Missing Dawson

So it's getting close to the end of July, which is when DCMF occurs.
I miss it. In a huge way. I am deeply saddened by the fact that I'm not going to be there. Particulary since a lot of the bands that are playing are awesome.
For example:
- John-Rae and the River
- Amy Millan
- Great Lake Swimmers
And these are just the bands I already know. Last year, there were a ton of wicked bands I never would have heard of had it not been for Dawson. This is why I can't even visit the myspace sites of any of these bands for a little listen. It would crush my soul to hear how fantastic (I know) they (probably) all are at the same time as I know how un-present I will be at DCMF.

Up to Speed

Dan Griffin was awesome at the Spades show. The Spades were equally awesome in a different way; in a makes-me-twist-the-night-away-way. Their new album is also sweet as fuck and I suggest, to everyone who hasn’t already, buying it. I saw Dan Griffin & The Northern Lights again last week, which makes me one of the few and the proud who can say I’ve seen every single show they have ever played. All three of them. With them, I saw two new bands. Rock Plaza Central is a pretty wicked Toronto band that uses accordions and horns, among other things. I loved them. They’re an eastcoastified mix of Arcade Fire meets Modest Mouse. Also saw Paper Airplanes; a Kansas-based band with a whole lot of guitars and rocking. Sounds like Rock Plaza Central minus the horns. All six of them, plus merch guy, plus someone’s Mom slept at mine and Sean’s place afterwards because Aaron (our friend/Northern pedal steel star) took it upon himself to take care of them and while his place isn’t, our house is big enough to handle the hospitality. They all made their beds and washed their dishes the following morning so pats on the back to them. That’s more than I do most days.
Best news this month –Joel Plaskett’s new album, Ashtray Rock, came out last week and it is wicked. When I first heard these new songs at the last couple live shows I’ve seen I thought, “ well…those are…new…” but since getting the CD, oh man. I am obsessed in a hugely unhealthy way. The songs make up an hour-long singsong story of what I am assuming is the downfall of Thrush Hermit due to the love triangle that formed when Plaskett scooped a bandmate’s (again, I will assume –Rob Benvie’s) woman. An added bonus is that the album got me a-researchin’ on Rebecca Kraatz–Plaskett’s wife /NovaScotia artist (and suspected Mistress of AshtrayRock). I had always been quite obsessed with the cover art for La De Da, which she did, and when I discovered that she had a wholecache/collection/empire built on similarly-styled wood burns and watercolour work, I was in Heaven! Plus, she also writes a memoir-esque weekly comic, and since those are my favourite kinds of comics, I was even more thrilled!

Preparing for the onslaught

Soooooo much muuuuuuuuusic!
Going to see Adam Cooke tonight –a local guy n’ guitar musician who has a weekly gig at Slainte. I know nothing about him other than the good somethings I’ve heard.
Even more exciting –the return of the Spades to the Pepper Jack on Saturday. I haven’t seen these guys since before we left for Dawson which was…almost a year ago now. They’ve got a new album that sounds awesome, and Dan Griffin & the Northern Lights (consisting of most of the former members of The Surly Young Bucks) will be opening. I am psyched for this because Dan Griffin is awesome. His songs make me fuzzy and nostalgic over the memories of a past I don’t even think is mine.
Sunday night, Hank & Lily are playing in Guelph, along with a bevy of west-coast musicians including Carolyn Mark. I had originally planned to see Hank & Lily play the Casbah in Hamilton on the 14th but things have arisen and I can’t make it. Fortunately, upon re-examining their tour schedule, I discovered their date with another of my favourite western acts. For once, hooray for things arising!
The show I am perhaps most pumped for however, is Hungry Hill. The stand-out band (for me) from DCMF is finally touring beyond the Yukon and is, as I type, making its way across the country to play Hamilton’s Studio Theatre at the end of April. The following week they’re playing Burlington so we’ll see how the old finances hold up and maybe I’ll go to both.

