Sarah Harmer at Sydenham St. United Church "So...Yay!"

Last night the lovely Sarah Harmer graced the stage in the Sydenham Street United Church in Kingston (she jokingly said that she wanted to be quoted saying "So...yay!" about her return to Kingston...so that's what I did there). It was quite an amazing space and she performed a wonderful, and very long, blue-grass inflected set to a sold-out audience. This show was part of a little mini-tour in support of her latest CD I'm a Mountain which, like Songs for Clem, has more of a "traditional" feel than her two solo albums. However, where Songs for Clem was a disk of standards, I'm a Mountain features new songs, a few older Sarah Harmer songs that were recorded for the first time, a couple of Weeping Tile songs, two covers of her friend's songs (Luther Wright/Chris Brown and Kate Fenner), along with a Dolly Parton cover. Good stuff. The show pretty much played out like the disk: songs from the new album, covers, and selected songs from her solo albums. She was accompanied by her "Acoustic Band" who brought out guitars, upright bass, piano, organ, the mandolin, the banjo, and the violin to great effect. She was personable and humourous (especially when she misread the set list or after she realized that said she wrote songs that she didn't) and her voice was, as usual, fantastic - clear, powerful (so much so that she sang the final song "How Deep in the Valley" without the aid of the microphone), and suited to all types of music. Last night she showed that she could take a turn at pretty much any style and it would sound wonderful and authentic, whether she sang pop/rock, bluegrass, country, or jazz. Another great Kingston show.
rgsc.

Fencing with style if not skill

Much to my joy, my fancy new fencing mask (seen below) arrived in Kingston on Wednesday. I ordered this stylin' FIE range mask from Leon Paul USA partly because I dug the free shipping. Hey! It's free! With the Canadian dollar being pretty strong, the mask, I figured, would be a fair bit cheaper than a similar quality mask purchased in Canada. As it turned out I saved only a bit, if anything at all, because I didn't figure in the duty charges and the $5 service charge levied by Customs (on top of taxes) but that is ok. What caused me much grief, however, was the fact that it took forever to get to me. When it was sent out from London I was told it would take two to four days. Excellent! I would have it in time for the RMC tournament. It didn't. It wasn't here for the Brock tournament the following week. It got to Toronto in two days but then it sat there. And sat there. And sat. All while I watched through the handy-dandy tracking service provided. If I couldn't actually see it just stalled in Toronto I probably wouldn't have been so irritated. I contacted the courier company and they said they would look into it. I contacted the Leon Paul guy, who was very nice and a quite apologetic (even though it wasn't his fault at all). I dunno if it got held up at customs or got lost in the shuffle or what the deal was but it took just shy of a month for me to get it in my hot little hands. But it is here and that is all that matters to me now. No longer will I have to use my first mask (seen on the top) which (a) has had a flaw in one section of the mesh which caused it to fail the safety test from day one, a point I was initially ignorant of until it was too late to do anything about it; (b) has started to rust in several places; and (c) has required duct tape from where the rubber bit around the front part of the mask is coming up and most recently from where a hit on the bib part took a chunk out of it. I doubt that the new mask will make me a better fencer, but it will protect me from getting a sword in my left eye and it will make me look better out there on the piste. And hey, fencing is, if nothing else, a style sport.
rgsc

...And now for something(s) completely different

I have been sorta neglecting this thing. I would like to say that there have been a whole lot of exciting things going on but that would just not be true. Since nothing is going on here at the moment I thought I would just throw out a few random things.

-I am really digging CBC1's The National Playlist. For those of you who don't know about this, they have a list of 10 songs. Listeners vote throughout the week for their favourite of playlist, the bottom four get dropped. Each week there is a three person panel who, along with the host Jian Ghomeshi, each pitch two songs - one that has been released within the past year and a "desert island pick" which can be any song they think is great and relevant and stuff (with the one caveat that the song must have national distribution in Canada). On friday the panelists vote for which of the four new songs get added to the list. The songs have been a mix of contemporary and classic, popular and critically acclaimed. The pitches have been strongly and passionately made and have made me take a second look at some songs that I would not have thought about or haven't thought about in a while. I'm not a huge fan of all the songs that have been pitched or placed on the list but it has made for interesting listening nonetheless. So check it out 11:30am weekdays and the countdown on Saturday at 9pm and vote for your favs.

