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: 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.

2011-11: Catchup

Well, on Sunday, November 6th -- the day after our fantastic visit from the Accordion Babes -- we had a rump Planks delegation visit the Roseblade house to help celebrate a bonafide 1st birthday party for a 40-year-old, busting out songs from the Planks' feature set at the Cobalt's "Ink" open mic five years ago or so.

Then, yesterday, Thurs Nov 24th, we were supposed to join David Roy Parsons (of "Beat Up Old Guitar" fame) for a set in Victoria at the Fort Cafe... but the hoary winter winds of a fierce seasonal storm put the kibosh on that ferry crossing after a very spirited afternoon spent sitting inside a wind-buffetted car. Well, what's something that CAN go right?

Here's something difficult to ruin (worse than it already is, at least) -- a visual gag a long time in the conceptualising:

Editing some outrageous Creaking Planks live audio in Audacity...

okay, let's clean this up a little bit...

and... voila. Wait -- what?!

Thank heavens for the "undo" function, that's all I can say. ("Accordion Insanity" photo by Jonathan Dy, and that "normal" band is Clyde Stacy and the Nightcaps. They probably sound all right!)

Update: more normal than normal, and more abnormal than, well, than pretty much anything!

PS: Creaking Planks 7th anniversary show coming up Wednesday, January 18th at the Railway Club with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan!