Natalie Vermeer is sugar and spice and all things nice.

Not only is this multi-talented lady a member of Vancouver indie music sweethearts, The Good News, she’s also an elementary school teacher, seller of organic goods, and maker of piñatas for Paul Anthony’s Talent Time.

Sad Mag talked with this lovely woman over milkshakes about weird transit experiences, bailing friends out, and pouring her feelings into paper mache.

Sad Mag: Where are you from?

Natalie Vermeer: Chilliwack – where many good ones are from!

SM: Valley girls represent! When did you move to Vancouver?

NV: Summer of 2003.

SM: What’s your day job?

NV: I’m an ESL/Music/P.E. Teacher/Librarian at a primary school. Also, I package raw organic snacks. I’d like to start teaching piano again once I move my piano. Just putting that out there!

SM: A Chilliwack girl and a librarian – we are two peas in a pod! Tell me, how do you know Paul Anthony?

NV: A number of summers ago, he introduced my band, The Good News, at the Railway. He told some inappropriate jokes to the crowd and then he carried my keyboard for me. He’s been a lovely friend ever since.

SM: How did you start making piñatas for Talent Time?

NV: It was the night before the first Talent Time ever and Paul didn’t have a piñata! I couldn’t believe it. So I got right on making something. I had it by a heater and hairdryer all night to try get the layers dry in time. It wasn’t even sealed up by the time the show started! But at least it had money inside!

SM: What was the first piñata you made for Talent Time?

NV: Yeah, um, so because of time constraints, the first piñata was a blue ball. Mighty desperate – I mean, creative – I mean, practical!

SM: How do you decide what the piñata should be of that month?

NV: Lately there have been themes to the shows so that totally helps. For a while it just seemed like I could do anything, so I’d get suggestions from friends when needed. My friend Ben suggested a baby so I did that for the show the mini mariachis were on. When I went through a bit of a vegan baking obsession, I made a cupcake. When I felt I shouldn’t continue an on/off relationship, I made a dead horse head. This piñata-making thing has become a great outlet for me!

SM: What’s been your weirdest piñata experience?

NV: There’s the, ahem, one of the times Paul had to hold the piñata as it broke off the rope right away and then my friend Phil smashed Paul’s face rather than the piñata. I guess that’s not weird so much as painful. How about the fact that I was never asked any questions when I was on the bus, holding a piñata [that looked like a baby] in a blanket? I’ve gotten more strange looks about a keyboard stand!

SM: Have you ever gone on stage to break any of your own piñatas?

NV: No way. It’s hard enough to witness when they don’t smash within a nice span of time. I want my piñata to succeed, as in stay on the rope long enough, but I don’t want to be any more involved with it after it’s made!

SM: What do you like best about Talent Time?

NV: It’s great for short attention spans. I love the variety and quick pace. And the enthusiastic and eclectic crowd is amazing. I’ve run into Brittany whom I met in Japan four years ago and Kim who I played in a band with years ago… you never know who you are going to see at Talent Time – on stage or in the crowd!

You can see Natalie’s latest creation at the next Paul Anthony’s Talent Time on December 1st at the Biltmore. Also, you can listen to her band, The Good News, here.

Feature photograph by Evil Patrick Shannon.

Jasper Sloan Yip will steal your heart with his luscious folk melodies. The warm swoons of his music soar with a tinge of heartache. Jasper recently performed to an enraptured audience at Sad Mag Live at The Cultch.

When I first met Jasper, we were both working “joe jobs” at a local cafe. A gentle soul, Jasper was the only chef who didn’t make me cry at one point or another. Thankfully, we’ve both moved on and he has proven that he can do more than make a mean omelette.

This week, we had a quick chat about ditzy moments, favourite musicians, and more.

Sad Mag: Tell me how you got your start in music.

Jasper Sloan Yip: I started teaching myself guitar when I was sixteen and as I got better I began recording songs at home. After two ho-hum years at university I released my first album titled White Elephant.

SM: What other talents do you have?

JSY: I’m terrific at getting lost and have a real knack for forgetting things.

SM: You grew up in Vancouver, does it influence your song writing?

JSY: I took Vancouver for granted when I was growing up. Traveling really made me wake up and pay greater attention to my home. Overall, though, other cities have influenced my writing more than the place I came from.

SM: There’s a sense of pining in many of your songs – does that stem from all of your traveling?

JSY: A lot of the songs on the album are about loss and longing and that did come from spending so much time alone in foreign places. I spend a lot of time in my own head and I’m prone to wax nostalgic. Then I get cheesy. I have to always watch out for that.

SM: Who are the members of your band?

JSY: In order of appearance we have Mark on bass/banjo/lap steel/mandolin, Stephanie on violin, Graham on drums, and John on keys.

SM: Who are some of your favourite musicians?

JSY: My favorite Vancouverite is Erica Mah. Three songwriters I really admire are Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Zach Condon of Beirut, and David Bazaan.

SM: Seen any good shows lately?

JSY: Arcade Fire was amazing, the Black Keys were tasty. I saw the dudes play for two hours at Break Out West, they put on a really good old fashioned rock and roll show.

