~ friday, november 23, 2001
~ I went to the Khyber last night for the rap show. It turned into much more than your average rap show, as Sixtoo was having an art opening in the upstairs gallery. Various paintings by Rob 6.2 as well as by James and Jeremy. The Stoop Crew was well-represented. Rob had his computer out and played new music into the gallery, which he simultaneously re-recorded and subsequently re-broadcast to the musical accompaniment of bass demon Lukas Pearse.
I could hardly tear myself away to go downstairs, but by the time I got to the bar the MCs were in full-force. Half-a-dozen of these guys, bouncing around on stage like crazed simians while the beats and rhymes came fast and furious. I couldn't help but grin like a fool and dance like an even bigger fool. It was an awesome show.
~ As soon as I got into the bar I hopped up on stage to tuck my coat away. When I stepped down, I ran into a friend of mine, who was laughing. "I saw you get up on the stage, and I had a funny thought, 'Philip Clark--Hiphop MC!" she said.
"Why is that such a funny thought?" I said. She was still laughing. "Just you wait," I said.
That tears it. I'm gonna be a rapper. Why the hell not, it sure looks like fun.
~ One of Jeremy's paintings bore the caption, "SUBMIT TO SEASONAL CHANGE." It's a subject I haven't been able to stop thinking about over the past couple of weeks. It is definitely affecting the music I've been making.
And since swordfight.org is supposed to be a record label website, I suppose I should mention that there's a new CD out, Swordfight #7: "Electro Stoop Therapy" by the 9Volt Sound System. It started off as a summer idea, some old-school electro to commemorate the Creighton Street stoop parties. But with the arrival of the first snowfall of November, the whole sound went all moody and submerged. 9Volt runs a Roland TR-606 (my latest acquisition) along with the JX-3P synth. I'm addicted to these old analog sounds, to the whole reverb-drenched deep-fried analog soulfulness.
~ An interesting note about my 606: some previous owner had painted it completely flat black. Fortunately I know what all the knobs do. It looks amazing. Such a sinister piece of technology, flat-black with silver knobs and relentlessly flashing red LEDs.
I became so enamoured of this look over the past week that I decided today to paint my synthesizer to match. This was not a small project. It wound up taking pretty much all afternoon today to take the synth apart, get the cover off, get a couple coats of flat black on there, and then put it all back together.
It looks awesome and makes a great match for the 606. Sleek and deadly-looking. I painted the case for the PG-200 controller too, so now it's just a menacing black box with a bunch of silver knobs. Completely inscrutable to pretty much everyone but me.
I just spent an hour jamming out on these machines. Taking the works up to And Cafe to perform tonight. It is complete improvisation and my current favourite way to make music.
~ What the hell, before I forget here's an MP3 off the new Stoop CD: Stoop In The Name Of Love (5.6MB mp3). Write me if you want a copy of the disc.
~ Run away, stay home, hide... the last weekend of November is coming. I've been charting it for the past three years; a terrible weekend for single males in Halifax. That's the weekend that all the girls go out and get boyfriends. After this weekend, the single male dog experiences a lull in his sex life, as the pool of available females is suddenly diminished.
Things all come back to normal the last weekend of December, when people wake up to whatever mistake they've been making for the past month, and realize they want to start having fun again. The last week of December is easily my favourite week of the year.
~ I wonder what it indicates about my mood, this urge to go around painting things flat black. My mother in Saint John sent me a package on the bus last week--some baked goods and candy left over from Hallowe'en. "Just thought you might like something to cheer you up," read her note. Demonstrating that once again, as always, much of my happiness depends upon the kindness and intuition of women.
~ I picked up the package at the bus station on Almon Street at about 8 in the evening. It was a mild night. All I could think of to do was to walk around the North End by myself and eat licorice and chocolate from a King Cole Tea box.
As I walked past the Bloomfield Center, I noticed a red dot playing around my body and the building beside me. I looked into the shadows, but could not detect the little bastard who was shining a laser beam on me.
Is that a pair of legs behind that bush? I couldn't tell. I squinted into the darkness just as the red beam of light hit me square in the eye. It filled my vision for an instant, blinding me, and then disappeared.
~ Darkness, pulsing into red, and then back into blackness again. And then it's all over.
In late November, life is just one heartbreak after another.
~ thursday, 8 november 2001
~ The lights went out on Gottingen Street tonight.
