Inukshuk – Yer A Peein’

DISPATCHES FROM A DIFFERENT EUROPE
BY: RUGGER RUGGEDSON

I’d given up on Inukshuk. As usual. They just disappear, and no one thinks anything of it. Well, I do, but it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it. When those guys get into the wind, they’re gone. And there’s life to live so we all just kind of move on, in our own fashions.

So there I was in Vienna, of all places, writing concert reviews for some online newspaper blog feed thing that only the kids understand. Hey, free coach class flight to Euope. I’m not old, you are.

Anyway, I was at an outdoor café the morning after a rough concert the night previous. Goose Shite had opened, which always destroys the place and requires several ambulances for the decimated crowd members, and then The Fucking Fuckers took the mayhem to another level, one which North American audiences wouldn’t (likely) survive. This is not a challenge, mind you, it’s just a likely truth requiring even more ambulances.

The coffee was hot, the sun was peeking through the clouds, and Inukshuk weren’t on my concert-addled mind at all. Hadn’t wondered about them in a minute, in fact. Hell, I was lucky to have been able to stumble here to the café. I mean, I hadn’t been back to my hovel, er, hostel yet as I was still out from last night, and my clothes were beer and blood-soaked tatters, but you gather my meaning.

And that’s when I saw the flyer on the post across the way. It was torn, and fluttering precariously in the wind, but my heart jumped a beat which, in my state, wasn’t a comfortable romcom cute moment but instead was rather terrifying. Needing glasses, I squinted hard and was half-convinced I’d seen the name Inukshuk. I didn’t believe it. I brushed it off. But the possibility niggled, so I finished the (excellent) coffee, and hobbled painfully over to the post. 

Tearing the last vestiges of the flyer from the post, I saw that it did, indeed, blare the name Inukshuk in faded blood red letters. Elation doesn’t begin to describe my mood-lift, in that moment. Here I was on another continent, thousand of miles from the last Inukshuk sighting, and here was this scrap of paper bearing their name and, almost illegible, an address. It wasn’t a concert flyer, though. Just the name and the address.

I went back to the café and frightened the waitress with my reappearance, asked about the address. She’d been clearing my table, so she drew a rough map on the back of my ring-stained paper placemat and hoped it’d be enough to make me go away for good. It was. Suddenly my long night’s exhaustion was gone. I wouldn’t ever need to sleep again, as I was inexplicably back on the Inukshuk trail. Why were they in Europe? How did they even get here? My mind reeled as I walked towards (hopefully) the answers.

That waitress had lied in saying it would only be about 15 minutes’ walk, as I was well over an hour even getting close, but this could also be explained by my general state of (lack of) fitness. Eventually I had wandered into a fairly rough part of the city. No matter, that was par for the Inukshuk course. I found the street, and the address, and stood facing a brick edifice with a shabby peeling-paint door and the house numbers askew. 

The street was otherwise quiet, no one else about, so I just hauled my carcass up the steps and knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again. No answer. I was about to give up, defeated, when the door opened an inch and an eyeball blearily stared out at me. I said, simply, “Inukshuk?” while holding up the remains fo the flyer. Something behind the door (I presume it was human), muttered something unintelligible and closed the door. So that was it, I’d failed a mission I didn’t know existed mere hours ago. Dejected, I sat down on the step to rest my weary bones. 

The door behind me opened an inch again, and the same eyeball stared out. Then the door opened wide enough for a grimy hand to protrude, holding a cassette case. I stood, and quickly retrieved the cassette from the hand while trying not to touch it. I reached for my wallet, to offer cash while asking “Is Inukshuk here? Are they in there? I know them, I’d like to say hello…” but the hand waggled one finger at me and that gargling voice said, in awful English, “No Inukshuk. Free for Ruggedson. You leave now.” And the door closed on me. I knew it was hopeless to knock again, no more information was forthcoming.

As I walked back toward the general direction of my hovel, er, hostel, it suddenly occurred to me to look at the cassette I clutched in my hand. I’d been so dazed, I’d forgotten it. Imagine.

The cover art you can see attached to this article, and what I held was a 4-song EP entitled Yer A Peein’. It was a bootleg, of course, and the quality is ass, of course. But this cassette held four tracks, new songs too. I held the holy grail, as far as I was concerned. 

I didn’t know how many copies were made, I didn’t know where the band even was, or if they had any shows coming up, but as soon as I got back to my hovel, er, hostel, I fired it into the Walkman with trembling hands and heard the first new Inukshuk to grace my ears in a long while. 

The sound quality was equivalent to a trombone being played down an oil pipeline into a microcassette recorder. No matter.

Side A begins with Humanitarian Crisis, a half-yelled half-whispered meditation on migration that seemed to support it while also talking about hamburgers, all over a driving Inukshuk beat. Garbage On The Coast was just Gord Smith yelling “GARBAGE!!” the whole time while the band tuned their instruments in the background. The track is 30 seconds long.

Side B starts with Dying On The Roadside, which opens with highway traffic sounds and then morphs into pounding drums and throbbing bass guitar while the guitar wails painfully and out of tune. It has no vocals or lyrics. It goes on for (I timed it) 28:17. The final track is Wank, a ballad that slowly unwinds itself like a lover on a bed, yet Gord makes it clear he’s alone and, er, taking care of things himself. The song eventually trails off as the band forgot they were even playing, with talking and laughing and coughing ending abruptly in silence. 

It’s a masterpiece. 

It is Europe as seen through the eyes of Inukshuk, which isn’t as anyone else would or could see it. I’ve played it repeatedly and now it’s all I can hear.

I attended so many more concerts across Europe, and wrote about them for the online newspaper blog feed thing that was (barely) paying for me to survive the trip. I saw a ton of bands in hole-in-the-wall clubs and basements and back alleyways before flying home again, but I never saw Inukshuk, or any other signs of them, and no one I asked at any of the gigs had heard of them or knew where they were (if they did). 

Of course, I had so many questions. Was Inukshuk even in Europe? When, where, how and by whom was this EP made? Had Inukshuk known I was in Austria at the time? If so, why didn’t they contact me? Was that dilapidated flyer, the only one of its kind I saw in all my European travels on that trip, left just for me? How had they known it would be that particular square I would visit? Who was in that apartment when I knocked on the door? How did they know my name? Why was this copy of the EP free for me? What does any of this experience even mean (beyond the obvious)? Is my determination to cover the band slowly, finally, being rewarded in some Inukshuk way?

Alas, it is what it is (as ever). Gord (drums), Gordon (bass), Gord (vocals, guitar), Gordon (vocals, guitar), and Gord (lead singer) were still in the wind. But I hold a copy of Yer A Peein’ in my hand and that is enough. For now.