CampusIntel

The Steamwhistle Brewery, located at 255 Bremner Boulevard, Toronto, is hosting an art exhibit brandishing photographs depicting some of rock’s biggest icons this March. The brewing house turned art gallery event, which is free, is displaying, for the first time in large-scale public view, a series of photographs taken at rock and roll shows in Toronto between 1979 and 1981. Included are shots of The Clash at their first performance in Toronto in 1979, and Bob Marley’s last Toronto concert.

The photos are a result of a pair of young punks’ do-it-yourself photojournalist tactics inspired by the early punk rock movement, around 1979. Nick and Simon White, brothers who grew up in Toronto, saw most of the shows that later went down in history as part of the beginnings of the new musical era. They got the idea to photograph these early performances, possibly foreseeing the nostalgic element they would later provide.

The mostly black and white photographs depict a youthful who’s who of 70s and early 80s rock: The Ramones, The Clash, Peter Tosh, The Specials, and U2 with a young Bono are among the legendary acts captured in the photos. Other rare performances like The Talking Heads, Johnny Rotten performing with post-Pistols band Public Image Ltd., and The Specials were also captured by the brothers.

For the past 30 years, the photos have been tucked away, and nearly forgotten about, by the brothers. They stopped photo-documenting the music scene when it became harder for them to obtain press passes for concerts. In the earlier, they were just seeing shows and taking pictures from the crowd. They started a fanzine, Smash It Up, where many of the photos were printed, but it went out of production when the 70s underground went mainstream and being punk no longer meant being free to publicize your favourite bands.

Now, the White brothers’ extensive work is on display for all to appreciate. The event is free, on for all of March at The Steamwhistle Brewery in Toronto, and, I’m sure, pints will be on hand to help commemorate the wild moments.

Here is a small list of some cool shows coming up in March or April. Check one out for something to do!

SNFU – March 19 @ Sneaky Dee’s, Toronto. SNFU started playing in the late eighties in California. Early skate-punk with fast licks and catchy lyrics.

Forgotten Rebels – March 13 @ Casbah, Hamilton AND March 20 @ Alexander’s, Brantford. The Forgotten Rebels were around during the first wave of punk in the late seventies. Heavy garage sound, basically just distorted Chuch Berry tunes if you ask me – which is a good thing. And, they have a new album coming out this spring.

The Specials – April 19 @ Sound Academy, Toronto. This show will be amazing. The Specials also started in the late seventies, playing ska in the UK. Rocksteady-reggae that heatseekingly catches the ear. If you don’t know ‘em, try ‘A Message To You, Rudy’ on Youtube.

Gogol Bordello – April 20 @ Sound Academy, Toronto. Gypsy-punks. ‘Nough Said.

Also, Germ Attack from Ottawa just released a 7-inch, and they are releasing a new LP, Cruxshadow, in March. Speed-Street Punk that has been evolving in Ottawa for almost ten years now. The thing about Germ Attak is they have really well-done recordings, and they are seasoned musicians, so they know what they are doing. I recomend, and will have to pick these up sometime soon.

Word. Thanks for reading, reply with a comment about a show I’ve missed. See you in the pit.

Baltimore hardcore band Give opened the show at the Opera House Friday night, and set somewhat of a heavy tone for the night. Sadly, I only caught the last two songs of their set, and I really wish I could have seen more. The thunderous, bass-laden drums that continuously keeps rolling on through both fast parts and slow breakdowns initially captivated me. Their uniqueness kept my attention. Give is definitely a hardcore band, complete with tell-tale aggressive heaviness. This gets mixed, though, with a lighter guitar sound. There isn’t too much distortion, making it easy to follow the rhythm. Comparing the guitar style to a similar band would not be easy.  And, when a band can heed me from b-lining to the bar as soon as I get into a show, which Give did, they usually stick around in my playlist for good.