I was crouched down behind the console at the time, plugging an insert cable into a compressor. When the power went out I felt my way around the rack and looked through the control room window. Couldn't see a thing. My eyes adjusted slowly. I had to depend on the headlights of passing cars to make my away across the studio to the front door.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk and into a rare moment of city darkness. The wind blew from the north down a long dark tunnel. You forget how bright the city normally is.
~ The darkness gave me an adrenaline rush. I expected danger. Cars drove up to the corner and moved thoughtfully through the intersection in the absence of traffic signals. Busses continued to roar up Gottingen, giant light boxes on wheels. In the fleeting moment of their passing, I felt as though I could pick out every detail on the faces of the passengers. Happy to be heading home but submerged in uncertainty.
Women hurried past on the sidewalk. Some ran. I was a vague shape in a doorway.
~ I went back inside. I was determined to keep working but by the time I felt my way back to the control room I realized how silly that goal was. Lit a match and looked around. Shook out the flame. A small glow whispered through smoke, and then my motivation went out along with the light.
Fantasized about looters smashing through the front door. I would hide behind a divider and brain them with a Peavey practice amp.
~ Eventually the blackout got boring. I wheeled my bike out onto the sidewalk and slammed and locked the studio gates. I saw yellow in an upstairs window across the street; candle?
Other than that, car headlights and the deep maroon of the roiling sky were all I had to navigate by. Leaves skittered and chattered as they raced like hell up Gottingen.
~ I made it to the top of Cornwallis when the streetlights came on. Dull at first then brighter. I turned around and started back towards the studio. The wind was so strong it nearly blew me backwards up the hill, bicycle and all.
~~ Join the Pirate Club, meet other pirates.
Send a blank email to:
pirateclub-subscribe[at]swordfight[dot]org.
The Pirate Club--a place to discuss the finer things in life.
~ friday, 2 november 2001
~ I posted on the Exclaim messageboard with a reply to their nasty review of A/V at the Pop Explosion. You can read my response here.
I once read somewhere that musicians should never respond to bad reviews. To hell with that... Just because critics have access to the media doesn't mean their opinion should stand as Holy Writ. I'm into dialogue, or "information war" if you prefer.
Plus all those months of shit-talkin' on the 902 hardcore messageboard have gotten me in good shape for not taking any crap.
~ Turns out some friends of ours were disappointed when they were turned away from the Mokka on Hallowe'en night. It was pretty crowded, but I didn't realize they had stopped letting people in. Thanks to all who showed up. Nearly everyone was dressed up, and some of the costumes looked awesome.
~ This was a reunion show of sorts for A/V; Selwyn rejoined the band for one night only, and we threw down some new wave covers and old songs off the first CD that we did together. Selwyn dressed up as a werewolf. I was a full-on Devo guy with a red suit and hat. I went around all night saying "~GREETINGS ~EARTH ~FEMALE" and "~ROBOT ~MOSH!!"
~ One of the songs we covered was "12XU" by Wire. The last line of the verses goes something like, "Saw you in a mag, kissing a man, GO!" Selwyn heard this line as "Saw you in a mag, kissing a mango" and for the show he made a little sign that said, "Mango." Every time the chorus of the song was coming up, he'd hold up the sign: "Kissing a MANGO!"
After the show, I got a close look at Selwyn's sign. It was beautiful. He'd painted it with orange and yellow, and the word "Mango" was in black, carefully stencilled on both sides. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to make this little sign that he would only hold up for two brief moments during our set. I brought it back to the studio and hung it on the wall, a reminder of a great night.
~ Half an hour after the bar had closed, Eric came upstairs with a samosa. "Hey! Where did you get that?" I said.
He leaned in conspiratorially. "Sleeping with the staff has its advantages," he whispered jokingly, in reference to his long-time relationship.
"Wow," I said. "Is there anyone who works here who's single?"
Eric thought about this. "Yes," he said. "But I don't think any of them want to sleep with you."
So I had a bite of his samosa. God damn, I had two bites.
~ There's some other stuff from that show that I can't really write about because Halifax is such a small town. Entertaining, it definitely was. Afterwards I stuck around and drank and drank, until about 7:30AM. Stayed up all day and went to jam with my new rock band. I'm playing guitar. We sound like a cross between Gang Of Four and !!!.
