It’s been a while since a culture-related or Vancouver-related post so I thought I’d muse a little about “1067″. 1067, prosaically named after its address on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, is an ultra-cool underground jazz venue that few know about even here in town. I personally got introduced to it rather randomly. When I was still quite new to Vancouver and largely ignorant of the music scene I found myself at Calhoun’s (another good local live jazz spot). I was talking to their house band’s drummer during a break between sets and he suggested I check out 1067 when I asked him to recommend other places around town for good music. After following his cryptic directions (see info on how to find it at the end of this post) a few days later, I made it to this mysterious little space.Photos courtesy of: Flickr, MySpace, Petterpang’s blog and a friend of mine. None are mine, but I’ve tried to link all to the sources.

When I got in from the random back alley door (see photos) and got up a set of stairs, I found a little jazz club that looked a lot like someone’s living room and served only cans of beer from a mini-fridge. The acoustics in this large room are quite good and the music has definitely kept me coming back. 1067 has some of the best jazz in town, especially if you are into its more modern and experimental forms. You can listen to some samples and see if you like it (MySpace). Cover is always $5 and a beer costs $4. Lately, they’ve been getting more organized and have a little Yahoo! Groups page which they use to keep people updated about the upcoming shows. It also seems more consistently open than before: there used to be times when the door would be inexplicably locked on Fridays or Saturdays. They even have a MySpace page with fan comments, photos and tunes played the club.

I get a really peaceful vibe at 1067 and the music has a tendency to put me in a very contemplative state. This is a great spot to while away the evening and you can combine it with other weekend outings – they usually start at 10 or 10:30 PM and play until 2 AM or so. Now that I’ve moved downtown, I would like to come here much more often.

Directions: coming soon

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[8 out of 10] [ For my other movie reviews, see the Film category of this blog or my IMDB vote history ] This is my mini-review of “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”, which I recently got from the library and thought I’d share with whoever is interested. I gave this movie an eight because it does a great job chronicling The Funk Brothers, a forgotten group of Detroit musicians that put together a hard-to-believe string of chart-topping hits from a small basement studio. In fact, the movie mentions that they created “more number-one records than The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined”. I personally love the Motown sound and was sadly ignorant of how big a contribution the musicians made to the music of Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson etc etc. It’s a no-brainer to wonder who provides the sound to go with those incredible vocals, but many have overlooked that aspect. Director Paul Justman is apt at guiding us through the group’s collective story and individual histories while splicing in some of the hits that made Motown such a juggernaut. Interestingly, this seems to have been his breakthrough as his previous docs were not noteworthy. There are musical cameos by Ben Harper and Chaka Khan (among others), who play some of the Funk Brothers’ biggest hits with the remaining members of the band.

As promised, I will slowly leak videos and photos that my friends and I took at Sasquatch a week ago (May 26-27, 2007). Here’s the first installment – my video of The Arcade Fire, now up on YouTube. They played a great set at Sasquatch – their sound was so polished that I was overheard saying that it was a lot like listening to a studio record. This is a video of them playing “The Well and the Lighthouse” from their new album, Neon Bible. You can also see it on Facebook by clicking HERE. There are also some cool videos of Arcade Fire at this festival uploaded by others to YouTube. Have a look at “No Cars Go”, “Rebellion” and “Intervention” (click on the thumbnails to view on YouTube):

[PHOTOS/VIDEOS to follow]

As promised, here is a breakdown of the recent festival roadtrip from Vancouver to The Gorge in Washington State. It was a great decision to head down to Sasquatch Music Festival. I love these kinds of things and who really needs an excuse to camp, tune in and have a few beers in an otherworldly setting?

Although my little carful was late getting there, we still caught Manu Chao, The Arcade Fire and Bjork at the main stage. The latter was yawn-tacular – my apologies if you’re into Bjork, but I just am not.

Already fueled by great vibes from his Vancouver show the night before [see posts below], we were a very receptive audience for Manu Chao’s brand of cool stoner fusion and upbeat pseudo-punk. The sun began to set and, when Manu asked Bobby Marley to ’sing something good to me’, it was a memorable moment.

The Arcade Fire totally stole the show. Apparently, one of their band members fell off the stage at one point, but I didn’t witness this. They sounded like a frickin’ record, but they were live. Unbelievable. There was even the tiniest dig at Jerry Falwell. I am now a gushing-schoolgirl-type fan of theirs and want their children. The pipe organ alone was worth the whole trip!

Bjork was largely boring (to me) and I headed with my crew back to our campsite … it was a little like bring Jim Morrison: we walked for (literally) two hours and people were strange and acid-laden strangers + pleaded us to take them home, but we little knew where our own was. At least one of them did and it was sad and funny in equal measure. The car/tent conglomerate was finally located, no thanks to the Gorge people and we slept.