The D’urbervilles, who took the stage after Give, are also great at keeping your attention. Their new-age brand of rock-pop beamed through the Opera House. Their sound is somewhere between Joy Division and the Weakerthans, and much in common with most dance-rock indie bands. However, they strike their own pose. They have some very technical, high-tempo, yet sometimes hard to follow, drum beats. Two synthesizers, looked after by guitarist/lead singer John O’Regan and lead guitarist Tim Bruton, work together well with the clean, palm-muted, not too overpowering guitar lines. There were highs and lows to this set – when at their best, The D’urbervilles can trigger sporadic, arm-throwing dance moves in any wallflower, like they did for O’Regan.

After the D’urbervilles, Kurt Vile played a captivating six-song set that I, once again, was very drawn into. He opened with “Overnite Religion” accompanied by a second guitarist/percussionist, who laid down the tambourine and maraca lines of the song. The trippy folk-rock made up of loop-dubs, looped drum beats, and guitar, set an intimate vibe throughout the Opera House before Fucked Up went on. At times I felt like it was just Kurt and I alone in a room, and when I would come back to my senses, I would look around and confirm that everyone else was also entranced by him. The third song was drummed by Jonah from Fucked Up, which added a refreshing crack to the low-key stoner rock. In total, the Kurt Vile set felt almost like a healing process, a cool rejuvenator before Fucked Up tore the place apart.

Tore it apart they did. Fucked Up started their set with drummer Jonah’s mother playing the flute line from “Year of the Rat,” and then dove into “Son the Father,” off their Polaris Prize winning album “The Chemistry of Common Life,” and staple opener for recent shows. They moved smoothly into “David Comes To Life,” with a tweaked breakdown in the middle, differing from the studio version of the tune. By mid-set, lead singer Damian Pink Eyes Abraham lit things up and tore his t-shirt off, as usual. For the next song, Damian sang while pulling an impressively long microphone cable around the entire Opera House floor, a perfect way to engage the crowd. Near the end of the set, while playing “Crusades,” a fan who grabbed the mic from Damian and started singing was attacked by another audience member, the attacker was swiftly removed from the event. After a quick break, the debacle was sorted out. The band just picked up where they left off, and finished the song with the final chorus. The performance was full of Fucked Up classics,  including a thrashing rendition of “Two Snakes” off the band’s debut LP, “Hidden World.” The sextet played well together, in sync at all times, while frequently switching and changing parts of many songs.  A tight set, that was undoubtedly planned and polished, from one of Toronto’s hottest bands.

I posted last month about a bunch of shows going down in the GTA in the new year, and now I have realized that an update is due.

First off, the Slayer and Megadeth “Canadian Carnage” tour that was scheduled to hit Toronto in February has been rescheduled. The tour, which was a rescheduled event from a missed show last summer, has now been set for the end of July – they hit the Molson Ampitheatre in Toronto on July 29. Check out www.slayer.net for full tour details.

As a reminder, there are two Fucked Up shows happening around the GTA in February. They are at the L3 Nightclub in St. Catherines on the 23rd with Leatherface, and are in Toronto on the 26th with Kurt Vile at The Opera House. Wallet allowing, I will be at both shows.

And, something really exciting for me, oldschool punk band The Forgotten Rebels are doing some shows in the coming weeks: On February 27 they will be playing at The Casbah in Hamilton with The Lucky Ones; and on March 20 they will be at Alexander’s Tavern in Brantford. These are two shows that any ‘77 punk lover will need to see, myself included.

Also in February, skate-punk originals The Queers will be at the Horseshoe in Toronto on the 21st; and Killing Fields will be at the Rearview Mirror Bar in Toronto on the 20th for a FREE show.

Coming up, two-tone kings The Specials at the Sound Academy in Toronto on April 19. Can’t wait to dance the night away for that.

