only magazine

↵ home

Glass Candy's Sock

By only

Friday October 29, 2004

And cops watch the burnt-down punk house

By BEN LAI

I’m not asking for pity but I’d just like to say that I got a cold last week that made me sicker than a Japanese porno. And I still made it to WPP’s CD release show last Friday nevertheless. I was late but I managed to catch a bit of Foster Kare. They played some tight and well-calculated postpunk that I thought was pretty swell, which was interesting because I didn’t care for the band when I saw them the last time. Despite having a fill-in bass player, WPP put on as energetic a show as usual, just like the old days so no complaints here.
I didn’t go to Interpol the next night but instead went to Pat’s, and I’m positive I made the right choice. Zeus was freaking brilliant, I mean how can you go wrong with two drums, two keyboards and a smoke machine? Channels 2+3 was spastic bliss. And Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre was pure 80s cheese glam pop, but in a harmlessly fun way. Funniest moment of the night was when the singer threw her socks into the crowd and some guy chucked one of them back at her on stage.
Being Halloween and all I guess most of you are looking forward to partying it up this weekend, disguising yourself in a costume you whipped up last minute from crap found under your bed. Normally finding a good house party in Vancouver is a cinch, all you have to do is to visit the Party Army webpage and voila you have a shopping list of choices. But not this week. The word is that cops have been monitoring the website regularly after the infamous 12th & Main house fires—they are so scared about this weekend that they’ve even visited the house where a high profile Halloween party was going to take place and promptly cancelled the party. In order to save parties from being preemptively stopped the Party Army decided to shutdown their website. So this week you’ll have to find your parties the old fashion way, by word of mouth.
Obviously you are not only limited to house parties and there is plenty to do out and about if you got a few bucks to spend. Friday night, Seattle’s Zeke is starting their tour across Canada with the Black Halos, and both will be raising a stink at the Red Room, along with S.T.R.E.E.T.S. And then there’s a show with Dandi Wind, Concrete Lions, and Collapsing Opposites at the Lamplighter. Dandi Wind is one of those hard to describe acts that you’ll be silly not to see at least once. Her performance is so overly intense that it literally freaks me out.
Saturday night Rumbletone is throwing a big monster mash at the Waldorf, with three rooms in action. The notorious Halloween band The Fiends will be playing their first show in four hundred years in the main room. They are joined by Israeli psych poppers RockFour, and local kids Raised by Wolves and The Invaders. The Colorifics will be playing in the lounge all night, and there’ll be DJs in the Hula Hut room. Over at the Media Club you can see The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Oshawa’s Cuff the Duke will be playing at the Pic, and I really liked it the last time I saw them. Not quite Johnny Cash meets Sonic Youth yet but maybe someday…
On Tuesday SHiNDiG’s good this week with Abyss, The Mentally Ill Equipped and Vancougar. But say if you are on a first date you might rather go to see Ron Sexsmith at the Commodore, or even The Delgados with Crooked Fingers at Richards. On Thursday it’s the big Trail of Dead show at the Commodore. Things will be broken—bring some goggles if you are planning on standing near the front of the stage.