03/09/09
Text: Scott Indrisek
While New York spent the past weekend wowing itself with Armory / Bridge / Pulse / Scope madness, some of us were exploring the cultural scene of British Columbia. 'How Soon Is Now,' a regional group show currently up at Vancouver Art Gallery, nabs its name from a Smiths song -- but the Morrissey love doesn't end there. We're committed fans of art that involves music (case in point Christian Marclay's oh-so-brilliant 'Looking for Love,' in which the artist manipulates vinyl to hunt for that four-letter word); this show definitely [INSERT YOUR OWN AMAZING PUN HERE THAT HOPEFULLY DOESN'T INVOLVE THE PHRASE 'AURAL PLEASURE,' BUT IF IT DOES...SO BE IT.]
'The Music Appreciation Society' presented their 2009 work, 'The Smiths Mobile Research Listening Station': a roving turntable console that held various scholarly works on the Moz, plus all the band's key releases on vinyl. A collective known as Instant Coffee contributed 'Nooks' (2007), a full-room installation in which visitors could sit down in little picnic-style cabanas and play BeeGees and James Brown 45s, warping the pitch and RPMs to their juvenile heart's delight.
This was all a preamble for the Most Amazing Thing We've Ever Done In A Museum, thanks to Samuel Roy-Bois' 'Ugly Today, Beautiful Tomorrow' (2009). Roy-Bois essentially recreated a band's practice space in the center of the gallery, with drums, bass, two guitars, keyboards and vocal mics housed in a cozy, soundproofed booth. A large window let spectators watch the impromptu jam sessions; the best feature was that every sound created in the room was pumped down into the entrance lobby over the P.A. system. We laid down some insane rhythm-and-skronk, failed to properly fashion a respectable metal riff, and then improvised with a fellow museum-goer who asked to join us. (That glorious noise, which might properly be called klezmer-acid jazz-punk, surely caressed the ears of any school children in the V.A.G. lobby. God, someone didn't properly vet that acronym, now did they?) After we vacated the mini-studio, the Cutest Family Ever took over. The 10-year old daughter/drummer started harmonizing with her guitar-playing mom on an awesomely shambolic version of 'Yellow Submarine'; it was as charmingly D.I.Y. and helter-skelter as Vivian Girls, only with a lot less distortion. We knew we could never compete.
If you're in Vancouver, 'How Soon Is Now' is up through May 3rd. If you're not in Vancouver, go listen to the Smiths and call it a day.
