The Best Drum Kit in the World

To My Youngers,

So a few weeks ago I kinda really ripped into the band 'One Hundred Dollars' for being one of the most ineffective opening acts I had ever seen (aka super creepy, played for too long, would have been better on CD, etc...). To be honest (and I'm not sure if i said this at the time) but it kind of ruined the rest of the show for me. Alright, not stricktly speaking as it is practically impossible for anything to ruin an Elliott Brood show for me, but it was definitely the least fun I had ever had at an EB show... Now normally that would mean I would really try to never see said offending band again, but 'twas not to be so. Elliott Brood played in Montreal last night, and I could not resist, despite the opening act.

I was tempted to skip them (the opener, not the whole show) but I had hyped their creepyness so much to K and D that it would have just been mean to deprive them of their own experience... Then I realised that it was actually a win win situation- if they were horrible again I was not only prepared, but would enjoy seeing everyone else's reaction, and if they were great (or even just good!) I would be pleasantly surprised. The only way they could possibly disappoint me would be by being slightly better than barely passable. So I guess technically more of a win-win-lose situation (66/33 odds are better than 50/50...) So we went for the whole show. Good decision.

One Hundred Dollars
To be fair, it would have been pretty difficult for them to get much worse, but One Hundred Dollars' performance was vastly superior to the last time I saw them! There were no scary eyes and pointing,  glares full of loathing, no horrible tension and sense of impending doom... I mean don't get me wrong, the lead singer still had her super creepy moments, but they were few and far between, and actually seemed to fit with the songs (as opposed to overshadow them like the darkness of everlasting night...). It felt like classic country instead of the jumble of conflicting and depressing visuals (and soundicals) of their previous performance. The lyrics fit nicely with the flowing and surprisingly upbeat music, the crowd sand along with most of the songs (we even seemed to learn a lot of new ones by then end!) and everyone benefited from the general sense of camaraderie resulting from this being the last date they would play with Elliott Brood. It didn't completely wipe out their last performance from my mind, but it was a good set and it created a mood the way an opening act should do. I would actually go see them again- hopefully they'll be even better the next time!


Elliott Brood
Now THIS is what I'm talkin' about!!! With the much much MUCH improved opening performance the crowd was in just the right kind of mood for the Brood boys. Enthusiastically joking, jumping and juggling (ok there wasn't any juggling- I just couldn't think of another 'j' word...) they blazed through  one of the best sets I've ever seen them play. With songs I havn't seen them play in years (President 35 was faaaaantastic), classy duds, and the best drum kit this side of anywhere (ok I might be a little biased, but c'mon, a birch bark and tree-cross-section kit? so appropriate...) they had the audience belting it out and dancing along with every song.  D even mentioned that this was practically the most enthusiastic she had ever seen a Montreal crowd (an impressive compliment, as many Montreal concert-goers will know).

Elliot Brood's strikingly appropriate and amazing drum kit

I suppose I should mention that K even got the opportunity to massively make fun of me when Mark Sasso walked in front of us and I turned bright red. Yes K and D could tell even in the dark, that's how bad it was. Now I just have to figure out a way to get back at her by making her be suddenly face to face with Library Voices...

-E

Judging a Band by Their Artwork

To My Youngers,

Art means a lot to me. You know that. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that. Kids I teach for two days know that! I feel that the art someone makes (or for that matter chooses to display as a part of themselves- in their home or in association with something they have created like a book or a CD) says a lot about them as a person- obvious statement I know, perhaps even a bit trite, but I mean in in an actual way. Like seeing someone's artwork, for me, helps me understand them better than anything else does.

Over the years I have likewise noticed that choosing books and albums based on their covers has never let me down. Now I know that it goes against the tried and true saying, that parents and teachers everywhere cringe as I type these words, but when taken quite literally (as in judging actual books) I find that time and time again if an author or a band likes their art, and I like their art, I will also like said author or band.

Two things have recently re-brought this idea to the forefront of my mind. The first is the just-released cover of John Green's soon to be published book The Fault in Our Stars. I have to say I like the cover- its simple and quirky and doesn't spoil anything about the book or try to trick you into reading it. Its drawn, not photographed, which gives it a warmer, more personal feeling, and it seems to fit with what I expect the book to be: simple, honest, funny, and somewhat childlike. Apparently, however, many fans of John's writing are not fans of the cover, and have been quite vocal about it (as youtube peeps are wont to be). In many cases I'm sure they're just sad it didn't look more like their own cover design (yes many nerdfighters designed their own covers, no, I do not have enough room here to explain nerdfighters... watch this if you're curious), and I'm sure some of them are just complaining for the sake of it (though its not really the nerdfighter way...), but I think mostly they realize that the cover of a book (especially one which the author himself has expressed a deep love for) does in fact reflect on the insides, and that if they aren't head over heels for it, they start to worry that the book might not be what they think its going to be. In other words: though they have spent their lives being told that "You can't judge a book by its cover" they do, in fact, know this to be not entirely true... Interesting also is the publisher/author reaction to this dissapointment/upsetness whereby they are offering to have a competition throughout nerdfighteria to design the cover for the reprinting of another of John Green's books An Abundance of Katherines. It seems  they too realize the importance of cover art...

The second thing that happened (just happened, like five minutes ago) is that I discovered that the artwork for my favourite band (Elliot Brood) is, in fact, all created my the banjo player and co-lead-singer of the band, Mark Sasso. This is 1) odd for me because I have loved this band for about five years and I'm not quite sure how I was not previously aware of this fact and 2) particularly odd, seeing as how they are my favourite band musically (on my bike, in the car, in the summer, in the fall, live, on cd, basically just best. yeah, just best) but also by leagues my favourite band artistically (well, by leagues I really mean that The Decemberists are a very close second, but that these two bands are leagues ahead of all the rest... incidentally I also just recently found out that all of The Decemberists' illustrations are created by the wife of lead singer Colin Meloy!).

I love this artwork. I have a limited edition, beautifully hand-made release of their album Ambassadour, which I bought the first time I ever saw them in concert, and lovingly display on my bookcase. When they're setting up for a show I peer around other concert goers to get a look at their set pieces, the bass drum image, the carved chair... The first thing I do when I buy one of their CDs is open the cover and pull out the innards to see what they've done this time (sometimes a train schedule, other times a hand written note...). I even decorated my bike helmet with Elliot Brood inspired designs. Their stuff has such a great sense of narrative (just like their music) and nostalgia (just like their music) and frontier aesthetics (just like their music) and quirkyness (wait for it...... just like their music).

I seriously love this band's artwork. Seriously. And finding out that its made by someone in the band makes me love them even more than when I thought they just liked it too.

Its kind of weird when you think you can't love something more and then get proven wrong. Of course that happens often when you read/listen to things covered by artwork you love... 'Can't judge a book by its cover' my ass...

-E

Its So Hip To Be A Square

To My Youngers,

I have finally come to terms with it- I like things that are lame. So lame (in my opinion at least) that it makes them entertaining, but lame nonetheless. Now I take solace here in the fact that 'lame' is a fairly difficult word to define (in this context at any rate) and so can have a positive connotation (which is how I choose to see it!) thus avoiding the more pejorative meaning of commoner times... Orsomething.

What has brought on this realization (you might be asking)? A few things actually:

1) Trying to explain to a friend why banjos (and in particular Elliot Brood) are both awesome and sexy but being wholly unsuccessful because despite all the video links I could find at the time not in the least doing justice to Elliot Brood, Mark Sasso, or banjos I still found them awesome. Apparently they were lame...

2) Becoming suddenly completely taken with the idea of moccasins and deciding to purchase them, driving to the mall, then buying the silliest most fifties-cartoon moccasin booties I could find (also deemed lame)...

3) Rediscovering a secret cache of Moondog tunes on my computer (how did they even get there in the first place? I literally have no idea, they just appeared one day) and being super taken with them despite their uber seventiesness and indisputable lame factor...

4) Being sad that all my favourite vloggers were slack on uploading videos this past week cuz they were at vidcon. Worse yet? Knowing what vidcon is.... laaaaaame

5) Missing riding my bicycle so much (shes not left the shed in three whole days!Yes my bike is a she. Her name is Agatha. Yes my bike has a name.) that I felt compelled to take it out for a ride at ten o'clock at night, ending up at the grocery store to get new batteries for my headlamp and having a long discussion with the checkout-girl about the excellentlness of my speaker-filled bike helmet. Doesn't sound too lame, until you factor in how excited I was to be discussing my bike helmet and finally getting batteries for my headlight and that my bicycle has a name...

