No Luck Club steals CFUR’s show

By Kathleen De Vere

CFUR shows usually turn out to be a
‘who’s who’ microcosm of the UNBC
crowd, where you have the perennial crowd
favorites who show up, make the evening,
and generally start the party when they
arrive (the CFUR crew, certain well known
student politicians)... and then you have the
assorted scum and detritus, who generally
show up early with some lame excuse that
they’re reviewing the show (newspaper
losers.) :

But sometimes people go for the music,
and that was something that the No Luck
Club show had plenty of, even though it
faced some stiff competition from other
exciting acts that night.

Even competing with the Rez Semj-
Formal, and a gospel revival across the
street, by the end of the night, CFUR sold*
almost all the tickets to the show.

The evening opened with local Prince
George hip hop group Versus, who did a
nice job of warming up the crowd with a
fairly generic, but good rapping type per-
formance.

After they finished their set, we were
treated to a very cool impromptu beatbox
set by some audience members, which, I
can say with utmost authority, was even
better than ‘Havin’ a Roni’ by Vanilla Ice.

During all this, there was a slight prob-
lem with getting appropriate volume out of
the sound system, despite the heroic efforts
of Eric the sound guy to affect an outcome

_ to the contrary.

The problem didn’t stem from anyone’s
incompetence, but from the fact that the
sound system was held together in parts
with solder, yarn, and prayers to ancient
and terrible acoustics gods.

This didn’t stop a great operation from
DJ Weasel and Kain Lee, who came all the
way from Edmonton to grace us with their
presence. Weasel played a mix of drum

and bass ‘electronic music’ with the hip hop —

stylings of Kain Lee over top. Although the
drum ‘n bass got people moving, the best
part of the show was Kain Lee’s opening
comments, which included such comedic
gems as: “My names Kain Lee. Lee
because that’s my middle name, and Kain
from the bible because he killed his brother
and so did I when I was 15.” (awkward
silence from crowd) “Ha Ha, just kidding
folks.” ;

Although the best was, “I’ve got some
good news for you all, Let’s hear it for
Weasel, who’s just gotten over a really bad
2 year meth addiction!” I fucking love terri-
ble black humor,

Anyhow, the music that they played was
also very decent, and there was a sizable
contingent of people shaking their booty
out on the dance floor.

After Weasel and Kain Lec had finished
they fixed the sound, and No Luck Club
was able to petform at top club shaking vol-
ume.

The sound problems weren’t actually
that bad in retrospect, since the volume was
fine near the stage and quiet cnough in the
back to allow for mingling, drinking and
conversation. Overall, the technical end
held up very well.

So finally, No Luck Club hit the stage.

No Luck Club, (for those of you who didn’t
look at a single poster that littered the
school for weeks before their arrival) are a
Vancouver duo, with Matt Chan on the
turntables and Trevor Chan on Mac laptop
and midi keyboard. Most people were sur-
prised by their fluid transitions and scratch-
ing skills, but most of all by their blend of
dance beats, scratching, found sound and
jazz licks. Well, I was. The evening so far
had been a very hip hop oriented affair,
and I found the change to more straight up
electronic music to be refreshing, like a cold

40 oz of OE.

almost the entire
crowd squeezed onto
the dance floor to
Shake their asses in a
manner that was

almost, but not quite,
in time with the beat.

For one of the only shows they’ve ever
played outside of their native Vancouver,
No Luck Club got a very warm reception -
almost the entire crowd squeezed onto the
dance floor to shake their asses in a manner
that was almost, but not quite, in time with
the beat.

Poor dancing skills aside, everyone had a
fantastic time while the dynamic duo
worked their dance music magic, and one
impressed concert goer confided it me, “I
haven’t shaken my booty like this since
well... ever!” Then scurried back to the
dance floor to take in more of the show.

The Chan brothers played a nice selec-
tion of cuts from their album Happiness
(buy it now, they’re on Dan _ the
Automator’s label) and some heavy energy
tracks to keep the crowd going. A personal
favourite was the way they ‘covered’ Body
Movin’ by the Beastie Boys and Teenage
Wasteland by the Who. Such crowd-pleas-
ing favorites kept many people on their toes
to see what the Chan brothers would do
next. They played for over two hours, and
by the time their set began to wind down
the crowd was practically begging for an
encore. Alas, they were almost unprepared
for the reception they got in our fair town,
as they couldn’t fulfill a request for their
stellar album track Beatnik Communism,
on account of they hadn’t prepared it, since
they’ve never gotten a bonafide request for
a song at one of their shows before.

Nevertheless, No Luck Club acquiesced
to the crowds request, playing one last song
before they announced that they’d' actually
run out of stuff to play, since they’d never
played for that long at a live show before.

Of course, many, many people rushed to
the stage to buy CDs, get autographs, and
congratulate the Chan Brothers on their
incredible show, myself includéd.

The final verdict: if you weren’t there,
you missed out. The crewd had a great
time, and by the huge grin on their faces by
the end of the night, so did No Luck Club.