>>PREVIEW
RAMP
The Summerlad, Kara Keith and Woodpigeon
Thursday, September 7
Broken City
It's true – you can have too much of a good thing. To a wine connoisseur burnt out on the grape, even the finest vintage will have the bitter tang of vinegar. Likewise, the most devout music fans can leave a performance with the acrid taste of the same-old burnt into their mouths. It becomes a codified ritual: drink beer, watch band, talk shit, buy merch, go home.
But The Summerlad, Calgary's own masters of re-jigging the rock format, have plans to change all that. Beginning tonight at Broken City, The ’Lads kick off RAMP, a monthly performance night designed to confound expectations.
"With a rock show, everyone knows what to expect," says the Summerlad's Arran Fisher. "There's room for a lot more in this city, a lot of different voices."
As the RAMP webpage puts it, "Screw the rehashed crap that's being constantly rammed into our gullets, what else you got?"
The inaugural RAMP features The ’Lads along with Woodpigeon and smoky-voiced songstress Kara Keith. Though the names may be familiar, the performance promises to be anything but.
Keith is set to show off an excerpt from an animation project she's been working on.
"From what I understand, Kara was initially using the animation to block out sets and characters for a musical she was working on and it just took over from there," Fisher says. "Woodpigeon are performing an operetta they wrote, based on the life of Redbeard the pirate, with members of the band playing different roles in the story."
As for the Summerlad, they'll be unleashing a 20-plus minute piece called "The Calm of Cancer, The Calm of Capricorn." Now, this is not a band that has ever shied away from long songs, having performed a Glenn Branca-esque piece scored for 16 players at One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo, but the lengthy composition is a departure from the two-minutes-and-change punk anthems found on their recent 7" record.
"That was a side of ourselves that we just needed to put out there," Fisher says of the short and nasty wolf-themed EP. "Some punk rock songs we needed to get off our chest.
"But for us, 20 minutes isn't all that long."
Fisher and co. hope RAMP will serve as an outlet for alternative performance acts of all stripes, from spoken word to noisy electronics to bands that bring the rock a little differently. RAMP is held the first Thursday of every month at Broken City, and encourages any and all interested performers to contact them via their webpage, at www.myspace.com/rampcalgary. |
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