Boris, or the dangers of blind trust

I don't remember who recommended the Boris concert to me, but somebody made a very successful prank when they convinced me to buy tickets for yesterday's concert in Vancouver. (I have to call Rodrigo to inquire if it was him...and maybe end our friendship) I have a bad habit of buying tickets first, asking questions later that has led me to suffer through horrendous performances by new bands. Yet, nothing compares to my Boris experience.

I sacrificed the last night of the Celebration of Light to go to the concert... yes, the night where China showed the Canadian and American teams why they are the fireworks rulers of the earth. But don't get me started on that....

After walking in front of Richard's on Richards and hearing the first fireworks explode (any view of them blocked by the Yaletown buildings), I shoved my way through a crowd of leather clad Boris fans and suddenly realized I was surrounded by a mass of headbanging hardcores that made me and my skinny jeans look ridiculous. En español, me sentí fresísima.

Minutes later, the Boris guys jumped on stage, turned on their amps, and began their metal guitar noises and their shouts. The crowd went crazy and I felt just like a character in Guitar Hero, with the rhythm guitarist trying hard to follow the drummer's extra fast pounding of his Tama with equally fast riffs. It felt like an aggressive talent show band, just delivering song after song of ear busting noise. I left after the 5th identical one... the horror, the horror.

------------- Update! (August 4)

Revising my blog, I just realized that I got this Boris thing all wrong!! I did NOT see Boris that day at Richard's on Richards... it was the opening band Torche!!! I arrived late that day, (the tickets said doors opened at 8 pm) and I assumed that the band that started to play at 10.30 pm was the main event! Faaaaaak.

Walter would call me a "fucking amateur" and I would have to just bow my head in agreement.

Chikita Violenta en Seattle

Acabo de regresar del concierto de Chikita Violenta en Seattle. No he tenido mucho tiempo de bloggear porque el viernes me lanzo al DF y tengo muchos "quehaceres" pendientes antes de regresar al motherland. Pero les comparto que me dió un gusto tremendo estar en la primera gira internacional de la Chikita y verlos rockear en la ciudad de Cobain y Vedder. Como dijo Andrés desde el escenario, "We were eating a pizza a block away from here and I suddenly noticed they were playing Alice in Chains. And then I realized it has always been a dream for us to stand on a stage in the city that gave birth to grunge."

Fueron la banda principal de la noche, y la única que logró que todo el público del High Dive se acercara al escenario a rockear. Jero Jiménez, baterista de Simona, fue el músico invitado de la gira y le inyectó dos kilos de extra punch a todas las rolas. Mad skills, that boy, maaaad skills. Trataron de cerrar la noche con "The Last Film", pero la rola alborotó demasiado a la gente y tuvieron que regresar a tocar un encore no planeado: repitieron la rola abridora, "War" porque, como explicó Armando, "we didn't have time to practice every single song with the new drummer!






Felicidades a la Chikita Violenta por su primera gira...and keep on rockin'!

Celebration of Light!

The Celebration of Light has started and we saw the US team last week, and the Canadian team tonight... I sincerely think today's show was much better, even if the wind didn't really cooperate by taking away the smoke. I can't wait for China!

Shearwater @ Zulu

I was riding my new old Bianchi along 4th Av. earlier this afternoon when I suddenly heard an amazing sound coming from Zulu Records. The whole street was paused in awe and turned towards the store, so I parked my bike and crossed the street to find Shearwater performing live! The crowd was no larger than 30 people, and their vintage amplifiers were stacked between the tight rows of used vinyls and the old arcades.

Although I usually need a week or two to fully accept a band into my system, Shearwater managed to really grab my attention after only a few minutes. Their songs brought me the melancholy of Andrew Bird and Beirut mixed with the suspense in Radiohead's Amnesiac....and the voice reminded me of the anguish in Antony and the Johnsons. The voice had an unforgettably pure old school flavor.

