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Pocket protector punks >>Playing the game by Line Three's rules by Rupert Bottenberg
Drawing a straight line between punk rock and gaming (role playing games, war games, card games) may seem like a stretch. But for Line Three, all three of whom work at the St. Denis street gamer's oasis Valet d'Coeur, the similarities are there. And not just in the social outcast status both subcultures have incurred. "There is a certain parallel," says Seliger, "in the sense that you have to use your head. A complicated game forces you to think in a different way from how you'd go about your daily life of walking the dog, going to the store, going to your job. It forces you to think strategically. "For me, a game is far more interesting if I have many options. In punk culture today, I find that's what's missing. People aren't thinking, 'What can I do with this?'" What Line Three have done with punk is push it into the realms of what might be call ed mathcore. The formula is to infuse the hostile energy of punk with an intellectually challenging complexity, pairing the results with lyrical ambiguity and abstraction. "I've always felt politically oriented songs sound preachy," remarks Seliger, explaining why Line Three prefer to let their clinically precise aggression speak for itself. But where Seliger sees gamers and punkers as happy bedfellows, Warren isn't so sure. "Punk is synonymous with rebellion. Gamers are not a particularly rebellious lot." As he sees it, the stereotype of the chubby social retard in the Spawn T-shirt holds plenty of water. Be that as it may, the gaming scene has bestowed some concrete benefits upon the band. Valet d'Coeur provides them with a safe, cost-free jam space. And friends at Dream Pod Nine, a Montreal-based game manufacturer, have graciously given Line Three access to their CD-Rom burner, allowing the band to produce their new CD EP, Four-track Mind, in affordable batches of a dozen at a time. "We made a lot of mistakes with our first tape," says Warren. "We won't make them again." That's good, because learning from one's mistakes is the key to a good strategy. Line Three play at the Polliwog finals at Café Campus Thursday, October 9, 7pm, $7
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Astute Montreal commuters may have noticed something missing from our city's metro system. Line Three's drummer Spencer Warren did, and christened the band accordingly. "Line three... where it goes, nobody knows," chuckles bassist Alex Seliger. Equally AWOL is guitarist Chris Weiler, whose absence speaks volumes about what makes Line Three tick. He blew off the band's first print interview in favour of a Magic card tournament.