2015-12-23: Sex Elf

One final video to ring out 2015 with, the Planks saved the strangest for last! Seemingly a one-off gag visited at a 2012 Christmas party and then discarded by the wayside, for unclear reasons (perhaps in the interest of completely exorcising it completely once and for all) we opted to revisit our re-written holiday rendition of Soft Cell's already-strange Sex Dwarf. Unlike our artful "Kiddie Closer", consisting of entirely new material crammed inside the sausage casing of Nine Inch Nails, this re-write was executed in the crudest, most brutal fashion possible -- the syllable-matching noun and verb search-and-replace hackjob, leaving us with an unforgettable holiday anthem that is more than a little creepy (especially with the original "naughty children", here understandably diluted down to "frosty snowmen.") (But come now: is it really any worse than "Santa, Baby" or "Baby, It's Cold Outside"?) Strange as it is, we can testify that we didn't really end up with any worse a song than the original. I know, shooting for the stars. (If sharing this video constitutes getting the song out of our system, perhaps this blog post can also give me an opportunity to be done with my related Dadaist joke:

Q: What's the opposite of a "sex dwarf"?

A: An "abstinence giant".)

Happy holidays, everyone, and see you all in the New Year at our 11th anniversary concert Jan 29th!

2015-12: Never Give A Puppy Redux

In August of 2007 Blackbox Squeezebeard, scrunched in a Greyhound bus seat rolling back from a "silent movie"-themed wedding in Washington state, scribbled its couplets in a notebook balanced across his knees to appear in that winter's "Very Vancouver Christmas" (Vol 2) fundraiser compilation for the SPCA, a pilot project of Rave On Studios. Brooke & John covered it and we released our "charts" (lyrics and chord progressions) out into the wild; then we by and large ramped down the aggressive pursuit of holiday party gigs (due to a basic kind of thematic mismatch), and due to the song's seasonality, it disappeared from our set lists.

But wait! Covering every holiday all year 'round, as it does, it is actually eternally relevant -- and so we have revived our Christmas charity single, "Never Give A Puppy For Christmas", to appear in our video series. It is, ah, more accessible than our other holiday song this year, so we hope you enjoy! (Featuring Drongo on the guitarviol, a full array of Planks regulars and Backwash Sally on guest whistle solo and tambourine!) (PS, nothing against puppies per se -- just introduce them into a family as forever friends when their arrival can be the big focus, not one more distraction in a context of disposable consumerism and annual turnover.)

2015-12: T-shirt deals for Toronto and Portland

So, did you avail yourself of a hot Creaking Planks octopus/accordion T-shirt? We sure went through a lot of them -- maybe the local market is now saturated, but maybe we'll take a gamble and get a new run printed for our 11th anniversary. But suppose you live away from Vancouver and never had a chance to pick up a shirt by attending one of our concerts? Well, a few of you availed yourselves of our online ordering and payment system... but in the shift over to the new website, that is no longer a straightforward process. Fear not, however, as for fans in a limited number of locations, there are forgotten and neglected stashes of shirts available to interested parties at fire sale prices!

Do you live in the biggest city in Canada? While the band's numerous members have mostly spent some time there, the band itself has never visited -- and yet, a trove of Creaking Planks T-shirts was brought there in a deprecated effort to make it easier for our fans in the Greater Toronto Area to have convenient access to them. Our impromptu warehouse, Dieter Friesen (of Deet Street productions, a longtime cornerstone of our reign at the Railway Club), is decamping to Prince Edward Island, and he is aiming to not bring all the shirts with him. So if you wear a Men's S, M or XL, or (like GTA-based cover model Nico, rocking the Planks shirt as hard as the bedhead) a Women's S, M, L or XL, then you're in luck! If you care to coordinate with Deet you can skip the shipping and go home with a Creaking Planks T-shirt today for only $10! (Steeper discounts may arise as we approach his departure date.) They make excellent Christmas presents, but will also suffice for Hannukah and Kwanzaa in a pinch! If the design is a winner but the sizes just aren't quite the right fit, you can always cut it out and turn it into a stylish patch!

We know we have friends in Toronto, but we also know that we have more friends in Portland, Oregon, where a small shipment of small shirts managed to make its way to this year's Horace Phair party without us. (It's... a long story.) Any Plank friends or octopus enthusiasts in the environs who wear a size S shirt, please make a connection with Jenn Dolan (or write us, we can facilitate the hookup) to get your sweet paws on a small shirt before the New Year, strictly by donation! (Apologies to The Big Smoke, that's just reflective of the regional economics of the matter.)

