Music Waste festival poster...
Music Waste venue, the Adonai Pub...
Manning the door with Michelle...
These guys had never rehearsed or played together before...
Friday, May 20, 2005
Music Waste festival - pics only
Music Waste festival poster...
Music Waste venue, the Adonai Pub...
Manning the door with Michelle...
These guys had never rehearsed or played together before...
Monday, May 16, 2005
Mad Aussie House Parties/Grouse Grind weekend
G'day,
Last weekend was busy. To put it mildly. Well, okay, Sunday I was busy being a couch potato, but everything leading up that point was busy...
Friday night was the Snow Patrol gig - I've already written about that. But I was far from ready to call it a night, I was truly buzzing from the post-gig adrenaline that you get when you just experienced something amazing.
I'd been invited to 2 different parties that night, one really close to me in East Van, and one in Kitsilano, thrown by an Aussie workmate, Michelle, which wasn't quite so close. But not being very sensible sometimes, I chose the Kits party first, with an idea that i'd try to get to the East Van one later on.
So I jumped on a bus and got 1/2 way there before i realised that I had no booze with me. So what, you say - just go to a bottle shop or corner store and get some.... Uh-Uh, not here in Vancouver, B.C. If there is one thing that bugs me about this town, its that the liquor stores are all Government run, and they all close at 11pm. End of Story. Thats it....In a word, Bummer.
When I got to the party, a smallish 2 bedroom apartment, it was jumping, crammed in with 20 or 30 odd people there. A quick scan of the room and I knew about 5 or 6 of them, all Aussie, and listening to the chatter, it was all that I could hear. There was one sole Candian, an Irish girl, a smattering of Kiwis I guess, and then alllll Aussie. There were a few more late arrivals along with me, also without booze. Someone drunkenly piped up and said she knew of one bottle shop that was open til Midnight, on Commercial Drive - about 4 blocks from my home. Without thinking too much into, 4 of us made the decision to check it out.
"Jump in my car, I'll drive" says one guy. He was sober, he said, so we all hopped in. This was no ordinary drive tho. His mate had just arrived off the plane from Oz and so he wanted to pick him up form the airport in style, and had hired a Mustang convertible for the day. Red, too, coz red goes faster!! I somehow landed the passenger seat, and then we were off speeding thru the Vancouver streets at close to Midnight to try and find this bottle shop. We seemed to be taking the long way 'round, coz it took forever...
Then all of a sudden, the driver pipes up to his mate "How are them mushrooms kickin' in??" Sure, he was sober, but he was also tripping!! I thought he was a little erratic behind the wheel! No wonder. Anyway, we get to the bottle shop....and of course it was closed. I could've cut my losses here and walked home, but not being very sensible again, I chose not to.
Okay, so lets get back to the party then, resigning ourselves to a sober night (well some of us anyway!). It was no biggy anyway. It was a great night out for a drive, top down, spinning around the Vancouver suburbs close by the marina with a view of the city skyline all lit up in lights. Back at the party, we were taken pity upon and given a cuppla beers by a cuppla guys who looked like they didn't need anymore anyways. Most people were pretty well trolleyed by this stage, evidenced most clearly by Michelle and Paul singing along to a song, using a RUBBER DUCKIE as a microphone!
Paul and Michelle sing karaoke into the Rubber Duckie Microphone...
Not long after that, I got a taxi home, completely forgetting about the 2nd party.
Next day, Saturday, I'd devoted to getting up the Grouse Grind. Grose Mountain is one of three mountains that provide the awesome backdrop to Vancouver. Merely a stones throw across the Burrard Inlet, its a very short bus ride away to the snowfields in winter, and awesome hiking and mountain-biking terrain the rest of the year.
Grouse Mountain...The Grouse Grind begins. Otherwise known as "Mother Nature's Stairmaster From Hell"...
I concede its pretty terrible of me to have this amazing resource at my fingertips and not use it once until now - especially as I had missed the Whistler season.
A word of Warning...
There is one walk in particular that you can do - the Grouse Grind - which is reputedly the most popular day hike in North America. The grind in the title stems from the fact that it is a 933 metre elevation gain squashed into a mere 2.9 Kilometres of trail. Its popular nickname - Mother Nature's Stairmaster from Hell. It is literally like walking stairs - uneven, crooked stairs, for 3 kilometres. It is said that completing it in between 1 and 2 hours is a good effort - altho there are professional sporting events here where the record is some 24 minutes to the top.
Too easy really...48 minutes for me...
