Dandi Wind

By Sarah Cordingley

Saturday January 15, 2005

Not Goth Enough For Sanctuary

Not despite being this year’s Shindig second-placers, Dandelion and Szam have somehow become alienated from the Vancouver scene. Meanwhile the folks in Montreal have been enjoying almost as many performances as we’ve seen here at home.

ONLY: How long have you been playing?

Dandi: Not very long.

Szam: Well, we’ve been working together for like 5 years.

D: We’ve been playing shows since the summer.

ONLY: That’s not very long.

S: Somehow we’ve still managed to play like 25 shows in the last six months. It was insane.

D: We were invited to play some shows on the east coast.

S: It’s funny; outside of Vancouver we’ve had a good response. But for some reason Vancouver just seems so…

ONLY: Yeah, it can suck. What was your best show here?

S: We played a house party in Surrey…

D: That was crazy. They were all kids…

S: And these homies came and shot off roman candles into the party.

D: They shot firecrackers into the people’s family photos and smashed the glass. A big piece of the glass jumped into my leg and cut it and I still have a scar. I was bleeding everywhere.

S: And then people danced on our amps and shit while we were playing.

D: This cute little 18-year-old girl was dancing on our amp with another person.

S: Two people were dancing on my amp! They started rocking back and forth and fell off and the girl broke her arm. She was like “My arm feels weird.”

ONLY: You guys played at Sanctuary, right?

D: We played at Sanctuary.

S: They hated us at Sanctuary. Everybody hated us. We’re totally not Goth enough. And then Dandi started making Goth jokes. Somebody said we were like Nina Hagen meets Yoko Ono…and they meant it in a bad way. But that’s cool, you know.

D: Yeah, those are actually my main influences. (Laughs)

ONLY: Are your parents artists?

D: Yeah. My dad is a sculptor and my mom’s an activist. Szam’s parents are not artistic whatsoever. They don’t even like music.

S: Yeah, they don’t like any music or any art. They have no interest.

ONLY: I met Dandi’s Dad. I met him on the patio of the Railway Club at the last Shindig show.

D: Oh no!

ONLY: He was telling us all about you. He’s so proud of you.

D: He came in and said “They’re all talking about you out there,” and I was like “Dad, it’s because of you going ‘I’m Dandi’s Dad!’”(Laughs)

ONLY: That’s exactly what he said.

S: Dandi had rekindled his interest in punk. He went to the Astoria last night. He was like “I’m going to go to the Astoria and check out some bands”

ONLY: Is it weird to sing lyrics like “his penis was limp, but then it got hard!” in front of your dad?

D: Yeah, it’s weird. But I kind of block them out of my head. My mom has brought family friends to shows and stuff. I feel kind of weird screaming all that. I wonder if my dad even knows that I say that.

ONLY: I think you say it pretty clearly.

D: Yes, I know. I wonder what he thinks, actually. He’s going to come to one of our shows this weekend, maybe the Lamplighter one.

S: Oh, yeah. We’re playing this rave thing at Let’s Dance studios… they’re having all these DJs and stuff.

ONLY: How do you play so many things when you play live, Szam?

S: I have the drums on a backing track, because there’s no way I could do that, and then I have the bass lines. Then I play all the lead parts on my two modules. We’d like to have a drummer.

D: Yeah, we want a drummer. A punk drummer

S: If there’s any really good drummers that read Only…
Dandi Wind performs January 14th at Lamplighter and January 15th at Let’s Dance.