Big John Bates & the Voodoo Dollz Blog

Okay, so there are some dangers of eating road food. While I’m the first to boast I’ll eat anything, often times my stomach will reject it after the bravado of my mouth. Eating on the road offers a bevy of possibilities, most of them fast food related. I don’t care for fast food much, being someone who enjoys cooking (and enthusiastically waving a tea towel under the smoke alarm) and eating good food. It’s almost always disappointing and leaves you feeling a little dirty afterwards, like watching a pornographic movie you had high hopes for and then getting a rather abrupt reality check.

In my constant efforts to alleviate the boredom of the long drives between shows, BJB and I sat down and tried to figure out the correlation between fast food restaurants and musical genres. These are the things you do on the road. Really. So without further ado, here are our results…

McDonalds – Pop/ Top 40

The obvious choice. The unavoidable. Because no matter who you are, your age, income bracket, sexual preference, etc, at some point in your life you will get this crap stuck in your system. Whether it is Britney Spears or a Big Mac that shit is going to be lodged in you and carried around for a decade.

KFC – Country/ Southern Rock

Because no matter how region proud you may be this will kill you – whether it’s the violent green of the radioactive coleslaw or a near fatal argument about what Skynard song is the best. And you can kind of tell from the self-satisfied smirk of the Cornel that he is listening to Hank Williams while his wares pick off Yankees one by one.

Wendy’s – Classic Rock

Wendy’s want to be your mom. Like the contemporary cougars from small towns who crank Journey, they will offer all forms of familiar comfort (Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Seger, baked potatoes, burgers and chili) They want to rock out – they really do. It’s just the dated concept of what constitutes ‘rocking out’ that is holding them back.

Subway – Adult Male Contemporary… zzzz

What do Subway, Jack Johnson, and John Mayer all have in common? You may think they are good for you, but really they’re crap.

Next! Part two… Burger King and Hip Hop and Pizza Hut and Punk.

Little Miss Risk

In a continuous effort to lure people out to our shows short of buying massive ads or using leg hold traps on passing city folk, I started making Facebook invites for as many of our shows as I could stomach. I won’t stop you from making your own, mind you, but with offers of great music, Jagermeister and sassy striptease artists, I’m kind of running out of things to entice people out. I’m going to start trolling streets with a dark van and offers of puppies and candy at this rate.

So for those of you on our route, here’s the links to some of the shows…

London, ON @ Call The Office April 5th

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1212198036693#!/event.php?eid=361086489164&ref=ts

Toronto, ON @ The Horseshoe Tavern April 9th

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1212198036693#!/event.php?eid=321902448919&ref=ts

Winnipeg, MB @ The Pyramid Cabaret April 12th

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1212198036693#!/event.php?eid=365892815317&ref=ts

Not to say there aren’t other Canadian dates, and there are, but I only have so much patience for Facebook these days. It’s gotten to the point of being like some kind of odd, ego-stroking visual crack and frankly, I’m checking into rehab rather slowly on that one. Yes, my name is Little Miss Risk and I’m a social networking junkie. Eff.

I’ve also had time to notice that the more time we spend sealed in the Murderbus is more we begin to get a little… odd. Not to put too fine a point on it but in our insular little universe it has begun to feel very much like we’re piloting a strange spaceship, travelling from galaxy to galaxy along and stopping to play shows, muss up our hosts guest linens, and leave a trail of glitter and broken guitar strings behind.

Along with spending so much time interacting with only one another our behavior degenerates amongst ourselves. As a whole we have begun to fall prey to inside jokes carried on for so long that anyone outside looking is starts to feel faintly nervous and wonders if they have some mace or liquor to subdue we lunatics. Not that we’re dangerous – far from it. More like a bachelor that, over time, has grown so comfortable in their ways that they’ve become rather eccentric. But it’s in these quiet moments that you learn things you didn’t know or previously appreciate about your band.

Like, promoters randomly dying.

