Rural Alberta Advantage, a band I haven’t listened too very much but Reilly and the gang like, rocked out at the Venue last night. Fun band, cool instruments (Moog bass pedal!) and an acoustic cover of Eye of the Tiger. Since that’s my all-time favorite song I was quite impressed.
I was sleepy though so I skipped out early to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I’ve started running again and between that and the gym visits I’m not much for missing my beauty sleep anymore.
What else have I done? Saw the brilliant B-movie splatterfest that was Hobo With a Shotgun! The title says it all. Only surprise was the George Stroumboulopoulos cameo. Loved it! Blood! Hobos! Shooting!
Also saw Limitless last weekend. Good film. Our friend Shanman had a cool wicked party that featured poetry readings. I picked a spicy Bukowski poem. There were some fantastic readings as well and we all passed around a copy of Ginsberg’s Howl.
So ya, you only get a quick hilight reel this month :) Tomorrow I’m hiking up the Chief with Sharon. So I should get some more beauty sleep. G’nite!
I woke up to a blanket of snow across the city this morning. Plow trucks rolled past on Main Street and I feel as though it’s Christmas again. When I first moved to Vancouver from Alberta I made a point of going camping in late February when it started warming up again. In Alberta you have to wait until June to get reasonable camping in but on the West Coast you can generally camp year round although December and January are usually too wet and cold for staying outdoors overnight.
I haven’t camped in Feb in a few years but this is the first time I remember it being too snowy for camping. Maybe March will bring a good weekend to go over the water to Rathtrevor for a night or two.
Yesterday Sharon and I wandered into Performance Works at Granville Island to see a band called The Crackling who are fronted by Dan Mangan’s drummer Kenton Loewen. Gord Grdina, who also plays guitar in Dan Mangan’s band, adds his guitar genius to the band too. I first saw them open for Dan Mangan last year and it was cool to see them again. Kenton’s a pretty funny guy on stage with his growling voice and dry humor.
Today we’re going to see another Gord Grdina band called East Van Strings at Performance Works, again at 12:30.
First, I think we’re going to take a little walk in the snow since it’s such a rare sight for us.
I don’t travel very often. At least, I rarely leave BC unless I’m making a quick trip over the border to Seattle to see a band. The only time I’ve left North America was in 2003 to go see some relatives and friends in Germany. So when our friends decided it was time for a group trip to Cuba in May to celebrate Shan’s 30th birthday I jumped right in! I’ve officially booked my tickets this evening. Now I need to find a Lonely Planet guide and maybe learn a few words of Spanish.
My Grandfather used to say that you only needed to know how to ask where the washroom was and how to order a beer and you’d be fine. Seems like good advice.
My old friend Clint, who I’ve known since prison high school, made the trip in from Nelson to hang out with Dave and I for the weekend. It was a lot of fun. Friday I whipped up a pizza to enjoy before we met up with friends at The Ayden Gallery in Tinseltown where they were having some sort of anniversary party. Cool artwork. Surreal, which is the way I think all art should be. That was followed with beers at Reilly’s pad and then sleep.
Saturday we wandered around the convention center and then picked up Sharon to go to Squamish where Dave had cooked up a big tasty dinner for everyone. Salmon and some other kind of white fish (I am no fish expert so I don’t know what it was, except delicious).
I abandoned Clint in Squamish for Sunday while I got together with Reilly and a few of the other people that belong to our building’s photo studio to go out and shoot around Gastown with a stack of film cameras. Reilly gave us a rundown on “breaking film” which means to use or develop film in ways it wasn’t intended for creative effects. Then we went off and shot stuff! I had my Dad’s old Minolta film camera that he’s owned since we lived in Summerland in the 80′s. A new battery at London Drugs and it was good to go.
Sharon said I was like a kid at Christmas when we saw Quasi last night at the Rickshaw Theatre. They were opening for Sebadoh so we got in early and were right up front with a handful of rabid Quasi fans who were equally excited to be seeing them. We were rewarded with a rocking set with Sam (the singer/guitarist) giving us his best goofy poses and loads of squealing guitar feedback. Halfway through Sam switched to his keyboard and the band dug out a batch of songs from their many past albums. Janet, as always, thundered on her drum kit which had a see-through cutout of the band’s name and Christmas lights stuffed inside to illuminate it. One day I want to do that to my drums.
I picked up a shirt and a couple of records from Janet at the merch table after the show. We chatted briefly and I asked her about the album that’s been rumored to be coming out of the new band she’s in with Carrie Brownstein called Wild Flag. Janet said it’d be appearing in August and that they’re planning a 7″ for Record Store Day in April. I really need to buy a turntable.
So yes, I was very, very happy last night and the buzz is still making me smile this morning. I love Quasi :)
This is one of my all-time favorite videos. Mudhoney have never taken themselves too seriously and the video for Good Enough shows them at their goofiest.
I’m spinning some of their older albums off Rdio.com while I prepare a pizza dough for lunch. Dave’ll be here in the next half-hour or so and we’ll get started on this closet project.
On my way home from a grocery run tonight I heard Bend Sinister’s song Things Will Get Better on The Peak. I saw Bend Sinister a few months back when they played at UBC with the Paper Lions (another of my favorites who I discovered last year) and was totally hooked. Their sound is something like an updated Supertramp. Before you think I’ve lost my mind, realize that I don’t like Supertramp at all but Bend Sinister takes their sound and makes it amazing.
There’s a video of them on Edmonton’s Breakfast Television show where they play that same song. Skip forward to the 5:00 minute mark if you want to get straight there, otherwise enjoy their opening song, Change Your Mind, that I quite like too.