(And to the thwarted locals in Vancouver, Canada, fear not -- there are still a few on the racks over at Spartacus Books.)

2016-01-29: Planks' 11th Anniversary party with the Sidewalk Cellist & the Myrtle Family Band

Thanks to everyone who made it out last night! Tomorrow we return to the video shoot dungeon, following which we get a little time to rest up and strategise in anticipation of our next public gig -- that weird annual tradition, our latest band-birthday show!

Staggering out of their first decade looking markedly changed, East Van's jug band of the damned take to the stage to do their unique combination of holy idiocy, colliding the canny with the foolish, the sacred with the profane, and Britney Spears with the accordion. Doors at 8:30, $10.

The Benedict Arnolds of the trad set, The Creaking Planks squander perfectly pleasant old-timey acoustic instruments on unlikely repertoire that ranges from inappropriately avant-garde to downright bizarre. But why? It’s anyone’s guess, but happily as it turns out, the unexpected end result is pretty fun: a mystery wrapped in an accordion wrapped in an enigma wrapped in bacon.

The members of the Myrtle Family Band are bound by a tie thicker than blood. Those mysterious Myrtle Sisters boil down a thick, juicy slice of Americana to a potent syrup both sweet and salty, then apply it judiciously.

Vancouver’s Sidewalk Cellist takes the classics out of the concert hall and throws them into the streets, with the help of her nearly-indestructible carbon-fiber cello! She provides a musical mix of everything from Bach to Nirvana, jazz to heavy metal, and more, building bridges between genres for audiences of all shapes and sizes.

Join us, won't you?

2015-12: Born Slippy cover video

The most improbable (and consequently, most delightful) of our recent run of fresh cover songs, we have been cooking up a spare acoustic version of Underworld's 1996 electronic music single "Born Slippy", best known from the "Choose Life" sequence in the movie Trainspotting. It was an early attempt to put a human face on techno music -- in contrast to, say, whatever it was The Prodigy thought they were doing -- and we like to think that this arrangement is a culmination of that aspiration: raw, ethereal, vulnerable. A little bit earnest, a little bit haunting? Being a goofy band is fun, but as we "mature", an important lesson we've taken home is that ... it's all right to strive for a little bit of beauty as well from time to time.
This was actually part of our first set of DIY videos, but wouldn't you know it -- the battery ran out in the camera halfway through a take. But the sound recordings ticked on, giving us some ear candy that was well-enough received that it inspired us to take another kick at the can.

Well, we returned to the living roomstudio and took another crack at it, because anything that is liked when only heard, must be loved when seen. (Doesn't that stand to reason?) And if that doesn't put you in the zone, try cracking a glow stick and waving it around while flicking the lights on and off. Now, because these are live takes, there is some variance between the two versions -- maybe you can choose your favorite! So here we go, without further ado -- the Planks take 2 of Born Slippy:

2015: our re-invention as a virtual idol group

We're getting old! The 11th anniversary of our inaugural gig is coming up and phoo-ee, in that time we sure have killed a lot of time in bars: load in at 6pm, sound check scheduled for 7, sound check starts at 8, first band starts at 9, second band starts at 10:15, we start at 11:45, we wrap at 1 am, strike the stage setup and load out by 1:30, get paid out by the bar once the end-of-night cash tally is completed at 2, drop band members off at their homes and get to bed by 3 am... up and at the day job by 7! But it was well worth it to play to the eight people who were still there at the end of the night. We're still going out to play shows whose bookers are motivated to host us (and, y'know, wedding receptions and interesting and well-remunerating functions), but our drive to seek out further punishment has been diminishing.

Instead, we've devised a new approach. We still enjoy each other's company, getting together and playing music, but why does it have to happen at places we wouldn't otherwise want to be, at times that are inconvenient for us? Instead, we can meet up in the evening in one of our living rooms and jam on comfortable sofas, with a cup of hot tea at our side and no flatscreen television sets subjecting us to brutal MMA mishaps. And by setting up a camera, we can allow you to sit in that living room with us, at your convenience, from your own comfiest chair, regardless of just how far away you live or how much room there is for additional human beings in our living room. You're all welcome to join us!

