When it comes to listing off renowned Vancouver bands through the decades, groups like Trooper, Skinny Puppy, the New Pornographers, Be Good Tanyas, or D.O.A. might spring to mind. The band that might not is the Evaporators. That’s a shame, because the Evaporators will always be on my list as one of the greatest groups to ever hail from our Terminal City. What might be more immediately recognizable to you is the name of the Evaporators’ lead singer: Nardwuar the Human Serviette.

Over the past several decades, Nardwuar has not only become one of Vancouver’s most unique citizens, but truly a Canadian treasure, mostly because of his incredible stockpile of highly researched and wildly entertaining video interviews with everyone from Snoop Dogg to Mikhail Gorbachev. On a Canadian level, his (mostly successful) attempts to get Canadian political leaders to play a ridiculous ‘60s party game called the “Hip Flip” is always amazing, and surprisingly humanizing.

But back to the Evaporators: Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, marks the band’s 30th anniversary. It was on that night, three decades ago in the dusty gymnasium of Hillside Secondary School in West Vancouver, that Nardwuar and his band mates took to the stage for the first time, at Variety Night (a yearly talent revue hosted by our English teacher). The Evaporators performed three cover songs: “Shot Down” by the Sonics, as well as “Goo Goo Muck” and “Human Fly” by the Cramps.

I remember the night well, because I was in the audience. The Evaporators blew my nerdy teenage mind, and were the primary reason why I formed my own band a year later. To me, the Evaporators were the coolest of the cool, mixing ‘60s garage rock with ‘80s surf-punk to maximum effect. Nardwuar was the manic frontman. Back in ‘86 he rocked a brush cut, looking nothing like his signature tam o’ shanter-atop-the-Prince Valiant-haircut he’s famous for now.

For years, the Evaporators were essentially the underappreciated house band at all of Nardwuar’s legendary all-ages shows all over Vancouver. In 1992, they finally released a record: a punk-fuelled seven-inch EP entitled Welcome To My Castle. Their first full-length album wouldn’t arrive until their tenth anniversary in 1996: United Empire Loyalists, a vinyl LP that highlights Nardwuar’s obsessive love of Canadian history, coming complete with a massive foldout sleeve. They really started rolling after that, releasing I Gotta Rash in 1998 (a split LP with Nardwuar’s other bizarre band Thee Goblins), Ripple Rock in 2004, and Gassy Jack and Other Tales in 2007 (arguably their best, a salute to Gastown founder Gassy Jack Deighton). The songs on many of the records reveal a glance into the mind of Nardwuar: “Addicted To Cheese”, “I Feel Like A Fat Frustrated Fuck”, and “I Say That On Purpose To Bug You”, etc. The backing instrumentation by veterans of bands like the New Pornographers, Slow, and Destroyer is wicked.

Over their three intense decades, Nardwuar and the Evaporators have steadily evolved into absolute masters of live entertainment as well, often featuring in-set cameos by everyone from heavy metal legend Thor, to Scottish hit makers Franz Ferdinand, to New York party rocker Andrew WK. If you’ve ever seen an Evaporators show, say for instance in recent years at the Khatsahlano Festival, it probably took you hours to wipe the smile from your face.

Unfortunately, there won’t be a big celebration for the Evaporators’ 30th anniversary this month. Nardwuar is busy concentrating on something much more serious: recovering from a stroke he suffered in December, along with reparative heart surgery last month. The good news is he’s doing well, and promises new music from the Evaporators later in 2016. Long live Nardwuar, long live the Evaporators, and happy 30th anniversary, from a life-long fan. The Evaporators will always be on my list of Vancouver’s best-ever-bands.

Read more of Grant’s Vancouver Shakedown articles here.

“FUCK THE WOLF CULL”

The slogan was as unlikely as the location it was chanted in, over and over, by howling teens, as instructed by their on-stage leader of the pack. If you were at Miley Cyrus’s sold out Queen Elizabeth Theatre concert last month, or heard about it after the fact, you’ll likely be aware that the American pop star once again put BC’s controversial wolf cull centre stage, literally, by illuminating her backdrop with the hashtag #savebcwolves. Cyrus then filmed her audience shouting the afore-quoted phrase. She shared the video with her millions of followers from around the world.

What Cyrus may now wonder, as well as other wolf cull-opponents like Pacific Wild, a conservation group that has gathered over 200,000 signatures in opposition, is where to point the protest? Is it towards the ongoing five-year wolf cull in the South Peace and South Selkirk regions of BC, designed to protect rapidly dwindling woodland caribou populations? Last year’s cull wiped out 180 wolves, all brought down by sniper fire from helicopters, with many more wolves to drop this year and all the way through to 2020.

Or is it the new proposal (found by chance by a CBC producer in Kelowna) that was quietly rolled out by the provincial government in November? That proposal, if approved, recommends unlimited, year-round, completely open season, no bag limit hunting of wolves in the Peace Region. This is up from the previously allowed bag limit of three wolves per year per hunter. Why? The rationale in the proposal is as follows: “verbal reports from many stakeholders and First Nations…suggest that the wolf population in the Northeast appears to be very high, relative to levels in recent history. Increased wolf populations can have negative impacts on wild ungulates [deer, moose, elk, caribou] as well as cattle.”

