I grew up on television. The tube was an ever present entity in our household and without it I firmly believe that I would not have the ease with the English language that I now possess. I guess I have Big Bird, Count Duckula and Mr. Dress-Up to thank for my bilinguilism. What a strange thing.
I recall loving morning cartoons. I'd get up as bright and early as I could, which usually meant a short while before 6 am, and I'd watch my favorite shows all the way til noon hour if I could. Would it stop there? Of course not! I'd record that colossal 6 hours of goodness to VHS tape and give it another watch come evening, skipping over the not so good parts. Those were the days.
Since moving out of my parents' house, television has been filtered out of my daily routine. On the one hand, my interest in the thing had waned over the years as nothing managed to capture my attention like the cartoons of old, and on the other, a modest studetn's salary makes it rather difficult to afford cable. Lack of cable makes for lack of quality programming, but that goes without saying. As of now, I can tune into Radio Canada with a minmal amount of static, and the CBC with a considerably large amout of weird shadows, fuzz and wobbly lines. Nothing more.
So this brings us to this evening. I imagine you're all wondering what purpose this abnormally long diatribe about television has. It's Saturday night in Montreal and I find myself considerably bored, the result of being a jerk who alienates any new friends I make all too easily. I recalled that it was NHL playoff time, so I decided I'd try to see if I could tune in to the game on one of my two channels. Luckily, the CBC provided and I now find myself strangely enthralled.
Along with my interest in television, I somehow lost my interest in hockey over as I grew up. As any good Quebec boy, I played hockey for a brief while as a kid. My dad really wanted it, he even went as far as being assistant coach for a while. Unfortuntaely, my laziness (remember my obsession with cartoons?), my flat feet and my fate as a chubby kid all contributed to make me a pretty shoddy hockey player. I eventually quit the whole thing, telling myself that if I couldn't be the best at something, I might as well not do it at all (a way of thinking that still sticks with me to this day.)
My current interest in the hockey game has nothing to do with faded childhood dreams however. No, you see, it has everything to do with latent civic pride. I can't explain it. I haven't felt a thing such as attachment to a city in the longest of times, yet there's something strangely comforting about the sense of complicity with a large group that something like a home team participating in the Stanley Cup Finals can illicit. As the fuzzy, shadowy players glide across the glitchy, speckled ice, dodging oscillating lines and shifting between monochrome and colorful, I'm filled with a weird sense of excitement. Every goal offers edge of your seat excitement. The Ottawa Senators are leading 5 to 3 as I type this and I couldn't be happier about it.
Of course this is all ephemeral. Hollow, fleeting and base excitement in my otherwise tepid life. Though I can't help but think on a larger scale. What if the Ottawa Senators win the Cup? Will the result be similar to what happened in 1993 in Montreal? Will a large number of angry mobs take to the streets? Will there be rioting, looting, pillaging, plundering, senseless violence, piracy of all kinds, etc... ? If so I'd like to take this moment and volounteer as angry mob leader. I believe that my superior intellect and lukewarm charisma would allow me to rule over groups of senseless yet vindictive fools with an iron fist. No? I've always wanted to lead an angry mob. It's been a dream of mine for almost as long as I've loved cartoons, and that's saying a lot. This story isn't going anywhere. Cartoons suck now. Good night.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
Tour Recap Part 1
It's the dream of every single kid who's ever picked up a guitar with the intention of rocking and rolling: to hop in a tiny over-packed van with 4 other dudes, to live in abject poverty for an extended period of time and to play loud deafening music to crowds of no one night after night. Wait, that doesn't sound that appealing all of a sudden. In any event, I'm getting ahead of myself.
So the tour. I went on tour. City of a Hundred Spires went on tour. I've been asked questions ad nauseum about our little trek since we returned and I believe I usually offer the same answer to most: that it was a great experience with great highs and terrible lows. I usually add some half-hearted sentiment about how I imagine that such an outcome is pretty much par for first touring experiences. Yeah.
The first show of the tour is pretty much the perfect synthesis of the great highs/terrible lows dichotomy. On May 5th 2007, we were set to play at le Troquet in Hull with our tourmates in Tunturia. Hull is our (my) hometown and this was meant to be the show to send us off with warm hugs and considerable applause (the memories of which we'd have to nibble on for the coming weeks as hugs and applause would come sparingly from then on.) The show proceedings started off in our traditional ricketty manner. We got to the venue, loaded our gear in and then proceeded to scramble to try and finish burning off our CD-EPs. Being the fiends of last-minute that we are, we'd managed to finish assembling the packaging for our records, but we'd yet to burn the actual music to disc yet. Sitting at the bar with our laptops, we managed to finish up the EPs by early evening. People started filing in and the night was about to begin.
As a small à côté, I'd like to talk about the Jagaton for an instant. The Jagaton was our drink of choice throughout the entire tour, yet it's a drink that is known only to a select few. Equal parts Jagermeister and Tonic Water, the Jagaton gets its name from an amalgamation of the words Jagermeister and tonic, with some slight Carribean flavor added for fun. It's to be pronounced with a slight Jamaican accent. More on the Jagaton later in this story.
