5 Questions with Rags #82 - Krofton

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I'm struggling to think of a single person who has entertained me more in the last 3.5 years than the man known as Krofton. A mainstay of the west coast indie wrestling scene for two decades, Krofton is one of the most beloved members of the incredibly loved 365 Pro Wrestling roster. Kids, moms and wrestling dorks (like me!) alike go wild when the first notes of The Real McKenzie's “Chip” hits and Krofton comes bounding out from behind the curtains. An adaptable in-ring performer, you know when Krofton is coming up, something fun is going to happen. Doesn't matter the style of wrestling, Krofton is going to make it work. The man was part of my favourite match of 2023 – which included a long man-on-another-mans-shoulders sequence and a man riding a scooter around a ring to inflict his wrestling violence. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT (It's the first match on this show). Also, no one in local wrestling has done more for me personally than Krofton, blessing the world with my favourite move time and time again, keeping it alive – the BIIIIIG BACK BODY DROP! 5 Questions with Rags is one of the things I like doing most in this world and there's honestly no wrestler I would rather have be the first answerer of the 5 Questions than the big homie, Krofton. He was more than game to get out of wrestling mode at the end of our chat to answer my silly questions – but shockingly wrestling still pops up! Wrestling is all things. Krofton is wrestling. Hence, Krofton is all things. Not really, but he's really fucking good at wrestling and a helluva guy to know and be able to talk with.

1. Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money?

It was Green Day Dookie. It wasn't a CD, it was a cassette.

When's the last time you listened to it?

Oh god, half the songs are on my work playlist I listen to every day. I hear “Longview” and “She” and “Basketcase” every day. Sometimes twice.

What's an underrated song on that record people should listen to?

The secret song, about 8 minutes after “F.O.D.” ends. It's stupid and it's corny but it's great.

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5 Questions with Rags #81 - Stop The Presses (Ali & Danny)

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I'm gonna start this thing off with a personal confession – for a guy who works for an internationally known ska festival, I don't really listen to that much ska when left to my own devices. But at some point in the fall of 2022 whilst scrolling Twitter, a lot of people I really like were talking about this album called Got It by Stop the Presses. I'd never heard the band before, but I was really drawn to the colourful pineapple on the cover and wanted to try to find something new and pleasing to bring back to my ska festival family, so I fired up the streaming and put it on. From the first notes of the opening track “Make the Best of It” I was in. Then “Fat Cats” came on and I knew this album was going to be part of my regular rotation. Got It is a ska album seemingly made for me, a SKAptic – immaculately balancing ska, reggae and rocksteady, full of great hooks and really fantastic, crisp production. Danny graciously explained part of the process behind the album before I ambushed he and Ali with the 5 Questions. “Got It was kind of a return to us writing in the room as a band a little bit more. The past album, it was our proverbial “bedroom album”. in our living room, just Ali and I writing, cavemanning our way to demoing things, trying things out over and over again, getting better through the writing. And then this album [Got It] we were able to bring much simpler demo ideas to Jack and Steve, our rhythm section, and were able to write a lot more on purpose in front of each other, which gives you that dynamic, that extra layer – you put the physical work into it and the music kind of shows that.

The album became a personal audio touchstone, propelling me through intense winter and spring work with its infectious energy and big doses of fun. I made it my mission to get Stop the Presses on the lineup for the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest 2023, but it turned out to be a pretty easy mission because they were as excited to come up as we were all to have them. I was lucky enough to not only get the whole band up to the Canadian west coast for an unreal set on the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest main stage, but to rope Danny and Ali into a rousing instalment of 5 Questions with Rags. Which also apparently features a whole extra bonus question because the conversation was so good and easy that I lost the question count.

(I actually did this interview right before last years Ska & Reggae Fest, but through the combination of work with the Ska & Reggae Society/Festival, mental health struggles and living through the grind of life in 2023, this stayed in the vaults until now.)

1. What’s the first album you remember buying with your own money?

Ali – It was two. I was in third grade. I bought Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Both of those records bring back to a time in my life.

