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bobfrombob

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    2010 NBA Playoffs

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    Since this whole episode has been pretty cynical, I'll be cynical about the ESPN thing. Television and radio is mostly about finding the cheapest possible content to fill the space between the commercials. LeBron is what ESPN has been using to fill the space between the commercials for the past week. I'm sure LeBron didn't pay them anything.

    Arcade Fire

    in After The Show

    Posted

    2 shows in Toronto this weekend. Tickets go on sale each day at noon which is a little early considering it's a 5 hour drive from here and you would probably have to arrive at least 2 hours in advance to ensure tickets.

    Weller and Foxton reunite

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    http://www.nme.com/news/paul-weller/51246 (with video)

     

    Modfather plays with ex-bandmate for the first time since 1982

     

    May 26, 2010

     

    Paul Weller was reunited with his Jam bandmate Bruce Foxton for the first time since 1982 last night (May 25), as the two performed together in London.

     

    Weller, two days into his five-night residency at the capital's Royal Albert Hall, called the pairing "history in the making" as he welcomed his old bandmate onto the stage.

     

    The duo – augmented by Weller's backing band – kicked off their three-song reunion by launching into a vitriolic version of 'Fast Car/Slow Traffic'. The recorded version of the track, taken from Weller's latest album 'Wake Up The Nation', also features Foxton on bass.

     

    "Well, it's been a while hasn't it?" said Foxton afterwards. "Twenty-eight years, I think. Thank you for the wonderful reception!"

     

    Foxton then remained onstage to run though Jam classics 'The Eton Rifles' and 'The Butterfly Collector', before waving to the crowd and exiting to a huge ovation from the audience and a hug from Weller.

     

    Weller played a greatest hits set to the sell-out crowd, including cuts from 'Wake Up The Nation' alongside older classics including 'Start!', 'The Changingman' and 'Strange Town'.

     

    The singer – who was celebrating his 52nd birthday yesterday – responded jokily when the crowd sang him 'Happy Birthday', saying, "The only thing I want right now is a cigarette."

     

    Paul Weller played:

     

    'Push It Along'

    '7 & 3 Is The Striker’s Name'

    'Sea Spray'

    'Into Tomorrow'

    'Aim High'

    'Andromeda'

    'Moonshine'

    'Up The Dosage'

    'Strange Town'

    'Wake Up The Nation'

    'Trees'

    'Empty Ring'

    'One Bright Star'

    'Shout To The Top'

    'Start!'

    'Fast Car/Slow Traffic'

    'The Eton Rifles'

    'The Butterfly Collector'

    'All On A Misty Morning'

    'Light Nights'

    'Brand New Start'

    'Echoes Round The Sun'

    'Art School'

    'Come On/Let’s Go'

    'The Changingman'

     

     

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/20/paul-weller-bruce-foxton-jam

     

     

    Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton reunite for a Jam

     

    The former band mates, who weren't on speaking terms for more than 20 years, have collaborated on two new songs. Don't hold your breath for that Jam reunion though ...

     

    Sean Michaels guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010

     

     

    Paul Weller has reunited with the Jam's bassist, Bruce Foxton. The former band mates, who reportedly went more than 20 years without speaking, collaborated on two songs for Weller's forthcoming solo album, Wake Up the Nation.

     

    "It came about because we had both lost loved ones last year," Weller told NME this week. "[bruce] lost his wife at the early part of the year, and I lost my dad, and it opened up a bit of a dialogue, and it seemed like a nice thing to do at the time. In fact, it was a wonderful thing."

     

    After Weller dissolved the Jam in 1982, he and Foxton reportedly went decades without speaking. They met again at a Who concert in 2006, chatting for 10 minutes – and finishing with an embrace. Last year, Foxton revealed that they had again become friends, but that a reunion of the Jam seemed out of the question. "I don't even discuss it with him, I know the answer," he told the Yorkshire Evening Post.

     

    Weller previously expressed some hostility toward From the Jam, Foxton's touring act with former Jam drummer Rick Buckler. "I'm not mad about the idea," he told NME. "It's a bit cabaret to me. I thought we were against all that." Weller and Buckler are not said to be on speaking terms.

     

    On his website, Weller described one of the new songs featuring Foxton, Fast Car Slow Traffic: "It's a real London tune. It's a pretty full-on. We played this on the last tour and people were really mad for it. It was really interesting to hear Bruce playing on it. You can instantly tell it's him."