Tomorrow Dave rolls in to give me a hand putting new shelves and such into my closets. I’ll be able to hang stuff up in my place! Pandemonium! Dogs and cats living together!
Lots of stuff happened yesterday. It started out with me skipping a workout (again! need to stop doing that) and monkeying with some Ruby on Rails (geek stuff). I pulled it together in time to go see Chris Guillebeau talk at Chapters about his recently-published book The Art of Non Conformity. He’s a cool guy and I liked his message. I’m all about making your own decisions and not being worried about what everyone else does so it was inspiring to see what he had to say and hear how he’s crafted his life. He’s working towards his goal of travelling to every country in the world which is incredibly cool. I have different goals but it’s always fun to see someone else kick ass and do what they want.
After Chapters I snuck in to the Indie I Do show that Reilly and Miranda and their friends in Lotus Events put on every year at Heritage Hall on Main Street. There’s always cool stuff to check out there even if you’re not in the market for getting married and it’s fun to check it out every year. I met up with Dave there too and we went down to Zigz for a rice bowl before I headed towards Krista and Patrick’s for their housewarming.
Met some new people at Krista and Patricks and had fun there. They’re friends of Sharon so I don’t know many people in their social circle. I did manage to alert a couple of Pixies fans to the tickets going on sale on Friday for the May 3 show at the Orpheum.
Then I went down to Shanman’s where there was a group of friends watching the hockey game. We abandoned that after the third period started and went down to the Factory on Granville to watch the rest of the game and listen to my high school soundtrack being spun by the DJ afterwards. Seriously, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Guns n’ Roses, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were in heavy rotation once the game ended. Guys who run the bar must be in their mid-30′s.
Finally we wheeled over to this communal art space on Granville that hosts jazz shows to help cover their monthly lease payments. You have to find a backdoor in an alcove off the alleyway and then ring a buzzer that’s been mounted on the roof above your head. The whole thing felt very speakeasy-like which is what I enjoy most about the place. It’s $5 to get in and $5 for cans of Bowen Island beer sold out of a fridge in the back. The space is set up with an assortment of 70′s-era couches and chairs that looked as though they’d been liberated from a consignment store and all the furniture is arranged in a semicircle around the small stage where some of Vancouver’s most talented improvised jazz musicians play. I love going there and the band that played last night was very, very good.
Shanman also gave me a copy of the book Girls To the Front – The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, which documents the feminist punk movement of the 1990s, many bands from which have remained my all-time favorites (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and Bratmobile in particular). I’ve been reading obsessively ever since I got home last night and it’s getting me thinking about making music again.
Also, on Friday, I got lucky and managed to get Pixies tickets from their presale after they had to reschedule the presale twice because the volume of traffic from eager fans stampeding to their website kept overloading their servers. Tickets sold out in minutes and out of everyone that I know who tried to get some I was the only one who was lucky enough to be able to purchase any before they were sold out. Fortunately it was only the first 20 rows that were being sold so I imagine most people will be able to pick them up when the rest are sold on Friday at 10am.
I finally jumped on to rdio.com with a $5 a month subscription which lets me stream whatever music I want from their site. What I like most is you can see what your friends are listening to and discover new music that way. In the past week I’ve been turned on to the new Dead Weather album (so awesome!) and some new bands: Slartybarfast, Blood Red Shoes, and a shoegazer/wall-of-sound band called Darker My Love. There are some albums by Mercury Rev and Gang of Four that I’ve finally listened to as well. I should’ve been listening to both those bands years ago but didn’t bother for whatever reason.
The biggest win with rdio is I can listen to new music immediately. So the other day I was thinking, “I should check out Mercury Rev.” Normally I’d go to their myspace page and give them a listen and maybe download an album to see if I like it. Now I just hop onto rdio, do a search, and satisfy my curiosity right away. No more messing around trying to find albums on torrent sites or digging though a disjointed pile of songs on a myspace playlist.
There are some albums that aren’t on rdio. Tegan and Sara albums before The Con are all missing and there’s no Paper Lions to speak of. Paper Lions I can understand, but really, So Jealous isn’t on your music list? Let’s hope they fix that soon. These omissions aren’t terrible though. I still have my iTunes with my favorite albums and I use that when I’m at home. Rdio is more a tool of discovery for me.
Today marks Sharon and my first anniversary of being a couple! We’re going to go out for dinner tonight and spend the evening together.
So much has happened in the last year. Looking back on 2010 I hit a number of significant life changes. I started work with a new company, got a new girlfriend, spent the first year in my newly-purchased condo, quit playing drums (and quit the excellent band known as My Friend Lisa), embraced a vegetarian diet, and made the first moves towards a more minimalist lifestyle. Oh and I quit biting my nails too. That’s a habit I’ve had ever since I can remember and it’s finally been broken.
Not much has happened in the meantime. I’ve been feeling a little blah so I haven’t got up to much outside of the eat/sleep/work routine.
Listening to the Paper Lions EP from last year, Trophies. I think it was one of the best releases of 2010 and it remains in heavy rotation in my playlist. What other bands put out great albums last year? Hannah Georgas, Paper Lions, Bend Sinister, Quasi, and the Corin Tucker Band.
Most anticipated album for 2011: Wild Flag, Janet and Carrie from Sleater-Kinney with friends. Should be amazing. Strange trivia: Mary Timony and Carrie, both in Wild Flag, where once in a Priceline commercial starring William Shatner. They were Bill’s backing band while he covered Two Tickets to Paradise.
