Dummy Pops :: Live @ CFUV on Jan. 26th!

Victoria’s Dummy Pops will be taking over the airwaves on Monday, January 26th at 10:30pm on Pillbox Hat!

“I think there’s less of a gauge for what is cool in Victoria,” offers Six Brew Bantha drummer Tyler Akis, who grew up in the local punk scene. “In a big city people can push shit aside, because there’s elite scenes and there are more niches, but in Victoria you kind of get what you get, and if people want to take a bunch of different styles and combine them into one, people aren’t going to be so judgmental, and they might even take it for what it is.”

Akis and his roommates have been doing shows in their basement, putting together DIY house gigs that include everything from the brutal, chaotic grindcore of his own band (not to mention his two other bands, Dummy Pops, a raw pop-punk band, and crusty hardcore band Kraxxa) to indie rock, noise, and punk bands. As Akis often says, the basement scene at their house, and Victoria’s scene in general, is “chill.”

“People here are more patient and they understand what some of these bands are trying to do,” he says. “In our own band, we take a lot of different influences and put it into one sound, and maybe that’s something accidental just by living here. Maybe it’s something in the water, who knows?”

Tyler Forslund (a.k.a. Ty Stranglehold) distinctly remembers going to his first punk house show in Victoria. He was working at a gas station at the time and, like all good Canadian punks, had some Propagandhi playing on the ghetto blaster behind the counter. “These guys came into my work one night and said, ‘Oh, rad! You’re listening to Propagandhi! My friends are playing a house show down the street tomorrow night. You should come!’ It ended up being just two blocks from my house,” says Forslund, “so I grabbed a six-pack of beer and walked up to this house where I didn’t know anyone and those guys ended up being my best friends.”

– excerpt from “DIY YYJ: A Look At Victoria, British Columbia’s Weirdo Underground Punk Scene” by Jason Schreurs feature on Noisey.