I'm beat. Despite the short week, its felt long. So many good shows, so many hot days, so many cups of coffee. Electrelane were stunning. !!! was good too. My bike still rules. The summer is creeping in, and homeostasis has never felt so good.
I also don't have much to say. Watch the vid, enjoy and then read up.
I am in the middle of a live music marathon. Since last Monday I have seen more bands than I can count, in more venues than I can remember, and it continues this week...a brief recap, yes?
I had been excited about this show for MONTHS. LCD has crawled their way up the list as one of my favorite bands, perhaps ever. The new record, Sound Of Silver IS the best record of 2007 so far, and the second single, All My Friends IS the best summer jam of 2007 so far. Check these totally deadly covers of the song that are B-siding the single. SO. RAD.
The show itself didn't disappoint. YACHT (AKA one 1/2 of The Blow) was super funny and entertaining, flailing about the stage with Napoleon Dynamite-esque dance moves and jittery broken beat pop melodies. When he broke for a question period, the audience shouted random things like, 'Whats your favorite color?' (answer: "teal!") and my personal fave, 'What drives you to create?' (answer: "you, m'am"). His set was short and sweet and then it was dancing time.
And dance we did. LCD played all the hits and then some, before their bass amp blew and they left the stage for 20 mins, leaving us all wondering if they were coming back - they did, briefly, to perform a Joy Division cover ("No Love Lost") and closing with "New York I Love You", the brilliant finish to the new album. Al Doyle of Hot Chip was on guitar and Mr. Murphy was in fine form as his 'semi-grumpy frontman' character, saying little more than "thanks very much" after every song. Modesty is something this band wears on their sleeve, and I couldn't be happier about it. This video kinda proves my point:
Love it.
Wednesday May 9 - Justin Rutledge w/Eleni Mandell @ The Mod Club
Now, I used to work in the management team for Justin, so I'd seen him many times before...but I was especially looking forward to seeing Eleni Mandell, whose voice and songwriting style has intrigued me since I got into her last fall. She's very...Strummer-esque in her delivery, both as a musician and vocalist - punk rock at heart, twangy songstress by voice - not unlike the Nekos and Jennies of the world. Fourteen thumbs up.
Thursday May 10 - Choke - Mod Club / Bovine Sex Club
The night started early as I went to Mod Club to see my homies from Edmo, Choke. That band means more to my past than any other band today, hands down...I should say, they informed my interests and passion about punk rock for years and years. After first seeing them in 1997 in a crammed rugby hall in Leduc, Alberta, I knew that I wanted to work with them - 10 years later I'd produced almost a dozen shows for the band, and so when it came time for the 'last tour ever', my heart cramped up a little. It really was the end of an era, as blogTO points out. The show at the Bovine was, in a word, phenomenal. EVERY album's hits, EVERY amazing sing-along, lots of pumped fists and sweating shoving. The band closed with the last song from the last record, the refrain of which is, "When I fall / When I break / These friends will carry me through..."
The band stopped singing and let the fans flood the stage, shouting the line over and over. Tears started to flow, gigantic sweaty hugs commenced and when it was all said and done, the band stood triumphant among friends, there in support and celebration of 13 years of music. Thanks to them, for everything.
Friday May 11 - Blonde Redhead w/Fields - Opera House
I was pretty stoked about this show, but without dissing the bands, after a week of non-stop rockin, a mellow post-rock show was fairly anticlimactic. Fields were really good - they reminded me of My Bloody Valentine kinda, very wall-of-sound style with droney vocals and intricate melodies, which should have set the stage for an amazing Blonde Redhead show, but something was missing - the band's performance felt really dialed in, like it was just another show for them, nothing special requiring no great effort...which is too bad, but it wasn't a mutual feeling with the rest of the crowd, who went as bonkers as one can go to music of that tempo...aggressive toe tapping? I dunno.
The weekend was kind of a blur - I seem to remember an army of hammered drag queens, tons of bike riding, yummy breakfasts and hot hot weather. It was grand...but the music marathon continues this week. I'll get to reporting on that when the week is up. Take what you've got, discover some new tunes and have a fantastic rest of the week!
