2012 in review

It's been another year of ups and downs (er, pitches an' yaws?) for the jug band of the damned, and since it's a list-making time of year, here are a top 10 of highlights from 2012 for the Creaking Planks!

• 10. This was a new one for us -- something hard to achieve after seven years! 2011's new experience was playing in a tattoo parlour, but this was stranger still -- a teleperformance between multiple Planks in different locations! Blackbox wasn't able to join Wyoming Johnny at the Horace Phair party in Portland this year, so the night of October 6th they had to jam together employing unconventional means:


• 9. We were expecting somewhat more diversity in genres representing across Gastown on Make Music Day, June 21st, but set up at our allotted location to find ourselves sandwiched between a dozen noisy, amplified rawk bands of various makes and models hiding behind Marshall stacks. And here we were, in a minimal 3-piece format, on acoustic instruments with our gutless little PA. Was it worth even setting up? The answer: Mais oui! Vive la différence! Turns out that contrast is one effective key to garnering attention, and as naturally there were no other acts remotely like us out on Water Street, we quickly gathered a small but devoted crowd, clinging (tenaciously?) to us like shipwreck survivors to a liferaft. Even the smaller format, which we'd been concerned would be underwhelming, worked to our advantage, each instrument occupying its niche in the pitch spectrum without competing with others and muddying the mix. A new paradigm -- doing more with less?
  
  
  See you next year, random hoop lady!


• 8. We don't like to go any smaller than a three-piece ensemble when confirming for a gig (so you don't book "a band" and end up with "a ukulele player"), but circumstances compelled us to go in as a two-piece for a truly extraordinary show Nov 10th in which we were among the more normal of the acts offered to the crowd. Mixing it up with the new format, we went for broke with unusual, not-played-into-the-ground repertoire for an unusual kind of audience -- chamber music-style folks, seated and politely listening attentively. Our new tack wouldn't have worked in most of the noisy bars, cafes and tattoo parlors where we usually play, but it was absolutely the best fit for that particular room on that specific occasion. Plus, of course, the rest of the strangeness was off the hook, and for once we got to appreciate the spectacle rather than providing it.
  Case in point: note the topless manservants in the mirror. They were on-stage all. night. long.
  


• 7. Many of the best gigs in town look somewhat humble on paper, like playing a set at the Deer Lake Rhododendron Festival, but what sets them apart is how they manage to both deliver a reasonably-sized audience and a decent payout for hard-working hungry musicians. In this case the premise seems somewhat hand-wavy -- here's an extension cord, go plug in your PA system outside in John Hendry Park and we'll set up 60 chairs for Trout Lake patrons who may encounter you and decide to hear more. Opening this August 1st set playing to 60 empty chairs was a leap of faith, the set feeling like a gambler's desperate double-or-nothing gambit, but skipping forward a couple of hours and wrapping the set to a full house demanding encore after encore leaves you feeling like you successfully stole fire from the gods. Where performing in public spaces is concerned, it's like the magical opposite of busking -- people actually pay attention to you, AND you actually get paid... by NOT asking for money! Then we had the great fortune to play that gig again a few weeks later, Aug 22nd! Sometimes (not to name any names) your only reward for a great outdoor set is the beautiful natural stage, but fortunately that's not the case everywhere.


• 6. So you write a great song, but what do you do with it? A friend helps you make a great recording of it (in exchange for which we say: if you're of the guitar-playing persuasion, you ought to consider a Tinker guitar) but you're still ten tracks short of an album. But now in this iTunes microtransaction era, we can just serve up a single song! It's the greatest of our great original tunes, and someday will serve as the bedrock for a full album -- but you don't have to wait 'til then! That's the beauty of it.
  


• 5. Early in 2012 the Heineken beer company ran a fun (if somewhat problematic) ad campaign featuring everyone's favorite Hindi film sountrack hit, Jaan Pehechaan Ho! Interest in the song mounted and folks out there in Internet-land began seeking out alternate renditions of it. That's where we came in. A humble, unassuming (and not even synchronized!) performance of it we'd had recorded live off the floor a year earlier suddenly found itself thrust into weird prominence, and when the dust cleared, we found our video had been viewed twenty-two thousand times! We haven't yet had any invitations to travel to Mumbai to perform our version but we remain hopeful.


• 4. If you trace the history of mass entertainment back far enough, you find an exciting and intriguing post-vaudeville moment in time when movies and cartoons had been invented but not yet synchronized with soundtracks, leaving live musicians (typically on a piano or Wurlitzer organ) to fill in the blanks, sonically. April 7th, we got to deliver a fun and funny live soundtrack to a great piece of black & white animation featuring the great surreal feline of the Depression era, Felix the Cat! Coming up with different riffs to suit the cartoon's disparate weird moods was a slice and drafting our instruments for double duty doing foley work for sound effects was also a big thrill. Then getting to make it happen on-stage in a theatre in front of a packed house was the icing on the cake, and all the other great soundtracks from the other performers the cherry on that icing. Hopefully we'll be revisiting this format annually!


