BeatRoute Magazine [AB] print e-edition - [April 2018]

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420 MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL 4.20 questions with the heads of Calgary’s annual green party BY MR. SLATE A fter we caught wind of the 420 Music and Arts Festival’s immanent return, we were compelled to track down organizers of the annual psych-rock smoke show, CC Getty and Celestia Scarlett. The Metalheads United promoters gave us the 411 on Calgary’s three-day long and two-dozen band strong celebration of cannabis culture. BeatRoute: What are you most looking forward to about this year’s three-day event? 420Fest: Dopethrone, for sure! It took having one festival under our belt to show them we knew what we were doing. Having desert rock legend Brant Bjork in to disc jockey live on 4/20 will be rad! He’ll be bringing up a crate of wicked ‘vinyls’ that he’s picked out specifically for that night. We’re also stoked to welcome Californian’s Sasquatch (Los Angeles) and The Great Electric Quest (San Diego), who will be performing Canada for the first time. We’ve had so many requests to bring back, highlight of the 2017 installment, La Chinga (Vancouver, BC), that we simply had to invite them to return and play an even longer set. And, be sure to check out the great Derek Mendozza and his influential [British Columbia]-based bands Mendozza and Chunkasaurus! BR: What homegrown selections will you be showcasing? 420Fest: Local (Calgary, AB) bands Buffalo Bud Buster, The Electric Revival, Bazaraba and Set & Stoned will be returning to our stage. Meanwhile, the likes of Electric Owl, Haaze, Solid Brown, Raw, & Pelican Death Squad will all be making their 420 Festival debuts this year. And, we are thrilled to be introducing Gin Lahey, a potent-but-sweet hybrid featuring members from Chron Goblin and Witchstone, who will be making their first appearance (anywhere) at our Festival. Calgary’s original hemp store the Hemporium will be there again this year and handsome Mammoth Beard Co. will be sponsoring the 420 Beard Contest. Last but not least, The Perogy Boyz and Waffles & Chix food trucks will be onsite to satiate of any munchies that may arise. BR: Words of wisdom on how to best approach and enjoy the Fest? 420Fest: Get your passes or tickets in advance from Distortion, Sloth Records or Deadly Tattoos to save on service fees and get through the line a little faster. Be sure to arrive early to see all the bands. There are always special rewards for those that do show up in advance. And don’t forget, to hit the bank machine before you come as Distortion is a cash only bar (and so are most of our vendors). Take advantage of the Festival’s convenient location and get a room at the Days Inn, so you can party all weekend long! BR: Lessons learned and new improvements? 420Fest: We decided to have our ‘420 Expo’ with all kinds of artists and craftspeople set up during the Festival evenings, instead of separately, to give attendees even more to enjoy during the musical performances. The biggest lesson we’ve learned is that we can’t take any time off. We’ve come to realize that, in order to build something bigger and better, we’ve got to approach this Festival as a full-time job and a yearround operation. In fact, we’ve already begun booking acts for 2019! 420 Music and Arts Festival runs from April 19 until April 21 at Distortion (Calgary). For more information on the line-up and to purchase tickets, visit420musicandartsfestival.ca WHAT SHAKES YYSCENE’s quick scan go-to-guide for April And here we are into April – there’s a lot going on, so let’s dive right into it because, well, we can. Start the month off on April 5 taking in some great vintage film at Lougheed House with Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. On April 8 you can catch HOLY HUM with Hermitess and Deep Covers at Nite Owl, and for the poetry slam lovers out there, you’re in luck! Can You Hear Me Now? All Ages Poetry Slam will take place at Shelf Life Books on April 10. Also on April 10 you can take in The Maine with The Wrecks & The Technicolors at The Den, U of C. Then on April 11 head over to Studio Bell again for Passport: Music Export Summit Showcase with Ahi, Nuela Charles, Samurai Champs, JEFF GOLDBLUM at the Comic Expo. Sate & Port Cities. Danger! Danger! Yes it’s true, Electric Six will be at the Gateway on April 12 (see what I did there?) and then on April 14 head over to Ironwood for Petunia & the Vipers. All fun, all the time. The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) will take place in our fair city from April 16-21, specifically at the Globe Theatre. Great films, the Found Footage Festival, Saturday morning cartoons complete with cereal ... check out their