Attention Ottawa people! I’m having an indie music concert at my house this summer¹. That’s right, it’ll be an intimate night of folk and rap songs with Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously. Remember these two from the concert I went to earlier this year, where this awesome and impromptu collaboration happened:

You also may have read about Jesse in an Ottawa Citizen article last month, or seen Shane performing with Krista Muir over the last few years. Well, I wanted to see both these artists perform again, so I invited them to my house. Not only will it be a night of authentic music (with another collaboration, I’ve been told!), but there will be free ice cream, and you’ll get to meet my cat, with whom you’ll fall in love². Shane has also hinted that he might bring a special guest for the night. So come and meet the musicians, support local Canadian talent, and have a fantastic time.

1. Click the picture above to download the invitation. [↑]
2. No, you cannot take her home. [↑]

When I watched Moonstruck in my university “Music in the Movies” class, we studied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s character) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talking just about the opera. After losing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most prestigious opera house in the world, with a beautiful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screenplay, there are set directions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beautiful clothes fill the plaza created by the three great buildings. A glorious fountain filled with lights forms the centerpiece. Behind the fountain, grand and splendidly lit, is the magical Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attending. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

So when my local movie theatre started offering live HD broadcasts of performances there, I decided I should go. To fulfill a dream in spirit, if not in the flesh.

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This was by far the best concert I’ve ever been to in my life, and not just because Shane dedicated It’s A Drag to me and Julie (although that was TOTALLY AWESOME).

It was the intimate setting, chill atmosphere and awesome music that made it unlike any other performance I’ve attended. This private show was at 160 Workshops, a house that regularly opens its doors for craft workshops to bring people together in the Ottawa community.

Shane’s songs are always best in small venues like this. They’re personal and subtly striking, and the acoustic sound really brings that warmth across.

Shane did a mix of old and new material, then took requests from audience members, along with some participation on vocals, spoons, and cowbell. There also happened to be Canadian nerdcore rapper Jesse Dangerously in attendance, and after some prodding, he provided rhymes for Girls by the Beastie Boys, along with beatboxing background percussion for Les Ouaouarons.

And, of course, Krista Muir (aka Lederhosen Lucil) was the headliner, promoting her new full-length album, Accidental Railway. The album includes a huge map for a fictional town that Shane made, with names of streets and places taken from memories of their tour together.

Other shows with Krista Muir and Shane Watt

1. At the Workshop Studio & Boutique
2. At Le Petit Salon des Arts
3. At Irene’s Pub
4. At 160 Workshops

A demo reel I made for Rachel Beausoleil, using footage I shot of her jazz vocal performance at the NAC Fourth Stage, as well as snippets of an interview I did with her. As a way of getting more exposure for future gigs, she asked for some video that she could shop around to different venues. I agreed to make this demo reel for her in return for some tickets to the show for me and my friends.

It was a wonderful concert in an intimate setting. The repertoire was quite varied — from waltz to Bossa nova to ballad — but all songs were performed as a jazz interpretations. The setlist included Aquarius by The Fifth Dimension, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and Evangeline by Isabelle Pierre.

Of special significance is that the performance was on Rachel’s 40th birthday. She had planned the concert over a year ago as a comeback after having two kids and giving up her time for them.

I can now embed videos in HD after acquiring a Vimeo Plus account; they look oh-so-sexy, and even better in full-screen.

One of the highlights of the night was Tom Posner’s bass solo during Caravan (a classic Duke Ellington big-band piece) clocking in at almost two minutes. You can see how surprised Rachel is when Tom loses himself in the music and keeps going on this great flurry of notes. This solo is some kind of awesome that I can’t even describe.

I asked Julie to come to the show with me. I did it with trepidation, because I considered it a big favour, and felt like I didn’t know her well enough to ask. But Blake was out of town and she was going out on Saturday, so it just happened that she decided to keep her Friday free.

It pretty much saved me. When driving to the pub, I was hit with an anxiety attack, which I’ll elaborate on in another entry someday.

Julie was the perfect person to bring, I imagine because she has experience with people who suffer from anxiety. I told her I may suddenly want to leave at any point, possibly even on the way there. She told me she didn’t mind coming, she didn’t mind leaving, she didn’t even mind standing outside the pub with me for a couple minutes in -16°C weather while I mentally prepared myself. I owe her big time.

We played cards to get my mind off the anxiety. I taught her how to play Slapjack, she taught me how to play Egyptian War. It worked.

While waiting for the show to start, I gave Krista the large prints from the previous shows. Krista gave us some random Larry and Bob balloon stickers she found on the bus (Julie and I think they were from a deaf person). Julie also met Cory there, her schoolmate from horticulture college, and Krista’s sister.