Seeing them play in that tiny space to such an intimate crowd was a true privilege. In big festival stages you lose the connection between the band and the audience, and artists can easily hide their flaws by simply increasing the volume or adding a distracting light show. But today at Zulu, you could almost touch the intimacy created by the five musicians who were showing their talent and didn't need a place to hide. It felt raw, real, and pure. I didn't hesitate to buy their CD and find a marker to get it autographed.

All I can add is that I got home two hours ago and I've already listened to their album twice.

(this happened at Fingerprints record store in Long Beach)

Folk Music Festival, part 3

On Sunday, I decided to put the lens cap on my camera for a while and become a true festival-goer. The first thing I discovered were the dozens of hoola-hoops scattered around the lawns at Jericho Park, waiting for a moving waist to give them a shake. I stepped over a purple one and suddenly became one of the hundreds, maybe thousands of curious festival-goers that enjoyed an instant flashback to childhood on that sunny Sunday at Jericho.

After a quick escape to eat an organic lentil wrap (veeery Vancouver), I went back to the main stage area and realized I was the only person without a blanket to mark his territory on the grass. The blanket situation requires a full post by itself, but I will just say that it looked like an unspoken "who brought the most exotic blanket to the park" contest. After a full ten minutes of trying to penetrate the blanket crowd and stepping on them all (accompanied by the classic "sorry, excuse me, sorry again, oh oops, coming through, hi sorry..."), I finally found a miniature blanketless square of grass and sat to enjoy the music of Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

As the sun was setting, I walked back to the media tent to meet the festival volunteer that would escort me to the back of the main stage in order to shoot the closing act of the festival. I knew it would be an important band, but I read the name of the performer and it didn't ring any bells. That explains why, when I entered the backstage area and saw Michael Franti calmly dribbling his soccer ball, I just said "excuse me" and walked past him.

Ten minutes later, I found myself mesmerized by Michael Franti. Watching him appear on stage was shocking and his music had a je ne sais quoi that left me in awe. I was paralyzed. I spent a whole song simply looking at him jump around the stage and absorbing his energy. Seeing a performer on stage makes us forget that they also walk as humans...on normal ground. To our eyes, they belong on stage, with lights and microphones and a fake background. But this man that had been so calmly playing with his soccer ball on the grass behind the stage, suddenly appeared before my eyes as the cause of all the shouts and the crowd's sudden hysteria. Anyway... here are the pics I shot after I got out of the trance:

Folk Music Festival, part 2

On Saturday I arrived just in time to see the master himself, Martin Sexton. There are only three letters that can describe this man: WOW. He injected the Jericho lawns with a spiritual energy that sent an extended cue for collective goosebumps. His voice reminded me of Ray Charles and Paul Simon, mixed with Dave Matthews on his better days (oh, sacrilegious comparison, I know). After him, I managed to get an escort to go on stage again and shoot the amazing set of Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet featuring Béla Fleck. Yes, I repeat, Béla Fleck, the banjo sensei that won 4 Grammys and was the only performer whose music I had on my iTunes! The main stage was suddenly turned into a display of virtuosismo by the banjos and the two violins that accompanied them. She delighted the audience with a song in Chinese and a story about her love for the time she spent recording there. Fleck was wearing a wicked pair of sunglasses that had some sort of foldable metallic window with a question mark and made it almost impossible to get a photo without a crazy glare.