I found another video clip from the Manu Chao concert I went to [my earlier video and clip can be found right here]. This one is from someone on YouTube. Unfortunately, they were a little further back – I was right up at the stage, but only caught the tail end of ‘Mala Vida’. Oh well … Enjoy!

Manu Chao recently played a great live show at the Commodore Ballroom here in Vancouver before heading down to The Gorge in Washington State for the Sasquatch Music Festival. I was practically front-row and was on hand for the Sasquatch craziness too … For now, here’s a little video from the Commodore concert (link on the right of this post). You can see a better version on Facebook if you have an account there.
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In the spirit of savouring what might be the last week of being unencumbered by work, I headed to Commercial Drive (that’s a cool neighborhood here in Vancouver) recently to watch some football, or soccer if you will.

The match was the big final of this Champions League season, with Liverpool FC again taking on AC Milan, as they had done only two years prior in Istanbul. This year, the game was played in Athens’ cool new Olympic Stadium and Milan was hoping to regain some cool points by making up for losing that last game despite being up 3-0. I was wearing my Milan jerseys one over top of the other, hoping for some of the same.

I chose Abruzzo Cappuccino Bar (1321 Commercial Drive) since it has the best atmosphere and always gets packed for big events in the football world. It did not disappoint – pretty much standing room only by the time the whistle blew for the start of the match. Other Rossoneri (Milan) fans were clearly on hand + a handful of Scousers. After nervously gobbling down some espresso and chinotto, I finally scored a seat at halftime as Milan went up 1-0 thanks to a lucky deflected free kick. Fillipo Inzaghi’s second goal for Milan was more skillful and seemed set to seal Liverpool’s fate. Of course, the game got its necessary dose of theatrics when Liverpool’s Kuyt pulled off a late header to bring the score within one. It was a nail-biter, but Milan thankfully came out on top.

Here are some thoughts I’d had during the game:

• I thought it very strange that Rafael Benitez (Liverpool’s manager) chose to field Jermaine Pennant and keep some of his offensive firepower safely mothballed on the bench. None of Peter Crouch, Craig Bellamy, or Robbie Fowler were brought on until only 15 minutes remained. By then, Crouch had little chance to contribute to any sort of meaningful comeback.
• Even stranger were Milan’s defensive tactics. The above-mentioned Jermaine Pennant had the run of what seemed like half the field, with nobody bothering to defend him. Milan’s Czech defender Jankulovski probably should have stayed on the bench or at least replaced by more experienced Kaladze or Cafu earlier than he was.
• Milan did not seem to want the trophy until quite late in the game and were lucky to come out on top. They were clearly outshot and outrun by Liverpool, who were unfortunate not to get many bounces their way.
• The game was played fairly cleanly and professionall, with very little overt diving and dirty physical tricks.

And some hypothetical “what-if”s:

• I have to wonder whether, if Milan still had the services of Jon Dahl Tomasson, Rui Costa, Hernan Crespo and Andriy Shevchenko (all gone since these teams last met in 2005), Liverpool would not have been buried much earlier on. Of course, the English club also no longer have Milan Baros and Djibril Cisse. Looking forward to next year, having the Brazilian Ronaldo back from injuries and [just maybe] Sheva back might put Milan clearly back on top as the odds-on Champions League favourite. Shevchenko is currently being speculated about as contemplating a return from Chelsea to AC Milan, where he had been far more successful. Interestingly, Milan stand to gain GBP 18 million on such a transaction – the rumoured price for him is 12 million, whereas Chelsea paid an amazing 30 million to secure him.
• If Jerzy Dudek was still Liverpool’s starting goalkeeper, he might have made the same astounding Oliver Kahn -like saves that gave them the trophy two years ago. He has been playing high-level football for over 10 years, whereas the younger Reina has far less experience in such important matches.

One of the coolest moments of the afternoon was the presence of a photographer on assignment from The Province (a big daily newspaper in Vancouver). He tried to capture the important moments of the game and the fans’ reactions. [UPDATE: I ended up in the sports section of The Province newspaper the next day - see my scan of the page above; you can also click through to a larger version].

There was also a fan there who was blind – he was intently listening to the game and asked me something to clarify the second goal. It’s only too bad that the TSN/ESPN commentary he got here in these Northern climes is quite weak. We could really use Sky Sports or ITV here.

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[Newspaper photo credit: Vancouver Province, taken by Jason Payne]
[Headline photo credit: Courtesy of marc_l'esperance on flickr]