Gig: Art Metronome 001

Art Metronome 001 (feat. Guggenham and Harwood / Life of a Craphead / Times Neue Roman / Kids on TV)

The Shop under Parts and Labour. Wednesday, June 30, 2010.

The art scene and the music scene are rather often their own little self-absorbed worlds. Despite the fact that creative people are often unconstrained by limits of genre or media and move freely back and forth, in terms of audience, there's arguably less intermingling. So an interesting opportunity to mash up some scenes at this party, which I guess you could describe as the overlap between the art-fetish types and the 7" collector crowd — and, I suppose, also no few people from the "fuck art, let's dance" contingent. Originally slated for Cinecycle, the show was hastily reconvened at Parts & Labour.¹ The celebration was to honour the release of a single under the banner of "Art Metronome" — the name a play on publisher Art Metropole, the longstanding artist-run centre.² And so, a mix of crowds in the room, with a slightly-older art crowd rubbing shoulders with those who had come to see the bands.

Both contingents were well-served by the evening's co-hosts Lex Vaughn and Keith Cole, in character for the evening as Guggenham and Harwood, vintage performance artists from the 80's recreating some of their most important "hits", such as 1986's Meat Toss, involving the semi-clad Cole³ bent over to present a target for the tossing of cold cuts.⁴ Raising some money for Art Metropole, the pair sold off a few souvenirs of their work while doing a fun job with their loving satire.

The first act of the night was Life of a Craphead, the "conceptual comedy duo" of Jon McCurley and Amy Lam. They had an ultra-dry style with comedy sketch dynamics squeezed into knock-knock-joke-sized bursts, usually punctuated by anti-punchlines. You could tell that a bit was over when they said "thank you!". An interesting idea, perhaps, but it didn't really work for me at all.

And then, back to the hosts, who were doing a good job staying in character and having to come up with a lot of stuff on the spot. Somewhat more prepared was a song, where Vaughn threw down some keyboard beats while Cole did a sort of spoken word piece ("Your Bike is Crappy"). And then, with speeches from the folks at Art Metropole (Ann Dean, Stephen Andrews, Andrew Zealley) there was an unusual art show element to the night — including a curatorial statement.

And then, both of the bands on the single took turns on stage, with Times Neue Roman going first. Having seen them a couple times before, I knew that the duo — Alexander Punzalan (aka Alexander The) on guitar, beats and singing plus the rapping and incitement of Robert Bolton (aka Arowbe) — were reliably entertaining. They started with a number backed only by Alexander The's guitar that didn't immediately get all the talkers in the back to pay attention. But when the beats for "Roq Roq" kicked in, they commanded the room. Playing several songs from their now-released "Talking Sporty" EP, the band hit just right — booming, danceable beats, pop smarts, and Bolton's rapid-fire lyrics.

As I've seen them do before, the band showed off their nimbleness with some improvisation, the call of "We're down here! Fuck y'all Upstairs", aimed at the patrons of the restaurant above, with Bolton pounding the low ceiling with the flat of his hand. Plus several old favourites, including the audience participation fave "Hands No Hands". Good fun, and the band was called back for one last song, playing one most appropriate to the occasion, Bolton introducing it with, "okay you art fucks, this is called 'Fuck Art'."

Listen to a track from this set here.

And then another reliable favourite to follow that up, with a full set from Kids on TV. Certainly an inspired choice for the first of the Art Metronome singles, KoTV have mixed art and music from their inception, always aware of the forerunners that they're honouring, but never letting "mere art" get in the way of their body-moving mission.

On this night, they were playing in a three-man alignment, with Roxy absent but Wolf on stage, joining John Caffery and Minus Smile, all three wearing "BRING BACK GAY" shirts. Things got good pretty quickly in the early going with an extended version of Whodini cover "Haunted House of Rock" featuring a live sax breakdown courtesy of Shane MacKinnon. More of this is hopefully in store for the future.

There were some sound problems with the bass before and during "Liberace's Lover" and for most of the rest of the set, it sounded like it was right at the edge of feeding back. They continued with "Goodbye Horses" — a remix of which was the band's contribution to the Art Metronome 7" — which also wasn't quite firing on all cylinders, despite the always-winning vocal assistance of Julie Faught, who also appeared on "Poison".

Rallying, there was also the debut of a brand new track, which was listed as "Bobby" on the setlist⁵, which I believe to be about artist Robert Rauschenberg. It had a similar New Wave vibe to "City of Night" which followed it. Appropriately, the namesake of "Still on About Keith Cole" joined the band for some interpretive dance moves, and the band rounded out the set with perhaps their two best groovers, "Dazzler" and "Breakdance Hunx".

Including a one-song encore, the band played an hour-long set. With those nagging technical problems, it wasn't the most knockdown performance I've seen from the band, but I've seen 'em enough times to be fussy. Which is to say, still a great time overall — in a venue where energy can trump technical limitations, they brought it off in style.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ It was nice to note some improvements as The Shop becomes a bit more "lived in". The area behind the performers is now covered with floor-to-wall chalkboards, creating a chance for easy, ever-changing backdrops — a small change that enhances the space considerably.

² Art Metropole, was, in fact, founded in 1974 by pioneering artgroup General Idea. A frequent source of inspiration to Kids of TV, fans of that band will instantly recognize a few homages they've paid to GI.

³ One sign that this was a high-class affair was the fact that Cole was at no point fully nude.

⁴ "It was before Fastwürms," sniffed Harwood in an aside. Other works alluded to included 1987's Manstrual Blood ("manstration comes from men," is probably as much as you need to know) and 1991's penny-throwing Self Defence.

⁵ The setlist was written in chalk on the wall beside the band, looking something like a bistro menu.