&W's than humans. And I mean egregiously-powerful monster trucks with no purpose other than being powerful. Some even have Confederate flags on them. Yes, they know they're in B.C., which is in Canada which wasn't (still isn't) a part of the Confederate U.S. southern state territory. So I don't know. Oh yeah I do! They're racists! Also, people here actually smile and say Hi passing by you on the sidewalk and get this: it's not sarcastic, and they actually get legit offended if you don't do the same in return! I feel like Kevin Bacon in Flashdance, only he doesn't blow up the Death Star. Or whatever that movie is. You get the idea, I guess? I'm basically in opposite-land! Confusion has become my default setting.

So today on the now 90-min-plus-long bus ride home from work (it was 45 minutes before), I have no idea why, but the memory of a girl that I had an enormous crush on when I was in grade like nine or ten and maybe fifteen or whatever came over me. There's a lot of nothing to look at outside the window, so looking inside the self and its weird, morphing, mental photo-albums becomes a thing you get to do. Esp. if you don't have unlimited data.

Now, I had it SUPER-heavy for this girl. We shared an art class and I was one year older than her. I'll skip all the details because  - I mean, when you think of past moments and people like this, you're thinking of them as you did at that time , not as who you are now, so basically I'm a fifty-year-old thinking about how hot and beautiful a 13-to-14-year-old was. Fine for Vladimir Nabokov, but not me.

Anyways, I imagined how she must look these days, slipped into a platonic fantasy-situation where we'd meet up today and etc etc, snapped out of it and got off the bus and went home.

...aaaand looked her up on Facebook. Yep, I did that.

It was weird, and I shouldn't, I mean really shouldn't have done that thing. 

But it was a thing I did.

I feel like each love we have, be it crush, fling, marriage, failed romance etc is its own little animal and it gets fed and cared for differently than any of the others. And some shouldn't be fed at all. I mean, they gotta get put down. So when I - and this only came to me later the next morning when a song I had on dug some old, unrelated feels out of me - sat on that bus tripping away, I was subconsciously dusting off a set of complicated emotions that were never meant to be unpacked again, breaking some sort of safety seal like a four-year-old with a new bottle of 'candy' found in the medicine cabinet. I'd discovered a dime bag in an old drawer and it had a few crumbs left in it of some of the best shit I'd had in the 80's and like a dumbass I hadda go and dab the remains expecting to suddenly re-live the good ol' days, and now I'm freaking out, finding it kinda difficult to put everything away again where it should've stayed. Is it possible to re-crush after 30-something years!? I'M PLAYING RE-ANIMATOR WITH DEAD MEMORIES!? Keeping in line with my first allegory, I hit up the Pet Sematary and we all know how that pans out.

For about an hour afterwards I just felt odd, misplaced, and I guess jarred into that feeling of being one step further all up in the face of mortality. Actually, it's six hours later now and I'm still a bit shook. As to why, though, I can't pin down.

Actually, yeah, I can. That's exactly it: she aged, and accomplished a lot so far in her life. Whereas I'm still a kid in my head, and have done nothing. 

What was I expecting, huh? A taller, slightly-more-mature version of That Girl with maybe a little grey in the same Jr.-high-styled hair? 

35+ years monstrously climbed outta the cellar of memories and kicked a reality-check in place of the old, fuzzy mental photograph I have of a person I had mentality-changing feelings about. 

Now I'm sitting here just blanketing my cold soul in some old comfort and feelings I haven't gotten cozy with in a long while, but it's mildewy and strange so away it goes. Eventually I guess. This is so weird. I hauled an emotional corpse out of its grave and am paying a toll for the effort. A small part of this is also probably because I haven't physically changed much since school. I weigh the same and my (albeit thinning) hair is only starting to sprout silver. And I still think and act like I'm 20. Hell, two years ago I got back on a skateboard after a double-decade absence and I'm ripping way harder than I ever used to. Maybe I lack a time-filter? Dude with the scythe is starting to walk faster behind me,  and I'm tripping on his shadow in the lamplight while daydreaming about the past. Uh-oh. I guess I'll sort it all out? Someday?

But until that miracle happens, I still love all the music that I was ever into, including punk and The Who (a band I got heavily acquainted with way back in the time-frame that the above loveawkwardness happened), two musical entities mashed up in this year's (haw) entry. 