My housemate Ceri was up for it too, but after faffing about for ages, we didn't leave the house till after 1pm for the train downtown. Getting there also involved taking the Seabus across the inlet to Lonsdale Quay. Of course, here we decided to stop for lunch, and I wanted some pics of the amazing views, before we hopped on the bus to the mountain base. Another coffee break for me before we started meant that it wasn't until 4pm that we finally took off. Procrastinating? Putting off the inevitable? Fear of the unknown? Who knows, actually?
it's only 2.9 Km long, with an ascent of 933 metres...
I'm in pretty decent shape at the moment - all these 10-20 Kilometre day hikes I've been doing, and cycling everywhere has done me the world of good, so I shouldn't have been too concerned about this piddly little 3 kilometre jobby beforehand. And indeed I really shouldn't have - I nailed it in 53 minutes! Ceri came in at 72 minutes. I still felt pretty fresh at the end too, like i could have done it again.
See how happy I look!...
Getting back home needed to done a little more hastily than getting out - we had another party to get to tonight in Kits. An Aussie Barbeque. Haven't been to one of those since.....well, since i threw one in my house for my birthday last year in Dublin!
Me and my harem, Eryn, Ginny and Jenny (also known as Bruce and Trev...)
This house was decidedly larger than Friday nights party. In fact the house was huge. It was an old style weatherboard - 3 stories, witha front patio and an attic, with a massive backyard thrown in for good measure. The rear verandah was decked out in eucalyptus branches and leaves as well - I could have been back at home! I fell in love with it straight away. Kits is full of these types of houses - its amazing to walk around this suburb just checking out the architecture. There were even more Aussie folk here than last night as well, with once again maybe a couple of locals thrown in for novelty value. The barbie was great, and we even managed to get a little drunk tonight, having remembered to bring the booze. I wasn't gonna go thirsty 2 nights running!!
Aussie House Party in Kitsilano...
Eventually tho, the days events caught up with me, the Grind grinding me down, and weariness setting in, and it was "Home James" by Midnight.
P.S. Was invited to do the Grind again yesterday by my pal Travis and his girlfriend Michelle, so Ceri and I joined them again. Happy to say that I knocked 5 minutes off my time, coming in at 48 minutes (Ceri posting 67mins). We're talking about making this a semi-regular event. Its a great cardio workout - i'm wondering if i can bring my time down to 45 or even 40 minutes!
Tony
Last weekend was busy. To put it mildly. Well, okay, Sunday I was busy being a couch potato, but everything leading up that point was busy...
Friday night was the Snow Patrol gig - I've already written about that. But I was far from ready to call it a night, I was truly buzzing from the post-gig adrenaline that you get when you just experienced something amazing.
I'd been invited to 2 different parties that night, one really close to me in East Van, and one in Kitsilano, thrown by an Aussie workmate, Michelle, which wasn't quite so close. But not being very sensible sometimes, I chose the Kits party first, with an idea that i'd try to get to the East Van one later on.
So I jumped on a bus and got 1/2 way there before i realised that I had no booze with me. So what, you say - just go to a bottle shop or corner store and get some.... Uh-Uh, not here in Vancouver, B.C. If there is one thing that bugs me about this town, its that the liquor stores are all Government run, and they all close at 11pm. End of Story. Thats it....In a word, Bummer.
When I got to the party, a smallish 2 bedroom apartment, it was jumping, crammed in with 20 or 30 odd people there. A quick scan of the room and I knew about 5 or 6 of them, all Aussie, and listening to the chatter, it was all that I could hear. There was one sole Candian, an Irish girl, a smattering of Kiwis I guess, and then alllll Aussie. There were a few more late arrivals along with me, also without booze. Someone drunkenly piped up and said she knew of one bottle shop that was open til Midnight, on Commercial Drive - about 4 blocks from my home. Without thinking too much into, 4 of us made the decision to check it out.
"Jump in my car, I'll drive" says one guy. He was sober, he said, so we all hopped in. This was no ordinary drive tho. His mate had just arrived off the plane from Oz and so he wanted to pick him up form the airport in style, and had hired a Mustang convertible for the day. Red, too, coz red goes faster!! I somehow landed the passenger seat, and then we were off speeding thru the Vancouver streets at close to Midnight to try and find this bottle shop. We seemed to be taking the long way 'round, coz it took forever...
Then all of a sudden, the driver pipes up to his mate "How are them mushrooms kickin' in??" Sure, he was sober, but he was also tripping!! I thought he was a little erratic behind the wheel! No wonder. Anyway, we get to the bottle shop....and of course it was closed. I could've cut my losses here and walked home, but not being very sensible again, I chose not to.