Escape to Hamiltonia

Oh Ontario how I have missed you!
Made the escape "back east" (according to the Westerners) and am thrilled to be back in the land of way-too-much-music-to-even-decide-which-music-to-go-and-see. It's so refreshing after so many months in the musically barren landscape of Victoria (well, I suppose it's not entirely barren, especially not if teen punk death-metal is your thing -there's a thriving local screamer scene in Victoria).
Shows on the horizon include Hamilton's own Charlemagne (who I haven't seen in about eight months and who I am very excited to rock out to once more) the ever-intrguing but not-yet-seen-by-me Po' Girl, the new-and-incredible-(so I've heard)album-touting Golden Dogs, BC's own Wassabi Collective and Matt Mays on an Angels Make Contact tour.
For the new year I also have high hopes that Modest Mouse will pass nearby, that Arcade Fire will tour their new business in my neck of the woods, and that I will -please God- get to see Jenny Lewis before I explode.
BRING IT SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO!

Kinski vs. tequila -they make me equally sick

In what was to be our last Victoria week-end Sean and I went to see some muz-ak at a bar called Lucky on Friday night. Lucky is a sweet bar. I enjoy the exposed brick everything, the bartenders are nice, and I especially love the autographed Luke Perry glossy they display so proudly and prominently behind the bar.
A Seattle band called Kinski played after two openers -a Victoria band called Run Chico Run (who I've been weirdly obsessed with for years despite never having heard them) and some other band I think was called Espionage and whose hometown I'm sure I don't care about.
Anywhoooooo we attended the show with one of our three Victoria friends, Chris, and his girlfriend. I was already quite drunk when we arrived and then Chris insisted on buying shots (plural) of tequila for all of us. Did I miss something? Was it frosh week? Would it have applied to us if it was? Questions I ask myself now, but thought nothing of at the time. Mostly because I was too busy shooting tequila. And then beer. And then wine. So I was spetacularly trashed rather early on, but still. This should only have served to make me think more of all of these bands by virtue of the fact that my powers of judgement were at an all-time low.
The first band sucked. I think I may have danced to one song and that was only because I was thinking about the Joel Plaskett show I'm going to attend on my triumphant return to Ontario in a couple weeks. Run Chico Run was also un-exceptional, which made me sad because it means all the years of curiousity about them were for naught. Or at least, only for suck.
The third band, Kinski, was supposed to be some hot shit Sub Pop Seattle band but really...when was the last time being on Sub Pop meant anything? Not bloody lately. Jokes on their website still reference Singles, and that was a looooooooooong time ago. Roughly the same time Bridget Fonda did anything worth anything.
Now I may have drunk (drank?) a lot but the bands sucked at least as much, and I maintain that it was the music that pushed me over the edge from "woozy" to "sickly smashed and unable to even consider riding my bike home", which is something that's never happened before. I can always ride my bike home. We ended up catching a cab three songs into the Kinski set.
On the upside Sean and I ran into a guy we worked DCMF with. On the downside of that upside I was screaming and embarassing-drunk in his face. I may have spit in his mouth, and I'm sure I stepped on his toes a bunch.
Also made a fool of myself (or at least made a stranger feel like a freak of nature) getting grossed out by this one dude's mechanical arm. He fell out of a window while working construction or something equally stupid. I don't know. It took me ages to get that information out of him. At first I thought his idiocy came with the territory (he was, remember, a construction worker) but then Chris told me he'd had a run-in with the same guy and that he was on LSD, so that accounted for his crazy eyes and inability to focus on anything I asked him. Plus it made me feel a bit better about making gagging/puking sounds about his sickening arm because I'm sure, in his head, words only made sense in Vulcan or Mandarin or Pig Latin.
Here's to our bikes not getting stolen overnight, and also to the awesome breakfast we had at Paul's Motor Inn the next morning.

