VANCOUVER
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Partly Cloudy 2° » 5 day
Because they have been trying to destroy the Downtown Eastside since 1913
Not only does Vancouver have a very short history, what little of it that is great is neglected or, worse, forgotten. When the story of punk is told, it’s always London v New York. Director Susanne Tabata’s Bloodied But Unbowed, recalls Vancouver’s contribution to punk, a time and place that was second to nobody.
Just about ten years ago, before the iPhone, before the iPod, before even there was even an online store to buy from, Apple released – bought really – a programme for the Macintosh that allow one to play something called MP3s.
Megaphone Magazine and Music Waste presents…
The only difference between our festival and the two that came in first and second? A couple hundred thousand dollars.
The lead vocalist for the band Throbbing Gristle and one of the founding minds of Psychic TV, Genesis P-Orridge has been charged with having invented industrial music, acid house and some even lump Brit Pop into that mix. A musician, performance artist and social provocateur, Orridge has made it his, or her, life’s work to push the boundaries of social behavior. From the early days of living in an anarchist commune fueled by the infinite frustration he experienced in the 60s and 70s he has always worked to explore the intellectual and very human experience of why do we do the things we do. His art has taken many forms, it is both playful and confrontational and has covered ground ranging from pornography, totalitarianism, Nazism, love, peace, evolution and especially gender. Both his art and music often defy the conventional, in fact they mischievously and intelligently deny the use of conventional expression as words and symbols and definitions become altered, removed, unnecessary. Throughout his career his life has become inseparable from his art and most recently he and his other half, Lady Jaye began a physical, living art project that saw them both undergo body modification and plastic surgery in an philosophical and artistic effort to explore the concept of what they call Pandrogeny – the realization of a third entity that exists beyond the sum of either one of them. Unfortunately the project has since ended with the abrupt passing of his partner Lady Jaye in October 2007. Regardless, he continues with his work, having recently released an new Psychic TV album and DVD and his intelligent and thoughtful ability to articulate his ideas and heartfelt hope for the survival of the human race has helped him find a new and excited audience in Universities around the world. I spoke to Genesis on the phone from New York.
For those of you who still live in the city and care about what happened before you were born, this event is sure to be a good one. Local Vancouver punk historian Scott Beadle will be giving a talk. Hopefully it will be more rock and less talk, although a little talk is OK. Especially before a night of dirty sex.
Unless you used to religiously follow Three One G’s every release you may not know that Katrina Ford, Celebration’s singer, was in an awesome punk band called the Jaks. Katrina, as well as the Jaks’ Sean Antanaitis, went on to form Love Life, Birdland and Celebration together.