At the first show, I told Shane he should make an acoustic version of his album. Since I paid him in person for a pre-release EP that night, he told me he did have an acoustic version and promised to give it to me. I asked him earlier this week if he could bring it, which he did, but he forgot it in his suitcase. Quite a pity, since he told me he was in the studio making sure he mixed it right for me. He felt terrible about it, and told me he’d mail it to me instead. March 14th is when the album officially comes out.

The sets were rather short. Shanker and Romps opened for them, a garage rockabilly duo. Our view of this performance was a bunch of people who were much taller than ourselves.

The highlight of the show was seeing Shane perform It’s A Drag (and getting a video of it!), my favourite song on the album. Krista did the backup vocals. This is the only time you’ll hear such a dulcet harmony from another awesome artist, certainly something you can only experience from a tour. Krista also got Cory up on stage for the Bumblebee Song as an encore.

Julie asked me if I still had a crush on Krista. I had to think about it for a little bit, and the fact that I had to think about it made me realize that I don’t anymore.

Other shows with Krista Muir and Shane Watt

1. At the Workshop Studio & Boutique
2. At Le Petit Salon des Arts
3. At Irene’s Pub

A few days before the show, I found out that Krista and Shane were playing a small venue in town. Usually I make it a point to see an artist just once in my life, but last time was different; I was expecting Lederhosen Lucil, but was treated to an entirely different and unfamiliar sound. This time, it was my chance to see Krista and Shane perform after becoming familiar with the songs. Turns out the venue was in un petit salon des arts. This place boasted a mixture of different artforms; music, metal sculptures, photographs, paintings, and graphic poems.

I didn’t really feel like going out that night, but I forced myself to go, reminding myself that I could say the same thing any other night and I’d never get anywhere.

When I arrived, the Salon was to capacity. I couldn’t even get in the entrance; there were people physically blocking the door. My chance to get in came after a few had made room by leaving, then I saw a path up the stairs and took it.

Enter six degrees of separation.

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As predicted, I left my house feeling nervous and excited, and put on my Top Rated playlist to distract myself. The music of Lederhosen Lucil has never touched me on a deeply intimate level, the way, say, a Leonard Cohen or Thrice song does, but it’s still remained very personal. I discovered L.L. at a time when I was feeling rather jaded from life. The music was silly, fun, and confident, so I embraced it with delightful hedonism. It lifted me when I was in a strange state of numbness and limbo.

 

 

 

I got there at what turned out to be an hour and a half early (though it was due to a mistake on the venue website), so I wandered the store until the show started, feeling like a fish out of water in a tiny room filled with handmade women’s clothing and jewelery. Though beautiful and impressively unique, they wouldn’t let me take pictures of anything¹.

As soon as I saw Krista alone, I began to hyperventilate, which was rather unexpected (I’m still getting over how hilariously embarrassing this was). I approached her and managed to spit out “Hi” in a whisper. I didn’t know what to say, so I just asked her to sign my CD (still whispering, unable to control the volume of my voice). I’m sure I’ll appreciate such a reaction in a couple years, as not many people can cause me to be so flustered².

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1. I’m guessing to protect the designs of the artists [↑]
2. Perhaps it was the strange feeling that Krista, who was now suddenly in front of me, had so unwittingly affected me, without ever even being aware of my existence. Or perhaps I was intimidated. I like to consider myself a creative person, but by no means a professional, earning a living off my creativity. Krista is, however, a born entertainer. [↑]

The concert was quite amazing. The set lasted just over an hour and a half. Nothing was performed off the first album, which makes me think that Thrice actually knows how weak an LP it was. They did two encores, one of which was Dustin playing an acoustic version of Staring At The Sun, and the other which was a short little piece from the middle of The Abolition Of Man, where Dustin actually hands off his guitar to a guy who comes on stage with a grey hoodie, and walks into the crowd to scream the last few bars. Unfortunately, my memory card ran out of space during the LAST WORD, ultimately ruining the clip.

It was good to see that people knew all the words to Artist In The Ambulance, and Deadbolt (which they didn’t play until everyone was yelling it in chorus).

On his celebrity, Dustin once said, “It’s pretty awesome. A lot of people throw underwear at bands, but our kids bring us books”. If I ever had the chance, I’d give him Huis-Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.

There’s more that can be said, but I think I’ll put this to rest for now.

Thrice is Love.

The Thrice = Love Series

1. Introduction
2. The Journey
3. As The Crucible
4. Rock It
5. The Rush
6. Far From The End

When taking a sample of progressive metal fans, one will find that the subset is almost entirely comprised of males, most of which are much taller than the average Asian guy. This makes it extremely difficult for the average Asian guy to see the band during progressive metal concerts, which was the case during the Dreamtheater show on Wednesday. As can be seen from the picture, I went up to most of the other peoples necks. Although there was the chance to go straight up front since there was no mosh pit (cause who can mosh to music that changes time signatures every other bar?), the area was too densely packed to get anywhere.