• 3. On a good year, we'll play one wedding reception. In a great year, we'll play two. But in 2012, we got to play two receptions for the same wedding, in two different cities! (On two separate dates.) Canadian folk music royalty (well, at least the court jester) Bob Bossin of Stringband tied the knot with artist Sima Elizabeth Shefrin, first on May 20th at the Peretz Centre where we provided musical bookends for the occasion as the band from Chelm (with the best old-world village food on the reception dinner menu -- cabbage rolls and kugel! -- our inspired suggestion) and then later, on June 30th, on Gabriola Island at the amazing Net Loft, our first ferry-assisted gig that didn't involve our taking a bath. 2013 is already on deck to be a good year -- Cumberland, we're coming to your wedding celebrants this upcoming July! Just as well, we need to share our inspired genius with the BC Ferries musical ecologist (presentation pictured) who teaches passengers about seaweed through song. "Kelp! I need somebody! Kelp! Not just anybody! Kelp! You know I need someone! Ke-ellp!"
  
  
  (We landed this gig because of our great .GIF animation, in honour of which this post is framed by two more, anachronistically from our Nov 2011 show with the Accordion Babes.)


• 2. Bob and Sima were concerned when Blackbox mentioned that his partner was in the third trimester and there was a remote possibility he might need to duck out of their wedding in order to attend to the birth of his firstborn child. No need to worry, they still had a week left until the due date -- and as it turned out, things didn't really get rolling until two weeks later... causing us to cancel an entirely different gig on very short notice. (They were warned!) We don't like to cancel gigs -- we've withdrawn less than a handful of times over 8 years -- but if you've got to do it, this is an excellent excuse.
  


• 1. Tracks on Tracks. Long story short, we accidentally entered a musical popularity contest, and inadvertently made it through several qualifying rounds. We don't involve ourselves with these hyping exercises often because they're very energy-intensive and always a let-down to not win. Since Kickstarter emerged, everyone knows a dozen musicians, rotating in a game of musical chairs, continually clamouring for votes, likes, and dollars. There's so much focus on pre-selling the art, there's no time for the art. (Admittedly anything that gets the artists paid is good, but it makes for an irritating baseline buzz of tedious hype at all times.) But this time, because the stakes were high (you know how much it takes to ship a band across the country?) and because our initial accidental success in advancing to the second round was so invigourating, we campaigned. It compelled us to better ourselves. It drove us to give people more ways to appreciate us. (See #6, above.) It inspired us to get organized. And, mostly, drunk on unprecedented reach as measured by Facebook Insights, it pushed us to produce an extremely silly series of doctored photographs of the Creaking Planks insensitively performing at the sites of great train wrecks. When we proceeded to round 3, leaving behind bands we knew darned well were more popular than us (though we knew that we of course were far, far nerdier than them, always a factor in online campaigning) and caught people we hadn't seen for years boosting us to their friends, our hearts were fit to burst, not least because we knew secretly that even if we somehow won, we wouldn't be able to go (because, well, see #2, above.) In this business you spend a lot of time feeling like you write your name in water, giving people a good time but not for a long time. It was very heartening given our increasing long-in-the-tooth-ness to find that some of that goodness we'd spent years pumping out into the world was coming back to us. Ultimately, a good investment! Definitely one of our top 3 didn't-happens, along with not-opening for Nina Hagen and not-playing on the World of Goo soundtrack.


• 0. Monkeying with time, is it possible for us to include last year's anniversary show? We put two astounding out-of-town acts to great use and were much entertained ourselves, to boot! Truth be known, it probably does fit -- heck, the poster artwork alone qualifies it, and someday we'll have to sell something with that on its cover -- but right out of the calculations would be this year's anniversary show, coming up in three weeks! Well, so be it. If we have to break time itself (using polyrhythms!) to include it in our list, that's just what we'll have to do. Heck, certain unnamed cultures mark their New Year celebrations by the annual Planks anniversary show, until which it will still be considered 2012. So there you go. It hasn't even happened yet and already it's among our favorite memories of last year. The best part was when you came and joined us!

A moment of silence for two Vancouver venues

A moment of silence, please. You, you in the back... yes, with the alpenhorn. Just for a minute, please. Well, okay, but take it outside. Man, than thing is huge. Now, where was I? Ah yes, a chance to pay our respects to two local music venues who played key roles in the development of the Creaking Planks, both of which closed their doors to live music performance in October.

