music: Vuggy lures geologists and others from their studies, into the pub
John MacQueen, The Peak

'Trip the light fantastic'...Vuggy played the SFU Pub on Friday, Oct. 26 to a crowd of fans, people in costume and students from the department of earth science. The crowd, unusually energetic for a Friday night, was out in full force for this evening of music and performance.

Vuggy defines a specific type of rock porosity. Apparently this fact struck a chord with the geologists in the crowd, instrumental to the good turnout. In my living memory, not since the 'Rolling Stones' has there been a bigger geologist following.

Indie night regular Peter Gibson called it "...challenging pop!" Indeed, it is hard to pigeonhole a band, and this is a really hard band to classify. Their sound was collaborative, alternative, and an enjoyable listen.

"It's pop...good pop...interesting pop...challenging pop!" said Vuggy in a recent interview on CJSF. I learned that the band is composed of musicians with backgrounds from all over the musical spectrum. Rachel, one of the vocalists, is classically trained with the Vancouver Bach Choir. Brendan, the drummer, comes from a punk background and has played in many bands. Russ plays the saxophone and had started out doing improvisational music, but now he plays bass. The other vocalist, Kristie, comes from a musical family - both her father and grandfather have played in bands - she has played the bass guitar, the piano and the flute just to name a few.

And how do all these different backgrounds merge to become Vuggy? "With great difficulty!" Russ exclaims, although they are now finally "sorting out the elements," and "finding out what our sound is collectively."

Although they feel that Vancouver is a tough scene, they do recognise a strong punk following and note that there is great difficulty in getting people out to shows, which is an important thing for a beginning band. Russ says, "We play our thing, we've a good sound, it's not really like anything else that's going around. We've got a range of things that we do, so we can play a good long set with a lot of variation. From the really ruckus upbeat stuff to quieter (acoustic) stuff."

One interesting aspect of their show is the vocal melodies between Kristie and Rachael. The vocals were indeed strong, and I would like to see them do some all-acoustic songs as they have a very clean, fresh sound which would benefit from it. The entire band contributes creatively, which makes their sound unique. If it were up to me, I'd give Vuggy a recording studio, just to see what kind of new sound they might come up with. Russ, in the interview, brags of his genre he calls Plunko, part Punk and part Flamenco.

I think that when people go to see a band, they go for the overall personalities, and this band delighted the crowd. They've certainly received what some followers said was their best reception so far. Although on Oct. 26th, Vuggy's collective sound wasn't perfect due to battling elements with the sound system while setting up, once the lights came on, their lively performance stole the crowd.

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