I’ve been meaning to write a writing-related post for, oh….
since the Before Times. But part of what has made even that so difficult is the
same thing that has made it hard to do anything creative as the COVID-19 pandemic
hits different parts of the world: worry.
I don’t find I have been worrying all the time about the
coronavirus, but living in a state of taking precautions, shifting all kinds of
routines and daily life, and not being able to make long-term plans (and
cancelling many plans already on the books), makes it hard to, say, write a
novel.
So… I picked necessary but not-exhausting tasks.
Proofing and line editing A Taste of Home in the spring — I always catch more when I a) read it out loud and b) mark up a print copy.
In the spring, I read aloud the MS for my Icelandic-folkore-collides-with-Canadian-real-estate-practices novel, A Taste of Home, marking line edits and corrections. That took a few weeks. Then I went through the MS and made all the changes. Another few days. In May, I dusted off the Excel spreadsheet of people I planned to query on it, and started working up query letters.
Also, since finishing the latest round of submissions for my 1980s heavy metal werewolf novel Bark at the Moon, I was fortunate enough to get feedback from awesome critique partners Angélique Jamail and Sarah Warburton. Taking their suggestions to heart, I turned my attention to tweaking and making a few big shifts to that MS.
And, since #PitMad was coming up in June, I worked on some new Twitter pitches… for both novels! Why not? Seriously, why not. It was more complete-able than jumping back into my current WIP, the haunted-threatre novel Venue 13, which had stalled months ago when I put all my attention into substantive rewrites for A Taste of Home.
Over the summer, thanks to the Twitter recommendation of Delilah Dawson, I picked up Lisa Cron’s Story Genius. As someone who likes to write big ideas, and work out plot, but often falls down in the (many) early drafts on characterization, I really, really want to try her approach as I overhauled Venue 13. I ended up abandoning the 90-odd pages I’d already written, and started over from scratch.
Following the approach recommended in Story Genius, it’s taken me much longer than usual to get to a point where I’m writing the draft of the novel. But I don’t know whether that’s owing to trying a new method, or the background stress of the whole year. I’ll probably blog about what it’s like for me to take an approach that sees you figuring out major character motivations and conflicts before you start drafting, rather than my usual method of starting to figure that out after three or four drafts.
Also during the summer, I worked on a cover for Bark at the Moon so I could submit it to an online reading platform. It was a lot of fun to bust out my pen and ink for the first time in years and dust off some old Photoshop skills! But alas, getting things just right on the cover took me longer than I thought, and I missed the submission window. Maybe I’ll blog about that later, too, and show off the cover. I’m happy with the way it turned out.
A section of what I came up with for a cover for Bark at the Moon.
Currently I’m still querying and submitting A Taste of Home, and writing the first draft of Venue 13. I wish I’d gotten more writing done this year — but I’m not complaining. The pandemic has messed up everyone’s plans, and tragically so for far too many.
I suspect all of the above (writing-wise) is a consequence
of having just enough energy and attention-span bandwidth to work on small,
concrete tasks, but not necessarily enough for huge, open-ended tasks like
writing the first draft of a novel.
I will not get into all the other (good, useful, non-writing) projects I got into over the past year — those were mostly for my mental health in being able to keep “busy” without dwelling on the pandemic 24/7. But hey, now I can make and can jam, build raised garden beds, and er, clean the basement (just kidding, the basement never stays clean — that’s more a Sysiphean task that borders on open-ended).
One of the projects keeping me occupied in 2020 was building this composter.
In Manitoba, it we had a relatively mild first wave of COVID-19, but a much more serious second wave. And even in our province, which initially saw fewer cases and fewer deaths from the coronavirus than other jurisdictions, there have been many job losses and a lot of economic hardship. In that context, I found it very hard to focus and start working on a new novel.
So who knows? I count myself lucky to have escaped some of
the worst effects of the pandemic, and I salute all those writers out there who
were able to get anything done. With any luck, the next year will be better for
all of us.
