Joel Plaskett

Last night the Joel Plaskett Emergency played a lovely (as per usual) set at the Olympic Hall. We were pretty far back in the crowd but it sounded great - the view was less than awesome but that didn't stop the amount of singing along and dancing that I did.

Judging by this picture it really doesn't look like anyone is on stage, but I promise there were!

Musical Fun!

I'm participating in the musical Sweet Charity, but on by the Pictou Rotary Club. To my surprise and delight a song from the musical was featured in the latest episode of Bunheads (yes, another of my tv guilty pleasures).



If our version there might not be AS much leg, but this catchy tune is featured not once, but TWICE!

Excellent Cover

Greg had a musical surprise for me last week, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have been:

Halifax Visit

Last weekend Greg and I visited Halifax for some family fun and to go to the Mother Mother show. It was a lovely coincidence that our friends were throwing a Movember chili lunch fundraiser at their house. So not only did we get to see some pals we had a great meal and supported  a worthy cause:

I also spotted some interesting signs on our visit, I have no explanation for the sign on the right but as for the one on the left it was in front of the North Face store on Barrington Street as Petraeus was supposed to be in town for the weekend - well placed, it got us to stop:

Last but not least, treats of Halifax! Since I seem to have a gluten sensitivity I can't drink beer anymore. While this is very sad at least I can enjoy something that Propeller produces, rootbeer! And on the left is a snap from the Mother Mother show - they AND their lights were very, very entertaining and impressive.

Music Nostalgia

I heard this tune on the radio yesterday and was immediately on the hunt for more nostalgia:

Halifax Pop Explosion

Greg and I took in a great show last weekend at the Halifax Pop Explosion, the headliners were Of Montreal and they put on an excellently theatrical show!

We got there to see two bands before Of Montreal took the stage: The Bicycles (left), Sheer Agony (right)

Of Montreal (below)! You can't appreciate the craziness of this show, but it included a wrestling match, crowd surfing spidermen, balloons and more:

Lil Wayne Documentary

A few nights ago we watched this documentary about Lil Wayne (Tha Carter Documentary) that Greg stumbled upon (I was surprised to learn that you can have videos that are longer than 10 minutes of YouTube!)

Now we aren't Lil Wayne fans and after watching the doc I haven't warmed up to him anymore. But it was interesting to watch. If you have some time to kill or are in the mood for a look into a bizarre man's life check it out (as you might assume this documentary has lots of offensive language, heads-up):

Stars: The North

As I mentioned earlier this week Stars has a new album out, The North. I didn't think of it at the time of my post but I found a few YouTube audio versions of some of my favourite tracks as well as a trailer for the album:


Trailer:



Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It:


The Theory of Relativity:

Summer Sonic 2012

I headed to Halifax on Friday to check out one of three days of the Summer Sonic festival.

I had some observations:

1. There were not many people in attendance (at least on Friday)
2. There was an excellent choice of eats from food vendors at reasonable prices
3. The music was excellent

Upsides to a small crowd:

1. No lines for anything
2. You are easily spotted by friends who didn't know you'd be attending

I was happy to be scared to death by two friends I hadn't seen in awhile and we shared a giant bag of kettle corn - it was lovely.

The line up Friday evening was: Bahamas, Father John Misty, K'naan and Stars. Each act was great, I was impressed with K'naan's band and Stars played their first show of their current tour. I was quite taken with their new tunes and happily handed over $15 at the merch table for their new album, The North. I highly recommend it.

I didn't take many pictures, the first is from my vantage point sitting on the hill when Bahamas was on stage. The second is of K'naan and his band:

I had two opportunities to eat downtown while in Halifax for my short visit. On Friday I went to Hamachi House for a really (4:45PM) early dinner. I was really excited about it since I couldn't remember that last time I had sushi. On Saturday afternoon I grabbed lunch, the biggest sandwich on a bagel at the Paperchase:

I will make another recommendation: eat at both of these places!!

SappyFest 7

This past weekend Greg treked to Sackville, NB to take in our second SappyFest. It's a music and art (mostly music) festival that presents a number of up and coming musicians from Canada and the US (but mostly Canada).

There were a ton of bands to check out and one of the wonderful parts of SappyFest is that you leave with a list of music to add to your iTunes list. This year the fine folks who organize SappyFest put together a FREE compilation with a track from each artist/band who played the festival. I highly suggest you check it out, here.

