A horse of many colours, awash with the showering lights of others. These things have all been seen beneath the skies of Whistler B.C and on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. How can something be in two places at one time? Well, it wasn't. It was the same guy, C.R. Avery, doin' his thing on two different nights in two different locations.
First delight was a night at Joe's Cafe on Commercial Drive. Picture old gentlemen behind a lunch counter. Big steaming machines, and soup to nuts. Beer in cans. Black velvet prints of matadors from Portugal. Pool tables with table clothes. I'm here to see a show called "Some Birds Walk For The Hell Of It". Parallel to Joe's, and connected through the door in the wall, is the extra room now enlisted as a theatre. It is here that I laughed and cried, felt big and small, felt all and nothing, and nothing at all. I was taken on a journey through pornographic nunneries and city streets paved in rhyme. A pornographic landscape of codpieces and Jelly Rolls. Poetry. Free poetry. Black and white landscape. Crows.
In between the start and the finish, the audience was shown all manner of fantastic songs and rhythms. Dance and movement. Flesh incisions. I received reprieve to my eyes with many appropriate moving pictures displayed on a large screen behind the luxurious stage setting of plywood fantasy. The subject as subject.
I searched the floor for my scattered emotions after seeing a sacrificial effigy of Sinead O'Connor burned in a flame of oxygen and sunlight. All the while he juggled snakes while playing harmonica.
What I witnessed was entertainment. Cabaret. Burlesque. Show biz baby. This is a caravan of must-sees and credit must be given where credit is due: audio/visuals, Blair Bou-skil; burlesque dancers, Melody Mangler and Violet Femme; and the raconteur entrepreneur himself, C.R. Avery.
The curious may satisfy themselves on the interweb @ http://youtu.be/zugHtu0A4k4
Sent & Delivered
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It is said one might be so lucky as to see seven colours at once as you drive out of town on the sea to sky highway. In casual conversation some days earlier, I had revealed my history of auto racing in Monaco and France. As a result, I had been asked to drive part of the C.R Avery caravan as it pushed north. We descended to our destination on the shores of "The Point" on Alta Lake; a charming and warm lodge filled with local inhabitants of the same disposition.
This night was more straight-up witch doctory than anything. Voodoo Hoodoo. Snake oil y'all. Real deal snake oil with active ingredients guaranteed to make your joints jingle and your toes tingle.
CR molded clay pots on stage and then served berries & cream in them. The hungry ate greedily as he waved a harmonica revolver around. We were served boogie shoe stew. Fresh tunes from old refrigerators and bottomless cups of rhymes. The crowd got up, the dance floor got blisters, the people got high.
Once again, the total package of entertainment. Joy, Bliss, sorrow. "You know it, street poet obscene, ridin' in the back of a yellow limousine." What good people, what good times, what a classy and greased band from East Van. The horde barely escaped as the beams crashed to the floor and the moon blew the sky off the mountain. Infact, I clearly heard 'em say as they were leaving "Not a better dollar was spent!"
Noah Walker, gtr; Michael Simpson, dr; Kathleen Patricia Nisbit, vn; Catherine Anne Shirley, b, tpt.
- Rich
* All photos from "The Point" copyright 2015 by Timothy J. Smith, Whistler, BC (altalake@gmail.com)
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