John dropped a subtle bomb on me that it was the first Big John Bates tour that one of their promoters actually died and no one knew for some days after. John, trying to get through on the phone, guided the band to playing a show for a bunch of skin heads while unbeknownst to any that upstairs the promoter for the show had died of a drug overdose. Now, that’s a pretty good excuse for not promoting your show but even then I don’t think I’d be that lenient. But then, I’m a bit of a hard case that way.

So it’s with this effort to rejoin the non-cyber or band world and get off my duff and play a show in homage to Alice Cooper tonight in Phoenix. Here’s hoping he can take a break from the links to see us do our thing. If not, I happen to have a bunch of zombie gophers ready to do battle and I’m just vindictive enough to release them on Arizona. Like I said, I’m a bit of a hard case that way.

Cheers,

Little Miss Risk

… Heh heh… Apparently during the Oscars even the barflies stay home. Good thing I made friends with the local ex-lowriders last night. I love California.

PS: If you going to knock off a bank in a host town, do so during the Olympics. If your going to knock over a bank in California, do it during the Oscars. Then swing by after and steal the statues just for kicks.

Little Miss Risk

Four days into this spring tour and I woke up in the middle of the night last night in a panic – I remembered that we were going to be playing Phoenix. In the hot, arid city of Phoenix lives one of my idols and a rock and roll legend, Alice Cooper. I have but a few lofty goals in my life, and performing for or with Alice is on my top ten list and on that list that goal appears at least twice. So it came as a jolt to be reminded that we were going to be playing his town, he wasn’t on any tour, and if all went well, the stars would align and I’d be able to maybe lure him out to our show. I accidentally kicked John when I woke with a start too, so apparently it hit him late in the night too, but by accident.

The thought had occurred to me that possibly this was, indeed, a fairly ambitious goal. I also, too, realized that he was kind of a big deal and how was someone in our musical social scene going to attract his attention in the first place? Fortunately we live in the age of social networking and viral videos so I figured an appeal to the public would be the best bet…

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10150121597320161&ref=ts

So my sneaky/cunning plan is to basically try to get enough awareness of the Phoenix show so that maybe, possibly, word of it may get back to Alice and that he might check the band out. Even if he doesn’t actually make it out to the show, he might sit down, check out our videos on YouTube and consider us (or members of the group *cough cough*) for an opening act.

So I’m hoping that in the next week we can garner enough attention that maybe Alice may notice an item come across his desk and it piques his interest in time for our Phoenix show. In the meantime, California, here we come!

Cheers,

Little Miss Risk

2010 USA DATES w/ Reverend Deadeye

Feb 25 – Bellingham, WA @ Wild Buffalo
Feb 26 – Seattle, WA @ Studio 7
Feb 27 – Bremmerton, WA @ Winterland
Feb 28 – Portland, OR @ Dante’s
Mar 02 – Eureka, CA @ Nocturnum
Mar 03 – San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside
Mar 04 – Fresno, CA @ Audie’s Olympic
Mar 05 – Bakersfield @ Fishlips
Mar 06 – Anaheim, CA @ Juke Joint
Mar 07 – Long Beach, CA @ Alex’s Bar
Mar 09 – Huntington Beach, CA @ Blue Cafe
Mar 11 – Las Vegas, NV @ Dive Bar
Mar 12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rogue West
Mar 13 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Burt’s Tiki Lounge
Mar 14 – Denver, CO @ Casselman’s
Mar 15 – McCook, NE @ Sport
Mar 16 – Manhattan, KS @ Kathouse
Mar 17 – Springfield, MO @ Nathan P. Murphy’s
Mar 18 – Memphis, TN @ The Hightone w/ Memphis Belles
Mar 19 – Hot Springs, AR @ Maxine’s w/ Memphis Belles
Mar 20 – Nashville, TN @ Matty’s Alley
Mar 22 – Tallahassee, FL @ Engine Room
Mar 23 – Deland, FL @ DaVinci (Outdoor show)
Mar 26 – Satellite Beach, FL @ The Sports Page
Mar 27 – Bradenton, FL @ Distillery Tavern
Mar 28 – New Smyrna Beach, FL @ Beachside Tavern
Mar 30 – Charleston, SC @ Tin Roof
Mar 31 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbour
Apr 01 – Richmond, VA @ Playing Field
Apr 02 – Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant Street
Apr 03 – Lafayette, IN @ Lafayette Brewing Co
Apr 04 – Cleveland, OH @ Now that’s Class

2010 CANADIAN DATES:

Apr 05 – London, ON @ Call The Office
Apr 07 – Ottawa, ON @ Mavericks
Apr 08 – Montreal, QC @ The Green Room
Apr 09 – Toronto, ON @ The Horseshoe + White Cowbell
Apr 10 – Thunder Bay, ON @ Black Pirates Pub
Apr 12 – Winnipeg, MB @ The Pyramid
Apr 13 – Regina, SK @ The Gaslight
Apr 14 – Lethbridge, AB @ Henotic
Apr 15 – Edmonton, AB @ New City Suburbs
Apr 16 – Calgary, AB @ The Distillery
Apr 17 – Kelowna, BC @ Doc’s
Apr 18 – Kamloops, BC @ Dirty Jersey

This falls under the category of strange, and sub-filed under the section “Bates Specific”. I’m sure the extended family out in Ontario will get a kick out of this…

“Lurid stories from seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were spread into popular press about premature burial. Some of these tales were spread by well meaning doctors; for example, postmortem reports described corpses with their fingers chewed off – a sign doctors said, that the corpse awoke and was panicked and hungry enough to eat off their own extremities. In reality, most or all cases were rodent infestation.

However, there were good reason for people to be terrified of being buried alive. Physicians and medical professionals were not particularly skilled at telling the difference between dead and unconscious, and burials happened so fast (due to heat in some parts of the world) that it was no unheard of for a person to wake up underground.

John Bateson (here comes the connection) was an inventor with a paranoia about this very situation. So he came up with the Bateson Revival Device -  a small church bell attached to the head of the coffin and connected to a cord strapped to the deceased hand. The idea being that if you woke up in a coffin, you could ring the bell til someone rescued you. Because the fears of this were widespread, Bateson was made wealthy because of this device”

(Source: Book Of The Bizarre)

Oh, those wacky Victorians! I suppose they should count themselves as lucky that they didn’t have Michael Jackson’s doctor, though I hazard a guess that poor guy wishes he could be buried alive in something other than circus media. But now that I’m trying to find little scraps of trivia pertaining to people with the name Bates, I’m finding that almost all the interesting bits I find seem to be on the morbid side. Interesting parallels.

Now I’m off to hassle some Olympic tourists.

Ciao!

Little Miss Risk

In the spirit of the Hallmark Holiday that is Valentine’s Day, I felt it best to honor both the Eastern Goddesses who are my two favorites: Kali and Shakti. So next time you think your romance is a disaster to rival  Hurricane Katrina, consider that it may indeed suck, but nowhere nearly as bad as this:

“Princess Maria del Pozza della Cisterno’s 1867 wedding day was a bad one. Not because of her fiancee, Amadeo, the future king of Italy, but everyone around her. Her wardrobe mistress hung herself, the gatekeeper cut his throat, someone got caught under the wheels of the honeymoon train and died, and the best man shot himself.”

In other news, I’ll literally be selling my love tonight at Kitty Nights. As part of the “Love Show” The Purrfessor will be auctioning off my kisses between the first and second sets. The funds go to a great cause: starving burlesque dancers.

Ciao!

Little Miss Risk

I WILL update the blog with some photos from the Voodoo Ball last week, as soon as I get some. However, since I only just uncurled myself out of fetal position (YOU try wrangling half naked gargoyles, Voodoo Dollz, and camera crew and see how your sanity is) I am going to focus on my current bitch du jour:

The 2010 Olympics.

Love them or hate them, they have arrived, and with them a whole lot of messy road closures, angry residents, and Stupid Tourists. I am pretty familiar with the breed of Stupid Tourists, given I’ve been one myself, but these are special. Like Reeperbahn-on-a-Saturday-night special. Now no longer confined to weekends, downtown Vancouver, Granville street in particular, has become this mess of my least favorite kind of people. The sports-loving, Ed Hardy-wearing, douches that seem to be universal no matter what country your in. It just happens that if feels they are flooding into MY country at the moment.

My intense dislike of these games stems not towards the blatant commercialism (which I’m not a fan of either) but rather something far more deep rooted. Something that harkens me back to high school. It was the age old struggle between the Jocks and the Art Geeks. Either you seemed to be a Jock and pushed around everyone else or you were everyone else getting hassled by Jocks. No amount of mind clearing yoga or bygones be bygones mindsets can really truly shake this for me. So after a number of years after high school I find it’s happening again – on a citywide and even federal level.

Jocks (aka Olympic athletes) are coming into Vancouver where the city is making up bylaws to suit this corporate event. Major arts funding cuts aside, some of the issues I’ve noticed are:

Being told you can’t have negative advertisement “while the world is watching”

Education cuts and schools closing because of the costs of the winter games (no P.E. classes which is pretty funny)

The police state of the Olympic Village

Probably my favorite is the lack of snow. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t you want, I don’t know, actual SNOW if you are hosting a Winter Games event? Which puzzles me even more, since Vancouver is one of the mildest cities in the world in the winter. Apparently, no one thought to look out the window and see if this would be an issue. Strangely enough, the Vanoc people are panicked and importing snow from other mountains for the Games. What strikes me as weird (other than using helicopters to move snow around) is that they felt they would be exempt from the kind of snafus that you encounter when putting together a HUGE event… remember the summer Games in Atlanta when the buses shuttling the athletes got lost and some of them missed competing in their events?

Hmm. So actually, in terms of Olympics, this is kind of par for the course.

On a brighter note, I noticed the Saints won the Superbowl. I would like to maybe think that the Jock world and my own might have collided in a positive way as prior to Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dollz rolling through New Orleans, they never made it to the Superbowl and in cheerful sports fashion have proudly worn our band colors (black and gold) also. I like to think that this was the heart that got them the big win. If our Voodoo power can make that happen then we’re capable of anything, really…

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to summon a dormant sea creature out of False Creek to reign down terror on the opening ceremonies with the ice-holes and lugers. Or at the very least discourage people from wearing those stupid red mittens.

Ciao,

Little Miss Risk

So last night, Teddy Smooth and Eroc at Citr were minding their own business when myself and BJB descended on them and took over Cabaradio, I guess part of the problem with UBC being so remote is it’s pretty easy to sneak up on radio hosts when you have a big, black diesel-engine bus. I sometimes forget hoe stealthy the Murderbus can be.

What we did get out of the show was a good mix of music, both live and recorded as well as a exclusive: the first live performance of BJB’s newest song, Jaws Of Victory, which the band will be recording for a 7″ this Sunday. We also wanted to thank Dale fSawyer for being the winner of a pair of tickets to the Voodoo Ball on Friday as well.

All the quips and songs can be found for download or streaming here:

http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20100202-230401-to-20100203-003950.mp3

Don’t forget to tune in every Tuesday night to hear Cabaradio as well on Citr. It’s radio with sass!

Now I’m off to sew some scary looking syringes onto a bra for Friday night…

Ciao!

Little Miss Risk

Normally I like to throw out an odd little fact or piece of arcane trivia that no one except myself or crossword puzzlers would be interested in. Friday is usually when I like to do these things but as my Friday got away from me yesterday (which BJB swapping stereos at Casa De Risk and hoofing it to my tower in East Vancouver) it fell by the wayside. Now with the weekend ahead, I thought I’d share a strange little bit that you may have not previously appreciated…

“When English writer Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928) died, his heart was kept apart when his body was cremated. The idea was to bury it in Stinford, England, the home of his beloved childhood church and his family’s burial plot. All went according to plan until his sister’s cat jumped up onto her kitchen table and snatched the heart and ran off into the woods with it.”

Source: The Book Of The Bizarre,  Varla Ventura

The moral of the story? Don’t be late feeding the cat when your brother’s earthly remains are on the kitchen table. For myself, I can think of at least several things that are wrong with that particular story (and I mean wrong as in demented, not inaccurate).

Enjoy your Saturday!

Little Miss Risk