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Music by Aubrey McInnis THE SMUGGLERS with The Forbidden Dimension July 14 The Night Gallery After 12 years of touring the world as ambassadors for Canada, rock ’n’ roll and mischievous boys everywhere, and being one of the only bands that hasn’t had their gear stolen or tampered with, Vancouver’s dapper players The Smugglers had every single thread of their tony, trademark suits stolen in Adelaide, Australia. In an effort to perk them up and persuade The Smugglers that Australia wasn’t the criminal-infested place its historically known as, their tour manager took them to a wildlife park. Someone handed 27-year-old lead singer Grant Lawrence a lovable (maybe too lovable) Koala bear to hold, and a few minutes later, Grant was swiftly kicked out of the zoo for mistakenly sticking his hand up the furry creature’s ass instead of into a nonexistent pouch. As he was dragged away, Grant cried to the park rangers and onlookers: "I thought it was a marsupial." While abroad during that tour – which also took them to Japan and New Zealand in support of their latest album, Rosie (produced by Kurt Bloch of Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows and Grammy-nominated Nashville Pussy fame) – vacationing CJSW DJ, Rosanna Bird, was instructed by yours truly to get over to a Smugglers gig to have some fun. She went wearing her Chixdiggit shirt, had a great time and scored an official Smugglers dance trophy that reads "I’m #1, I shook my ass the hardest at the Smugglers’ show." And Grant had to fully relinquish the notion that Calgarians can’t dance. "Well, it was quite ironic and that’s full circle right there because the first city we toured to when we started way, way back was to Calgary," he says. "And we were upset that Calgarians weren’t dancing to us so we wrote this song which has become quite infamous called ‘Calgarians Don’t Dance.’ And since then, Calgarians have debunked that myth many, many times over by dancing very furiously at our shows. "But it’s an interesting full circle, that way on the other side of the world, by complete fluke, because we had a New Zealander judge who had no idea who (Rosanna) was and picked her out. And she came up and she’s like, ‘I’m from Calgary.’ "What was weird is on that tour, a lot of the winners by complete fluke were Canadian. I guess they just dance better than locals or they knew the songs more or something. We do have a rule: no repeat winners – the dance contest winners are a fraternity that stretches right across the world – it’s one trophy each." They’ve been through over 500 trophies – every one is unique and of good vintage quality (they hand select them at various thrift stores), and usually representing very Canadian sports. "We like collecting the weird, very Canadian sports (trophies) to give away in the foreign countries so we have a lot of hockey, lacrosse and curling trophies that we give out in Japan, Australia and New Zealand where they’re like, ‘What the fuck is that sport?’ Where it’s some guy in a little Scottie cap with a broom and like this large, as they call them, rocks, and in this bizarre stance and people have no clue what it is... very Canadian."

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