artist Petroleum By-Product

Petroleum By-Product - "Superficial Articificial" LP

During the late '70s, bunches of punks stepped away from the guitar, bass/drums attack and added keyboards (shock, horror). Some, like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Gary Numan, garnered a ton of media attention and promptly disappeared up their own arses in a puff of white face powder, taking with them all the no-mark imitators. The good shit from the dark synth-wave era was epic. I just got an LP of French bands from the late '70s put out by Frustration's label (another curent band not afraid of the synth), which is really groundbreaking and fucking great. This Canadian band is way less dark, but takes the very best elements of Tubeway Army and Penetration/Siouxsie-esque vocals and delivers it in a totally DIY punk way. I think this LP smokes. - Tim Brooks, Young Offenders for MRR

Gary Numan fronting a new wave garage band. That kind of cold detachedness, squarewaves, discobeats, danceable. Living entirely under the belief of products controlling everything. A tougher smarter Human League. It's alright. - Marissa Magic for MRR

The Glamour of the Plastic Generation

By Elliot Lummin

Photos by Johannah Jorgensen

Lately, I feel old. It’s not an issue with numbers, the fact that the big 3'o is approaching. It’s finding out that the indie bands of my youth are now the institution, the sell-outs. It’s sitting down to interview Petroleum By-product, a Vancouver band which recently released their first album Superficial Artificial, to find two, well, kids: Sally Jorgensen and Vanessa Turner. Getting into how they formed “PBP” in high school, age was the first issue we discussed. “Our age was the novelty,” Sally recalled, “Or it became the novelty. When we first started, we still had school the next day and people liked that. They liked the idea of seeing a good high school band, or what they considered a good high school band.” Vanessa laughed at this, adding: “We could barely play our instruments. Have you seen Fabulous Stains? It’s a film about three girls who start a band. They couldn’t play their instruments and wore very decadent make up, like us. So people made that connection.” It would be easy to write off this new wave of Vancouver music if it simply relied on cheap novelties. However, Petroleum By-product’s music has always been informed by their concept of the “plastic generation”, their term for consumer culture and its excesses. They are interested in our relationship with things and our increasingly “denaturalized” environment. “We both came from really health-conscious families that didn’t use plastics or certain metals,” Vanessa explained, when asked how they arrived at the band’s mission statement, “It’s one of the reasons we first started talking actually. We had an immediate connection because we’d see people microwaving plastics and we’d be like ‘Oh god, how can they do that?’” In spite of their issues with modern society, Sally was careful to separate Petroleum By-product’s message from the hardliners. “I wouldn’t say it’s the result of frustration,” she clarified, “It’s more of a fascination really. Instead of focusing on the bad things, we decided to glamorize the excess. To satirize it and make it absurd, even more absurd and over the top than it is. For example, we used to play in uniforms that were garbage bags designed with yellow tape and these futuristic vinyl shoes.”This playful approach certainly comes through in their music. The first two songs on Superficial Artificial, “Mad About Plaid” and “Ain’t Got (Money)”, feature anthemic punk chorus lines set to fully charged bass and synth. As songs of resistance, they don’t point fingers or assign blame, but beg you to join in on the fun of breaking the mould. It may not be the era of Vancouver music that I identify as my own, but it is certainly an evolution from that sound and, perhaps, a reaction against it. It became apparent just how far Vancouver musicians have evolved when my conversation with Petroleum By-product turned to the city’s music scene and the closure of venues like Richards on Richards and The Cobalt. I expected to find two like-minded individuals concerned with the few legitimate spaces left for art and music in Vancouver. Instead, I found two musicians that have completely adapted to the city’s cycle of boom and bust underground venues. Again, the age gap was ever present. It turns out that while alternative spaces like The Emergency Room (where Petroleum By-product was one of the regular acts) have come and gone, the band has always had the opportunity to play. “This may come off as arrogant, but we’ve never really had to think along those lines,” Sally explained, “We’ve just been fortunate enough to always have people asking us, ‘Play our show. Play our show.’ So we’ve never had to sit down and think about where we can play. We’ve never really had to worry.” Although they may not remember a time when indie shows could be easily found along the beaten path, not in secret basements or underneath the Georgia Viaduct, the girls still believe there’s room for improvement in Vancouver. Vanessa suggested cities across the border as models for progress: “There’s a huge illegitimate venue scene in the States and websites with a list of all the venues with all the shows going on. Here, it would get shutdown in a heartbeat.” When asked about the Olympic games and whether it was helping to get local musician’s exposure, the answer was an outright “No”. “Sure, there was a lot of art money and grants,” Sally conceded, But they didn’t benefit local musicians everything about the Olympics bothers me. Even the clothing. ‘Buy more clothing to support the Olympics’. This cheaply made junk that goes right into the garbage.” She added: “They’ve even tried to appease local artists and musicians by trying to dress us up in their clothing and use us as mascots. It’s so insulting. We were offered a photo shoot to model Olympic clothing for the Hudson’s Bay Company. But, how hypocritical would that look?” As it turns out, a band from what I deemed “the good old days” had taken the offer after Petroleum Byproduct turned it down.After another reminder of how things have changed, there was one last issue that needed clarification: the trend toward bands releasing only on vinyl and the sense that they have no interest in reaching a broader audience and “making it big”. Vanessa addressed this, sidestepping the fact that Superficial Artificial was released on 12” vinyl: “They’re really doing it because they love it. Whether they get recognition for it is beside the point. For me, it would be great if we could be paid to play music for a living. That’s our dream. But if not, that’s fine too. We’re still going to keep doing what we’re doing.” In the end, I walked away from the interview still feeling old, but not without a sense of optimism. I got the sense from Petroleum By-Product that in spite of Vancouver’s approach to city planning and liquor licensing Vancouver musicians will still be doing their thing for years to come.Download here: http://www.memewaronline.com/

