Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Upcoming gigs and articles: the Furies, DOA, Terry Chikowski, Nels Cline

I'm excited: Chris Arnett of the Furies, one of Vancouver's first and most energetic punk bands, will be putting the group back together for a Vancouver show, opening for DOA on February 10th. Anyone who saw Arnett with his second group, the Shades, at the Vancouver Complication gig knows that this is one not to be missed. I'll have an interview with Arnett up in the next little while, to correspond with something on the Furies/DOA show I've done for Discorder. Meantime, next month, make sure to check out the Terry Chikowski interview in Nerve Magazine - he was the security guard injured in the Litton Industries blast, back in the days of the so-called Squamish Five. There'll also be a brief piece on Nels Cline (in town Feb. 22, at a gig relocated from the Red Room to Richards on Richards).

Meantime, transcribing my Joey Shithead interview for the above article (and also for a longer piece I'm doin' for Razorcake), I made a fascinating discovery. To capture the flavours of Joe's speech - rich and earthy and charming - I was writing fuckin', as an adjective - not fucking, but fuckin' - and my spellcheck wasn't recognizing it. Not surprising - anytime you drop the "g" to give a more "spoken" feeling to an -ing word, the spellcheck balks and underlines it in red. The thing was, in the list of "alternatives" they suggested - I checked, for the hell of it - "fucking" was not among them! SPELLCHECKS DO NOT OFFER PROFANE SUGGESTIONS! I guess they don't want to scare old grannies who disapprove of such language by it popping up on a list of options. The discovery has prompted whole minutes of fun. If you render "asshole" as "ashole," it also does not suggest "asshole" as a possible spelling (even though it recognizes "asshole" as a word). "Ashore," yes, but not "asshole!" Next I tried writing, "I like your titts," with two T's, and got as a list of suggestions "tats, tilts, tints, tots" and "twits" - NO TITS!!!! There's a George Carlin routine in this somewhere...

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