I’ve been boozing up a lot lately. Too much in fact. If this keeps going I might have to check back into the Lynx Head Recovery Centre. I kicked the deep fried lentil snacks habit, but this is something else.

It was that damned trip to New Orleans that did it. My capacity for alchohol was doubled in five days. I knew it was going to be an ACM kind of town when I was in Houston, waiting to board the connecting flight. A woman walked up to me, beer in hand, asking in a magnificent twang of an accent whether our section of the plane was boarding yet. En route, a 737 full of Texans heading to the Crescent City to see the Longhorns play Tulane got sauced in 48 minutes.

I headed out to the French Quarter that night, and found it to be a drinkers’ Disneyland. A liquour store practically every block. I tried to find some good southern bourbon for Smash but found the stores to be curiously well-stocked in Canadian whiskey instead, especially Crown Royal. There were people selling you pints of good beer (they’ve got some cool indie breweries down there) from the side of the road for a buck fifty U.S. You take the plastic cupfull and walk along, sticking your head onto the open doors and windows of various bars, soaking up the music.

I’ve been back for a month, but like a big bagful of Hallowe’en candy, the booze habit has lingered. It’s not all bad, though. When I have a drink or two by myself at home, I find I slip into a familiar habit.

I listen to Klagg.

More specifically, I listen to ‘This is Klagg.’

It is probably the best record I’ve ever been involved with. The first Klagg album was, as Leacock-winner Howard White once said of my editing skills, ‘a bit rough.’ There is of course the Stoke record, but though it has received accolades from California to Fredericton to Iceland, it is almost too Alec. It’s blackness and dry heaviness weighs it down like one of those thick Quebec beers. It’s tasty, but do you really want to drink a six pack of the stuff?

Decline had it’s moments, but never released an album (hey Rob, you’ll have to play ‘Please Don’t Kiss in Public’ in your Formula Vee show, though it suits me more than you now). The Huxley album comes close (I might have something to say about that soon). The glorious Boring Holmgrens contributed the lo-fi punk masterpiece ‘Blood in Bombay,’ as well as the insane ‘Silly Carnival,’ but neither stack up to ‘This is Klagg.’

I’m very pleased with my own contribution to the record. Bullishly so. I did not offer up a single riff to start, but was so inspired by some of Ian’s (aka JR Muc’s) bass lines that I took a few of them and started running. ‘Orange Cat,’ ‘Varispeed’ and ‘White Trash’ are the most obvious results. I also weighed in with riffs or words on ‘Sumuru,’ ‘Cordova Nova,’ ‘Glass Apple,’ and even for the middle eight (yes, my recollection of events is that anal) on ‘She’s A Curler.’ The guitar playing, if I may say so, is excellent, in a retro kind of way. My favorite guitar parts are all of ‘Cordova Nova,’ the whole iditiotic grandiosity of the last half of ‘Radio Central,’ and the stripped down six string economy of ‘Suitcase Pimp’ (some of which, to give credit where it’s due, is the Mule’s).

And what of the Mule? On the first Klagg record, he was the running back, taking the ball and carrying it for touchdowns. I watched with some awe as he would take snippets that I figured were useless and, in the words of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song ‘certainly made it all seem worthwhile.’ On ‘This is Klagg,’ he was less available to oversee the proceedings, leaving Ian and I to pick up some slack. I think the Mule presence on the record is a bit less pervasive than on the first record, but as a result the parts where he takes over all the more pronounced. Instrumentally, he raised the bar; the drumming is tight, with lots of Stoke-like bashing.

The Mule has become a master of many styles over the years, and some of his offererings on the record are so evocative of this or that era that it makes your head shake. On ‘Radio Central,’ he gives you something that could’ve been off of Kiss’ first album. On ‘Racing to a Red Light’ we get some Black Flag-like punk (at least Rob says it’s like Black Flag; I have no idea what the hell they sound like). Heading over to another part of the 1980’s, he takes an Ian progression and turns it into ‘Swinging Ronnie,’ the best song the Smiths never recorded.

The ‘Sumuru’ riff makes me think a bit of Nirvana. ‘Suitcase Pimp,’ arguably the best tune on the disc, is like a blend of Gilby Clarke and Billy Corgan, pushed over the top by JR’s lunatic vocals. (Speaking of which, I remember Rob walking out in disgust when we were recording the vocals on the chorus. “They sound nothing like the ‘Destroyer’ album,” he lamented. After he left, Ian and I stripped them apart and re-did them, and the results, I think, are not bad).

Of course, comparisons to all these bands are pointless once they get to be so varied. They serve mainly to illustrate the disparate building blocks upon which the Mule’s own singular yet catholic style has been built.