The narrow confines of Cafe Montmartre always seemed more like an alley between buildings where someone had hung sheet metal roofing and a few tricycles than a building of its own; unbearably hot in the summer, it played host to the long-running Thundering Word open mic series long after its founder passed on. We featured at the open mic twice, and played there on numerous occasions -- a room we had access to book when other venues didn't necessarily believe in our locally-unproven support acts such as the Accordion Babes from California, and of course, we'll never forget the riot (well, the police came and my mother was standing on a table) when Mezamazing played with us there at the Accordion Noir Festival.

Two blocks away, the Little Mountain Studios have completed their conversion into a theatre, after what must be nearly a decade of struggles with the city inching incrementally toward venue legitimacy since its early days as the Butchershop Floor Gallery, where a young Lord Eel, Lee Shoal, and Blackbox Squeezebeard managed to clear a full house shortly after meeting just by pulling their instruments out. Later, we managed to play a haunting set to an empty room while accidentally burning a hole in a banjo. After the changeover we took on an official status as the venue's "house band", playing many an opening, and for a time enjoyed a weekly residency there. There, also, we put on gigs that quite simply couldn't have happened anywhere else -- the Cabaret of Wonders! Err on the Side of Caution! (And of course, hosting Mezamazing after their Montmartre show.) And of course, we had many, many RAV line nights.

We don't strictly speaking need them now, but the bands who are, now, in the position we were in, then, do need rooms like these. (Venues that will pay you are also nice, to be sure, but even before your band is at that level, you need a place outside your living room to develop your skills to a point where you can go semi-pro.) Where will they be found? These rooms are survived in the neighbourhood by the Main and the Cottage Bistro; more widely, the Safe Amplification Society is keeping its finger on the pulse of accessible venues for eg. all-ages shows that can't always promise the massive paying patrons many venues demand (in lieu of rent; of course, if you have capital, anything is possible... but that's not a reason to make everything impossible to those without capital if all they have to trade on is talent!)

So hats off to the rooms for keeping on keeping on; it's always a surprise when the totally anarchic band perseveres and manages to hang on for longer than legitimate businesses (well, and the LMS, which just seemed unkillable, despite its years of seemingly perpetually teetering on the brink.) We would have liked to give you one last set, but timing isn't only the secret to great comedy, but also sometimes its inverse. Many regards to Ali and Ehren; letting your art lead you through life is one folly, but then running a business predicated on daily dealings with those fools is a whole other flavour of foolishness. We wish you great success in your next adventures and look forward to our paths crossing then!

2012-04: An entirely un-rail-related milestone

Sometime over the past few days our ticker quietly slipped past 20 thousand views on that notorious unsynchronized performance video of us playing Jaan Pehechaan Ho last Easter, making it not only our most-viewed YouTube performance, but somewhat difficult to imagine surpassing.

(If only we could get every one of those 20 thousand to vote for us at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-4 , our position on this train ride would be secured!)

It's perhaps worth comparing to the tremendously viral pre-Plank-video YT clip of Blackbox (hm, pre-blackbox, even -- it's red!) playing an incomplete take on Britney Spears' "(Hit Me Baby) One More Time" solo at a party, one-handed, and its eventual accruing of some 27 thousand views. Now, that video is apparently potent, but the newer one is catching up. Let's investigate the factors that separate them:

Age. That Britney Spears video has been up for almost six years, meaning it only averages 4500 views per year. The Plankian Jaan Pehechaan Ho has garnered all 20 thousand views in a single year.

Performance weight. There are many factors here -- full band of eight vs. soloist, full song vs. an excerpt, competent two-handed use of instrument vs. a clumsy single-handed rendition. Assuming that all of these naive handicaps worked in the earlier video's favour (as it's hard to see what else was going its way), we can use New Math to calculate that if our rendition of Jaan Pehechaan Ho had been done differently according to the formula of the earlier video it would have achieved still further popularity by this point in time.

Imagine, if you will, that posting a fragment of the song doubles its appeal, and that performing it one-handed doubles it again in minimalist virtuosity. Then that minimalism is diluted fully in half with every supplementary player. According to this airtight formula, we can calculate that a solo player performing a chunk of Jaan Pehechaan Ho one-handed would in one year have garnered ... 646 752 views. (And hot damn, would he or she have earned it!) Over six years that would have risen to 3 880 512.

Aaaand... carry the two.

Thus, we can calculate that objectively, this flawless heuristic also reveals that Jaan Pehechaan Ho is 143.7 times better a song than (Hit Me) Baby One More Time.

2012-04: Round 3!

Surprise! It couldn't have surprised anyone more than us to determine that we'd gotten into the top 25 bands out of the initial 300 competing to travel on that Tracks on Tracks contest to ride the musical rails into Toronto and the NXNE festival, but unpredictable is our middle name. (Named after our great-uncle, whose exploits in Central Asia... well, but I digress.)

