Mr. Chi Pig (SNFU – acoustic set), Chris Walter, and Thomas White @ Luneta, Mar. 5
It is not every day you get to see a punk legend like Mr. Chi Pig in such an intimate setting.
Mr. Chi Pig, aka Ken Chinn, is the infamous lead singer of one of Canada’s oldest running punk bands, SNFU. He was on point last night with his buddy playing the acoustic guitar for him. The performance felt very personal, as he walked around in the bar and got up close with the people who attended. They played a great mix of SNFU stuff and some real awesome covers, including “Girlfriend in a Coma” by The Smiths and “Can’t Hardly Wait” by The Replacements.
But going to a show like this is not so much about the music as much as it’s about the stories and comments between songs. Mr. Chi Pig has had quite the crazy life, moving to Vancouver in the nineties and getting into the battle with heavy drugs. He did tell us however that he hasn’t done drugs for the last 9 years which is great news. There were still some gems in the between song banter, “I was so poor growing up my grandma’s tits produced powder milk,” said Chi. Later he added, “I ate so much man ass in Stanley Park, my goat cheese looked like a doughnut.” Back to the music though, I was very excited to hear “Buffalo Jump,” “This is Goodbye,” and “Cannibal Cafe.” It was also kind of fun to be called handsome by the man on the guitar, and then being asked to fetch him a “Blugh,” – or a Blue as the rest of us know it.
After the set, Chris Walter, author of SNFU: What No One Else Wanted To Say, read some excerpts from the book. Once again stories are a really cool part of these kind of events, and here is one he shared.
“I met Chi Pig at 17-years-old, and let me tell you he was a freak in 1981. Black spike, Doc Martins, skateboarding… and never thought thirty years later I’d be writing a book about his band. We should have died but we didn’t. This story is about modern day touring with GPS instead of maps. SNFU were heading to New Brunswick, but the GPS took them to USA. They were starting to panic as they noticed they were approaching the bridge. Once on the bridge, and knowing they had drugs they thought to turn around, but Pig said “You don’t turn around on a bridge.” So the entered USA by accident, end up at customs and get strip searched. Pig always one to have fun, encouraged the customs agents to go “faster and harder,” then thanking the agent for working him over really good. They turned over the weed they physically had on them, but luckily the dogs missed the 2 1/2 ounce of weed in our guitar amp. After five hours of questioning, they were on their way back in Canada”
Opening up the night was Ottawa’s Thomas White with his acoustic guitar. I truly dug his acoustic punk sound, most specifically his song “No History.” He introduced the song by saying “This song is about how we will fuck everything up.”