If this all rings familiar to you, it’s because European settlers have been at war with the wolf ever since we set foot on this continent. Time and time again we blame the wolf for just about everything imaginable, yet time and time again critics and evidence will argue otherwise. In Alberta, the provincial government engaged in a wolf cull that began back in 2006, resulting in the destruction of nearly 1,000 wolves. The caribou population they were trying to save has stabilized, but not grown. It raises the ethical question of human beings playing God in nature: do we have the right to kill one species to save another, when the real reason woodland caribou populations are in a free fall is because of lack of habitat due to our encroachment through everything from highways to resorts to mining to deforestation to snowmobile trails?

Over time, it’s always remarkable how much changes, and how much remains the same. In other words, the BC wolf cull is misguided Canadian history repeating itself. In 1948, the federal government assigned a naturalist and soon-to-be author named Farley Mowat to the far north to investigate – surprise!– dwindling caribou populations, to see if the wolf was to blame. Mowat’s findings were negative, he was fired, and the wolf cull proceeded. I’ll leave you with Farley Mowat’s conclusions from his wolf study almost 70 years ago. It’s decidedly more eloquent than Cyrus’s 2015 howl, but just as biting:

“We have doomed the wolf not for what it is but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be: the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer—which is, in reality, not more than the reflected image of ourselves. We have made it the scapewolf for our own sins.”

Read more of Grant’s Vancouver Shakedown columns in the Westender here.

Where were you 25 years ago? Thanks to consistent reminders from my longtime pal, interviewer extraordinaire, and media impresario Nardwuar the Human Serviette, I happen to know exactly where I was in November 1990. My ramshackle garage band, the Smugglers, had landed the gig of our young lives, at an all-ages concert at UBC’s Student Union Ballroom. It was called “Whoa Dad!” and starred none other than Mudhoney, Seattle’s undisputed kings of grunge. Also on the bill was Nardwuar’s band, the Evaporators (who are still rocking, celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2016), and legendary Olympia indie band Beat Happening. It certainly helped our cause that Nardwuar was both our friend and the promoter of the concert.

Nardwuar had already organized several other smaller all-ages concerts around town, but he really hit the needle in the groove for “Whoa Dad!” Mudhoney was arguably at the apex of their career in November 1990, months after their hallmark debut self-titled album, and less than a year before the music world would be changed forever by fellow Emerald City rockers Nirvana.

All 1,000 $6-tickets sold out in advance, with heavy demand for more, so Nardwuar organized a security force of geek-rock volunteers from UBC’s CiTR Radio, who in retrospect could have passed for the cast of Ghost World. When the frothing hordes of first generation flannel-and-combat boots-clad grunge rockers arrived by city busload after busload, they easily shoved the twee security aside, over-stuffing the SUB Ballroom with raging teenage testosterone.

The Smugglers played first, taking to the stage in our matching outfits of dark navy pea jackets and rubber boots, with as much false confidence as we could muster, playing as loudly and as quickly as we could, with as much airborne energy we could possibly manage. From the very first note the crowd was miraculously with us, exploding into a frothing pit of bodies like an ocean riptide. When we gathered backstage after the set in sweat soaked puddles, we felt like rock stars.

Caroline Longford, the reviewer from Discorder magazine assigned to cover the gig, didn’t agree, not even bothering to mention our performance in her print review: “of the three acts worthy of mention, the talented Evaporators were, as usual, the most amusing. Beat Happening, contrary to what the names suggests, definitely wasn’t… [and] last but not least, Mudhoney. They were good.” Not even worthy of mention? Ouch.

What sadly is worthy of mention is my most haunting memory of “Whoa Dad!”: the moment immediately before Mudhoney took to the stage. Acting as MC, Nardwuar was attempting to introduce the band in a trivia-laced, lengthy and earnest intro, but was being drowned out by the booing crowd. Finally realizing the battle between audience and MC was lost, Nardwuar pulled a double reverse, shouting four words into the mic that I’ll never forget: “SPIT ON ME NOW!”

The surly audience didn’t hesitate. A sickening hailstorm of spit and phlegm rained down on our dear friend and promoter, who stood at the lip of the stage in a crucifix pose, his head craned back, his eyes shut tight and mouth agape. The stage lights grossly illuminated the bodily fluids arcing from the sinus cavities of the thousand-plus angry punks to Nardwuar. I was used to Nardwuar’s sudden bursts of reverse psychology, but had never seen it backfire to this disgusting magnitude.

When the gobs finally subsided, a seemingly nonplussed and thoroughly soggy Nardwuar lifted the mic to his mouth and shrieked “ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… from Seattle, Washington, USA… MUDHONEY!”

Mudhoney fittingly launched into “Here Comes Sickness”, and the SUB Ballroom detonated into pure grunge rock mayhem. So… where were you 25 years ago?