~ I recently had an intriguing phone call. It was a wrong number that turned into something else entirely. S., if you are reading this, e-mail me.
sunday, 29 october 2001
~ Gerry and I hopped on our bikes this afternoon to head over to Food Not Bombs. At the corner of North and Gottingen, Gerry paused and started laughing his head off. I looked in the direction he was pointing and started laughing myself. Someone had managed to haul a shopping cart up on top of a bus shelter. It sat up there glittering in the afternoon sun. The cart looked ridiculous and somehow majestic, with the span of the Macdonald Bridge providing the backdrop.
As we pedalled away, still laughing, Gerry said, "I love dumb stuff."
~ A shopping cart and a bus shelter. Two features of everyday life on Gottingen Street. As mundane as these objects are, this afternoon's unusual conjunction seemed to us to be an explosion of creative brilliance.
And so a movement was born... or a cult... or something. It is with sinister pleasure that we announce the formation of the "Dumb Stuff Collective." Halifax, you have been warned.
~ I consider myself something of a connoisseur of shopping carts, having used them for quite a while as transportation for A/V's live performances. I can tell you that the President's Choice carts from the Superstore are the limousines of supermarket trolleys. Sobey's carts are the Toyota Camrys.
~ A/V played at the Halloween NSCAD dance on Friday. When I showed up at the entrance the security guard wasn't going to let me in. "You can bring the gear in," he said, "but not the cart."
"Is this 'no-cart' policy a recent development?" I replied, summoning the elevator. "It's part of my performance."
NSCAD students must get away with so much shit. "It's part of my performance." Ha.
~ I was originally going to be a vampire, but wound up going dressed as a polite Swiss person. This show was way more fun than the Pop Explosion. No stages, no barricades, no bouncers, just a sound system and a room full of drunk art kids in crazy costumes. I started off the set in true A/V style: "I have a roll of Rockets as a prize for the first person who comes right up here to the front and stands in front of me and gives me a kiss on the lips." Of course I was eyeing this foxy cowgirl and I swear she took a tentative step forward when Paul Hammond burst out of the crowd in his Chico Ferrari getup and came running up to the front and gave me a big smooch. I suppose I asked for it.
Then I dropped Art Star 2001. Getting to perform this specific song at a NSCAD dance always represents a high point of my so-called 'musical' so-called 'career,' and things just seemed to go bananas for the next forty-five minutes. I remember jumping around and rolling around on the floor and climbing up on tables and jumping off tables and climbing up the PA stacks to stick my head through a ceiling tile.
~ Lots of kids rockin' the fake moustaches this year. I got Chico to be the judge in a fake moustache contest. I'm all for the fake moustaches, since I'm thirty years old and probably ten weeks away from ever having a real one.
~ At 2:30am I was getting ready to play a second set, a full-on drum&bass live PA, when all the lights came on in the lounge. "Shut 'er down," said the head of security. I pressed play instead. Beats and basslines rolled for thirty mad seconds and then the plug was yanked out of the wall. Security quickly herded out the partygoers. I tore down my gear and everyone was gone, including a certain someone that I was hoping to talk to; so I loaded up my cart until it was heavy with science.
And I pushed the load up the steep Duke Street hill, one step at a time. Chilly night in the city.
~ My frank talk of bar pickups and making out with strangers in last week's entry got a range of responses. I wrote that I've learned to expect nothing, meaning partly that I seem to have worked enough at the Marquee Club by now to have built up a 'tolerance' for that overtly sexual atmosphere. It takes something truly crazy and wonderful to get my attention these days. I did sound for a band there last night, downstairs in Hell's Kitchen, and couldn't help thinking that lately I've become more of a spectator than a participant in the whole sexual circus. Women say "Hello" and "Hi, how are you?" and I just smile and raise my eyebrows and walk away. Is it just that I need something more, or have my predatorial instincts somehow gotten dull, I wonder.
~ I remain rather scornful of monogamy, and continue to consider myself a basically sleazy person (in the most intelligent possible way), so at least that is all still normal.
friday, 20 october 2001
I stay in a certain place longer than I should, just because it's warm. Cold days lead to grim thoughts. Even afternoon sunlight carries the threat. Darkness is coming.
~ The Halifax Pop Explosion came and went. Lots of bands stayed at the Bloomfield House. A/V performed on Saturday with Peaches and Chicks On Speed. During load-in, I found two broken keys on my Yamaha synth. I just shrugged. What can you expect... driving vintage electronic instruments around in a shopping cart. Road cases for all this gear would be nice. But then it wouldn't all fit in the cart.