Artsy-Fartsy

So last Thursday I was flipping through Monday Magazine (Victoria's sorry excuse for an alt-weekly) when I happened upon a show listing that, wonder of wonders, sounded like something I might give anything close to resembling a damn about!
Carolyn Mark, Lily Fawn, Amy Honey, and BJ Snowden were playing at a place called The Fifty-Fifty Arts Collective the next night. I immediately hightailed it to Ditch Records to pick up a couple tickets for Sean and I because, though I had no idea who the last two musicians were, I love Lily Fawn adn Carolyn Mark, and I missed the latter's show last week because I was working.
So. Friday night rolled around and Sean and I revved our bike lights and pedalled off to Bay and Douglas to find this place. We were a little skeptical about what we were going to find because the corner of Bay and Douglas is quite a ways from downtown, and a corner highly populated with quickie car repair places.
As it turned out, with good reason. The Fifty-Fifty was a small storefront on an old yellowed brick block that also housed a number of out-of-business-looking establishments that specialized in such things as furniture refinishing and junk collecting. Smack in the middle of these was the venue we sought -a small white gallery jammed with some "meh" paintings of I don't know what. There was a handful of people milling about inside, eating chips out of a plastic bowl, and drinking beer out of plastic party cups. We locked our bikes outside, took a deep breath, and dove in.
Inside was a non-scene that quickly developed into a weirdo scene as we sat and waited for some music to start.
First off, I was the ONLY chick in the place who wasn't wearing knee-high boots of an ass-kicking nature, crazy socks, a skirt, and some variation on a velvet coat/cape/shawl (though had I my purple winter coat on, I would have given them all a run for their money).
Secondly, every one of the twenty-odd people there seemed to know each other except Sean and I and one other dude who, perhaps smelling the similar reek of "outsider" on us, sat right beside us all night. I don't know why this twenty-plus posse didn't just get together in one of their basements to drink and play music instead of each paying $8 to get together and drink and play music at the Fifty-Fifty...maybe it was all an elaborate ploy to bilk Sean and I and Random Dude out of our $8?
Anyway, the show took place behind the gallery -in a concrete boxy space with some sort of unfinished overhead loft. There was a makeshift stage lit by one sorry, drooping strand of mini-lights, and a row on uncomfortable vinyl benches against the back wall.
We didn't venture into the back, back room because it looked like something out of the movie Seven but people kept coming out of it with drinks in hand so I assume there was some sort of fridge or keggerator beyind the greenish glow.
But all atmosheric insanity aside -the music.
Lily played with some mousy chick in a little band called "Deer Legs." There was much singing, violin, flute, and there should have been a tambourine at one point but it had apparently been misplaced. So now I love Lily Fawn but this other chick sucked. She was good with the violin but her voice? Tortured me. That is all I have to say about that.
Amy Honey was pretty good. She could play the guitar, she seemed very nice and chilled and she had some good songs. Some made her voice sound better than others but on the whole, I would see her again.
Next up was Carolyn Mark and she appeared to be smashed out of her tree before she even got onstage. Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed her set. I love the girl's voice and even drunk and speaking in inside jokes to the large group of everyone but Sean, random dude, and I, her ramblings were entertaining.
Unfortunately for BJ Snowden, we had to get some alcohol into ourselves before Friday night ended so we bolted as soon as Carolyn Mark finished, but I can tell you this -BJ was a middle-aged black woman wearing a lot of silver whose contribution to the merch table was a handful of autographed 8x10 glossies and a bunch of white T-shirts with giant prints of her face on them. Sean and I have since listened to songs on her website and Sean's take is that she's a female Wesley Willis. Mine is that she is a one-woman version of the Will Ferrell/Cheri Oteri SNL skit where they play Casio keyboards at school and church dances.
Anywhoooooo, moral of the story? Carolyn Mark can D-rink, Lily Fawn needs to get rid of sullen, mousy, awful singer, Amy Honey can stay, and if BJ Snowden doens't add something other than Casio samples to her act she's going to end up an SNL skit.

What's up...or not up as the case may be, and is?

Well it's hard for me to write about music in a city that has none.
I spent the summer cycling through northern BC and the Yukon with my lovely boyfriend Sean. We attended the Dawson City Music Festival, which rocked my socks off in a way that I may explain at a later date.
Afterwards we moved to Victoria where we have seen one band (The Hylozoists) since August because none of them seem to make it past Vancouver before heading back east.
In other news, we've also grown to hate this city and everyone in it. Because they suck. Or at least the native Victorians do. I miss Ontario and its overwhelming, neverending, too-many-shows-in-one-night music scene.