**********
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v4 #1 for 2 February 2001: No fooling.
OK, it's time to 'fess up. The curtain is dropping and we're leaving the stage. After April 2001, PopCanon will officially cease to be. What d'ya know? The rumors turned out to be true...
PopCanon has played more than 200 shows since Founder's Day, 17 June 1995, when Ned & Blue backed a startling and talented 12-string acoustic guitarist with the unlikely name of M. David Hornbuckle exactly one hour after seeing him play a solo set opening for the band Planet Ten. In those six years, we've played in clubs, bars, pubs, hellholes, pizza palaces, art museums, coffee shops, university debates, bookstores and festivals; we were the pit rock band for a production of Jesus X Supercar; we lived through an East Coast tour. We bought a van, fixed it up and drove it into the ground.
PopCanon won the Hogtown Music Award for Favorite Pop Band twice and won Favorite CD of the Year for d'art. We put out nearly 60 songs over four independent CDs; we made a video using Playmobil dolls. Our music and stage show delighted some, irritated others and confused the rest. We were NOT a ska band. We read a lot of books and wrote more songs than necessary about that fact; that some of them were actually good was funny.
We handmade and sold PopCanon tshirts, tights and underwear...but also sheet music, nightlights, spatulas and an illustrated calendar; we never sold very much of this stuff. We were once fed an amazing barbeque dinner in Montgomery AL; on a different trip, we got into a drunken screaming brawl--ah, the rock life. We were once paid $0 at a club in Washington DC.
We played with lots of amazing bands and made some real friends. We realized that playing rock music is both one of the silliest things you can do, and at the same time one of the purest and greatest ways you can change your own life and the lives of others; and that the one hour spent on stage in a night can be some of the best fun you will EVER have.
And we could hardly have done *any* of that without YOU--so thanks for listening all these years. It really means something to us. It helped us go on this long. Hell, six years is longer than lots of people stay married--imagine being married to 5 or 6 other self-centered egomaniacs who are *just like you* for that long! It gives me the fantods, as Tom Sawyer once said.
Anyroad, we're not dead yet: there are still three more shows to play before we have a Viking funeral and burn down the drum kit and backflip through a plateglass window wearing a cow teddy. We're playing a show a month for the next three months, all of them at our favorite venue, the Common Grounds Coffeehouse. And each of them will feature musicians with whom we've shared some of our favorite memories. All you people who have been meaning to see the band, this would be the time. First off:
SHOW TOMORROW!
Saturday 3 February -- Common Grounds Coffeehouse, Midtown Gainesville FL.
The full 6piece PopCanon. Opening act is Red Label Revolver, a great band fronted
by our pal Stuart McNair, formerly of our dearly-beloved sister band from Tuscaloosa,
Pain. (We played 14 shows with Pain since our first one together in July 1997.)
THE PENULTIMATE SHOW:
Friday 16 March -- Common Grounds Coffeehouse, Midtown Gainesville FL.
Ned's 35th birthday--how poignant. Opening act is Andy Wagner, formerly of Idiot
Savant Garde, the mathrockers from State College PA with whom we Toured
the East Coast last year. Andy has a track on Blinder's comp of Police covers
which will be out next month, just like us: our track is Synchronicity II. We
played with Blinder on the East Coast Tour, too. That's what Mr. Sting would
call 'synchronicity', no?
THE ULTIMATE SHOW:
Saturday 21 April (date subject to change) -- Common Grounds Coffeehouse, Midtown
Gainesville FL.
During the CG Anniversary Weekend. Opening act will be Squeaky, our favorite
band. We've played *20* shows with Squeaky since our first one together in May
1996, more than with any other band. We love them. Some of them have been IN
PopCanon from time to time. Pretty freaky, eh? Wheels within wheels, people.
More on this show as it develops. And it surely will.
So, there it is. We all knew this day would come. And it has. Excuse me, we've got something in our eye...
Love,
PopCanon
************
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v4 #2 for 15 March 2001: Penultimate show is nigh!
*NEXT-TO-LAST SHOW TOMORROW!!*
*Common Grounds Coffeehouse, Midtown Gainesville*
*PopCanon and Andy Wagner -- 11pm, Friday 16 March*
Well, here comes our next-to-last show. It's this Friday, at the Common Grounds Coffeehizzouse. We know there are many other popular and entertaining shows happening that night, so please budget your time wisely. Our dear friend Mr. Richard Andrew Wagner (late of Idiot Savant Garde with whom we toured the East Coast last year) will open for us and undoubtedly sit in on a few numbers. Next month both Andy and PC will appear on Blinder's Police comp, called 'Many Miles Away'--Andy does a version of 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' while we survey a 7/4 version of Synchronicity II' that we've been playing in concert lately.
