Vive Le Chaos!

Vancouver has earned itself the widely-recognized and somewhat well-deserved moniker of "No Fun City". It's also more or less a fact that punk, as in the social movement spawned in the 70s, is dead. Accurate statements both, yes, but I'm telling you... so far in 2007 I've been having a serious facefull of fun at punk shows in Vancouver.

New faces like The China Creeps, The Hoovers, and Ovary Action, along with vets like The Excessives, have put on a string of shows that have been giving Vancouver's punk music scene a serious shot in the arm. The Cobalt... Pub 340... The Alf House... Video In Studios... Antisocial... The Balmoral... punk rock chaos is indeed on the move. Any doubts? Just ask the staff of The Lamplighter how their St. Patrick's Day was.

Sure, punk as a movement had already been dead for some time when the snowboard rock explosion nailed its coffin shut in the mid 90s... and Blink 182, Sum 41, and their ilk have been spraying sugar-tinged urine on the tombstone ever since... but good punk music still exists, and goddamn I love a good punk show. I'm rarely more content than when standing in the middle of churning mass of flying bodies with empty beer cans sailing overhead.

Photo courtesy of fictures.