Friday, May 26. 2000 — North Shore News - 13
THEATRE - POPCORN: 15
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| RUSS MEYER’S VIXEN: 18 |

, SMALL TIME CROOKS: 19 |
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BOWEN BY KAYAK: 21 |

“| ONLY HAVE 50 MORE YEARS TO MAKE MUSIC” — BJORK AT CANNES (PAGE 20)

nae

NORTH SHO

New age sounds and cards
get inside reporter's head

Michael Becker
News Editor mbecker@nsnews.com

- $0 we're sitting there in the newspaper office and
:. WOW singer-theramin and chimes stroker Sonia
Venus is all flash om long legs, massive beads ’n’
‘ braids hair and nasty faux-leopard skin platform
~ boots.
We're waiting along with WOW bass player Nico Rusu for
-.. guitarist Doug Deep and drummer Pat Haavisto to emerge from
the concrete horror show that is the other side of the Second
‘Narrows during a weekday rush hour.
".. Venus, priestess of flowers, pulls out a delicate bag of mystical
cards. They’re hand-made tarot-like affairs she’s created during
‘down time. on the road. She asks me to select several of them and
>in a few intensely revealing, minutes she actually nails much of the
- unresolved psychic trash bumping about deep inside my head.
Wow. I get some interesting music and some serendipitous per-
‘sonal perspective just in Gime to wander lightly through this
freshly dawned Age of Aquarius.
Listen to WOW’s newly released independent debut —-
WOW — and you know they are riding a bright beam. It’s the
“kind of stuff Yoko Ono was tripping on throughout the 1990s —
5.” oblique sing-song speak, resonant fuzz guitars and cool electron-
ic rhythmic bedrock. Whether Venus is invoking the shaman’s

Leave it Naturai..

Win dinner for two
on the Pacific Stariight
Dinner Train: Page 17

NEWS photo Terry Feters

WOW, left to right, Doug Deep, Sonia Venus, Pat Haavisto and Nico Rusu have just released a debut CD and
are set to play the Railway Ciub in Vancouver on June 10.

slave to seduction or musing about cute dogs as road kill, the
result is a propulsive sensuality.

The band was talking about working on a CD about this time
in 1998 already. Says Deep, “The thing is, we're trying tv do
music that a lot of people over here in Canada haven’t really got
a grip on. It’s mulu-layered and a cross breeding of styles and
we're trying to make things that normally don’t sound like they
would work together. It took 2 while to find somebody who
would understand where our heads were at.”

WOW was showcased earlier this month at the Penthouse
during, an evening of giam-rock during Music West.

Adds Venus, “Everybody there was all dressed up and they
really wanted to be entertained. We didn’t have so pummel them

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over the head. We just kind of slapped them around a bit and
they were excited about it.” Some of the fun involves Venus with
an angle grinder and a metal bikini (belt and breast plate).
“When things are getting so that they might know what’s going °
to happen next, f grind off into the audience and shoot sparks.”

Alternative versions of two of the band’s songs on the debut
disc —- “Climb On Top” and “Starship” — have been licensed
for the TV series The Net by Columbia Tristar on USA Network.
The band is stili shopping the disc for distribution and is in the
process of setting up a Web site and posting MP3 files.

WOW plays next June 10 at the Railway. Later in the summer
there’s a motor home tip for a couple of dates in San Francisco
and a show in The Viper Room in West Hollywood.

YOU WANT SOME LOVELY — WIN NEW CDs FROM XTC AND WHITNEY HOUSTON: PAGE 25.

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