At first I thought that the crowd was mostly made up of the same “type” of people, but Trolley pointed out that he’s never been to a show that was more diverse. All I saw were lots of blond, Caucasian males, but he only saw lots of differently aged people. And it was true…while there were an extremely limited number of females in attendance (although I’m sure that Anj was there), there were also people from my age to twice my age. It was odd to see a lot of guys old enough to be my father at the same concert as me.

There was no opener because their set went for almost three hours. They first performed for an hour and a half, and came back for three encores. One of the encores was the entire 45 minute long track on their Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulance album with no pauses. I’ve also never seen a band measure time like they do when performing live: somehow they manage to count their rests with perfect timing when the lights go out. Even though this is done on the album version of Endless Sacrifice, the impressive thing is that they have different tempos for their shows. Most other bands need a cymbol hit to keep time (like what Manson does during Antichrist Superstar at the Hartford show), and it’s always a dissapointment to find out that a band can’t count notes in their heads.

Portnoy’s drumset owned half the fucking stage.

There’s a running joke between the members of DT, where they replace lyrics of their songs with “you can eat my ass and balls”. I first found out from the Metropolis 2000 DVD, when they all jokingly sing it instead of “there can be no peace of mind” during behind-the-scenes the commentary. At one point during the Wednesday’s concert, LaBrie replaces “take me as I am” with “eat my ass and balls” and I had to burst out laughing. Then I noticed that no one else was laughing.

Went to a Death From Above show at Zaphod’s. I actually recognized Jesse F. Keeler (the F stands for Fucking) outside when Aaron, Trolley, Jesse, and I were waiting for Jen. Both Keeler (the bassist) and Sebastien Grainger (the vocalist/drummer) have similarly lithe bodies and unkempt facial hair so they aren’t hard to spot, but are easy to mix up. The set went just like the last time I saw them: they start off with an intro song as a warm-up, then Grainger takes off his shirt for the real show. They also ended with Do It!, when Grainger kicks down his mic stand and goes crazy on his set.

The word is energy.

The Billy Talent concert was pretty decent. There were quite a few people who seemed out of place there such as 10 year old girls and women beyond the cougar idiom, I’m guessing because BT is more of a mainstream band, but I’m not sure. I didn’t really know anything about them besides the fact that they have four members and that they have a single out (even though I know the entire album like the back of my hand). I’ve never even seen one of their videos so actually seeing what they looked like, to put a few faces with the music, was pretty interesting. They played about half the songs from the album, and Benjamin was able to work the crowd up pretty well.

A band called Crowned King opened first and they had a fun ska derived sound with a lot of well composed harmonies, but the lyrics that I heard were a turn-off.

The best part of the show, however, was the second opening act by a band called Death From Above, who used to be on the Sound-Virus label and are now on the Ache Records label (which also happens to be the label for Hot Hot Heat). It’s a band with just a drummer (the vocalist) and a bassist, but the sound is extremely full and well rounded. It’s extremely blood pumping, adrenaline rushing, great sounding music and I would have bought an album at the concert if it was available. They’re completely a no-bullshit band who tried to start shit with security for kicking some people out during their set. They started talking about how much of a bigot Glen Danzig is, and then making fun of the crowd for having no fucking clue about who Glen Danzig is after cheering from a mention of the Misfits. Just goes to show how many people at concerts are complete poseurs. I’ll definitely be looking into Death From Above because I believe that they’re Canadian as well.

I got back from the AFI concert about an hour ago, after seeing Aaron and Wheaties off, and grabbing a relaxing shower. The concert was decent, but that’s in comparison to seeing my favourite band live. The lighting was amazingly done, with the correct colours and spotlights to match the music. Davey Havok was singing almost a semi-tone flat through most of the concert, so he must have been pretty tired. I only enjoy their last album, Sing the Sorrow, but at one point during the summer I was listening to it to no end. Dina asked me if I thought there were any pretty girls walking around between sets and all I could answer was “lots”.

There aren’t too many bands I feel as if I need to experience live. I’ve seen Tool, the Dwarves, and the Misfits live already, and those are the only bands I feel that I enjoy enough for me to attend. I would go to another Tool concert if they came around again, and definitely a Portishead show if they were ever doing one. I would be up for an Ellen Ten Damme concert with Darren, but unfortunately she seems to only play in Europe and the UK with a few Japanese tour dates. I could go for a Dreamtheater concert, but I have the live DVD, so a personal viewing isn’t quite as imperative. The Dears is a possibility, but I’d have to get more into their music before going.