The last act of last night was Spirit of the West, a band that had a truly personal connection with the audience. After 25 years of performing together, this Vancouver band is a favorite of the local crowd...some of their songs tell elaborate tales of North Van and sound like a Broadway musical. I wouldn't say I loved their songs, but it was impossible to keep still while listening to them. In what sounded like the celtic folk equivalent to a motivational poster, I was soon shaking my body to a fiddle and a mandolin! I hereby share my photos of this second night:

(click to enlarge)

Folk Music Festival

This weekend is very special for me. I'm covering the Vancouver Folk Music Festival for The Ubyssey newspaper! My assignment is to take photographs and write an article giving my opinion about the festival. I must say that I'm far from being a folk music connoisseur, but it's been a fantastic experience so far. On Friday I saw Aimee Mann, for whom I had great expectations (she won a Grammy for the Magnolia soundtrack), but she was dull on stage and sounded very monotonous. After her concert, I decided to try and see if I could get a press pass to take some shots of the closing act from the stage (it never hurts to ask). The media relations people were delighted to escort me to the stage corridor and soon after I was frantically taking pictures of Ozomatli!

Their show was so charged with energy that it made everybody in the audience stand from their portable chairs (yes, Vancouverites come very prepared to beachside festivals...with enormous organic cotton blankets from some country they can't pronounce and the most professional foldable chairs that make a Tesla engine look simple). It was very pleasing to see the large crowd singing, or at least trying to sing in Spanish and loving every second of Ozomatli's eclectic mix of Mexican folk and hip hop. As always, Ozomatli ended their concert by jumping off stage with large drums and doing a sort of carnival parade around the field. Here are some photos I took on this first day:

(click to enlarge)

Glimmer of hope

It's terrifying to read the news these days. Child slavery, organ trafficking, sexual exploitation... I lose a bit of faith in humanity every day.

But once in a while, a tiny incident happens in my life, a little reminder that not everything is lost and that a noble cause is still worth fighting for.

Yesterday, I left a note on a parked bike in my basement, telling the owner that I was interested in buying it. It is a vintage Bianchi Formula One with a pink frame, and rusty handlebars. It was love at first sight when I saw it...I imagined spending a little money to turn the bike into a sweet hipster fixie and gaining some street cred at last!! (look at these Moyer beauties, for example, or these Fast Boys).

Anyway, I got home and had a message from the bike owner. I called him and he said, "listen, I appreciate your interest in the bike. I am aware of its value as a vintage hand welded italian frame, and I'd like you to have it. But there is only one condition." At this point I thought, "oh god, he's going to make me babysit an annoying kid for a full month or take his miniature chihuahua out for a walk on Sunday mornings!"

But I was very wrong. My neighbour simply asked me: "I need you to make a donation to the Canadian Liver Society... my niece had a liver transplant and we would greatly appreciate your help." He didn't ask for a specific amount. He only said, donate.

His words moved me, they grabbed me and shook my insides. I felt tiny...my intention of buying the bike suddenly seemed stupid. I felt humbled. And so I logged into the link he gave me and met Taya, a baby with Biliary Atresia, a rare liver disease. I gladly made a donation.

Today, the bike rests on the wall of my room, waiting for a new chain and some air in the tires. But it has now acquired a new, deeper meaning from when I first saw it. A constant reminder of Taya, the pink Bianchi fills my room with hope...

p.s. this post is dedicated to my neighbor Lu Vo, who today showed me the meaning of gratitude.

(feel inspired? Donate. You won't get a bike, though)

Nanaimo Scuba

I went for my first cold water dive yesterday! I've been a member of the UBC Aqua Society since last October, but I was too fearful of the cold water during the winter to even try it. The idea of diving in rainy winter weather had no appeal to me whatsoever. I heard tales of people riding the boat to the divesite in their Goretex jackets with hoods and gloves, freezing with the wind and hoping to jump in the cold water as soon as possible. To me, diving has always been about flipflops, sunblock and my swimming trunks. Thus, the sunny weather of this past week just made it irresistible to go for a dive.
The dive site was the bay of Nanaimo, in Vancouver Island. We took the ferry and planned the dive while enjoying the beautiful views of the mountains. I reviewed signals with my scuba buddy Grant (the "international" scuba signs needed some translation) and learned that Jacques Cousteau loved to dive in this area.