     

    Wake Up the Nation also includes a cameo by My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields. The album will be released on 12 April.

    GPS recommendations

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    Here's a little tip that might save you some problems. If you are parked in a parking garage, don't turn your GPS on until you get out into the street. My GPS, if you turn it on when it can't get a satellite signal, it gets confused and takes 15 minutes to "find" you. Bad.

    Seconded. My Garmin does the same thing.

    GPS recommendations

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    I like my Garmin. I think it's a 260 model. I don't use the traffic updates because that feature is not available in Ottawa. I mount it on the windshield only when I don't know where I'm going and put it away otherwise. So the "suction cup on the windshield" feature is good for me. In fact, all I really do is enter the street addresses of new destinations, add them as favorites, and pull them up as needed. I have used the "search" function a couple of times and find it's really slow at finding places - I guess because of the amount of data.

     

    I find the voice feature pretty essential since you should really be looking at the road most of the time and not a little video screen. I wouldn't get one that didn't talk. Plus I love it when she says "recalculating".

    Jane Siberry one-ups Tweedy

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/is-jane-siberry-in-the-house/article1556528/

     

    Not just living room shows but an entire tour, self-promoted, playing in homes, etc. Interesting.

     

     

    Is Jane Siberry in the house?

    Randy Quan for The Globe and Mail

     

    The Canadian singer-songwriter is staging her bare-bones European tour in the living rooms of her fans – provided they feed her dinner first, and put her up for the night

     

    London — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

     

    The last time Sarah Gillespie had seen Jane Siberry in concert, it was at London's Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank of the River Thames, along with several thousand fans. Last Wednesday, Gillespie was able to see Siberry again, but this time in a much more intimate venue: Gillespie’s own living room.

     

    She and about two dozen other fans crammed into her shared two-bedroom ground-floor flat in Brockley, a leafy, nondescript southeast London neighbourhood, to catch Siberry during her swing through the British capital on her do-it-yourself world tour.

     

    “Oh my gosh, I've been travelling through so many villages to get here,” Siberry said as she took the stage, which was a patch of floor by the bay window.

     

    “Have you ever heard of Brockley before?” a man in the audience asked.

     

    “Never,” Siberry replied, before kicking off her set.

     

    The cozy concert at Gillespie's home in a semi-detached Victorian house was one of a dozen microgigs the Canadian singer-songwriter has played in London during her salon tour's British leg. The night before, she had played to 40 guests at a small organic café-bar in Bethnal Green in east London, where the organizers were also putting her up for a few nights. The night after, she was scheduled to play to 30 people at another Victorian house in Battersea in southwest London.

     

    “ I don't have a promoter that's interested in bringing me over, and I thought, 'Am I just never going to play there because someone's a gatekeeper, but people want me?’”

     

    After becoming disenchanted on her last tour, Siberry decided to arrange this one mainly through word of mouth. She's using her e-mail list to invite fans to host her in their homes or other small venues, and is paying her own way through ticket sales, thereby allowing her to travel to places she might never have been able to go if she relied on a conventional concert promoter. To keep costs down, she’s also asking hosts to give her a bed for a night or two, and to cook her up a dinner before she goes on.

     

    And she's travelling light, with her guitar and her dog, a border collie named Gwylym. She's taking buses, trains and ferries. Any further erupting volcanoes in Iceland won't be able to stop her.

     

    From London, she'll be making her way to Scotland and Ireland before heading to Sweden, Finland and Norway this month. In June, she's scheduled to be in Rotterdam, Warsaw and Paris. Many dates are already sold out, with tickets ranging from about $30 to $40, but she's encouraging other fans who want to see her to volunteer their homes so she can add more.

     

    It's the latest innovation from the 54-year-old performer known for her relentless reinvention. She started out with quirky new-wave pop songs in the early 1980s, before branching out into jazz, classical, folk and gospel. She set up her own record label, Sheeba, in 1996. She gave away most of her possessions and moved into a cabin in Northern Ontario. She even changed her name briefly to Issa.

     

    At Gillespie's concert, the do-it-yourself ethic was in evidence from the start. The songstress flicked on a light to brighten the room, tuned her guitar herself, and summoned backing tracks from her own iPod. Most of the audience perched on stools while a few others sat on chairs from the dining set. A lucky few slouched on the sofa. Two guys sat cross-legged on the floor at the front.