I didn't bring my good camera to take pictures of the band; I'm not one to fight through the crowd to get up close and I will not be one of those people who watch the show through their camera in hopes of getting a good picture while flailing with zoom options. So I took a snap here and there to just remind myself of the different venues. Clockwise from the top right: Christine Fellows plays a wonderful set in a very, very warm church, the lead singer from Fucked Up ran through the crowd during a song and kindly posed for a picture to our right so I took advantage, TomBoyfriend is one of the most bizarre bands to grace the stage with their 7 individual band in a mish-mash of stage get ups, Eternal Summers play a catchy set at the home of the Acadia University President's house,  Canailles - a french country band plays by far the most dance inspiring set of the weekend:

Picaroons is responsible for bringing the beer to the festival, this year we received these lovely re-useable cups to quench our constant thirst:

Saturday morning we hung out at The Cackling Goose Cafe, just up the street from the main tent. It was wonderful, we had their back deck to ourselves (and a squirrel who was very nosy) and enjoyed a yummy meal with dairy free carrot cake for dessert. The topping is actually whipped nut fat (I can't remember from which nuts, almonds perhaps?) and it tastes quite a bit like real whip cream. I made such a fuss over how I can actually enjoy carrot cake given that it's lactose free that the server gave us the biggest piece they had - and we ate it all:

Each year Struts Gallery has some sort of interesting exhibits to go along with the festival. This year there was an very interactive piece: a mini put course made up of bizarre found items. Greg is putting on my favourite hole: through a bathtub down a ramp made up of vintage wrestling figurines:

Each year there is something called City Mail at the festival where people write notes/letters/pictures to each other and throughout the weekend it will get delivered to them. Typically you would check the board (below) to see if you have mail and check in with the folks who handle the mail at different locations at the festival. Sometimes people have to be tracked down based on a description given. It's all very awesome and works well at a festival this size:

Left: a bubble machine and beautiful flowers just up from the main tent. Right: "This Is Nowhere", the slogan for SappyFest 7, and as it is taken from the title of a Neil Young song "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" there were much rumblings that Mr. Young would be the secret show. Clearly this is much too crazy of a thought but the sign hung next to the main tent all weekend.

On the note of a secret show, this year there was no secret show per say. It was announced before the last band played on Sunday night (Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra) that they were in fact the not so secret show as they were in the program and in the line up. To remind you, last year Arcade Fire played under the name Shark Attack, as they were playing with U2 in nearby Moncton. Two years ago, Sloan showed up and played their entire Twice Removed album from beginning to end. So it wouldn't be much a secret if each year there was some sort of surprise. This keeps this interesting and I'm sure in years to come the organizers will manage to surprise the audience.

Okay, so throughout the weekend Greg and I had a few ongoing 'competitions'. The first was the 'best' tatoo and second was the 'best' piece of clothing. Best being a loose term for most ridiculous. It was too awkward to get pictures of both the winning tatoo and piece of clothing so I will explain them.

'Best' Tatoo: there was a tie, between a poorly drawn narwhal behind a gentleman's right ear and a GIANT deer head on the thigh of a woman in her 20's.

'Best' Piece of Clothing: went to a gentleman sporting a solid moustache (to give you a better visual) who was wearing a tucked in dress shirt that had a scene of horses in a field near the water on both the front and the back - I think the scene wrapped around from the front to back actually. The best part was that it was about 2 sizes too small so it fit even more awkwardly. It was amazing.

The reason for these two competitions were because SappyFest is filled with bizarre tattoos (perhaps ironic hipster tattoos best describes it) and a total disregard for any fashion trends. Seriously, you could show up in just about any piece of clothing from any time period and would not be that strange person in strange clothes.

A few general trends in fashion however could not be ignored:

Ladies: Lots of high waisted skirts, pants and denim shorts. There were also alot of cropped tops to meet these high waisted bottoms. Kind of like this:

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Dudes: Moustaches/beards, deck shoes, tank tops and shorts:

So this top (there were a few similar hats):

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with this bottom:

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Overall it was a great people gawking watching experience. Once super ironic item we found and DID manage to get a picture (although poor quality) is this guy's Arcteryx backpack with the patch "Fuck The Economy" underneath the Arcteryx logo. I did a bit of digging and found out that this pack or one quite similar to it costs $175 CDN, so I'm not sure what type of statement he's trying to make about the economy, but I'm fairly certain he's buying into it and not really telling it off:

One more musical re-cap before I end. I thought I would sum up my favourite bands from the weekend, in no particular order:

• Canailles
• The Blow
• Fucked Up
• Del Bel
• Christine Fellows
• Cold Specs (the singer is AMAZING!)
• BA Johnson (the grossest man I have ever been around, EVER)

Ali's Musical Awards:

Best Show Overall - Fucked Up

Most Danceable - Canailles

Most Bizarre - BA Johnson

Worst Show - Yamantaka//Sonic Titan 

Thank you SappyFest for an amazing weekend, we'll be back!

