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.”