-It is getting to the end of the year and that means it is time for year-end best-of lists. The bloggers of the world have had their say and the best bands of 2005 both North and South of the border have been presented: Information Leafblower gives the world the Top 40 bands in the US and I (Heart) Music has the 33 Hottest Bands in Canada. Some surprises, some stuff I'd never heard of, plenty of great stuff. Many of the entries on the lists have links where you can download or stream songs.
Update: Here is the list of The UK's Hottest 47 Acts from Take Your Medicine.

-I am ashamed to say that I have never been able to make a paper airplane. Just never got the hang of it. Now, however, I may stand a chance as three engineering students from Leed's University have come up with the world's most perfect paper airplane. Go get some of that aerodynamic goodness.

-Gary Glitter, the former rockstar and constant perv (this is not libel - he was found guilty of possessing child pornography in Britain), has been arrested in Viet Nam and may face the firing squad for "obscene acts with a child". Now this would not normally be something I would post about except for this. On the excellent blog, Stereogum, there was a post on GG, which has a comment from a fellow in Scotland called (tiny)Judas. And this guy wrote the following:

"If you go to a little place called Kingston, Ontario and spend enough time hauling your ass to and from the train station which, because its canada (the home of pointless distances) is barely even in the city you can eventually get yourself a ca[b] being driven by Gary Glitter's cousin, who will tell all about his cousin and the 'difficulties' he's having in the far east. As far as i remember he didn't mention paying the price of sandwich to roger some vietnamese pre-teen... i guess i didn't tip well enough."

Weeee-eird. I don't take too many cabs so I don't think I have had the pleasure of being driven around by this guy but I guess it goes to show you that you never know who you are going to run around here.

-Ok, and lastly, Optimuscrime gets a cookie for the best illustration I have seen in a long time.

That's it. That's all I got. Hope you enjoyed this randomy-randomness.
rgsc

Rocktober (part two)

Alright, here it the round up of my October rocking, and rock we did. On October 19 the megasuperstar Canuck collective Broken Social Scene opened their international tour where? That's right folks, Kingston. They chose to play Grant Hall as a sort of dress rehearsal but as far as I could tell there were very few kinks to work out. But before I get ahead of myself and start gushing uncontrollably at the awesomeness of it all let me talk about the opener New Buffalo. New Buffalo is Sally Seltmann out of Melbourne (we tried to figure out where she was from but couldn't pin it down - I figured she was European from her sound, shows you what I know). She played by herself and while her sound was good she suffered from the fact that she was alone - initially accompanied by a little pink gizmo she set to play the back-up rhythm which looked suspiciously like an iPod from where I was standing but which, I am sure, something fancier. She alternated between the not-quite-an-iPod (but might as well have been) along with playing the occasional bit of keyboard and accompanying herself on guitar. With her rather dreamy songs (no Whitey Houston that's for sure) she really didn't get the full respect/attention of the crowd despite having a really interesting set and a Feist-like vibe. And this crowd liked Feist, I'll tell you what. But again, I am getting ahead of myself. So check out New Buffalo (you can stream her album on her website) and hopefully with the exposure she gets with touring with BSS she will get more attention paid to her. Broken Social Scene, when they finally came on (come on guys, what was the freakin' hold up? You know from mentioning it during your set that Queen's students are partial to burning shit, don't give them an excuse. Oh, and it was awesome that you said that it wasn't cool to burn someone’s car. good on you), they did not disappoint me in the least. I have read some bloggers who were not so impressed by the show, much of it due to the sound, which makes me very glad to have stood 5 people away from the stage just off to the right of the speakers. They played a solid hour and a half set with tunes from their new album (which is superb) and their (even more superb) back catalogue. Jason Tait (Weakerthans) and Julie Penner (FemBots) were there along with six (seven? eight?) BSS guys and gal. And Feist came out to sing. And the crowd when bananas. And for the encore Sarah Harmer came out and I went bananas - she was made an honourary member of the group for the song "Backyards" and then was given the stage to sing her song about the Niagara Escarpment. They were really tight musically, had a good on-stage presence (except for the new singer, Lisa Lobsinger who really needed to loosen up and you know, maybe enjoy herself or something), talking and joking with the audience and Kevin Drew even hopped into the audience to hug them. The music was dense, anthemic, wonderful. Aside from some knobs in the audience (no, I don't need a running commentary or to hear you think that it "sucks" when they tell us that the version of Major Label Debut they played was the slow version, which, by the way, was far from sucky. Please, please, shut up. dicks) and rather low vocals (which is almost to be expected as it is their preferred sound even on their albums) it was an absolutely great show. It was very different from the first time I saw them - outdoor, huge festival during they day vs. an intimate gothic church-like space during the night - and I am so happy to have had the chance to get to see them up close. (The BSS pic was taken from the Queen's Journal).

