Wavelength Series No. 518 on SATURDAY, APRIL 9TH 2011

FUCKED UP

Toronto post-hardcore visionaries and Polaris Prize winners perform an original live score to 1928 silent film, West of Zanzibar!

Part of the Images Festival / Live Images 6 / Closing Night Gala
Plus! Screening of General Chaos Visuals’ “Luminations” DVD

Saturday April 9 @ 7:30pm

Toronto Underground
Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue)

Admission: $15
general / $12 students, seniors, advanced

Tickets at Rotate This, Soundscapes & imagesfestival.com

West of Zanzibar

Tod Browing

Photographed by Percy Hilburn

USA, 1928, 35mm, 63 min, silent with
live musical score

Print courtesy George Eastman House

Taking the traditional format of live accompaniment to a classic silent-era film and smashing it to pieces, the Images Festival Closing Night Gala features none of what you would expect from this scenario. In collaboration with our good friends at the Images Festival, Wavelength has invited Toronto hardcore luminaries Fucked Up to play a live set along to the 1928 Tod Browning film West of Zanzibar.

High-school friends influenced by first- and second-wave hardcore bands, Matador Records artists and Polaris Prize winners Fucked Up formed in Toronto in 2002. Their first 7 inch was entitled No Pasarán after an anti-fascist slogan from the Spanish Civil War. It is ferociously melodic and inventive, and set the scene for a string of singles that combined political commentary with incredible musicianship and a sense of theatre. The political concerns of the band are always at the fore, as when they released an 18-minute single entitled Year Of The Pig, which is an impassioned commentary on the plight of sex workers in Canada, or their recent spat with Stars as to the appropriate response to controversial immigration laws in Arizona. Though Fucked Up remain punks at heart — if quixotically diverse ones — they create great, weird, heavy sounds that stubbornly stick in your brain and in your heart, somehow managing confrontation without cheap gimmicks or novelty, creativity without pointless noodling, and intensity without predictable arrangements.

Tod Browning’s West of Zanzibar is a devastating parable of lust, exploitation, guilt, greed and revenge, set in a dystopic jungle of the kind found only on B-movie backlots.  The film stars Lon Chaney as the magician Phroso, a man both cuckolded and crippled the same night. A year later his wife returns and dies leaving behind her infant daughter (Mary Nolan), prompting Phroso to decamp to Africa to execute an elaborate revenge on his nemesis Crane (Lionel Barrymore). For 18 years Phroso, now known as Dead Legs by his cronies, plots his revenge, becoming a pseudo-king in East Africa, near to where Crane has set up an ivory business. When the daughter is grown, having lived in a brothel in Zanzibar thanks to Dead Legs, Phroso put his plan into action. “An orgy of revenge and retribution from the team of Browning and Chaney — this may be the meanest of films from those two meanies. Lushly shot always and uncomfortably racist at
times. The sometimes indifferent Browning really got up for this one.” — Guy Maddin

A:

Q: What does nerds board gamin’ blogging read like?

A: http://boardgamerinparadise.wordpress.com

sweet video talking about pins and sweet pins stuff!!!

Pins+Needs: Project One from Brent Hodge on Vimeo.

feist sits in the dirt with an old man kyle field aka little wings playing music with a peacock feather in her hair

Cutie pie Clea Minaker makes amazing shadow puppets and things for her live show

but the highlight of the film was a footage of her and gonzales rapping in track suits!

no really, its awesome. better than the hello kitty nighty/costume/fleece thingy.

flying squirrels > hellokitty

and its waaaaay cooler than this japanese chicken hat (whats up with mannequin head and the fake eyelashes, i guess it really brings out the chicken-ness of the hat)

at least with the full body costume, you can do crazy stuff like skiiing. yeah. i said it.

now check out these white kids in middle america trying to be azn. GEEZ just cuz you have a wacky azn animal costume doesnt mean you can act all wacky azn.

is it the fact they were named canadian’s duran duran in the 80s ?

or is it something in robert smith’s voice that makes everything soothing

like a babys new change of pampers ?

or maybe its the fact that everything make sense in the world after hearing this song

its going to change your life

or at least your undies, since you’ll crap ur pants —its so good.

this is OG version. playing in front of a crowd hoping for motley cruez

ps. this is ur new xmas greeting card. print some more for me. thnkx

-sound check/set up included a fight between bros matt (mr t.) and pat flegal (hole t-shirt, possibly courtney love?)
- below is a post fight photo
-matt flegal turned his back on pat during the whole gig, what a burn! or was he too embarrassed by his eye makeup? dressed as courtney love. omg.

- after a few songs, pat totally dissed the band by dropping the mic, matt walked off stage.
-mike wallace (drummer) still plays drums, possibly just to keep the dream alive
-pat asks the crowd “who wants to start a thrash metal band???”, while mike is still drumming.

-some white dude, gets on stage
-he doesnt realize he’s pretty lame.

-courtney love wins again

-the night gets effed up
-women implode, the crowd still parties
-the kids in victoria dont realize their little brunch town made history —”most awkward last show of a sweet band in history.”

lets remember the good days — the band giving some commies a good show from a few wks ago

and/or

- even if you were a contestant on Jeopardy.

- Lists are curated by smarty pants in science, art, & public spectacle.

13 Handy Metric Conversions for Time Travelers

itrw = 10.46 kilometers
In ancient Egypt, there were seven palms in a cubit, one hundred cubits in a rod, and two hundred rods in the ‘itrw n skdwt,’ literally ‘river of towing,’ figuratively the distance a boat could be towed on the Nile in one day.

shaftment = 15.24 centimeters
In Saxon England, a shaftment was the height of a thumbs-up sign, from the bottom of the fist to the tip of the thumb, useful for measuring the length of poles and staves, one hand over the other. It was equal to eight digits, two palms, or half a foot.

leap = 2.06 meters
In medieval Wales, the Venedotian Code proclaimed three barley corns in an inch, three inches in a palm breadth, three palms in a foot, three feet in a pace, three paces in a leap, and three leaps in a ridge. (The current world record in the long jump is 1.33 Welsh leaps.)

bamboo = 12.8 meters
In 16th-century India, under the Mughal dynasty, a bamboo was equal to twelve and a half guz. There were four hundred bamboo in a crouh: “Whenever his majesty marches at the head of his armies, or performs a journey, the road is carefully measured with the above-mentioned bamboos, by persons appointed for that purpose, whose accounts are checked by a Darogha and Mushriff.”

- amy ross: gobble gobble-lawn knifes (piano cover)

- womb > san francisco > edmonton > dominating the world

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photo by kate henderson, discorder

myths:

former members of mutators

screeching sounds of chole lum

creeeeeps