I took care of door duties that evening, sipping on many a Jagaton (ha! also: it should be noted that Simon Guibord, friend and Troquet waiter, makes a fine Jagaton) and greeting the overwhelming amount of people that came to see us that night. We somehow managed to fill up le Troquet, there was barely any standing room left. This was a high point without a doubt. It was great to see all these people who'd supported us over the years, all of them gathered there to send us off. Friends, acquaintances, family (my whole family came, great aunt included!) stood/sat around waiting for the music to begin.
Tunturia took the stage before us and played a great set. To say I was impressed with them, especially as they were only on their second live performance, would be an understatement. They played great tunes and turned out to be great dudes. This was a positive omen for that aspect of the rest of the tour.
Our set was decent I believe. We played loud and proud, even getting demands for an encore. Once again, the performance aspect of the show turned out to be a success.
We even managed to sell nearly forty copies of our CD-EP as well as about ten t-shirts. More victories than you can shake a stick at, I tell ya. But unfortunately, the positive stops there (isn't that far enough, I hear some of you asking?)
If there's one thing that rock n' roll is vulnerable to, it's certainly the emotions of the very flawed people performing it. Without going into detail, the ensuing evening resulted in a string of events that damaged not only the emotions of individuals in the band, but some of the relationships between band members. Shit? Shit.
After a great deal more drinks and great tunes (Wilco, D'Angelo.. to name a few) courtesy of Simon, we all parted ways and went home to be greeted by the arms of the last bit decent sleep we'd get for a while. Things seemed uncertain, I was pretty fucking worried. Don't you love how I'm writing this like some kind of thrilling serial? More to come soon.
So the tour. I went on tour. City of a Hundred Spires went on tour. I've been asked questions ad nauseum about our little trek since we returned and I believe I usually offer the same answer to most: that it was a great experience with great highs and terrible lows. I usually add some half-hearted sentiment about how I imagine that such an outcome is pretty much par for first touring experiences. Yeah.
The first show of the tour is pretty much the perfect synthesis of the great highs/terrible lows dichotomy. On May 5th 2007, we were set to play at le Troquet in Hull with our tourmates in Tunturia. Hull is our (my) hometown and this was meant to be the show to send us off with warm hugs and considerable applause (the memories of which we'd have to nibble on for the coming weeks as hugs and applause would come sparingly from then on.) The show proceedings started off in our traditional ricketty manner. We got to the venue, loaded our gear in and then proceeded to scramble to try and finish burning off our CD-EPs. Being the fiends of last-minute that we are, we'd managed to finish assembling the packaging for our records, but we'd yet to burn the actual music to disc yet. Sitting at the bar with our laptops, we managed to finish up the EPs by early evening. People started filing in and the night was about to begin.
As a small à côté, I'd like to talk about the Jagaton for an instant. The Jagaton was our drink of choice throughout the entire tour, yet it's a drink that is known only to a select few. Equal parts Jagermeister and Tonic Water, the Jagaton gets its name from an amalgamation of the words Jagermeister and tonic, with some slight Carribean flavor added for fun. It's to be pronounced with a slight Jamaican accent. More on the Jagaton later in this story.
I took care of door duties that evening, sipping on many a Jagaton (ha! also: it should be noted that Simon Guibord, friend and Troquet waiter, makes a fine Jagaton) and greeting the overwhelming amount of people that came to see us that night. We somehow managed to fill up le Troquet, there was barely any standing room left. This was a high point without a doubt. It was great to see all these people who'd supported us over the years, all of them gathered there to send us off. Friends, acquaintances, family (my whole family came, great aunt included!) stood/sat around waiting for the music to begin.
Tunturia took the stage before us and played a great set. To say I was impressed with them, especially as they were only on their second live performance, would be an understatement. They played great tunes and turned out to be great dudes. This was a positive omen for that aspect of the rest of the tour.
Our set was decent I believe. We played loud and proud, even getting demands for an encore. Once again, the performance aspect of the show turned out to be a success.
We even managed to sell nearly forty copies of our CD-EP as well as about ten t-shirts. More victories than you can shake a stick at, I tell ya. But unfortunately, the positive stops there (isn't that far enough, I hear some of you asking?)
If there's one thing that rock n' roll is vulnerable to, it's certainly the emotions of the very flawed people performing it. Without going into detail, the ensuing evening resulted in a string of events that damaged not only the emotions of individuals in the band, but some of the relationships between band members. Shit? Shit.
After a great deal more drinks and great tunes (Wilco, D'Angelo.. to name a few) courtesy of Simon, we all parted ways and went home to be greeted by the arms of the last bit decent sleep we'd get for a while. Things seemed uncertain, I was pretty fucking worried. Don't you love how I'm writing this like some kind of thrilling serial? More to come soon.
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