Okay, so lets get back to the party then, resigning ourselves to a sober night (well some of us anyway!). It was no biggy anyway. It was a great night out for a drive, top down, spinning around the Vancouver suburbs close by the marina with a view of the city skyline all lit up in lights. Back at the party, we were taken pity upon and given a cuppla beers by a cuppla guys who looked like they didn't need anymore anyways. Most people were pretty well trolleyed by this stage, evidenced most clearly by Michelle and Paul singing along to a song, using a RUBBER DUCKIE as a microphone!
Paul and Michelle sing karaoke into the Rubber Duckie Microphone...
Not long after that, I got a taxi home, completely forgetting about the 2nd party.
Next day, Saturday, I'd devoted to getting up the Grouse Grind. Grose Mountain is one of three mountains that provide the awesome backdrop to Vancouver. Merely a stones throw across the Burrard Inlet, its a very short bus ride away to the snowfields in winter, and awesome hiking and mountain-biking terrain the rest of the year.
Grouse Mountain...The Grouse Grind begins. Otherwise known as "Mother Nature's Stairmaster From Hell"...
I concede its pretty terrible of me to have this amazing resource at my fingertips and not use it once until now - especially as I had missed the Whistler season.
A word of Warning...
There is one walk in particular that you can do - the Grouse Grind - which is reputedly the most popular day hike in North America. The grind in the title stems from the fact that it is a 933 metre elevation gain squashed into a mere 2.9 Kilometres of trail. Its popular nickname - Mother Nature's Stairmaster from Hell. It is literally like walking stairs - uneven, crooked stairs, for 3 kilometres. It is said that completing it in between 1 and 2 hours is a good effort - altho there are professional sporting events here where the record is some 24 minutes to the top.
Too easy really...48 minutes for me...
My housemate Ceri was up for it too, but after faffing about for ages, we didn't leave the house till after 1pm for the train downtown. Getting there also involved taking the Seabus across the inlet to Lonsdale Quay. Of course, here we decided to stop for lunch, and I wanted some pics of the amazing views, before we hopped on the bus to the mountain base. Another coffee break for me before we started meant that it wasn't until 4pm that we finally took off. Procrastinating? Putting off the inevitable? Fear of the unknown? Who knows, actually?
it's only 2.9 Km long, with an ascent of 933 metres...
I'm in pretty decent shape at the moment - all these 10-20 Kilometre day hikes I've been doing, and cycling everywhere has done me the world of good, so I shouldn't have been too concerned about this piddly little 3 kilometre jobby beforehand. And indeed I really shouldn't have - I nailed it in 53 minutes! Ceri came in at 72 minutes. I still felt pretty fresh at the end too, like i could have done it again.
See how happy I look!...
Getting back home needed to done a little more hastily than getting out - we had another party to get to tonight in Kits. An Aussie Barbeque. Haven't been to one of those since.....well, since i threw one in my house for my birthday last year in Dublin!
Me and my harem, Eryn, Ginny and Jenny (also known as Bruce and Trev...)
This house was decidedly larger than Friday nights party. In fact the house was huge. It was an old style weatherboard - 3 stories, witha front patio and an attic, with a massive backyard thrown in for good measure. The rear verandah was decked out in eucalyptus branches and leaves as well - I could have been back at home! I fell in love with it straight away. Kits is full of these types of houses - its amazing to walk around this suburb just checking out the architecture. There were even more Aussie folk here than last night as well, with once again maybe a couple of locals thrown in for novelty value. The barbie was great, and we even managed to get a little drunk tonight, having remembered to bring the booze. I wasn't gonna go thirsty 2 nights running!!
Aussie House Party in Kitsilano...
Eventually tho, the days events caught up with me, the Grind grinding me down, and weariness setting in, and it was "Home James" by Midnight.
P.S. Was invited to do the Grind again yesterday by my pal Travis and his girlfriend Michelle, so Ceri and I joined them again. Happy to say that I knocked 5 minutes off my time, coming in at 48 minutes (Ceri posting 67mins). We're talking about making this a semi-regular event. Its a great cardio workout - i'm wondering if i can bring my time down to 45 or even 40 minutes!
Tony
Vancouver street activism & community spirit
Hey,
One of the best things i love about living in Vancouver is the vitality, vibrancy, and strong community feeling of it's activist scene. Actually, along with the music scene i mentioned in my last emails, the whole Pacific Northwest region is chock full of alternative-community-activist type groups, right down to Portland, Oregon.