And then there is ‘She’s a Curler.’ I tuned into XFM on the evenining of September 10th, 2001, and heard the song on the air. The idea of Rob singing a pop song on the radio filled me with glee. Those lyrics, and the Ric Ocasek delivery. Ha ha ha ha ha!! I practically skipped to work the next day, still on a high. Then the grim era of nine-eleven descended. Fittingly, though much to JR’s irritation, the song never got played on the radio again.

It is Ian who deserves the most accolades for the record. He doesn’t play the bass as much as he binges on it. He soaks up the contents of his record collection like Malcolm Lowry drinking booze in a Mexican cantina, then he sweats it all out in fits of riffing and wailing.

“Get out of the box!” Rob would yell at JR as he generated riff after riff around the same basic scale. But if the box works, it works. We’ve pinched a couple of the tunes for Stoke shows, and they’re inevitably favorites.

What I particularly like, though, is how Ian finishes some of the songs off. Like Bob Guccione during the making of ‘Caligula,’ he would often sneak back into the studio to work on things (sans Pets, of course). This kind of behavior caused ulcers in the Decline years, but this time he got it right. Most of his secret work came in the form of vocals, the best example being ‘Glass Apple,’ a perfectly excellent tune that can kick the shit out of most of what you’ve heard on FM radio over the past five years.

The production is the musical equivalent of dressing well out of a second hand shop; you can tell not a lot of money was spent, but it’s the right look. The guitar sounds Ian got are cool. After fighting in Trebas for the better part of a year to get a Marshall to sound like a Marshall, I’m more appreciative than ever of what Ian does. And what exactly is it that he does? Let’s see, he puts a mic up to an amp and presses record. What a great idea!!

He used up most of the eight tracks he had to work with on each song, insisting that it was better to have too much than too little. Then he would ride the faders to just the right mix. He would demand that I lay down entire tracks of guitar feedback, causing me much irritation, yet when I listen to it now (‘Varispeed,’ or ‘In a Shell,’ for instance) it sounds beautiful. He is a basement George Martin.

There is something in ‘This is Klagg’ that reminds me of the movie ‘Withnail and I.’ The key characters are at the end of an era in a way, mired in their various dysfunctions. I’m not sure that I’ll be part of something similar again. Pieces of a potential new Stoke record are scattered over various disks and DATs like the bottles and cans in my house. Whether the will or wherewithall exists to gather them up and cash them in is not completely clear. Another Klagg record is possible, but can it match the same ambitious abandon as ‘This is Klagg?’

This is a pretty long piece. It could have been longer. It’s possible that these ramblings are my own desperate self-delusions. But I don’t think so. Maybe you’ve never heard the record, and doubt it can be as good as I say. Maybe you’ve heard it, and think my objectivity is skewed. Maybe you just think that a little record, made in a basement and heard by only a few people, can’t really be worth noting at all.

Well, as the bass player for Stoke would put it:

“Fuck you, you’re wrong.”




stoke_acm@yahoo.co.uk

Why can't your average 'rock journalist' in this town write a review without it consisting mostly of a summary of their alcohol comsumption, financial status, co-workers & friends' idiosyncracies, shitty living quarters, high-school recollections etc. etc. You think you're getting a review of a record or band, and what you get is a fucking mini-autobiography. Half the writers around here spend more time reviewing themselves than they do the music they're supposedly reporting on.

Many of these scribes wear an unfading punk rock pose on their sleeve, yet they do more wanking in one article than the various members of Yes have managed to do in thirty fucking years.

I got some advice for these people: If you're gonna be so self-absorbed, pick up a guitar and join a fucking band like the rest of us.

SUNDAY

In the spring and the fall, like a pagan solstice ritual, my dad and I go to Gabriola Island.

In the spring we go to “open the place up.” In the fall we go to “shut the place down.”

Early Sunday morning we head off from my dad’s place. Not early enough, unfortunately, to avoid being tailgaited on the 2nd Narrows by some silly girl blabbing on a cell phone.

We get to Horseshoe Bay, get on the boat, and immediately head to the cafeteria. Ahhhh, nothing like a BC Ferries breakfast. And I’m not being sarcastic. The sausage is simply....sausage. The eggs are eggs. The coffee is coffee. There is no unique taste, no weird twist to the flavour. I feel myself start to relax.

There is a fog on the coast on this particular morning. A beautiful mist, serving to blend the sea into the air as one grey shroud. Along the way, you can barely make out shapes in the distance; another ferry; a tugboat and barge; and then, wonderfully, a few dolphins.

Off the big boat, and on to the little one. October Ferry to Gabriola. It’s the name of a novel by Malcom Lowry, published after his death. I go out on deck, and notice a clump of seagulls converging in one spot. As we pass by, a seal pops its head out of the water. Sticking out of its mouth is the tail half of a salmon. The seal goes back under, and the seagulls are squalking, waiting for scraps like dogs around a dinner table.