This is Dumbrock Vol.5: Tommy in Seven Minutes - a tribute of a sort, I guess, to that classic Who album on one side, and the other with four versions of The Beatles' "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)". Released in 1994 on clear vinyl (my version at least) with twelve very varied bands taking on the rock opera with jubilant abandon, all of whom you can see on the jacket-scans below;

The Beatles-side I can take or leave, really, but I'm all-in for the main feature. Even in '94 I only knew 5-6 of these bands, which makes sense I guess as musically this thing's all over the place. It's so much fun I kinda wish a full album could've been done, but it seems seven minutes is a perfect length. As for any other release under the Dumbrock flag, I can't find anything. And as for That Girl, I wish you an amazing life. I'm going to forget you again and try to stop running in a worn circle.    

Download here: 

TI7MYKMNLUTN 

(Oh and it looks like I'm back, at least for a little while. I also have these files in .flac if anyone deems them worthy of an upgrade. And I'm still unsure about the new background pic I'm using)

Dedicated to Scratch Records (R.I.P.)

The year was 1980-something. 1988? Okay. '87 maybe. We heard about this little tiny record store in downtown Vancouver. We were from the odious 'burbs against our wills. We were used to heading out every week to Odyssey Imports, to Track Records, to Collector's RPM and A&B Sound and Sam the Record Man, all on one strip (after Odyssey moved over from Granville St), then on a short bus ride to Zulu on W.4th, in another super-cozy space that I think once housed Quintessence Records. So here we had yet another record store to go to, on Cambie, near Hastings (apologies to non-locals - I know that reading about "familiar" street names is totally irritating).
It wasn't on street-level, it was just off the sidewalk and down some hazardous steps into a narrow pit that also housed three other shops - as far as I know, the only place in Van where such a thing exists - and second from the end before you popped back up the opposing staircase. Of the two, I preferred that other-end-staircase, but I can't say why.

Creak open the door, and shit; this place is small. Sort of triangular too. Nine out of ten times heading in and to your immediate left on the sofa behind the till was Keith Parry, owner-proprietor, music-lover of any genre and all-around swell fellow (as well as member of Superconducter, among others), with a How-dy! and we were like, "Uh - hey.", and hit the racks. We weren't used to benevolent - or non-paranoid, or anxiety-free - music-shop owners, but time went on and we eventually got on famously.  

Tons of vinyl we'd never seen before. A small table full of used 7"'s (I refused to pay $8 for a worn copy of the DK's first single "California Uber Alles" and now kinda sorta totally wish I'd bought it, since I think brand new 7"s go for the same amount these days) and weird stuff all over the walls and ceiling, including a giant homemade Residents eyeball-with-top-hat made out of macrame. No, paper-mache. Whatever. And rail-thin Keith with the hair down almost to the waist, perpetual smile and infinite (okay almost) knowledge on the local scene and anything vaguely underground. Tape cassette shelves on the walls, a small zine-display, some rarities and a GG Allin voodoo doll in the front-counter display, tiny video cabinet with obscure VHS tapes, and cheap dollar-boxes under the used bins filled with unexpected treasures, like when I found that 1982 12" version of BAD RELIGION's first 7" (when the initial 1981 7" sold out, BR repressed it the next year in a bigger size), and my buddy said, "Hey, cool - let me see that...". 
Yeeeeeah. The next moment I look up and the fucker was at the register buying the thing.
(I eventually got it back 22 years later.)

Carl (The New Pornographers) Newman behind the cash machine when Keith was out, malevolently staring down potential customers through a ton of red hair just daring them to buy anything that didn't meet his approval. Small surprises, like candy added to your purchase or doodled artwork on the other side of the printed plastic store bags. I actually still have my record bag with a big Scratch logo on one side and a life-size, multi-colored va-jay-jay adorning the back.
Mr. Parry giving me an original 11x17 gig flyer for the Dead Kennedys/D.O.A./Toxic Reasons show at the Commodore Ballroom from 1982 after he saw me eyeing it with insane lust.
It was just a warm, neat place. 