Since i've been here i've become involved in, or attended quite a number of events organised for various reasons. Living in East Vancouver, right by Commercial Drive, I am totally in amongst the thick of the action. This area is a hot-bed for radical thinkers, artists, bohemians, students and is a generally open-minded community.
Just a few weeks ago, there was an event called "Roads Are For Hockey". This is basically a "Reclaim the Streets" styled event, highlighting the need for more public space, generally how the automobile industry has taken over what used to be public space, and more specifically a protest at a proposed highway expansion plan that is set to decimate the area.
A coalition of community groups were co-ordinating this event, namely the Cross Pedestrians (http://www.dotank.org/crosspedestrians), the Work Less Party (www.worklessparty.org) - slogan "Work Less, Consume Less, Live More!!!", with the Adbusters spin-off, Vancouver Culture Jammers (www.adbusters.org) also helping to promote the event.
This oh-so-much-fun event had a one block stretch of Commercial Drive blocked off to all forms of traffic, except buses, and an open public game of field hockey took place. The local police were on hand to direct and maintain traffic around the event, and media of all forms were there to report on this crazy little gathering.
It was on for young and old, literally, as kids as young as 3 or 4 were in there mixing it up with older kids, adults, and pensioners, both men and women. The skill level didn't seem particularly high, but the enrgey and enthusiasm levels certainly were. This particular stretch of road is bordered one side by a public park, and the other side has a range of cafe's, bars and retaurants, and there must have been at least 300 hundred people either taking part in the game or watching from the sidelines. A small number of community and activist groups had stalls open selling wares and promoting causes, a small P.A. system was blasting out fun, up-tempo hockey related songs.
A provincial election is coming up soon, and so the local political hopefuls were in there, from the Greens (not surprising given the nature of the event) to the liberal NDP party and the Conservatives, stating their environmental credentials. It was really quite funny when a bus approached as the chorus "BUS, Game Off!" was shouted out, goals moved to the side of the street, and the bus allowed to pass. Then it was "Game On!!", and normal service resumed.
After the designated hour was up, everything was packed up, and normal traffic was resumed, with the participants all either filling up the cafe's and milling about the park, or heading home.
roads are for hockey.
I've also attended a couple of more bike-activist events in recent times, hooking up with the pseudo-anarchist Maragret Charles Chopper Collective - MC3 (www.mcthree.ca), art-bike collective for another ride around town, and also the monthly Critical Mass (http://www.bikesexual.org/cm/links.htm) ride around the city, held on the last Friday of every month. These rides get madder and crazier every month - this month it was tall-bike jousting - a kind of modern day version of the King Arthurs Knights of the Round Table medieval jousting of centuries past.
Apparently there was a tall-bike jousting festival in Portland earlier this month!
The Critical Mass event is now a worldwide phenomenon, starting back in 1992 in San Francisco. This is both a celebration of bikes and bike culture, promoting cycling as a serious alternative to motorised vehicles as a form of transport. It's better for the environment, healthier for you, and quite often, in peak traffic in big cities, faster. The word quickly spread, and I attended my first Mass in Melbourne in 1994. It comes as no surprise to me that they are here in Vancouver, and regularly well attended. It is billed as a global, simultaneous gathering of like-minded people, celebrating the culture of cycling.
As mentioned, it occurs on the last Friday of every month. So in dozens of cities around the world, there is this huge gathering which then takes off in a mass of two-wheelers for a group ride around the city, typically lasting anywhere from an hour to 3 or 4 hours in length, at a leisurely pace, with a celebratory, festival, carnivale type atmospehere. In Vancouver, There are often 100-200 and more bikers that gather together.
At the last ride, it was the night of the U2 concert, and as thier is usually some kind of theme, for people to get inspired and dressed up in costume, last month it "U 2 can be a rock n roll star". There was the most amazing array of people dressed as their fave rocker, and more than one Bono rubber face mask!
As a foreigner, being a part of these groups and attending events like the Hockey game really makes me feel like a part of a scene, especially now that i've been a few times and people recognise me by name. It's so much fun. I love it.
Talk Soon,
Tony
One of the best things i love about living in Vancouver is the vitality, vibrancy, and strong community feeling of it's activist scene. Actually, along with the music scene i mentioned in my last emails, the whole Pacific Northwest region is chock full of alternative-community-activist type groups, right down to Portland, Oregon.
Since i've been here i've become involved in, or attended quite a number of events organised for various reasons. Living in East Vancouver, right by Commercial Drive, I am totally in amongst the thick of the action. This area is a hot-bed for radical thinkers, artists, bohemians, students and is a generally open-minded community.