But there we were, tuned in to the podcast on Wednesday, when there we heard it. It was brief, but then they repeated it a few times, confused by how alphabetizing names beginning with "The" puts bands with "Creaking" in their names after "Shred Kelly". (Pro tip: often the "the" is omitted. Sorry.)

And here we were, all ready to blog about The Little Engine That Could and how we thought we could and put out our best effort and thanks to all our supporters for believing anyway and now we could get back to business just scraping by, but no -- the campaigning continues! We have until noon PST on Tuesday, May 1st, to garner enough votes to place us among the top 10, now at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-4. The results will be out by late Wednesday morning, and we can assure you we'll be making a big stink either way.

Our campaigning will continue apace, with more goodies to be shared over the coming week -- with this new revelation that people actually care what we're up to, we're definitely more inspired to give our best! And superfans subscribed to our Twitter feed at twitter.com/creakingplanks or our Facebook group (and the new event there created just to gracefully court voters across multiple rounds without endlessly bugging them) will likely get the inside scoop on these goodies! Only here will they be discussed and analysed endlessly, but if you want the announcements without the insight and lousy jokes, check there first!

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks -- the ever-lovin' end!

Warning: this post is not suitable for children, and the image contained herein may require a long time to explain to them (and years of expensive therapy to fully get over.) The precise circumstances remain infuriatingly vague, but it was universally admitted to be a calamity the likes of which the Children's Festival had never anticipated when they booked us. You start singing the Happy Birthday dirge with its line "children crying in despair" and never realise just where it leads. Well this is it, the end of the line, folks. Everybody off! We warned you to keep your hands inside the moving vehicle!

It's true, this is our final imaginary photo-post campaigning for round 2 of the CBC's "Tracks on Tracks" contest -- you have until noon Tuesday to submit your vote in support of the jug band of the damned (down in the "T" section at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3) to try to clear us for participation in the third and final round. The winner gets to ride with Green Couch Productions (heh, if their Indiegogo campaign picks up) and some other bands on a musical train trip to Toronto and the NxNE festival in June. We like to think we'd be admirable candidates for the job, and thanks for asking!

This week of strange photocollages has been an attempt to psychically associate us with a rail travel context, a little bit askew (in conjunction with spectacular and historic disasters -- modern ones are just too horrific) but all the more appropriate for our somewhat bent take on the music biz. Of course, we hope not to bring on any bad juju to whoever ends up winning the contest and riding the gravy train east -- but, y'know, even if disaster strikes you can keep your camera handy and own the disaster as best you can. Rocking out, loudly, can be a form of grieving!

(We also had an unfortunate run-in with Big Bird backstage, but those photos are entirely unprintable.)

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks -- Hardcore!

Who knew that our stint as a supporting act on Jason Webley's Monsters of Accordion tour would lead to our landing an opening spot at OzzFest? This particular image captures perfectly a moment in the set as we transition from Patsy Cline's "Crazy" to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" to Ozzy's "Crazy Train" to Elizabeth Cotten's "Freight Train". Our cross-genre sensibilities have always engendered "train wrecks" (startling, jarring sudden transitions between genre and mood) and so why not our stage shows also? This train may not have crashed yet, but it's so badass it leaves a shipwreck in its wake -- in the sky. (The conductor is actually a really nice guy but too many years in green rooms has done a number on his face. As for the angel, she just missed her entrance cue.)

To be sure -- this scene never happened. But remember -- pictures never lie. And art is the thing that uses fiction to tell greater truths -- just ask Mike Daisey. Are you confused yet? Here's what you really need to take home from these bewildering blog posts: as a band, we really like trains and rail travel, which all these demented imaginary photocollages are, in a sense, celebrating. And you could help us to experience some this June as part of the Tracks on Tracks tour to Toronto, by voting for us at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 ! Now don't forget to stop by tomorrow for the final stop on our tour of the locomotive collective subconscious!

PS, unrelated, but make sure to check out the new video of our live classic cartoon soundtrack accompaniment from two weeks ago!

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks -- miniaturized!

When will it end? Why, when we're in Toronto. Until then, we are campaigning this week to get you to send us there by voting for us in the second round of the Tracks on Tracks popularity contest, at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3

This campaigning takes the form, this week, of demonstrating pictorially what a great fit we are for the rail medium featuring so prominently in the contest by sharing great imaginary photographs from the Creaking Planks Album of Gig Photos That Never Were But Maybe Should Have Been... surprisingly many of which feature calamitous rail voyages of one kind or another.

For this next photo, for instance, we not only traveled back in time to 1964 but also into a wholly fictitious universe -- and then shrunk down to model train size! Because, y'know, if you're going to do one impossible thing, why not three? So here we are, celebrating Hallowe'en with Gomez Addams by playing a spirited set at the bandstand in his model railway set. And because Gomez plays by his own rules, his toy trains aren't always arranged optimally so as to get everyone where they're going on time -- unless their destination is the afterlife! Of course, model railroad figures don't have an afterlife, do they? (Hm, the theological implications are staggering!)

