LIVE! Crystal Stilts

You put a bowl of soup in the microwave and press start. It comes out cold. You put it back in for twice as long; you take the bowl out and it’s still cold! No matter how many times you microwave it, the motherfucker just won’t HEAT. Frustrated, you throw the bowl of soup in for 10 minutes at maximum power and wait. The end result: it’s now scalding hot, and you still can’t eat it. This describes the Crystal Stilts show at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver this past Thursday.

But first I want to talk about the second opening band. I wish I could remember their name (it was either Case Studies or Student Teacher), because God were they awful. Not just bad musically, but they managed to implode with a Spinal Tap-like grandeur.

Things started out well enough. Everyone was in sync with the female band member who was bashing the hell out the tambourine, totally absorbed in the moment. This lasted for about two songs. Then at some point the drummer just said “fuck it” and walked off stage and spent the rest of the night chatting up two chicks at the bar.

Now down to three band members.

Tambourine Girl has to sub in for the drummer, and she is clearly pissed about it. Her limited drumming skills results in the band playing the same instrumental on a loop for 10 minutes. Finally Tambourine Girl says “fuck it” and walks off stage without a word.

Now down to two band members.

The two bewildered guitars players face each other playing the same instrumental over and over again. They stop playing whenever the first guitar player has to pick up a piece of paper to read the lyrics. Or the set list. Or the cords. I not sure what was on that paper, but this Stop and Go lasted (I kid you not) for at least 20 minutes. Sensing a growing hostility from the audience, the exasperated guitarist takes off his guitar, mumbles “the Crystal Stilts are on next”, unscrews a mikey and sulks off stage. End of the opening acts.

Crystal Stilts take the stage. Since the two open acts were trying hard emulate the sound of the Crystal Stilts (lo-fi atmospheric 60s surfer proto-punk?) there was only a few degrees of separation between the poor opening acts and the headliners, and as a result the Crystal Stilts became tainted. Even with the lead singer doing his best Lizard King impersonation, the Stilts seemed unremarkable. And after waiting four hours on cold soup, the Crystal Stilts were boiling hot and you were past caring. -L.M Harrison

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

At the time of writing, today marks the two month anniversary of the passing of artist Suze Rotolo (the girl clutching Bob Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and in the outtake photo above) the girlfriend and muse to Dylan in the early sixties. Let’s use this moment as an opportunity to put the spotlight on one of the Greatest Albums Ever Made, which was added the US Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry (recordings that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States”) in 2002.

The thing about Dylan is that there are so many facets, phases and layers to his work that countless trees have died with people writing books and articles trying to figure out this man’s psyche. Allen Ginsberg stated that when he heard the sixth track “A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall” he broke down and wept –because with that song, a new generation was taking up and surpassing the mantle established by Ginsberg and his beatnik peers a decade earlier.

Nothing significant can be said or written about this album that hasn’t already been done before, so I’ll just state that in this “iPod shuffle” generation it’s easy to ignore albums. However it’s worth the investment to listen to the album its entirely. Instead of listening to The Tallest Man on Earth, do yourself a favour and listen to the person Kristian Matsson is trying so hard to impersonate. -L.M Harrison

Bob Dylan vs. TIME Magazine (1965):