So Tuesday after work we packed up the station wagon four man strong (or four strong man strong... or at least one strong man and a few milquetoasts... or... something) and headed down to see Black Mountain in Moncton.
Traveling for rock shows is a proud tradition for some of my fellow journeymen, and I've been known to do so in the past... so company was tight.
The show was at the Manhattan, so we parked nearby... then on PJ's recommendation went to a nearby Irish pub called Triangles for dinner. I had pretty good Curry and Chips... Howard had something called Irish Tea Break which was two enormous slabs of beef and pork resting A-frame style atop a mound of roasted mash potatoes all topped with curly fried onions. Zany.
There were two openers... a solo act (ex-Deadly Snakes member) from Toronto going by the name Nordic Nomadic unspooled some spacey Tim Buckleyesque guitar swoonings. Next was Wisconsinite band (also on Jagjaguwar) Bon Iver... a three piece, two guitars and drums who's stuff veered from slowcore jams to what TV on the Radio's sound might be had they grown up around tractors instead of fire hydrants.
Black Mountain came out and ripped through most of their new album... tossing in a couple of nuggets from the first... did a three song encore (no 16 minute epic as I had predicted) and then it was 1am and time to hit the road again.
All three bands put on great sets, but they were compromised by the less-than-stellar sound the bar provided. The Manhattan is a restaurant/bar built in what used to be the back end of a movie theatre... the architecture of which means the ceiling above the stage is between 30-40 feet high. It seems like all the low end of Black Mountain's guitars and bass were sucked up into the void or bounced around the room until it sounded more like a boom than a groove. Still they brought the rock.
The drive back was into the eye of a snowstorm that grew steadily from the time we left the Irving in Salisbury until we hit Gagetown... at which point it was like having a drunk Santa pull you too close into his beard.
These are the little footprints I made coming home at around 4:30pm.
I've had some pretty good fun over the last couple of weekends. First the ECMA weekend... which kicked off a little slowly. I had anticipated a crush of shoppers so made an effort to stock the store with appropriate goodies only to sit (or pace) by myself for most of the day. We made $41 between 11am and 4pm. Friday was better... but finally Saturday we threw a little event that brought people out:
The "surprises" part was Julie Doiron who graciously accepted to play in a stairwell in the afternoon and even busted out some unrecorded material for the faithful. The day was a blur of music and smiling people and... hrrm... shoppers.
That night we tried to actually take in some showcases, but the venues were so packed and fully lit with PDAs that our only recourse was to retreat to the 20/20 Club to listen to Footloose on a system with no high tone... which in fact is more truly East Coast music. When you think about it.
The next weekend was also musical... and very East Coast. I decided to gather together my struggling music playing friends and my struggling music listening friends and put them all under one roof... or more accurately under one floor under one roof:
There is some video of the Windchimes set on the Ker. MySpace page or just check this out:
It culminated in much drinking on several different levels of homestead and a multi-street cheeseburger trackdown. How many drive-thrus are open late in Fredericton? Not many it turns out.
But one side effect of special event fever is that it brings along with it a special kind of crash on the weeks after. The mundane seems that much more mundane. The banal seems... painful.
This fact was illustrated and heightened by a convergence of three of my "What do they do?" people so far this week. These people are folks who, over the years, have regularly and relentlessly visited the store yet have perhaps purchased a sum total of 4 items between them over a decade of browsing. But they are also people who I unfailingly see everywhere else I go in town... uptown, downtown, Northside, industrial park, wading pool... everywhere.
The first was the "Gasman." I actually hadn't seen the Gasman for a couple of years and believed him to have either exploded or floated away... but I bumped into him up at the Regent Mall waiting for the bus I was about to disembark. When he (regularly) came into the store he would rustle his oily army jacketed self over to the cassette rack and clack through them... burping, farting and whistling his merry tunes. He would also mumble unintelligibly things about each cassette he was holding. I eventually realized he was talking to me... but because he never turned around I had no way of making out anything he said.
The second was/is the "Walker." Aside from the store you can spot him at the Carleton Street Library, buying coffee at MacDonald's, walking up or down York Street, Regent Street, George Street, Charlotte Street, Brunswick Street... any hour of the day or night. The store seems to be a 20-40 second segment of his path as he routinely comes in, walks one slow circle around the perimeter and then back out the door.
The last was/is the "Bike Guy." Bike Guy is the most dynamic of the trio... and the least frequent. Dynamic because... well he has a bike for one, and also because he also speaks in close to full sentences in a nearly clear linguistic pattern. Unfortunately he says things like, "It sure is icy out there today." I guess when you're the Bike Guy this has a potent impact upon all aspects of your life. Dynamic also because he seems to do things like buy groceries and go to the Salvation Army, whereas the other two seem to be handled by some firm that possibly also hires out movie extras. Meaning they are somehow magically clothed and fed by some external force. But the other distinguishing trait of Bike Guy is that every outfit he does wear seems to have some prominent rip involved. Today it was in the seat of his corduroy pants.
So... the good thing is I've gotten my involvement with these folks out of the way for the week... which means either clear sailing, or that I won't see anyone else from here on out.
