Archive for the 'Interview' Category

On Mon­day night, Vancouver’s swag­ger­ing funk-rap group Pan­ther and the Supafly will be play­ing live instru­men­tal ver­sions of hip-hop clas­sics while karaoke hope­fuls get live on the mic. If you’ve never been to For­tune Sound Club’s Hip-Hop Karaoke, widely con­sid­ered to be Vancouver’s best Mon­day night out, this is an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to check it out. And if you’re already a Hip-Hop Karaoke fan, you shouldn’t miss the chance to see the night go unplugged like Jay-Z and the Roots on MTV. Pan­ther and the Supafly will also be rock­ing tracks from their debut EP “Nikazi.”

Sad Mag’s explo­ration of the com­plex moti­va­tions of Hip-Hop Karaoke per­form­ers con­tin­ues here:

Tim Mortensen

Shmuel Mar­mostein: What got you into Hip-Hop Karaoke?

Tim Mortensen: I was at a Nice ‘n Smooth show here wear­ing a Gang Starr t-shirt, and they pulled me on stage.It was right after Guru died and they were pour­ing out orange juice on stage, it was crazy! A friend of mine who knew about HHK saw that and sug­gested we per­form DWYCK, the song Nice n’ Smooth were doing.

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

TM: Half­time by Nas, on Hal­loween. It was one of the hard­est songs I’ve ever done. It was fun because I was dressed as b-boy priest in gold chains.

SM: What about by another performer?

TM: A Busta Rhymes song by local MC Kaboom Atomic, he did it perfectly.

SM: That’s hard! How much do you usu­ally practice?

TM: It depends on the song. For some of them I’ve already liked the song for a while, so it’s eas­ier. I usu­ally prac­tice the song 15–20 times. I always rap over the vocal, and then I switch to the instru­men­tal, which is a lot harder! For the Nas one, I did it 30 times or more.

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

TM: The good vibe, and the fun I always have at the night itself. It’s a priv­i­lege to per­form. You do it once or twice and you get addicted. It’s great expe­ri­ence if you want to be a per­former because you have the spot­light on you. And I love hip-hop, so I get to do what I love.

Chad Iver­son, event orga­nizer and co-founder

Shmuel Mar­mostein: What made you start the Hip-Hop Karaoke night?

Chad Iver­son: Paul [Gibson-Tigh, the other founder and orga­nizer] told me about the HHK night in Toronto, and said we should do it here. It was just a drunken con­ver­sa­tion on Third Beach, and I though hhk sounded like the illest idea.

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

CI: Earl by Earl Sweat­shirt, or the one I just did, Tried by 12 by East Flat­bush Project. I love that song and I’ve been want­ing to do it for­ever. It’s an under­ground classic.

SM: It was awe­some, you killed it! What about by some­one else?

CI: That’s a really hard question…maybe Kyprios doing Passin’ me by at the one-year anniver­sary show?

SM: How much do you usu­ally prac­tice before performing?

CI: Way too much. If you take a look at my lastfm site, all my top songs lis­tened to are ones I’ve performed!

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

CI: The ego boost. It feels good! It’s a rush being on stage. I’m also pay­ing homage to a genre of music and a cul­ture I love. I never thought I would be run­ning a hip hop night in Van­cou­ver, that’s for sure.

SM: How has putting on this night changed your life?

CI: Well, this night has made For­tune a sec­ond home. I do pro­mo­tion here and I’ve learned a lot about, I don’t want to use the term, the “club­bing scene.” It’s a poten­tial career changer. The changes have all been pos­i­tive, definitely.

Hip-Hop Karaoke: Pan­ther and the Supafly

For­tune Sound Club (147 E Pen­der St)

$4 cover before 10:30PM, $8 after

Full details on Face­book

Usu­ally we com­ment on things that make us un-sad, but there’s a fight going on between the Rio and the LCLB that’s mak­ing us sad and mad. For­tu­nately, the Rio’s Cor­rine Lea is not back­ing down, which is mak­ing us glad. As does rhyming but I digress.

On Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 26, the Rio was sup­posed to be cel­e­brat­ing their suc­cess in achiev­ing a liquor license, an achieve­ment which was an inte­gral part of con­tin­u­ing as a viable busi­ness.  Instead, the event became a fundraiser to off­set their losses and fund future resis­tance to the restric­tions out on the Rio due to that very license.

