When Rick White asked me to help film the Blue Fog Revue last week, there was no way I could say no. Besides playing in one of my all time favourite bands, Rick is also part of the Blue Fog Recordings family, having released 3 solo albums for the label he helped start close to ten years ago. Some other bands on the label include $100, André Ethier, Castlemusic… basically a bunch of bands I really love. The entire active roster was on the bill last Friday at Lee’s Palace, but if you happened to miss it you can check out selections from the evening on YouTube. I filmed the whole night alongside Rick, and he’s been busy editing the footage all week.

I also bought a digital camera, finally. Maybe I’ll start posting photos?

I had such a great time watching Thrush Hermit play. I go to a lot of concerts, and even bands that I really like have a tough time holding my attention for as long as Rob, Ian, Joel and Cliff did last night. For 2.5 hours and nearly 30 songs, they really gave it their all. I’ve seen Joel play solo, where he’s usually pretty calm cool and collected, but in Thrush Hermit he was a madman. I didn’t realize how deeply ingrained all their songs are within my psyche. I knew all the words.

At the show I bought their new box set Thrush Hermit: The Complete Recordings, and I’ve spent all night eating spaghetti and pie, listening to all the unreleased and non-album tracks. It’s 2010, and I’m hearing new Thrush Hermit songs. Oh, and they’re on the cover of NOW. See, good things are happening!

Going back to Jim Guthrie, he’s so great. I bought his last album Now, More Than Ever on CD at Soundscapes in ’05 when my friend tried applying for a job there. Today at work I got word that Now, More Than Ever is getting a long overdue vinyl release with 2 bonus songs, and an extended CD version with 12 new songs! It’s one of my all-time favourite albums, and owning it on vinyl will be sweet. Order it here at 3 Syllables Records, who are making good things happen.

Alright I think I’ve crammed as much as I can into this post. I know this is supposed to be a blog about my life, but guess what: this is important. It’s what’s on my mind. I guess if there’s one thing I’m trying to say with all this, it’s that the future really is unwritten, nothing lasts forever, the sky’s the limit, and thank you and goodnight.

PS: Can someone put Clayton Park on vinyl so I can buy it for a third time?

So yes, I must be on my way, but I’ll leave you with some fun videos from this past weekend. Didn’t have time to edit them or anything, just dumped the footage on YouTube. First up, it’s PS I Love You featuring Diamond Rings performing “Facelove” at the Silver Dollar on Friday.

And here’s The Magic playing their hit song “Downtown Line” in some weird sort of tomb off of Ossington, at 4 AM, technically Saturday morning.

Last night I went to the Tranzac to see a different type of show than I’m accustomed to seeing. I was there to catch the Toronto debut of Le Cyc, a live music/graphic novel extravaganza. I first heard of Le Cyc last September when I was in Guelph for the Kazoo Festival, where it was being performed for the first time. I couldn’t stick around to see it, but a few weeks ago I found out they were bringing an expanded version of the show to several towns around Ontario, so I knew I had to catch it this time around.

Still, when I took my seat before the show, I had no clue what I was about to see. The large Tranzac stage was divided in two, with a projection screen in the center and various instruments on either side. I tried to decipher what was being projected – it appeared to be some sort of desert landscape with a large mechanical-looking tower in the middle – but decided to just sit back and wait for the show to start, hoping the answer would reveal itself.

A little after 9:30, the 8 person band took the stage with their instruments (piano, upright bass, violin, accordion, guitar, drums, saxophone/clarinet ), and soon the projections started. After a few slides giving some backstory on the small cast of characters, the story started. I guess if you’re reading this you might not understand exactly what’s going on right now. Imagine a graphic novel where every panel has been blown up to fill an entire movie screen, and instead of speech bubbles for characters, there are people singing all the dialogue in the form of really catchy songs. Sometimes a panel will stay on screen for several seconds, and sometimes (when there is a lot of action for example) the panels will flash by quickly, almost like crude animation. It works really well, and each panel is really a work of art, created using only ink, wine, and coffee by visual artist Dave Willekes.

So once you’ve grasped how the show is experienced, you can really sit back and enjoy the story of Le Cyc (which you’ll quickly learn is ‘cycle’ backwards). I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it involves a city powered by bicycles, a singing parrot, true handlebar moustaches, and an epic bike race. The show is around 80 minutes long, and it’s really entertaining the whole way through. I really hope they bring the show back to Toronto, since it’s pretty amazing what these kids from Guelph have done. The stuff that comes from that city never ceases to amaze me.

I was out last night at a bar and a few people complimented me on the Eric’s Trip t-shirt that I was wearing. It’s always nice to meet people who like Eric’s Trip. They’re my favourite band to come out of the early 90′s East-Coast Canada music scene, but it definitely took me a while to get into them. When I was young, my oldest brother had a few Sloan albums that we would listen to on family roadtrips. When I started getting more into music in high school, I remembered liking Sloan so I bought a few of their albums on CD. I saw them live in 2004, and I can easily say they were one of my favourite bands back then. I still enjoy their 90′s output, plus a few tracks from their more recent albums.