SM: What do you hope audiences will take away from your shows?

JSY: I want them to have as much fun as I have.

SM: Any upcoming performances?

JSY: We’re playing Rain City Chronicles at the WISE Hall on November 17th, and the Biltmore on November 22nd.

Check out Jasper & his amazing band at the above mentioned shows and here.

Feature photograph by Christine McAvoy.

The technological age is upon us.

Visionary Australian director Jessica Wilson’s visually sumptuous Dr. Egg and the Man with No Ear, written by Catherine Fargher from a concept they created together, offers a look into the not-too-distant future at a world of genetic mutation and cloning.

The piece offers a heightened, futuristic reality carefully contrasted by a simple story revolving around a man, his perpetual sadness stemming from losing an ear, and his heroic daughter who tries to intervene, for better or for worse.

Tania Bosak’s androgynous, impish Narrator (who also provides much of the sound design) points us toward the piece’s central moral dilemma, where, just as the story starts to take flight it so quickly ends.

Technology and craft are on display in all factions of the show: exquisite use of lighting, brilliant projections that work seamlessly with the action onstage, puppetry so staggeringly simple and impeccably performed you’d swear you’re watching a real being, perspective changes that redirect the way we take the story in.

For those who are familiar with The Cultch’s repertoire take a dash of Ronnie Burkett, a pinch of Catalyst Theatre, some of the humour of Midsummer and just a sprinkle of quality Brecht and you have the recipe for this Australian wonderland.

Dr. Egg and the Man with No Ear
The Cultch
Remaining Performances:
October 28-30 & November 2-6, 8:00 pm
October 30 & November 2, 2:00 pm

If you don’t remember him from his breakthrough film J’ai tué ma mere (I Killed My Mother) that won him more awards internationally than he has room for in his Montreal loft, you certainly will this time around. Quebecois prodigy, and Canada’s cutest hipster, 22-year-old Xavier Dolan back with his sophomore film Heartbeats.

Here we are introduced to forlorn Francis (Dolan) and his best friend Marie (Monia Chokri, Quebec’s Audrey Tautou) and how their dangerously dependent and interwoven friendship gets wrapped up in a love triangle.

Enter Nicolas (the steamy Niels Schneider), the Audrey Hepburn-loving, classic literature-referencing, blond Adonis with a hippy, happy-go-lucky chip on his shoulder whose smouldering, pouty sexiness draws them in. And you can’t blame them. Nico is irresistible and by showing them each equal attention, his overwhelming energy starts eroding the friendship.

Does this sound simplistic and trite? It’s neither. Dolan is an understated screenwriter and director and a real heartthrob onscreen. He is smugly cute and boy does he know it, but his heartbreakingly grounded performance is beautiful. Dolan is inherently watchable.

As Francis and Marie slowly hit rock bottom and their sullen emo selves shine through, Stephanie Anne Weber Biron’s cinematography takes over. Her jerky zooms and continous basking in slow motion makes the film into a twentysomething hipster dream.

Above all else, Heartbeats, which should be translated from its original French to Imaginary Loves, dissects how friendship is affected by competition, and how we create internal lives for people that simply aren’t there. With lines like “a high IQ is a vital counterpoint to brown eyes” and “cigarettes keep me alive until I die,” it will no doubt be added to the DVD collections of any young artist in the city who’s looking for a little love in all the wrong places.

As an out gay man living in Vancouver I’ve got it easy nowadays, more or less.

Compare our contemporary city to the plight of the 1960s New York City homosexual: homosexual acts are illegal (even between consenting adults), queer gathering spaces are shut down by the police , those who are caught there are arrested and their names, addresses and employers are published in the paper, media depictions mark homosexuality as illness, and many are forced into horrifying medical treatments in an attempt to “cure” them.

A lot has changed.

Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s haunting documentary Stonewall Uprising, based on a book by David Carter, sheds an unsettling eye-opening light on the 1969 Stonewall riots, known as the beginning of the queer rights movement.

In 1969 The Stonewall Inn was the gathering place within the East Village. Though it had seen raids before, one June evening police showed up with a vigour not previously seen and the queers inside decided enough was enough.

They resisted, and then fought back with words, with drag, and with violence, leading to the police being barricaded inside the Inn itself. It lasted hours, and then days and led to the formation of the first Gay Liberation Parade on June 28, 1970, which would usher in the Gay Pride movement.

There is little to no footage of the riots themselves and at the time, there was hardly any media attention from the mainstream press. Most of the footage in Stonewall Uprising is simply footage of the era or reconstructions of certain key events, but they are of little consequence.

The heart and soul of the film is felt through interviews with former Stonewall Inn patrons and uprising starters as well as New York politicians and police workers who offer up incredible the emotion, “There was no going back now. We’d discovered a power we didn’t even know we had”.

Yes, a lot has changed, but not as much as we’d like to think. Look at the massive mainstream media attention that five gay teen suicides have garnered in recent weeks. Look at the homophobic attack that occurred at the Stonewall only last week. In watching films like Stonewall Uprising we see what we, as a queer community, are capable of, and how much fight we still have in us.

