Day: June 15, 2008

Categories
Concert Reviews

Review: En Bref, I see Rowboats, Joel Plaskett and drinking at the Legion

In following with Palmer’s style of blogging I figured I would write a little review of this weekends concert goings. According to OttawaFestivals.ca there are 17 festivals during the months of June and July. You can go see 2 to 3 live bands minimum every single weekend during festival season if your up for it. This weekend I attended two such festivals: Le Festival Franco Ontarien and WESTFEST. I also went and had a Beer at the Royal Canadian Legion on Richmond road for good measure.

Thursday night started off meeting some friends downtown for drinks and dinner at the Elephant Castle. A friend of ours used to tell us that the Elephant Castle was the only place that sold this particular brand of beer. However it seems like they have not carried this beer for quite some time as the waitress had never heard of it. After a few pitchers and a decent meal we headed off to the Festival Franco Ontarien to see “En Bref”. This was a great evening for us as “En Bref” had been on hiatus for the past decade and this was only their second show since they reunited. The show was amazing and we had great spots right at the front. At the end of the show we got to meet the band and chatted with them for a while. André even mentioned that he still had the original demo tape with the lead singers old phone number on it from Sudbury. Just before leaving André asked the Singer if he (and the band) would like to attend his wedding at the end of August. The singer seemed genuinely interested and gave us his contact information. Maybe if I am lucky they will be at the wedding and I will get to jam with them :). Fingers crossed.

Friday I had to decide between going to the Festival Franco Ontarien or WESTFEST. There were a few bands I wanted to see at both festivals but in the end WESTFEST won out. The first band we wanted to see was I See Rowboats. I see Rowboats is this great band from Halifax that are making all kinds of noise. They put on a great show despite the fact that the band before them ran into their time and had to shorten their show by quite a bit and also didn’t get a proper sound-check. I highly suggest you give them a listen if ever you have the chance, you wont be disappointed. We even got to hang out with the band for a bit at the end of the night as Rémi is good friends with Darcy the drummer. We had a couple hours to kill before Joel Plaskett’s sets so we decided to grab a beer and a bite to eat. I got a bison burger on fry bread which was most excellent. We then checked out the scenery and ended up in at the legion. What can I say about the Legion …. I love them. There were two guys playing music and singing along with some CD’s and they had 710ml bottles of beer for $6.50. That’s right folks, for less than the price of a pint of beer from the pub we got this huge bottle of beer. It was awesome. Should any of you ever end up in a Legion though, please remove any hats before entering. It is a sign of respect and also if you get caught you have to buy a round of drinks for everyone in the bar.

After we finished up our pints, we headed back to the park to catch Mathew Barber’s set which is always a good time and of course the main act of the evening, Joel Plaskett. If anyone hasn’t already seen Joel live your missing out. There is something about Joel the way that he act’s on stage that just adds so much more to the songs. He is this tall and lanky guy but he sure knows how to groove on stage. He is just so at ease with the crowd and talks a bit before the songs and in some cases even acts out the songs as he is playing them. I have seen him a few times now and each show just gets better and better.

Categories
Trips

Day 2 – BC Trip

On Father’s Day, I started out taking a job on the Galloping Goose Trail which is a 50km trail starting from the city of Victoria and running across Vancouver Island.  It was quite inspiring to hit the trail in the nice cool forest as the trees sheltered the effects of the sun.  I passed by forest, trails and eventually ended up at a bridge overlooking a river below.  It was quite nice.  Dad and I headed back on the trail later on in the day with some bicycles (mine having some amazing streamers off the ends of the handlebars) and I enjoyed that time with Dad on the trail seeing that it was Father’s Day.  It was also inspiring to come back and work alongside Uncle Brent and Troy who were attempting to fix a clothesline.

I also gave Dad a copy of Drunken Covers Volume 1 which I envision to be a series of live albums whenever we actually hit record on the machine.  We are also trying to figure out an easy way to distribute this to anyone who wants it.  It’s a recording of Troy and I playing some covers last year in London.  We popped it in the car stereo when we headed to Victoria and I was proud when Mom thought it was the radio playing!

We headed into Victoria for some fish and chips which were amazing.  One thing that struck me about Victoria was that everywhere you went, the landscaping was amazing!  You could have a rundown apartment complex in the welfare area of the city but it had shrubs and flowers and nice lawns!  I found it quite intriguing.  Uncle Brent also took us up Bear Mountain which is this new housing development up on this mountain outside of Victoria.  It was quite amazing to be so high above the city.

At night, Troy, Uncle Brent and I played crokinole which I had never played before.  Clearly Uncle Brent had played before as he kicked our ass every time.

Troy and I then discovered that Uncle Brent had the Fight Network on his television and we decided to see what was on.  Hilariously enough, at 10PM, we stumbled upon a show which had Russian girls wrestling in honey.  Beautiful!  We had some good laughs at the show as the commentator was hilarious.  The girls had some great names like “Black Widow Spider” and “Angel Dust”.  So the commentator would say “Black Widow Spider is slowing down due to the viscosity of the honey.” or “Angel Dust needs to spend more time wrestling than adjusting her top.”

At 10:30PM, “The Real Catfight” started up and it was a bunch of Asian women wrestling each other.  Usually they were dressed up in some crazy outfits and it was a hit and miss show.  Sometimes they would not wrestle at all, sometimes they went all out and we cringed at their antics and sometimes it was a little crazy as you would have the girls getting bonus points for various acts.  Considering this is a family friendly zone, you can talk to me in person if you want to know what was going on in the show.  We found the shows highly entertaining and watched them every night and had a good laugh at it.  Dad even came down one night to see what the fuss was all about and he had a good time.