FFWD Weekly
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Street Sounds by Aubrey McInnis CHIXDIGGIT Pub Crawl with The Ex-Boyfriends and The Smelters August 26 The Night Gallery There’s a serious film crew surrounding Chixdiggit and friends who are out on a Sunday afternoon shooting a totally not serious rock music video at the Bow Valley Ranch ghost town. The boys are dressed like dusty caballeros and the gals are decked out like the pretty señoritas on old Havana cigar boxes. In order to win back the heroine, KJ Jansen struggles to maintain a sinister glare while executing deadly hip thrusts aimed at villain Grant Rushton (WCW’s Pastor of Disaster), during a slapstick dance duel showdown. The director reprimands the cast for smiling, but finally succumbs to the hysterics when an overzealous dancer splits his pants after a particularly deep lunge. Better than a Monkees out-take, Chixdiggit’s playful charm is on full display during the video shoot for "Spanish Fever" – it’s the first sizzler off their new fireball rock album, From Scene to Shining Scene. Although the boys were busy on the set with choreographers and make-up artists, I caught up with them individually at some of their favourite hot spots around town. Thursday, 7:10 p.m., Kart Gardens Chixdiggit sighted: Mike Eggermont (bass, creator of the album’s fun CD ROM) Zooming around the race track (sans helmet à la Ron Dugay), speed demon Mike gives me the inside scoop on their video as we hotrod neck ’n’ neck and get bugs mashed into our teeth. "(Our set is the same set) for parts of Mystery, Alaska, Shanghai Noon and Lonesome Dove. With the colourful characters that we have created, it’s going to be quite a visual masterpiece," he says. "It’s Romeo and Juliet, but mixed with East Indian dance. We wanted to do an East Indian-style dance music video in which everybody constantly danced. And we thought that maybe if we put cowboy hats on, they’ll play it on CMT so that we could recover some of the costs ’cause they pay cash when they play your videos. From there it went to the fact that we could get this set and we decided, well, instead of cowboys we’ll make it Mexican cowboys, like, gauchos. Of course, you can’t get those uniforms. Then we went to sombreros and then, like, matadors – a kind of big mix of everything." Friday, 10:30 p.m., Candy’s Massage Parlour Chixdiggit sighted: Mark O’Flaherty (guitar) The mighty solo (from triangle to electric guitar) gets to glow on From Scene to Shining Scene, Chixdiggit’s third perky LP. With 11 new contagious singalongs to bounce to, Mark unveils more of his fine guitar-noodlin’ prowess. "I don’t think kids like guitar solos anymore," he says with a nose crinkle and a smile. "When I was a kid, everyone in my junior high air-guitared to Twisted Sister and Iron Maiden and stuff like that. For me, as a kid, you got to do a lot of gesturing, posturing. "There’s more frilly bits on this album than any other Chixdiggit album. I really enjoyed that we did it ourselves and didn’t have someone else come in and produce. It made it more hands-on and there was more freedom to muck around. It was more fun doing it and less of a job." Saturday, 3:30 p.m., Radio Shack, Sunridge Mall Chixdiggit sighted: Dave Alcock (drums, engineer/mixer/producer) "It’s all, like, real sort of clichéd engineering things, like backwards reverb and, yeah, all the stuff that was overdone in the ’70s and ’80s – just did it all again, just for shtick factor," says Dave about their bionic rock skills, employed for one of their irresistible star-studded beasts, "Moto Foxe." "I spent seven weeks, every day for 14 hours a day working on (From Scene to Shining Scene) and it was intense," he says as we peruse a wall of adapters and Ohms testers. "It was really intense. We came into it not even knowing any of the songs, came out, and we had a record and we were happy with it, which is sort of the amazing thing. It was a bit of a risk, just ’cause we didn’t know what the songs were gonna be. We just told KJ, ‘OK, you have to be ready to sing a song tomorrow,’ so he’d finish it and it’d be done. And it was kind of easy in that way, but it was also kind of nerve-wracking ’cause you just had no idea how it would turn out. It was fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, but it worked." Monday 11 a.m., Ikea, living room showcase Chixdiggit sighted: KJ Jansen (vocals, guitar) We’re plunked on a lilac Ängby, and a couple of young female Ikea staffers walk by giggling after KJ winks at ’em with a friendly, "Let’s hear it for Sweden!" It’s one of the last moments that KJ will be chillin’ on a sofa – he and the boys are off to tour Canada, the States and make a second rock ’n’ roll jaunt to Europe. "We’re all looking forward to going back there," he says while fiddling around with a Brio set. "To be honest, the shows are fun, but it’s more like the travelling and getting to hang out in new places and see cool stuff that we wouldn’t get to see normally. Y’know, you don’t get to go to a lot of these crazy European castles and all that crap. All the whorehouses and wine and cheese parties that you get to go to... that’s all touring is really."

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