Category Archives: features

Ivan Decker

“I was told this very early in stand-up. You should never ask a question you’re not prepared to not get the answer you want."

by Evan Brow

Ivan Decker | | photo by Leigh Eldridge

Standing at the heart of Vancouver’s stand-up scene is Ivan Decker, a 27-year-old middle child who just wants to make people laugh. Decker began stand-up at 19, debuting at Yuk Yuk’s (now the Comedy Mix) on Burrard to a less-than-thrilling reaction. “My first time on stage was okay,” says Decker. “After that, my second night, I got booed off stage, which I thought was something that would happen commonly. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this probably happens to people. Whatever.’ And in the eight years that I’ve been doing comedy since then, I’ve never seen that happen to anyone else at that club, ever.”

Despite this early setback, Decker strode on, simply craving the feeling of comedy and its process. While many working comedians can coast on their constructed stand-up hour for years, Decker explains that he feels an obligation to constantly improve and update his material, to engage in the craft of comedy. While he has other pursuits that include sketch comedy, improv, scene work, and a potential sitcom script he’s working on with local comedian Adam Pateman, Decker’s first love remains stand-up.
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War Baby

“When confusion resolves to something that makes sense, it’s really powerful”

by Robert Catherall

War Baby | | photo by Victoria Johnson

  “Big Daddy Cumbuckets … I have no fuckin’ idea who they were,” Kirby Fisher of Vancouver doom pop trio War Baby says, explaining his favourite band shirt. Considering both he and guitarist Jon Redditt pick vintage clothes for a living, this was the last thing I expected him to say. The band’s latest recordings were even commissioned off a pair of vintage jeans that Fisher sold. Yet I still hesitate to believe this shirt even exists. This was just one of the possible half-truths War Baby tell me while cracking jokes and drinking beer under the dim light of Pat’s Pub to discuss their debut full-length album, Jesus Horse, Aussie radio, and gay pride.

 
  It’s been just over four years since the core duo of Jon Redditt (guitar/vocals) and Kirby Fisher (drums/vocals) first convinced Wendy 13 to let them play the Cobalt in 2008. The following year their Permanent Frown EP was recorded under the guidance of Jordan Koop at FaderMaster Studios. The EP garnered local attention, but immigration troubles stifled War Baby’s progression as Fisher was forced home to Australia twice to renew his Canadian visa.

  Not much for his listless hometown and determined not to lose the momentum of Permanent Frown, War Baby made plans for a full-length recording and enlisted bassist and tugboat captain Aaron Weiss to round out their riffs. Koop was again enlisted to record Jesus Horse, although this time at Noise Floor Studios in Ladysmith, B.C., giving War Baby the perfect excuse to visit an old friend.
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SHiNDiG 2012 Winner

Praying For Greater Portland

by Jordan Wade

Praying For Greater Portland | | photo by Victoria Johnson


When it comes to cock talk, Clint Sleeper doesn’t shy away. After his experimental multi-instrumental one-man project, Praying For Greater Portland (P4GP), was victorious in SHiNDiG 2012, we talk a bit about the rock, but more about the cock. After 13 weeks of 27 bands battling for top honours, host Ben Lai announces the official winner and Discorder finds the least chaotic corner of the Railway Club to chat with the man behind P4GP.

  “I’m really stoked. I’m amped,” says the Reno, Nevada, transplantee, in a subdued tone, perhaps indicative of shock. “I like this bar. It’s got a funny reputation. Every time I was here, Ben Lai was really great. [His] dick jokes were really great. I mean penis jokes … Is penis more acceptable?”

  Sleeper, who flocked north in August last year to begin his Masters of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University, first heard about SHiNDiG from his friends in the band Flash Summer, who suggested he sign up. Ironically, P4GP played against them—and won—on the competition’s first night. “That was weird, but I still love them a lot.”

