Yup, I am once again asking for your support in coming out to see my band play. We will be performing at LanaLou’s in Vancouver on Friday, April 14. Attendance is mandatory.
See the Facebook event page for more details.
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Despite my recent history in marketing and PR, I spent a considerable portion of my career prior to that as an arts journalist. I am happy to report that I’m dipping my toes into those waters again, thanks to Stir. For the curious, here’s everything I have written for Stir to date:
Novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad ponders home truths at the Vancouver Writers Fest
Stir, October 11, 2022
Steve Dawson and friends will take a musical trip with Grateful Dead re-imagining
Stir, October 17, 2022Comedy review: Blueberries Are Assholes finds the absurd within the ordinary, at the Firehall Arts Centre
Stir, October 22, 2022
Games in Music concert plays into the power of video-game soundtracks
Stir, November 1, 2022 -
My band is playing another show, and if you’re going to be in Vancouver next Thursday, I would love to see you there.
For full details, please visit the Facebook event page.
Here’s a taste of what we sound like:
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As many of you reading this will already know, I worked at the Georgia Straight for many years. This week came the news that the Straight has been sold once again, and that the entire staff has been unceremoniously terminated without any advance notice. (Not by the new ownership, I should clarify; in fact, the new owners have expressed a desire to bring the paper back to what it was in its glory days, so there is a lot of reason to be optimistic.)
Last time the Georgia Straight changed hands, a large chunk of the editorial department was let go. (And some, including me, left for their own reasons.) A few of the former Straight staffers subsequently launched their own web-based venture called Stir, which has become a bastion of local arts coverage in Vancouver.
I recently got the opportunity to write a piece for Stir about the Improv Centre’s latest production, a murder mystery called Stage Fright: Murder at the Improv. You can read that here. Below is an excerpt of my interview with Artistic Director Jalen Saip:
Saip admits that there is a certain degree of risk involved in pulling an unproven non-performer up on-stage to interact with the pros, especially in the context of a production in which the improvisation is expected to make the audience laugh while simultaneously driving a narrative forward.
“You can’t really ensure that it won’t be chaos,” she notes. “Before the pandemic we had done some shows where we also used an audience member as our lead—like the Merry Kiss-mas show that was done here—and you really, truly never know what you’re going to get with an audience member. But that’s sometimes the fun of it. That’s how you can really show that you are improvising the story. You don’t know what they’re going to say or do.”
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Janet Smith at Stir for asking me to write this piece, and also to remind anyone in need of some assistance with word-wrangling that I am available for freelance assignments.
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I have a very extensive catalogue of old articles that I think are worth revisiting. Here’s one of them. I love a bit of good ol’ band infighting. Unless it’s happening in my band. (This article originally appeared in The Georgia Straight.)
It probably goes without saying that you can’t believe everything you read on the Interwebs. Take the article on Perfect Pussy that Pitchfork staff writer Evan Minsker filed last October. In his preamble to a Q & A with singer Meredith Graves, Minsker wrote of the Syracuse, New York–based noise-punk outfit: “They regularly meet at diners for ‘band feelings time’, where they offer each other support and an open forum to air out what they’re going through.” He then quotes Graves as saying, “We’re, like, really nice. It’s like our calling card: we’re the nicest fucking band in punk.”
While this makes Perfect Pussy sound like a tattooed version of the Get Along Gang, a different picture emerges when the Straight rings up Shaun Sutkus, the group’s synthesizer specialist and resident recording engineer. Reached on the road in Texas, somewhere between McAllen and Houston, Sutkus seems suitably engaged in the business of being interviewed. Partway through the interview, however, he reveals that a bit of intraband drama has been unfolding in front of him.
“So, our bass player just took the van off and left Meredith and I at this gas station, and I’m really fucking pissed off right now,” Sutkus announces, sounding remarkably calm, all things considered. “I don’t know what the fuck his problem is right now. You probably heard a car horn beeping? Yeah, that was him beeping at Meredith to get in as she was flipping him off. And then he decided to leave.”
The Straight offers to refrain from reporting any of this—including the part where he describes bassist Greg Ambler as “a fucking asshole”, but Sutkus responds with a nonchalant “Oh, I don’t care if you do.” So there it is.
Clearly, Sutkus wasn’t about to go anywhere, so he fielded a few questions about Perfect Pussy’s chaotically assaultive sound, for which—as captured on the group’s just-released debut album, Say Yes to Love—he’s largely responsible. The record blitzes by in a 23-minute blur of feedback, fury, and tape hiss. That hiss, Sutkus reveals, is the sonic signature of an effects unit, the Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, and not an indication that Perfect Pussy takes an analogue approach to recording.
“Everything’s digital, and it wasn’t recorded live, either,” the producer states. “It was all overdubbed and stuff. What I do is, we’ll set up drums and record everything at once and then just replace stuff that needs to be replaced—that we fucked up or something. And then once we get a solid, basic tracking done, we just do passes of feedback. Like I’ll just throw Ray [McAndrew] in front of his guitar amp and turn it up all the way and have him just play with it feeding back. And then same with Meredith, too. When I record her vocals, I’ll just throw her in a room with an amp turned up all the way, and it just feeds back. Every time she’s not saying a word, the amp starts feeding back.”
If that makes it difficult to make out what Graves is singing about, that doesn’t faze Sutkus, who admits that he doesn’t focus much on the lyrics anyway: “When I record and listen to music, I don’t really listen to the vocals and the words, or the writing. I don’t really pay attention or analyze that. It’s just usually the sound that it makes. It’s more of a melodic instrument that makes sounds.”
The sounds that Perfect Pussy makes have seen the band pegged—by everyone from Rolling Stone to, yes, Pitchfork—as one of 2014’s acts to watch. Let’s hope that doesn’t mean watching the band disintegrate on tour.
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On May 2 of this year, I started a new job as the in-house copywriter at PressReader. This is my first real marketing position, after years in journalism and a stint in public relations. so that’s pretty exciting.
What is PressReader, you ask? You’ll find a more complete explanation here, but PressReader’s main product is a platform that aggregates thousands of newspapers and magazines. You may have encountered PressReader at a hotel or on a flight, or maybe you even have the PressReader app on your mobile device and are already familiar with it.
It’s a great company, and I am stoked to be working for it.
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After a two-year hiatus from live performances (thanks to a certain global pandemic that shall remain unnamed), my band will be playing a show in the New Year.
February 12 at the Princeton Pub in Vancouver, to be specific, along with Hotel Empress and Doom Cocoon. More details as I get them. Peep the poster below:
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When I worked at the Georgia Straight, I wrote about music. A lot. It was one of my main beats. Since then, I have done very little writing about music, but thanks to the Vancouver Guardian, I recently had the chance to write a short article about local-band-made-good Mother Mother.
I have written about Mother Mother a number of times over the years, and frontman Ryan Guldemond is always a human quote machine. Click here for an example of my previous articles about the band.
I’m hoping to make freelance music journalism something I do more of in 2022.
John Lucas 