Clubbing with/for Family

Last night we went to our first club in Van­cou­ver. This town has a ton of them, but we were out at the Lamp­lighter because my cousin B.J. has a band, Parts and Labor that was on tour through­out the US and Canada, and last night was his stop in Vancouver.

We got there right at 8PM, which was when the evening’s bands (there were to have been 3 of them — we found out that ‘The Fatal Fly­ing Guil­lo­teens’ had to can­cel) were to have started. Not even close. After a lit­tle while, B.J. walked in from the rear entrance. His band had just got­ten over the bor­der an hour or so ear­lier. While the three of us attempted to do the nearly impos­si­ble in Gas­town, which is find a restau­rant open after 9:30 PM, we got caught up.

By the way, it’s a funny thing, but restau­rants do close pretty early here, lead­ing many res­i­dents to say that this town should be nick­named ‘No Fun Van­cou­ver’. I have to admit that we’ve been caught out too late with­out hav­ing got­ten din­ner on a cou­ple of occa­sions, and have had to set­tle on Denny’s or Sub­way, two chains that tend to be open late. For­tu­nately, the Denny’s near us is actu­ally not bad at all, unlike the ones I’d been to in the States.
B.J. filled us in on the tour. It had gone well, despite the fact that this morn­ing they’d had their first or sec­ond flat tire of the trip, which is always a has­sle. It’s a gru­el­ing life, being in an indie band on tour, and it’s not at all glam­orous, despite what any­one may think. It con­sists of dri­ving for hours (some­times ten to twelve at a stretch), arriv­ing at the gig, eat­ing, unpack­ing the gear and instru­ments, per­form­ing, sleep­ing (usu­ally at friend’s houses), and then doing the whole thing all over again, day in and day out for a month or so. I imag­ine that it is a real chal­lenge to fight back the bore­dom. B.J. was very impressed with the sup­port net­work around indie bands. Band mem­bers from dif­fer­ent groups fre­quently know each other and help each other get book­ings. They see one other and social­ize on tour stops as part of the cir­cuit and some close friend­ships get formed. Like any­thing, a com­mu­nity has emerged.

It’s been a while since we’ve been in the States, and Pam and I rarely ven­tured into Red State land, so we asked B.J. what he’s been see­ing, since he’s been dri­ving through the coun­try for sev­eral weeks. “Three things, mainly.” he reported. “Bill­boards for Jesus, bill­boards against Abor­tion, and bill­boards for strip clubs. Every­where we went on the road, we’d see signs for those three.” A curi­ous com­bi­na­tion, we agreed. Think­ing back to that, it strikes me now that all of them hap­pen to be anti-woman (if one assumes that the Jesus ones involved the Bap­tists’ direc­tive that women be sub­mis­sive to the man of the house­hold, anti-abortion in our opin­ion is highly anti-woman, and as for strip clubs, well that’s self explanatory).

After B. J. found a falafel stand that was open, we returned to the dim inte­rior of the Lamp­lighter. The Lamp­lighter is in the Domin­ion Hotel “Vancouver’s Only Bud­get Art Hotel”, as their web site puts it. They also quote the Toronto Globe and Mail: ‘This prob­a­bly isn’t a hotel you’d rec­om­mend to your mom, but if you’re on a tight budget…a night at the Domin­ion is quite the expe­ri­ence.” Hmm.

The hotel (and club) is on the cor­ner of Water and Abbott Streets in Gas­town. Very funky, it’s one of the old­est build­ings I’ve seen in Van­cou­ver (built in 1889). the bar/club has a high tin ceil­ing that’s been painted dark brown. The stage was at the back, and the bar was toward the front and to the left. Actu­ally, it was pretty cozy and not at all dirty or dan­ger­ous look­ing. There were can­dles at the booths and tables. A very friendly girl at the front took the cover charges. The bar­tender and bouncer were also quite personable.

As for Parts and Labor (or as we were amused to see the local paper list it: Parts and Labour), the best descrip­tion I can pro­vide is the one given by Nar­nack Records, their cur­rent label:

Parts & Labor com­bines prim­i­tive, min­i­mal elec­tron­ics with an anthemic, rhyth­mic bar­rage. The Brook­lyn trio formed in early 2002 with BJ War­shaw and Jim Sykes adding bass and drums to Dan Friel’s solo keyboard/electronics exper­i­ments (described by Time Out New York as “Strange and won­der­ful, and best of all, unlike any­thing we can think of.”

We wore earplugs because the band is very loud, even by indie band stan­dards. (The drum­mer con­fided in us that at one venue, he had been doing some pre­lim­i­nary sound checks when the venue’s sound engi­neer said that his drums alone were louder than any of the other bands). I have to say that the pro­tec­tion of the earplugs kept me from mak­ing out any real details to the songs, but their raw energy was engag­ing, I was not bored, and the crowd (who kept far closer to the band) clearly enjoyed them.

At the end of the evening, we headed out quickly, keep­ing to the well-lit parts of the streets. At that end of Gas­town, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t want to walk around alone too much at night. We had no trou­ble get­ting a bus home, so now I know that a late night out does not mean that there’s no bus, even at near (or even past) midnight.