Category: Music

Categories
It Happened to Me Music

Last Wednesday: The Pixies Concert

Last Wednesday’s Pixies concert

marked the start of my mini-vacation for American Thanksgiving. This

reunion concert was one that nobody expected — in spite of their

relative obscurity, this band is so loved by alt-rock fans that tickets

for the show sold out when they went on sale six months ago.

When the tickets went on sale, I simply bought four and assumed that it

would be easy to find three other people who would want to attend.

Photo: Adina and Paul at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Deenster and Paul, just before the show began.

Those three people turned out to be my housemate Paul, Deenster

and her boyfriend Chris. They’d arranged to meet me at the office, from

where we’d hop into my car and drive to the show. For some reason, the

concert was booked to take place at the International Centre, a

cavernous warehouse typically used for auto and computer shows located

in a bleak industrial park right by the airport. Still, we were seeing

The Pixies, providers of inspiration for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit,

key players in the soundtrack of my years at Crazy Go Nuts University,

and we’d have gladly seen them play at a sewage treatment plant.

Deenster arrived first with two guys named Chris. One was her

boyfriend, the other an internet friend from the HappyRobot.net online

community. HappyRobot Chris was accompanied by his girlfriend, Becky. I

invited them into the Tucows kitchen, where they were impressed by our

vending machines and assorted free coffee, teas and hot chocolate.

We’re livin’ the high life in this office!

After giving my guests some hot drinks, I showed them my desk, located

in the dead centre of the Tucows offices. Becky noticed a photo of Wendy that I had on my bulletin board.

“I know that girl!” exclaimed Becky.

“That’s Joey’s fiancee,” said Adina.

“Wait…you know Wendy?” I asked.

“I know Wendy from NTI!” Becky replied.

I knew Wendy attended NTI — short for the O’Neill National Theater Institute

in Connecticut — about ten years ago, back in her school days. That

clearly ruled out any possibility of mistaken identity; it was just

another one of those strange coincidences to which I’ve grown

accustomed.

Photo: Becky and Chris at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Becky and Chris,

just before the show began. They came up from Jersey to catch the show.

To the right of the photo, an unknown hand attempts to do some product

placement.

We arrived at the International Centre in the middle of heavy rain. The

pairs of glass doors at the entrance had a sign with this laser-printed

on it on each left door:

NON-DISPOSABLE CAMERAS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

And each right door had this laser-printed sign:

MOSHING AND CROWD SURFING STRONGLY DISCOURAGED

I interpreted this as:

ANY ACTIVITY WHICH WE THINK WILL HURT OUR ABILITY TO MAKE MONEY OFF YOU IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

…but…

ANY ACTIVITY WHICH WE KNOW HAS A HIGH RISK OF HARMING YOU AND THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU, WELL, BE CAREFUL, EH?

I resent the fact that Ticketmaster thinks that by dint of booking an

act, they own your experience and the right to take some snapshots of

it. We really need to spank the music middlemen.

I had my Nikon Coolpix SQ in a case attached to my belt. I told security it was a cellphone and they waved me through.

I ran into a number of friends at the show and even saw Miranda the Accordion Girl and her friends (although they didn’t notice me waving “hello”).

Chris and Deenster suggested going back downtown for drinks after the show, but I had to decline.

“I fly to Boston at 6 a.m.,” I said.

“6 a.m.! It must be love,” said Chris.

“You better believe it.”

Photo: Joey at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Me, phasing in and out of our space-time continuum just before the show. I had a 6:25 a.m. flight to catch to Boston the next day.

It’s been a dozen years since I last had a chance to catch The Pixies

live in concert, and I must say that they sound much tighter this time

around. Perhaps the fact that bassist Kim Deal requested that it be a “dry tour” — she was famous for playing sloppily onstange because she was drunk or high — helped.

Photo: Black Francis onstage at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Black Francis (a.k.a. Charles Michael Kitteridge Thomson IV) gets things rolling.

Here’s some video that I shot during the show. The quality’s not going

to be the greatest, but it should give you an idea of what the show

was like:

Categories
Music

Rejected Wedding Song #1

Photo: Bruce Lee.

Dude!

I thought it would be really cool if we played Lalo Schifrin’s excellent Theme from “Enter the Dragon” [2.9MB MP3] as either the wedding march or when the wedding party enters the dining room. I suspect that it will get voted down by everybody but me, even if I use my most compelling argument: “But dude, it’s Bruce!“

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

Scenes from Last Night’s Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club

Here’s a video from last night’s Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club:

Photo: Still frame from video of Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club, November 17, 2004.

Kickass Karaoke host Carson T. Foster usually strips down to his skivvies by the end of the night.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Music

Tired of Shakin’ It Like a Polaroid Picture

Button: I've stopped dancing to 'Hey Ya'.

Today, November 10, 2004, is the first anniversary of ther release of Outkast’s biggest single, Hey Ya!, in the UK. While the clever pop magazine Pop Justice hails the song as one of the greatest singles of 2003, they’ve had enough. They’ve posted a page titled ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and are asking all you Beyonces and Lucy Lius and babydolls to get off the floor. They’re asking people to stop dancing to Hey Ya.

I think they will meet with very little success. The song’s riff (build

on top on an infection G – C – D – Em progression) is so catchy that

people will dance and sing to even my (necessarily pared down)

accordion rendition.