In conclusion... please vote for us!

2012-04: Stupid Tricks for Tracks on Tracks

To demonstrate our tremendous suitability as candidates for inclusion on the CBC's "Tracks on Tracks" musical train tour to Toronto in June, (and specifically, our eminent "good fit" as parties deserving of your vote to progress through the second round of crowd polling -- which you can, ahem, corroborate at http://cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 ) we've been going on a whirlwind blitz through the albums of imaginary photos of rail-related gigs the Creaking Planks never played -- but might have.

Don't think we didn't hear you snickering behind our back at how safe and conservative our last two rail visit photos were. Those horrific disasters were done with and we were just ambulance-chasing, you claimed, visiting the site of tragedy after the fact to safely mug at the camera like Langley teens taking Instagram shots of each other in front of a previously burned-out cop car at Vancouver's Stanley Cup Riots! (Yes, that was oddly specific.) Well, we fired up our Creaking Time Machine again to see about pushing the boundaries and came up with something a little more "extreme" for you:

One of our coldest gigs, to be sure, and the sound check was hellacious -- we had the hardest time achieving a balanced stage mix in the monitors. And the green room was, as you can see, quite draughty. But at the end of the night we each took home a cool fifty dollars in cold cash, so it evened out.

2012-04: Creaking Planks for Tracks on Tracks -- Time Tracks!

Not content with our previous travel through time, in search of grand historical train trips from which to draw inspiration for our upcoming prospective rail voyage, we visited Paris' grand Gare de l'Ouest in 1895. Wacky hijinks ensued. I don't know how this happened, I guess we're just not well-trained.

What a ruckus... it sure was hard to hear ourselves in the monitors! Why all the trains on the brain, anyhow? Well, you may have heard that we're in the running to participate in a little contest which might send us on a musical voyage by rail to the sunny shores of Toronto! This prospect has us so excited, well, to be honest, it's short-circuited our brains a little bit. Anyhow -- would you consider voting for us? (We're down in the "T" section, for "T"he Creaking Planks.)

2012-04: Tracks on Tracks contest -- second round!

It's true, folks, somehow we garnered enough votes to ascend through the ranks of the 300 applicant bands and ended up among the top 50 in the second round. What this means is that we need for you to vote for us -- again! -- over at cbc.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-3 !! Thanks a lot for voting us in the first round, and we hope for your return electoral business.

If we'd realised that we'd need to be campaigning for a second round, we probably wouldn't have exhausted all of our colour Planks-on-trains photos in the last post. However, tipped off to the new, ongoing nature of the business, we hopped in the ol' Creaking Time Machine (did you know that drummers kept time?), and snapped off a few more.

You can't tell, but Pavel is actually incorporating the fallen locomotive here into part of his kit. What can we say, we brought the house down.

Creaking Planks... on a train? Tracks on Tracks contest!

As you can see, the Creaking Planks have been on a train before:



... that was back in '09, outside Longevity John's Duncan Garage Showroom on the Flogged 'Round the Fleet tour. We look good in a locomotion context! (These glamour shots were snapped by Wyoming Johnny's pappy, who knows his way around a camera!)



We had fun hanging out with Raghu Lokanathan on a chock-blocked train car in Valemount the following summer, but since then our days have been disappointingly rail-free. Individual Planks have more than a little train experience, both cross-Canada and south along the West Coast (and let's not bring Euro-rail into this particular conversation) but never since have we all been on a train together. (Maybe a SkyTrain, which isn't quite as glamourous.)

Well, the "Tracks On Tracks" contest the CBC and VIA Rail are presenting is here to change all that! If we're one of the three winners, as determined by... profuse fan-voting! ... we could be sent on a multi-stop trip to Toronto, playing music and being filmed all the way. Comparisons abound to the 2003 documentary about the 1970 Festival Express train trip, except that this edition would have significantly more Canadian content... and of course rail travel wasn't strictly for the rich back then. (And BC Rail... well, don't get me started.)

TL;DR? Click here to vote for us and up to two other bands that you think would make this train trip one for the ages. Then cross your fingers, knock on wood and see if you can get your friends to do the same! If the chips fall in our corner, we might well be posting new photos of Creaking Planks On A Train in July!

We sure are an animated bunch!

In celebration of our Jaan Pehechaan Ho video breaking 15 thousand views (and the Heineken campaign fuelling its accidental virality showing no sign of slowing), here's a low-fi video -- an animated .GIF made out of snapshots virtuous band photographer Jonathan Dy took of us the same night as that viral video was made, three-quarters of a year ago. We have listened to the masses, tightened up our arrangement, and even learned the words to the second verse! There's a round of recording coming up and this tune is definitely on our hit list.

