Author: admin

http://www.nme.com/news/the-police/27621

Uncle Gary tipped me off on the Live Earth concert series taking place across the Globe this summer. Much like the Live8 concerts of…2 years ago now? Unsure of when that happened. Must be back in 2005.

I had heard rumours of the concert series happening but there were no real line-ups officially announced at the time.

Let me tell you of the greatest rumour to ever grace our ears.

The concept of Live Earth is to have music happening in every continent. “That’s a swell idea.” all of you are thinking…until you think of how many continents there are and then you say “Wait a second…Antarctica?!”

So back to the rumour I head on Chez 106 a few weeks back…there is rumour that a mighty band from yesteryear will reform and play in Antarctica.

That band’s name is SPINAL TAP.

Oh my. Honestly, if this were to happen, this would be bigger than Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who and The Smashing Pumpkins all taking the same stage, on my birthday, for my birthday and heck, while they are at it, I would be on stage with them.

We are talking Spinal Tap here…the Gods of rock, the band mightier than mortal men, the group who has their amplifier knobs go up to 11. They know how to rock.

Anyhow, I would seriously consider a trip to Antarctica to see these guys. 😉

Back onto the Live Earth concert series – as always, a cool concept. I’m glad the Smashing Pumpkins will be playing. HEY, this might be the first chance we get to see them live on television since their comeback. Neat-o. Other than that, I don’t think the concert will be close to Ottawa so it’s kind of reach for this guy!

It wasn’t mentioned on this site before (due to it being a surprise) but Mike and I had taken Thursday off to head on back up North for a visit. I had this grand aspiration of just hitting the road in the springtime after reading the Stompin’ Tom biography and how he just traveled across Canada. I figured I needed some of that! Plus, my car needs a good cleaning and Dad’s garage was calling its name.

Unfortunately, on the night of the Sam Roberts concert, I heard through the grapevine that there was a massive snowstorm heading towards Kapuskasing. What to do…what to do?

I hemmed, I hawed, I called Mike. He said that Eric had canceled his own plans to head up North. This solidified my plans and I decided to cancel the entire trip. There went my idea of traveling in the springtime. Perhaps next week!

I can’t say I’m overly disappointed considering at last count, it had been snowing for 80 hours straight and they had more snow than they received all winter. I do feel bad for the folks as they were looking forward to a weekend where they could start some yard work, work outside, do SOMETHING other than sitting in the house watching it snow.

Hence, Easter weekend was a bust. I spent Thursday and Friday working on my essay. Overall, I think it is crap. I really don’t enjoy the class I am in.

I also played around with GarageBand for an entire day and came up with some pretty nifty tunes. I am at a hard spot in terms of songwriting. I find some cool little chord progression but have a hard time to make it into a full out song – especially where the bridge is concerned. I will have to talk to Troy about the art of songwriting and how bridges usually work. I have heard from Mike’s dad that they usually switch into a new key. Anyhow, I am pretty impressed with the results so far and the click track is my new friend in terms of playing ‘in time’. Hello metronome!

I spent a lot of time over at Eric and Annie’s where I learned to play Mille Bournes which is an awesome card game. We also played what is called The Dice Game. Coupled with a quick game of poker and euchre, I had my fill of gaming.

Saturday also held a sneaker shopping expedition to Bayshore Mall with Trish and Mike which turned into a zoo. I found the sneakers I was looking for (incidentally, the same sneakers that Krista picked up in New York – I think they are swell!) but decided not to pick them up right away. I am cheap. $70 for a pair of sneakers feels like a rip-off to me. Everyone reading is probably laughing right now but that’s the way I feel.

I definitely decided against buying the sneakers this week as I picked up my guitar from Long & McQuade. (begin rant). I dropped the guitar off on March 12 in hopes to have it ready by March 23 (the day I was heading to Aunt Dinah’s surprise birthday party in Ajax). They had told me that it would be ready in two weeks time. Unfortunately, it was cutting it short wanting it by March 23.

Not a big deal, I nabbed my old acoustic from Amelia and it played out well. So I phone Long & McQuade’s yesterday and sure enough, my guitar is ready and has been ready since March 26, a mere two weeks ago. Come on! I was pretty miffed at the fact that no one gave me a phone call. I didn’t even bother calling them earlier as I had already called on March 23 and they told me not to worry as someone would call me when it was ready. I was ready to call them, tell them to cancel the tune-up and I would bring it elsewhere.