  He wasn’t necessarily expected to win, facing stiff competition in the final from Greenback High and Teapot Hill, who placed second and third respectively. “I’m probably pretty lucky, to be quite honest with you. These songs are kind of weird and maybe a little bit different, and I guess that’s what the judges were after.”

  With music obscure as his moniker, Sleeper tells us the story behind the name, taken from a bumper sticker he saw in Portland, Oregon.
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Discorder Revisited

The year was 1983...

by Jordan Wade

lettering by Mel Zee


For Discorder’s 30th anniversary issue in February, we revisited the magazine’s past with founding co-editors Mike Mines and Jennifer Fahrni (via phone from Hawaii, at the time). These days, Fahrni travels frequently as PR manager for the Irish Rovers. While home in the midst of a busy touring schedule, I jumped at the opportunity to chat with her face to face and visit Discorder’s birthplace: her childhood home.

  Fahrni grew up in an old character house at 2nd and Blanca in Point Grey. It was there on her parents’ massive dining room table that she, Mines, and fellow CiTR alumni Harry Hertscheg held paste-up-parties, where they would physically assemble those first issues of Discorder.

  Three decades later, I’m plopping the glossy, full-colour 30th anniversary issue on that same table. It’s a powerful feeling and I can sense the energy in the room. With me, I have a copy of —
according to Fahrni, from previous conversation — her favourite issue: March 1983. Volume one, issue two. A huge smile grows on Fahrni’s face as she peers through the pages. With candid confidence, takes me for a trip down memory lane.
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Data Romance

"Steve Aoki stole my ice cream... It was a hot day, too..."

by Jacey Gibb

photo and composition by Victoria Johnson


Looking to get into some synth-heavy jams, but have too much self-respect to listen to Skrillex? Then Data Romance is just what the musical doctor ordered. Striking up a melodious mixture of electronic beats with cinematic production values, Ajay Bhattachayya and Amy Kirkpatrick have spawned a fresh sound that borderlines on club thrasher, laced with a certain gravity.

  In preparation for the February 19 release of their first full-length album, Other, I sat down with the duo to talk about band name changes, the creative disparities the new album benefited from, and high-stake ice cream theft involving Steve Aoki.
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Babysitter

"Taking something out of the head and putting it into the hand...”

by Alex de Boer

lettering by Janine Prevost


Contributing to a calm generational clash, Babysitter front-man Kristian North and I drink afternoon Caesars in Logan’s Pub, a Legion-esque establishment in Victoria. Forested by square wooden tables and the slow climb of wall panelling, the pub operates as both a retirement hangout and a grungy music venue for twenty-something crowds. In the bar’s beardy dimness, local post-punk garage trio Babysitter has found a welcoming stage. Even during the midday quiet, I can imagine how their cantankerous chants of rebellion and mischief would echo with enticing irony; an unconventional sound in an conventional bar.

  Loud and gritty, Babysitter’s music is tattooed with revolution. Made up of North (vocals, lead guitar), Andy Vanier (bass) and Aden Colligne (drums), the trio’s first full-length LP, Eye, explicitly uses the word “revolution” in nearly half of its 13 songs. Even a casual listen to the album reveals Babysitter’s unabashed oath to rock-and-roll. Resistance to death and old age is pledged in “Talkin’ Bout the New Generation” and “Angel of Death,” while freedom and youth are celebrated in tunes like “Crace Mountain” and “Prime of My Life.”
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Cameron MacLeod

“Cam will show up to a night where you think you’re going to have a bad time and he will make it the best time.”

by Evan Brow

photo by Hana Pesut


Cameron MacLeod and I sit in a booth at The Five Point, a lively pub on Main Street. He orders us a pitcher of beer and two whiskey shots, initiating a discussion of our mutual love of Scotch, kicking off a night of conversation and drinking.

  MacLeod grew up an SNL kid, living in its second golden age when the likes of Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, and Chris Farley graced the screen. “Chris Farley was a big one,” he says. “I still feel he was my generation’s John Belushi.” MacLeod also admired Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman, who showed him how absurd comedy can be, and how far one could take it.