This is a way of saying that we've launched a YouTube video series of us workshopping and playing standards, originals and covers (and who knows, perhaps your suggested song could be next on the hit list?) The channel overall can be found over here, where recent recordings will always be available for interested parties to get up to speed. As of press time, we have four videos available for your enjoyment:

• Our version of the Virgin Prunes' lost gem from 1982 "Sweethome under White Clouds":
  
• Gena the Crocodile's Russian birthday song (Jason Webley translation):
  
• Autobiographical Planks original (heck, you can hear echoes of it in this post's introductory paragraph) Your Sister's Wedding:
  
• And one more Planks original, Boo Jupiter's request for "music for a pie-eating contest" at a 2008 county fair-themed warehouse party:
  

There will be ... quite a bit more of these -- basically, we intend on continuing to meet and record songs a few times a month until we reach the end of music. I figure that will take a while. There are more in the works already recorded at this moment and just being pieced together in spare moments on MacBooks. Will I update this post to reflect the new additions? Well... no. But probably they will get their own announcements here on our blog! So stay tuned (or, y'know, SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube feed) to keep yourself posted...

2015-12-06: Creaking Planks with Professor Gall and Carolyn Mark at the WISE Hall

OK, time to inaugurate this "new" website with a fresh gig promotion post! (Don't go back too far, folks, or the pages might break on you -- but we're working double-time to get all seven years of the website up to snuff.) We've never yet had a successful intersection with Portland's Professor Gall (even the most recent failed attempt was over a year ago, at a now-closed venue! The locations change but the urge remains constant...) and as for Victoria's Carolyn Mark, well she burned things down with us at Bernerland in February, but before that we haven't crossed paths since the Blackberry Wood house concerts at the Big Blue House in 2012... so clearly we've got some catching up to do!

This show is coming up this coming Sunday night, December 6th, running from 8 pm until late (but not too late, it's a Sunday night people 8) at the WISE Hall (upstairs 1882 Adanac at Victoria.) Tickets are $10! See you there!

Get your dancing shoes ready for December 6th at the WISE!

Professor Gall
A Tincture of Junkyard Folk and Steampunk Jazz, Professor Gall seeks to uncover the contradictions of an ambiguous and native-less society, "dreaming the existentialists' dream", while at the same time pleading for individualism, peace, and more fun at funerals.

Carolyn Mark
The Queen of Vancouver Island, Mint Records recording artist and all 'round sweety with a dark side! Country, folk and Americana delivered with a smile. Please welcome all the way from Vancouver Island: Canada's Best Country Cabaret Trio Carolyn Mark and the New Best Friends. Featuring Joel Fernandes (aka The Portuguese Stallion) on lead guitar and Dennis "The Ingrate" Siemens on the (barely) upright bass. Carolyn and her band sure love playing The Wise Hall and are glad The New Asshole Neighbours didn't get it shut down. The New Best Friends are delighted to share the bill with ...

The Creaking Planks

(Come on, you know us already!)

2015-11-07: ASHKENAZ

Just a little note to our seemingly permanently hooped website that a rump delegation of Royshiker Krokves will be playing klezmer tunes at Floral & Hardy Edible Plants (688 East Hastings) this Saturday night at the free Heart of the City festival event "Ashkenaz", from 7:30-10 pm:

a celebration of eastern European music, Yiddish story telling and EATING... klezmir musicians, Yiddish story telling, bagels, cream cheese, jam and smoked salmon... FREE... a container will be passed around to raise some funds to sponsor a Syrian family to Canada

2015-10-01: Afterland launches!

Today marks the full worldwide release of Imaginary Games' "Afterland", a gothic collectible card game for smartphones... for which we were thrilled to compose and record soundtrack music and sound effects with a "dark carnival" edge. We'll be playing its launch party at Creative Coworkers tonight, but (sorry) it's a private function -- however the game is free-to-play, meaning that you can install it on your Android or iOS smartphone right this minute and hear our great work during your coffee break: (Sorry, Blackberry and Windows Phone users!)

2015-09-14: 8th annual Accordion Noir Festival accordion parade flashmob!

Ah, was it only a year ago that we logged our final appearance playing at the Accordion Noir Festival? How did we put it?

[T]his year marks ... the final AN Fest appearance of the Creaking Planks. Gasp! Shock! Say it ain’t so! [T]he programmers have spoken... (And who knows, maybe in time we can be brought back... But it won’t be in 2015.)