online schedule for all of the goodness. Literary types! Wordfest presents Sane Takes on an Insane World Festival April 16 - 23 at various venues around town, and then on April 18 you’ll be wanting to hit the Ship & Anchor Pub to see Night Committee with Des Arcs and Less Miserable. More into dance? Sure you are! DJD presents Mimic April 19-May 5 at their amazing theatre, and over at Studio Bell (they clearly have a truckload of stuff going on down there) their Alberta Spotlight features nêhiyawak with FOON- YAP on April 19. On April 21 head to the Gateway for Fever Feel with The Ashley Hundred, and then on April 25 The Commons will host Aimee-Jo Benoit and Trio Velocity in their Parlour Room. Wait for it! The 13th Annual Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo will take place at the BMO Centre April 26-29, featuring the POW! Parade of Wonders downtown on April 27. The cast of Back to the Future, Lou Ferrigno, JEFF GOLD- BLUM? Come ON! You can catch the PVRIS North American Tour with guests at The Palace April 26 and then what better way to end the month than over at Distortion on April 30 taking in 2 Shadows-Feed the Obscure Tour? I have no counter to that one. Kari Watson is a writer and former Listings Editor of FFWD Weekly, and has continued to bring event listings to Calgary through theYYSCENE and her event listings page, The Culture Cycle. Contact her at kari@theyyscene.ca. 12 | APRIL 2018 • BEATROUTE ARTS
FILM FUNNYMEN OF FOUND FOOTAGE Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher bring their hilarious show to CUFF BY CHAD SAUNDERS Nick Prueher: There’s something very endearing to us about these sort of analog weirdos. In the YouTube era, everyone knows that they are broadcasting to the world and goes into it with far more media savvy than even the most sophisticated media professionals had in the 80s and 90s. There sort of a wide-eyed innocence about their endeavors that’s really appealing. I mean, Jack Rebney was having a bad few days shooting an RV commercial, Frank Pacholski made two episodes of little-seen public access show, and Larry Pierce was recording dirty country songs in a garage and sending them to a truck stop comedy label. They weren’t doing it to get famous or anything. YouTube is great but everyone on there is self aware and that takes the fun out of it for us. Chop and Steele doing their fake strongmen early morning TV routine that garnered a lot of laughs and lousy lawsuit. THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL is a one-of-a-kind event that showcases footage from videos that were found at garage sales and thrift stores and in warehouses and dumpsters across the country. Curators Nick and Joe take audiences on a guided tour of their latest and greatest VHS finds, providing live commentary and where-are-they-now updates on the people in these videotaped obscurities. You have been doing the Found Footage Festival since 2004, close to 15 years. Did you ever think it would go this long? Joe Pickett: No. Not at all. After the first few years of touring, we thought we’d run out of video tapes or people would lose interest. But we’re continually surprised (and grateful) that so many weird videos have been produced on this planet. And based on the stacks of videos in our office, we’ll be doing this until the day we die (or go insane). What makes a good find? What is the criteria for making the cut for your FFF tours and DVDs? Joe Pickett: We have a few rules: 1. Nothing off the internet. The videos we show must be an actual, physical copy. 2. The video must be unintentionally funny. In other words, whatever the producer set out to do, whether it’s a training video about flipping burgers or an instructional tape about singing like Elvis, they had to be earnest in their intentions. And 3. Puppets, corporate rapping and ridiculous exercise videos always have a home in our show. members encouraged to bring tapes and if so, what are you currently looking for? Joe Pickett: It’s a needle in a haystack to find a video that’s good in the right way, but when you find it, it’s an absolute rush. Thrift stores don’t carry VHS like they used to, so we always ask people to bring us their tapes. In fact, last year, after David Letterman retired from the Late Show, a writer gave us the show’s entire VHS collection, which turned out to be pure gold. As for a tape we want to track down, we’d love to find the Donald Trump piss video, but we currently don’t have any leads. VHS is a media that is disappearing. What makes a clip captured “today” (on VHS or not) special? Does the Internet “water down” or mask the real/honest people genuinely trying to present an idea? Joe Pickett: People were much more sincere back in the ‘80s/’90s and you really don’t