PEI For Canada Day

**click the picture to see many, many more pictures**

Greg and I took the ferry across to PEI last weekend to take in the Canada Day festivities and visit friends!

Before we got on the ferry we checked out the terminal which included lobster traps! There were also arcade games (which we played) and a portable library crate where people are invited just to take the books with them - forever! Greg was pretty happy about it:

The ferry ride to PEI was lovely, we both enjoyed coffee and read (and I didn't even get motion sick!). At one end of the boat there were a duo of musicians who were quite entertaining:

There were two used book stores side by side on Queen St. in Charlottetown, one (The Bookman) was much more organized and user friendly than the other one (who's name escapes me) but the other store DID have this great book Field Guide to Cows:

There was a lot of eating, and GREAT eating during the few days we were in PEI. We spend some time on Saturday morning at the Charlottetown Market where I had a DELICIOUS salmon bagel (with lemon, dill, capers and diced onion). On Sunday we went to an awesome coffee shop in downtown Charlottetown where we had a very yummy macaroon:

Here is a mish mash of photos, we went to Pets Smart on Saturday as Angela and Dave (the lovely friends we stayed with) wanted to get something for their cat. In the process we found HILARIOUS cat and dog outfits which Angela and Greg posed for oh so well. You should also notice the super cheesy "mussel shirt" and Greg hanging out in a hammock:

Again, there was a lot of eating and drinking. We stopped by the Gahan House, a micro brewery in PEI, and I had a delicious sampler. Another place we went to had their drink menu on an iPad - pretty fancy. They also had a seafood 'soup' which is something I haven't been able to eat since 2007 given that whole lactose intolerant thing so it was pretty much the most amazing thing EVER. Oh and we also went to an olive oil tasting spot where I had some interesting tasting oils:

The main reason we went to PEI was for the Charlottetown Summerfest that was happening downtown. Sadly not many other people were interested in this festival and the attendance was ridiculously low. The first picture here was pretty much the crowd for the second band (of 4) for the day. There were a few people behind us and about 20 more in the beer tent area but really this duo (who were really entertaining) played to an audience of about 50. The band...or rather guy is Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, who made the most of the small audience, talking to and sometimes taunting individuals in the 'crowd'.

After MBF played Mardeen took the stage and the crowd grew perhaps by about 20 people. Still pretty tiny. They played a great set as per usual and as soon as they cleared the stage a bunch of keen Hey Rosetta fans took their places at the front of the stage. It was like a magnet pulled them close. The time between sets the crowd still hardly grew, it wasn't until about 5 minutes before Hey Rosetta took the stage did it really feel like we were at a concert and people were reasonably close to each other:

At the time I thought these were two separate churches (in Charlottetown) but now after looking at them I think they are the same place. Regardless this is a beautiful church:

On the way back to Nova Scotia (again we took the ferry) we had some time between when we arrived at the terminal and when we had to board the boat. So we headed over to a field to play some frisbee and I took some snaps along the way of the fishing paraphernalia and the sandy beach:

We had a lovely weekend and are really keen to bike to PEI for our next visit.

The Past Week in Instagrams

A beautiful view from my window, quite the busy day in the skies:

Beautiful flowers from my Drama students after they completed their final exam - a play they wrote, directed and starred in:

Purchased! Greg and I will be heading to Sackville, NB this August. Yippee!

Old Man Ludecke

As part of the same concert series that brought David Myles to New Glasgow had Old Man Ludecke and Del Barber play this past Sunday.

I hadn't heard of Del Barber before getting tickets for this show and seeing his name on the bill. After checking him out on CBC's new music site I was anticipating a much more country sound than what he played at the show. While still having a country twang it was toned down. I also learned that Manitoba has cowboys...who knew?

Since my camera was less than awesome of taking pictures (see above super fuzzy photo) I decided to go the video route for Old Man Ludecke:



He was lovely as ever and although he messed up and started to play a song he'd already played (apparently a first) he was very charming about it.