Stonewall Uprising screened as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Music lovers have a complicated relationship with Richard Wagner. For some, his music is revolutionary. He is the inheritor of a German musical tradition that includes Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Alternatively, Wagner is an anti-semite.

To further complicate matters, Wagner’s music was adored by Hitler. Hitler made many trips to Bayreuth to pay tribute to the master and the Wagner family was an early supporter of Hitler.

Stephen Fry, the “me” of Wagner and Me, believes the former but must come to grips with the latter. This, in a nutshell, is the narrative of this documentary.

As a film, Wagner and Me is better suited to the television screen than the cinema screen. Like far too many documentaries, the filmmakers fail to consider the cinematic aspect of the film experience. One would think that a film about Wagner, intended for the big screen, would invoke the grandeur of Bayreuth.

More problematic, though, is Stephen Fry’s fanaticism towards Wagner. We listen to Fry go on about Wagner’s genius, but there is scant attention paid to the basis of this genius. Other than a fascinating scene describing the significance of the Tristan chord (the chord that structures and sustains Wagner’s opera “Tristan & Isolde”), there is little discussion of the music beyond superficial biographical details.

Granted, music is notoriously difficult to speak about, but a documentary about Wagner’s genius should, at the very least, contain a substantive discussion of the music so as to ground the claims of its narrator.

Wagner & Me
Part of the Vancouver International Film Festival
Empire Granville 7
Remaining screenings:
Monday Oct. 11, 3:45 pm
Wednesday Oct. 13, 2:50 pm

it

It is a great day! Our magazines are coming and we are getting the final preperation for Sad Mag Live done! We are so excited to see all our friends and our Sad Family this weekend. And it is Thanksgiving! Double Life BONUS!
Check out what the internet has to say about it:

Vancouver is Awesome

Vancouver Observer

Only Magazine

We can’t wait til the curtains open! See you Saturday night!

Tickets online or the Cultch Box Office 1895 Venables Street at 604-251-1363.

–Sad Mag Team

Luke Cyca and Devon Lougheed are a strange and wonderful combination. Individually, Cyca is a therapeutic protein molecule designer and electronics recycler and Lougheed is a doctoral candidate and comedian. Together, they are Beekeeper – an irreverent indie band breezing into Vancouver’s music scene.

Cyca, a prairie boy from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, began his musical career at home, singing with his father and sister. After a prototypical string of garage bands in high school, Cyca moved to Vancouver and bought a drum set. “I was in a band called The Kitchen, I played in a couple other projects, and I play with Piper Davis now. That brings us to Beekeeper,” says Cyca.

Lougheed followed a similar musical vein, always instilling his trademark cheekiness. While in his home province of Ontario, Lougheed was in Tomate Potate – a band known for their onstage martini consumption. “Fans started sending us martinis and it turned into this game of ‘How many martinis can these guys drink in a twenty minute period?’ Then one day the bassist, Nich, came up to me and said, ‘Just so you know, I don’t really like martinis,'” Lougheed smiles. “So that’s why I’ve got a bandmate now who likes martinis!”

Beekeeper melds high-energy beats with unconventional time signatures, appealing to both light-hearted listeners and music nerds. Lush earnest vocals are balanced with playful melodies. “It’s indie-rock made by reformed hard-core kids who are suckers for male/female harmonies and singalongs,” says Lougheed.

Cyca and Lougheed keep things interesting for themselves with constant experimentation. “Devon writes two new songs every week, so there’s no shortage of challenges,” Cyca explains. “An mp3 comes to my email box and it’s got the shittiest synth instruments playing drums – they’re not sequenced, just played live. I listen to it a few times, we jam on it and it changes a bit into a real song. And that’s how they’re made.”

The recording of Beekeeper’s first album, BE KEPT, was an adventure in itself. Recorded throughout Canada, from parties to bedrooms to studios, the resulting poshness of the tracks surprised the band. “We did everything wrong in terms of how you’re supposed to record,” says Cyca. “And then we dumped everything on Colin Stewart at Hive Studios,” laughs Lougheed. “He’s the godfather of the Beekeeper baby.”

Lougheed means this quite seriously. “Interviewing us about the album is like interviewing new parents about their first baby. I like everything about it! I even like when it poops!” Cyca nods in agreement, “Normally, after making an album, I’m totally sick of it, but this one I can actually listen to and enjoy still.”

BE KEPT follows the narrative of a man searching for something to keep. While Beekeeper’s core consists of Cyca and Lougheed, they often feature musical guests in their live performances and a variety of female vocalists, a violinist, and saxophone player were recruited to fill their sound on the album.

“I’m the most proud of Beekeeper,” says Lougheed. “My mom has been driving around with a copy and singing along, every once in a while she’ll call me and say things like, ‘What is this song about? I just like it so much! This is such a significant improvement!'”

Beekeeper’s album BE KEPT is available online and download cards will be available at SAD MAG LIVE this Saturday, October 9th!

Photographs by Tina Krueger-Kulic.