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The love bloat >> For the romantically inclined, a bouquet of sonic Valentines by RUPERT BOTTENBERG If there's one day a year that heartstrings should sing louder than purse strings, it's St. Valentine's Day. Here's a variety of interesting possibilities for the sacred day, whether you're accounted for or on the prowl for someone new. Eerily enough, the festivities kick off on Friday the 13th, the night before St. Valentine's Day. Despite the ill omen, this might very well be the night to get lucky. That is, if you've got a passionate fixation on tall, bald guys with slightly unnerving stares. If Jake Brown sprang into your mind upon reading that last sentence, then you'll be happy to know that the man is back at the Cabaret with another whopper of a Yawper.
Beyond that, one can expect a variety of other bite-sized performances. Le Groupe de Poésie Moderne will continue their valiant struggle to make pretentiousness fun, while Concordia professor Rob Allen launches his new book, Napoleon's Retreat. The bands Child 44 and Low Brow will be plugging their amps in, Akin will provide a session of African drumming and Marc Rubinoff will display his remarkable talents as a ventriloquist. The real stars of the night, however, might prove to be the Rhythmic Missionaries, whom Brown credits with inspiring the whole shebang. "Their angle is to find the beauty in evil, rather than the opposite," the Yawpmeister explains. Citing Walt Whitman as a moral model, the Missionaries play tag team poetry off trumpet, violin and drums in what Brown calls "a very tight, beatnik-oriented fashion." Dig this, daddy-o: the Missionaries encapsulated the theme of the evening when they told Brown, "Let's just call out for love, and see who answers."
"We don't want to burst the bubble before it's blown," says Oldfield, but he does divulge a few details about Earth Central, the nonprofit organization for which the evening is gathering funds. "The main goal is a proposed eco-festival, on the site of Expo '67, in 1999. That's only 18 months away and we've still got a lot of work to do." You're off to a good start, Mr. Oldfield. The team has assembled a bizarre cast from across the artistic spectrum. Sam Shalabi will be present with his oud, Heather McLeod with her acoustic guitar. Some guy named Raf will be performing magic tricks while Diane Leyland does the live painting thing and local cartoonists perpetrate a comic jam. Oldfield's press release also promises "miscellaneous freaks." "I won't identify anyone specifically as a freak," he says, "unless of course they want me to." To this writer's mind, glass eaters, balloon sculptors, belly dancers and didgeridoo-tooting hippies sound pretty damn freaky, thank you very much. On a more sober note, a number of eco-activist groups will also be lurking about, distributing info on hemp paper. Drop by the kiosks of the CannaBusiness Coalition, QPIRG, Recyc Quebec or the Biodiesel people for indispensable news on sustainable development. Lovers of contemporary Jamaican sounds will be packing themselves into Metropolis the same night. Dancehall hero Beenie Man is coming to town, and he's got a special Valentine surprise in tow. No, not local last-minute addition Jah Cutta and Determination Band, though that's a bonus in itself. The clincher of the evening is no less than Lady Saw. Anyone with an aversion to violent, misogynist machismo will probably have soured on the last few years of dancehall, comparable to the slick ugliness of gangsta rap. The cavalry has arrived in the curvaceous form of Lady Saw, who's one-upping Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown in the process.
While she got her start singing in church, Lady Saw's music is anything but sexually repressed. The bold and unapologetic sexuality of her lyrics has some men breathing a sigh of relief, and plenty more out shopping for stopwatches, if you catch my drift. Not surprisingly, women outnumber the men at her shows. "When a woman like me can just walk up there and say the things that they'd love to say, they feel good about it. "On the other hand, people laugh about it, too, you notice? There's something funny in my music. I'm not out to discriminate, to point a finger from the stage." In terms of the tunes, Lady Saw's recipe for dancehall calls for a variety of herbs and spices, such as jazz, roots reggae, cabaret and, of all things, country and western. The bottom line, though, is giving the ladies what they want. "It pays to be aggressive," she says, "like Lady Saw." Dimestore romeos, take heed! See music listings for all showtimes
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Headlining what Brown has dubbed the Yawp! of Love are local eclectopoppers the Snitches, who have become to Valentine's what, say, American Devices are to Halloween. That is to say a perennial, and a highly appropriate one. As well, Brown has rounded up Coco Love Alcorn, a solo guitarist/singer from the West Coast who is apparently getting the record label types all hot and bothered with her "kind of laid-back funky jazz vibe," to quote Brown. She did sell a mountain of CDs at the recent Chantal Kreviazuk gig, so maybe they're on to something.
For many, their first love is the green Earth we live on, the ecosystem, the waterfowl, the coral reefs and the squirrels that chewed up your mom's magnolias last spring. While stopping short of supplying trees to hug, the folks at Xposure Productions have thrown together a doozy of a Valentine for the green scenesters. Technically speaking, organizer Eddie Oldfield calls the event, to take place Saturday night at the World Beat Center, "a multi-disciplinary, interactive benefit."
"I like what's going on today with the music," says her Sawness. "It's a different vibe... an uptempo vibe. What I like is that the females are holding their own, even mashing up the place more than the men." In this respect, Lady Saw is leading the pack.