Just a few weeks ago, there was an event called "Roads Are For Hockey". This is basically a "Reclaim the Streets" styled event, highlighting the need for more public space, generally how the automobile industry has taken over what used to be public space, and more specifically a protest at a proposed highway expansion plan that is set to decimate the area.
A coalition of community groups were co-ordinating this event, namely the Cross Pedestrians (http://www.dotank.org/crosspedestrians), the Work Less Party (www.worklessparty.org) - slogan "Work Less, Consume Less, Live More!!!", with the Adbusters spin-off, Vancouver Culture Jammers (www.adbusters.org) also helping to promote the event.
This oh-so-much-fun event had a one block stretch of Commercial Drive blocked off to all forms of traffic, except buses, and an open public game of field hockey took place. The local police were on hand to direct and maintain traffic around the event, and media of all forms were there to report on this crazy little gathering.
It was on for young and old, literally, as kids as young as 3 or 4 were in there mixing it up with older kids, adults, and pensioners, both men and women. The skill level didn't seem particularly high, but the enrgey and enthusiasm levels certainly were. This particular stretch of road is bordered one side by a public park, and the other side has a range of cafe's, bars and retaurants, and there must have been at least 300 hundred people either taking part in the game or watching from the sidelines. A small number of community and activist groups had stalls open selling wares and promoting causes, a small P.A. system was blasting out fun, up-tempo hockey related songs.
A provincial election is coming up soon, and so the local political hopefuls were in there, from the Greens (not surprising given the nature of the event) to the liberal NDP party and the Conservatives, stating their environmental credentials. It was really quite funny when a bus approached as the chorus "BUS, Game Off!" was shouted out, goals moved to the side of the street, and the bus allowed to pass. Then it was "Game On!!", and normal service resumed.
After the designated hour was up, everything was packed up, and normal traffic was resumed, with the participants all either filling up the cafe's and milling about the park, or heading home.
roads are for hockey.
I've also attended a couple of more bike-activist events in recent times, hooking up with the pseudo-anarchist Maragret Charles Chopper Collective - MC3 (www.mcthree.ca), art-bike collective for another ride around town, and also the monthly Critical Mass (http://www.bikesexual.org/cm/links.htm) ride around the city, held on the last Friday of every month. These rides get madder and crazier every month - this month it was tall-bike jousting - a kind of modern day version of the King Arthurs Knights of the Round Table medieval jousting of centuries past.
Apparently there was a tall-bike jousting festival in Portland earlier this month!
The Critical Mass event is now a worldwide phenomenon, starting back in 1992 in San Francisco. This is both a celebration of bikes and bike culture, promoting cycling as a serious alternative to motorised vehicles as a form of transport. It's better for the environment, healthier for you, and quite often, in peak traffic in big cities, faster. The word quickly spread, and I attended my first Mass in Melbourne in 1994. It comes as no surprise to me that they are here in Vancouver, and regularly well attended. It is billed as a global, simultaneous gathering of like-minded people, celebrating the culture of cycling.
As mentioned, it occurs on the last Friday of every month. So in dozens of cities around the world, there is this huge gathering which then takes off in a mass of two-wheelers for a group ride around the city, typically lasting anywhere from an hour to 3 or 4 hours in length, at a leisurely pace, with a celebratory, festival, carnivale type atmospehere. In Vancouver, There are often 100-200 and more bikers that gather together.
At the last ride, it was the night of the U2 concert, and as thier is usually some kind of theme, for people to get inspired and dressed up in costume, last month it "U 2 can be a rock n roll star". There was the most amazing array of people dressed as their fave rocker, and more than one Bono rubber face mask!
As a foreigner, being a part of these groups and attending events like the Hockey game really makes me feel like a part of a scene, especially now that i've been a few times and people recognise me by name. It's so much fun. I love it.
Talk Soon,
Tony
gigs gigs gigs! - part 2
'Ight!,
The following Thursday was the Sloan gig, at reputedly vancouver's best live music venue, The Commodore Ballroom on Granville Street. This one of a number of venues on the 'entertainment strip' that has survived and evolved from the hey-day of vaudeville theatre and 50's rock-n-roll dance nights, and reinvented itself as a premiere live music venue.
Sloan hail from Halifax in far eastern Canada, an area once pegged as the next Seattle for all the grunge-pop music coming from the area, and have been around since before Kurt Cobain loaded up his shotgun. They are one of Canada's most enduring and beloved acts. And for good reason - they do, indeed, rock! I was way up the front, and with my camera (of course) got some cool pics of the band strutting thier stuff. Their most famous song "if it feels good, do it" (my personal mantra?) was left til last, and while getting some video of the song, i got a tap on the shoulder from a security guy and summoned to the stage office. The band manager seemed none-too-pleased that I was video-ing the song, apparently thinking that I was a professional photographer out to make a few bob from the pics and video. Sometimes it doesn't pay to have such a high-end camera.