Written by John Coleman

On February 4, 2009, the rock and roll world lost one of it’s greatest and most unsung trailblazers. Lux Interior, lead singer of the Cramps ¾ a legend in his own time ¾ died due to aortic dissection, he was 62.

The Cramps were founded in 1972 by Lux and the ferocious female guitar player, Lux’s future wife, Poison Ivy. By 1975 the Cramps were a staple in the budding punk rock scene in New York City, turning heads alongside the New York Dolls, Television, and the Ramones.

However, The Cramps were different from the other seminal punk bands. This is highly due to Poison Ivy’s guitar style, which was highly dependent on blues riffs and archetypal rock and roll music. She picked up where the 50s and 60s punks left off (yes, punk was around then too) with guitar driven music that concentrated on the spirit of the garage, rock and roll’s first home.

Many of the songs The Cramps played were covers of old rock and roll classics – like “Surfin’ Bird” by The Trashmen, “Psychotic Reaction” by 60s California garage band The Count Five, or “Shortnin’ Bread” made popular by The Emeralds. But, they also had a telling bluesy influence, through which The Cramps popularized new rock genres that spring-boarded off punk.

Rockabilly, southern rock, prototyped by Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley; infused with hillbilly bass lines and country guitar, became part of the Cramps’ lure. However, they did it with a twist. As if by accident, they bred a new -billy: Psychobilly. Early Cramps flyers advertised “Psychobilly” and “Rockabilly Voodoo” as their style of music. In the coming years after the first wave of punk, Psychobilly would be used to describe many punk bands, like with The Dead Kennedys who mixed hardcore with an old school rock sound, and The Stray Cats who mixed the old rockabilly sound with punk’s speed and fashion.

The Cramps were also masters of keeping the Hallowe’en spirit alive all year ‘round. Lux’s lyrics were obsessed with sci-fi exploration like in “Human Fly” and “How to Make a Monster,” and masochistic sexual themes like in “What’s Inside a Girl?” This ghoulish, creepy sci-fi theme led to another sub-genre of punk: Horror Punk. The Misfits and ensuing copy-bands are considered the horror punks, and a lot of their dark, gothic subject matter was founded by The Cramps’ style.

Above all, The Cramps are arguably the first blues-punk band. For lack of a better term, blues-punk essentially means high energy, distorted blues. When analyzing The Cramps, this is exactly what they are. There was still no bull, keeping them punk – but Poison Ivy could lay out a juke-joint riff like any of the greats. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is a recent band that follows in the crashy, trashy style of blues that The Cramps fine-tuned.

In recent years The Cramps were still touring. Lux was still sporting his leather bondage gear and high-heels, and still giving head to the microphone; Poison Ivy still laying down the hippest, funnest riffs in recent rock, and looking damn hot while doing so. Needless to say, I love the Cramps, and I think you should too. I discovered them in my early high school days, on one of the old Punk-O-Rama compilations that Epitaph records used to do so well. The song? Haulass Hyena, off “Big Beat from Badsville” (oh, what an intimidating album name, and cover). After that, I was a Cramps-head, through and through, and always will be.

Look around for an album series called “Songs The Cramps Taught Us” – a collection of Cramps songs that were in fact originally recorded by other, often much older, artists. Hopefully it will lead you to an appreciation for original rock and roll - an act that punk, as a learning tool and reference point in rock history, begs us to do.

R.I.P. Lux Interior.

Written by John Coleman

The Christ Punchers opened the floodgates at Rehab in Brantford last night with their own unique brand of streetpunk. Sometimes they sound like mid-80s Exploited, other times they resemble the Varukers, or G.B.H. Either way, every time I see the Christpunchers, I am intrigued by something new. Last night it was their intense vocal ferocity. I didn’t know what they were chanting half the time, but it sounded damn good.

