Cryptozoologists/Five Alarm Funk
Cryptozoologists
Pond Life // Big Boat Records
The tour guide traverses the long corridor toward the awaiting patrons at Frank’s Emporium of Wonders and Spectacle. “A diamond for the club that fills the heart with darkness, and a spade to fill the grave with dirt to his navel!” He repeats over and over as he approaches the hordes of children and their parents who eagerly await entry on the other side of the stanchion. With 20-odd feet to go, he leaps with a single bound, and sails toward the patrons in lotus position, yawning a mouthful of gold teeth, and the children shriek with glee. He lands, quiet as a kitty, and a gust of air that smells of onions and stale cigarettes settles in with him. The noses of the patrons twitch at the offensive odour. But it is the guide who sniffs the loudest, casting a disapproving look upon the crowd from behind a furrowed brow. A breathless silence passes under his scrutinizing eyes, before they find their mark on an oblivious little cherub, sucking on a lollipop.
“What have we here?” He gasps, and cranes his neck down to the ruby lipped young darling, delicately licking her swirly lolly, little blonde curls parted perfectly in the middle of her small head. He clears his throat, and with a flourish, begins to speak “A vixen expressive/ in a corduroy jumper/ jolly with lolly and smiling with pleasure/ the essence of darling unrepressed adolescence/ but soon to be whacked, wicked vicious and wretched/ wrecked and wracked with putrescent pubescence/ pimples on nipples and throbbing erections/ Yes, P-U! Look at you, who now stand so vibrant dripping with dew like the fronds of a yew/ I gaze and lament that these days are few/ youth’s bountiful candy that you so dutifully lick from/ sticky, exploding in orange and rose/ will soon erode/ into nothing more than a stick form/ but on you will lick, convinced by the myth that you can still taste it….”
He slowly lowers himself to his knees in front of the little girl, and continues…
“Enjoy if for now/ my young ruby lipped darling/ you are still young, and you want to wander/ through wonders dawdling to lick from your… your…your stick/…: His fingers trace softly over the little ones cheek, lingering on the tip of her jaw, And, barely audibly, from the recesses of his big jaw and buried somewhere in the depths of his golf ball sized adam’s apple, he speaks to the little girl, in the voice of a primordial child, “You, I’ll call Feather.” (From this kneeling position he turns up his eyes to the mother/ gasps, and brings his eyes back to the daughter/ and rolling his eyes over the father/ he jabs to the air with a thumb and forefinger/ and with a sharp snap he brings them together/ exactly like he was rolling a booger/ he works up a vigorous lather/ then snaps them back open with a spark of blue static/ and then with a glare that would curl hair/ scrape the paint off the side of a barn/ with his thumb and forefinger in the shape of a gun/ raises his hand and points to mom/ brings the barrel to her cranium/ and says, with the voice ever cracked and ecstatic/ ‘You, I’ll call Leather.’”
With barely a flick of the wrist, he unclips the velvet rope from the stanchion, turns on his heels and saunters towards the door with the hanging funhouse mirror, flings it open, and the giddy families stream past him into the blue-lit Emporium.
- JD Ormond
Five Alarm Funk
Big Smoke // Independent
When your selecting something to listen to you usually choose something to fuel your mood. Maybe you need a “pick me up” as strong as your coffee on a Monday morning. If that be case, you need of serious dose of Big Smoke! I’m not talking about electric lettuce. I’m talking about Vancouver’s own Five Alarm Funk!
Five Alarm Funk has been playing together for over 17 years, done numerous tours, and recieved 2 Juno nominations. They’ve come together and delivered a high energy riot of an album. This is the 7th studio album for this seven-piece band and it’s simply described as their tightest and funkiest album ever… I like to say it’s funking fantastic! Larger than life and sure to put some pep in your step. If it doesn’t.... than you must be a zombie.
Take a mystical, mysterious journey with ‘Mufasa’. The rhythm is like walking across a bed of hot burning coals..... it’s on FIRE!! Everytime I listened to this one I notice more and more funky layers of sounds. Thick bass, hot horns, bongo’s and conga’s so fast I had a full frontal lobe explosion.
Big Smoke features a couple of noteworthy collaborations. One with the one and only Bootsy Collins in ‘We Play The Funk’. The other features saxophone legend Leo P in ‘Wake The Funk Up’.
The title track is so lively and electric my dancing shoes lit up in flames. Tsunami saxophone action to slap you silly. ‘Big Smoke’ is Big Time!
They do slow it down just a notch in ‘Changing Vudu’, but it’s just as funky as ever. Beautiful bass and latin style trumpets reminiscent of the Buena Vista Social Club.
I took a funkified ride on the ‘Wheels on the Bus’. What a fun song that seems like a description for going on tour. I’ll make sure to have this checklist if I get to tour one day!
Big Smoke by Five Alarm Funk is definitely 2020’s best Funk album by far! It’s the funk revival we’ve all been looking for! Take a listen...your ears will thank you!
Love Always,
Green Noreen
