alisonboston.com

Ari Up and Paul Zasky of Dubblestandart on stage at the Bayou Bar

….plus MPG at Fisherman’s Wharf (keep reading….it’s there)

Austria’s Dubblestandart had an instant crowd of dancers last night at the ICA Folk Fest in Victoria. It was great to hear this band live and move to the rhythm. When Ari Up joined them on stage the mood changed, and so did the crowd. But by the time she did her long punk vs reggae song the crowd had changed over with a mostly new group of energetic dancers in front.

Robbie Ost at Dubblestandart’s keyboards and mixer. This guy rocks while he plays. Between his rocking, Paul’s running, the crowd’s jumping, the barge was rocking in the water. Yeah, after the concert, the hinge on the walkway joining the the barge to the dock had come loose. Doesn’t surprise me because those guys had the crowd energised..

I like those Dubblestandart guys. They are a cool, easy going bunch. No wonder the tour is called Dubblestandart vs Ari Up. The contrast between the band’s laid back, space-dub reggae and Ari Up’s in your face punk can be nothing but a ‘versus’ because the energy is so radically different resulting in a tension that certainly is ‘versus’ as opposed to ‘with’.

I’m also a fan of both musical genres: reggae and punk and would certainly enjoy a blend of the two. In fact last summer I heard a great band called Dubioza Kolektive who had successfully melded the two - resulting in a hard, driving, yet melodious and rhythmical sound with a strong, socio-political message. Hmmmmm

Alice in Wonderland

Ari pulled me on stage at the end of the night to do a poem backed up by the band. (No I didn’t get a photo, drats! and the DVD was finished by the time I got to the stage.) I did ‘Tribute to Ani’. It felt really good to perform this song for the capacity house (250) at the Bayou, with such a solid band supporting me. The rhythms were great and there were moments when it all came together even though we had never rehearsed and I had never practiced that poem to those rhythms (and in spite of Ari’s interruptions.)

When I was out and about today I got lots of great feedback on my lyrics and performance. Total strangers - both men and women, but mostly women - approached me and remarked on how well my performance fit with the band, and how powerful my words were.

Ari introduced me as ‘Alice in Wonderland’, hence the title of this post. It’s a nym I thought of using when I was younger. Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland was one of my favortites as a child, but I never wanted to adopt the ttle of the book as a nym. It’s too patently obvious a play on my name and imagination. Kind of the lazy person’s approach to finding a nickname for a poet and artist. Besides my name isn’t Alice, my name is Alison. So in earlier years, I sometimes played with the idea of calling myself ‘Alison Wonderland’ but decided that’s about as imaginative as Alice in Wonderland is original. I always came back to “Well, my name is Alison Boston so why not just use that. It’s a good name.”

Alison Amazed or simply A.Mazed

But with our trend to finding alternative stage names for people, I’ve wondered about adopting a nym, just to give me a touch of the magic that nym adoption gives people, like Ari-up aka Madussa.

At the beginning of the folk festival, I sat down one day at a table on the Bayou and started a conversation with a few people there. Playing with phrasing, I introduced myself saying: “I’m amazed,” and quickly took it on as a nym “I’m Amazed.” Sp if I have to have a stage name, I’d like to be Alison Amazed, or simply “A. Mazed,” rather than Alice in Wonderland, because although my imagination does give my life a wonderland feel, I am truly amazed by the world I live in and the people and various life forms that inhabit this planet.

Human behaviour, in particular, is one thing that never ceases to amaze me. For example: grown adults making scenes in public like spoiled children. Ahh such is life. We all have our emotionally charged moments on this planet.

Cause there’s no pic of me, I’ll give you another of Paul. Yeah, he does his running workout while he plays. Now I know exactly the kind of job I need to lose weight and keep it off once and for all.

Paul Zasky running high.
Only one way in, and no way out.

*(Do your own web search to learn why it’s MADussa and not MEDussa, and form your own opinion.)

And for those of you who have come this far, here’s a little movie for you to watch!
Fisherman’s Wharf