(Haven't you always wanted to have a little band in your desk, to take out and put on the shelf to caper and cavort for your amusement at the drop of a hat? I'm of half a mind to violate every design tenet on the book (where's my blink tag?) and put this little animation on the top of our website, for viewers to enjoy on every page.)

Two items of further note: we missed telling you about a gig we played Tues, Jan 31st, fundraising for the Federation for the Organization of Open Desire at the Little Mountain Gallery (where we'll be back Thurs March 1st presenting you a re-match with Portland's Underscore Orkestra -- but I get ahead of myself) and this Saturday night, Feb 18th, we'll be joining Blackberry Wood at the Big Blue House again for another jam-packed album fundraiser show there, shuffled among such luminaries as Geoff Berner, Carolyn Mark, and the Orkestar Slivovica. Just keep your ears open as you walk along Salisbury Street, there's no way you'll miss it.

Jaan Pehechaan Who?

Here we are, April 24, 2011, in a strangely unsynchronized video (note Dec 21: we managed to correct it, reflected above!) recording capturing our performance of that eternal Bollywood surf-rock anthem, Jaan Pehechaan Ho. We've performed it more than a few times, though usually not in front of a camera. Alan Zisman kindly took video footage of pretty much the entire night, including spirited sets by headliners Maria in the Shower and Jason Webley (basically a perfect bill: maybe we can do it again sometime, guys?) It wasn't a hugely successful show -- we rented space for more bodies than we could draw, and a few parties had to take pay cuts. A friend was even caught after the fact red-handed tweeting "meh" sentiments during our set. But a few months after the fact, we noticed something curious.

Reviewing the video footage of the sets that night, total view counts of most of the performances had plateaued and would only continue to increment slowly thanks to the long tail. But our rendition of this song was pulling out well ahead of our other videos from that concert -- even synchronized ones! It was being viewed more than the Maria in the Shower videos. Now, those gents work hard to Put On A Show (going so far as to accidentally drive a tricycle backwards into a table of adoring fans at this particular show) so that shouldn't be happening. It was being viewed more than the Jason Webley videos! Now, that definitely shouldn't be happening! (For the record, Jason dug our performance of that tune as well, getting to enjoy it over and over again during our elaborate sound check.)

Like many of you, I first learned of the song from its strategic placement at the front of Terry Zwigoff's 2001 film Ghost World, setting an exuberant opening note of wonderful strangeness and strange wonderment that the film couldn't entirely sustain. I had to know more, and learned of its origin in the 1965 movie Gumnaam, and its performance by Mohammed Rafi (and not, as the film suggests, Ted Lyons.) Maybe you haven't seen Ghost World or Gumnaam, but you were one of the 8 million people to enjoy watching the Heineken advertisement "the Date." Either which way, it definitely makes an impression. The impression it made on me was: "gosh, I'd love to learn to play that one! But it'll take an elaborate arrangement -- I'll never convince the Planks!" Fortunately, I didn't have to convince them: Phil & Kimla, longtime Plank supporters (what supports a Plank? a Beam?) requested for us to perform it at their Indo-Canadian wedding and finally we had the excuse we'd needed to put in the work needed to pick it up.

Now, we aren't the only band who have had the great idea to cover this great song, but as far as we can tell, our new interpretation has been the most popular of the pack. Grinder Nova deliver a high-energy rendition, but in a grave injustice it's been enjoyed under 2000 times.

Mexican Drug Patrol also give it a high-intensity instrumental take, and bafflingly, the Railway Club sign in the background of that footage indicates that we've got competition in the Jaan Pehechaan Ho category even in our own hometown! Their version is great, but due to the vagaries of surfers, ours has still been viewed a thousand times more.

Not only has our unsynchronized video performance of this song become the most popular cover version on YouTube (redeeming a complicated show for us -- the audience for that particular performance is now a couple degrees of magnitude greater than the people who were in the crowd enjoying our set) but it has also risen to become the most popular video of all of our performances! This is great, because the internet has terrible taste. Our previous MPV (most played video, right?) was one of the very last times we performed our "faithful" version of Nine Inch Nails' "closer" with its original lyrics before awesome(face)ly infantalizing it -- regrettably, the night some of our members decided to experiment with some improvised percussive multitasking for the first time ever. There are better versions of us playing that song on YouTube, but that's the one that ended up under the microscope on the fan forums at nin.com, where about the kindest thing anyone could say was that they could see that we were aspiring for an interesting re-interpretation. Very diplomatic, sir!

Also rapidly receding into the dust is our former 2nd-most-watched video, now barely on the podium, featuring an impromptu collaboration between us and Free Software guru Richard Stallman of a little Bulgarian ditty in 7/4. Oh, one of those! I've got to say, if we've got to be chiefly associated with one performance on YouTube, I'm glad it's Jaan Pehechaan Ho instead of these two.