Sloan at The Commodore Ballroom...
In the end he let me go, footage in tact, when i convinced him that i was just a backpacker and a keen amateur, but i'd missed most of my fave song because of it.
That same night, The Sadies were playing at another venue just a few blocks away, and i was told by a local girl, Mel, that I was not to miss this show. And that she would also be there.So i hot-footed over to The Red Room only to find that they'd been on for more than an hour and were just about to start the encore. I convinced the door-staff to let me in for free. And the band then treated us to a 45 minute encore!
The local weekly free street press gig-bible, the Georgia Straight, had also done a write up of this band, which also had me intrigued. Here's an excerpt:
"It's hard to say what we love most about The Sadies. The fact that singer-guitarist and chain-smoking all-round bad-ass Dallas Good looks like he buys his suits from the late Hank Williams is a good start...the Toronto quartet mixes and mashes genres with vicious abandon, spiking its rebel-yell alt-country with shots of Dick Dale surf, post-80's hardcore, and paisley splattered underground folk...The Sadies spend 50 weeks or so of the year stinking and sweating in a claustrophobic van, meaning they are willing to truly suffer for their art. Smell the magic..." Need I say more! They leaned more to the country rockabilly this night, and were entertaining as hell!
Next, on the Friday was Snow Patrol, from Dublin/Belfast/Glasgow - a bit of a Celtic supergroup in their homeland, and a band I came to love while in Dublin, seeing them live in my final weeks there in a sweaty theatre, mixing with the locals way down the front. I wasn't going to miss them again, and went with my pal Ginny, who unfortunately was suffering with flu. Hence, we took seats in the upper balcony, right down the front, a blessing in disguise really.
Snow Patrol at the Vogue Theatre...
This vantage point gave us a an awesome view over the crowd and the band down below, and the incredible lighting show they put on accompanying the sounds, helped make for an exhilarting atmosphere - and great photos! I also nervously video-ed one song (Spitting Games) at the beginning of the set, altho there was no security to hamper my efforts this time.
When the entire audience sang along to the final strains of mega-single "Run", it was superb. Lead singer Gary Lightbody was clearly overwhelmed by this, his cheeky smile beaming from ear to ear.
What a great couple of nights.
Tony
The following Thursday was the Sloan gig, at reputedly vancouver's best live music venue, The Commodore Ballroom on Granville Street. This one of a number of venues on the 'entertainment strip' that has survived and evolved from the hey-day of vaudeville theatre and 50's rock-n-roll dance nights, and reinvented itself as a premiere live music venue.
Sloan hail from Halifax in far eastern Canada, an area once pegged as the next Seattle for all the grunge-pop music coming from the area, and have been around since before Kurt Cobain loaded up his shotgun. They are one of Canada's most enduring and beloved acts. And for good reason - they do, indeed, rock! I was way up the front, and with my camera (of course) got some cool pics of the band strutting thier stuff. Their most famous song "if it feels good, do it" (my personal mantra?) was left til last, and while getting some video of the song, i got a tap on the shoulder from a security guy and summoned to the stage office. The band manager seemed none-too-pleased that I was video-ing the song, apparently thinking that I was a professional photographer out to make a few bob from the pics and video. Sometimes it doesn't pay to have such a high-end camera.
Sloan at The Commodore Ballroom...
In the end he let me go, footage in tact, when i convinced him that i was just a backpacker and a keen amateur, but i'd missed most of my fave song because of it.
That same night, The Sadies were playing at another venue just a few blocks away, and i was told by a local girl, Mel, that I was not to miss this show. And that she would also be there.So i hot-footed over to The Red Room only to find that they'd been on for more than an hour and were just about to start the encore. I convinced the door-staff to let me in for free. And the band then treated us to a 45 minute encore!
The local weekly free street press gig-bible, the Georgia Straight, had also done a write up of this band, which also had me intrigued. Here's an excerpt:
"It's hard to say what we love most about The Sadies. The fact that singer-guitarist and chain-smoking all-round bad-ass Dallas Good looks like he buys his suits from the late Hank Williams is a good start...the Toronto quartet mixes and mashes genres with vicious abandon, spiking its rebel-yell alt-country with shots of Dick Dale surf, post-80's hardcore, and paisley splattered underground folk...The Sadies spend 50 weeks or so of the year stinking and sweating in a claustrophobic van, meaning they are willing to truly suffer for their art. Smell the magic..." Need I say more! They leaned more to the country rockabilly this night, and were entertaining as hell!