Well... what can we say? We're big, fat, lying liars. We saw this year's Sunday afternoon community event promoted with an accordion parade, and then got a fire lit under us when we were told that no one had organized one. But the location, Spartacus Books, so close to Trout Lake! All you need is two people (a small parade, granted, but one person alone is never a parade) to musically march one block and do a loop of the park. Surely we could round up two people in 48 hours!

Well, those 48 hours were a roller coaster ride, I can tell you. Squeezebox Circle luminaries confirmed their availability, then cancelled hours before the parade. Planks themselves boldly issued "yea"s which then somehow twisted cruelly into "nay"s. But having been announced, the show had to go on! So I strapped the baby accordion on my three-year-old and went to Spartacus Books to rendezvous with Daisy-Jones Locher, the only constant element in my hair-brained, last-minute cockamamie scheme.

There we found additional accordionists! Accordionists setting up raffle tables, adjusting stage lights, setting up video cameras... accordionists, otherwise put, unavailable to join us in our parade. But the hosts of the afternoon's fest program, the Kate & Rich duo from Halifax, were there early and opted to join us for strange kicks. (Just as well, I'd be lying if I said that our motivation was so very different.) A further ancillary accordionist loitering around the facility also followed suit, and we were off!

It's no sousaphone but... #eastvan pic.twitter.com/H8Nn1wCYVM

— Sara Bynoe (@sarabynoe) September 13, 2015

Without necessarily being a criticism, I feel confident in making the observation that the sunny Kate & Rich, likely highly lucrative on the busking circuit, may despite their affiliation with this festival this year, perhaps be the least Noir ensemble in existence. It didn't help that to lighten her load, Kate elected to play & promenade not on her regular 120-bass accordion, but the student model being offered as a raffle prize -- the one with no minor chord buttons. But we were so happy just to not be certifiably crazy weirdos out there all alone in the world (instead, crazy weirdos out there in a very small group in the world) that we tempered our planned park-circuit set (mostly klezmer) to suit the limitations of the instrument. But it sure made for an emotional roller coaster: we played "Creep", they countered with "You are my Sunshine"; we upped the ante with our G-rated rendition of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer", and they centred the mood back with "When the Saints Come Marching In". But our bizarre procession did garner some attention and drum up some interest in the imminent proceedings nearby at Spartacus -- notably, the final notes of Closer were recognized ("No freaking way!") by a park patron who was squatting a picnic table for a goth clothing swap.

OK, throwing together a last-minute accordion parade flashmob was stupid, what can I say. But also it was fun. (It was also, I think, the third most successful accordion parade in the festival's 8-year history, and this time no one had to play through garbage bags to keep their instruments from being drenched by a torrential downpour.)

Anyhow, thanks to the Accordion Noir Festival for waiving their prohibition of us, and thanks to Kate & Rich for mellowing our tartness with some sugar -- and thanks to all the goths out there, who have no choice but to be themselves in this world gone mad. Now, we have another announcement coming up for early October, so stay tuned!

2015-08-08: Eleven 88 Howe’s Party

If you live at 1188 Howe Street, you probably already know that your place of residence is presenting a block party this coming Saturday. If you live in the West End, you may not have known but this information may be of interest to you. If you don't live in the West End but could use an excuse to visit that lovable, walkable, urbanly dense neighbourhood, this could be just what you've been waiting for!

The festivities are divided up between four stages and other ancillary sites offering discounts and freebies. They're trying to bring about a Mr. Rogersian feeling of downright neighbourliness!

As for the performances, well, there are a bucketload! Throughout the event's runtime from 2-8 pm there are a pile of solo performers and small acts bouncing between the small acoustic outdoor stages and the amplified mainstage. The Mint Juleps, Monkeybar, Cowjazz Billionaires, Derek Nyberg, Julia Spitale and Shera Kelly, John Cullen, Jonny Paul, Johnny Scoop, Jordan Lyric, David Shurvell, Anni deGroot, Bad Oldesloe... AND MORE! To that list you can add not only the Creaking Planks, but also our mandolinist Daisy Jones-Locher (with Ludwika LePearl on cello) and Blackbox Squeezebeard (with his new beard the squeeziest it's been in some five years!) performing solo sets sometime within our compressed timeframe of 3-6 pm. There might be multiples! We, uh, we don't know yet when or where we'll be playing, but will update this page when it's finally confirmed.