David Myles, April 2012

On Saturday Greg and I checked out David Myles and his AMAZING band mates at Glasgow Square.

Since New Glasgow has been really windy almost all Spring I was impressed at the lack of bluster on the way to the show:

East River

E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes opened the show, and the lead singer is from Trenton (town 5 minutes from New Glasgow):

E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes

A poorly framed picture of David Myles and Co.

I put my iPhone video to the test and filmed a couple of pieces from the show. I was impressed with the sound quality:



And another little video at the end of the show, they unplugged and came out to the edge of the stage. Their harmonies are WONDERFUL!

New Tunes & Covers

The Shins are releasing their 4th album, Port of Morrow, next month. Their first single, Simple Song, is pretty catchy and has a Wes Anderson-esque feeling video.



In response to Jay-Z and Kanye West's Ni**as in Paris Yasiin Bey (formally known as Mos Def) created a wicked song: Ni**as in Poorest.  There a number of excellent lines in the song and it really makes the original seem like 4 minutes of unnecessary name dropping. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Watch the Throne album, but Mos Def puts the most recent single to shame:

(Heads up - there are swears in this song)


This popped up in my Twitter feed this morning from the CBC Radio 2 Morning show. It's Willy Nelson covering Coldplay's The Scientist:

MORE Joel Plaskett

He's somehow gotten even more awesome in my mind. This evening on twitter he posted a link to a new song about the Metro Transit strike. You can even get the song for free if you're keen.

Check out his website.

You'll also find there a video for his latest Scrappy Happiness track, Somewhere Else. The video is full of old-timey footage and an ostrich chariot race of some sort?

New(ish) Tunes!

I'm kind of late on this post, but this week has been a bit busy so I haven't been on the online ball.

If you are a regular listener of CBC Radio you might be familiar with The Joel Plaskett Emergency's Rock 'n' Roll in Record Time, where the band creates, records, and releases a new song a week for 10 weeks.  If not, here's a video where Joel Plaskett explains the concept:



This weeks release North Star has been my favourite so far - it's been in my head since I first heard it.

But lets take a look back at the making of all 5 of the songs that have been put out, you'll also note the increasing craziness of Joel Plasket. These are GREAT videos! Oh heads up, there are some swears:

#1 You're Mine:




#2 Harbour Boys:




#3 Old Friends:




#4 Slow Dance:



#5 North Star:



Only half way through, that means 5 more awesome songs AND videos to go!

You can listen to all 5 of these songs and lots of other Joel Plaskett Emergency songs on his CBC Radio 3 site.

Christmas Movie (& Music) Madness

Well, not really madness, but it seemed to make a better post title.

Like many other people Greg and I indulge in a variety of excellent classic Christmas movies and also a bit of the less than classic movies.

We are saving the best (Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Family Christmas, A Christmas Story) for this week, but so far these are the gems we've taken in:

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The next movie, Fred Claus, reminded me that when actors have children they end up in bizarre movies.  Vince Vaughn, well that's not too much of a stretch, but Paul Giamatti, Kevin Spacy, Kathy Bates, Rachel Weisz, the list goes on!

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It really wasn't too bad of a movie, other than the parts that were created so kids could have a dance or laugh at quick moving clips of Fred and Santa flying through the main street in the North Pole strung together. 

One of the best parts of this movie was that I learned about a new to me Christmas song, Christmas Wrapping. It's from the 80's but I don't think I'd heard of it until Fred Claus. 

Check it out:

If you don't know the Waitresses you might know their song I Know What Boys Like:

Back to Christmas Wrapping, in searching for a video for the song I came across two covers, one makes sense, the other just seems strange. I'll let you decide which is which:

Oh yea, and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges was in the movie as an elf, a DJ elf - of course! And he has a Christmas rap: Ludacrismas, you can't resist:

Evenings in New Glasgow

Last Friday Greg and I took in a great show at the Baked Cafe in New Glasgow. The band's called Poplar Pines and they were making their way across Eastern Canada on a tour.  It was a great acoustic/a little electric set and each of the two guys played a guitar AND part of a drum set, either bass, high hat or symbol.

We picked up their CD for only 5 bones!

(Almost) Animals in Music Videos

I'm late on this one, I'm sure most of you have watched this video but I'm in love with it!! That elephant somehow tugs at my heart strings, although I totally know it's Chris Martin.

Anyway, if you haven't watched the video for Coldplay's single Paradise take a few minutes and do it now: