Return of the Living Dead: Fun Zombie Schlock or Post-Vietnam Military Anxiety Satire?

As someone who grew up with a great appreciation for George A. Romero’s original trilogy of zombie movies, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, as well as a lifelong love of punk rock, Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead has always held a special place in my heart. Between it’s over-the-top camp feel, its sense of humour, and some of the most wonderfully hilarious punk rock stereotype characters ever to appear on film, as well as its fantastic mid-80s LA punk/deathrock soundtrack, it’s become one of the go-to movies for many of my friends who hold a deep appreciation for both the film and music genres.

It’s a gleefully nihilistic story about the origins of a near apocalyptic zombie outbreak that starts out small but quickly threatens an entire city. Nearly every step spurred on by the completely inept decisions made by the film’s protagonists who expect a real life zombie outbreak to behave like those they’ve seen in the movies.

But for those of us who tend to look at past horror films through a cultural historical lens there are some deeper themes to the film, ones that can be easily overlooked but are essential to fully appreciating this wonderful movie.

There are two themes in particular that are present throughout the film but which are deeply intertwined, specifically the distrust of the American military in the mid-1980s, and the scourge of Agent Orange.

Distrust of the United States military is nothing new when it comes to horror films, arguably moreso than any other genre. For every Top Gun or Pearl Harbour that glamourizes the armed forces there are countless genre films that provide a more realistic and horrifying look at the traumas caused by the actions of the US military, such as Deathdream, Jacob’s Ladder, or George A. Romero’s own Day of the Dead.

This distrust of the US military comes early in the movie when Frank (James Karen), a senior employee at the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse is showing young Freddy (Thom Mathews) the ropes on his first day. In one scene Freddy asks Frank what the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in the warehouse is, prompting Frank to tell Freddy a story about a chemical defoliant developed by the Army to spray on marijuana crops that had the unintended consequence of making a number of exposed cadavers jump around as if they were alive. According to Frank there was a “typical Army fuck up” which led to the contaminated bodies, sealed in steel drums, to be sent to the warehouse. Freddy, somewhat skeptically, asks to see one of the bodies, which Frank agrees to. Once they approach the basement to view one of the steel-encased corpses Frank hits the side of the drum causing a chemical gas to escape from the drum, contaminating both them and the entire warehouse. This chemical leak is the catalyst for the domino effect that makes up the rest of the events of the film leading to an entire graveyard of corpses to become reanimated and attacking Freddy’s punk rock friends who had been partying in the graveyard while they wait for Freddy to get off work.

While the idea of a chemical gas causing the dead to return to life is more than a little far fetched, a chemical compound used by the US military that brought unintended consequences has a fair amount of historical precedent.

During the US involvement in the Vietnam War the military deployed a chemical herbicide and defoliant known as Agent Orange in what was called Operation Ranch Hand from 1961-1971. This chemical was sprayed from airplanes on the lush Vietnamese jungle which the North Vietnamese army, or Viet Cong, would hide in before launching ambush attacks on US troops. By using Agent Orange the US was able to obliterate huge swaths of jungle, making the areas impossible for Viet Cong troops to hide in. Over the course of the war over 3.1 million hectares of jungle were completely decimated. The chemical also brought with it a host of horrific side effects including a massively increased risk of diseases such as leukemia, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, various other cancers, and severe birth defects in children whose mothers were exposed to the chemical.

While the side effects of Agent Orange, as horrific as they are, might sound mild compared to the reanimating properties of Return of the Living Dead’s 2-4-5 Trioxin, the link becomes much more clear after learning that the name for the chemical is 2, 4, 5, Dioxin. And given the effects of the fictional Trioxin, I for one am pretty glad that for as devastating as the effects of Agent Orange are, at least it didn’t make near-unkillable zombies!

In the years following the Vietnam War, domestic attitudes towards the military plummeted in the United States. Between the vastly unpopular Draft, the demoralizing nightmare and ultimate defeat by North Vietnamese forces, and a tremendous lack of support for returning veterans wracked with bodily injuries and PTSD, anti-military sentiments were quickly adopted by many Americans, and especially those involved in the then burgeoning punk subculture that had begun to spread in the 1970s.

By the 1980s, punk in America and Canada had taken on a more political, harder edge than the original 1970s wave. Many of the bands at the time were viciously political and stood vehemently against what the previous generation, who had gotten the country involved in Vietnam, stood for. With the United States becoming involved in military engagements throughout the Middle East and Central America many felt that another disastrous Vietnam style war was on the way. And if the war in Vietnam had gone as badly as it had, many feared that these conflicts could turn out as bad if not worse. To those who grew up during the Cold War, where nuclear war felt like more of an inevitability that an abstract possibility, the thought of the US military going to extreme measures to save face in unpopular or unwinnable circumstances also seemed more and more of a possibility. It’s easy to watch Return of the Living Dead in 2021 and laugh at the extreme lengths that the army would take to cover up their own mistakes, in 1985 it seemed like less of an absurd third act movie twist and more like something that wasn’t entirely inconceivable.

Return of the Living Dead is a wildly fun horror comedy that’s fully enjoyable on its own. But as with a lot of horror films, it’s also very much a product of the historical, social, and political circumstances that it was made in. Despite the grim nature of some of these circumstances I think that fully understanding them only helps to make the movie that much more enjoyable. It isn’t easy to laugh at the horrors associated with twentieth-century warfare and the devastating effects of US military intervention around the world, but somehow Return of the Living Dead manages to pull it off like no other. At least when it comes to Return of the Living Dead, death is a rockin’ party in a cemetery with a kick-ass soundtrack and loads of laughs.  

Top 10 Albums of 2020!

2020 sure was a shit year, eh? Through all of the anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic, the weeks of political fury and riots, the isolation caused by said pandemic, and the absolute chaos of the United States presidential election, it was easily one of the worst years in my lifetime.

However, that didn’t stop this year from being full of fantastic music, which helped make this garbage fire of a year somewhat more bearable.

Here are some reviews for my top 10 albums of 2020, plus some EPs and honourable mentions.

The records I chose here are the ones that helped make this year more bearable, the ones that made up my soundtrack to the year. Those in the honourable mentions are records that I really enjoyed, but got to a little to late to make much of an effect on my listening habits of 2020, though I’ve been finding a lot of enjoyment out of them in late 2020/2021 so far.

So let’s get at it! Here are my favourite albums of 2020!
I didn’t want to do any sort of critical ranking of them, since each album affected me and helped me cope with the year in different ways, so I’m simply listing them in alphabetical order.

Artificial Dissemination – Modern Day Peasants

Modern Day Peasants is exactly what I wanted in a punk album in 2020. 10 songs of solid, hard-hitting punk rock that’s equal parts serious and sarcastic, with solid doses of fun throughout. I honestly think it’s their best record so far, with their 2015 album Take Us To Your Leader as a close second.

As with their previous work, every song on here shows up, beats you around the head, and then leaves before you really know what hit you. But with other punk records that take the same approach, every song on the album is unique and catchy enough that it stays with you, which isn’t an easy feat to pull off. The entire record is loaded with hooks that I continually found stuck in my head for hours after listening to the album. And at a quick 10 songs in 22 minutes, I found myself playing it over and over again on repeat nearly every time it landed on my turntable.

Compared to their previous work it definitely has a darker, more aggressive feel to it which reminded me a lot of some of the more aggressive punk-veering-on-the-edge-of-hardcore bands in the early 90s like Born Against and Econochrist, but with much catchier songs.

https://artificialdissemination.bandcamp.com/album/modern-day-peasants-2020

D.O.A. – Treason

In 1983 D.O.A. released their classic album War on 45, taking fierce aim at the Reagan administration, its virulent warmongering, and mythologized version of America; a clean, white suburban ideal that was what wholly unrealistic for the vast majority of the country. 2020’s Treason acts as a follow-up and is equally as uncompromising in its critique of our neighbours to the south.

2015 saw D.O.A. with a new lineup consisting of Joe “Shithead” Keithley on guitar and vocals, Mike Hodsall on bass, and Paddy Duddy on drums, as well as a return to the hardcore punk rock style they pioneered on albums like Something Better Change and Hardcore ’81, and this album is a welcome continuation in that vein.

Songs like “All The President’s Men” and “It’s Treason” are fast, furious, and thoughtful condemnations of the Trump administration, which has been wreaking havoc on America and the world since before the 2016 election. Meanwhile “It Was D.O.A.” offers a bit of levity to the situation, paying homage to all the roadies, sound techs, and drivers who’ve put their lives, sanity, and backs on the line in service of the band.

Two tracks on the album are transplanted from their 2018 album Fight Back, “Just Got Back From the USA” and “Gonna Set You Straight”. Normally I’d dock points for a band reusing songs from a previous release on a new record. But on this album it works, and I don’t think the record would be the same without them.

Treason is a solid hardcore punk album that comes out of nowhere, slaps you around the head for 19 minutes, and leaves you with a renewed sense of informed rage at the complete disaster that the Trump administration has wrought on the country and the world. It’s D.O.A. doing what they do best; being loud, angry, and drives you to want to do something about the shit situation we’re all in right now.

https://suddendeath.com/store/vinyl/doa-treason-lp

Dead Cells – I

Somehow, Dead Cells debut album is exactly what I wanted in a punk album in 2020. If this year’s “Top 10” list is any indication my soundtrack to the year has been equal parts furious straightforward punk rock and moody yet powerful post-punk, and this album feels like a perfect synthesis of those two moods.

Combining somewhat riffy guitar leads and powerful driving rhythm parts and a vocal style that mixes both oldschool punk snot and a sense of desperate post-punk angst, this album combines everything I love about early hardcore punk before it was classified as hardcore, and the more recent wave of gothy post-punk.

While you wouldn’t expect such a high-tempo album to be as catchy as it is, I constantly found myself humming along to it hours or even days after I listened to it last. Of all of the albums I listened to this year I can absolutely single it out as one that made me ache for live shows and being able to completely lose myself thrashing around in a mosh pit, only to gather myself just in time to shout along with its hooks and choruses when the time came.

If this band never put out another record I’d still stand by everything I’ve said here, but I’m seriously hoping they keep on writing material of this quality. Goddamn, I love this thing.

https://deadcells.bandcamp.com/album/i

The Essential Letdowns – All Seriousness Aside

I’m an absolute sucker for contemporary punk bands who manage to perfectly capture an old-school punk sound. With their debut album All Seriousness Aside, The Essential Letdowns show both a loving appreciation for and deep understanding of what makes so many of those albums great.

Somehow this album manages to feel like a synthesis of Rancid’s And Out Come The Wolves, crossed with Teenage Head’s self-titled album, with a hefty Elvis-style blues/rockabilly influence as well, and I mean that in all of the best possible ways. Some tracks especially reminded me of the Forgotten Rebels album In Love With The System, but sonically rather than thematically.

As a debut album, I don’t think they could have done better. Really excited to see what they do in the future.

https://essentialetdowns.bandcamp.com/album/all-seriousness-aside-2

The Fallout – The Times Have Never Changed

I love The Fallout, and as someone who loves The Fallout I can safely say The Times Have Never Changed might be their best record so far.

In 2018 the band released a 7” EP Raise Your Flag And Other Anthems, their first release since Patty O’Lantern (Class War Kids, Brutal Youth, Dragged In) joined the band. While that EP was absolutely solid, it was only a quick preview of what the band would do on this album.

Patty’s inclusion on this record sees the band adding a welcome pop-punk sensibility to the band’s working class, Clash-influenced sound, and I mean that in the best possible way. As much as I adore The Fallout’s three earlier albums, Patty’s “woah’oh” backing vocals add a completely new, yet familiar dimension to the songs. Almost like if Screeching Weasel went on a massive Clash binge and decided to write some non-reactionary/contrarian political punk anthems.

One of the stand-outs for me is the new version of the Class War Kids song “One Last Struggle”, an almost naively optimistic political punk anthem whose reputation was unfortunately tarnished by the actions and behaviour of Davey “Brat” Zegarek (Fuck That Guy). This new version is every bit as heartfelt and optimistic, but it feels somewhat more poignant than the original.

Other stand-out tracks are “The Times Have Never Changed”, “Meat Of The Matter”, “Wage Slave”, “Red Light Union”, “Raise Your Flag”, “Failure Of Character”, and “Invincible”, a deeply personal tribute to Todd Serious, the late singer for the amazing Vancouver punk band The Rebel Spell. I’ve been a massive fan of The Rebel Spell ever since my first time seeing them at a house show in Kitchener, Ontario in 2007, and I’d be hard-pressed to write an equal or better song about my feelings about Todd and his influence on my life and Canadian punk in general.

https://thefalloutcanada.bandcamp.com/album/the-times-have-never-changed

Häxan – Aradia

I feel kind of weird trying to write a proper review of this one since I’m not much of a metal fan, and even with the metal I like I tend to be really picky about it. So take any comparisons I make to any other bands with a bit of a grain of salt ‘cause I’ll be the first to admit that I might not really know what the hell I’m talking about.

That said, this album fucking rocks. From its slow moody intro track to the 8-minute long closer The Alchemist, every time I put on this record I find myself involuntarily headbanging to it, regardless of what else I’m doing when it’s on.

To me it sounds like halfway between early Black Sabbath and the late ‘60s psychedelic occult proto-metal rock band Coven. Every track is absolutely packed with heavy groovy riffs and amazing vibrato-y, almost operatic vocals from singer Kayley Haxan, with songs that know exactly what to bring to the table without hanging around long enough to get boring.

One of my biggest criticisms of a lot of metal is that, to me at least, a lot of the songs tend to drag on, relishing in their own riffs to the point of sounding masturbatory. Granted, that probably has as much to do with the metal I’ve been exposed to and my own personal tastes and biases when it comes to music.  

With Arida, I’m both hooked and engaged for the entire 42-minute run of it, which is rare for me with metal. Hell, now that I think of it I don’t think I’ve ever dropped the needle on this one without playing it at least twice. That said, I’m having a difficult time finding the right words to describe the sound of this one. So rather than taking the risk of trying to talk about this one further and embarrassing myself by failing to articulate what a solid metal album this is I’m just going to tell you to go out and listen to it.

https://haxanto.bandcamp.com/album/aradia

Horror Vacui – Living For Nothing

2020 was one gloomy-ass year. And as such, I was so grateful for this album. While it was released in March I actually didn’t get around to giving it a solid listen until late August when my seasonal horror movie binge began earlier than usual. But once the needle on my turntable hit the groove on the vinyl it rarely left until mid-November.

To those new to the band, Horror Vacui are easily one of the best goth-punk bands going right now, and Living For Nothing might be my favourite album of theirs so far. The entire album is drenched in chorus effects and reverb that makes it sound like it was recorded in the catacombs of an Italian church. It’s everything I wanted in a goth album when I was first getting into the genre, but with a punk energy that a lot of the 80s bands seemed to lack, in my opinion.

If this record had come out in the 80s it would have been an absolute classic among the likes of Bauhaus’s In The Flat Field or Sisters of Mercy’s First Last And Always.
Songs like My Funeral My Party, Frustration, and Unreachable would have been absolute classics had they been released alongside those albums, but thankfully it came out this year, giving us all a fresh dose of aggressive gloom that was amazingly therapeutic during this dumpster fire of a year.

Easily one of my favourite albums of the year, go check this band out.

https://horrorvacuilegion.bandcamp.com/album/living-for-nothing

Spectres – Nostalgia

Spectres are a band I’ve been a huge fan of ever since I discovered them with their 2012 album Nothing to Nowhere. In my opinion, they’re a band where every record they put out stands head-and-shoulders above the one they put out before, and Nostalgia is no exception. On every album Spectres seem to move slightly further and further away from their furious anarcho-punk inspired gothy post-punk and towards a more emotional, melodic take on the style they established for themselves on their early albums.

That isn’t to say that this album lacks the fury of their earlier records, far from it. Every track simply drips with energy and power, but with a heavier emphasis on melody, hooks, and atmosphere. The song Pictures from Occupied Europe is every bit as furious as their earlier material, but has a degree of sophistication that I don’t think the band really reached until 2016’s Utopia (my absolute favourite album of that year next to The Maras – Welcome to Wax Beach).

I really don’t know what else I can say about this album without coming off as a gushing fanboy. So please, go out and listen to this fucking record.

https://spectresvancouver.bandcamp.com/album/nostalgia

War on Women – Wonderful Hell

War on Women are one of my favourite bands going right now, and Wonderful Hell is easily their most pissed-off album so far.

I’m really at a loss as to whether this record or their previous effort, Capture The Flag is  my favourite album of theirs, but there’s no denying that Wonderful Hell is their heaviest, most energetic, and most furious record they’ve put out so far.

A lot of War on Women’s signature sound comes from their guitar work, which I’d best describe as a combination of punk, hardcore, and chunky metal riffage, and on this album that work completely excels.

For me one of the standout tracks is the fourth one on the album, Stolen Land. Beginning with what sounds like school children singing Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land (I’m always a sucker for an ironic use of that song, see: the Zounds and MDC reworkings of that tune) before breaking into a heavy breakdown with singer Shawna Potter screaming “You create the refugee, then you hate the refugee” in a scathing indictment of both US international policy and immigration policy under not only the Trump administration but also the ones that preceded it.

Nearly every track on here manages to perfectly balance their signature guitar work, bitterly biting socio-political commentary through a strong feminist lens, and catchy melodic vocals that stick in your ears like a Ceti eel (Whoo! I knew I could squeeze a reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in here somewhere!).

While I’m not sure if this is my favourite album of theirs it’s hands down one of my favourite furious, pissed-off, and articulate political punk album of the year. But that being said, the more I listen to this record the more I get hooked into it. Who knows, maybe in a few weeks this might become my War on Women record.

https://waronwomen.bandcamp.com/album/wonderful-hell

World/Inferno Friendship Society – All Boarders Are Porus To Cats

As someone who loves anarchist punk rock, the World/Inferno Friendship Society are an absolute joy to have around. While their last album This Packed Funeral came out back in 2014, every time they release a new album it’s always a joyous occasion.

Mixing old-timey swing jazz, blues, crooner vocals, anarchist politics, and a wonderful sense of playfulness, I think they’re one of the more unique punk bands, and especially political/anarchist punk bands out there, with their 2007 Addicted to Bad ideas as their absolute masterpiece.

Unfortunately I can’t say I’d count this album as being among their best. However, it’s loads of fun with nearly every track on the album being wonderfully catchy with a great danceable swing to them.

My biggest complaints about this album are that it doesn’t seem to have a cohesive theme, and that it ends rather abruptly. With albums like Red-Eyed Soul, Addicted To Bad Ideas, The Anarchy And The Ecstasy, and This Packed Funeral, every album had both a theme and a solid structure to the albums, and this one seems to lack that. While it does come across as an album of songs they’ve collected over the past few years it’s a wonderful record to listen to, but compared to those previous efforts it does seem lacking.

I know this might come across as a somewhat negative review for something on my top 10 list, but you know what? Even if it isn’t their best effort hearing a new World/Inferno album in 2020 is definitely an absolute treat and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re a fan of the band. If you’re not, listen to Addicted to Bad Ideas, The Anarchy And The Ecstasy, and This Packed Funeral before jumping into this one. Or maybe it’ll be a good introduction to such a weird and unique band.

https://worldinfernofriendshipsociety.bandcamp.com/album/all-borders-are-porous-to-cats

Honourable Mentions

1. Anti-Flag – 20/20 Vision
2. Bad Cop/Bad Cop – The Ride
3. Bob Mould – Blue Hearts
4. Dragged In – L.P. I
5. Napalm Death – Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism
6. Ötzi – Storm
7. The Suicide Machines – Revolution Spring

EPs:

1. Blacked Out – Wasted Breath (EP)
2. Classics of Love – World of Burning Hate (EP)
3. The Damned – The Rockfield Files (EP)
4. The Fallout – Casualty (EP)
5. Subsistance – Unstoppable (EP)
6. Therapy – Therapy (EP)

History and Mythology

I think it’s time we take a minute to talk about the difference between history and mythology. Because the two are so deeply intertwined, but completely separate when it comes to their function.

History is the study of our past, rather, the endeavor to find the most accurate representation of the past. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly, but also the lessons that we can learn from it.

Mythology is the idealized past, the popular story, the theme park ride, all put in place with a purpose, and that purpose is to reinforce a very specific interpretation of history.

There is history in our mythology, but mythology only represents a tiny fraction of what history is.

Unfortunately, what we’re taught in schools, what we see in our monuments, what we associate with buildings named after figures from the past, is more mythology than history.

In the debates over toppled or defaced statues it’s important to realize that difference.

When someone pulls down a monument with rope or chains, they’re not “erasing history”. They’re countering mythology. When they splash blood-red paint on a statue, they’re including a page of history to the mythology.

Statues are incredibly important, in that they present to us all the mythological story we want to present. But that story, while rooted in truth, omits the raw historical truths that make up the rest of the picture.

So if you’re so concerned with statues of Confederate generals being taken down, or Sir John A. McDonald being doused with paint, ask yourself, what narrative are these monuments promoting, and what part of history would you rather see represented.

Misfits & Miscreants: An Oral History of Canadian Punk Rock by Chris Walter

To say that Misfits & Miscreants is an ambitious project would be a serious understatement. While there have been other books written on Canadian punk in recent years, most of them prefer to stay laser-focused on one band, one city, or one era. What Walter does in this book is document the ways in which Canadian punk began and continued to evolve from the 1970s until the present, told through the voices of those who experienced it firsthand.

While a number of the bands featured in the book have been written about in other works, most notably Perfect Youth by Sam Sutherland, Treat Me Like Dirt by Liz Worth, I, Shithead by Joe Keithley, and even Walter’s own autobiographical works (Mosquitoes & Whiskey, I Was A Punk Before You Were A Punk, I’m On The Guest List, So Fuck You) and his other music biographies (Personality Crisis, Dayglo Abortions, SNFU, The Real McKenzies), nothing in Misfits & Miscreants comes off as a retread. Instead, this book helps to compliment, supplement, and build off the aforementioned works, while also drawing in stories from and about other bands whose stories had never really been written about before.

That said, some of this book might come off as a series of unrelated stories from musicians whose names tend to appear as a footnote here or there. But to those who care about punk, Canadian punk, and Canadian punk history, this book is a fantastic read. If I had to pick one flaw, it would be that it might require that the reader is at least somewhat familiar with Canadian punk to help put some of these tales into context. However, if this is your first book on Canadian punk it works as a solid introduction to the country’s secret punk history, which will hopefully inspire you to pick up some of the other aforementioned books and help you discover some of the best bands you never knew existed.

Order the book here: http://punkbooks.com/mandm.html

D.O.A. Interview – November 8 2014

So I’ve been kind of sitting on this for a while, and I figured it was about time that I released this interview I did with Joe “Shithead” Keithley from D.O.A.

I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but someone at the radio station that I co-host a show at, Rebel Time Radio at 100.3 fm (soon to become 102.7fm) managed to get an interview with Joe before their show at Cork Hall in downtown Kitchener in November 2014. Somebody involved in the process decided that I should be the one to interview him, since I was the person most familiar with the band’s history.

So I get an e-mail telling me that in two weeks I’m supposed to interview the leader and only original member of one of my all-time favourite bands since I was 15 yeas old. I somehow manage to scrape together some questions that I hope Joe hasn’t been asked before, or at least in a while, or ever before, and somehow manage to make it through an interview with one of my all-time punk rock heroes without shitting my pants.

So here’s the complete, unedited interview I did with Joe “Shithead” Keithley of the legendary Canadian hardcore punk rock band D.O.A.

———————————————–

D.O.A. – November 8, 2014. Cork Hall. Kitchener, Ontario.

Me: I’m here with Joe Keithley from D.O.A. at Cork Hall in Downtown Kitchener. So, how’s the tour going so far?

Joe: It’s good. I mean we’ve only been out for like a week so it’s not much, pretty easy. We had a pretty great time up in Vankleek Hill, played the Oktoberfest up there with the same people that made the Beau’s D.O.A. beer, the Hardcore 8.1 malt liquor.

Me: D.O.A.’s been a band for over 35 years now, probably longer than most of the people here have been alive. You’ve probably seen punk culture change quite a bit since back in its early days. Anything that really sticks out?

Joe: I mean really, when you think about it, the music can remain similar but it’s the times that change around it. We’re in a different era than we were back in the late 70s, early 80s. I mean really, to me the big difference is now, and this is not a knock on punk rock, but that punk rock is now a genre of music, like how rockabilly or jazz or country is. Back then, punk was a cultural phenomenon that people were afraid of. ‘Cause they thought it was this revolutionary thing that was trying to tear down society. And a lot of people that got involved in it thought “yeah that’s what it is, that’s why we like it”, type of thing. So I think that’s really the biggest aspect. Now this is not to say that you can’t still do good things to change society in a positive way using the DIY ethic of punk rock, there are people doing it. It just doesn’t have the same cultural effect that it previously had.

Me: Like now when you can buy Ramones shirts at the HMV in the mall.

Joe: Yeah, it’s become a commodity that’s been marketed, where it was not a commodity before. And it was really small, and the size of the audience was tiny.

Me: You’ve had sort of a rotating lineup since you began back in the day. Has that affected song writing at all? Or has it been each person adding what they have to the lineup and affecting the overall sound of the band?

Joe: Well it doesn’t really affect the song writing, since I’ve written most of the songs. But it would change the approach, you know, ‘cause every drummer’s different, every bass player or guitar player’s different. And you know some people would have their forte at certain things and not be quite as strong at other things. To me, it doesn’t change the song but it might really change the approach that you’d take with recording something, that’s really where the difference would be. I mean, if you’ve got a guy with a totally dynamic kick drum right foot, you’re maybe going to emphasize that more than a guy who’s a little bit simpler with that. Like if you’ve got a slower song you’re going to want a similar thing with the kick drum patters, the kind of stuff like that. To me it really comes down to demos. You do a demo and you listen to it and go “ok, that’s a good song with a poor performance”, or “that’s a mediocre song with a great performance”, and think “can the mediocre song become a good song?” Probably not. So that pares it down to whatever your choice of songs are. If you’re going to write an album, you really should be writing a minimum of fourteen songs, maybe twenty-two. And some of them won’t make it. And that’s where if you have someone to help out producing it can really help with that. It doesn’t have to be a big-time guy, just somebody with some experience and an ear for music can make a real difference in making a good album. And that’s really what I’m really interested in is making good albums, which I feel is really a lost art these days. We’re really to back in the 50s where music, and I’m talking about all types of music now, like electronic, hip hop, pop, rock, country. Back to the 50s everything was really single-driven, whereas in the 60s, 70s, 80s, you’d try and write a good album. You didn’t succeed every time, but that would be the goal of an artist, I think.

Me: Back in 2013 you ran for a nomination for the NDP candidate for an upcoming BC provincial election. You also ran as a Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2001. So, what’s it like transitioning between electoral politics and the sort of punk-style street politics, and what do you see as the relationship between the two?

Joe: Well, I mean, the transition’s obviously different because you’re like, well I mean recently when I was campaigning I wasn’t wearing a leather jacket, I was wearing a suit and my hair was combed.

Me: Just getting a completely different reaction from people you were running into?

Joe: Well yeah, I mean, some people would go “wow. What the hell was Joe Shithead doing knocking at my door wearing a suit?” But there was quite a bit of publicity in Vancouver about it, so when I did knock on people’s doors they weren’t that surprised. They were mostly surprised that a politician, or would-be politician, actually bothered to knock on their door and ask them what they thought. And that was my whole big thing. Couple of really big points when I was running, and I’m probably going to run again in 2017, try and get people democratically involved, like in a grassroots manner, so they have more at stake and get involved more than voting once every 4 years. ‘Cause I think is what disenfranchises people and makes them feel unheard. The other ones are education, that’s a big thing. I think post-secondary education should be basically close to free or at least drastically reduced in costs, for everybody. So you don’t end up with a wildly huge bill at the end of their post-secondary education. I mean they can do it in France and we’re just as rich as France. And then the third thing is listening to people, and if you don’t listen to people then you probably don’t deserve their vote.

Ok, now that’s a long way around what you asked, but the point of that is with D.O.A., I’m a cultural politician, so to speak, and I’m trying to do things from the outside. So trying to get elected and being part of forming a government, ‘cause obviously that’s the goal, you’re not just trying to get elected and be part of the opposition, you’re trying to win the whole beanbag, then trying to exert influence in there. For example, there’s a really old movie called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart plays him, and both parties hate him because he actually says what he believes in and he actually tells the truth. So that’d the approach I would take. The big difference is really, I wouldn’t be playing guitar and singing, but still talking about important issues. And of course you’d end up talking about really mundane issues too, so that’s sort of the downside to.

Dan: Politics can’t always be fun.

Joe: No, I did it a lot of times and it’s miserable. You just get criticized, doesn’t matter what you do. You get sadistically picked apart by the public and the media, and made to look like an idiot. So it depends on how good you are at defending yourself.

Me: Well I mean the same thing happens in music, unfortunately.

Joe: Well yeah, you can put out a record or put on a show, and it could be pure shit or the greatest thing you’ve ever saw.

Me: So, a couple years ago you did a tour of China.

Joe: Yeah, we did actually two now, one in ’09 and one about four months ago.

Me: I found that interesting, because that’s something you don’t really hear a whole lot of; punk in China.

Joe: No, I think in ’09 we were the first political punk band to go there, right? In both cases we submitted a few songs and lyrics that they wanted to hear; otherwise they’d block you from coming into the country.

Me: The Great Firewall of China…

Joe: Yeah, it’s true. When you’re there, if you go look at a (web)site it could be open and all of a sudden it’ll be closed down. Or you can’t open them at all. Like even some foreign sites like, for example I’ll go look up ESPN, ‘cause I’m a sports fan, so I’m over in China and I want to see what’s going on in hockey or whatever. Sometimes that’d close ‘cause part of the content on ESPN may have some not-that-connected, but partly connected political commentary that might say something about China. So that’d be enough to shut it down.

So we got past the censor board, and mainly because we don’t have any songs about Tibet or the Falun Gong, which if you talk about them, you’ll never get into the country at all. Two really touchy subjects. And now if you wrote a song about Hong Kong or Tiananmen Square, you probably wouldn’t get in either.

It was great though, wonderful place in a lot of ways. Incredible. Never seen anything like it, we’re going to go back next year.

Me: I was kind of curious to see how China would have compared to those tours you did of Warsaw Pact countries in the mid-80s.

Joe: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It was really similar to going to Eastern Europe in 1985. It was not just a different culture but a different political system which was way different from ours, in both politics. It’s basically a police state, when you think about it. But I found in both cases, the bands that you’d meet would find ways to express themselves and be critical of what’s going on in the government, but they couldn’t be overt and say something like “Fucked Up Ronnie”, but they’d have to find a more sneaky way of saying it, and all of that makes it more subversive in a lot of ways.

It’s pretty interesting, what’s happened in the past five years that the rock music scene has totally taken off. The first time, some people kind of knew a few songs, this time they went fucking nuts. I mean, you think about that culture, they didn’t grow up listening to rock music, watching rock videos, they didn’t have turntables, didn’t have CD players, cassette players, or whatever new or old technology. And we were trying to get CDs around the first time we went, our tour guide said most people get their music off their phones. That’s the only form of listening to music, other than traditional Chinese music. Now they’ve got bands all over the place, and big music scenes. We’ve just signed a new band for Sudden Death Records called Subs, from Bejing. It’s kind of an experimental punk rock new wave, a little psychadellia thrown in there, and the record’s coming out in November. It’s really good, it’s not crazy punk rock, but it’s really good. I saw them in ’09 and I saw them again this time at a big festival we played at with them, and they’re great live. They were going to come in November, but their drummer just broke his foot so that’s off ‘til April.

Me: So you’re on tour right now supporting a new live album, ‘Welcome to Chinatown’, and you also released a live DVD last year ‘To Hell and Back’, as well as you’ve put out tonnes of live recordings over the years and DVDs which feature a lot of live material. It seems like you put a lot of emphasis on live recordings, more than a lot of other bands I can think of, and I was wondering of there was any reason or tactic behind that.

Joe: No, not really. Well, with one thing, we started the live album in 2011 and we finished it in early 2013, there was a really big gap and two different drummers on the album. Really, I thought I was going to win that nomination so if I got elected I didn’t think D.O.A. would be playing, so I thought we should wrap it up with a really good live album. And of course I was defeated, but why not promote the live album. And we used not exactly the same, but about half of the songs you hear on the live album are part of the live DVD. The live album is just three nights at the Rickshaw in Vancouver, and the live DVD is over six different nights between Vancouver and Alberta. We didn’t want to make it exactly the same.

Me: You mentioned at the beginning, along with the live album you’ve also got your organic D.O.A. Hardcore 8.1 ale. How exactly did that come about? Did you have the beer company being like “so, we’ve got this 8% beer and we need a name for it,” or did you kind of bug them and say “hey we had Hardcore ’81, how about Hardcore 8.1?”

Joe: No, well it’s a funny thing, I phoned up Steve who’s the head of the brewery, ‘cause he’s friends with some of the punk rock brewing guys I know in Vancouver, and I said “would you be interested in doing a D.O.A. beer?” and they were big D.O.A. fans so they went “yeah, that sounds great”. So not much happened over a couple months and they sat around and sort of kicked it around and they came up with the Hardcore 8.1. It’s only on tap here tonight, but this is like a bit of a test run, if it goes good they’ll make it again in the spring and then hopefully it’ll end up in the LCBO. One of the cool things, the beer’s really good, but the bottles come in a paper bag, so it’s like the old punk rock days. Not so much in Canada but in the States outside every show, you’d be drinking malt liquor in a bag to save money and get a little fucked up before going into the show, right? This is the old punk rock tradition from the 80s.

Me: Oh, we still do that here.

Joe: Yeah, ok. So you’ve got the paper bag with the album cover printed on it. So if it does make it to the LCBO it’ll stick out like nothing you’ve ever seen. And they just throw it in the bag and scrunch it up and that’s how it’s packaged.

Me: I really hope that turns out.

Joe: I hope so too, yeah. I few up to Vankleek a few weeks ago to try it out, and I was amazed how good it was, and I did a tour of the brewery and it turns out most of the brewery are punk rockers, so that’s a perfect fit.

Me: So lastly, I was on the Sudden Death Records site and you’ve got a world tour planned next year and a new album coming out.

Joe: Yeah, I just started showing the guys the news songs and we’ve barely worked our way through five, but we’re doing a bunch of stuff through the fall. We should have it all rehearsed by the end of December and then starting recording January, so the new record should be out late March. And then we’re probably back out here, we’re doing lots of US stuff, going back to Asia, going to Europe I think in June or July.

We just went to Europe in the summertime and played nine countries there, but I think this time we’re going to go mostly to the South, like Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Greece, stuff like that. We haven’t been there very much, so we thought it would be cool.

Me: It just seems like you never stop going, you’re either on tour or making an album or running for an election.

Joe: Yeah, I guess I’m a bit of a nut. I mean, I like working. My dad had the worst temperament, didn’t like music at all, hated me being a drummer when I was a kid, but I guess I learned my work ethic from him, just a regular working glass guy. Almost like in music right now you’ve got to work at a bunch of different things or a bunch of different bands to try and get by.

Me: Oh yeah, nobody really makes a whole lot of money off of records anymore.

Joe: Yeah, you have to tour and sell t-shirts and all that. Records are really low-paying, like one step above promo almost. Unless you’re in some huge band that’s still selling, but even big bands… Hey look at a big band like U2, their record was so shitty that they couldn’t even give it away!

Me: With all these countries you’ve been to in Europe, China, all over the place, is there anywhere you haven’t been to yet that you’re really itching to get to?

Joe: You know, all these opportunities will come up and you just take them one at a time. I don’t have a bucket list of “oh we’ve got to get there” or something like that. Last year when we went to China we had offers to go to Vietnam, Mongolia, Nepal and Thailand. But all of a sudden the trip, which was supposed to be sixteen days, became like a month. You know, when you’re traveling you chew up a lot of days with travel time. So some of those places looked really good, but I thought I don’t really want to go to Nepal unless I’ve got at least at least three weeks to hike around. Otherwise it’s just like getting there one day, getting in a cab from the airport, going to probably the grubbiest section of town where the punk rock club is, staying in a hotel, and catching a cab to the airport the next day. I mean, you get a little sense of the culture but not much, not as much as you’d really like to. China was fine though, because we got to go to a lot of different places.

Me: Alright, cool. It’s been great talking to you. Can’t wait to try that beer, and looking forward to that set tonight!

Joe: Yeah, same here. We’re on at 10:30, so let’s go see how the bands are doing!

Godzilla Stomps Again

Tonight I had the opportunity to see a movie I’d been waiting for since I heard it was going into production: Shin Godzilla/Godzilla Resurgence/Shin Gojira! This is the first Toho produced Godzilla movie since the 2005 Godzilla: Final Wars and first Godzilla movie since the 2014 Legendary film.

As much as I enjoyed the Legendary film, to my own surprise, it wasn’t Toho and therefore not a “real” Godzilla movie. But I have to give it credit for the respect that it had for the Toho films and did a pretty solid job at doing its own thing, including coming up with some pretty interesting monsters for Godzilla to fight. So when I heard that Toho was getting a new Godzilla production underway I was completely on board. What also made me excited was finding out that the new film would be getting a limited theatrical run in North America, which hasn’t happened since Godzilla 2000. A lucky 10-year-old me was somehow able to convince my Mom to take me to see it and because of that it’s still one of my favourites in the series.
I’ve been a massive Godzilla fan almost as far back as I remember, so I have absolutely no doubts that my love for the Big G affects my opinion on the new one. That said, it’s not perfect by any means, but I’ll start with the things I enjoyed about it.

Now, this is a solo Godzilla movie. In my opinion these are some of the less interesting movies throughout the various series, with the exception of the 1954 original masterpiece. Though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the 1985 solo movie, largely in part because it just haven’t been available in North America for decades and even then it was heavily edited. Luckily the original cut was just released in North America so I’ll probably be watching that soon.

That being said, this movie takes a surprisingly original approach to a solo Godzilla movie, which I really appreciated. Prior to seeing the movie I’d heard that Godzilla goes through a series of metamorphoses before becoming the monster we all know and love. And at this point I really have to hand it to the people behind the marketing for the movie because they gave absolutely no clues as to what he’d look like aside from that pretty terrifying final form.

The movie also had a much more serious and realistic tone than we’ve seen in a Godzilla movie in a pretty long time. A pretty serious chunk of the Godzilla city-stomping action is shot from ground level with the audience seeing the destruction from the point of view of the people who it’s actually happening to. They did this well in the original, as well as in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack, and it was cool to see them revisiting this way of showing the destruction and chaos caused by Godzilla. We also get a lot of scenes of the politicians and military commanders trying to make sense of the situation and figure out what to do in a more practical (less hokey sci-fi) way than we’re used to seeing in Godzilla movies. But more on that later….

For me personally, one of the things I enjoyed the absolute most was how it expanded on the Godzilla origin story. Since 1954 Godzilla has been a representation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, an unstoppable force of nature that the world (Japan) needs to learn how to deal with, a saviour of the humanity, and an antihero who protects the earth because it’s his turf but at the expense of people. This is probably the first movie in years that uses Godzilla as a metaphor for something new. In addition to Japan’s post-WWII nuclear anxiety this Godzilla can clearly be read as a metaphor for the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as well as the failure of bureaucracy in dealing with urgent disasters. Oh yeah, this movie also spends just so much time bashing the USA, in so many ways.

And here’s where I think the movie kind of falls apart, in my personal opinion. I said earlier that I enjoyed the way that the movie shows scenes of politicians and military commanders try and make sense of the situation they’re in. Yeah, these scenes take up FAR too much of the movie. Just way, way too much. I don’t have a personal copy of the movie so I can’t really do the math on it, but it felt like at least 70% of the movie was board meetings, military meetings, scientists in meetings, political walk-and-talk meetings; just so many meetings. And so much of it felt like political drama written by someone who has no idea how to write political drama. To be fair, I appreciated a certain amount of the board room politics side to the story, but it was horribly overdone.

There were also an awful lot of characters, almost all of them entirely one-dimensional, and so many of them completely unnecessary and largely forgettable. One of the things that appeals so much to me about some of my favourite Godzilla movies are the human characters, since they’re the ones you experience the movie with. But with this one they’re just, kind of there.

Another major complaint I have with this movie has to do with its portrayal of Godzilla. He’s both completely overpowered and underpowered at the same time. One scene in particular has him as one of the most apocalyptically overpowered kaiju I’ve ever seen, and then he’s defeated in a sort of goofy, though somewhat creative way. And that’s another problem I had with the movie. It tries to be incredibly serious, but it has all these goofy moments that seem so out of place. When it comes to these kinds of movies I feel like they only work when they commit to one end of the extreme, goofy and aware of it, or dead serious. This one tries to blend goofy and dead serious and I personally think it suffers for it. And while we’re talking about tone, I think it’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie as poorly paced as this one. It has scenes that drag on for what seems like forever, and ones that seem to blast by far too quick. And unfortunately the scenes that go by in a hurry were the ones I really enjoyed.

And finally, the last major problem I had with this movie was how it ended. As much as I appreciated the lengths this movie went to do an original, modern take on Godzilla, the ending felt like a cheap retread. It was, without exaggeration, a slightly modded cheap retread of the end of Godzilla vs. Destroyah, minus Godzilla’s son or any of the cool shit that went on before that. I don’t even know what else to say about it without outright saying what the final plan was.

So yeah, those were my thoughts on the new Godzilla movie, whichever title you choose to refer to it by. There was a lot that I liked, and a whole lot that I didn’t like. At almost a full two hours, I feel like you could edit it down to a really solid hour and it wouldn’t feel like it was missing anything. To diehard Godzilla fans, there will be enough in there that you’ll really enjoy. But to newcomers in the series, it’s going to be very slow, very dry, and a little goofy for your tastes.

R.I.P. NoMeansNo

Well it looks like one of my all-time favourite bands has decided to call it quits after 37 years. Without hesitation I’d definitely consider NoMeansNo one of the best Canadian bands of all time. Between Rob and John Wright’s amazing bass and drum playing, their brutally intelligent, yet cheeky lyrics, and sheer creativity, they’re one of the few bands out there who changed how I think about music. 
I can still vaguely remember being at a show at the Sweatlodge house in about 2007/2008 and Sam Gaudet (I think, though I might be wrong) telling me “I have a record for you. It’s weird. You’ll like it.” The record in question turned out to be Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed, NoMeansNo’s third album. 

I remember listening to it for the first time and not really understanding what I was hearing, but finding it appealing on some strange level. I quickly tracked down their albums All Roads Lead To Ausfahrt and Wrong and was completely hooked. 

To make things even better, their joke band Hanson Brothers is probably one of the best joke bands in punk history, both in their composure and songwriting.

I listened to, examined, studied their albums, and tried to learn as much as I could from them. I can fully credit Rob Wright for just about every bass line I’ve ever written, and their music was the best kind of intellectual fuel for nearly every paper I wrote during my time at U Waterloo. 

As sad as I am to hear that they’ve called this one off, I hope the best for them and whatever they’re working on now. At least I have that Compressorhead album John’s been talking up to look forward to!

NoFX – The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories

Just finished reading NOFX – The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories tonight. Can’t say I’ve ever been a huge fan of NOFX, I think they had maybe 4 or 5 albums I really enjoyed, plus a few songs here and there that I could get into, but this book really was one hell of a read.

Starting in the early 80s Los Angeles hardcore scene and detailing some of the horrific violence that a lot of us now like to ignore about that scene, to dodging, joining, and escaping street gangs, to hardships on the road as an unestablished band.

A lot of the stories in this book are completely hilarious, and some of them are some of the most terrifying, disgusting, gnarly shit since I read Al Jourgensen of Ministry’s autobiography a few summers ago (there is absolutely no better anti-hard drug PSA than stories from people who have survived that shit).

If you like music biographies, have an open sense of humour, and a strong stomach, this book is probably right up your alley.

MDC: Memoir of a Damaged Civilization

It seems like everybody who’s a fan of music has a small handful of bands that completely define various genres or subgenres to them. For me, MDC is the band that completely epitomized political hardcore punk, alongside bands like D.O.A., Crass, Subhumans (both the Canadian and British ones.), and Jello Biafra’s various projects. Like a tonne of other bands, I first discovered the band while I was shopping at one of my favourite record stores in town, Orange Monkey Music. I was 15 and was at the shop at least a couple times a week, spending what little hard-earned cash I had on learning as much as I could about punk rock.
One day, flipping through the bins of CDs (this was right before vinyl came back in a big way) I came across a copy of the Millions of Dead Cops/More Dead Cops compilation album, combining their debut album with an early singles and EPs collection.

Over the years I’ve built a pretty solid mental punk rock encyclopedia and a pretty decent record/CD collection to match, but to this day there hasn’t been an album that’s thrilled, intimidated, and scared me like that one. Every single track on that album is pure fucking political-as-fuck hardcore gold. Short, fast, lout, and right to the fucking point. I mean, you can’t really get more direct than “John Wayne Was a Nazi”, can you? Sticking the song “America’s So Straight” right in the middle of “Dead Cops” was one of the most spectacular production decisions on a political punk record I’ve ever come across. Songs like “Greedy & Pathetic” and “Multi-Death Corporations” are some of the best, fastest, angriest punk songs I’ve ever heard. Meanwhile, “Corporate Deathburger” and “Chicken Squack” were what prompted me to consider that maybe eating animals might be something to disagree with (I went vegetarian about 2 years after buying this album, vegan about 3 years after that), and the song “I Remember” as well as the album’s artwork really prompt me to think about my position in society as a straight white dude who’d had mostly positive interactions with the police so far in my life. So it would be a bit of an understatement to say this band has had a bit of an impact on me.

Some of their later albums might have been kind of lacking; Smoke Signals is kind of all over the place and not in a good way, and there isn’t much that I find too memorable about Metal Devil Cokes, but records like Millions of Damn Christians, Shades of Brown, Magnus Dominus Corpus, and their split with The Restarts, Mobocracy are all fucking stellar political hardcore.Which is why I was super excited to discover that their singer/lyricist Dave Dictor had just released a memoir, titled MDC: Memoir of a Damaged Civilization, published by Manic D Press in San Francisco.

It became pretty apparent from the beginning of the book that this was less of an autobiography or band history than a collection of stories that really stand out for Dave Dictor throughout his life and career, which I was somewhat surprised by. Considering how boldly political of a band MDC is I expected the book be at least 40% anti-capitalist/anti-police/pro-queer rants. Instead what we get are the kind of stories you’d tell to your friends over pints or to help pass the time on a long drive. It has a kind of “you know who I am and what I’m about so let’s cut that shit. Here, let me tell you about the time the dog I was looking after saved me from getting beaten by Nazi skinheads” feel to it.

For fans of the band, I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re into hardcore left wing political punk and don’t know this band, where the fuck have you been? Get over to my place, we’ll have a beer (if that’s your thing) and crank their records until the neighbours complain, then I’ll loan you my copy of the book.

Goose Watch ’15

I’ve been studying at the University of Waterloo for a bunch of years now and with all of the regular stress that comes with comes with student life there’s something extra that this school has to strike fear into the hearts of those who attend it.

Canadian geese.

While these creatures might look kind of goofy, what with their weird long necks and general overgrown duck shape, they are some of the most belligerent, hostile, and dangerous animals that roam free among the squirrels and pigeons.

And they’re also something that the University of Waterloo is well known for. They’re something of an unofficial mascot, a campus surprise that you need to see to believe. While they’re relatively peaceful and not overly confrontational for most of the year, springtime is nesting season and nesting season is when the evil brewing within the Canadian goose reaches its critical levels and is released in indiscriminate bursts aimed towards whoever happens to be unlucky enough to be there. Type in “Canadian goose” into a Google Images search and you’ll see this in the related searches:

A few years ago the Weather Network had an April Fools prank news story about a group of geese that take over the Davis Center and hold a student hostage in the library and while it’s kind of goofy, it’s actually pretty believable if you’ve had a bad experience with these beasts.

I’ve been at the school since 2009 and have been directly attacked once, seen dozens of attacks on other students, and been hissed and hocked at by these territorial beasts more times than I can count. I’ve seen people chased, bitten, kicked, body-slammed, and slapped with their wings, which can cause enough force to injure a person. A few years ago a family of geese set up nest in the courtyard of the Student Life Center and spent seemingly the entire spring hissing at students through the glass as they tried to study and eat inside. That spring, it was also impossible to use the door next to the nest, because doing so would ensure an attack. It’s incredibly fitting that the Victoria B.C. “puck rock” band The Hanson Brothers chose to replace the eagle in their parody Ramones crest with a Canadian goose, because they’re basically nature’s hockey goons.

One of my friends recently told me about a website that keeps track of locations of Canadian goose nests and even provides safe routes between buildings that circumvent any recorded goose nest. How I didn’t find out about this earlier is beyond me. It’s called Goose Watch, and while some people joke about the school’s overuse of the term “Innovation,” this is one useful, innovative tool for getting around campus while avoiding goose attacks.

While Canadian geese are pretty confrontational in general, if you step anywhere near one of their nests they will come at you, and they’ll want blood. Goose Watch is something that anybody who spends any time on campus at all should be aware of if they’re at all concerned with their own personal safety. Then, after the spring ends we can all wear our “I Survived Nesting Season” t-shirts with pride, knowing full well the hell we’ll have to go through next year.

This is the only t-shirt from my school that I own