Our first dive was a tugboat shipwreck at a maximum depth of 25 meters. As I soon learned, diving in the summer is terrible in terms of visibility. The warm weather causes algae and plankton to grow, so once you begin descending, the water looks yellow and green and you can't see further than five meters. (Dang! I guess I'll have to learn to dive with a drysuit in the winter.)

The wreck was interesting but not spectacular. You had to be literally on the boat to see it...and to me, the best part of a wreck is to see it lying on the seabed from a distance, and then slowly approach it. Once on the boat, we explored the inside of the main control room and peeked into the hull windows. We were told a large octopus lives in the boat, but we didn't find it.

(I got a little nostalgic of diving in the Caribbean... you either wear a short sleeved 3mm wetsuit, or you go with just your swimsuit... here, I had to use a 14 mm wetsuit with gloves, hood, thick boots, etc.)

The second dive was at a wall that is next to the Saskatchewan shipwreck. Again, the visibility was terrible but it was beautiful to see enormous white anemones and giant starfish. I was surprised that the starfish here have more than 5 arms! There were also hundreds of minuscule starlike creatures crawling on the bottom and many sea cucumbers feeding on the rocks.

(click on the pics to enlarge)

Details

"In the early 1990s I built a workable time machine. All it lacked was the flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity."

-Atrios, responding to Ken Pollack's reminder that “in 1990, Iraq built a workable nuclear weapon. All it lacked was the fissile material."

(For context, see Kevin Drum)
p.s. thanks Carnivoro

Requiem to Art

I saw this deeply disturbing note on the Vancouver Sun a few weeks ago. The Device to Root out Evil, one of the most though-provoking and visually enticing sculptures in the city of Vancouver, was rooted out of its location, a park in the beautiful Coal Harbour. The sculpture by Dennis Oppenheim depicted an upside down church, an eye-catching image that invariably led to a myriad of interpretations.

I remember smiling when I first discovered the sculpture last year. It was my first week in Vancouver and I gladly sat to admire the sculpture's evoking power (I then took the second picture you see here). To me, the Device to Root out Evil represented the need for religious institutions to reform themselves, an urgency to "turn the house upside down" and reinvent their practices. I also thought that the sculpture could be a call to bury religion altogether, to root out the irrational evils of religious fundamentalism in an age where scientific thought is once again under siege.

Art exists to inspire thought, to generate discussion. The function of art is definitely not constrained to its aesthetic qualities. Art expresses the struggles and controversies of its era...it is never neutral.

Unfortunately, Vancouver Park officials didn't see the the true value of a sculpture that, at the very least, generated food for thought. To me, apart from its inherent physical beauty, the fact that this sculpture generated social controversy was its greatest value. Controversy can lead to thought and constructive criticism. It can lead to introspection and to a rethinking of one's core beliefs. To dismiss a sculpture's value on the grounds that "it blocked the view of some neighbors" is an insult to all citizens of Vancouver. Unfortunately, as Miro Cernetig points out, the rooting out of this sculpture shows that Vancouver has not yet shed its "small town" skin. It's simply striking for a city with such a cosmopolitan mix of people. (where is my dear Mexico City when I need it?)

The Vancouver Park Board's excuse was cowardly, to say the least.

Shit guys! They figured me out.

Browsing through this jewel, I came across a line that might launch the third wave of my identity crisis (the first and second waves will be explained upon request):

Fact #7 - White people earn credibility by being into film from strange countries - “oh you liked Batman? Yeah, I didn’t see it, I’m really into Serbian film now. They had a great retrospective at the Vancouver Festival.”

Shit guys! I'm white!

p.s. For an alternative view of "shit guys!" visit The End of the World.

It's the guns, stupid.

Last week's DC ruling reaffirming the infamous (and frankly ridiculous) Second Amendment, is a sad reminder that, although greatly deflated, the House of Bush can still deliver subtle, yet great blows to American society.

I cringe at the thought of Charlton Heston rejoicing in his grave.

Heil state-sanctioned corruption!