2012-12-14: SFU IT Services Holiday party -- and Sex Elf!

Our one December show was a blast, folks! Thanks to Blake, we opened up with some blisteringly dub-tastic klezmer (so as to make this the most Jewish Christmas since the first one!) and studiously ignored (even abandoning our own seasonal carol, Never Give A Puppy For Christmas, despite rehearsing it!) the reason for the season (that being... the Oppan Gangnam Style dance-off for the iTunes gift card, right?)

At least, until our closing number... a holiday reworking of Soft Cell's classic, Planks B-list stalwart "Sex Dwarf". But just in time for the holidays, refashioned into "Sex Elf":

Isn't it nice? Cider and spice...
Luring naughty children to a land of ice!

I could make a trip, and follow a star...
You'd be a natural the way you are.
I would like you on a candy cane;
I would parade you down Santa Claus Lane!
You've got the attraction, you've got the pull power;
Walk my little angel, walk my little sex elf...
We could make a scene, we'd be a team;
Singing the carols sounds like a dream.
When we hit the roof you just watch them move aside;
We will take them for a ride all right.
They all love your miniature ways --
You know what they say about small...

Sex elf!

I'm in my bobsled -- look, it's so huge!
It's big and it's gold with my dumb reindeer...
Looking to procure (... run little snowman!) Lure naughty children!
Run, my little sex elf, I feel so lonely!
Get my little workbench, make a nutcracker...
Sex elf, in a gold sled,
Making it with the dumb reindeer.

Isn't it nice? Cider and spice...
Luring naughty children to a land of ice!
Sex elf, isn't it nice?
Luring naughty children to a land of ice?

We can make an outfit for my little sex elf,
To match the gold sled and my dumb reindeer.
We'll all look so good we'll knock 'em cold --
Knocking 'em cold with myrrh and gold!
We can have playtime in my little workshop:
Naughty children, my sex elf,
And my dumb reindeer.

I would like you on a candy cane,
You can bring me down to Snowball Lane.
Sex elf, isn't it nice?
Luring naughty children to a land of ice!
Sex elf, isn't it nice?
Luring naughty children to a land of ice!

And that's got to be just about the strangest thing you'll hear until our next gig, our fabulous 8th anniversary show at the Railway Club coming up January 24th with the Legion of Flying Monkeys! But more about that soon...

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!

2012-11-10: For The Love Of The Hippo House part II

It is hard to say anything about this show and have it be both meaningful and understood. As best we can gather, the OperaFeHk community agitates to infect the complacence of orchestral chamber music with an ounce of aggressive avant-garde surrealism, employing shock, costume, and cognitive dissonance. In short, musical terrorism in line with our own murderous tendencies. This manifestation of the series runs two nights -- we're playing on the second, at One Thousand Rivers (54 E. 4th Ave.)

2012-11-02: So You Wanna Be A Ukulele Pop Star part II

Inasmuch as our ensemble can practically be defined as a wildlife preserve for underdog instruments -- all the axes which might be told at some point, "No, we don't want any (x) in our band" -- it brings us great pleasure to take our ukuleles to the table at this ongoing series... and burden them with the drag factor of the rest of our sonic freakshow.

Also featuring performances from Corinne Mundell, Jen Charters, Martin Lunatech, Steven Drake, plus our own Devon 8 and the band Blackberry Wood! One night only, at Cafe Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive).

2012-10-27: Parade of Lost Souls redux

Though we're not at liberty to disclose in which East side park the festivities will be proceeding in, we are happy to announce our return to the Parade of Lost Souls -- this year on the mainstage! Don't miss us at the very early (but still quite night-time) hour of 7 pm!

2012-08, 09, 10 missed business.

Because sometimes they only come through at the last minute, and sometimes they are private functions, and sometimes it is more work to talk about the gigs than to play them, a handful of shows eked out lately that we never mentioned here on our blog, an omission we intend to now correct:

August 22nd, as suggested, we returned to the Trout Lake Community Centre for another delightful outdoor evening concert, courtesy of the Myrtle Family Band who invited us to open. Repeat customers were veritably outraged with delight. One precocious tot wanted us to make impromptu musical arrangements of all of their favorite nursery rhymes -- perhaps a project for another time. Only one on this occasion.

September 8th we bravely traversed the Great Ice Wall in order to take up an invitation to perform at the Sh'Bang festival, located in the beautiful Lookout Arts Quarry south of Bellingham.

September 12th we descended into Calabash's caged basement between drag lip sync acts to enjoy a slice of cake and blitz through a blisteringly short set (prior to an Accordion Noir Festival visit from our visiting Bay Area pal Renee de la Prade on the radio) at the Catalogue of Independent Arts' launch party for this season's installment of their "See Seven" catalogue of arts events -- for which we were paid in the following swell ad in their pages:

(Now all we need is some more recent gushing copy for our press kit!)

Then we performed Sept 19th at the Stanley Park Rowing Club, an organization counting among its honorary membership British royals who write in with letters of congratulations when their rugby clubs reach a century of age. There we played in support of one of the few Vancouver political organizations with which we could share a room without having to hold our noses: the end-of-summer BBQ of municipal party COPE. Despite preparing a set of old folk songs for, well, old folks, we ended up jamming instrumentals during supper (Fred Bass wanted to know: is that what is called klezmer?) and then, after Ben West spoke at length on many weighty matters, ripping through our power set for the youth slate. (Then getting lost in Stanley Park, then giving Norway's accordion siren Guro von Germeten a ride back to Geoff Berner's place from her Accordion Noir radio appearance!)

(Photos courtesy of AHA Media. SpongeDev not depicted due to late arrival 8)

Finally, despite rodents and humans coming together to coordinate elaborate preparations, we did not manage to field a physical presence last night, October 6th, at the eleventh annual Horace Phair party in Portland over Columbus Day (Wyoming Johnny did, but it takes at least two to be a "we". Blackbox's excuse is his accordion's tapeworm.) Nonetheless, hearkening way back to the ridiculous technological underpinnings of our initial association with our jolly chums there, we managed to set up a videoconference through Google+ Hangouts (Skype wouldn't return a picture from our end!) and after some awkward small talk played a set as an international duet over broadband, Johnny live in a Portland Saluthaus living room with a banjo and Blackbox in HIS Vancouver living room on accordion and banjo-ukulele, with guest Plank appearances for the first time from his pets Jim Casy the cat and Pickles the dog. Songs We Never Play Anymore came out for fans from way back, and were sung along to with minimal latency, making for the second most memorable tele-presence at this year's party. If you can't be there, this was a distant consolation prize, but a virtual party is better than a kick in the pants. We will drown our sorrows in turkey.



Did You Know that the Creaking Planks have a fan page on Google+? Strange but true.

2012-09-27: Oktoberfest at the Railway with The End Tree, The Creaking Planks, and Fang!

It's that special time of the year when our Kishka Anthem makes sense! (from a sausage point of view at least).

The Planks will be celebrating Oktoberfest in not quite Oktober at the Railway Club this coming Thursday, September 27 with chamber squawk trio The End Tree, and well-heeled accordion rock weirdos Fang.

The Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir St., Vancouver)
$8 - 8:30pm