 Petroleum By-Product: Spastic Plastic

Petroleum By-Product are bratty. They’re young, snotty and nearly a cliché of what happens when you send your kids to alternative schooling. This isn’t necessarily a problem when you play in a bratty, snotty, alternative-schooled new wave act, but it does mean that to get to the core of them in an interview you had better be too cool for Christmas and hate the government. Their defiance possibly comes from leftover voices from Vancouver’s early Eighties punk scene, or is perhaps just the contrarian opinions of youngsters, but at the very least it plays well on stage and in song. The trio consists of Sally Jørgensen (Synth, vocals), Vanessa Turner (bass) and Robin Borawski (percussion) and they have just self-released their first EP, a 12” vinyl called Superficial Artificial. The record, which was recorded by Felix Fung at Little Red Sounds, features contributions from Nicholas Macmillan, Justin Gradin, Ryan Dyck and Sean at Nominal. This is the voice of Vancouver’s youth.   How did the band start? Vanessa: The concept of music making started it. Sally and I both grew up in plastic-free, health-oriented homes. We first connected on the fact that we didn’t have plastics in our house. At school we’d think “So gross! How can people microwave in that?” We were always interested in music and even though we had no skills, we just really had the desire of playing music. We just started playing music with people we knew, but eventually kicked them out for being unprofessional. Sally: We met in school. We had similar backgrounds and similar taste in music so naturally we formed this project and played at our alternative school talent show and it expanded. It was received quite well because it was fun and gimmicky. We did the Fake Jazz night at Vancouver’s infamous Cobalt, which no longer exists and featured more alternative acts and bands that can’t really get shows other places and that was more like a “band” thing and it was received pretty well. Vanessa: We had the same taste in music for sure, a “fake it till you make it” kind of attitude. “If those people could get up and play that kind of crap, why can’t we?” we thought when we saw other bands. I think Patti Smith said something like that, it’s really not that original of a process (laughs). We’re 20. We were about 17 when we started. The first show we played we had to go to school the next day and Sally went wearing all the makeup from the night before. We were at school with [local band] Nü Sensae and it was really a very arts oriented environment.

What do you think of the current arts/music infrastructure in Vancouver? Sally: The public art that we have seen sprout up in the high traffic areas (due to the Olympics) is creating a wealth disparity between the already established artists and the struggling artists. Think about the public art we see—for example, the giant artificial rock outside the newly made Canada Line—assuming a lot of money was put into the image of an international city rather than supporting local Vancouver artists.

 

Do you think the city is supportive of independent arts, or do you think independent artists/musicians have to completely do it themselves, like finding a venue to showcase yourself? Vanessa: Even with venues closing down, there’s still fun opportunities. I read this quote about adventures in the 1920s, on how adventure is dead and there’s nothing to do, but as long as there’s women and men and sea, there will always be adventures. It went on about how the people who say “adventure is dead” are dead themselves but the coroner doesn’t know it yet. It’s kind of like if you have this energy… I don’t know, you can make opportunities present themselves. Sally: I would say in most cases, artists have to do it themselves. There is some funding available, but as we have recently seen, most of the federal money goes to either already established artists like Metric who received $50,000 from Factor or the money goes to more pro international image-making projects.

It’s nearly impossible to create new music without being derivative of your influences. How do you approach this? Is it something you embrace with a nod? Or is this even something you are conscious of? Sally: Both. We are inspired by sounds from the past but aim to create our own niche and we do have a lot of respect for the forefathers/foremamas of the original new wave. Vanessa: I think there’s just certain sounds and instruments that we gravitate to. We weren’t trying to copy anything. It’s just a preference.

Since there will be so many people here during the Olympics, (probably reading this article) is there anything you would like them to know about Vancouver? Sally: There is a large multicultural community with a fine selection of restaurants and junkies and our record is also available here at Zulu, Scratch, Audiopile, and Red Cat… that’s the most important knowledge for a rich tourist wanting souvenirs of real Vancouver culture, plus it makes for a fine gift/mantlepiece to show off to one’s peers or give away like candy.

Do The Petroleum By-Products go to the beach? Sally: Yes, and swim in the oil-trench sea.

www.myspace.com/petroleumbyproduct Words: Patrick Stewart Photography: Kris Krüg www.staticphotography.com