~ There wasn't time for me to soundcheck, so I returned to Bloomfield and found the place deserted. I put a can of something on the stove and decided to practise by singing along with the new CD. I cranked the volume. Pretty soon I was dancing around the living room with a pot of ravioli in my hand, howling along with my own music. At one point I glanced into the mirror on the living room wall. In the reflection, the three members of Eulcid stood in a row, looking at me.
~ I went over to St. Antonio's and got to see Rockets Red Glare and part of Weights And Measures before heading off to the Marquee. Due to a late start for the show, my set was cut drastically short. So be it. If you can't make an impression in three or four songs, you might as well stay home. The marquee outside the Marquee read, "HALIFAX POP EXPLSION [sic]." So I started off by saying, "Welcome to the Halifax Pop Expulsion." That got a few chuckles from nervous indie-rockers.
~ Most of my friends had stayed behind at St. Antonio's to see Sweep The Leg Johnny. I had told them I would set myself on fire onstage. I told them I would kill myself onstage. They said, "Ahh, we can see that anytime."
~ Crowd reaction is hard to judge from the Marquee stage when bright lights are in your eyes and the audience is on the other side of a World-War-II-looking barricade. I thought people must be bored because they weren't dancing much. But then everyone would applaud warmly when the song was over. I wanted everything to be more intense and tried to make up for the energy I wasn't getting from the crowd. I almost did kill myself.
Partway through, the Radical Cheerleaders stormed the stage to bust out a few dope rhymes. Among other things they extolled the virtues of masturbation as a political act. They were hot. Peaches was so taken with the Radical Cheerleaders that she later borrowed them for her own set. Hot, hot, hot.
~ Any rumours you may have heard are true. I did, in fact, duct-tape Peaches to a chair in the Marquee dressing room.
~ While Chicks On Speed were performing, I watched a couple of artsy types watch the band. Motionless, solemn, they might as well have been watching television. What does it take to make Canadians dance? No wonder Peaches moved to Germany.
Chicks On Speed took off right after they played, abandoning their big bottle of Jagermeister. Danke.
~ After the show I stuck around to dance. My main man Sol Despot (voted "Illest New DJ in the North End") dropped a track I produced, "Light Up The Marquee." (If you've ever been at the Marquee and heard the cheesy-funky house track with the Daft Punk vocals going "life is just a parrr-ty," I am to blame.) I just stood in the middle of the dancefloor and watched the effect the music was having on people. Marquee girls shakin' it, couples grabbing each other and making out. When I saw the hands go up in the air, I felt like I was playing a joke on everyone in attendance. Including myself. "Life is just a party." Yeah, too funny.
I felt suddenly depressed. Where were all the dancers when A/V was playing? I had been alone and exposed on stage and could have benefitted from the energy, the shared motion of many bodies. Whereas now, here everyone was going off to this throwaway party track. And I was standing right there, safe and anonymous, in the middle of it all. I could see why a musician would give up performing live to go write cheesy music. At least it moves people.
~ I left the bar alone. (A funny thing to say about the Marquee.) It's not that I wasn't in the mood for action. But really, it's not until you get someone alone that encounters become unique and special. The whole pickup ritual itself has become boring; routine. Occasionally you connect with someone in a wonderful and unusual way. But you can't go around hoping for surprises like that. Otherwise you will be constantly disappointed. I have learned to expect nothing.
~ I was thinking about all this as I dropped off my cartful of gear and locked the studio gates. Then I turned around and looked up Gottingen Street, and damned if i didn't see a woman dancing up the sidewalk. Alone, twirling around, getting down to some unheard music inside her head.
~ Within three minutes we were making out.
~ How amazing to be kissing a total stranger on the middle of the sidewalk on Gottingen. Late at night, the street deserted except for the occasional taxi, a pretty smile and an instant connection.
~ "I'm going this way."
"I'm heading up here."
"Oh, well see you later."
"OK bye."~ It happens so rarely. But it happens... just often enough to make normal life seem lame and unsatisfying. I think I would trade ten bar pick-ups for one such moment of surprise and intrigue on Gottingen Street.
~ coming soon: halifaxstories
philip[at]swordfight[dot]org