As recent Metal Monday posts show, I lately became a big fan of the Killer Dwarfs. I’ve loved their songs since first seeing the video for “Keep the Spirit Alive” waaaaayyy back in the winter of 1986-87. But it was seeing them live not just once, but twice, within a year in 2019 that got me hooked. I began searching out their back catalogue. Easier said than done! And sadly, there is no Killer Dwarfs box set. So… I made one.
Homemade Killer Dwarfs box set by David Jón Fuller / Photo by Mike Aporius
To start with, I’d been fortunate enough to pick up their 2013 album Start @ One, and their 2018 live album Live, No Guff! at one of their shows. I bought Russ Dwarf’s Wireless at another show. But finding the Dwarfs’ earlier albums is something of a challenge.
The signature crate from the Killer Dwarfs’ popular video for “Keep the Spirit Alive,” in which the hapless Russ Dwarf suffers many misadventures.
I had never bought Stand Tall when it came out, despite “Keep the Spirit Alive” being one of my favourite songs, nor Big Deal, despite the brilliance of the video for “We Stand Alone.” However, thanks to searching out music stores and resellers online, I was able to put together most of a collection on CD. Stand Tall and Reunion of Scribes — Live 2001, were by far the hardest to come by.
Sometime around the second Dwarfs show I went to, in late 2019, I started thinking: of all the bands that have released box sets, who better than the Killer Dwarfs, whose signature crate would make the perfect case for it? But as mentioned above, there is no Killer Dwarfs box set. If you’ve searched for one online and ended up here, you already know that.
So, being in no way a carpenter or marketing genius, I decided to make one. Here’s how I did it.
Filling your Killer Dwarfs box set — the albums
Obviously, it’s not a box set unless it is in some sense “complete.” So, absent any bootlegs, I figured I needed:
The easiest way I found to get the recent CDs (i.e., released since 2013) was at the Killer Dwarfs’ live shows. (I’ve tried ordering other CDs through their Bandcamp site, but just cannot get it to work.) They really ought to sell their complete back catalogue at each performance (hint, hint).
The hardest albums to track down on CD were Stand Tall and Reunion of Scribes — Live 2001. Good luck finding either for less than $200! I found the first on eBay, eventually (search early, search often). The seller was in Russia, and it was going for around 10 bucks… so for that price, either it’s not a collector’s item there or this is some kind of copy — which, upon receiving it, I think it likely is. But the sound quality was fine and I have the original album on vinyl, anyway! I just wanted to have a complete collection to go in the crate.
The second hard-to-find album is one I have now owned three times. I reviewed Reunion of Scribes for Uptown magazine when it came out in 2002, but it wasn’t my favourite album, so I gave it away. (It’s a decision I rue now). Recently I tried many used record and CD stores, locally and online, to no avail. To make a long story short, I bought a digital copy from Russ Dwarf’s Bandcamp page, and then, ironically, found the CD for a decent price from a seller on Discogs the very next day — so I bought that too.
Designing a Killer Dwarfs box set
First, I figured out how big to make it. I chose to make it a cube with enough room to hold at least 10 CDs, to allow room for the entire Killer Dwarfs back catalogue, as well as a future album or two.
Then I had to figure out materials. I thought of building it around a plastic CD rack, but couldn’t scrounge one that would work. I decided to go with lightweight wood.
The crate from the video for the Killer Dwarfs’ “We Stand Alone” is clearly built to a different scale than in the previous music video, but it had a clearer image of the front lettering.
For the inner box to hold the CDs, I went with ¼-inch fir “good one side” plywood. For the outer appearance of the crate, I took screen captures from the videos for “Keep the Spirit Alive” and “We Stand Alone” and stumbled onto a workable selection of materials in my basement: ¼-inch wood panelling, which on its unfinished side looks like “crate” material, and wooden stir-sticks for paint that could look like framing.
Fortunately the folks at Rona were willing to sell me a
bunch of long stir-sticks that were also ¼-inch thick, making the math of
figuring out how the materials would work together way easier (and, it looked
better than a thinner stir-stick like the ones I had).