The poster is by polymaths Jordan Lyric, who in addition to appearing on the bill also appeared in this very blog seven years ago (his comic strip appears at the very bottom). In case we don't manage to get the site updated in time to be useful, for breaking news and last-minute details you can check out the Facebook event for the block party. Cheers! (PS, thanks to the Bike Smut people for having us back for a zany intersection from even further back than Jordan's, opening on short notice for the July 23rd screening at the Rio! It was, well, it was really what it was.)

2015-05-02: May Day Info Fair at Grandview Park!

In an anarchic display of spontaneous unfolding, we have been engaged to perform at a free open-air info fair from 1-4 pm at Commercial Drive's Grandview Park Saturday, May 2nd, in celebration of the international workers' holiday the day before. Hosted by Audrey Siegl, the bill should include the fabulous Carnival Band, Gross Domestic Product, and voices in harmony from the Left Coast Labour Chorus and the Solidarity Notes Labour Choir.

2015-04-17: CFRO Co-Op Radio’s 40th Birthday party at the WISE Hall!

Our band has only just turned 10, but CFRO Co-op Community Radio, parent station to our kindred spirits at Accordion Noir, turns 40 this year! It's been, uh, quite a while since they last had a party, so they've pulled out all the stops with a bevy of special guests curated by all the stations' programs, all building up to... a headlining set by the jug band of the damned (that's us), beginning at midnight sharp!

The party goes down at the WISE Hall (1882 Adanac Street at Victoria), also features a set by Purple Soul (and a variety show segment featuring, well, a cast of thousands: tag cloud -- "Adam Farnsworth, anniversary, CFRO, Chelsea Rooney, Chris Suen, Homegoing Brass Band, Jillian Christmas, Kenan Sungur, Mama Rude Gal, Mike Zinger, Purple Soul, R.C. Weslowski, Ramon Flores Trovador, Roots Roundup, Royal Aloha Monday Orchestra, Steve Bowell, Suzette Amaya, WISE Hall"), and begins with a mixer at 7 pm -- performances at 8:30. (Do you think there will be a DJ? There will probably be 50 of them!)

Advance tickets for station members are $10, available at Highlife, Red Cat Records, at The Wise Hall & Lounge, online, and of course at the radio station. (Prices will increase a little at the door, and a little more for non-members.)

If you need more convincing, here's an official PSA made by the station in which we are described as a "dorkestra". (This is why you generally try to provide your own promotional copy.) Just make sure they spell our name right!

2015-04-10: Gypsy Spring at the Waldorf!

I know, it's strange -- no one designs posters anymore, just Facebook event headers.

Due to a medical emergency, the Planks' set at last month's Balkan Beats party on March 6th was postponed. The good news is that we're all tip-top now and ready to return to the stage for a distinctly Royshiker Krokves set (think Old Country and European points further East) at the next of their parties at the Waldorf (1489 E. Hastings.) Also on the bill: Adam Shaikh and the Burinata Duo, plus visuals by VJ Simon Kinotropy! The show starts at 10 pm, $15 at the door!

2015-03-25: at Skinny Fat Jack’s

Next Wednesday night -- one week from tonight! -- a small but tight and dedicated cadre of Creaking Planks will be taking to the Very Small Stage at Skinny Fat Jack's, around the back alley entrance of 3475 Main St., to play a few sets of their committed musical strangeness. The action starts around 8 pm and will run probably about as late as the neighbourhood will allow. Admission by donation, but suggested donation $10 -- and don't miss out on the sweet opportunity to pick up a dashing Creaking Planks t-shirt at a discounted live-music-fan price!

And don't forget you can double your pleasure with dinner and drinks at Slickity Jim's Chat & Chew around front before the show!

Thanks to Mike Chow for providing the swell photograph we so ham-handedly bowdlerized!

2015-02-13: Creaking Planks T-Shirts

We now have Creaking Planks T-shirts available for sale to the general public! If you are impulsive you can buy a shirt (or 2, or 3) here.  If, however, you prefer to research products extensively and/or enjoy purple prose, keep on reading... What Do You Need To Know About The Shirts?