In 2006, I saw Julie Doiron play at the Velvet Elvis in Oshawa (previously discussed in this post).  At that point I really didn’t listen to her, but I immediately became a fan after that show. I learned more about her story, and discovered she was in Eric’s Trip. I think I remember seeing the music video for ‘Stove’ when I was a kid, but I really hadn’t bothered to listen to them until that point. I ended up buying a used copy of Forever Again at Deja-Vu Discs on King Street in Oshawa one day after class sort of on a whim. I guess I should mention that I’d already gotten into a few other East-Coast bands throughout High School like The Super Friendz and Thrush Hermit. Anyway, ever since I started listening to Eric’s Trip, I’ve been slowly collecting other music from that era. As you can see from the above photo, my collection is still pretty small, but I think I’ve got a few gems in there. A lot of it is on CD since I really didn’t buy records until recently. It’s pretty rare to see much stuff from that period in stores around here, but I think I’ve been lucky. Most of my collection was found by scouring used stores in Oshawa and Toronto, but I’ve had to get harder to find records off the internet. Amazingly, I don’t have any overlap in my collection, though I really want to get all the Eric’s Trip albums on vinyl. I saw a copy of Love Tara about a month ago on eBay but I didn’t have much cash that week so I let it pass, and now I really regret not getting it. It was a sealed copy from a record store in Kingston and it only went for $60, which isn’t too bad. I’ve never seen it anywhere else before. I’ve seen Forever Again once or twice, so I’m hoping I can get a copy soon. None of the Sloan CDs are hard to find. I have two Moon Socket CDs, I’m not sure how rare those are. Same goes for the Jale and Hardship Post CDs.

I’m pretty happy with what I have right now, but there is so much out there I still need to get. Eric’s Trip alone have about ten more EPs I need to get. Fun fact: Out of the 28 releases I have, 11 came out on Sup Pop and 9 came out on Murderecords.

A few years later now, late 2006, I head to the Velvet Elvis to see Julie Doiron play. At this point I’m not really a fan, I’ve only heard a few songs, but I knew she was one of the bigger acts to play our town so I went. Also playing was some band called Shotgun and Jaybird. No clue who they are really. I’d played one or two songs on my radio show to promote the concert, but didn’t know their story. Opening up the show was Will from the Constantines solo, so that gave me another reason to go. Anyway, Shotgun and Jaybird went on and I fell in love with them. It’s true. It was one of the sweetest sets of music I’d ever seen. Their whole approach to playing was so charming. The way the different band members interacted, how they spoke to the audience, the way they played their songs, all so fantastic. They had two CDs for sale that night – an EP and their new full-length album. I bought them both and still listen to them regularly, they never get tired. The band split up a few months after I saw them, and it was sad at first, but they’ve all gone on to make great music in other capacities. Plus, they left me with one great show and a perfect little discography.

I’m not sure when I first met Steve Lambke. I think I met him with my friend Mitch at Lee’s Palace seeing the Cons when Mitch got him to sign his show poster. However, the first time I really spoke to Steve was when he played solo in Oshawa at this old bar, Catch 22. Not many people were there, so I took it as an opportunity to go speak to him. Steve plays in the Constantines, so naturally I wanted to have a few words with him. He was very friendly to me, and when he played he even dedicated one of his songs (Windy Road) to me! It was a great feeling to know that guitar player in my favourite band is a nice person.

That night Shotgun and Jaybird played the Elvis, I was able to chat with all of them for a while. One of the band members, Jimmie (aka. Shotgun Jimmie) told me about how he was originally from the Durham Region but now lived out east in a town called Sackville in New Brunswick. I may have mentioned how I’d been to Sackville once before, when I was a young kid. Anyway, Jimmie and I kept in touch on the internet, and I learned more about his town of Sackville and about the music festival him and the other folks in Shotgun and Jaybird had just started the previous August called SappyFest. A year or so later when Jimmie was releasing his solo album, he went so far as to hand deliver me a copy in Oshawa! What a great guy!

Last Spring I was in my last semester of College. It had taken me three years but I’d finally made a good friend in my program named Dale. I think the only reason we started talking was because I noticed he was listening to the Weakerthans one day. Nevertheless, we quickly became friends and started sharing music. One of the first bands Dale got me into was a band I’d heard of but had never listened to called Attack in Black. He let me have their album ‘Marriage’ and I enjoyed it enough on my first listen, but I couldn’t fully connect with it at that point. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when I went to go see the Constantines that their music really made a connection. You see, Attack in Black opened up that show and I was front and center (I had to have a good spot for the Cons). I was still on the fence about them at that point, but seeing them play made me a fan. I thought their songs sounded way better live than on the record, and they were really great performers too. Since then I’ve gotten their second album ‘The Curve of the Earth’ which has become one of my favourite albums.

Everything came together this past August. I finally made it out to Sackville for SappyFest. I camped out in a tent on Jimmie’s farm. The night I arrived there, there was a big campfire. That’s when I realized Steve was also staying there, as were the guys in Attack in Black, so I got to meet them. That whole week was amazing, and it made me appreciate all these individuals so much more. I feel lucky to know all of them, as they all make music that really means a lot to me.

I started writing this post simply to tell everyone about the new record label they’re starting called You’ve Changed Records. They’re releasing Jimmie’s new album ‘Still Jimmie’ on March 10th, and an Attack in Black/Baby Eagle (Steve’s solo project) 12″ on April 14th. I’m so goddamn excited. Go to their website and listen to Mind Crumb.