SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

Here is Part 1 of this segment.

During the first break of the night, I’m talking with Tom Power, host of Deep Roots every Saturday on CBCradio2, great show by the way, and without warning the next act begins when an intense man creeps up and hunches intently over the microphone like he’s ready to eat and attack it and his eyes burn a mark right on you—whoah, he’s intense, the “hunchback” of George St. United Church. I later learn his name is Jody Richardson, lead singer and guitarist of The Pathological Lovers, who often indulge in avant-garde improvisational mayhem at Night Music, a once-a-month showcase of unusual and unique talent, including a spontaneous jam session collective where musicians can get up to the stage with their instruments and jam in between sets. It’s every third Thursday at The Ship down on Duckworth Street—I would go but my radio show unfortunately conflicts with it right now.

And so Jody howls into the microphone in pitches all across the frequency spectrum, ripping his electro-acoustic apart like it was made of thin paper, and his gleaming white teeth shine at you like a beacon breaking through the fog, hunched over that microphone, daring you to move. Intense stuff, and then you have Alex poised on the drums anticipating Jody’s moves, and they start “talking” to each other back and forth with their instruments, they’re on the exact same page, and we’re bolted to the pews here, reading every word. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t look away lest I miss something, I don’t know—seminal. Because that’s what these dudes seem to be about, and that’s what this whole show has been for me: seminal.

Here is my podcast with Jody Richardson.

And now intermission…

Tweet This Post 

This is Part 2 of Julie Doiron’s show last night. Part 1 is here.

So as Calm Down It’s Monday finishes a number,  Fred starts telling us all a hilarious story about his phone conversation with a funny fellow at the ICR Towers in Sackville, NB, their place of residence, I think. Fred was suffering from crazy dreams where he could speak in different languages, and the fellow at the towers said, oh yeah, that’s a frequent complaint, and wanted to know if Fred was in a hypnagogic state, that fine divide between a waking/sleeping state, kind of like when the comedian Stephen Wright says, “you know how when you’re leaning back in your chair, and you almost fall completely over, but you catch yourself at the last second? I feel like that all the time…”—maybe this is a hypnagogic equivalent. Then Fred mentions this movie, not Waking Life he says, as someone suggests from the audience, but The Good Night, starring Danny Devito, Penelope Cruz—“Just play some music!!!” a guy feels compelled to shout out in the church. What the hell??? Deer in headlights, I tell you.

Julie makes a crack later about how Fred got in a fight with the last guy that gave him a problem, and we all laughed. Anyone know who that guy was? Feel free to share, enquiring minds want to know. Just goes to show you that even churches aren’t safe from the dreaded heckler, but one must wonder how often a priest or a pastor gets heckled as he stands high on the mountainous pulpit, shouting axioms of undisputed truth and lore to his acolytes. “Hey, enough with God already, just get on with the show!” I doubt this happens, but then what do I know, I don’t go to church. I wonder how many people in here do go, or when the last time was. Again, feel free to share here, if you were at the show or whatever. What was your reaction to the heckler? Are you a church-goer? 

Here’s Part 3, Jody Richardson and Alex Pierson from The Pathological Lovers

Tweet This Post