Lea has had to can­cel film screen­ings as venues clas­si­fied as “movie the­atres” can­not serve alco­hol. Lea main­tains they are a multi-media venue and so are mis­clas­si­fied. She also notes that her license only runs from 6pm to 1am, and she is not insist­ing that liquor be served at screen­ings, only that screen­ings be able to take place. After they screen the “Rocky Hor­ror Picture-less Show” on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 27th, when the sound­track will play and the film enacted by a  shadow cast, they don’t have any­thing sched­uled until Feb­ru­ary 4th. “As far as the blank days go, we’re just going to scram­ble and try to fig­ure out what to do. We might have an open mic night every night or a karaoke night…If the gov­ern­ment were to reverse their deci­sion I could have movies in those slots like that.” She snaps her fin­gers with the type of gusto required when going up against said government.

Since being told about the caveat on her license, there have been many state­ments issued — by Lea, by Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Shirley Bond, and by Liquor Con­trol and Licens­ing Branch gen­eral man­ager Karen Ayers — but lit­tle con­struc­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion seems to be hap­pen­ing.  Ayers has made many com­ments in the media about the var­i­ous rea­sons the Rio is in this predica­ment and not, say, Roger’s Arena. Ayers touts pub­lic safety and notes the arena’s secu­rity as a rea­son for venue’s such as that being licensed. Lea notes that she was never given the option to increase secu­rity as a means to secure the licens­ing she needs.

My opin­ion, and the opin­ion of groups like CAMRA, is that the province and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment are main­tain­ing pro­hi­bi­tion era statutes. I would add that even the LCLB’s ratio­nal­iza­tions seem out­dated, not to men­tion incon­sis­tent. It would bet­ter serve pub­lic safety to ban alco­hol at vio­lent sport­ing events than at the movies. I’d def­i­nitely put my money on not see­ing see any post-event riots at the Rio, screen­ings or oth­er­wise. While Ayers has been answer­ing objec­tions one at a time, there are easy fixes to these, which Lea is more than will­ing to put into place. For exam­ple, wor­ry­ing about minors hav­ing liquor in the dark could be assuaged if the Rio doesn’t serve alco­hol dur­ing film screen­ings. Lea notes she sim­ply wants to serve liquor at events, not movies.

Bond has issued a state­ment, picked up by sev­eral out­lets, that her office is “aware of the chal­lenges,” are “con­sid­er­ing what changes may be appro­pri­ate” and they “look for­ward to hav­ing more to say about this in the near future.” While this may sig­nal progress, the lack of specifics are wor­ri­some to Lea. As of Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 29th, Lea has yet to hear from the Solic­i­tor General’s office or the LCLB on any options she might have going for­ward. The Rio is con­sult­ing with the British Colum­bia Civil Lib­er­ties Asso­ci­a­tion as to whether their civil lib­er­ties have been curtailed.

The Rio is sched­uled to host films from the Van­cou­ver Island Film Fes­ti­val, which begins Feb­ru­ary 10th. This is just one effect the Rio oper­at­ing with­out screen­ings will have, and rep­re­sents a real dead­line for action. The Rio sup­ports a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ties beyond film – music, com­edy, bur­lesque, dance and more – by being a unique and acces­si­ble venue. It also rep­re­sents a part of Van­cou­ver his­tory, as the Tyee points out, an archi­tec­tural and cin­e­matic his­tory that is being demolished.

Thus it’s not sur­pris­ing that peo­ple are rais­ing their voices not just in the street forums (which is what I call cof­fee shops and face­book com­ments), but in the press (sim­ply Google “the Rio The­atre Van­cou­ver” for a flood of sto­ries) and among politi­cians (Jenny Kwan and Heather Deal are both speak­ing out on the Rio’s behalf). It even tran­scends polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, with Leo Knight,  “Law and Order” opin­ion colum­nist, to agree on an issue with a Vision Coun­cilor “for the first time in liv­ing history.”