Danny – Mine are only slightly more embarrassing. The first Spice Girls record and Metallica Re:Load. That was the record. I was like 11 or 12, I was at a Sam Goody – the music store that actually had contemporary CDs, tapes and records – Wow! We just listened to Jagged Little Pill less than a month ago together. I’ve listened to at least half of that Spice Girls record in the last six months. I still go for earlier Metallica on the regular, Kill ‘Em All through like, the Black Album, but my brother already had those records already so I’m gonna get Re:Load ‘cause that’s MY record. There’s good stuff on there.

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5 Questions with Rags #80 - Kandle

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Sometimes things happen around me and I miss them completely. Then I get blindsided by the existence of said thing. This happened last fall when I was writing for the Rifflandia festival guide and was assigned to write a bio for Kandle. I went in not knowing anything about her and was astonished at her immense musical talents when I put on her first independent release Set The Fire. (What. An. Album.) How I had completely missed nearly a decade of this incredible musician who was from my hometown?! How the fuck did I manage this? And she's the daughter of west coast music legend, 54·40 frontman Neil Osbourne? Truly this was a tremendous blunder by me. Luckily she was easy to track down so I could find out more.

Though she grew up in and around it, music wasn't always the end goal. “My whole life I think I was doomed and destined to be an artist,” Kandle says with a laugh. “I am kind of into everything. I went to school for photography in Victoria. I do a lot of drawing and painting. I started writing poems and then I started playing guitar. I kind of started doing music by accident.” It's a good thing for music lovers that accident occurred because Kandle has been consistently untouchable - delicately balancing modern sounds with big nods to crooners of the past – without ever sounding like a pale imitation of that past. “I've definitely always been a sucker for all of the classic crooners. I learned to sing by copying Billie Holiday when I was teenager. Growing up in the 90s with a rock dad I was really into alternative stuff, every “head” band – Radiohead, Portishead.” Even though you can hear the influences throughout her music, Kandle is most definitely not doing an homage – her music is entirely her own and all of our ears are better for it. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to not only write about this amazing artist for one of my city's biggest festivals, but also that she was so easy to track down and so effervescent when I did! Enjoy this wonderful instalment of 5 Questions with Rags featuring the powerful KANDLE.

1. What is the first album you remember buying with your own money?
It was Our Lady Peace, Clumsy. I was a diehard fan when I was like 6. I may have peed myself when I met them. <laughs> My dad never full got my obsession with them. I think they were opening for him around the time I got obsessed and he was just like, “ooookay.” I was just screaming “Superman's Dead” in my little overalls. It gets me every time.

2. What's the best memory you have of a teacher or mentor growing up?
This is going to be a shoutout to my Oak Bay art teacher. Mr McGulky. (Note: I cannot confirm the spelling on this. Please forgive me if it's wrong!) It was my, I dunno, sixth high school at that point? I'd kind of given up on making friends and fitting in after that many. For the first little while there, even now we're still friends, but he was my only friend there for awhile. I had pretty crippling anxiety about getting bullied, not fitting in, not doing well in school. Everyone knew I was a bad seed. He would lie for me. He would write notes for me to get out of science class. If I was freaking out about something, he would have my back. He would always roll his eyes and complain about it but he looked after me and I always really appreciated him. He's always proud of me.

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5 Questions with Rags #79 - Balkan Bump

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Things haven't been great in my brain for awhile and, like a lot of people, I've just been doing what I can to get by for awhile now. Part of that meant that writing about music fell by the wayside. I still like listening to it, but gathering the strength to write about it was just something that I haven't been able to do. But things are slowly moving again and I can feel a bit of rhythm in the air. My friends are going to festivals and dancing and reporting back. And one of the names that keeps coming back in reports is BALKAN BUMP. All these glowing reviews reminded that about a year and a half ago, I tracked him down for one of the best interviews I'd had in a long while. Two music-lovers, talking about music. And as he returns to Vancouver Island this Saturday (August 20 at the fantastic Cumberland Wild in Cumberland) it seems like the perfect time to finally present this interview. This interview is from FEBUARY 2021. I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to share this.