I bought The Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III, and I’m impressed with it’s depth. It’s basically a completely new game now, with different units, heroes, and buildings. I find that it’s much more strategy based and less focused on micro. Since I’m unemployed, I’ve been playing quite a bit with Artfag, and since she’s unemployed as well, there’s never a chance to guilt the other into looking for a job, which is something that I’m finding hard to get motivated about.

Speaking of which, I spent the last week sending out résumés to various companies and government organizations. I have a résumé that I’m pretty proud of right now, after Pat helped me fix it up. No phone calls so far.

Before heading over to Babylon for the Dwarves concert, Iain and I stopped into Record Runner to see if there were any albums worth buying. I found the Dreamtheater concert DVD for $26 and was about to purchase it before realizing that I’d have no place to put it during the concert. I also found out that The Dears have a new album out which I must consider purchasing. I later discovered that they will be performing in two days at the same place, another thing needing consideration.

The concert was great. I didn’t know any of the opening acts (Sack Lunch, Maximum R&R, and the Riptides), but they weren’t very good anyway. I never knew how tiny Babylon is and was surprised to find airplane seats and couches scattered around the large room. The size made for an intimate atmosphere and comfortable viewing, even for vertically challenged people such as myself.

While Iain and I waited for things to get set up, we pondered the things that would look odd at a punk show. Being Asian was the first thing that we came up with, although I did see one Asian girl and one person of African decent there in a crush of Caucasian faces. We agreed that someone with an iPod or recordable MiniDisc player would stand out from superfluity alone. One thing we couldn’t figure out was the poplutation of gay punks compared to gay non-punks. I joked about whether the more dominant male punk would make fun of his effeminate, emo listening boyfriend.

There were some Dwarves shirts and CDs available for purchase, but nothing I would consider wearing. Two thongs with the skull and cross boners logo were spread out on the table in a rather embarrassing way. Even a Blood Guts & Pussy shirt was there, and we were surprised to find that it lacked a single shirt pocket.

When the Dwarves came on, there was no sign of HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED, much to our disappointment, although I suppose it was better for the crowd of all-ages. The drummer and two guitarists we didn’t recognize, although one of them came on with sunglasses and a stocking over his head while the other went skins. Blag entered with a sleeveless “Slut.” shirt sans gloves or wig (come to think of it, I haven’t seen him ever wearing a shirt with sleeves).

Then there was Tazzie.

She came on wearing a dark purple-blue dress shirt with a sequined nurses mask. Her dark brown hair covered her entire face and at times she seemed like Cousin It playing bass. Partially through the set she took off her mask, unbuttoned her shirt half-way to reveal a lacy black demi, and flooded her hair behind her right ear when she got too hot.

It’s obvious that every member of the band has a good time on stage. Blag body surfs and is generally charged enough to keep the pit energized, just as the legends go. The guitarists all scream at the top of their lungs while hitting out the fast paced Dwarves tunes. Even the drummer is lost in a furious frenzy of adrenaline. But Tazzy rocks the fuck out. She gets so into the music that she rarely looks up from her guitar, her eyes half-closed most of the time. She spasmodically bangs her head at each beat and each aggressive bass line. It’s almost as if she’s experiencing an implosive surge of energy while she has a look of quiet concentration on her face as the rest of the band waxes chaotic around her. I’ve never seen a more attractive instrumentalist.

Plenty of great hairstyles were in the crowd, although some were rather shabbily done. The best one was someone sporting a pink mohawk with a razor thin center strip extending more than a foot outwards.

The entire set lasted more than thirty minutes, which must be a Dwarves record, and surprised us since we were expecting anything from three to fifteen minutes. Now I’ll be looking forward to the upcoming AFI concert, and possible Dears concert. Walking home on the bare city streets was nice and peaceful, away from the constant stream of noise and people. It was a good way to end off a tiring evening.

I’ve been listening to my Dwarves collection to get in the mood for the punk concert tonight. My guess is that I’ll be the only Asian guy, let alone Chinese guy, there. It’s too bad their songs are all so short, I find that my playlist loops after only a few moments.

I watched Deliverance yesterday. I expected more to happen. So many movies nowadays are huge, sweeping epics that I guess I’m used to characters going to hell and back à la Armageddon. Still, it was a good movie, but I’d have to watch it again to be able to appreciate the themes of man vs. adversity and nature.

It’s the FUCKING DWARVES! They’re playing at Babylon tomorrow at 7:00 pm. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go at first, since I don’t know any of the opening bands and the Dwarves are notorious for their short sets, but Iain talked me into it. Seeing the antics of Blag and HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED will be worth it in itself. That, combined with being able to see how their new female bassist, Tazzie Bushweed, interacts with the band, and I can’t help but get excited.