Last month we played with our pal Stuart McNair's band Red Label Revolver, who did a spectacular and surprising cover of 'ArtHole'--thanks, Stu! And there's a very nice (but unpublished!) review of the show (the pen-penultimate show) written by Mr. J. Maggio--among other things, it claims that PC has 'rocked, riveted, annoyed and entertained us all for over six years' (which is certainly partially true)...and this is a fine sentence, too: 'After you have heard one of their songs, even the noisy 'bleep', 'boops' and 'swquas' stick in your head.'
Lots of giant, fun, impractical and dangerous ideas afloat for our FINAL SHOW EVER on 21 April--special guests, pyrotechnics, a pinata filled with rotting meats and cheeses, the return of Blue Lang and his $300 drumkit... Hopefully, more will come of these ideas than just the sitting around and saying 'Dude! Wouldn't it be awesome if...'
And hey, read some really,
really nice things people have written in to express their condolences over
our splitting up.
And finally--a larf, from last week's Onion
StatShot: TOP INSPIRATIONAL HYMNS
1. Lord, Thou Art Not Made Up
2. A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lakeland Heights Community Christian Church
3. Rinsing Out The Sheaves
4. Jesus Christ, Look At This Place
5. This Cross Was Built Ram Tough
6. Mary, Mary (Why Ya Buggin'?)
7. Gracious Lord On High, Toss Me A Peanut Brittle
Swquas!
PopCanon
************
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v4 #3 for 16 April 2001: The End of
an Earache!
A quite long one, but hey, we sent it way early so you have a week to read it,
and there won't be many more chances to enjoy our sparkling and self-obsessed
'wit'...
LAST SHOW
*EVER* THIS SATURDAY!!
*Common Grounds Coffeehouse, Midtown Gainesville*
*PopCanon, Squeaky, some surprises and special guests*
*10pm SHARP! Saturday 21 April*
LAST SHOW *EVER*, says Comic Book Guy
(Well, barring the inevitable--and no doubt greatly desired-- Reunion Shows
that are so popular nowadays with 'the kids'...) Tickets are on sale NOW at
the Common Grounds for a mere $4.99 -- and will shoot up to a full $5.00 day
of show. We're expecting a sellout, so don't complain later. And fer crissake
(happy easter!) don't dare come up to us *after* this Saturday and say 'Dude,
when's that last show? I swear I'm going to make it!' People: this is your LAST
CHANCE.
Yes, here it is, the time has come, the curtain is falling, we are To Be No More...kind of spooky, innit?
The show is going to be brilliant. We've prepared a comprehensive tour through
the madness that is PopCanon, our favorite band Squeaky is opening, and there
are
surprises afoot, too. Here's what Ludwig Wittgenstein said about the surprises
in store for you at this Final Show: 'When I went to [the Last PopCanon Show
on 21 April at The Common Grounds in Midtown Gainesville] I expected a surprise,
and there was no surprise for me, so, of course, I was surprised.' However,
Wittgenstein is lying--for starters, he would have had to travel forward in
time past the 21st, then backwards in time to today in order to report what
he saw, and that's unlikely. Plus, he's been dead for quite some time, though
he lives on in the PC song 'Make Reference'. Rest assured that there WILL be
some surprises at this Last Show, including but not limited to: a pinata filled
with rotting meats and cheeses; a GREAT many songs that you may ne'er hear again
'live'; drunken testimonials from various hopped-up and overly emotional fans;
the baring of flesh, human and/or other; and some sort of explosion, human and/or
other. Hmm, I guess none of those things will be surprising now that I've just
mentioned them...well, come to the show anyway and see what happens.
A review of our Penultimate
Show last month is posted at pc.com -- and like the previous unpublished
version of this review, it claims:
>After you have heard one of their songs, even the noisy 'bleep', 'boops'
and 'swquas' stick in your head.
Thanks to Jay Maggio for this dangerously good review...
On an unrelated note, our own David Hornbuckle--already well into his post-PC
grieving period with his new band Eurotoaster--has had several original literary
pieces accepted (but not yet posted) by the redoubtable McSweeney's
Internet Tendency, the online journal run by Dave Eggers, author of the
(honestly, aptly named) memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
(One of the pieces NOT accepted compiled some lists drawn from Ned's
PCTourDiary recounting our Spring Tour '00 -- including Things That This
Tour Has Revealed Alyson Hates, Number Of 'Adventure Golf' Places On Kings Hwy
in Myrtle Beach SC, and several Spooky Signs From God or the Pennsylvania Turnpike.)