This issue is hot, not only because the Rio and Lea are so sup­port­ive of and beloved by Vancouver’s arts com­mu­nity but because, espe­cially to that same arts com­mu­nity, it rep­re­sents major issues in Van­cou­ver and BC. It’s a hard place to suc­ceed as a small busi­ness, and is full of demol­ished unique cul­tural venues, archaic liquor and pub­lic safety laws and a gen­eral dis­re­gard for what access to arts does for a com­mu­nity both socially and eco­nom­i­cally. The story at the Rio has become a point of ref­er­ence  the chang­ing of BC liquor dis­tri­b­u­tion, but it’s truly a point of ref­er­ence for the inter­sec­tion of arts, busi­ness and government.

On a pos­i­tive note, the Rio fundraiser née cel­e­bra­tion was a suc­cess. “We had 200 peo­ple attend  – it was a beau­ti­ful event. Pan­dora and the Lock­smiths made for a really classy evening with a lit­tle bit of tease. On a per­sonal level I found it really uplift­ing to see every­one face to face. It was really great to per­son­ally go around and thank peo­ple. It was a real good night for peo­ple to talk about the issue,” says Lea, sound­ing hope­ful despite her los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars every day her the­atre is closed.  MLA’s Jenny Kwan and Shane Simp­son were in atten­dance, as was Leonard Schein, the pres­i­dent of Fes­ti­val Cinemas.

Along with the return (kind of) of gam­ing based arts fund­ing, the con­tro­versy and sup­port the Rio’s lat­est bat­tle has drawn may her­ald change. But to win, Lea needs our sup­port. Here’s how you can help: raise your voice and write to your MLA, the Solic­i­tor Gen­eral and the LCLB; on Jan­u­ary 31 Heather Deal is pre­sent­ing a motion at City Hall to have the movie ban removed, and you can come and speak for the Rio; and sup­port the Rio finan­cially by attend­ing their amaz­ing upcom­ing LIVE events. Find the addresses and emails, up to date info, FAQs and next steps on Rio’s Face­book group.

The Rio may not be screen­ing movies right now – but there’s still amaz­ing events com­ing up. Let’s wrap up this chap­ter of the ongo­ing saga with a few events com­ing up. You can check out full details online includ­ing advance tick­ets, but Lea had a few extra tid­bits to share with Sad Mag readers.

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 4: Patrick Mal­iha presents the Legion of Stand-Up Come­di­ans
Tick­ets: $10 Doors: 7pm Show: 8pm

“This is a really excit­ing night because Patrick Mal­iha is a well known come­dian about town and always puts on an excel­lent event. Gra­ham Clark will be a spe­cial guest, which is amaz­ing, peo­ple love Gra­ham Clark. He’s added some­thing like 23 bur­lesque dancers last minute, so it’s going to be fabulous.”

Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 10: Tongue N’ Cheek: Sex, Dance and Spo­ken Word
Tick­ets: $12 advance $15 door Doors: 8pm Show: 9pm

“We’re very excited about this show because it fea­tures my four favourite bur­lesque dancers in town, [Sweet Soul Burlesque’s Crys­tal Pre­cious, Lola Frost, Lit­tle Miss Risk and Cherry On Top].  This is kind of my baby, this par­tic­u­lar show, because I’m com­bin­ing two of my favourite things, bur­lesque and spo­ken word. C.R. Avery, Mike McGee and Jamie DeWolf are three really pow­er­ful spo­ken word artists and we’re get­ting them to col­lab­o­rate, it’s not ‘here’s a dance, here’s a poem’, we’re get­ting them to work together. [Plus] there’s 8 local poets who will be com­pet­ing in the Dirty Haiku con­test. … It’s com­ing up on Valentine’s Day week­end so it’s a good date night.

Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 14: The 2nd Annual Sweet Heart Ser­e­nade
Tick­ets: $10 advance, $14 at the door Doors: 8pm Show: 8:30pm

“Last year we attached it with a movie, and we had planned to show Shake­speare in Love but with the predica­ment we find our­selves in, we are not going to be allowed show it with a movie. So, now it will just be live music but it will be a spe­cial night because we’ve hand picked per­form­ers from some really great bands in town. It’s a more stripped down, inti­mate per­for­mance which makes it per­fect for a date night. It’s adults over so they can have some wine to enjoy dur­ing the evening.”

