Yearly Archives: 2010

Meeting Sikander and Lunato

I’ve known Sikander for a few years now, but the extent of our inter­ac­tion only hap­pened online. We knew each oth­er through the Ottawa blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty, but at this point, nei­ther of us can remem­ber who found who first.

Now he lives in Toronto with Lunato, which I did­n’t know was­n’t her real name, and whom is now his wife (I think they were just room­mates when Sikander and I first start­ed talk­ing). I’d see lit­tle glimpses of their lives through their pic­tures, along with their per­pet­u­al smiles, kawaii details, and mot­ley assort­ment of friends. It was inter­est­ing to see how two peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures could get along so well; as Sikander said to me, he used to be a good Muslim boy before he met her.

Sikander and Lunato

Coolest cou­ple ever.

They hap­pened to be in town for a wed­ding, and it was the per­fect chance to final­ly meet in per­son. We set­tled on some gela­to over which to talk; I always mar­vel at how small the cup sizes look, and then how full I am after a medi­um.

Love by Oka

 

We’d send music back and forth over the years, though usu­al­ly it usu­al­ly stays in the ambi­ent, elec­tron­ic genre between us. Funny sto­ry: Lunato told me she liked my video of Hong Kong mar­kets, and it was actu­al­ly Sikander who gave me that music from the Code 49 sound­track (which I slowed down about 50%). He said it sound­ed famil­iar but nev­er real­ized where it came from.

Before part­ing ways, Sikander gave me an album by Oka, an Australian elec­tron­ic reggae/dub out­fit. He once saw them per­form at a busker fes­ti­val in Toronto (though they’re not buskers), and it was the first hard-copy piece of music we shared. A music rec­om­men­da­tion is always gift, and an actu­al phys­i­cal album feels all the more spe­cial.

third show

Jesse sent me an e‑mail this morn­ing, invit­ing me to play a few acoustic tracks on his set tonight at the Elmdale Tavern in Hintonburg. Naturally, I could­n’t say no. I got to his place ear­ly, and in the four hours lead­ing up to the show, we worked out the arrange­ments.

The venue was nice and cozy, with the front tables only a few feet from the stage (which was bare­ly ele­vat­ed itself). There was no kitchen but a bar and a pool table in two main rooms, and this fact meant the place lent itself to peo­ple com­ing to watch some­thing, instead of social­iz­ing and talk­ing over it, as it com­mon­ly hap­pens in a restau­rant or pub with live music.

Self-portrait at 29 10/12

Waiting for sound check.

I was­n’t ner­vous the entire night until the minute up to the very first song; I was doing the main chords and it would have been painful­ly obvi­ous had I made a mis­take.

And since we were unam­pli­fied, we came off the stage and stood at the tables, with Jesse rest­ing his glock­en­spiel on the front-most one. It made the audi­ence all the more vis­i­ble — and me all the more ner­vous — so I just kept my eye on Jesse for tim­ing and vol­ume cues to take my mind off it.

But with a lit­tle more time, expe­ri­ence, and prac­tice, we nailed every track. Also includ­ed was an appro­pri­ate­ly spot­light­ed group high-five after the Videotape-Write Protected-VCR med­ley, which is cer­tain­ly the most dif­fi­cult piece (on my end) due to the fact that I’m play­ing the vamp that leads the tran­si­tion between each piece and the tim­ing is real­ly tricky to get down. I also noticed that I kept strum­ming my strings habit­u­al­ly to make sure I was in tune to avoid the dis­as­ter that hap­pened last time.

A tall, dark-haired gen­tle­man with a cig­a­rette in his hand said, “Good job, bud­dy. It sound­ed great.” as I was walk­ing by to load gear in my car. It was a nice lit­tle acknowl­edg­ment.