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Casting a spell

East Vancouver’s The Rebel Spell returns to Whistler with Cambridge, Fraser
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Plugged In Punk The Rebel Spell come back to Whistler to play a show with Cambridge and Fraser this weekend.

Who: The Rebel Spell, with Cambridge, Fraser

When: Friday, Jan. 9, 9:30 p.m.

Where: Garfinkel’s

Admission: $8

Ah, a throwback to Punk Night.

Rejoice, lovers of this genre — this Friday, you can get your punk fill with a performance by Cambridge, Fraser, and, of course, The Rebel Spell, which features Todd Serious on vocals, Erin on guitar, Chris on bass and Stepha on drums. This quartet has been making music together for just over five years, bringing their old school-style ’80s street punk sound to the streets of East Van and beyond.

This is punk, true to form: angry and subversive, and unapologetically anarchist. None of that glazed-over, mainstream pop-punk sound here, thank you very much. Instead, their punk helps articulate their message through an energetic form.

“I was a little kid in the ’80s, and even now, I didn’t know what street punk was until people started saying that’s what we sounded like,” Serious admitted. “…I have two genres: good and bad, and I try not to draw any more lines than that. Most good bands really transcend genre, anyways.”

Their name is also remarkably similar to the popular counter-culture book, The Rebel Sell , by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, though Serious said he actually hasn’t gotten around to reading it yet.

“I’m pretty sure that we came out first,” he said with a laugh, adding that their name actually comes from an old song by Mano Negra.

Chris, Stepha and Serious had all known one another for years. But as soon as Serious made the move to Vancouver, he put the wheels in motion to start a band.

“Chris was my roommate at the time and he kept asking me to play bass, and I kept telling him no,” he recalled. While Chris had played in bands before, he didn’t exactly have the best track record with follow-through. “I couldn’t find anybody else, so finally, I let him.”

Serious was well aware of how much time and effort artists need to invest to make a band a success, and he didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. But somehow, they managed to find a group of four like-minded musicians who have managed to make it work for almost five years.

After listening to some of The Rebel Spell’s lyrics, which are by and large written by Serious, it’s really not much of a surprise to hear that he is strongly influenced “by more things that bother me.”

“Our music is political, it just happens to be how my brain works, and I think if you’re going to make music, it better be about something real to you.”

Animal rights are an issue that’s close to Serious’s heart, though it doesn’t come through in their music very often. Rather, Serious and the rest of the band feel that human and animal rights, environmental issues and other hot-button issues are all tied together by one common thread: capitalism.

“They’re all affected so much by the economic system that we’re all chained under,” Serious explained.

A quick visit to their website shows that these guys are pretty passionate about the issues they cover in their music. Their blog includes articles on topics that fall under the headings of “crappy crap crapitalism,” “government corruption,” “sexist shitbags,” and “police corruption.”

But how do you maintain a balance between preaching to an audience, and simply making good music?

“I care a lot about that, because there are a lot of bands out there that don’t understand the difference,” Serious said. “I don’t write very overtly, and I think that’s the artistic part of it. You have to leave room for interpretation, and the more room you leave, the more they can kind of think on their own.”

Serious is confident that people will be able to draw their own conclusions from the music, and hopes they can inspire people to educate themselves further about issues, pointing out that they’re not trying to brainwash, though music is a good “recruitment tool.”

“It can’t read like a PETA pamphlet, where you read lyrics like that or you hear them, and they come off as pretty clichéd and really just preachy. It doesn’t work.”

They recently signed to G7 Welcoming Committee Records, a company that is, according to their website, “committed to bringing the existing human social order into balance, thereby allowing the evolutionary process that has guided and nurtured life on this planet for millions of years to continue unabated. To this end and through the independent production and distribution of audio related materials, we seek to underwrite activities that encourage persons to actively seek out life's douche-bags for the express purpose of disobeying them.”

Sounds like a perfect fit.

Now, The Rebel Spell is in the process of working on a new album, which they hope to start recording in February.

They also make a concentrated effort to walk the talk, so to speak, attempting to offer download-only content on their website, as opposed to CDs and records, though the fans haven’t been as receptive of the initiative as they had hoped. They also just played an anti-Olympic organizing benefit, helping raise money to disrupt the Games.

For an anti-commercial group, one would think it would be a bit hard to come to play in a place like Whistler, where the privileged come to play. But Serious points out that, for the most part, their audience is made up of locals, not the elite.

“We wind up playing for the staff really, and the staff certainly aren’t living the high life up there,” he pointed out. “They get to play, but they’re all paying $500 to sleep in a closet.”