Sound Advice

by Inlander Staff & r & & r & Ride a Lorry to the Shoppe & r & Run Chico Run labels itself "tasteless art rock to hang in your parlour." We like it, even though we don't have parlours, because they spelled "parlour" with a "u." Like they do in England, which is where the queen lives. Queens are about as classy as it gets, kids, which, by our calculations, makes Run Chico Run a class act. We're also intrigued by their association with Belt of Vapor, who open the show. We've long since learned that if BOV is opening for someone, they'll at least be worth checking out. The checking out, in this case, happens Friday at the Shop.





Electric Fight Orchestra & r & Tracy + the Plastics were straight thrilling last week at Unified Groove Merchants. Utterly magnetic. Yes, it was only a half-hour long; yes, it was more talk than thrash; and yes, Tracy ("lesbian feminist video artist" Wynne Greenwood) basically just sat in a chair next to a screen that had images of herself projected on it (playing characters Nikki and Collette), holding a kind of three-way monologue. But ideas themselves are magnetic, friends. Dissent is electric, and Greenwood had the entire audience enthralled.


Hers is a feminism directed at the cultural vacuum of modern Cosmo culture. The ideas are radical, but the presentation is subtle. The art- installation feel and Greenwood's casual rapport with the audience was heady without pretense and stayed pointedly on message while managing an easy humor. We lowly pop scribes think even theater critic M. Bowen would have found this a brilliantly wrought piece.


Then, when the melodies did come (this is art punk, remember), in danceable, cascading bursts, it was like the Dionysian revelry after an Apollonian discourse. The commingling of emotion with rationality. Radicalism with rock 'n' roll. Hot shit, basically. We haven't had that much breathless, intellectual fun since college.