Family means everything to me. My mom has seven siblings, almost all of whom have children, and I myself have three sisters. My dad’s sister has two of her own, and I’ve always been close with all my cousins from every ‘wing’ of my extended family – I think I can count over 40 first cousins, which is big by any standard. Maybe not this big, but big.
And yet it grows. Leah and I went to her cousin's Bat Mitzvah this past weekend where I was introduced to a whole new family that I’m slowing becoming a part of. We sipped drinks and danced and snacked and watched dozens of tweens bounce and shout and beam and sing along with the semi-obnoxious DJ (maybe you’ve heard of him?), who played ALL their favorite songs. Leah pointed out that it wasn’t so much a Bat Mitzvah, but rather a Debutantes’ Ball, and the diva in question was dressed the part. In fact, the cake matched her dress, both in colour and design. And the tablecloths, balloons, lighting, etc...everything matched. It was a fun time despite getting lost en route in Toronto's labyrinth-like north end, where cities' borders blur together and are cut in half by mammoth freeways. Sure, it's quiet living up there, but its not for me.
That's not where the family ends. I was lucky enough this week to reconnect with someone I had almost forgot about, but he found me and we had dinner on Monday. See, my dad was adopted in 1955 by the Klein family of Viking, Alberta. The aforementioned sister was adopted a year later and they grew up as any normal family does. Sometime in the 80s my dad became curious about where he came from, who his 'real' mother and father were, and how it all...happened. He took out an ad in the Globe & Mail. It read:
Robert Michael Stater, born October 7th 1955 in Calgary, Alberta. Adopted shorty thereafter - do you have any information? Please contact...
Silence followed, until sometime in 1992 when a private detective called my dad and offered to apply for the adoption records - he succeeded, and slow but sure contact was made with the family that gave him up so many years before.
But I digress. My dinner partner was Tony, and he's technically my uncle - my dad's brother that he didn't even know about until he went digging for his adoption story. In fact, Tony has three other brothers, two kids of his own and lives just outside of Toronto. The last time I saw him was in 1994, during the summer after my dad passed away. I remember thinking then how amazing it was that dad found his blood family, and moreover, how much Tony looked like my dad. I admit that I was kinda nervous about meeting him again - that I'd be overwhelmed by the likeness, or that I'd be judged by my often-colourful past (since I was 14, anyways). Turns out, of course, that I had nothing to worry about. Tony is a relaxed, slender and handsome man in his late 30s, teaches music at an elementary school and loves his kids to the max. He still looks like my dad, and as we ate and drank a pint he spun me stories about his own father. A quick aside: when my dad first started looking for his birth parents, he found both of them - alive, in different cities - his mother willingly met him; his father told my dad that he was dying of cancer and that he could more or less fuck off.
Surprise surprise, the father in question - my blood grandfather on my Dad's side - is still alive. Tony told me about his fathers' philandering, how he cheated on his first wife (with whom he had two kids), the result of which was my dad. He then married again and fathered four boys, one of whom was Tony. Following me?
When my dad found his family, he was able to locate Annette, a daughter from my grandfather's first marriage. She was living in Okotoks, just outside of Calgary. Tony himself was living in Vancouver at the time, and my dad had every intention of bringing the three of them together that summer. Unfortunately for all involved, my dad died of a brain aneurysm that spring of 1994. I saw Annette at the funeral, and met Tony that summer and like a plume of smoke they vanished. I never heard from either again, so I kind of wrote off that half of my bloodline as...gone.
Until about a month ago, when I went home for a visit and my step-mom told me that she had heard from Tony - he was living in Oakville and was shocked to hear I was out east too. He dropped me an email last week, and suddenly I found myself sitting across from my dad's almost twin, reeling at the reality of knowing my dad's birth family, knowing where the other half of me came from.
It was like looking into a mirror of the future - what I might look like, how things might have been different if only...
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Less drama, more music blah blah this weekend. I promise.