I looked up online some ways to build small wooden crates,
but to be honest, since I’m no carpenter (see above) and since the look of the
crate in both videos, while slightly different, isn’t particularly finished, I
didn’t go for any complex, jewellery box detail in the assembly. Let me say
here that all the apparent blemishes and mistakes in the final look of my CD
crate were TOTALLY INTENTIONAL AND AESTHETICALLY NECESSARY.
Anyway.
Pieces for the inner crate of the Killer Dwarfs box set
Building a Killer Dwarfs box set
I cut pieces of ¼-inch plywood for the interior box. I cut them so the outer dimensions of that cube would be 6 ½ inches — so the top and bottom pieces were 6 ½ inches square, two sides were 6 ½ inches by 6 inches, and two sides were 6 by 6 inches.
The inner crate had to fit all the Killer Dwarfs albums on CD.
I always dry-fit pieces before I try to put them together
since I am Not A Carpenter ™ and don’t fully trust that my designs will work
before I put them together. Also, I was figuring this out mostly as I built.
Lots of measuring and re-measuring. By the way, building a cube that is
perfectly square on all sides when you don’t have a working table saw is SUPER
HARD.
I painted the interior walls black.
I decided to add something a little extra on the bottom — a
Killer Dwarfs logo. I found one online, printed it out large, and then scaled
it to fit, using a geometry set and a bit of junior high algebra. Then I did
the lettering on the wood in pencil as well as I could.
I scaled down and drew the Killer Dwarfs logo by hand.
After I had tweaked the imperfections in the logo, I painted
it black. After it dried, I erased more of the visible pencil lines and painted
a second coat.
I put two pairs of sides together with glue, and when that had set, I glued each two-side pair to the other and used elastic bands to keep pressure on the joints as they set.
I painted the interior sides black, and glued all the pieces together.
Then I glued the four-side construction to the bottom. The
front side showed no joins, since I wanted to use the fake “slats” I would be
adding to the sides to help hold the joined side of the inner cube together. To
be honest, given the number of pieces of wood I would be adding and gluing, I’m
not sure it would have made a difference. But since the wood was all too thin
for me to nail, I wanted to make sure it had as much strength as I could.
Making the “slats” of the crate meant cutting the stir sticks so I could have a square frame, which would go over the horizontal slats.
I used long paint stir sticks to make the slats and “frame” of the outer crate.
I painted the outside of the interior box black where it would show through the slats. That was for the illusion of it being dark inside, as well as allowing the glue to hold directly to wood on both sides, instead of paint.
I used elastic bands instead of a clamp to hold the slats tight while the glue set.
Once both sides were done, I started working on the bottom,
using the 1/4 –inch panelling. It was just right for the dimensions I needed.
In a perfect world I could have cut the tongue and the groove off the edge, I
suppose, but it looked pretty good to me.
I used tongue-and-groove siding, with the rough side out, to get the look of an unfinished crate.
The back and the front were also ¼-inch panelling, running horizontal. This duplicated the look of the crate, in my opinion, and let me cut the tongue and groove off the top and bottom for a more finished look on the top.
I put the back on first, partly because I needed to paint the front of the crate before gluing it in place.
Painting a Killer Dwarfs box set
For the front, I had to recreate the “DANGER / KiLLeR DWaRf / INSIDE / THIS SIDE UP” signage. I felt the lettering for the front of the crate would be much more difficult than just the logo, so I did it on paper first, using the images from both music videos.
I worked out the lettering for the crate at the scale I needed based on what is visible in the Killer Dwarfs’ videos.
It’s not an exact replica. (And the crates in each video don’t match, either!) But I was pretty happy with doing a rough draft, because it took several tries (and a lot of erasing) to get it right.
I debated using the paper version as a guide only, and re-drawing everything on the wood. Then I thought: maybe I can use it as an actual template.
So I made copies, cut the shapes and letters out, and used that to get the lettering right. I still used a ruler to get the lettering as straight as I could, even with the paper template.
The photocopy of my original lettering made a pretty good stencil after I cut the shapes out with an X-acto knife.
Then I painted the lettering on the front of the crate. I
did two coats.
The front of the crate took the longest to make, due to the lettering work and finding the right shade of red paint.
