March 10, 2004 . 7 A&E 12

Interview With Ox in the Modern World

Last summer a CD named Dust Bow! Revival was released by a man named Mark ‘Browning, he calls himself Ox. I had the sheer pleasure of conducted an inter- view with a man who’s music takes me back to the sound of the mid 90's and not of SimpleBlink41 of today!

1. Where were you born? And was’ Vancouver where you struck your first ‘record deal’?

Sudbury, Ontario. I suppose its Vancouver then- maximum music is the label that licensed ‘Dust Bowl Revival’ earlier this summer. Though, the record made its waves as an independent album- which is way more important to me than being on a label.

2. What inspired you to get into music?

I don’t think its a matter of inspiration really- its more like something that you just do and one day you look in the mirror and say, holy shit- I've got no job, no money, no apartment, no girl- friend... I must be a musician. Seriously, I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for a lifetime of easy money. My dad worked in radio and I grew up in the shadow of 70’s album oriented rock... I still like the doobie brothers tape (yes, TAPE) on those long Canadian cross-country tours.

3. What were you favorite bands while growing up and what band did you absolutely despise?

As a teenager, QUEEN, JOUR- NEY!! PINK FLOYD, BLACK SAB- BATH... I blame the drugs. But when I was a little gaffer, NEIL YOUNG, THE BAND, NITTY

GRITTY. DIRT BAND... JOHN CALE.

4. A lot of bands aim for a certain sound when they start out, what sound or genre were you aiming for?

‘Dust bowl revival’ wasn’t real- ly ‘starting out* fof me. but I thirik it’s the relevant beginning. I was shooting for. something broken and skeletal- like someone who knows how to play yngwie malm- steen but is just to hammered to play- more like, SONGS: OHIA, BONNY PRINCE BILLY, GIANT SAND- ‘anti-alt-americana’ if you like. My greatest inspiration is an English ‘neolithicist’ by the name of JULIAN COPE. I recommend ‘JEHOVAKILL’, “AUTOGED- DON’, and ‘PEGGY SUICIDE’. He’s refreshingly fucked but just so ‘on’ that you can’t miss it.

5. | noticed on you CD ‘Dust Bowl Revival’, you recruited people from other bands etc., Were these friends, acquain- tances or did you acquire them through another method?

Chon is the producer of RADI- OGRAM... and recommended to me by my good friend, and now co-manager Ken Beattie. Nathan Lawr of ROYAL CITY ended up living in Vancouver cause he chased a girl here... then broke up with her later... 1 know the ‘three gut records’ people and met him at one of their parties in Toronto. They’re good people- not industry label fags at all. I hate industry label fucking fags.

6. Here is a stereotypical question, what is the best

advice you have ever heard? Do you have any advice for those aspiring

musicians out there?

Brian may once said, ‘believe in yourself cause if you don’t how can you ever expect anyone else to’. If I ever become a ‘rock star’ he’ll be my mentor- he’s ‘hockey’ to every other full of shit rock star’s ‘basketball’. And he wears fucking clogs... and has for: 30 years.

7. Today the music indus- try is so commercialized that allot of bands get together for the sole pur- pose of profit. Would you say that the money in this business influenced you in your career goals?

Yes: if it makes moriey, chances are its shit. So do something else... and be nice to my mom. Really though, this business is crap- very few people are actually making any money. The people on TV and MTV don’t have as much money as you think they do- and the ones that do are the overwhelming minority. Besides, people who make MUSIC are in vans on the highway- eating peanut butter on stale bread... and hamburgers... and shitting at the husky... that’s why their music is s9 great.

8. What's the worst job

that you have ever had?

I shoveled out shit from sewage backed up basements one spring in Coniston, Ontario. I did it for 3 weeks and saved enough money to move to Vancouver.

9. Any complaints about society?

people ought to know who Loverboy is.

10. And finally, what’s you favorite beer?

At the risk of sounding like a snobby prick, Beamish. It’s from cork, my favorite city in Europe- and ain’t nothing like it when drawn from a tap right there in cork city.

Thank you kindly for your time. No problem Zac.

Last summer Ox released his CD ‘Dust Bowl Revival’ and after lis- tening to it I would have to say I

quite enjoyed it, and if you know me then you know I can be very critical of music. As I popped the CD into the player and listened to the first track, Transam, I could have sworn I was listening to REM, but as the CD progressed the style went from less REM to more Counting Crows. A truly awesome sound to those who enjoy that genre of music. Ox defiantly has potential for greatness, and will surely gouge his indelible scar in the music industry. Whether they like it or not.

-Zac Fudge

Rats:

by Robert Kotyk >> The Manitoban (U of Manitoba)

WINNIPEG (CUP) -- Most peo- ple don't like to talk about gross things.

For example, when you're sitting down over a couple of tuna sand- wiches and a container of cottage cheese with a co-worker for lunch, you will most likely rely upon such cafeteria-friendly topics as the weather, weekend plans or the rising cost of gas. For most, the prospect of having a conversation about rats while you're trying to choke down yesterday's stir-fry is downright unpleasant.

Reading about gross things, however, is another matter alto- gether. Who hasn't, for example, flipped stealthily through the Guinness Book of World Records, specifically to see the picture of the

our

guy with obscenely long finger-

nails? The pleasure in seeing or -

reading about something disgust- ing in a book is different because it creates a kind of private illicitness that can keep you turning the pages in search of the next disturb- ing thrill.

Michael Sullivan's new book, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, succeeds in this way, unsettling the reader with just the right amount of details about the animals that, according to Sullivan, no one wants to talk about.

"Rats command a_ perverse celebrity status," he writes, “nature's mobsters, flora ard fauna serial killers -- because of their species-destroying habits, and because of their disease-carrying

ability.”

For Sullivan, rats are the species with which humans share the most. "To know the rat," begins one chapter, "one has to know the rat's habitat, which is of course the city."

Using the rat as a springboard, then, Sullivan is able to pursue

everything from the history of

New York, to urban decay, to poverty, all the while infusing his narration with about as much hard information about rats as you'll ever get in one volume.

Peppered throughout all of these concerns, however, are spine-tin- gling rat stories. In one, a woman is attacked by a hungry pack of rats as she is walking to her car. In another, a group of men set a dog against a bunch of starving rats so they can bet on the winner. These stories, you find out, are the kind

t rela

that exterminators share when they talk shop, and they are exact- ly the kinds of stories that turn what is ostensibly a natural history into a royal page-turner.

For an extended period leading up to the publication of the book, Sullivan lived with rats. He became obsessed with observing their every move and would even spend hours in the alleys of New York.City. In the book, he talks to everyone he can think of who might be able to offer him some insight about rats: exterminators, other alley-dwellers, slumlords and scientists.

While spending time with Larry Adams, one of the city's most

respected exterminators, Sullivan °

writes; "If you hang around with Larry long enough, you realize that he sees the city in a way that

tives

most people don't -- in layers. . . . He sees the city that is on the maps and the city that was on the maps - - the city's past, the city of hidden speakeasies and ancient tunnels, the inklings of old streams and hills."

In many ways, for Sullivan, the history of rats in the city is the his- tory of New York itself, and in his book, he offers a new way of look- ing at-the animals that inhabit the exact same places that we do -- a neighbourly relationship that most people refuse to admit.

Overall, Rats is an obsessively researched and creepily sympa- thetic account - of rats and humankind's rocky connection to them. A good read, but not the kind of book you want to discuss over lunch.