Last night I went to the Juliette and the Licks show, mostly for an opportunity to see the warm-up act Tsar. I was definitely in the minority on that count. The small club was barely a quarter full when Tsar hit the stage and launched straight into "Calling All Destroyers" from their 2000 debut - which was a nice surprise - and then sequed into "Band - Girls - Money" without stopping for a breath.



The band sounded great, played with kilowatts of energy, and, mang, they really bear out Ian Hunter's assertion that "rock and roll's a loser's game." Singer Jeff Whalen is a strikingly bizarre looking critter, something like a bug-eyed muppet suffering from the debilitating effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. He made his entrance wearing a wrinkled, beer-stained American flag, and it was hard to decipher the meaning behind that gesture. I couldn't tell if he's being patriotic or unpatriotic, but he certainly made the Canuck crowd uneasy - and then won us over anyway. And that's one of the things that impressed me most about them - they're out there playing their tremendously unpopular, untrendy music with an almost heroic refusal to apologize for wanting to be rock stars. By the end of their short set they'd totally impressed me with their ability to bring the rock. The real thing, too - unlike the headliners.



After Tsar's set the place really filled up - way more Vancouverites came to see Juliette and the Licks than showed up for, say, the recent Drive-by Truckers gig. So today our city hides its collective head in shame. Juliette came out in a spandex yellow bodysock with white pointy boots and white kneepads. The outfit was so tight that my wife remarked "she's obviously had a Brazilian." And that, apparently, is the only appeal in regards to a Juliette and the Licks show. The band were a bunch of poseurs on loan from some LA modelling school, and they played the kind of generic punk that almost legitimizes Ashlee Simpson. Juliette has no pipes at all, but she has spent an awful lot of time in front of mirrors practicing her stage moves. I felt embarassed for her most of the time, but the crowd was singing along and totally into it. And the crowd, by the way, were mostlly a collegiate Hallowe'en version of punk; y'know, leather and studs and clean hair and stylish hats. We left after about 5 songs of Juliette's metallic Vaudeville, when it became apparent we weren't gonna see her get naked or meltdown.

Juliette is a fuckin' joke. Who the hell told her that she could sing?

Juliette played the pub at University of Saskatchewan last Thursday. I toyed with the idea of going just to see Mallory Knox jiggering away on that little stage. I was going to go and pay her to say: "Are you flirtin' with meeee" and then have her kick the shit out of me.

That Tsar shit sounds pretty awesome....

Yeah, I've never heard that Juliette Lewis thing, but I can't imagine that it would be any good.....Brazillian eh?

Juliette's body looks like that of a 12 year old boy's -- ie, no tits!

I like that she was wearing kneepads----nice touch.

Sort of a faux punk Rythm Nation.

Miss Lewis if you're nasty.

Yea, but, she wanted Richie to eat her pussy.

It's very hard to pull off spandex and knee pads.

[img][383:500]http://elwoodblues.com/images/large_photos/mick_jagger.jpg[/img]

You know, I love Juliette Lewis, dearly, but she should really go back to acting.No, dude, that was an hallucination. In the very next scene, you could see that she was still facing away from him...