Once the front was painted, I glued it on. It might have allowed more stability to do the lettering afterward, but I felt it would be much more awkward to letter and paint on the assembled box.
I left the top until the end, in case I had to cut or sand
down the top of the interior CD box to fit within the outside construction.
(Did I mention how hard it is to make everything perfectly square when you
don’t have a table saw?) As well, the wood panelling tended to have curves or
warps in it. Even with the use of clamps when gluing it on, it was not
perfectly flat. (TOTALLY INTENTIONAL.)
And, for the top of the crate, I decided to add a little extra. Leaving it blank would be more accurate to the crate in the music videos, but I thought it needed a Killer Dwarfs logo on it. So I stencilled the name on it and painted it to match the one inside.
Finishing touches
The final touch was to add some Russ-Dwarf-esque hands to the side of the crate. It was harder than I expected. I searched through used toys at the second-hand store, online makers of marionette parts, and eventually stumbled onto a hitherto unknown (to me) fandom, namely ball-jointed dolls. FINALLY, after racking up many a weird search result for “doll hands,” I found a supplier with two that looked like they might work.
I needed them to fit flush with the side of the box, so I used a mitre box and saw to get a nice, flat cut.
I also wasn’t totally happy with the colour of the hands as they were, so I painted them before gluing them between the slats of the side of the crate.
Now, for the finishing touch — I enlisted the help of my friend Mike Aporius to take some “official” shots of the finished product. As you can see, he made it look fantastic.
Homemade Killer Dwarfs box set by David Jón Fuller / Photo by Mike Aporius
So, there you have it. Until there’s an official Killer Dwarfs box set, you’ll just have to make your own. But for me, at least, it was a fun project to work on for several months!
Questions? Comments? Have you ever concocted something for your personal fandom because it didn’t exist yet? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
For me, the Killer Dwarfs’ second live album, Live, No Guff! had two barriers to hurdle. First, I bought it at the concert where I first saw them live, when they and Kick Axe opened for Helix, and they were fantastic. How could a recording live up to that?
The Killer Dwarfs’ Live, No Guff!
Second, I wasn’t super keen on their previous live album, so I had my doubts about this one. (In hindsight, I think that was due to the recording quality on Reunion of Scribes, the true-to-life gaps between songs, and the fact it works better as a video recording).
So how does Live, No
Guff! measure up?
Fantastically.
Any live album should make the listener feel they are actually at the concert, even if this means editing reality. The band recorded Live, No Guff! at live performances in Toronto, Ottawa, Whitehorse and Vancouver, rather than the single Toronto concert that was Reunion of Scribes.
Singer Russ Graham keeps the between-song banter to a minimum, but there’s enough to let you know the Dwarfs are having fun. During a lull in “Doesn’t Matter,” Graham tells the audience that maybe he’ll be prime minister one day “once I learn how to do all that math and stuff.”
The lineup on this album is Graham on lead vocals, Gerry Finn on guitar, Johnny Fenton on bass, and Darrell Millar on drums. The audio mix of electric and acoustic guitar, bass, vocals and drums is excellent.
The feeling is of a seamless blow-by-blow tour of the Dwarfs’ greatest hits. (Sadly, they still don’t play “We Stand Alone” on this recording, either).
The band plays songs spanning its entire career, from “Heavy Mental Breakdown” off debut album Killer Dwarfs, to the title track for Stand Tall, to Big Deal’s “Union of Pride,” the electrifying “Comin’ Through” from Dirty Weapons, “Hard Luck Town” from Method to the Madness, and the title track for Start @ One. It’s a clever way for a band whose albums are divided between various record labels and independent releases, some of which are out of print, to issue its own “greatest hits” album.
Having seen Killer Dwarfs now as both opening band and headliner, I’d say Live, No Guff! gives the best of both worlds. It sounds like a band professionally keeping things tight, playing together seamlessly, and still having a great time with the audience. I’d put it at the top of my favourite Killer Dwarfs albums, as well as near the top of my favourite live albums.
It’s also the perfect intro for anyone who’s never heard
them before, and unlike some of their classic albums, it’s relatively easy to
get hold of. Well worth the price of admission.
