One of my favourite parts of Vancouver is its rich musical roots. Only a city with a diversified pool of talent like ours could produce Michael Bublé and Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan and Mark Donnelly. And if you don’t know who Mark Donnelly is, watch a Canucks game. His voice will take your mind off the fact that we’ve never won a cup. So it was a huge treat when I discovered Dan Mangan, a nestled Canadian treasure hidden in the troves of Vancouver humbleness. Dan and his album “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” changed my perception of Vancouver music. He was at the musical stage of producing brilliant music, minus the mainstream, stadium-frequenting presence. He had the perfect setting for an indie, hipster musician with a dab of arrogance, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Dan was your friend who made it big. Dan was the guy who loved words, guitar and the tickled feeling in his throat when he sang just that much harder. In four words, Dan was a delight.
The first time I saw him play was at SHOREfest in the summer of 2010. SHOREfest was a musical festival put on by the Shore 104.3, coinciding with the Celebration of Light, a famous Vancouver tradition of blowing stuff up over English Bay. I was just some seasonal help, handing out Shore-branded kettle corn and tote bags to anyone with a need for sweet-and-salty popcorn and, subsequently, a bag to carry it. It was simple work, but with a picturesque beach feet away and an amplified soundtrack behind me, I was happy. I packed popcorn in bags through the fiddlin’ country vibes of Kendel Carson and the longhaired radiant atmosphere of Jon and Roy. It was nice to hear. Every so often I would mosey over and catch a song when the kettle corn business was slow, which, let’s be honest, it never was. I mean, come on. Kettle corn not attracting hordes of people? That’s like a walrus with a monocle not being awesome. Anyways, amongst all the haste of kettle corn snatching, beach lounging and simply put, boardwalk loitering, Dan Mangan stepped to the stage. The crowd suddenly shifted from tote to stage, disregarding our free stuff, a very rare occurrence. What the crowd hadn’t overtly shown for Kendel Carson and Jon and Roy, they overcompensated for Dan. They were swaying and harmonizing, yelling at Dan proposals of love and obsession, the good kind. It was intimate and beautiful, Dan and his band knocking out crowd favourite after crowd favourite until I realized, all of his songs were crowd favourites. Ten minutes before the end of his set I stopped packing bags and simply abandoned my post to get the true crowd experience of this guy. He saved the best for last, erupting the crowd in roars when he said,
“This is a song called Robots.”
And I felt carried away. I was swaying and chanting with joy, repeating,
“Robots need love too. They want to be loved by you. They want to be loved by you.”
And that is what I come back for. I’ve seen Dan six times now.
- At SHOREfest in English Bay.
- At the Alix Goolden Performance Hall in Victoria.
- At Smorgasbord, a fundraising event for homelessness.
- At the Sasquatch! Music Festival, a magnificent music festival three hours out of Seattle that you should go to.
- At Summer Live, a free outdoor festival in Stanley Park.
And the sixth was just a few days ago, rocking out the Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver’s most awe-inspiring theatre, on November 9th. He played the classics and he played what was new. He had a small orchestra and a larger stage presence. He was more mature and edgy, singing about death and larger questions of life, asking,
“What if all flags burnt together? Is that unity? Is that unity?”
But through his darker repertoire and his newly earned crowd-amassing presence, was the sweet, good ole Dan I always knew, who packaged his music with a bow and gave it to his audience. This was the Dan who pointed his mic to the audience and told us to sing, the Dan who told us to be his choir. So while he’ll experiment with his message and explore the depths of musical possibility, I’ll be comfortable knowing that Dan will always be the delight I first saw him as. He’ll always be the nicest guy around.