Other events com­ing up:

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 9: David Choi with Spe­cial Guests (Gen­eral Admission/All Ages Show)
Tick­ets $20 Doors:8 pm Show: 9pm

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 12: The Rio The­atre & NightHeat Present: Chali 2na MC
Doors: 8pm Tick­ets: $18 + S/C advance

Friday, Feb­ru­ary 24: Com­edy Fest: Marc Maron (WTF) with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk
Show: 7pm Tick­ets: http://comedyfest.com/show/wtf-marc-maron

The near­est beach may only be a few blocks from my seat at Gastown’s Nel­son the Seag­ull, but with mid-January hang­ing heavy over Van­cou­ver, noth­ing feels so far away as sum­mer. How­ever, as I start to chat with Jody Glenham—local musi­cian and lead singer of newly minted surf rock combo Plea­sure Cruise—our con­ver­sa­tion turns away from the drea­ri­ness of winter.

Instead, in the hours before Plea­sure Cruise’s PuSh Fes­ti­val Club PuSh per­for­mance, which will find the band along­side local insti­tu­tions like Bend Sin­is­ter and CBC Radio 3 per­son­al­ity Lisa Chris­tiansen, we end up dis­cussing (maybe per­versely, over hot cof­fee) the hazy warmth of low-fi gui­tars, the excite­ment of new hori­zons for the still-nascent project, and redis­cov­er­ing the fun of performance

Plea­sure Cruise, which Glen­ham describes as “the Ramones meets the Ronettes,” came together, rather by chance, in the sum­mer of 2011. “Dustin [Brom­ley] and Quinn [Omori] were look­ing for a female singer. At the time, I had an injured hand, so I wasn’t play­ing. And the way they were look­ing for a singer was on Twit­ter. They were actu­ally tweet­ing back and forth, and I hap­pen to fol­low both of them.” Glen­ham stops and jokes: “So I was on the inside track. And I half jok­ingly tweeted back at them ‘I sing, just saying.’”

Before the night was out, Glen­ham had a series of “bed­room demos” in her inbox; a col­lec­tion of sweet, sum­mer pop songs fea­tur­ing Quinn Omori—Shindig vet­eran, music jour­nal­ist, and pro­pri­etor of From Blown Speak­ers—on vocals. From those hyper­me­di­ated begin­nings, the trio (now a four­some with the addi­tion of bassist Kyle Bourcier) began tak­ing steps in the oppo­site direc­tion, towards a low-fi, sun-drenched aes­thetic, rem­i­nis­cent of con­tem­po­rary acts like Best Coast and Cults, and for Glen­ham, the 50s’ pop and girl group revival of the 1990s.

“I think our first band prac­tice was actu­ally on the beach,” Glen­ham recalls. “I just started join­ing them dur­ing their Third Beach after­noons and talk­ing with them, and that started click­ing. So we decided to get into a jam space with no idea what to expect.” This rough-shod hap­pen­stance, the kind that only sum­mer after­noons can offer, is imme­di­ately appar­ent on the band’s first EP, Busi­ness, or…, which jan­gles and echoes through tracks like “Sum­mer Fling” and throw­back piece “I Really Wanna Know.”

In a city where sun is scarce, Plea­sure Cruise has quickly become a bright spot, catch­ing the eager atten­tion of fans and jour­nal­ists alike. Before they had even played their first show, Wes­t­En­der had chris­tened the combo “Vancouver’s newest super­group” and sin­gled them out as one of five acts to watch for in 2011, along­side 2011 Polaris Prize longlist nom­i­nees Yukon Blonde and 2012 Polaris short­lis­ters, The Pack A.D.

Asked why she thinks Plea­sure Cruise’s par­tic­u­lar brand of “sum­mer beach music” seems to have con­nected so quickly with lis­ten­ers, Glen­ham offers a fairly sim­ple and extremely con­vinc­ing answer: “It’s fun! Doing your own solo stuff, you can get caught up in being so seri­ous all the time, and this is just so fun! I think peo­ple rec­og­nize that and respond to it in a gen­uine way.”

I have to agree. There’s some­thing about Plea­sure Cruise that recalls the do-it-yourself, do-as-you-will punk her­itage on which Van­cou­ver sits; that com­pul­sion to make music that just works, and to do it joy­fully, along­side friends. And that’s exactly what Plea­sure Cruise does—a jour­nal­ist, a singer-songwriter, and a for­mer punk musi­cian mak­ing slap-happy surf rock that audi­ences love.