At the beginning of last year, one of the last albums I was genuinely obsessed with was Osmanity by California-based musician and producer Will Magid, better known to me – and many other dancefloor astronauts up and down the west coast – as Balkan Bump. Osmanity, is an immaculately constructed album that works so well on headphones, but also keeps reminding you of sweaty, ass-shaking nights on a dancefloor. It is an album full of fresh ideas, sounds and, most importantly these days, energy. Osmanity is tremendously inventive and deeply fun – the creation of a musician whose love of the craft is evident from the opening notes right through to closing. Osmanity became a daily listen for me. I needed to know more. I needed to talk to the creator of this most excellent album. And lucky for me, the man himself was more than willing to jump on the phone and talk some shit with me. Not only did we cover Osmanity in more detail than I could have imagined, he was also game for a one of the finest rounds of 5 Questions with Rags so far. It's conversations like this that have me keeping music close, still staying at least a little bit in love with it. This shit right here is why I'm back.

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5 Questions with Rags #78 - Kytami + Phonik Ops

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There's something about the presence of a live instrument (beyond turntables, which are 100% an instrument and I'll fight you if you say otherwise) in electronic music that immediately grabs the attention of hardcore bass-heads and the uninitiated alike. Undoubtedly there are a few acts on the west coast combining live instrumentation and next-level bass with the ferocity and craft than Kytami + Phonik Ops. Since connecting at a festival here in British Columbia, the duo has become one of the most intriguing acts, standing out in an already saturated musical landscape. I got a chance to talk with the two from their studio, where they've been holed up – in heavy creation mode – during this whole quarantine thing.

“Phonik Ops reached out to me when were both playing Centre of Gravity in Kelowna. We were both playing at the hip-hop stage. He had reached out to me and posted one of my videos, so I looked him up and started listening to all his mixes,” Kytami says, recalling their beginnings as a duo. “At the time he was working with a rapper – Mishap – and I got them to open up for me on a winter tour. We started talking about working on a mix together and then we did it. That led to an EP. When we started working on actual music, we became partners in shows. It only made sense.” Phonik Ops elaborates with a laugh, “I started DJing for her is what she's trying to say.”

While both artists had their own things established, they meshed well right away and began tackling the big work – creating a truly unique sound that is instantly recognizable as their own. Listening to the duo talk about their music, it's clear why they work so well to this shared, and gloriously defined goal. “What these last few years has been about is getting the sound I want, getting it dialed in and getting the catalogue behind us. Really finding the space for my melodic lines against really heavy, fucking badass basslines. Trying to get those two working together, that's been the work. That's what we're really striving for,” says Kytami. “Not just liquid, or pretty, or easy-listening electronic music, we want it to be really badass, dirty but still have these soaring lines that I'm playing or shredding. But I don't want it be an afterthought.” Phonik Ops elaborates on the duo's process, “Part two to that is us figuring out how to write better together. Bass sounds and violin, how we can stack and move together and also what we can get away with frequency range-wise. Taking away frequency so there's that much room for her, versus if there's a more noisy part and balancing it out more. We're stoked with everything we're making right now.”

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1. When's the last time you did something for the first time?

Phonik Ops: First time I've been quarantined. Sorry, that's boring.

Nah, that's a very timely answer! Relatable as fuck.

Kytami: This is weird. I've been in this electronic world for so long. I actually rented a CD-J setup over the holidays, around Christmas, and I started trying to actually DJ. I DJed at a little clothing store. I found all my tracks, I DJed and played the violin over it. You think I would have done it by then. It was just for myself.

PO: She headlined her own birthday party! The dope part about that was that I saw it start to make her think about our sets differently. She's always pretty good at coming up with ideas but she's all stoked getting her own tracks and piecing together other tracks now.

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