Another plug, as if we are a band with a future: if you've somehow neglected to acquire the Compleat Recorded History of PopCanon on compact disc before now, we will have ALL of them available at this show, and each priced individually at $6.66! Of course we'll have the lovingly remastered The Kingdom of Idiot Rock v.2, and d'art (our masterwork), but we've also got a special 2CD package of Pricksongs & Descants (the revolutionary all-Bsides collection), and a special pairing of our never-before-on-CD 1996 debut cassette Some Antics by the Semantics paired with PC Covers It Up (our EP tribute to our favorite Florida bands) -- three(!) records on 2 CDs, all for the special and ridiculous upside-down price of $9.99! AND we'll also be selling Many Miles Away, a compilation of disrespectful Police covers put out by our pals in Blinder, which features our 7/4 version of 'Synchronicity II'.
[And now, a very special plea from our WebMonkey: To all other bands on this mailing list who have reciprocated and signed our various eddresses @popcanon.com up to your lists: please remove them ALL after 21 April. The website will remain up indefinitely, because we worked our collective ass off making it beautiful--plus we'll post pictures of the madness and mayhem of this Last Show--but the email forwarding aspect of our mail server will be suspended. It's nothing personal, we're just trying to tie up the loose ends. Thanks.]
Keep sending those condolences!
So--see you at the show Saturday. And try not to cry: we'll be doing enough of that for all of us. And don't forget to take your Disco Nap that evening. And bring earplugs. And money. And leftover easter candy. And love...
R.I.P. (Rocking It Postmortem)
PopCanon
************
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v4 #4 for 7 May 2001: Thank You, We Were PopCanon!
What--we're still sending out emails? Didn't we break up last month!?
Well, yes and yes. Saturday 21 April WAS our last official show as PopCanon. And it was spectacular in many, many ways. We've been recuperating for the last couple weeks, but this is just a love note to all of you who made it out (and there were a lot!), and especially to those who made it all the way to the end, at around 3.35am...
It was a pretty wild show. If you missed it--and people DID come in from locales as far-flung as Alabama, North Carolina, Tampa and Germany!--you missed something pretty special and fun. Some highlights: Squeaky's nutty set, capping off with a song (re)written to and for us; driving everyone out of the club in between sets to lay down four layers of bubblewrap for jumping upon; original drummer Blue Lang sitting in for some Semantics numbers, and being replaced mid-song by Robbie smashing a chair across his face, WWF-style; several other staged fights, guitar smashings, and one spooky real fight; BallZac from Alabama lighting his ball sac on fire during ArtHole; conspicuous public nudity, on and off stage; several nice and heartfelt testimonials to the band given onstage by audience members; and a wild and very unexpected runny whipped cream pie fight that ended the set rather abruptly and very messily at--no lie--3.35am Sunday morning. 'Twas a very, VERY long and bizarre night, and it was all captured for posterity by a documentary video crew--when that footage hits the film festival circuit sometime next year, we'll let you know. Seriously.
As a band we'd like to apologize for a few things: we had a number of technical glitches and horrific tuning problems throughout the first set, and that caused some irritating delays, but we want to thank you all for sticking with us and keeping everyone's spirits up. We've determined that part of the problem with staying in tune that night was due to the fact that the place was PACKED, and the heat and humidity was working against us. Having never played to such a large and vibrantly enthusiastic crowd in the Common Grounds before, we were unprepared. But things sorted themselves out by the second marathon set, which began at around 2am and rolled on for another 90 minutes or so... those of you who stuck around were very brave.
Now, some major-league thanks are due:
First off, thanks to our Brothers In Rock, the finest band in Gainesville: SQUEAKY.
Man, they put on a great show, and knocked us out with a special Awards Ceremony
during their set, in which we were all given special trophies celebrating our
years of rocking. PopCanon and Squeaky started around the same time in 1995
and this was our 21st show together. Every member of Squeaky has filled in and
played with PC at some point in the last six years--especially Steven, our official
backup drummer, he who lovingly bleached 'I (heart) PopCanon' into his scalp
that night (it's still there--pictures will be posted on the website soon).
As Hairy put it, 'When PopCanon plays, it's almost like seeing ourselves on
stage.' Squeaky, we love you.
And of course, happy anniversary to the Common Grounds Coffeehouse. We played our first show there as the trio Satanbuckle in that very room when it was called Cafe' Insomnia in June of 1995, and we've played there more than a dozen times, each more delightful than the last. Nigel, Naomi, Jay and the rest of the people there have always been supportive and indulgent of us, and we thank them deeply for that. Thanks to John, Eric, Danarchy and the whole CG crew for working overtime on this show.
Thanks to our special musical guests that night: Fred Buhl on violin; Neil Bliss (Alexei Sayle/TubaBoy) from California; Paul Miller on bass; Kenny Howes helping us pay tribute to the late, great Joey Ramone; Frog on trombone; and as always the boys from Squeaky, helping us sing their songs and smash our gear. Ned especially thanks Mr. Hairy Monkhorst (whose mom kicks ass) for undertaking the crucial role of his guitar tech that night.