Next, on the Friday was Snow Patrol, from Dublin/Belfast/Glasgow - a bit of a Celtic supergroup in their homeland, and a band I came to love while in Dublin, seeing them live in my final weeks there in a sweaty theatre, mixing with the locals way down the front. I wasn't going to miss them again, and went with my pal Ginny, who unfortunately was suffering with flu. Hence, we took seats in the upper balcony, right down the front, a blessing in disguise really.
Snow Patrol at the Vogue Theatre...
This vantage point gave us a an awesome view over the crowd and the band down below, and the incredible lighting show they put on accompanying the sounds, helped make for an exhilarting atmosphere - and great photos! I also nervously video-ed one song (Spitting Games) at the beginning of the set, altho there was no security to hamper my efforts this time.
When the entire audience sang along to the final strains of mega-single "Run", it was superb. Lead singer Gary Lightbody was clearly overwhelmed by this, his cheeky smile beaming from ear to ear.
What a great couple of nights.
Tony
gigs gigs gigs! - part 1
hey-o,
Picture this. A small room with cluster of chairs set up in a circle formation with a group of bedraggled, strung out looking folks of varying ages, sexes, nationalities, and race. At the entrance to this room is an A4 sized sheet of paper with the words "M A ANON meeting here, 7pm".
One of those people is a shaven headed, skinny, 30 year old from Melbourne, and he gets to speak...
"Hi, My name is Tony, and I'm a music addict"
Well, this scenario didn't actually happen, but it may well have, because I have seriously been investing a lot of time, energy and money in the music scene recently, probably too much, and possibly at the expense of my health (well, the health of my credit cards at least). Typical signs of an addict.
In the past two weeks, I have seen live - a seminal indie-pop Candian band in Sloan (www.sloanmusic.com), an up-and-coming and looming to be super-group huge Irish rock band, Snow Patrol (www.snowpatrol.net), an already super-group irish band, U2 (yay!), a rockabilly, country-hick outfit, The Sadies (self descirbed as "not your average surf, garage, country, rock band " - www.thesadies.net ) - (funny as hell, in a slap-yer-thigh, take-yer-partner-by-the-hand kinda way), and a bunch of local small time acts (Maplewood Lane (http://www.maplewoodlane.com), Radiogram (http://www.radiogram.org), and Joel R L Phelps (http://www.joelrlphelps.com) ) at the cool-as-feck bar The Railway Club (http://www.therailwayclub.com). On top of this, I have invested money in tickets for upcoming shows by Built To Spill (www.builttospill.com), The Waifs (www.thewaifs.com), from Perth, Oz - yay! again), and Architecture In Helsinki (www.architectureinhelsinki.com) from Melbourne, Oz). Oh, and not forgetting to mention the investment in cdee's by bands Death Cab For Cutie (www.deathcabforcutie.com), The Mountain Goats (www.themountaingoats.net), and The Eels (www.eelstheband.com) and a Barsuk records (www.barsuk.com) sampler cdee.
This obsession-addiction with bands and live music has been with me for a dozen years now, and has followed me around the globe. Not helping in any way, shape or form, is the fact that i'm am living practically in the epicentre of one of the coolest music and band producing regions on the planet, The Pacific-Northwest of North America. Also not helping is my discovery of possibly the coolest radio station on the planet, KEXP FM, from the University of Washington in Seattle. That I can listen to this via internet streaming 24 hours a day is certainly is also of no help. That this station continually churns out awesome song after awesome song, and introduces me to a new band almost every hour, and that this new band will typically be touring in town very shortly - no helping me there.
But the biggest obstacle of all, is the fact that there is no way on Gods earth do I want to give up this obsession-addiction, its waaaaaayy too much fun!
Any wonder i'm coming home early...but my thinking is that I want to maximise the fun factor while i'm here in the limited time I have left.
Another common occurrence in my life recently is the 'bizarre coincedence'. The Lisa/Before Sunset was one - here is another, altho with not quite the same level of cosmic significance.
When I was at the U2 video shoot, I was seated next to a couple from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who were here for the U2 gig, but also to visit pals who were doing a gig that Saturday night. I was invited along, and as I had nothng else on that night, decided to go. It was the "Radiogram" Railway Club gig.
