Arts & Entertainment

 

 

The New Pornographers at the
Commodore

September 28, 2007

Luke Simcoe, OP A&E Editor

V V ith a new record under their

belts, and fresh off an appearance

on Letterman last month, The New
Pornographers recently embarked upon
a Western tour that saw dates in places
ranging from Victoria to Albuquerque.
On September 28, Vancouver’s best
band—according to the Georgia
Straight’s Best of Vancouver poll—I’m
just happy Nickelback didn’t win—
returned home to close out their tour

in front of a sold-out crowd at the
Commodore Ballroom.

The ‘Broken Social Scene of the
West’ had both Fancey and Lavender
Diamond in tow for the show. Fancey
is the brainchild of Todd Fancey—a
sometimes Pornographer—and he
follows the same formula that the
Pornos do, but he lacks the songwriting
talent and the vocal chops to pull it off.
Lavender Diamond frontwoman Becky
Stark was spunky and engaging —
unfortunately her music wasn’t. It’s
not that Lavender Diamond isn’t a
good band, it’s just that down-tempo
folk ballads aren’t exactly what you’ re
after for when you come calling for
the power-pop bliss of The New

Pornographers.

Shortly before eleven, the black
curtains in front of the stage closed.
Quite frankly, I didn’t even know that
they had curtains at the Commodore,
and it definitely gave me the shot of
anticipation and energy that I needed
after the opening acts. I suppose the fact
that the sound system started blaring
“Classical Gas” helped as well, but I
digress.

When the curtains finally parted,
they revealed the full band, including
fair-weather live attendees Neko Case
and Dan Bejar, silhouetted against
a stage lit only by a blazing New

 

Pornographers sign hanging from the
rafters. Unfortunately, this was probably
the dramatic highpoint of the evening,
as frontman Carl Newman has a
tendency to stay rooted to his spot in the
middle of the stage. Nevertheless, with
Neko and Dan in attendance there was
still enough charisma to go around.

As expected, the new, slower songs
off of Challengers kind of dragged,
while the highlights from their earlier
records shone brighter than the band’s
aforementioned emblem. The band is
one of the best for a reason, and it’s
almost impossible not to bop your head
to the strains of “Use It,” or stamp your

foot in time with Neko’s tambourine
while she belts out the chorus of “Letter
From an Occupant.”

Still, the schizophrenic setlist
suffered from poor planning, with
slower numbers consistently being
followed by up-tempo rockers and vice
versa, which seemed to prevent the
band from ever finding their groove.
The set leaned too heavily on newer,
and frankly weaker, material, and
ignored many of the finer moments
from the Pornos’ underrated sophomore
record, Electric Version. Also, Bejar
would pop up from out of nowhere for
one of his songs, with either a guitar
or a beer in his hand, and then retreat
backstage as soon as the last chord
was struck. Granted, he did play both
“Chump Change,” and “Jackie Dressed
in Cobras.”

All in all, it was a strong
performance, and the band treated
their hometown crowd to not one, but
two encores. Still, it’s a little sad that
one of our country’s finest bands is no
more engaging live than they are on
record. Perhaps improving their live
show is a challenge they should take up
themselves.

 

“Johnny 99” by Bruce Springsteen

Song of the Week

Patrick Mackenzie

B ruce Springsteen’s Nebraska,
released in 1982, is populated with
characters whose lives are filled with
longing, loneliness, and desperation.
While the songs on the album are bound
by a cheerless subtext that presents
images of abandoned people living
on the fringes of society, “Johnny 99”
gives the listener a concrete answer
to the question of violence running
through American culture.

Dark and spare, Nebraska is a
one=man show that highlights Bruce
Springsteen’s characteristic mournful
voice. For the entirety of the record,

a single guitar and a few bursts of

the harmonica provide the Boss’ only
accompaniment. When one reads the
lyrics, it seems inconceivable that
Nebraska could have been made with
any kind of backing musicians—let
alone The Springsteen’s usual over-the-
top E Street Band. While still touching
on Springsteen’s common areas of
concern—namely blue collar America
and the plight of working people—the

12

subject matter of the songs on Nebraska
seem to be too dark, or at least too
common to too many people to be
obscured by a bombastic rock band:
hence the more direct approach of guitar
and vocals.

“Johnny 99” starts out with a high
pitched moan which later on ruptures
the song as an aggressive bark—the
apparent voice of despair of the song’s
protagonist who is sentenced to 99 years
for armed robbery. Seemingly standing
in ironic contrast to the sad story being
told, the acoustic guitar gives an almost
rockabilly cadence to the song. But
perhaps lessening that contrast is the
wailing harmonica that bursts through
the swinging guitar like a weeping man
being led to prison.

Like the rest of the songs on
Nebraska, “Johnny 99” tells a story.
Ralph, who afterwards is rechristened
Johnny 99 for the severe prison
sentence he receives, is the victim of a
factory closure. Springsteen laments,
“well they closed down the auto plant
in Mahwah late last month/ Ralph went
out lookin’ for a job but he couldn’t

find none.” With these opening lines
it doesn’t take much imagination to
know where the rest of the song is
headed. But rather than be a simple
tale of a hapless man hitting rock
bottom, “Johnny 99” goes further to
reveal, at the risk of offending right-
wing conservatives, that sometimes
crime, even violent crime, is rooted
in deeper social and economic ills.
Springsteen revealingly sings, “now
judge I got debts no honest man
could pay/the bank was holding my
mortgage and they was taking my
house away/ now | ain’t sayin’ that
makes me an innocent man/ but it
was more ‘n all this that put that gun
in my hand.”

Unlike most of the songs on
Nebraska that vaguely hover over
a subtext of social and economic
abandonment, “Johnny 99” gives
an absolute cause for the behavior
of one man. By doing so, this most
political of Bruce Springsteen’s songs
glaringly displays the complicity of
the machinations of an indifferent
economy and the surrounding

American culture implicit in Johnny
99’s self destruction. His fate is ours as