If you’re like me and approaching what feels like infinity years old, you probably need to pace yourself when it comes to going out at night. I will happily go for months on end without ever leaving my house after dark, but even despite my advanced age there are some things I just can’t resist.
Once a year, on some night directly before relatives descend upon my house but after we have all left behind such silly things as jobs and school, something magical happens, and it’s been going on for years and years. Something so mystical and alight with the glow of the holiday season that it’s impossible not to be swept up in the revelry.
I’m referring, of course, to the annual Angry Snowmans non-denominational holiday hoopla. For the uninitiated, Angry Snowmans are sort of a supergroup of Victoria-born and -bred punk rockers, with members of bands like Knife Manual and The Gnar Gnars taking the stage dressed like disgruntled elves and ranting and raving about unfit working conditions in Santa’s workshop, the poor treatment of the elvenfolk, and where to get the best hooch this side of the North Pole.
The show has everything a good holiday show needs, right down to an elfette named Elise Navidad angrily shaking her jingle bells at the writhing, moshing crowd. Each elf has a ridiculous name, some of them more thematic than others: Rayce becomes Egg Nob (a moniker more unsettling the longer you think about it); one of them goes by Hot Dog, for reasons never fully explained; and so on (seriously, stop thinking about Egg Nob.)
This was the 17th year that these masters of the ridiculous and merry have done the show, and although the lineup has changed and then changed back a few times over the years, the raucous toilet humour and idiotic antics never stray too far, and the clever retooling of punk classics always hit their mark. And it always sells out.
This year it was held at the venerable Lucky Bar on Friday, December 19, and I was happy to find that while we were all much longer in the tooth, it was the same group of roustabouts as every other year. As the band took the stage and began what can only be described as middle-finger Christmas carols, I was happy to greet old friends, as well as their children. The next generation of degenerates is apparently now legal bar-show age. If that weren’t enough to make one feel ancient, the show also gets earlier and earlier each year as we continue our slow, agonizing march into our dotage. This year, the whole event was wrapped up like a Christmas gift by about 10:30, and we were getting elbowed out of the bar by slightly bewildered hip-hop children whose event was starting around the same time I was getting home to watch my stories and fall asleep on my couch.
So, if you, like me, love to go out approximately once a year, may I suggest you dust off your dancing shoes? You know the ones; they’ve got curled winklepicker toes and are adorned with studs and spikes that jingle as you walk.
And don’t hesitate to keep checking for the Snowmans in local show listings, or to get tickets to next year’s show presale, because while it’s never exactly a secret when or where the Angry Snowmans show will happen each year, it is criminally under-promoted. This is perhaps because everyone there has a failing memory, bad eyesight, and can only mosh for about three minutes before we need to sit down somewhere. It is so much fun.