Matthew Good Blames Liquor Laws for Killing Vancouver Music Scene

Matthew Good is adding his name to a growing list of Vancouver musicians fed up with the stringent liquor laws preventing venues from keeping their doors open to new, independent musical talent.

In recent years, the west coast city's move to shut down smaller bars and clubs has choked Vancouver's punk and indie scene, with strict requirements relating to security and hours of operation making it increasingly hard for venues that don't cater to mainstream audiences to stay open.

"I was lucky enough to be pretty much the last performer at the Town Pump before it stopped being a live music venue," Good, who titled his just-released album 'Vancouver,' tells Spinner. "There was the Cruel Elephant, Gastown Music Hall, Smiling Buddha and now [they] have evaporated. There could be a bunch of guys jamming in a basement in Burnaby that could be the next Explosions in the Sky and who's going to give them a chance? Who's going to let them play?"

Fittingly, Good's album 'Vancouver' is an examination of the changing face of his city, once the site of a vibrant punk rock and hardcore community and, later, an explosion of creative indie rock.

"If I was sitting with my best friend at Taf's Café on Granville twenty years ago, I don't think we would have thought there would be a huge screen above a super-mega music store at the corner of Granville and Robson. I think we all would have entered into a suicide pact," jokes Good. "That edge to the city is gone and I don't think new bands get to pick up on it."

Scathing songs like 'Vancouver National Anthem' and 'Volcanoes' address Good's frustrations with his hometown head-on, lamenting a new urban landscape that would quickly stifle the rise of a new generation of D.O.A.s. Now in his late-thirties, Good credits the city's early punk scene with instilling him with a life-long interest in social activism.

"I grew up with D.O.A. and Adversity and Nomeansno and the Pointed Sticks -- that was our town," he says. "I know my music doesn't necessarily represent the fact that I used to go to Death Sentence shows when I was a kid. But it rubs off. You can't sit through a conversation with Jello Biafra and not be affected. It doesn't matter if you're in a three-piece business suit. It's about the subject matter."

Good says he's not just worried about the present, but also the future of Vancouver's musical legacy if the underground scene remains stifled in what critics are angrily dubbing No Fun City.

www.nofuncity.org from melissa on Vimeo.