We get to the wee house by noon or so. We unload. There is a chill sitting inside the place. It’s not as bad as it is in the spring, when it can take up to half a day to drive out the icy spirits that move in over the winter.

The main source of warmth comes from an oil burning stove. The stove was pulled from a posh house in Victoria that my mother’s Aunt Phyllis used to live in. Phyllis had a child as a young woman with some guy, but got rid of him and then married an older guy named Carl Sangster. He owned the first transit company in Victoria. A rich guy. My mother and I used to visit her when I was a little kid. At that time, her husband long-deceased, the still-alluring Auntie Phyllis lived in a swank place in Oak Bay. Cadboro Bay Road, to be exact; I love that street name. She drove a huge white Lincoln Continental, always dutifully obeying the unofficial Victoria speed limit of eighteen miles per hour.

It takes a while for the oil stove to warm up, and my dad turns on a pair of electric heaters in the meantime.

“It doesn’t give off much heat,” I say, holding my had in front of one of them.

“It throws the heat,” says my dad. “Stand back a ways and feel it.”

But of course. It’s one of those ventroliquist heaters. I stand back, and still can’t feel a thing.

“See?” says my dad.

“Yeah,” I agree.

I head down to the beach while the place heats up, then come back. My dad wants to visit an old friend named Vera, the wife of a guy he grew up with and went into the navy with.

When I was a little kid, we used to visit Vera all the time. It is a common thing for little kids to call their parents’ friends ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle.’ Vera told my mom that she already had enough kids calling her aunt and uncle, and said I should call her ‘grandma.’ It was agreed, and to this day I still think of her as ‘Grandma Vera.’

She is an island matriarch. She lives at the south end, opposite from us north end islanders. Her property is tucked up at the end of a dirt lane. It’s full of curiosities...huge tree trunks carved into the shapes of camels, large life-like dolls sitting at tables having tea, big toy trains on railway tracks that run over small ponds...

When I was a kid she also used to have lots of animals, especially cats. At one point she had about seven Siamese cats, and one regular orange cat called ‘Charlie.’ Charlie was highly aloof, and would appear only sporadically, exuding a snow leopard-like elusiveness. As a child I thought he was the epitome of cool. The Siamese, on the other had, were irksome and clingy.

“She’s not home,” said my dad after calling her. “But she might be at the museum.”

She is one of the founders of the Gabriola Island Museum, which actually has few historical artifacts in it than does her living room. We decide to drive around the island, and stop at the museum along the way. Sure enough, she’s there. She comes out with my dad, but has to meet someone else at their house. We drive her over there, and along the way she notices that my Stoke cowboy hat is sitting on the back seat.

“What a hat!” she exclaims. She has the most excellent voice, full of enthusiasm and expression. “Boy is that ever neat.”

She tries it on, then asks that I put it on.

“Boy,” she says, “That hat is the nicest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

We drop her off, head around the island, and get back to the house. My dad goes in, and I head off again to buy a magazine at the store. I make a detour out to Berry Point, along the north end of the island, my favorite part of the B.C. coast. Again more seals.

Back at the house, dinner is almost ready. My dad’s a good cook. He learned to cook when he was in the navy. For a while he was assigned to a tugboat, and used to play cards with the cook, picking up culinary tips. When the cook went on leave, my dad would take over by default. His cooking is simple but effective, and relies heavily on the frying pan.

Again I go for a walk, this time down to Malaspina Point. A deer on the road, and then yet another seal, this one asleep on a rock ledge at the edge of the water. I walk right up to it, and its eyes open. It looks at me for a bit, like it’s still not quite awake, then something clicks and it scurries back to the water, plunging under. It pops its head up after a few seconds, still looking at me, then goes under for good.

I go back to the cottage and we eat, and then comes the long haul of the evening.

“It takes a long time to make a night go by here,” admits my dad. He says this after about 45 minutes of sitting in front of a T.V. set that gets three channels. Every ten minutes he gets up to change the channel in the vain hope that something palatable has appeared one one of them.

Exhausting my copy of Guitar One magazine, I resort to a novel left behind by some visitor over the summer. It’s called ‘Ruling Passion.’ It’s a English murder mystery:

“She met Marianne’s quizzical gaze with the unruffled smile of one whose own buttocks were as compact as a boy’s.”

Yes, well....

I go back to watching T.V. Now David Suzuki’s on. Something about fire and water.

Look! He’s eating bacon and eggs!! HOLY FUCK!!!! The leading environmentalist in the country eats bacon?? Well. That’s revelation right there.

Finally it’s time for the news, and then bed. I was up early, and I’m tired. The loft has been made cozy by the rising heat from the stove, and I sleep easily.





stoke_acm@yahoo.co.uk