• For the time being, they are only available in one colour scheme: white ink on black shirt. Sorry, friends: octopus ink. That's just how it goes.
• The T-shirts are sourced from Fruit of the Loom: less ethically produced than American Apparel, but with less flamboyantly problematic baggage. They have been holding up well in band members' trial wearings and washings (note: accordion bellows friction will rub the design away), so if you insist on distressed band t-shirts, you may have to distress them yourself. (May I recommend the -- distressing! -- William S. Burroughs technique?)
• Sizes available: S, M, L, XL -- men's and now women's cuts, please specify! We have been asked about babies' onesies and are considering the option; please let us know if there are any shapes, sizes and styles of garment you feel we have unfairly excluded. (Please note: this design will not fit on a thong. No tentacles there, no box squeezing, and certainly no organ grinding.)
• The price is $15 for a shirt, plus shipping. Shipping within Canada or to the US is $10 per shirt (different countries, but by Canada Post logic...about the same amount) and to Europe... ehh, we can work something out.
• How are you supposed to pay for it? PayPal! or if you don't have that, contact us, we'll work something out. Like an octopus, we're flexible! (Well, OK, not that flexible.)
• In Vancouver, they're currently available at Spartacus Books (3378 Findlay Street), but if you know of a shop that needs to carry some of our shirts, we obviously need to know about it! Currently our fabulous Creaking Planks t-shirts are not carried in any other brick & mortar storefront. (Or our buttons, for that matter. Or, heck, our music. Genuine Creaking Planks™ however are available for purchase anywhere lumber is sold!)

SpongeDev SquarePlanks demonstrates this season's fashionable garment sensation!

And now... The Pitch:

Some pairings are eternal classics just waiting to be discovered. Like balsamic vinegar with strawberries, taxidermied trophy fish with Al Green, and politicians' faces with pies, from the moment they are first combined one reels in shock that the ecstasy of their meeting has been unfairly denied to past generations. Another of these fundamental pairings unjustly denied our ancestors: octopi and accordions. Prior to 1829, there simply were no squeezeboxes to juxtapose molluscs with, and even since then, one being an aerophone and the other aquatic... their paths have rarely crossed, belonging to different worlds. But in this brave, strange postmodern world, the lid has been blown off of Pandora's box, and there at the bottom, intrepid artists have discovered a consortium of octopodes entwined with button-boxes, pumping away at Piazzolla tangos in a passionate cloud of inky Oblivion. (And Hope. They also found a very small quantity of Hope at the bottom of the box, stuck to an octopus' beak like a wad of chewed gum. At least, I think that was hope... maybe it was ambergris?)

Making up for lost time, visual artists and graphic designers (thanks, Simon Warner, Doc Colour, Bethany Hockenberry, Andrew Schnoor, Amber Lamb, Kirsten Beneke and more!) are combining these two disparate elements as though the clock was ticking, like their subject might suddenly fall out of fashion. (But we know, of course, that the accordion is rebounding from strength to strength after its 50 years in free-fall, so ... are the 8-armed invertebrates in any risk of shedding their eternal appeal? You tell me: optimised for their niche, they have been evolutionarily stable for 95 million years, yawning during the disappearances of the dinosaurs and the dodo.) As you may recall, we recently (Jan '15) printed a run of handsome t-shirts perhaps epitomizing this appealing, absurd juxtaposition, the accordionic octopus. The art was made by our very own Daisy-Jones Locher to be used on the poster for our 7th anniversary concert, and though we always knew it was destined to end up on a t-shirt, realizing this manifest destiny took somewhat longer than we'd anticipated. They were available for sale exclusively at our 10th anniversary concert, and though we sold a bunch ... the quantity of shirts printed was in excess of the venue's capacity, so since nobody bought multiple shirts, we do have a few remaining in every size. We will still be carting around a limited selection of shirts to our upcoming gigs for fans to purchase directly from us, but in the meantime we are also officially opening ourselves up to orders for delivery via Canada Post. (If you hurry, they may still be able to deliver to your door!) Accordion Octopus T-shirt Trivia: the accordion is upside-down! You know what, the octopus really doesn't care. That's actually the way that Blackbox first learned (well, taught himself) to play the squeezebox, only correcting himself after seeing an accordion played in the proper position on TV -- an option this octopus presumably doesn't have! Anyhow, existing technique and posture for accordion playing assumes a vertebral torso and only two digited limbs; with eight tentacles to work with, octopus accordion style is far more versatile than the B or even C system. Forget bellows shake; this bad mother will tear the bellows right in half! More Trivia: wouldn't it be bubbling if air was being squeezed out of it underwater? Maybe it is filled with water, underwater, ruining the bellows and rusting the reeds. (And where will an underwater octopus find a rig to melt more beeswax with which to repair the reeds? Oh, don't trouble yourself.) Maybe the octopus is aboveground, holding its breath while it squeezes out a merry jig on a bather's unattended instrument. Or maybe the octopus is like Grace Jones (what, you want me to qualify that comparison?) and is merely posing with the accordion, pretending to play it. Maybe. In conclusion, now you can go ahead and buy a shirt.