Then he moved shop.
Like half a block away, across from the ass-side of the ancient Woodward's building and permanently shadowed by the parking garage next door. I helped move a bit of stuff along with Claudio (where's he at?), but my S.A.D. was spiking and it was a little weird. The new place was way bigger and had an awesome secret: a stairway somewhat in the middle of the floor-space led down to a series of rooms (used for storage, parties and I believe photo-shoots) that, as you traveled along, became smaller and smaller until you ended up in a tiny dank-ish concrete area with a manhole over your head that popped you up into the middle of Hastings. The rear of the place opened to a tight alley that threw you out onto the edge of Gastown.
Only a few years later and Keith pulled up stakes and took a smaller location on Richards, a non-descript building with only a doorway and sandwich-board to let you know where you were. Head down the long hall and there ya go. At this point I had pretty much stopped hitting the place for stuff, maybe once every three months or so: all the record shops previously mentioned had bit the dust due to both rent/lease hikes and the CD "revolution", and Granville - once a main punk-hangout - was in the first stages of personality-suicide and getting downtown was less and less of a fun pastime and more and more of a depressing punch of reality we only fully feel in retrospect: things move forward and change has to happen. Other reasons being that old-school punk LP's in the used bins were on the decline, and all the new music I was getting introduced to wasn't really available at the shop. 
It was also a weird feeling being in Scratch without Keith ever in sight anymore (he retreated to the office for the distro work and other office-y business), and 2-3 new staff members busy doing figures or shuffling product away and not knowing you, or that you had been buying stuff from the previous incarnations of the place for like ten years. 
The laid-back relaxed vibe we felt had gotten necessarily replaced, and there we are being moved forward. 

Jump ahead to sometime last year and Scratch moves to a spot on Hastings. Like, almost literally a spot, something matching 50 square feet almost right across from Pigeon Park. Incredibly cramped but also kinda cozy, and I guess far too small to accommodate the both old and new stock needed for a venture to hold out for very long. Also, the two times I was in there, the clerk seemed to have ADHD and a nervous anxiety usually reserved for startled squirrels. 

After 25 years, the physical store is dead, fully survived, however, by their online services, so go there instead and order away. (Edit: the site hasn't been updated since '14)

It's something we never think about at the moment because really, why would you?: that amazing place you go to will not be there forever. Except maybe the aforementioned Zulu Records still around in their second location.


As something of a tribute, I serve up "The Sensuous Black Woman",  by "The Madam".  
The Madam was actually Lady Reed, a familiar face around Rudy Ray Moore (of many a Blaxploitation flick such as Dolomite and Petey Wheatstraw). You can hear Lady Reed in outtakes - tho' not from this LP - on N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" on the track 'Gangsta Gangsta', if you're at all familiar with that release (and damn, you should be). 
But here she lays down the simple rules for sexually attracting, seducing, and keeping your man, and keeping him interested and horny for your beautiful Black pussy. 
And, if you're prone to discomfort around words such as pussy and cock, please, please do not bring these downloads onto your computer, because it's pretty much nothing BUT those words and better. Or worse, I guess. As the jacket says, "Rated for Mature Adults Only". Not the immature ones who are gonna start heckling their monitor drunkenly half-way through.  
And the album is produced by R.R. Moore as well, put out on Kent Records which had a roster including bluesman Guitar Slim Green and a group called Snatch and the Poontangs. The year? Sources say 1977, but it sounds like something from '70-'72.

Side one is her monologue on the subject, while side two is her giving a smaller version with a Q&A session, and it's hilarious. The audience of a seeming few is completely awesome. 

Caveat on the sound quality: my copy seems to have been played several hundred times by someone using a rusty axe as a stylus, and I've run it through a 'click & hiss' eliminator, so that odd aural activity in the background is not the tides of the ocean or elevator noises, but the dubious fixings of Adobe Audition.

(photo credit: me)