While not technically a Killer Dwarfs album, Russ Dwarf’s Wireless is a worthy addition for any Dwarfs completist, featuring acoustic reworkings of many of their best-known songs.
Russ Dwarf’s Wireless
As with any album of acoustic versions, Wireless has its ups and down. (Points to Russ “Dwarf” Graham for calling it that instead of “unplugged,” which conjures up memories of endless 1990s albums.)
Musicians on the album include Glenn Belcher (guitars, sitars, banjo, wood), Rob Zakojc (bass, backing vocals). Also contributing guitar playing are Kevin Simpson, Dan Lear, Kevin Reid, Ron Thal and Glen Drover. Cosimo Crupi plays keyboards, and Fred Duvall is credited for “bottles of anger,” whatever those may be.
Perfect fits
Slower songs from the Dwarfs’ later albums like “Look
Around,” “Four Seasons” and “Driftin’ Back” each work so well acoustically they
might as well have been the original versions. There’s less layering to, say,
“Driftin’ Back,” but it still sounds great.
Out of left field
The wireless take on “I’m Alive,” from Big Deal answers the question “What would the Killer Dwarfs sound like as a twangy honky-tonk band?” And I’m less sure I buy Graham’s crooning reimagining of “Dirty Weapons.” Nothing wrong with his singing; it just got me thinking, “Maybe their heavier stuff can’t be ‘wireless’.” But then…
Songs that shouldn’t work, but totally do
The Dwarfs’ first big hit, “Keep the Spirit Alive” kicks off the album. It’s slower than the original, but no less effective. The optimistic spirit (ha) of the original shines through on this stripped-down version.
Graham follows that up with a song from the same album, “Stand Tall,” which keeps the tempo of the original, but recreates the beat which crisp strumming instead of the soaring power chords and heavy drums. Mike Hall’s outstanding guitar solo, played on acoustic guitar (I assume by Belcher) would give Adrian Legg a run for his money.
I was blown away by the live version of “Comin’ Through” in concert and on Live, No Guff! And the studio original on Dirty Weapons is as heavy as the Dwarfs get. But man… the wireless version loses none of the aggression, and sounds like it should be on the soundtrack for a revenge-heavy Western. (You can hear some of it in the video below.)
Overall…
This is a solid album of different takes on the Killer Dwarfs’ pop-metal standards, with a few curve balls thrown in. Outstanding singing by Russ Graham and guitar work by many make it worth adding to your collection.
On Start at One, the Killer Dwarfs wail like the early 1990s never went away. As far as the album is concerned, it’s true.
The Killer Dwarfs recorded Start at One in 1993, but released it in 2013.
The Dwarfs originally recorded Start at One (stylized as Start @ One) in 1993 with the same band lineup as Method to the Madness: Russ Graham on vocals, Darrell Millar on drums, Ronald Mayer on bass and Gerry Finn on guitar. Unfortunately, it wasn’t released then and was, apparently, only available as a bootleg called Just Another Day. Blogger Carl Hose has more of the story. So for most fans, Method to the Madness was the last Dwarfs album before the band went on an indefinite hiatus. (That is, before some members reformed the band for a performance they recorded for Reunion of Scribes — Live 2001).
However, in 2013, the Killer Dwarfs released the album independently as Start @ One. (When the band signed with the EMP label, EMP re-released it in 2018.) So how does a heavy rock album recorded during the height of Grunge hold up in the 21st century?
Pretty well, actually.
Start @ One showcases the melodic songwriting the Killer Dwarfs displayed on albums like Dirty Weapons and Method to the Madness. But sonically, it’s more stripped-down, hearkening back to the style of their debut album.
The album starts off with two catchy songs, “Lonely Road,”
and “Solid Ground,” before shifting into the slithering “Sky is Falling” that
starts off with sharp, spare guitar riffs that keep grinding all the way
through to the sarcastic-sounding chorus and calliope-infused end. (Yes, the
calliope sound works, even if it’s a little weird.)