The next show was back at the gradclub on October 27th for the Hidden Camera's, supported by the Lesbians on Ecstasy. I wasn't a huge fan of LOE - a bit too much crazy synth filled vocals for my liking - but they got the crowd going like you wouldn't believe and that is something to commend them for. Their music was quite heavy but still danceable and people seemed to dig it quite a bit. The Hidden Cameras, however, I did like quite a bit, and if there was one reason why I didn't enjoy them fully is because I am not all that familiar with them. I mostly went because Christine-y Weeney highly recommended their live show and I dug the few songs that I heard. While their were no male go-go dancers and the band didn't perform in blindfolds as they are wont to do from what i understand, they did cram seven people on the stage plus had a cellist and a viola player sitting off to the side (more volume on the strings next time, please), played a great big set of dancey pop tunes, and really got the crowd going. There was banjo, there was xylophone, there was co-ordinated dancing. And, from what I saw, the soldout crowd was digging it. (The Hidden Cameras pic was taken from Optimus Crime - you can see a tiny bit of me on the right by the wall).

So that was the last show that I saw in October, but since I am on the topic of shows I have seen I might as well give a rundown of the two concerts I have seen so far in November. First, on November 3rd, was controller.controller, which I was really looking forward to. There were two openers. The first was a band called Sylvie out of Regina (check out their very attractive flash site where you can preview their songs). They were quite good, alternating between shoe-gazer space rock and more driving bits, except that they got screwed by the sound guy (was he not in the room?) and you couldn't hear the vocals at all. Nevertheless, they sounded really good and looked like they were having a good time - especially the drummer dude who looked like there was no where else in the world he would rather have been. Magneta Lane were up next. The sound issues got sorted out and their was no missing the powerful vocals of lead singer Lexi Valentine. Considering how many people I have seen on the gradclub stage as of late this trio looked pretty sparse up their in comparison but the sound was big: big vocals, big guitar, big hair on the drummer who pounded out crazy-big beats. Seriously, she reminded me of Cousin It, except with two drumstick wielding arms sticking out of the hair and pounding furiously. It was pretty awesome. In rather stark contrast, however, was the bassist French (as far as I can see she only has one name) who looked rather bored. As a whole the band was exceptionally tight and played a really good set. Up next was controller.controller, who I saw back in July and which was a great show in every which-way. This, in comparison, can only be described a great show despite all odds (as will be described in a moment) capped off with one of the strangest moments in my live-music seeing history. As the band came onstage and turned on their signature red footlights, Nirmala took up the mic and positively croaked out that she had laryngitis but would do her best. To my surprise they played a pretty full, if slightly truncated, set. The band sounded fantastic, they played all their great songs off their EP and new full-length album and, all things considered, Nirmala sounded pretty good even if her voice broke on occasion. She has some help from the audience and Magneta Lane's Lexi came out and sang on one track but all in all she gave it pretty much everything she had and I for one have the highest respect for that. Once the set was done the drummer/keyboardist Jeff Scheven stayed onstage and played atmospheric electronic stuff. Strangely, i thought given the state of Nirmala's voice, the crowd wanted an encore. Nirmala came out, sat on the stage, thanked everyone. She asked if people wanted to dance, we said yes, and she thought she could work something out. As she was talking to Scheven, the guitarist Scott Kaija (I think he came out first, it was a while ago now and he may have come out second, doesn't matter) came out. He was followed quickly by bassist Ronnie Morris. They exchanged some rather unfriendly words that I couldn't quite make out, then Morris knocked over a mic stand and then one pushed the other and they were into the crowd and then went offstage into the gradclub kitchen where someone standing near the door said they were fighting. Nirmala looked rather shocked, as we all were, said something to the effect that there would be no encore and had the sound guy put on a cd. Apparently it was just some personal issues that have been worked out but still it was pretty dramatic. And weird. And Oasis-like. I can only assume that it is one of the by-products of a stressful tour.