6) Being excited at the sound of the knife-sharpening-truck bells. More excited than if it was the ice cream truck. Yep. Lame.

(I was gonna stop at five but I couldn't resist the knife-truck childhood throwback...  ;o)

Also I played Scotland Yard all afternoon...

Life is so much fun when you can eek joy out of the things other people find too silly to bother with...!

-E

Death Country, Chains, and Group Wonderment

To My Youngers,

I am in love.

Not with a person. That too normal, too plain. I am in love with six (or it it seven?) persons- though I suppose perhaps more accurately I am in love with their band...

I tend to get a little excited about music (understatement? yes. super-excited? more accurate). If you know me at all (or have, like, ever read this blog) you would not be at all surprised by that statement. You might, however, be surprised to know that, of my experiences of falling in love with bands, the sudden, immediate, 'holy crap who the hell is this?' ones are surprisingly few. Now I suppose this makes sense as you don't often go to see a band live unless you've at least hear of them, but the magic of music festivals lies exactly in creating such opportunities for discovery and love-falling-in. In seeing bands perform whom you've never heard of and would otherwise have never been exposed to. I've written before about the first time I saw Arcade Fire, the 'ummmmm who is this? because they kind of freakin rock... ' vibe and how that was the first and only time I've ever seen that happen to a whole field-full of people at exactly the same time... well that story must now be amended, for I have once again been privileged to be a part of a room-full (or in this case tent-full) of people simultaneously falling in love with a band. And that band is Graveyard Train.

They classify themselves as 'horror-country' (strikingly similar to the self-moniker of 'death-country' used by one of my all-time favourites Elliot Brood) and are a crazy-awesome mix of a tumble-weed-covered-frontier-town-saloon crossed with chain-gang-running-from-a-pack-of-zombies. K and I spent the weekend discussing the awesomeness of their man-choir voices and their amazing choice of instruments (steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo, stand-up bass and chains. yes chains. played with a hammer.) and going to see them as many times as possible (three times in three days was almost not enough!) but the part that stands out most for me was the first twenty seconds of the first song I ever heard them play.

At Hillside there are main-stage and side-stage performances, but there are also workshops where bands who have never met, and often never even heard of each other, get together and jam. The regular performances are usually pretty durn awesome,  but the jam sessions are where the unexpected, unprecedented, and totally magical become common place. We had just gone to see Karkwa who were amaaaazing (and will soon have their whole own blogpost I'm sure...) and they were playing a workshop later on that evening in one of the tents, so we headed on over. It turned out they were going to be jamming with a band from Australia (Australian meets Quebequois was to be a theme for the weekend) who looked like they had just stepped off of a wagon train. I was already pretty excited when I saw the banjo and the steel guitar, but nothing could have prepared me for the music...

They came on stage. They picked up their instruments ("Is that guy holding a chain!?!" "Which guy?" "The one in the dirty tank-top, suspenders, and work-pant cut-offs..."). The lead singer tipped his hat. They started singing. Holy. Shit.

We were hit by the wall of sound of five men (manly men. dirty men. men men) stretched out in a line across the stage, belting out harmonies the likes of which have not seen the light of day since 1879. We stood stunned. The whole tent stood stunned. There was a stunned silence, literally. (Well not quite literally as there was the music... but other than the music there was a stunned silence.) Eight seconds, nine seconds... I turned to K, she was looking back at me; "Who the fuck are these guys!?!" We looked around. Everyone looked around. We were all turning to the side and saying the exact same thing...

Twelve seconds... a murmur sweeps the tent...

Fifteen seconds... everyone's head starts to move up and down. shoulders shrugging in rhythm...

Eighteen seconds... feet tapping, hands clapping...

Twenty seconds... I am in love.

It got even better as the song went on. It got even better with each song. Karkwa joined in and it got even better and better. After they were finished I speed-walked to the merch tent and straight up to the table, picked up their CD and handed it to the girl behind the counter: "I need this one." I was sad when it was over, but super excited that I would get to watch them again the next day, and again the day after that... Even more excited when the same experience was repeated two more times, with the slight modification of a growing crowd at the front of those of us already-converted, and a diminishing crowd of first-timers sitting in-behind, wondering at why we were all so excited (until they experienced their own first-twenty-seconds and joined the ranks of the initiated).

