Category: It Happened to Me

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Back to the Stage (or: Peril from Beyond Space!)

I met Scott Watkins in 1999 at the Queen Street West cafe Tequila

Bookworm, where we were not just regulars, but friends with the staff

(in my case, very special friends with one of the staff. albeit disastrously).

A couple of years later, he invited me to play accordion to accompany

his improv troupe on days when the regular musical director couldn’t

make it. I performed at a handful of shows and had a blast doing it. I

got to perform and still have the best seat in the house at the same

time, and it’s always great to see Scott perform (you should see his

“Beat Poetry of Ricardo Montalban” routine).

Scott recently contacted me and asked if I’d do some music for his upcoming show, Peril From Beyond Space:

Photo: 'Peril from Beyond Space' poster.

The synopsis:

The year is 1947. The forces of democracy have triumphed. Millions of

Americans are raising families, buying refrigerators, and wearing

nearly identical suits. Now that fascism has been eradicated, Mr. and

Mrs. Average Homeowner can look forward to a bright new era of peace

and prosperity. Or can they? Little do they realize that a malevolent

alien race has targeted the planet earth – a race of demon monsters

that threatens every single person in the entire world…a Peril – from

Beyond Space!

Peril From Beyond Space is a

“comedy sci-fi cliffhanger in four parts” taking place for the next

four Fridays at 10 p.m.: March 11, 18, 25 and April 1 at the Bad Dog Theatre, 138 Danforth Avenue

(at Broadview). Four different musical/comedy acts will open each show,

with Yours Truly opening for the March 11th opening show! Tickets are

$8 at the door. I should be entertaining, and Scott and Company should

be even more so.

I suppose that means I should go work on my routine.

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It Happened to Me

Jet

Funny airplane moment: just after boarding the flight to Boston, a girl

in the row behind me asked her father: “Where’d they get this tiny

little plane, Dad? eBay?”

Since I fly to Boston to see Wendy about once every six weeks (she does

the same, and overlapping our flights lets us see each other every

three weeks), I try and find the least expensive flight possible, which

is usually American Eagle, the wing of American Airlines that provides regional services. This past weekend’s flight, before taxes, was CDN$179 (CDN$279 after taxes).

American Eagle uses ERJ jets, manufactured by Brazil’s Embraer. I’m always kind of disappointed that Embraer Jets don’t automatically play Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66’s Mais Que Nada [Windows Media sample / RealPlayer sample] when you board, but that’s like wishing that Seattle-based Boeing’s jets played Seattle-based Sir Mixx-a-Lott’s Baby Got Back [Windows Media sample / RealPlayer sample] or Airbuses played Plastic Bertrand’s Ca Plane Pour Moi [Windows Media sample / RealPlayer sample].

(Get it? “Ca plane”? On a plane? Oh, never mind.)

This is actually a US Airways regional jet, but I

believe it’s an Embraer Regional Jet. I took this photo while flying to

DC in 2000.

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It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Accordion City Day, Part 3: X-Men in Accordion City!

While most things happen in New York City in the Marvel Universe (the milieu of most Marvel Comics), its superheroes often go to other cities. I’ve only recently read Wolverine/Doop (Wolverine’s the most popular X-Man, and Doop is a green mutant blob — kind of like Slimer from Ghostbusters — from the X-Men spinoff comic X-Statix), which takes place here in Accordion City — and features a lot of my local haunts in the backgrounds…

College Street West, Compressed. Note the locations: Cafe Diplomatico, The Orbit Room, the Royal Cinema, the Lava Lounge (which sadly, is closed as it’s being turned into a condo) and Dragon Lady Comics.

All are on College Street West, but not this close together — and the

street would have to run northwest/southeast for the financial district

building and the CN Tower to be visible. Still, it’s nifty seeing

places where I hang out depicted in an X-Men spinoff comic book.

Doop and Wolvie Racing Down the Annex. Featured in this Panel are Suspect Video and renowned comic book store The Beguiling.

That’s Ontario Place’s Cinesphere in the background.

I haven’t been to the Brunswick House since they remodelled and stopped being such a dive.

“Nooooooooooo-body!” You’d have to be from Toronto to get that joke. That’s former mayor (and a bit of a joke, at that) Mel Lastman. The proper honorific for the mayor here is “His Worship”, but we tended to refer to him as “His Washup”. And yes, CityTV is a local station (here’s its glowing write-up in Wired) a couple of blocks from my house.

Racing Down Spadina! The Silver Dollar Room is the home of a few of my misadventures and a couple of Meryle’s burlesque numbers. Remember Adventures in Babysitting — “Nobody leave dis place until dey sing dee blues?” That’s the Silver Dollar Room.

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It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Accordion City Day, Part 1: Where the Women Are

Travelling westward on King Street West between Spadina and Bathrust

this morning, I saw a lineup about five blocks long made up almost

entirely of good-looking, well-dressed women in their 20s and 30s.

