What’s in Your Fridge is where the Straight asks interesting Vancouverites about their life-changing concerts, favourite albums, and, most importantly, what’s sitting beside the Heinz Ketchup in their custom-made Big Chill Retropolitan 20.6-cubic-foot refrigerators. 

On the grill

Casey-Jo Loos

Who are you

I’m Casey-Jo Loos, on-air afternoon radio host and Assistant Music Director at 102.7 The PEAK here in Vancouver. You can listen to me soundtrack your life Monday to Friday from 2 .p.m to 6 p.m. on an old-school hipster radio or online via ckpk.streamon.fm. Call me at 604-280-1027 or text me your weirdo thoughts about the city and music at 88000. When I’m not at the radio factory, I’m chasing a sunset and writing something emo about it on Instagram (@caseyjoloos), flailing at a live show, or off fulfilling my lifelong role as Captain Sassy Pants on a West Coast adventure.

First concert

I’m not sure what defines “first”. My literal first concert was Charlotte Diamond in Nanaimo at a place called Beban Park when I was four years old with a bunch of other snivelling little brats. “Four Hugs a Day” anyone? I’ll love that song and believe that advice for life! “… that’s the minimum, NOT THE MAXIMUM!”

If we’re talking first real shows as a young adult, then I would frequent the all-ages community halls in Nanaimo as an under-ager to watch local bands play (when I wasn’t playing saxophone in my own live jazz band). I never saw a real-deal concert until I was older, because living in small-town Nanaimo with limited means to get to the big city for real concerts was an issue in my world growing up. And there was no way a band like Coldplay let alone Matthew Good was playing a show in Nanaimo.

If we’re talking REAL concerts, then I would classify my “first” as going to the Vans Warped Tour at Thunderbird Stadium (I went for a full festival, didn’t mess around). I would have been maybe 20 years old and I loved every minute. I had a backstage pass so I got to hang out with Travis Barker of Blink-182 in front of the portapotties and bump elbows awkwardly with Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance in the food area. Nonchalantly, while internally hyperventilating of course. There was a lot of guyliner happening and almost nobody wasn’t wearing Chucks—it was truly an emo and glorious year to be at Warped Tour. I remember getting caught in a serious mosh pit during Green Day where I had to step on a girl's face to safely get out of it. I still feel sorry about stepping on her face, but she was down, and I wanted to get out! I was so scared and it was crazy to be moved by a crowd like that and have no control over yourself. And so, it began. 

Life-changing concert

Metric, but specifically Emily Haines. I’ve since seen Metric in almost every kind of venue and crowd, and have met and chatted with them many times, but the first time was so intimate and magical. I got to sit right near my woman-crush-every-day when I lived in Victoria through The Zone at 91.3 (now sister radio station of The PEAK). They had a private show with Emily and Jimmy [Shaw] for winners. (I used to volunteer on their street team so I was allowed to go "just this once".) I was so enamoured with Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? at the time, her general bomb-ass babe-ness, but to see her in a tiny dance room, caressing her piano while reflected into the ballet room mirror times a million reflections truly blew my mind and made me feel like I could reconnect with my own voice. It gave me forgotten confidence that I had buried. 

Top three records

This is probably the toughest question to ask of life. (But also, don’t ask me what I want to be when I grow up.) I believe that we choose music based on how we want to feel at that point in time, and there are so many kinds of music that can make us all feel too many things. Since I must choose three, here are the ones that I could play always, all ways: 

Radiohead, In Rainbows  Love and melancholy dance handsomely in this record as the band got a little more personal and we tasted more “seduction songs”. Plus we all got to pay-what-we-pleased to the newly free-agent Radiohead, which seemed to simultaneously blow our minds and equally piss off the music industry. Thom Yorke’s aching falsetto had my heart in a chokehold from the start. Yeah, it wasn’t a lot of Radiohead fans' all-time favourite, but then again I’m not like all the cool kids anyway.

The Beatles, Abbey Road  I grew up on the Fab Four, and this one in particular which is considered one of the greatest albums in rock because it almost didn’t get made at all. I had no idea what I was singing and dancing to as a young kid (“Come Together” … *cough*) but as long as I was allowed to stay up late, watch Dirty Dancing, and subsequently dance to the Beatles while wearing my rollerskates around the basement, I thought I was living the dream. Bonus: “Here Comes the Sun” was one of the first songs I learned to play on my guitar, at the tender age of 10.

Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago  This record cries. Forget the fact that it was recorded in a tiny cabin somewhere in the woods in Wisconsin, or that Justin Vernon’s vocal performance still haunts me even though I’ve heard it probably trillions of times. Forget the creaking ambience with a cracked-open heart among the beautiful layers of lyrics. Forget the tour of heartache. Forget the forgotten man who has been left alone with his memories and his guitar. Forget it all. Except, you truly can’t. And that’s why this is a perfectly haunting and timeless soundtrack for life.

All-time favourite video

Fave video from the MuchMusic days was Fatboy Slim's "Praise You". Remember when flash mobs weren’t overplayed and seemed cool? And then Spike Jonze said to Fatboy Slim, “Yeah, okay, I’ll direct AND dance in this! It will cost $800 for my dancer friends to eat and to buy a boom box.” These “random guerrilla style dancers” outside of a California movie theatre were not only self-expression heroes, but they taught me and my high school awkwardness that I shouldn’t give a flying f***. Some may debate that this video is also the worst music video ever, and to those lost souls I say: “Let’s see your dance moves then?”

What’s in your fridge

Guys: if you’re not cleaning out your fridge on a regular basis, we need to talk. I believe in keeping things fresh in the fridge and not having anything that is unnecessary or unused in my life. Having said that, my most current prized weirdo kept-cold possessions are:

Marmalade from a stranger. I went to a cabin on the north end of Okanagan Lake for my birthday back in October, and this woman named Valerie had a cabin next door at the beach. She and her dog Parker came to sniff us out. When she found out it was my birthday, she returned a few hours later with fresh marmalade that she made for me. I knew it was fresh because it was HOT. I'm just some random girl with a birthday next door and she took it upon herself to spend time, energy, and love on me. Random acts of sincere and genuine kindness is what it’s all about, people. (And that marmalade is damn good.)

Prosecco. It’s not weird, but it’s weird if you DON’T always keep a bottle in your fridge because you never know when you’re going to need to celebrate something, big or small! (It’s an adult responsibility...seriously.)

Homemade salad dressing—main ingredient: garlic. Friends, if you truly want to sabotage someone in life, feed them this dressing for every meal. The amount of garlic is unruly. There’s enough garlic to clear out Rogers Arena at a Paul McCartney concert. My favourite trick if you have a crush on someone is to feed them this dressing I make; that way they will never ever be a “potential” for someone else because they’ll never have another human being get that close to them again. And it will also probably burn off all their tastebuds on their tongue entirely.