2015-02-06: Bernerland: the Songs of Geoff Berner!

Though our paths have not crossed all that often (usually at the ArtsWells festival!), local accordionic songwriter Geoff Berner nonetheless looms large in our band's history, inviting us to headline his show at the first annual Accordion Noir Festival, after which he sagely proclaimed: "every night some band is the best band in the world for that night, and tonight I think it was you guys." We debated long and hard whether to perform his "Dalloy Polezei" when we performed at the fundraiser for the Police Museum. (The verdict was unanimous: we totally should, and we definitely wouldn't.) In fact, a turn-of-the-century appearance opening for folkie weirdo Dan Bern at the Britannia Elementary auditorium was entirely responsible for Blackbox Squeezebeard being inspired to pick up the accordion in the first place.

So finally we have an opportunity to give back some of what he has given to us: we didn't take the chance to cover any of his numerous amazing original songs on the Festival Man album, but we will be giving up two at the fabulous Bernerland roast / tribute show coming up this Friday night!

The roster is a gallery of big talent including his old friends in the Burnettes, Jeff Andrew, Dave Lang, Demon Squadron, E.S.L., Ford Pier, Carolyn Mark, Rae Spoon, fellow Monster of Accordion Jason Webley... and us! All hosted by Ken Gordon... one night only, 8:30 pm at the WISE Hall (1882 Adanac St. at Victoria), tickets will be $20 at the door (only $15 advance!) and all proceeds will be generously donated to the WISH drop-in centre. It has no option but to be quite a show.

...

January was unexpectedly busy for us -- in addition to the big 10th-anniversary blowout, we performed two more gigs last week you never found out about here. First off was Support Resistance!, a brief but punchy appearance at a fundraiser for the Carnegie Newsletter on Jan 24th (at which Mr. Berner also weighed in!), and then on the 29th we had a fascinating chance to provide ambient and improvisatory instrumental wallpaper for a pecha kucha at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC, where we drifted among cello pedal loops beneath the skeleton of a blue whale.

Here we are living the dream of re-enacting @TheDecemberists Mariner's Revenge Song at @beatymuseum . pic.twitter.com/8tNdtndhla

— Creaking Planks (@creakingplanks) January 30, 2015

Show business! Even after 10 years, it can't help but surprise you!

2015-01-16: the Creaking Planks’ 10th anniversary extravaganza!

Our first anniversary went entirely unnoticed. Our second, likewise. By the time we had reached our third anniversary, we'd seen fellow traveller acts throw in the towel and several of the vital musical venues who had given us our first struts and frets upon the stage closing their doors, launching under new management or (worst of all) changing format to exclude live music in favour of MMA on numerous big-screen TVs. We felt we had achieved something merely by hanging in there and keeping on keeping on. Our third anniversary was an occasion worth celebrating, and celebrate we did (well, tried our hardest to), with a star-studded cabaret at the Western Front, one of the first posts on our blog here -- before which, we tracked our gigs on MySpace and on a long-extinct bespoke Geocities page. (Geocities? I know, Internet time moves so quickly, it's hard to believe music existed at all back then. We liked to bang rocks together and hit tanned animal skins with Smilodon tusks of different lengths.)

Now we are ten. We have been a going concern for over three times as long as that naive band of three, excited to be invited to play on the radio and basically trying to trick people into giving us opportunities to play for free as many nights a week as possible. We've played individual gigs whose fees have netted us as much dosh as entire years of playing for exposure got us; we have flown on airplanes to perform at festivals in other countries we never even applied to appear at. We have gone into studios to make recordings and then forgot about them. The level of success we have achieved has exceeded any heights we might ever have reasonably expected to reach with our improbable format, and yet, not a single one of our dozen-odd members is able to make a living in Vancouver making music. It's a funny, contradictory existence, to be true.

Whatever other beats we have and haven't been able to hit (gonged off stage: check; provided soundtrack for a live sex show: check; played on the soundtrack to the video game World of Goo: almost, but didn't quite happen), one constant for the last several years has been that we've had at least one show annually where we get to have it our way, on our terms -- to play on a bill stacked with acts we will enjoy, getting to pick our set times to accommodate our numerous twisted schedules. To wit: our anniversary show. Members turn up out of the woodwork to play just this one show all year round. We expect to be playing with 4 Planks and end up performing with 11, thereby kiboshing any chance of performing any material picked up since the previous anniversary show! We know that whatever we earn will end up as bus fare when split a dozen ways, so we ensure that we are paid amply in the only other currency with any weight to the unruly band of loose cannon musicians: fun.