Among them was my friend Angela, who’d just arrived to take her place

at the back of the line.

“Movie auditions?” I asked.

“No, it’s a lululemon warehouse sale!”

(Guys: You might want to keep lululemon in mind if your girlfriend has

a birthday coming up. Girls go for that yoga stuff, and they look

pretty good in lululemon clothes.)

Single men, you might want to bring an accordion and go busk that crowd. The sale’s happening at 590 King Street West.

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It Happened to Me Music

Nine Inch Nails: The Hand That Feeds

Graphic: Nine Inch Nails 'NIN' logo.

I discovered one of my great guilty musical pleasures — Nine Inch

Nails — in early 1990, when that first album, Pretty Hate Machine was

a few months old. It’s one of a handful of albums around that time that

made me go “Who is this? I must have this!” after hearing only a few

songs (Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish and Nirvana’s Nevermind and Ween’s Pure Guava come to mind).

Trent Reznor is one of my musical heroes, as he proved that you could

play synth and still not sound wuss-a-riffic (before I was the Accordion Guy, I was a synth guy). Prior to Trent, most

people’s image of synth players weren’t terribly positive (Paul

Schaffer, you hurt a lot of keyboard players everywhere), and that went

double in the proto-emo-rock scene of 1992 Kingston, Ontario, where my

buddies Karl Mohr, “Craigertronic” and I were the three synth guys in

the small town of a thousand guitars. He made it cool to smash a

keyboard onstange, something I managed to do only once (after my wonky

Yamaha finally died during a gig).

Trent made my DJ career (1989-1994) at Crazy Go Nuts University stand out. While

the other campus pubs were cranking out the pap of the day — Marky

Mark’s Good Vibrations and Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It For

You) and more Color Me Badd than you can shake a  stick at — you

came to Clark Hall Pub to hear Nine Inch Nails, along with Ministry,

Public Enemy, Sonic Youth and Jane’s Addiction.

I was the drunk guy dancing right by that stage when Nine Inch Nails

played Lollapalooza ’91 here in Accordion City. Maybe not the only drunk guy, but I

was there. And drunk.

Trent also played in indirect part in my accordion career. The first

number I played on accordion in front of a large crowd was Head Like a

Hole, which I did with Karl Mohr in front of the stunned goth masses at

the now-defunct Sanctuary Vampire Sex Bar (the story appears here).

Nine Inch Nails’ upcoming album, With Teeth, is due to be released on

May 3rd. It’s expected to be a more song-oriented album; Der Trentster

said in a recent Rolling Stone interview that “It’s going to be twelve

good punches in the face – no

fillers, no instrumentals, just straight to the point.” My face awaits!

As a fan, I present to you something I stumbled across — a crappy MP3 recording of the first single off the album, The Had That Feeds

[3.9 MB MP3, enclosure]. It’s a catchy basic little rocker whose really

fat bassline should sound good in the full-fidelity version. Enjoy!

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It Happened to Me

"The Call", Again

I got “the call” again today.

“The call” my own little name for the phone call I get from a family

member to inform me that Dad has yet again wound up in the hospital. As

I’ve probably mentioned dozens of times before in this blog, the

“perfect storm” of diabetes, a heart condition and lowered immunity

because of the anti-rejection drugs he has to take for his kidney

transplant means that keeping Dad’s health in balance is like trying to

keep a marble on balanced on the head of a pin by blowing at it from

all sides.

Long story short: last night, after we had our regular Sunday family

meal (a special treat this time: lunch at Dynasty for dim sum), Dad

didn’t feel like eating dinner. This morning, he took a turn for the

worse and got taken to the hospital, where he had some kind of cardiac

attack. Luckily — it feels strange to use the word “luckily” in this

context — he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

The appropriate measures were taken, and Dad spent the afternoon

sleeping peacefully.

He woke up at about 5:30 this afternoon and saw me by his bedside.

“So,” he asked immediately after coming to, “Is the wedding still on? You can’t back out now that your mother has bought her dress.”

(That’s his favourite joke; he says it every time he sees me.)

Daaaaaaaaaad!

I thought I’d send out a special thanks to both the staff at St. Joseph’s Health Centre for being such top-flight and nice people and to Boss Ross, CEO Elliot

and the Tucows human resources staff for understanding that I’ve got to

blaze out of the office and into the hospital every now and again.

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It Happened to Me

And Now, a Letter from the Editor…

From the look of it, this is going to be one of those years that I’ll

look back upon and say “Whoa, I was pretty busy back then!”. Hence the

shortage of more personal “Hey, look at what I did” entries. It’s not

that I haven’t been up to interesting stuff; it’s just that those

entries take the most time and energy, and those are at a premium. I

find it far, far easier and quicker to write op-ed entries and point

you to interesting things on both the web and in real life. I plan to

get back to writing some “It Happened to Me” stories soon, but in the

meantime, I hope you’re still enjoying the sort of posts I’ve been

making of late.