In 1993, not as many radio stations were playing this style of heavy rock anymore. But by the time the Dwarfs released Start at One, heavy metal and hard rock had had a renaissance. Bands like Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses were releasing new studio albums and touring as if the 1980s roared on. The fact the Dwarfs had an entire album’s worth of “new” material in that style made it a timely release in 2013.
The songs show a good diversity of what the Dwarfs are capable of. The title track, a hammering, melodic number that also sounds great live. The album shows its mellow side with the slower, Led-Zeppelin-esque “The Crowd.” I wasn’t as crazy about “Down in Hollywood,” which seems like a throwback to the L.A. music scene at the time it was written.
Overall, Start at One is a solid album, and a good addition to the Dwarfs’ catalogue. With its eventual release, fans no longer had to chase down illegal copies.
I don’t know why glomming two different things onto each other appeals to me so much, but it’s probably why I like puns so much. Or that I wonder what would happen in a crossover between Teen Wolf and The Lost Boys. Or write novels that jam, say, 1980s heavy metal and werewolves together, or others that mix Monty Python absurdity with Icelandic folklore. Occasionally, I start thinking up ’80s TV mashups. Here are the shows I came up with…
Sitcoms
Laugh-a-minute hijinks with your favourite high-concept, never-evolving characters in static three-set environments:
The Facts of Webster
Chachi in Charge*
Silver Moonlighting
My Two Ties
Bosom Morks
Joanie Loves Shirley
The Strokes of Life
Who’s Company?
Family Days
* admittedly this might be indistinguishable from either original series
Dramas
Emmy-award-winning, definitely-not-soap-operas because, uh, they used film, not videotape, and also, were broadcast in the evening.
Elsewhere Street Blues
airwolfsomething
St. Dynasty
Hill Street Cheers
Action/suspense shows
Diff’rent A-Team is a TV mashup I’d watch.
These would definitely make your mid-week evening “must-see TV” list:
Starsky and Mindy
Diff’rent A-Team
Too Close For Spenser
Remington & Remington
Sledge Hunter!
T.J. Hooker For Hire
Magnum Steele, P.I.
The Knights of Hazzard*
*It occurs to me this probably would have been a lot more sinister than a show with a flashy car :/
Ensemble casts
There’s always a standout subplot or gimmick for a minor character within the rigid parameters of every episode:
Love Island
Star Trek: The Day After
The Blue Thunder Years
The Happy Boat
Game shows
Try your skill, luck, or interpersonal charm at some of these doozies:
Wheel of Jeopardy
The Family is Right
Let’s Make a Feud
The $64,000 Definition*
*(I know, wrong decade)
Sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and other genres
Big ideas! Low budget! Probably a cool vehicle! To say nothing of the costumes…
Airwerewolf
Tales of the Golden A.L.F.
Automanimal
M.A.S.H. Headroom
Bring ‘Em Back Matthew Starr
Soap operas
Don’t worry, the interpersonal strife between the characters will never be resolved.
The Dallas Boat
WKRP in Santa Barbara
The Young and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not
CanCon
For non-Canucks, CanCon is “Canadian content” meaning entertainment that has been written, performed, recorded, produced, or replicated (or some complicated percentage of any or all of these things) by a Canadian, as judged by the CRTC, which has mandated a certain proportion of CanCon be broadcast by Canadian television and radio stations. This is why shows like The Beachcombers lasted forever, and why generations of teens must endure endless replays of The Guess Who on rock radio.
Here are some shows that might have livened up the ol’ CBC or CTV lineups:
The Danger Bay of Things
Beachcombers: The Next Generation
The Sesame Giant
21 Degrassi Street
SCTV in Cincinnati
Mr. Dressup’s Neighbourhood
No idea, but it sounds fun
Lifestyles of the Rich and Newhart
It’s your turn
All right, I’ve had my fun. Now let’s hear your ideas for ’80s TV mashups. You can see what author J.C. Lillis came up with when we were brainstorming on Twitter:
Cagney & ALF Quantum Moonlighting Max Headroom in Charge The Greatest American Fall Guy T.J. Hooker & Allie Perfect Strangers….with Children