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

Movies from Mysterion the Mind Reader’s Haunted Hotel Halloween Hoopla, Part 2

Here are two more videos from Friday’s event, Mysterion the Mind

Reader’s Haunted Hotel Halloween Hoopla. Both are of the “psychobilly”

local band The Matadors. The first is of their audio-animatronic

skeleton introducing them; the second is a snippet of their rip-roarin’

performance.

These files are included as attachments, so if you’re reading this on a web page, click here to get them.

Those of you reading with aggregators that can “see” RSS 2,0 enclosures

should be able to grab them — I think. Let me know what you see!

Categories
Music

How to Rap Safely If You Are White (or: Marc Canter, this one’s for you!)

Marc Canter, in case you’re not familiar with the name, was one of the founders of Macromind, which later turned into Macromedia. While Marc and I have never met, his career has intersected mine: Macromind (and later Macromedia) created Director, the multimedia authoring software that was my primary programming tool for my first three years after graduating from Crazy Go Nuts University.

Boss Ross and I have been communicating with him lately, and it would appear that he’s into rapping; his voice mail greeting and the messages he leaves are always in rap form (You can listen to one of Marc’s messages on Ross’ blog, Random Bytes).

As a service to Marc, I thought I’d post a cartoon which had been sitting in my “blog this someday” folder. Enjoy, Marc!

Comic: How to rap safely if you are white.

Update: Oh, what the hell, let’s remix it with the cartoon Canter…

Comic: How to rap safely if you are white (Canter remix).

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me Music

Accordion City’s Newest Accordion Player

Saturday night: The last errand I ran prior to hopping in my car and going to Homecoming at Crazy Go Nuts University was to buy up as many copies of The Globe and Mail as I could. Ryan Bigge’s story on Wendy’s and my engagement (“There he goes again…does he talk about anything else?”, I can hear you say) appeared in the Saturday issue, and I wanted enough copies to send to relatives and as personal souvenirs.

Saturday’s edition was a special one spolighting China as a great power — if not the dominant one — of the 21st Century (Adam Yoshida must’ve had a total conniption fit).

It was a popular issue, so picking up a dozen copies as I’d planned took travelling to five separate stores. The last store, from which I bought the last two, was the magazine shop beside the Lettieri cafe at Queen and Spadina.

As looked for an available bike rack, I noticed that someone sitting at one of Lettieri’s outdoor tables had a small accordion. An old-school accordion case — the sort that looks like one of those stiff cardboard suitcases from old black and white movies — lay open at her feet. She sat beside two of her friends and was talking to a rubby on rollerblades.

“You really play accordion?” asked the girl, the incredulity showing on her face.

“Shhhhhure I do,” said the rubby. “Jush han’ it over, and I’ll play you something.” He held out his arms, making “gimme!” gestures with his hands.

I wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to this nice girl or her accordion, so I intervened.

“I play accordion,” I said.

She turned and looked relieved to see me. “Okay, you play.”

I slipped the accordion on and started riffing in C minor, easing into Baby One More Time.

“Ahhh, I didn’t want to play anyway,” grumbled the rubby, who lurched northward on his rollerblades, his ankles almost running against the ground. For a guy who probably was on his fifth bottle of cough syrup that day, he skated pretty well.

Accordion Girl explained that she’d bought the accordion earlier in the summer and really wanted to learn how to play. I offered a couple of pointers.

I found out that the girls were big fans of Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine. I played Head Like a Hole [Windows Media link], and snippets of Down In It [Windows Media link], Terrible Lie [Windows Media link] and Only Time [Windows Media link].

It was then that I noticed that I’d forgotten the keys to my bike lock.

“Hey, could you watch my bike for a moment? I have to go buy some copies of the Globe and Mail. And hey, there’s a picture of me and my accordion in it.”

One of them pulled the bike closer to their table as I ran into the magazine store and bought their last three copies of the Globe. I returned and showed them the engagement article.

“Aww, she’s pretty!” one of them said, looking at Wendy’s picture.

“I’ll bet you use the accordion to get chicks,” said Accordion Girl.

“It helps,” I said. “It’s also good for making money. On a good night on Queen Street, you can make anywhere from fifty to a hundred bucks. You can also use it to gate-crash parties; most people at the door assume you’re the entertainment.”

“I could eat feel-eh meen-yon in a fan-cy res-toh-rant,” said Accordion Girl, affecting a posh accent.

I quickly went over the important chord patterns for most rock and pop songs: I-IV-V, I-IV, I-III-IV and so on.

“Look, I have to go,” I said, “but can I get your picture for my blog?”

“Blog?”

“You know, like a LiveJournal,” said one of her friends.

Except without all the drama and psychological problems, I mentally added.

“Oh, cool!”

I snapped their picture:

Photo: Toronto's new sensation, Accordion Girl and friends. Taken outside Lettieri Cafe at Queen and Spadina.Miranda [Accordion Girl], her accordion and her friends.
Taken at Lettieri (southeast corner of Queen and Spadina) last Saturday evening.

“Okay, I’ve got to run now, but promise me this: don’t let that thing gather dust in the attic, okay? Play it!” I was already on my bike and heading north.

“I will, Mister Accordion!” she said.

Ten minutes later, still enjoying an accordion high, I was in my car and turning onto the Don Valley Parkway. Nice start to a good evening, I thought.