Anyway, one of the supports I thought sounded like the singer from The Posies. This reminded me that i have their 1996 album 'Amazing Disgrace' cdee at home in Australia, and it so happens my housemate also has it here. I hadn't thought about the band in ages - I actually thought they'd split. As far as I knew, they'd done not a whole lot in recent years.
So, when i got home I listened to the cdee, and checked out their website, which announced they'd be doing an in-studio live performance on KEXP FM on my new fave DJ, Cheryl Waters' show the following morning.
As I said, not hugely life changing, but the chain of events was kinda eery.
(in hindsight tho, I had the voice completely misplaced at the time - Joel actually sounds more like Adam Duritz from Counting Crows than The Posies fella).
more in a mo.
Picture this. A small room with cluster of chairs set up in a circle formation with a group of bedraggled, strung out looking folks of varying ages, sexes, nationalities, and race. At the entrance to this room is an A4 sized sheet of paper with the words "M A ANON meeting here, 7pm".
One of those people is a shaven headed, skinny, 30 year old from Melbourne, and he gets to speak...
"Hi, My name is Tony, and I'm a music addict"
Well, this scenario didn't actually happen, but it may well have, because I have seriously been investing a lot of time, energy and money in the music scene recently, probably too much, and possibly at the expense of my health (well, the health of my credit cards at least). Typical signs of an addict.
In the past two weeks, I have seen live - a seminal indie-pop Candian band in Sloan (www.sloanmusic.com), an up-and-coming and looming to be super-group huge Irish rock band, Snow Patrol (www.snowpatrol.net), an already super-group irish band, U2 (yay!), a rockabilly, country-hick outfit, The Sadies (self descirbed as "not your average surf, garage, country, rock band " - www.thesadies.net ) - (funny as hell, in a slap-yer-thigh, take-yer-partner-by-the-hand kinda way), and a bunch of local small time acts (Maplewood Lane (http://www.maplewoodlane.com), Radiogram (http://www.radiogram.org), and Joel R L Phelps (http://www.joelrlphelps.com) ) at the cool-as-feck bar The Railway Club (http://www.therailwayclub.com). On top of this, I have invested money in tickets for upcoming shows by Built To Spill (www.builttospill.com), The Waifs (www.thewaifs.com), from Perth, Oz - yay! again), and Architecture In Helsinki (www.architectureinhelsinki.com) from Melbourne, Oz). Oh, and not forgetting to mention the investment in cdee's by bands Death Cab For Cutie (www.deathcabforcutie.com), The Mountain Goats (www.themountaingoats.net), and The Eels (www.eelstheband.com) and a Barsuk records (www.barsuk.com) sampler cdee.
This obsession-addiction with bands and live music has been with me for a dozen years now, and has followed me around the globe. Not helping in any way, shape or form, is the fact that i'm am living practically in the epicentre of one of the coolest music and band producing regions on the planet, The Pacific-Northwest of North America. Also not helping is my discovery of possibly the coolest radio station on the planet, KEXP FM, from the University of Washington in Seattle. That I can listen to this via internet streaming 24 hours a day is certainly is also of no help. That this station continually churns out awesome song after awesome song, and introduces me to a new band almost every hour, and that this new band will typically be touring in town very shortly - no helping me there.
But the biggest obstacle of all, is the fact that there is no way on Gods earth do I want to give up this obsession-addiction, its waaaaaayy too much fun!
Any wonder i'm coming home early...but my thinking is that I want to maximise the fun factor while i'm here in the limited time I have left.
Another common occurrence in my life recently is the 'bizarre coincedence'. The Lisa/Before Sunset was one - here is another, altho with not quite the same level of cosmic significance.
When I was at the U2 video shoot, I was seated next to a couple from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who were here for the U2 gig, but also to visit pals who were doing a gig that Saturday night. I was invited along, and as I had nothng else on that night, decided to go. It was the "Radiogram" Railway Club gig.
Anyway, one of the supports I thought sounded like the singer from The Posies. This reminded me that i have their 1996 album 'Amazing Disgrace' cdee at home in Australia, and it so happens my housemate also has it here. I hadn't thought about the band in ages - I actually thought they'd split. As far as I knew, they'd done not a whole lot in recent years.
So, when i got home I listened to the cdee, and checked out their website, which announced they'd be doing an in-studio live performance on KEXP FM on my new fave DJ, Cheryl Waters' show the following morning.
As I said, not hugely life changing, but the chain of events was kinda eery.
(in hindsight tho, I had the voice completely misplaced at the time - Joel actually sounds more like Adam Duritz from Counting Crows than The Posies fella).
more in a mo.
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