I was really excited when another Telephone City Hardcore band, Rapid Decline, took the stage. I’ve only seen them a handful of times, and jump at any chance I get to check them out. For the most part, they sound like Hatebreed or new Agnostic Front – extremely heavy, energetic, metal-based hardcore. But saying Rapid Decline resembles some other bands sells them short. They’ve got discipline that leads to some really electrifying and original hardcore music.

Then I got to witness Toronto hardcore band G-Men demonstrate their style. The oldschool hardcore band put on a thunderous show. At some points I was lost to what was filling my ears, in a good way. They kept it rolling hard for what seemed like a 25 minute workout.

All in all, it ended up being a pretty cracking show. And, it will have to be good enough to tie me over for what I have lined up in the coming weeks. I will definately be seeing 70s punk legends the Forgotten Rebels at the Casbah in Hamilton on February 27. And I think I’ve arranged for some sort of a roadtrip to see Fucked Up in Cambridge, and then in Toronto, near the end of the month.

Cheers.

Toronto based hardcore punk band F***ed Up have released a cover of Bob Geldof’s Band Aid classic “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in benefit of three advocacy groups that work to help victimized Aboriginal women: Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, DTES Power of Women Group, and Sisters in Spirit. A full description of each group is available on F***ed Up’s blog, http://www.lookingforgold.blogspot.com, as well as a link to iTunes so you can download the track.

The benefit song, available on iTunes for 99 cents or as a 7-inch record, features an array of independent artists. Indie-underworld gods Yo La Tengo, along with indie folk duo Tegan and Sara, are just a couple of the artists that contributed to the project. The nitty-gritty on why F***ed Up went this direction for their latest single is explained on their blog. It reads “as we’ve said before, we’ve always thought that the importance of marginalized art and cultural movements (punk, DIY, indie, you) is the ability to make connections and support other marginalized people within society. Issues like cancer are of course important, but for people like us, it’s just as important to attempt to highlight and support causes that most people will never come in contact with.”

If you don’t know F***ed Up, they have created a lot of noise in the Toronto music scene recently. Beginning in 2001, they became a regular in the Toronto hardcore scene, notorious for their high energy performances and oldschool style of releasing vinyl record singles. They have shared the stage with punk icons Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Keith Morris (Circle Jerks) and seminal New York hardcore band Cro-Mags, to mention a few. In September 2009, the band was awarded the acclaimed Polaris Music Prize for their “Chemistry of Common Life” album. In his acceptance speech, singer Damian Abraham said part of the prize money would go to recording “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

The benefit song has also been gaining attention in the media. Last week it was the topic of a feature story on CBC’s “The National” with Peter Mansbridge, which served as a platform for explaining the song’s charitable and political overtones.

So if you have an extra loonie, side the usual contribution to Tim Hortons and get “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” from iTunes. It is only 99 cents, and supports a great cause. Just remember that you want the F***ed Up version, not Bob Geldof’s. Or, if you are a vinyl addict, the song will be the b-side of the band’s next single “David’s Plan” to be released mid-February 2010.

One Dream by Sarah Mclachlan is the rumoured Olympic theme song. Follow the link to take a listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fje7ic-5qPI&feature=related

My favourite line of the song, “at peace we all shine”.

In the meantime, the lyrics are as follows:

One Dream Lyrics

We can feel a change is coming
Like a kiss upon a tide
Breathing life into every heart
The hopeful kind of times
Cause we’ll walk this road together
Though at times we felt alone
In the struggle to leave dissent
We find the strength one yet to find

You carry your courage, carry the history
But all are gone before you
Wherever you come from
Or born of one dream finds you, standing here

And you know that you can make it
(can make it)
You’ve got the whole world in your hands
(whole world in your hands)
And you’ve spent a lifetime working for this moment
(working for this moment)
And you are shining
You’re all that you wanted to be

When you’re airborne and free
At peace with gravity
High above everyone can see
The spirit of human ecology
How your flame keeps burning
When you leave all doubt behind
It’s a giant leap for mankind
At peace we all shine