Download here:
 Sensuous Black Woman

Voices of the Angels - The Final Chapter

...when I was 13 or 14, me and my best friend, Chris Sabourin (at the time - we "broke up" a few years later over - of all things - a large quantity of very old MAD Magazine back-issues) were spending a lazy summer afternoon wandering down a backwoods trail near the dyke in our old hometown; a small river with beautiful overhanging willows and the occasional sewage drain-pipe joining one side to the other (which we would always puff up our ain't-afraida-nuthin' chests to and cross, well, about three feet of before quivering back to the home-shore and saying something like "Ah, there's nothing over there anyway!" in a quick excuse), under which a small flock of Mallards might float, along with maybe a small log, which would get caught up in a stack of dumped tires or a misused shopping cart, now brown from being covered with decaying algae & motor-oil.
As we kicked rocks along the way, we spotted something shining off to the right, buried in the tall grass. Excited by the prospect of not being bored anymore, we rushed over and found two rifles with scopes, a huge bowie knife, and about three boxes of tranquilizer-darts, spilled onto the dirt & mixed in with the grass.
We completely freaked out.
What luck! Guns! Ammo (sorta)! Scopes!
My friend grabbed the knife (as I already had one that size), and I grabbed a rifle and started tugging at the sight-scope to get it off. We briefly imagined ourselves sauntering down the sun-scorched avenues of our 'burg with weapons almost as tall as we were and decided against it, although we made plans to hide them and get back under cover of the night to recapture the deadly items.
Anyway, we heard some noise in the distance, and carefully took a peek down the path. FUCK! A truck marked with some official city-seal and about four huge lumberjack-types inside was slowly trundling towards our position. We had a quickly-negated plan to grab the guns and lam it, but they were too damn big to go unnoticed in the hands of teenagers down a dirt path.
(I also imagined picking them off with the tranks, but that would have required some kind of aiming skill - a skill withered by my trading in the slingshot for sitting in front of Donkey Kong)
We dropped everything and bolted.
They never saw us, didn't chase us. I incorporated the brilliant plan of stopping just out of sight and sitting on the curb next to the road where the trail's exit merged: guilty kids would keep running - we just looked like a couple teens sitting in the sun. And we could see what they were doing.
They loaded up the firearms without any excitement, like it was them who left the items there in the first place, and slowly drove off.
We got up and started walking.

“So, whadda ya wanna do?”...

Download here:
VOTA 4

Voices of the Angels Part 3

...remember sweltering summer days in Port Coquitlam; BMX-biking alone through heat-rippled streets with neither a moving car nor any of the thousands of kids my age, also set adrift for two months, in sight.

Eerie silence but for the combined hum of knobby tires sticking to hot asphalt and uncountable A/C units from seemingly deserted homes... where they all were I never could fathom and never found out. Inside watching TV or playing Atari? No laughter, no cheering from any of these homes. Off to Disneyland? Summer Camp?

Oh – there's the mail-lady.

Okay, so I'm not in some Twilight Zone episode or left behind as rapture-fodder, but the robotic affectations of her movements that the job requires doesn't comfort me at all.

Winding through the sidestreets, dead end cul-de-sacs grinding my tires in a 180-degree turn, and somehow I find the abandoned “playground” in the middle of this particular area that's only accessible through a tiny paved passage between houses.

I slowly tour the mobius-strip concrete-8 that winds through the entire area, a cracked and tree-root-warped cement path with a little bridge in the middle rising over the junction; a few giant tractor-tires are scattered about, almost buried in weeds and erupting from the earth like farmland Easter-Island statues, peeling clown-paint on them nearly completely removed by the elements and years of neglect. There's a three-person swing-set with one seat wrapped tight around the top. Another is dangling from one chain, and the last is making a disturbing screeching wail from rusted chains holding a shredded canvas seat catching the dry wind.

Elsewhere, what was once a sandbox leisurely swallows unrecognizable and sun-faded plastic bits of toys. A discarded tricycle rusts peacefully against the wooden fence in a forgotten corner, and a doll-torso with matted hair and eyes frozen in horror glares up at me from a clump of undeveloped dandelions.

I ride over the small bridge once, back the bike up to the highest point for an overview of the entire area, and suddenly I'm overcome with chills; I mean one moment I'm fine and next this creeping terror with ice-legs crawls over my back like a blanket of millipedes and I am gone, I am outta there, and I never ever go back.

This side of the Voices of the Angels double-LP features author Danny Sugerman, Chris D (of the Flesheaters and Divine Horsemen to name a couple), and Doug Moody, infamous for his Mystic Records label of the 1980's.

Standouts (for me) are the Richard Meltzer track - "Wednesday...", and Cheryl Smith's "Sure", while the Jane Bond & the Undercovermen is merely a radio spot for the Rodney on the ROQ show.

Download here:

Side 3

(photo of kid in Smiths shirt on bike c.1988, found on the sidewalk some years ago)