     

    The set consisted mainly of songs from Siberry's most recent album, 2009's With What Shall I Keep Warm, and ranged from free-form jazz and ballads to punchy numbers strummed on her guitar to spoken word.

     

    She upheld her reputation for improvising freely, breaking off in mid-song to deliver monologues about ordinary 9-to-5 workers, matchmaking, tai chi masters and other subjects. She brought the audience into her own mysterious, dream-like world with tales of a black dog named Magic.

     

    During one monologue, she even explained to the audience why she stopped doing big tours. In an interview before the show, she had elaborated on that theme: “I would play at clubs and we'd go there and people wouldn't be prepared, or the dressing room would be filthy once again. So I'm standing there and these people have come from far, Detroit or whatever, and security guys are walking back and forth as if people are going to shoplift. It's so rude. Promoters are looking at the empty seats and waitresses are so bored, cash registers are going and it's against the force of music.”

     

    Siberry came up with the idea for the tour after receiving e-mail requests from fans in out-of-the-way places. “I don't have a promoter that's interested in bringing me over, and I thought, 'Am I just never going to play there because someone's a gatekeeper, but people want me?’ So that moment I wrote an e-mail and said, 'If you miss me, invite me to your living room and find, say, 30 people at 30 dollars.’ ”

     

    As she played, the sounds of the street filtered in through the open window. People walked past the house and whooped and cheered; a car alarm went off briefly. The noise added to what Siberry called the “magic” of the event. She sang about her mother, and about delinquent, unloved teenagers she observed while staying in an English village for a week.

     

    Midway through When we are Queen, from 2008's Dragon Dreams, she abruptly stopped. “Next,” she said, as she clicked to another track on her iPod. By the end of her set, the crowd was transfixed; some were weeping. They applauded as she dashed off-stage, into the kitchen. Returning for an encore, she said, “If you want to hear a song, just shout it out.”

     

    Someone immediately blurted out: “Everything Reminds me of my Dogs.” Someone else wanted her 1985 new-wave hit, One More Colour; one woman asked for Calling all Angels. Siberry obligingly played snippets of the first two and a full version of the third.

     

    As she thanked the audience for coming, her thoughts turned to her journey home. “If anyone's driving up to Bethnal Green,” she said, “I didn't realize it was so far.”

     

    For more information on tour details, visit www.janesiberry.com.

     

    Special to The Globe and Mail

    As I approach a dreaded milestone Birthday

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    I thought 40 would be a big deal, and it just wasn't.

    I did 40.

     

    I'm sort of looking forward to being 50, though that's still a ways off.

    I did 50 too.

     

    Crow Daddy was talking about wasted life cliches. There's lots of age cliches - like only as young as you feel, age is just a number, etc. I never understood why people worried more about turning say 40 than they did about turning 47. I'm generally happier now than I was at 40 or 50. And I think I'm healthier than I was at 40. Don't sweat it.

    How do you buy music? (isues, quality, quantity)

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    I am still old school in that I need the physical thing. I had lots of LPs at one time. For a number of reasons, I got away from listening to them but held on to a lot of them. So when it appeared that CD was the way to go, I started to buy not only new music but also CDs of stuff I already had on vinyl. Now I'm getting back into playing the viynl and wondering why I bought the CD back ups.

     

    I hardly ever buy CDs new. It's a little harder to get them as cheap in Canada as you seem to be picking them up in the US but $10 seems to be my iimit. If someething comes out on viynl now, that's my go to. Although I rarely pay more that $10 for a CD, I don't seem to hesitate to pay $15 or $20 for an lp.

    NHL 2010-2011 Season Thread

    in Tongue-Tied Lightning

    Posted

    ... Now Halak getting so hot reminds me of Roy in '86.

    And Dryden in the early 70s (71?). The is a Canadians tradition of goalies coming out of nowhere to win a cup. Halak certainly stole that series. And after the Olympics, and now this, the debaate about who is better between Crosby and Ovechkin will disappear for a while.

    Young@Heart

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    The Young@Heart documentary is outstanding. After seeing the film, I thought I really would love to see Young@Heart. And they are playing in Montreal this summer. But then, horror of horrors, it turns out to be the same night as Arcade Fire plays here in Ottawa. Crap. If anybody is looking for a pair for Montreal, I have a parif ro sale.

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