Anyhow, the tune-up was complete and I picked it up and I suggested they get a better call-back policy. It plays nice (with others! Ha ha) but I must admit that I’m back on the electric for the past month and my songwriting bug has bit back ever since. Plus, it helps to know that Troy is one-up on me on the recording side of things so I must play catch-up! (end rant)

My only regret of the weekend was not attending Melissa and Mike’s potluck as I had no idea if I would be done my essay or not and I didn’t want to commit and then have to bail. Although, it was a potluck so I suppose that’s the best event to bail if there ever was one!

This post is all over the place with random memories of the past five days. I must admit that this boy needed the time off. It’s interesting to see what happens when you have more than two days off at a time. You start to find time to do the things you’ve wanted to do for awhile but never got around to them.

Hope everyone’s holiday was a good one and there was not too much snow-removal involved!

It’s Day 4 of my five days off of work (thanks to you Easter Bunny) and I finally got around to doing…a lot of stuff.

The most important is finally getting around to getting The Morning Show up and running on the Internet.

The files are all on Youtube now which is a pretty slick video sharing site. Yeah, the uploading took forever and as I write this, I have no idea if it will get all of the final episode as it was a HUGE season finale and it may be over the 10 minute mark that is allowed on the site.

People can view all 19 episodes (hey, where’s the mysterious Episode #2 run off to? Let me refer to this episode as the Polkaroo.) by going to the top menu bar and clicking on the link which is labelled ‘morning show’.

Sit back, enjoy, and have some laughs at the sheer absurdity which was The Morning Show.

Saturday morning I awake, come downstairs and Mike has this quiz I should try – Test the Nation. CBC has put out an IQ test to test the nation.

I received 106 where 100 is the average. Not too shabby.

I realize that I have a hard time with questions dealing with ‘So and so is Bob’s uncle’s cousin’s sister’s brother. Who is he in relation to Ted?”. I also have trouble with the “What is the next number in this series – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ?” (alright, that’s a really bad example.

Give it a try and see how you fare! List your score in the comment section!

http://www.cbc.ca/testthenation/

Vero and I had some brilliant ideas for a film we want to make this summer concerning technology of the past decade and the demise of social capital as we know it.

It will revolve around how the ‘virtual networks’ that we have created are replacing our ‘in-person networks’ and in some extreme cases, have replaced them all together and there is no contact being made outside of the Internet.

An example of this would be how I maintain a blog, but never phone anyone who has a blog as I feel that reading their blog allows me to keep tabs on them.

Sounds…a bit silly doesn’t it? But it happens (for me at least).

Anyhow, we have some good laughable ideas on how technology wreaks havoc on us, but of course we won’t even list what’s right about technology. That would just defeat our hilarious movie idea.

A lot of the ideas stemmed from this article from the Globe and Mail.

I’m excited at this prospect as our original film idea seemed a little grandiose for our first project together. This film can easily be a 20 minute length.

If there is one good thing that this blog has brought to my life, it’s the fact that Kevin left a comment on the site that informed me that there was a free Sam Roberts Band concert in Ottawa tonight! Yeeeha!

So that’s where I’ll be heading tonight after my class. Too bad my class runs until at least 9PM. I’ll probably miss some of the show…but I can’t complain too much. Haven’t seen these guys since Bluesfest last year, and it’s FREE! They are also playing with Buck 65 and The Dears – both bands that I know about, but am not too familiar with their music.

I have a few extra tickets if anyone wants them but beware – supposedly they are checking for University of Ottawa/Carleton U IDs at the door (as it is for the university students). Otherwise the tix are $20 each. I wonder how much they would care to check IDs at a free concert anyhow?

http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2007/04/03/3905095-sun.html

I just read this great article about how Elvis came to Ottawa for 2 concerts (in one day!) way back when. I never knew.

Highlights of the article:

• He played two shows on one day – 4:30 and 8:30, each being 30 minutes each. That’s pretty amazing considering the norm nowadays which is 2 hours. I wonder if this was the norm for superstars or if it was just a special case? I know that the Beatles had the same sort of itinerary.
• The majority of the MPs in town bailed to see Elvis play. Excellent! Glad to see they have their priorities straight!