Khatsahlano! Music + Art Festival sprouted from deep indie roots

The festival builds on a renegade musical tradition that can be traced back to the heyday of punk rock

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      Considering the spiritual forefathers of the 50-plus bands that will be hitting the streets of Kitsilano this Saturday (July 13), it’s hard not to love the very idea of the Khatsahlano! Music + Art Festival. Actually, forefathers isn’t entirely accurate. Even if the Pack a.d.’s Becky Black and Maya Miller have never heard a Dishrags record, on some level they owe the infamous all-female punk trio something, so let’s throw foremothers out there as well. And returning to the Y-chromosome side of things, let’s give a shout-out to the Furies, Victorian Pork, and the Skulls too.

      What do all those pioneers have in common, besides being the first to drag punk rock screaming and kicking into Vancouver back when Johnny Rotten was a renegade instead of a Country Life butter pimp? The answer is that they established Lotusland as a place where it was okay to not be Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Or, in the years that followed, Prism, Trooper, Chilliwack, Loverboy, or Nickelback. (Not that there’s anything wrong, despite what snotbag rock critics will argue, with being Nickelback. Go on and admit it: you’ve sung along to “How You Remind Me” on more than one occasion, and not just ironically at karaoke or while test-driving a Ford F-Series pickup truck.)

      Add Pointed Sticks, the Subhumans, D.O.A., the Modernettes, Young Canadians, U-J3RK5, Female Hands, Insex, 54-40, Slow, Enigmas, House of Commons, Perfume Tree, Death Sentence, Sons of Freedom, the B-Sides, Bolero Lava, Go Four 3, Brilliant Orange, Coal, the Smugglers, Mystery Machine, and too many others to list, and you’ve got the foundation for something brilliant. Don’t know any of those blast-from-the-past bands, other than 54-40, and that only because Hootie & the Blowfish covered “I Go Blind”? Well, you should, because they’re part of a renegade musical tradition that leads us to where we are today: a killer free festival stretching 10 blocks along West 4th Avenue.

      If the bands playing Khatsahlano! this year—and in the festival’s two previous years—have something in common, it’s that they pretty much don’t give a fuck. Not in a spitting-on-old-ladies, flipping-off-toddlers, and slam-dancing-into-the-physically-disabled way, but in that they are more interested in making art than in scoring big on commercial Vancouver radio.

      We admit that commercial radio—unlike in the ’80s and ’90s—actually plays and supports local music. And by “local music”, we mean something other than Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Prism, Trooper, Chilliwack, Loverboy, and Nickelback.

      What makes Khatsahlano! so bloody brilliant is that it’s pulled Vancouver’s underground music scene out of the clubs and into broad daylight. For years and years the only people who knew about the kind of bands that recorded for the Mint and Zulu record labels were misfits who subscribed to Idle Thoughts and re­ligiously tuned into CiTR. Maybe the weirdo kid who sat in the back of your English 12 class planned to be at that Seylynn Hall gig featuring Gob, Brand New Unit, and Facepuller, but that was about it.

      Now you can take your easily corruptible nephew or niece down to West 4th Avenue in the middle of the day and expose him or her not only to the Pack a.d., but, in no particular order (except for the one on Khatsahlano!’s official poster), to Brasstronaut, Gold & Youth, Rich Hope & His Blue Rich Rangers, No Sinner, Cyclist, Longwalkshortdock, Evy Jane, the Vicious Cycles, Portage and Main, Christopher Smith, Koban, Village, Johnny de Courcy, Bre McDaniel, and much, much more. And because it’s outdoors, you don’t have to feel like one of those somebody-call-social-services parents who somehow thinks that you can slap a pair of Alpha Power Muffs on a two-year-old and then drag her down to catch Queens of the Stone Age at the PNE Forum.

      All of this must please one of Khatsahlano!’s main organizers, Zulu Records owner Grant McDonagh, immensely. Back when punk and everything connected to it were dirty words, McDonagh was there on the frontlines, where, thanks to Zulu, he’s remained ever since.

      In the late ’70s, McDonagh witnessed the birth of Vancouver’s underground DIY punk scene, stumbling into a now-defunct Kits community centre where Victorian Pork was putting on one of the city’s first-ever punk shows. That gig, and thousands that came after it in dive bars and cramped community halls, helped lay the foundation for what we have today.

      Not only have we come a long way, but, thanks to the Khatsahlano! Music + Arts Festival, we’ve officially arrived.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      Meathead

      Jul 11, 2013 at 12:35pm

      How come the Japandroids are not making an appearance? Oh, wait! It's because the Japandroids and the Pack AD are the same band...

      A Person

      Jul 11, 2013 at 4:52pm

      Nope, can't admit to singing along to any Nickelback songs because their music is as horrid as his whiny vocal stylings. Never been able to listen to any of their songs from beginning to end.

      Pointed Sticks

      Jul 11, 2013 at 6:46pm

      Nice article...and nice to be cited amongst the forepersons(?) of a new generation of bands who are making music for only the right reasons.Because lets face it, in this day and age,unless you are willing to concede complete control over every aspect of your career to some assholes who will steer you into recording some piece of shit song that has 9 writers names receiving credits on it,none of them yours,then your chances of making a decent living from playing music,are pretty slim.So fuck it.Play in a band because you want to,and because its probably the most fun thing you can do in public without getting arrested.And hats off to Grant,this festival is a culmination of a lifetime of promoting music that he believes in...gonna be a great day...