see that level of sincerity these days. Everyone is extremely self-aware now, but back then people would express themselves on video no matter how terrible the idea. Maybe it’s because comment sections hadn’t been invented yet. Whatever the reason is, we find it refreshing to watch earnestness on screen even if it is a little cringe-inducing. Tell us about Chop and Steele. What triggered Gray TV to begin legal proceedings? What will the new show incorporate from this episode of your lives? Nick Prueher: While on tour with the Found Footage Festival, Joe and I found ourselves going on these local morning news shows across the U.S. and Canada to promote the show and very early on we realized no one was paying attention. They’d get the name of our show wrong, they had no idea what we did, and they made us come in at like 5:30 am. We hated doing them, so as an experiment with our friend Mark [Proksch] we sent out an obviously bogus press release about an “environmental yo-yo expert” around Earth Day to some of these same stations. They totally ate it up, so Mark came along on tour with us and played the yo-yo expert on TV, despite the fact that he couldn’t yo-yo at all. It was so ridiculous that tried it again a few years later with me playing a dumb celebrity chef who taught you how to spruce up your holiday leftovers, essentially by blending them all together and pouring them on corn. It was so dumb but it didn’t matter. Chef Keith got on a half dozen news shows, no questions asked. So last year, we decided to see just how stupid we could be and pitched ourselves as a strongman duo called Chop & Steele, unifying a divided country by chopping cinder blocks. Again, we got booked a ton of these shows. They just never learn their lesson. And I guess Gray TV, which owns about 90 stations in the U.S., got embarrassed and sued us! Instead of training their reporters to be better, they paid tens of thousands of dollars to hire a law firm and make our lives a living hell for a year. We’ll be showing the hotly contested footage and telling the full story at the show at CUFF. Don’t tell Gray TV. How hard is it to be media pranksters? What is next with the Chop and Steele lawsuit behind you? Nick Prueher: Please don’t call us media pranksters. To me, that phrase conjures up snickering YouTube morons like Logan Paul who think it’s funny to mess with the poor lady in the drive-thru. We’re more like comedy writers with too much time on our hands. That said, we’ve got some other ideas to see if news stations are finally doing their homework. Could two incompetent cat trainers be touring through Alberta later this year for Cat Awareness Month? We’ll see. Tips to get on TV? How does one become the next GG Allin of Cookingon morning television? Nick Prueher: Send literally any press release to a news station on a letterhead. You’ll get on. You have introduced the world to Jack Rembey aka Winnebago Man, Frank Pacholski (US flag speedo wearing public access “star”), Larry Pierce (Dirty Country singer) and more. What makes these folk heroes stand out in a instant-celebrity world What makes the hunt for the next best VHS tape still exciting? of the Internet? What is different about being a VHS star over Found Footage Film Festival: Vol. 8 takes place April 21, 9:15 pm at the Globe Is there a tape that you still need to track down? Are audience being a YouTube sensation? Cinema FILM BEATROUTE • MARCH 2018 | 13
Page 1 and 2: Preoccupations • Uriah Heep • R
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER 13-23 CALGA
Page 5 and 6: HOUSE OF VANS Big Four Building Hos
Page 7 and 8: BEATROUTE • APRIL 2018 | 7
Page 10: ALL OF US AB Ballet’s tribute to
Page 15 and 16: KNUCKLEBALL shoot local, thrill glo
Page 17 and 18: FREAKS AND GEEKS: THE DOCUMENTARY i
Page 23 and 24: FILM FASHION runway to the screen B
Page 25 and 26: PBR MOnday’s at Pinbar! Every Mon
Page 27 and 28: PINK MEXICO darkness is their sherb
Page 29 and 30: BORN RUFFIANS new album marks a ret
Page 31 and 32: BLACKBYRD MYOOZIK Jeff Kynoch (27)
Page 33 and 34: SLOTH RECORDS Dave Muir (50), 19 ye
Page 35 and 36: EDM ONTON EXTR A EDMONTON POETRY FE
Page 37 and 38: #YEGMAN vigilante justice propels n
Page 39: RE-FORM the medium is the message B
Page 42 and 43: LET’S GET JUCY! Sam Binga perform
Page 44: ROOTS HEY OCEAN! drop anchor with c
Page 47: DONOVAN WOODS on moving forward On
Page 50: LA CHINGA the lowrider is a little
Page 53: MAY 26 AT 8 VENUES (MOST ALL-AGES)
Page 56 and 57: Amen Dunes Freedom Sacred Bones Ame
Page 58 and 59: J Blissette “Cracker Drool,” an
Page 60 and 61: livereviews Rhythm of Cruelty Rhyth
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SAVAGE LOVE what is love? I’m a 3
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