At this rate, it may soon overshadow all our achievements over the past seven years: its view count has grown by 300 since we discovered its new position as our number one video under a week ago on Twitter! (note Dec 21: and by some 2000 since we first made this blogpost!) We may have missed the golden opportunity for Planking we were born to fulfil, but we'll just have to earn our virality some other way. We were in on the ground floor of the Zombie Walk "movement", and I'm pleased to report that performing Jaan Pehechaan Ho requires a lot less sticky cadaver and gore make-up.

Three conclusions are clear: first, Blackbox needs to phonetically learn the third verse instead of just singing the second one twice. Second, we'll clearly need to track down the owner of the song and get permission to record it on our next album. Third, the Anonymous masses have made their demands clear: we'll have to get it up to speed in time to perform again at our 7th anniversary party upcoming Wed Jan 18th at the Railway Club, with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan.

2011-03: Business as (un)unusual

Not long after reporting that we were "open for business", an order was placed -- from a new fan in San Diego! How did they find us now, say, and not eight months ago when we were touring California? To make a hilarious story short, while researching pirate-themed artwork from "good girl art" illustrator "Coop", they found a recent appearance of a pirate band on a radio station named "Co-op". Strange but true!

Who knows, we thought, maybe we'll find ourselves in demand in the internet market of the commons. Maybe stuffing envelopes with our sweat and voices will eventually become another humdrum chore, ultimately abstracting high art down to crass commerce. But not yet! Opening the long-neglected "mail art" drawer from back in the postcardx days, this, our first order, from someone who we've never even sat in the same room with, was fortified with seven essential vitamins and nutrients. Yes, our CD packaging is grand as it is. Yes, Peter Guindon's liner notes artwork gives him a place in the "good girl art" pantheon of his very own. (One held up with chunky-thighed caryatids, please.) But there's no package so great that it can't be improved with some monkey stickers on the front, an old copy of Brad Yung's "Stay As You Are" and a plastic alligator carefully packed in a cardboard sleeve marked "Bliss".

Little did we realise that our new friend (who for reasons of privacy we will be referring to only as... "Tzar Ethers Eels") was similarly inclined toward the mail artistic persuasion, where sending anything less than a package would be ... slackage!

Now, because a picture is worth a thousand words, allow me to save everyone a whole lotta typing.

The package arrived, setting off both pets with its conspicuous disproportionality relative to the $20 it was expected to contain. Perhaps the postman accidentally delivered us someone else's package? (But no, there's my name, surrounded by flattering superlatives!) Maybe we had been paid the twenty dollars in loose change? (An impish urge ultimately a losing proposition by post, except in cases where postage has already been paid by the recipient corporation.) Surely the customs manifest would clarify. Hmm... postcards, a DVD... a map?! TOYS?!@#$%

Between shots, the lighting conditions changed and the pump organ became a better backdrop for our mad loot. (Beethoven doesn't agree about the lighting conditions, hence the hat, but that stony-faced downer will be busted either way.)

First out of the package -- our friend's favorite movie, on DVD: Joe Versus the Volcano. Two burned CDs (the letter discusses the convoluted logic involved in pirating music from one indie band for another; sending music to a cover band is like sending it to a radio station -- ultimately it's a zero-sum compromise at worst and if the tunes catch, we all win.) And what's that little card? Can we get a close-up?

It is difficult to imagine from what deck of cards that one originated, and what activities might be featured on the other face cards, but when a fortune-teller draws it from her Tarot deck, you know you'd best hop to it! But wait, this is just the tip of the iceberg! There's more, much more, in that box!

Two postcards from "Lather Seer Zest"'s favorite historical period, the Harlem Renaissance, plus a kinky one celebrating Killer Shrimp! (He was just an ordinary shrimp until one salad roll pushed him too far...) Then there's a two-page letter written on Bettie Page stationary, and finally an envelope containing a titillating hint of peep show.

And then there's a world map, celebrating "Ester Ha Seltzer"'s favorite charity. But does the map have any secrets to reveal? Where's the legend? Where is the treasure buried? By my ancestor's bones, what spot does X mark?

And then there's a whole other envelope in the box! From the sounds of things, a very submissive envelope trying to set terms for a bit of rough trade. It's enormous! For comparison, here's a full-sized banjo, to scale. (Just kidding! It's another banjo ukulele, and it's also not for sale.) What's in it? Where are the alleged toys?