The com­ing months, Glen­ham says, include a pos­si­ble vinyl release, some poten­tial fes­ti­val dates, and sink­ing “fish­ing lines” into record label inboxes. But for the most part, the future of Plea­sure Cruise seems to be as indul­gently casual as its past. In Glenham’s words: “what are you plan­ning? I’m plan­ning on doing what­ever the uni­verse hands me.”

You can down­load Plea­sure Cruise’s debut EP Busi­ness or… for free on Band­camp. The band will be play­ing Feb­ru­ary 3rd at Lucky Bar in Vic­to­ria and Feb­ru­ary 14th at The Biltmore.

Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo pulls up the leg of her jeans to show her right ankle. “Excuse my hairy leg,” she cau­tions, as she reveals a 3-inch tat­too: one con­tin­u­ous line that forms the out­line of a dog pulled length-wise. “It’s a line draw­ing of a weiner dog. It’s based on a Picasso draw­ing,” she explains. Picasso’s sim­ple sketch was a love let­ter to a Daschund named Lump; Capelo’s ren­di­tion is a trib­ute to her child­hood pet: “He was my best buddy grow­ing up. The best mem­o­ries that I have with my fam­ily are with that dog there. He was amaz­ing. That was the first one.”

Photo: Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo

Capelo has three tat­toos: she has another on her left wrist, and a third on her left bicep. She tells me the story behind each one, and then reveals that a year ago, she had no tat­toos. It’s pos­si­ble, then, that the year-long art project she just com­pleted might have swayed her to get a lit­tle ink.

Nearly every­day since Sep­tem­ber 2010, Capelo, a 22-year-old com­mu­ni­ca­tion arts stu­dent, has been ask­ing strangers about their tat­toos. In the hopes of over­com­ing and under­stand­ing her shy­ness, she chal­lenged her­self to talk to 365 strangers. Capelo approached peo­ple in cafés, on cam­pus and on Com­mer­cial Drive, where she lives, ask­ing them to show her a tat­too and tell her the story behind it. With an iPhone and a smile, she found 420 peo­ple who let her take a photo of their body art and share the gen­e­sis story on her blog, A Stranger A Day (astrangeraday.tumblr.com).

In July, she cap­tured a vividly coloured por­trait of Karma that stretched from a man’s armpit to his hip (he got it just for art’s sake). Last Octo­ber, she pho­tographed a dot of ink below a woman’s eye (the stranger wanted to remem­ber the tears she had shared with her hus­band). The tat­toos vary, but Capelo dis­cov­ered “some­thing really beau­ti­ful” in the rela­tion­ship all the strangers had with the art on their skin. “It’s hard to get some­one to say some­thing pos­i­tive about their bod­ies,” she says. Not very many peo­ple say, ‘Oh look at my nose! Look at my fin­gers!’ But with tat­toos, it’s very easy.”

On Octo­ber 24, she posted her final photo, and cried. “I was done! I was just really happy. But that was about 30 sec­onds and then it was onto the show.” Less than two weeks later, she and three friends drew about 200 Van­cou­verites to a tiny, nar­row art gallery on East Geor­gia Street to show the com­plete work. It was almost impos­si­ble to walk through the room and take in the images and sto­ries; the gallery was packed with bod­ies. Atten­dees were wait­ing out­side before the show even started at 7 p.m., many of whom were the inked strangers from her web­site. They’d heard about the one-night exhibit on CBC Radio or read about it on the blog Van­cou­ver is Awe­some and came to see their pic­ture on the walls. “It was really cool,” the artist says. “One of my main goals of the show was to reach out to the strangers, and for them to see what they were a part of, because it was all about them.”

Each stranger’s tat­too gave Capelo a doc­u­ment of a mean­ing­ful encounter. “A few strangers came by and I couldn’t remem­ber their faces. But they would show me their tat­too and I would say, ‘I remem­ber every­thing about you now!’ And I would. I would remem­ber where they were and who they were with.” As Capelo has learned, tattoos—or even pic­tures of them—make indeli­ble mem­o­ries and mem­o­ries indeli­ble. When a per­son gets a tat­too, she says, they’re choos­ing to put a story or image on them for the rest of their lives. No mat­ter the cir­cum­stances of get­ting the tat­too, good or bad, “It’s a mem­ory they don’t regret.”