Coming off two really packed, dance oriented shows, the second November show (gradclub again) was a whole different thing. On November 8th the always wonderful Jill Barber graced the stage. While I wanted to see the show, particularly to check out the opening act the Blue Raincoats, it was a pretty exhausting weekend, I was feeling a bit broke, and I had seen Jill with Josh Ritter on the same stage a few months before so I was going to pass on it...until my musical saviour Tuan of CFRC kindly provided my with two free passes. So we went. Things got under way right on time, which is never expected, so we missed the first few songs of the Blue Raincoats. They played a pretty good set, although I thought they sounded better on their album. I won't hold it against them as one of the band members was missing due to jaw surgery. They kicked it up at the end with a Nancy Sinatra cover and just as they seemed to come alive they were off. After a short break Jill took the stage. We had great seats at a table right up front of stage right which made for quite an intimate and mellow show. She sounded great, introduced us to her new guitar "Tennessee Rose", and previewed a number of new songs which were very good. As with the last time I saw her, Jill was quite chatty. She told anecdotes and shed some light on the stories behind her songs. She catered to the audience, which was quite good for a Tuesday night, playing a few more songs than she intended including a couple of requests. At the end she had the crowd join in on the chorus on a cover of the old country song "The Tennessee Waltz". As ever, she seemed right at home on the gradclub stage which, she informed us, is the first place she ever performed live, and she sounded wonderful. I am glad we ended up going.

So that's it. There are a few shows coming up in the next little while but October/early November will be hard to top in terms of the number of first-class shows that I was able to take in, in such a short span of time. 'Tis really one of the best reasons to be in Kingston - it may be small (which can be good thing in itself) but there is a lot going on.
rgsc

The Who's-Its take on the World

On Saturday the Royal Military College held their 36th annual Team Fencing Tournament. I fenced with a mixed team (ie no club affiliation) that consisted of Ian, the always entertaining Ryan, and little ol' me. In order to confuse as many people as possible we called ourselves the Who's-Its. It was an excellent day with some good fencing and good fun. We finished a respectable 7th or 8th (I haven't seen the final results) out of 38 teams, the highest result I have seen in a while. I am looking forward to reconstituting the team in January for the Carleton Team Tournament where, hopefully, we will finally beat the Ottawa team (or avoid them altogether) and go for a medal.

Photo by (oh, and the "Photo by" photo is by, and that photo is by me, so I guess we now have our bases covered)
rgsc

Rocktober (part one)

October has been an exceptionally good month for music in Kingston with one foray out to Toronto. So much so that October shall henceforth be known as Rocktober (TM OptimusCrime).
So here it is: 5 shows in 4 weeks...blogged all well after the fact.

It all started simply enough with Matthew Barber's CD release party on October 6th at the Grad Club. The opener, who's name I can't remember and which Barber himself didn't seem to know, was kinda uninspiring (see below regarding the Four for Fall show regarding how every opening band should be), just one rather nervous guy with a guitar. The rather large group of rather chatty and rather obnoxious people standing beside/behind us meant that we really didn't get to hear the guy. This is, in my opinion really really rude and it makes me mad. If you don't want to pay attention, fine. The Grad Club has 64 rooms, surely one of them would be much more suited to gabbing. This brings me to my eternal rock-show question: why on earth would you pay cover just so you could not pay attention? It is a concert. Watch, listen, dance if you feel like it. But please don't talk through the whole damn thing (even the main act? what are you people paying for?) while some kid is playing his guts out. Go to Stages. Just. Shut. Up. Ok, that's it for the rant. Matthew Barber came on and played a very good set of straight up rock and roll. The new songs sounded very good - especially "Love/Death" that his sister Jill previewed during her last visit to that very same stage (although, i must admit I liked her take on it better) and he played the best songs from his Story of My Life EP. Speaking of which - go out right now and buy that album. His new one is pretty good (with members of Stars and Metric as well as Jill Barber and his band the Union Dues backing him up, and while I was not in love with it at first it is growing on me. He sounded better on stage than on disc) this one is absolutely amazing. The crowd was a bit strange that night, rather sedate for such a rocking show, but it was definitely a good start to this musical month.