Sadly, our digital camera does not have a zoom function sufficient to demonstrate the full extent of the miniaturization of the itty bitty bottles of liquor which were contained within the padded envelope, the world's smallest dram of Jamieson's whiskey and an eighth of an eighth of Hendrick's gin (and where is Rumblebucket to enjoy it with us?) They were like models for a doll-house of sin. They were like homeopathic hangover remedies for last night's bender. They were like... well, we'll take this opportunity to reiterate the stage banter from Blackbox's first show as a Plank, at Blim's Night of Sad Songs. "I used to think that the saddest thing in the world was animals smoking cigarettes, but after some reflection I can report that the saddest thing in the world is in fact drunk children." Now you know that you can send booze internationally in the mail as long as you call it "toys" on the customs manifest. (Candy is dandy but...) We absolve ourselves of any of the numerous horrible potential consequences of your application of that forbidden knowledge. (Hence our obfuscation of our happy customer's name, to, er, protect the guilty.)

And finally, flying around loose in the box, almost an afterthought, payment for the CD in American currency, helpfully indicating to us that their monetary designation has moved from dollars to Jays. (I always thought that it would be us here in BC who would move to using jays for currency first, but this is what happens when you get a brother in the White House.)

Here are some perplexed Planks at practice posing with a portion of our package's portentious possessions. Blackbox and Daisy-Jones are holding the tiny bottles of liquor in their hands, lest a stiff breeze carry them away, while Ludwicka bears the whole world in her hands. This surprise interlude wasn't just an exciting discovery but also educational: we learned some New Math for how to divide one shot of booze among a band of over a dozen people -- put blueberry tea to shame and mix it with your pot of Bengal Spice to help give everyone a warm glow on the last night of winter. Breakfast tea of champions!

If these kinds of shenanigans are what operating a virtual storefront will entail, then we'll be expecting a full return on our investment plus interest dividends yielded in whimsy! But we'll spend so much time scheming surprise and documenting delight that our musical activities will necessarily grind to a halt. Perhaps it's better to keep these extraordinary exchanges just that... that said, the bar has been set if anyone wants to surpass it!

The Creaking Planks are open for business!

Please note: accordion and banjo ukulele not for sale.

Hot off the Creaking Assembly Line (tm), one more small batch of approximately 60 copies of that critically lauded album Flogged Round the Fleet, still with its swank original Peter Guindon-designed packaging for the last time -- the etched tin case with so many uses (storing a slice of American processed cheese, ten cigarillos, or another band's CD...) AND a free Planks sticker, to help share your love of our band with whatever bathroom stalls you may happen to encounter in your journeys.

But that's not all! Just slightly over a year following Daisy Jones-Locher's excellent lead in this department, the Creaking Planks have an exciting array of pin-backed one-and-a-quarter-inch buttons available for sale at shows (or, hey, talk to us about orders at thecreakingplanks at gmail dot com). I don't know what the well-dressed hipster is wearing this season, but these are the right cut and style to fit neatly on a hat, instrument case, or courier bag strap!

And if you have any better ideas for button designs, we're listening! Submit your own images and you could help dress and accessorize an entire cohort of stylish Creaking Planks fans!

Maybe you're in a band or part of an organization that would also like to be represented in button form? We invested in the equipment (some elements among the Planks have a traditional affinity for buttons and button presses, the start of so many good things -- like the Work Less party!) so we might well be able to help you button up. (Magnets also!) If not, we can at least tell you where to stick it.

Creaking Planks flashback, larger than life!

We've played at more than our fair share of art openings but never before have we been the art on the walls! Piratical Planks Lee Shoal, Wyoming Johnny, Orange-Eye Sabre-tooth Skipper and Phaulonious J Knucklebones burst off the wall seven feet tall at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a panel in their "WE: Vancouver - Change is coming" exhibition concerning itself with the Vancouver Public Space Network. Our performance at their "Pirates of the SeaBus" flashmob (remember?) is just taken as the most iconic moment of the occasion. It was fun... and years down the line, it turns into still more fun that we get to share with still more people!

Still, a shame we weren't invited to perform at THIS art opening!

Time Will Tell: RIP Skulltits McGee, 2010-07-09

Over the course of the three nights of the B:C:Clettes' 2007 Rouge et Noir cabaret, three women asked if they could join the band and perform with us, one after each night's show. Anja never did, Lucy became a true Planks regular, and Glenna joined us on-stage on the following night rocking the percussive possibilities of a bike frame; when polled, the audience thought that it was not her but Scruffy Bigbass who was the fresh new Plank (as she was dressed to party while he was just in his civvies.)

Though we did lure Glenna out to a practice after the stupendous cabaret (her self-chosen pirate codename reflective of her taste in tattoo subjects and locations and fondness for the movie Anchorman), we never got another chance to perform with her; now we never will.

A day before her 28th birthday, emerging artist and competitive skateboarder Glenna Evans was killed Friday in North Vancouver when she failed to negotiate a turn at the bottom of a steep hill.

Our intersection was brief but remembered. She will be missed by a wide variety of small and vibrant communities, and the extended community of Planks is just one more star in the mourning constellation.