  At 25, MacLeod co-created Man Hussy, his first sketch group, with an original lineup of friends Daniel Code, Steve Nelson, and Brendan Fuss. “We just hung out all day and came up with ridiculous ideas,” he says. “That’s pretty much how Man Hussy started, by us just saying, ‘Let’s just make this sketch that no one else would make.’” Speaking of his work as a whole, MacLeod emphasizes his desire to produce personal, unique projects. “I like to think I instill a love of independent comedy and doing what you want to do for the reasons you want to do them. If you think something’s funny, I want to put that out there.”
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SHiNDiG 2012 Winners

Second Place: Greenback High

by Coleman Ingram

photo by Skinny Tim

There is a superstition surrounding SHiNDiG about a “curse” that befalls its winners whereby they are banished to obscurity after some indeterminate amount of time following their triumph. You could suppose that a person’s opinions about this curse would depend on the height of the respective winners’ podium, so it goes without saying that the boys in the power-pop, punk-and-roll ensemble Greenback High, dodged it.

  Mulling about in their East Van jam space, the members—who go by the stage-names of Joshy Atomic, Rob Beardo, FloorTom Jones, and latest addition JJ Heathen—joke about their meteoric rise to runner-updom as they set up for a day of demoing. Joking aside, the band is legitimately grateful for getting as far as they did, explaining that they never thought they would make it past the first round, let alone into the finals.
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Discorder Revisited

How that magazine from CiTR began

by Jordan Wade

illustration by Tyler Crich


Discorder Magazine is 30 years old this month, and what better way to say, “Happy Birthday!” and reconnect our present with our past than to chat about the future with Mike Mines and Jennifer Fahrni, the founding editors of Discorder Magazine.

  Three decades after co-editing the first issue, Fahrni is now the PR manager for the folk group Irish Rovers, and Mines is now a lawyer for Mines & Company. I visited Mines at his downtown Vancouver office and pulled out the February 1983 issue of Discorder, Volume 1, Number 1 — in all its original black and white newsprint glory — for him to peer over. “I must admit, not to pat myself on the back too much, but for a kid who was just barely hanging on at university, this is pretty well written.” It was the first time he had looked at the magazine in about 30 years.

  Mines was an Urban Geography undergrad who got turned onto UBC’s radio community by his good friend and fellow CiTR alum Harry Hertscheg, the station’s resident jack-of-all-trades in those days. Mines began as promotions director in his second year at UBC (1980-81) and subsequently hosted a show called Pajama Party on Friday nights. On April 1, 1982, Mines was in the studio at noon Pacific time to witness the station’s official switch to the FM dial.

  Suddenly this sophomore promotions director had a much larger audience to work with.
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The Sunday Service

"...during the Vancouver International Improv Festival, the group collected guest improvisers “like krill through the bristle teeth of a whale.”

by Joni McKervy

lettering by Aaron Read


It turns out Canada’s next greatest export after Tim Horton’s and asbestos is improvised comedy. Attesting to this fact are the long and storied careers of the veteran improvisers of the Sunday Service. Since 2006, the group – Emmett Hall, Aaron Read, Taz VanRassel, Caitlin Howden, Kevin Lee, and Ryan Beil – has run a weekly improv show on Sundays at the tragically spelled Kozmik Zoo on Broadway (formerly Hennessey Dining Lounge). In August they won a Canadian Comedy Award for Best Improv Troupe, an accolade of no small importance in a country apparently rife with improv activity. The group, who the UBC Improv website calls the “final word on improv in Vancouver,” garnered six CCA nominations this year, including best web clip, best podcast, best female improviser and two nominations for VanRassel and Beil for best male improviser.

  “Improv is something that Canada doesn’t play catch-up in with the rest of the world,” says Beil, one of the Sunday Service’s longest standing members. “We’re on the forefront of it.”
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