Its a pretty magical thing to be a part of an amazing concert and even more so one where so many people are seeing a band for the first time and falling in love with them. Scratch that, its DAMN FINE. It a damn fine thing to have such a wonderful group experience- and to get to have it again and again three days in a row.

Thank you Hillside. Thank you Graveyard Train. Thank you tent-people with whom I got to share this! Now disperse and spread the word... music is a wonderful thing.

-E

Whip It, for real

To my elders,

So last weekend I went to visit E for the Elliott Brood concert. Which really did rock. I did not turn my pan into a bowl however. Its called using the flat side of the wooden spoon, not the edge.

After our eventful Friday of a late night concert, we decided to take it a bit easy Saturday and saw a Hitchcock double feature (Psycho, which was actually pretty creepy, and surprisingly progressive, even though one of the pivotal screens is ridiculously famous, its only half way through the movie, so the rest is still a) a surprise, and b) really interesting and The Trouble with Harry, which I had seen before, but the dry humour came off better the second time). And then Saturday night came and somehow, one thing lead to another and we ended up going to Roller Derby. My first ever roller derby bout, actually.

Now I, like many a young person before me, had seen the Drew Barrymore/ Ellen Page movie Whip It last year when it came out, and I, like so many other people, walked out saying "I am going to track down a roller derby game and go. Because its awesome." I then proceeded to never actually do this. So with E and myself encouraging one another, and feeling a little stupid and shy along the way, we made it to our first game? Tournament? Whatever, I sat through an entire sporting competition of my own volition. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

I must say, Whip It really does help to understand the rules of Roller Derby and what the heck is going on, cuz its confusing to watch for the first time. Though the teams did give us a demo to help out the "first timers." But that's really where the similarities kind of stopped... The game we went to was populated with, well, some of the people you'd expect to find at, you know, a roller derby game, your average alternative kids of many varieties. But there were also your standard twenty somethings. And your middle aged parent types. And old people. And thirty somethings with small children. Seriously. SMALL CHILDREN. Wearing Roller Derby t-shirts. I am perpetually impressed by this generation's parents of being cool. Well, when they're not being neurotic. Oh, and the players do actually dress like the girls in Whip It.

Moral of the story: Roller Derby is awesome. And kinda hot. And if small children can go to a match, so can you.

-K

p.s. Montreal Roller Derby game. July 9th.

p.p.s. Slaughter Daughters rule.

Participatory Rock

To My Youngers,

Elliot Brood. Seriously. So Good.

They make banjo sexy.  Combine now-time rock with olde-time sound. And lets not even talk about the experience of closing your eyes and seeing tumble weeds roll by a saloon full of bandits and bathtub whiskey, poker games and a player piano... Lets talk about audience participation.

You go to a concert and you expect people to sing along, you expect people to dance, and jump around and rush the stage (okay maybe not that last one, but as with a surprising number of shows I've been to a few overly enthusiastic souls jumped up on stage and ran around in gleeful delight, much to the entertainment of the boys in the band...). All of those things are excellent, all of those things are what I love about concerts, but Elliot Brood takes it a step further: they pass out pots and pans and wooden spoons. And you hit them. You hit them in time to the music. You hit them hard, and loud, and with great amounts of enthusiasm. And it is awesome.

Now I admit I can get a little overly enthusiastic, but give me a pan and a wooden spoon and Elliot Brood and you are putting your life in your hands. I almost hit K in the face, and my spoon flew out of my hand on at least two occasions. My once-flat pan turned into a now-rounded bowl. My sock-feet got full of splinters and my ears were ringing with wood-on-metal and banjos and drums and foot-petal bass... So. Much. Fun.

I love Elliot Brood's music, I love their enthusiasm, and their unconventional sexiness, and their ability to time-travel, but most of all I love how I feel when I listen to their music; like I'm a part of it. Like its all around me. Like I'm home.

Also like I'm five years old and playing drums on the patio furniture with a paddle I found in the shed. Rock on.

-E