The next show, on the 13th, saw me heading to Toronto after work for the Decemberists show at the Phoenix. I have only started listening to this band recently but when I first heard they were coming to Toronto I raised the idea of going to the show with Mark (click here for his take on the concert). After discussing it for what seems like ages we finally decided it would be a good thing to do so we got tickets. By the time I got into town, up to Mark's, and down to the Phoenix we missed all of the opener's set. It was Cass McCombs and he/they sounded pretty good but I must admit we really weren't paying too close attention. The Decemberists were very good throughout but absolutely great at the end. I expected them to be a little more zany than they initially were but even through the first part of their set they interacted with the audience a bit, made fun of each other, and played extremely tight. The last few songs - the last of the main set "The Mariner's Revenge Song" and the last song of the encore "Chimbley Sweep" - were some of the best live music I have ever seen and were themselves worth the price of admission. Lots of fun audience participation - in the MRS they had us scream like we've been swallowed by a whale at the right part of the song and Chimbley Sweep was transformed from the short album version (just shy of 3 minutes) to a raucous, spiraling epic that included band members switching instruments, a random audience member getting on stage to "play" (I use that term very very loosely in this case) a guitar, and, to end it off the entire audience was made to sit down and become very quiet before they erupted into the chorus for the last time instantly making several hundred people jump to their feet. "Twas awesome. All in all the show was very good musically and was great fun.

On October 18th I was back in the Grad Club for one of the strangest line-ups I have ever seen. It was the Four for Fall show put on by Exclaim! magazine and featured, as you might expect four bands. While I found out later that there were some connections between the bands there was quite a stark divide in the styles. Essentially the middle two acts, the FemBots and Luke Ducet, are country or alt.country groups and the first and last acts, Whitey Houston and Shout Out Out Out Out are loud, manic, mental outfits that would have been quite a surprise to folks just looking to hear some slide guitar. But let's take them one by one. First up was Whitey Houston. This band is made up of two guys, one on drums and a singer/bassist. In this respect and somewhat for their sound the immediate comparison is to Death From Above 1979. These guys, who only referred themselves as the String Cheese and Ham duo (so I wasn't entirely which of the four they were as I was only familiar with the FemBots going into the show), played like every opening band should - they absolutely kicked ass. There was no ignoring them. You couldn't talk over them. You had to be blown away by them. I thought they were great, playing loud, driving, noisy, raw rock. The real unfortunate part about it was that it was just me, two other people, and three guys from the other bands watching. Up next were the FemBots who were exceptionally different but very good. They have been described as alt.country or "death country." The two permanent members of the band were accompanied by The Weakerthans’ Jason Tait on drums and Julie Penner on violin (both of whom popped up at the BSS show the next night) and by guys on bass and on the vibraphone. The vibraphone, to me a big xylophone, was awesome and the guy used a bow on the key-thingys as well as bashing them creating a really great sound. Up next was the headliner, Luke Doucet. Again in the county vein, and it might even be appropriate to drop the "alt" prefix. Also, a very solid set. I can't say too much more as I was wholly unfamiliar with him before going in but he played some excellent guitar (apparently he has played with Sarahs Harmer and McLaughlin) and it is safe to say he is worth checking out. The fourth band took quite a while to set up and the already small crowd thinned considerably by the time they were ready to take the stage. All in all I counted 6 band members....and 9 audience members. However, it was Kingston's loss that they missed Shout Out^4 as they were absolutely unbelievable. (photo by) I hadn't a clue what to expect. The lead singer/knob-fiddler Nik Kozub was part of Luke Doucet's former band Veal and he played a song with Doucet at the end of that set. The Whitey Houston guys were onstage as well as a number of others. There were two drum sets, four bass guitars, many keyboards, synths, and other devices that emitted awesome sounds. They bill themselves as a dance band (because I know essentially nothing of the genre my immediate point of comparison would be Daft Punk) but they rocked out seriously. Everyone on stage gave it their all and put on quite a show, despite most of the remaining audience was not terribly interested in dancing at first. By the end of it we all were up grooving. I really enjoyed their set and I really respect the fact that they played their guts out despite the fact that there was essentially no one there and after, so we were informed, their tour van broke down earlier in the day.

Since this post is already huge I will end it there but stay tuned for the recap of the rest of the month's rocking which will be done....sometime.
rgsc