Underground Music in Rain City

While I was away on the island I noticed a bunch of people were posting a list of 30 bands that they had shared the stage with. Just a list of bands they had opened for. A real yawn fest if you ask me, so to spice it up I decided to post a list of bands I had shared the stage with, literally. As in I climbed up on stage while they were playing and then quickly jumped off onto the crowd below. Even if I was only up there for the blink of an eye, I had literally shared the stage with them. The shorter time you're up on stage the better. You're outstaying your welcome with every second you're up there and no one wants to be that rando guy dancing and acting a fool on a stage that isn't his. That guy sucks. But without further ado here's the stage dives I remember, and at the very least ALL of the ones I should try to forget. Yes those would be the ones where I went from stage to ass. Funny how you always remember the failed ones. Also the following list of bands I

   When I started writing the Vancouver Vengeance article for Absolute Underground Clayton Holmes of Eargoggles and Cobalt bartending fame was one of my first interviews. He invited me into his home, showed me how his keg worked and showed me a little hole in the wall pub close to his house. During this time we consumed way too many beers, and I may have even conducted an interview. Not sure how it turned out, but I do remember the bartender thinking twice about serving us that last one. It was a hilarious night, and when I heard that Clay had finally finished putting together the latest installment of Eargoggles I decided it was time to resurrect the blog to try and help get the word out.    In the past every issue of EarGoggles was free to the public if you knew where to find it. Just giving DVDs away? Is he mad? Maybe. This go around Clay decided to fire up a kickstarter page to raise the funds to make EarGoggles 7. "I was hoping to get $1000 to help me make a ton of copies, bu

It's been a very long time since I've updated this blog. What can I say? I got bored of writing about Vancouver music. This has nothing to do with the actual music (Vancouver still has an enormous melting pot of talented bands and musicians) I just got caught up in the politics of it all. I was writing for certain zines, getting used for my talents and receiving nothing in return except for the headache of dealing with unorganized people, so I said, 'fuck it, I'm gonna write what I want when I want.' And while this leads to not much being published I am certainly more happy writing heinous little stories and jokes in my word document rather than being asked to write about some band from butt fuck USA that I don't give two shits about. To be honest the whole ordeal with this magazine really put a sour taste in my mouth for writing about music. Combine that with some real life problems and this blog has suffered exponentially. But amazingly enough it still gets

Top Tens seem to be all the rage, so I built this one. Some of these shows I really had to think back to what happened. Strangely enough I seem to remember the ones that I was drinking at better than the ones where I stayed sober. What is that saying? 10. Saturday, June 2nd 2012 The Hookers, Ancients, The Jolts & El Camaro Funky Winkerbeans We burned it down to this show early because I knew El Camaro was going to be playing first and everyone who was smart followed me. El Camaro is from the Netherlands and sound pretty much like Zeke. The singer and the guitarist were both wearing Zeke shirts, I'm guessing they had played with Zeke the night before in Seattle and when you're on tour a clean shirt is a clean shirt. So if you love Zeke you will love this band. Basically I've just put the word Zeke in this review more times than all the other bands that played combined. Now that's a feat. You've got to be a truly awful writer to pull something like that

2012 got off to a rough start for me. I wasn't even able to work for the first 4 months of the year, so I missed out on a ton of good shows as well. But things picked up, I got back to work and out to some shows and by summertime I was killing it. Here are the honourable mentions for shows I saw in 2012. April 14th, 2012. MODS vs ROCKERS @ The Rickshaw Theatre featuring; The Vicious Cycles, The Tranzmitors, The Radii & The Injectors. This was probably the first show I was able to get out to all year and it was a doozy. The Injectors kicked it into high gear early with their brand of raging punk rock n roll, and were followed by the Radii. They were considerably mellower, but they had a cute singer in a pink dress so that was good enough for me. Now I'd like to mention that I hate it when somebody bills a show as a 'vs' type thing as if it's some sort of boxing match or competition. It's such a lame theme for a gig that it makes me want to vomit on th

With an amazing amount of music released from Vancouver bands this year my list could have easily been a top 20, and with 10 releases in the honourable mentions it basically is. What a great year for Vancouver music, and if you find the time I suggest checking out all the links below. I don't think I've ever had a list of such incredible range. Some might see this as getting old, but I see it as broadening my horizons. And here's the list: 10. Bison bc - Lovelessness - When dealing with Vancouver music you can not leave out the monolith that is Bison bc. These heavy metal rockers have seemed to come full circle and are back to their roots, so if you loved Earthbound you will definitely dig what they have to offer on their new album. Personally I was enjoying watching this band grow and evolve, but the main thing that has evolved here are the lengths of the songs. You can be listening to this album for close to half an hour and you'd still be on song 3. Not highly reco