For the first few years we were too scattered in our neurotic attempts to give away all the music as often as possible to worry about occasions on which to have shows that were guaranteed to be good, and for the first five years, that 3rd anniversary was the only one we celebrated. (It gave all anniversary celebrations overall somewhat of a bad aftertaste in our collective mouths, but eventually we learned to love again.) For the second five years, it has been mandatory: we had great, fun shows for our sixth anniversary, our seventh, our eighth, ninth and now, coming up next... the tenth anniversary of our first gig... to be our greatest, most fun anniversary show yet?

And now, apropos of nothing, I'd like to casually drop in a random photograph that assuredly has nothing to do with anything I'm talking about:

Here are the vital details you will need to know:

Accordion Noir presents
the jug band of the damned
Friday, January 16th, 8 pm
THE CREAKING PLANKS
10th anniversary extravaganza

plus Ehren Salazar,
Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band,
Der Royshiker Krokves,
magic by Travis
and special guests!

at The Emerald (555 Gore Avenue)
Admission $10 (for ten years!)

Bring at least a $20 bill along, because for the first time anywhere, we will also be selling Creaking Planks T-shirts featuring the poster artwork from our 7th anniversary concert, at very competitive prices.

What more is there to say?

...

Greetings to the Plank Nation! The time is nigh upon us! Tomorrow night, Friday, January 15th, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our first meeting at the inaugural performance of the Creaking Planks at the Western Front's "raw and cooked" showcase curated by Sarah Macdougall, along with Chrystalene Buhler, Joanna Chapman-Smith, and the freak performance poetry revue "That's My Brain... And You're KILLING It!" There the Planking of Ole and Heather -- "a droney song, a noisy song, a short improv; all with a touch of pirate" -- met Rowan's arrangement of Al Mader's "I'm A Lousy Lay" ... and the rest was, if not exactly history, ten years of occasionally-inspired obscurity. We celebrated the decade-long musical experiment on the Accordion Noir radio program last night, featuring a series of rare recordings and concert bootlegs from various nadirs and zeniths of our varied history, and you can enjoy them as well... by following that link. We'll be breaking into the vault of time and playing a few similar selections from our vast back catalogue Friday night. So, you know that it's all going down at the Emerald, right? 555 Gore, upstairs at the site of the old dim sum restaurant the New Diamond? Here, perhaps the poster that Ehren Salazar designed will help to cement the details in your memory:

That's right: not just the Creaking Planks, but also their Jewish wedding band klezmorim alter egos Der Royshiker Krokves opening! The prime mover Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band! New tunes from Victoria's newly electrified improvised genius, Ehren Salazar! Plus a set of magical tricks from Travis, gosh wow! Ten dollars (for ten years) -- two dollars per act -- is basically a criminally undercharged rate, and audience members will be getting away with, well, a very good deal. Speaking of good deals... do you like accordions? Of course you do! Do you like octopuses? Duh! Why not both at the same time! "You got your octopus in my accordion!" "You got your accordion in my octopus!" "Heey...."

"...NOT BAD!" But wait, this is a pointless digression!

That's more like it. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, for the low, low price of another ten dollars, you could go home wearing this -- the first in what will assuredly be a long, long line of Creaking Planks fashions. This t-shirt is from the fabulous 7th anniversary poster design by Daisy Jones-Locher. No longer need you wear the tattered poster! Spare yourself the paper cuts! But that's not all... for further whimsical and otherwise-unavailable goods that will be sold at our concert, read on!

That's right, it's the 2015 edition of Renee de la Prade's long-running Accordion Babes cheesecake pin-up calendar/album. We're not represented therein, as the "Accordion Dudes" beefcake calendar has had a long and bumpy trip getting off the ground, but we are great friends with the Babes and run on similar wavelengths as their strange sensibilities. Each month's babe is represented by a track on the accompanying CD album, so you can buy it to listen to and then later on you can pull out the magnifying glass to better examine which make and model of squeezebox each babe is rocking. A handful of these will be for sale for $20 a piece, and we can guarantee you won't find them in any store in town. Only in the strange chaos bubble surrounding the Planks do these bizarre alternate worlds manifest. See you there!