You carry your courage, carry the history
But all are gone before you
Wherever you come from
Or born of one dream finds you, standing here

And you know that you can make it
(you can make it)
You’ve got the whole world in your hands
(whole world in your hands)
Cause you’ve spent your lifetime working for this moment
(you are shining)
And you are shining
(you are shining)
You are all that you wanted to be
(you are shining)
And you are shining
You’re all that you wanted to be

Written by: John Coleman

So after all is said and done with the 2009 holiday season, I am making the usual longshot resolutions for the new year: follow a much stricter budget, study more, and of course – check out some bands that I failed to check off my ‘09 list. Here is a roundup of some upcoming Toronto area shows in January 2010 that are, for the most part, cheap, and should be really exciting.

At the top of the month original Canadian hardcore band Dayglo Abortions will put on a two day stint at the Kathedral on January 8 and 9, the first show is all ages. Supporting acts are still to be announced, but I think the Dayglos are enough to draw crowds from kilometres around.

British Punk/Oi! Band Oi Polloi is kicking through Toronto in the coming weeks. Legends in their own time, Oi Polloi helped form the hardcore spirit of ‘81 in the UK. 2010 will see the release of their newest LP, Duisg!, and a split record with punk band Appalachian Terror Unit. They play Toronto on  January 16 at the Kathedral with Murdersquad T.O. - making it double as good. Check out Myspace for specifics and other Canadian dates. 

Canadian Indie rock sensations Tegan and Sara are in Toronto for two dates this month – January 19 at Massey Hall and January 20 at the Kool Haus. The critically acclaimed guitar playing, lyric weaving twins from Calgary are trekking across Canada for the next couple months in support of their latest album, Sainthood.

On January 21 90s grungy/experimental style punk band Dinosaur Jr are playing the Pheonix Concert Hall in Toronto. The show is a rescheduled event, so tickets are going to be scarce, but if you try your luck on a scalper you might be able to get one. Mv & Ee and Lou Barlow are scheduled as opening acts.

Toronto punk rockers Career Suicide are at the Poor Alex Theatre in Toronto on January 22. The all ages show starts at 8 pm and is only 10 bucks!

At the end of the month, on January 24, Toronto’s legendary punk club The Kathedral will host its last ever punk show. The venue will be completely closed February 1. On the bill for the night are Toronto area punk bands Wraithriot, Lowerend, Random Killing, G-Men, Punch Drunk, Class Assassins, and more bands are expected to sign on for the night. This will be crowded, so get there early.

And on January 27 speed-metal infernos Arch Enemy grace the stage at The Pheonix. If you’re a fan of insanely squealy and face-melting guitar riffs, thunderingly punchy drums, and hot blondes who enjoy growling over shopping, this is your scene.

Okay, that is a small list of some cool concerts happening this month in Toronto and area. February also looks promising, with thrash band of all thrash bands Slayer on their Canadian Carnage tour alongside Megadeth, they will be at the ACC on February 19. And Toronto punk band F***ed Up is doing a date with British punks Leatherface in St. Catherines on the 23^rd.

Sweet Stroke Tiger!

Oh Tiger…you devil you! I say this rather sheepishly as I dont really care about Tiger’s personal life, much like I didn’t and still don’t care about Kobe’s private life. I admire these athletes because they have mastered a craft. I wonder if Picasso had a flare for extra-merital vagina….well, he did! I just did some research, and according to Sapergalleries.com, Picasso had two wives (Olga and Jacqueline) and four children by three women.  They also assembled a summary of eight of Picasso’s major relationships.

This is just my point…Picasso, MJ, Kobe, and now Tiger. These dudes are highly competitive narcissists that simply cannot be contained. I wonder if Picasso was alive today if people would care as much about his extra-curricula womanizing as they do about Tigers? I doubt it, for some reason the artsy fartsy types can pull it off better…as if its expected. Double standards all over the place…I can’t stand it.