Porn Stars & Layer Cakes

In my rock n' roll days - while we're at it - I always had a connection with other bands, and although my main band's goal was to be hated by all, we were pretty good buddies with then Grand-Mère's trash kings of fuzz rock, the Meteor 77.

It all began with Izaël Pépin & Pat Météor around a campfire.  I can safely narrate that now that the guys are on tour, somewhere deep in rural US, gettin' their ass kicked by rednecks because of their long hair.  We were pretty much all rock n' roll slackers at the time.  Later on, Izaël would move to Trois-Rivières and deliver pizza with his crap car.  I was there the morning he got fired for being to hung over to report to work; we had partied all evening with the Nashville Pussy, who had performed in a jock shit hole.  We went backstage to have a few drinks with them, drink all their beer in fact, and listen to their groupie stories while listenin' to the Devil Dogs' latest live CD.

So Izaël didn't stay in Trois-Rivières too long, and finally moved his ass to Montreal alongside Pat Météor to start a vinyl buying frenzy - Pat later DJ'd, for a very brief period, at a place on Park Avenue called the Playhouse.  I ran into them a couple of times and they told me they were gettin' a new band, the Demon's Claws.  Having just released their Meteor 77 album, I thought it was a pretty strange move, but now any well advised rocker knows the rest of the story : they're kinda big.  I say kinda because I don't know if some bluesed-out southern swamp rock n' roll can really be that big, but they're on a nice label and they're touring the US non-stop, which is not bad at all.



Pat Meteor, who had once played a few notes on my guitar with his cock, at the third edition of Troustock where he also played with his Meteor 77 - if you don't believe me, I have it all captured on video - introduced me to Dan Lang, a tall dark guy who had all it took to make it big in the beer drinking circles of Grand-Mère.  Seriously, the guy had good looks, and some nice hooks.  We started hanging out together after I stole his girlfriend, who was rather voluptuous and liked opera.  She left me for a guy 10 years younger than her - which is VERY young considering she must have been around 27 at the time - and got pregnant with the little fucker.  Case closed - almost : I ran into her at my "10 years later" high school reunion and she is now the mother of four kids... impressive !  She still looks pretty good, tho.

Hangin' out with Dan was like stripping my soul bare of any ego; we just sat there, chatted, drank beer, and played guitar.  We decided to come up with a band concept and found out that a "fake" mythic band called the Porn Stars was a good start.  They were "big" in South America, and were also big on screwing so many groupies that if you knew how many, it would make your head spin.  Of course, your head wouldn't spin for real because it was all fictionnal, but we started writing songs to record their 7 albums and launch a new one once we'd be done.

For songwriting purposes, Dan & I spent a few days in his father's house, deep in some woods east of Grand-Mère.  We bought enough beer to last a while, and I didn't have anybody to report to : I was on chômage, a jobless bum, with no girlfriend and a rock hunger.  We chatted, drank, and wrote songs.  We were playing acoustic guitar by the lake, watching the horizons, and thinking about sleazy lyrics and glam hooks.  We designed a web site and started recording the songs in the same St-Tite studio as the Ratés' unborn album was conceived.

Seven songs were recorded and they all became classics... in my small circle of rocker friends.

A short while after that, Dan Lang vanished from the face of the earth.  Nobody knows where he is now.  There are rumours he's a big shot in a suit for Hydro-Québec somewhere in Montreal.  He was adopted, and had started to look for his biological parents.  He had found his mother when we lost touch, and some people claim he found his father afterwards, had his hair cut, and became a completely different person.  Dan, if you're out there, somewhere, you know there's some porn star stamina left inside your heart : get in touch !

I was beginning to listen to EBM & industrial music back then, and was hangin' out at Krashtess, the Foufoune Électrique's industrial evenings.  I was pals with DJ Achtung, who was constantly jealous cuz of the chicks I dated.  I was some kind of "bridge" between the rock n' roll scene & the industrials.  Xavier Caféïne, who always liked glamour & people that dress well, considered that the rock scene wasn't glam enough, back then, and started going out at Foufs with me.  He hated the demo of Les Ratés that I had given him, so when we were done recording about 7-8 new songs with my band, I made him a tape, and included, on the B-side, some Porn Stars songs.

I gave him the tape at Foufs and told him there were some songs from my new band on the B side.  His eyes shined and he told me : "The Porn Stars, that's a fuckin' good band name !!".  He also told me, later on, that one of these days I'd be on all fours in front of him, moaning.  That hasn't happened yet.  What happened, more than a year after that, is that he released an album called Porn Star.

Do you believe in coincidences ?

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I saw LAYER CAKE a few days ago.  I told myself I'd never rent british crime flicks again, and there I was in Miss Bijoux's living room, sliding in this DVD.  It's funny enough - I thought it was a spankin' new release, and my GF told me she had seen it already, once the credits started rolling.  My bad ?

The film's about a guy who thinks he controls everything until it all explodes in his face.  Things couldn't get worse, really, and you have to see it to believe it because I frankly don't feel like explaining it all to y'all.  In the end, the guy doesn't control everything, but I hope that he got to screw Sienna Miller at least once.  Cuz she's the bomb.  Of course, she's a smoker, which takes away a part of the sex appeal, but I'd still pick her if she was next to a chimpanzee and I had no other choice.

British crime flicks, old tired genre.  I am in the process of watching the first season of SIX FEET UNDER and of THE OFFICE, because I'm a pretty late news type of guy.  Didn't watch TV for nearly 8 years now, and I'm not about to begin !