Afterword

One Year Later

Tilt Magazine Vol. 25, Autumn

Shell Shocked by Ama-Rock on Stage 9

Edmonton Folk Festival

Review by Ursula V

Rating: ???*!

This year’s annual Edmonton Folk Festival showcased some sounds never heard before. Stage 9’s two o’clock Sunday slot was filled by interloping balladeers who call themselves The Cadillac Couches, their gospel—a celebration of cacophony.

The sweaty sweet smell of ganja emanated from a small, unsuspecting crowd sprawled out on tarps, talking, cloud-sculpting, and waiting for the next band to hit Stage 9. Traditionally a stage for the lesser known artists, people gravitate to Stage 9 for that reason, to hear the next big thing.

Ten minutes late The Cadillac Couches stumbled on to the stage. Guitarist Annie Jones wore a forest green T-shirt with the slogan Anyone Can Make Art in block letters printed across her chest. Her skin colour almost matched her T-shirt; she had the look of someone who was deeply seasick. Wearing a zebra-strapped Gibson, she headed for stage left, as near the edge as possible—like she was plotting her escape route through the river valley. The lead singer and front woman, Isobella Sparks, strutted up to centrestage wearing a fuchsia-coloured boa over a leather bustier and pink hot pants. She sported ’50s cat-eye sunglasses and black Puss-in-Boots stilettos. With a permanent pout and her jet-black Cleopatra hairdo, she was a study in rock sirendom. A drummer completed this oddball trio. Wearing a black vinyl suit with a tomato in his lapel, Finn Hingley obscured himself behind an over-the-top drum kit that looked like a futuristic Lego space station with a galaxy of noise-making percussive components.

Jones started off their first song by tapping her foot on a wa-wa pedal, making a ’70s-style funky intro. Away they blasted with “Tumbleweeds,” one of their two original numbers. The rest of their set list was made up of barely recognizable cover versions of love angst songs. They massacred their way through Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” blasphemingly tortured the crowd with Nina Simone’s “To Love Somebody,” and peaked in badness, butchering The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” by fusing it with Roberta Flack’s “The First Time.” They managed to shred Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You” both times they played it. It was almost as appallingly bad as their version of “Wild Is the Wind.”

The Cadillac Couches jumbled lyrics, fused melodies, harmonized inappropriately, had no chordal riffs, did too many acrobatic leaps, high-fived way too much, and seemed wholly unapologetic. Initially, the crowd couldn’t believe what they were being subjected to. Some of the more rabid people spoke out:

“HEY—LEARN some chords!” heckled a guy wearing a Calgary Flames hockey shirt.

“Why don’t you take some MUSIC LESSONS! You guys suuuuck!” yelled a disgruntled muso.

“Gee whiz. C’mon, guys they’re just learning,” cried a middle-aged, good-citizen family man wearing a Tilley hat.

The heckling petered out as half the audience left. The tide turned and the remaining audience got on the Couches’ wavelength, feeling the strange noises in their hips and groins. They threw themselves into the anarchy, participating by screaming in nonsensical call and response. A lone pair of stripy boxer shorts hit the stage and triggered an infectious general underwear evacuation, during which Hingley managed to do a rain-stick solo for over three minutes. It was a moment topped by Sparks, who in a misguided flash tried to wrap her lips around a didgeridoo, mock fellating it. She emoted pure dominatrix—whenever she shimmied near the drummer, he percussed himself in the head.

Jones, clearly exhilarated, did a series of Pete Townsend leaps in the air. The Cadillac Couches couldn’t have looked any happier. Their frenzy was infectious—the crowd pogoed deliriously.

One fan jumped on stage right and did a series of perfect cartwheels before exiting stage left, uninjured. The crowed roared. A thin guy with a pencil moustache and lime green pants hoisted himself on stage and stood there ready to do something, but tragically lost his nerve, ran to the other side of the stage and jumped off, running into the distance.

After a modest fifteen-song atonal set with six repeats, The Cadillac Couches clasped hands and together yelled: “THANK YOU, EDMONTON!” Unbelievably, the crowd wanted more and insisted on encores! So they did it all over again: Patsy, Elvis . . .

The festival program blurb explained who these musical anarchists were. All this brouhaha was a deliberate effort by the Edmonton Folk Festival organizers to be non-elitist. As part of a new initiative, the organizers introduced a new music workshop: the Amateur Stage, to find new talent and to host a live karaoke band. The organizers chose The Cadillac Couches to host the jam because of their obvious musical hopelessness as well as an eloquent letter written by Finn Hingley telling of their universal plight: infinite enthusiasm, no talent. Hingley argued that people were tired of being spectators to the spectacle, they wanted to join in, to get off their asses and in front of a mike.

When asked what she thought about the necessity in art for quality control, Sparks said, “It’s completely naive to think like that. Our oeuvre is more performance art. Think DADA.”

Eventually, The Cadillac Couches took their bow—beaming at the grass on the way down and the big Alberta sky all the way back up.