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volga Ottawa, Ontario Canada |
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A-Tease at Avant-Garde Thank God for friends with cameras. Here are the pics from last Saturday's show. Including those of the smoke machine malfunction. Which covered up my costume malfunction. Thank God for the fortuitous fog. This was the e-mail for the show: Retro Abolition Department Minister Warns: 'Local Band’s Refusal to Cease and Desist Puts us on the Brink of Running Out of the Past, Blurring the Present, Having no Future!' OTTAWA, ON - 23 November, 2006 - In an interview Wednesday, Minister Jean Stonewashed of the newly created Retro Abolition Department (RAD) made an emphatic plea to supporters, warning of an impending "disastrous and irreversible ripple in the space-time continuum," cautioning that "if current levels of Canadian 1980s era retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may never see the evolution of pop culture again.” Urged by the announcement of an upcoming A-Tease concert at Avant-Garde Bar on December 2nd, Stonewashed warned that “Canada's retro appreciation for the actual 1980s decade, which ended 16 years ago, is colliding with an interest amongst some groups to engender a complete 80s revival. This is creating a climate of confusion where citizens of this great country of ours are in danger of confusing the 80s of the past with 80s inspired culture happening in real-time today”, creating what he called a "retro-past-present-collisionary-amalgamatory warp," the impact of which could be “greater than the Big Bang itself.” “This local band’s refusal to cease and desist puts us on the brink of running out of the past, blurring the present, and having no future!” Stonewashed warns. “What this group is doing is accelerating the rate at which people will become so confused by their feelings of 80s retro-inspired nostalgia colliding with the embracement of a new wave of appreciation for 80s inspired culture, that this new new wave of embracing the old new wave, will result in a tidal wave of confusion so perplexing, that members of society may start to feel nostalgic about events which have yet to occur," Stonewashed told reporters. “The only person who will likely understand the severity and breadth of what I am talking about here is Steven Hawking,” Stonewashed admitted, “So I encourage you not to discount my warning due to its ambiguity or confusing level of incomprehensibility to the layman. Just trust me, if Hawking gets it, and he’s worried, you should be too. He’s a genius, by the way.” Nowhere is the imminent retro-past-present-collisionary-amalgamatory warp more apparent, Stonewashed said, than in the area of popular music, the afore-cited A-Tease’s December 2nd concert being a prime example. “The intellectual elite who have studied this phenomenon admit to having underestimated the importance of mass consumption of retro-kitch at first,” Stonewashed admitted, but the A-Tease’s reluctance to “just give it up already and play songs more 2000s-like, has fuelled and exacerbated the imminence of this warp. They are all talented musicians, why don’t they just write their own darned stuff instead of regurgitating the past? “RAD,” Stonewashed continued, is “determined to quash this trend for once and for all.” RAD has called for all anti-retro-past-present-collisionary-amalgamatory warp supporters to protest the December 2nd show by blocking entrance to the bar so that neither band nor fan can get in. He also urges that consumers boycott such bands as The Killers and Hot Hot Heat, whose mainstream catchy 80s inspired lilts have caused millions of fans to question what year they are actually living in. Stonewashed also attributes this confusion to such artists as Debbie Harry, who refuses to stop touring, and Ric Ocasek who declines to stop producing and moulding new bands in his 80s image and sound. When asked to comment, A-Tease front woman Madonnalene Gigučre exclaimed: “What the hell is this guy talking about? Who comes up with this stuff? And where does he get off telling me what I can and cannot do? If I feel like singing a Go-Go’s song, I’m doing it, this a**hole can’t stop me!” Gigučre adds: “In deliberate retaliation against RAD’s attempt at signalling us out as an agent provocateur of this so-called ‘retro-past-present-collisionary-amalgamatory warp’, we’ve decided to attempt to accelerate this non-existent phenomenon by calling our next show Back To The Future. Maybe when Stonewashed sees that nothing happens as a result but a night of good times, he’ll get off this bandwagon of his. Geez, I haven’t witnessed such unfounded hysteria and blatant propaganda since that whole Y2K debacle. He’s just pissed that we cover cool songs from the 80s, not crap he grew up listening to, like Perry Como and Burl Ives.” Unrelenting, Stonewashed counters "Heed my warning! There is a massive 80s-retro tsunami of confusion coming this way, it will wash over the mainstream and blur the lines between the current pop culture and memories of the original 80s movement itself. For the first time in history, a phenomenon and nostalgia for that particular phenomenon will actually meet. When that happens, watch out: there will be legwarmers, devo hats and people dancing like robots everywhere.” Stonewashed vehemently denies that his call for an anti-retro-past-present-collisionary-amalgamatory warp protest is fuelled by his financial stake in his family’s ownership of the publishing rights to Burl Ives’ song archive. Some have argued that he’s felt thwarted by a lack of mass retrospective appreciation for Ives, leading to only a few dollars’ worth of royalties every Christmas season when Frosty The Snowman airs nationwide. “This has nothing to do with Burl Ives!” Stonewash defends. “Yeah, right,” Gigučre retorts, adding “Dude, why don’t you make like Michael Jackson and Beat It!” No one can predict the outcome of this debate, which is sure to come to a head next Saturday night December 2nd, when the A-Tease plays at the Avant-Garde Bar on Besserer at 9:30 sharp! 12.2.06 [ 252 views ]
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