Thanks are due to documentarian filmmaker and bon vivant Alex Fernandez, plus Manny and Jeff who worked the cameras for an astonishing five hours that night. And kudos to Michael Rotolante, our friend and producer, for recording audio for the obligatory three-record live set. Working title: Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends... Thanks also to Charlie McWhorter for creating a brilliant and freakish 4ft version of the Art sculpture from d'art, with tiny heads from all PC members past & present attached; and a shoutout to Z Systems for getting us the bubblewrap, and Spin Cycle for getting those beautiful tshirts done in time.
Finally, the biggest thanks to YOU, the fans, too numerous to mention or even count. We saw a lot of faces we haven't seen for months or years that night, and it was heartwarming. Thank you all so, so much for coming that night and for all those other nights (nearly 200 in the last six years)...we're really going to miss playing those songs for you. We love you all.
Other news:
We gave out 10 FunSaver cameras that night to the crowd to shoot wild things
they saw, and we've so far received eight of them back --if you've still got
one, by all means, contact us here at PC Headquarters so we can get it developed.
And if anyone took some digipix of their own at the show, we'd love to see those
as well.
A show report with pictures will be posted soon on our website, which will remain
up and active for the forseeable future. So expect a few more emails in the
future, too.
Also, in merch news: we had a few special PC Is Dead tshirts made up for the show, and we seem to have lost most of them in the chaos at the end of the night. If you know where any of them are, please tell us--people in the band didn't even get any. Copies of the Many Miles Away: disrespectful Police covers CD on which we appear will be available soon at Hyde & Zeke Records in town, and we have a few copies left ourselves. And we still have several copies of our special 2CD reissue of Some Antiques by the Semantics/PC Covers It Up and Pricksongs & Descants, our B-sides collection available here for $9.99 + $2 s&h. And if you order now, we'll throw in a spare copy of d'art or a tshirt or something--everything must go, etc. Send checks to PopCanon, POB 14872, Gainesville FL 32604.
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...
PopCanon
************ ************ ************ ************
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v5 #1 for 25 January 2002
Shred this email: A special supplemental PopCanon Rant & Rave from beyond
the 45 Grave ...
SHOW NEXT WEEK!
Saturday 2 February 2002 (02.02.02)
The ReUnification Show
PopCanon, Squeaky & Eurotoaster
at the Blowhole, Gainesville FL
I know, I know ... we called it The Last Show Ever, which seems pretty unambiguous: no more shows following This Show, the Last One Ever. I don't know what to tell you. But since we've also recently been told that Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, I guess that applies to claims about Last Shows and whatnot...
What I'm trying to say is: on 02.02.02, all 6 members of PopCanon will be in Gainesville for the first time since they weren't -- since Michael moved to California to burst the dot.com bubble, since Dave moved to New York to move to New York, since Alyson moved to Missouri to stick it to The Man -- and we thought it might be fun to get with our old pals in Squeaky and 'rock the fuckin' house and kick some ass' ... Though I swear this time it will be a mere hour of blistering and under-rehearsed ROCK and not a 4-hour Death Knell...
Now, some say this is just a sadly transparent ploy to rewrite history, and simply -- finally! -- finish the Marathon Set that was interrupted by the Blinding Pies of 3.35am ... and some say I grew a beard and moved to One Fish Lake ... but that's a damn lie! I've had this beard since I was a child ... Read more about this upcoming rocktrocity at http://web.popcanon.com/WhatsNew.html
************
This is the PopCanon Rant & Rave v5 #1.5 for 1 February 2002: Salt In The Wounds
The Second Supplemental PopCanon Rant & Rave reminder about the
SHOW TOMORROW!!
PopCanon, Squeaky & Eurotoaster
The ReUnification Show
The Blowhole (Purple Porpoise)
Saturday, 02.02.02 -- 10pm
As Hornbuckle says in a brief writeup in today's Scene Magazine, which calls PopCanon 'that beloved assemblage of quirky, melodic math-rockers': "What's the point of breaking up if you can't have a reunion? Come see us reopen all the old wounds and pour salt into them."
Hard to top that. Eurotoaster will kick off the show, Squeaky will set the joint on fire and then we'll try to collect the insurance on it, or something... If nothing else, there should be some laughs to be had, and some enthusiastic if underrehearsed rockingness.
Don't know when all 6 of us will ever be back in town again to have the next in a no-doubt-endless series of 'reunions', so why don't you drop on by? As Hairy M-M-M-Monkenstein asks: 'I mean, you love music, don't you?'
PopCanon
Now & Again
-----
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