I’m in Halifax at the One World Cafe. I thought I would write a quick post but there’s been so much to write and anyway I’m mostly just hanging out at the cafe chatting with whoever comes along as it approaches 7PM and the sky starts to grow dim.
Gobblefest in Sydney, Cape Breton. That was awesome. I wound up on a bill at an all-day all-ages show at the Steelworkers Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever played a set that involved a conga line at two in the afternoon. So that can’t be bad. Sydney kids are all right.
(I recall the last time I was in Sydney. I played for six people. Two of them were in the other band, there was the bartender, two drunk chicks who wandered downstairs from The Bum Jungle err sorry The Rum Jungle, and also there was this elderly Chinese man who interrupted my set to ask if he could perform a song. So I gave him the microphone and sat down while he did an acapella version of some operatic love song. It was very moving to say the least.)
Sunday night was the Gobblefest afterparty drunk show at the Capri Club. Someone said the Capri Club reminded them of the Marquee Club when the band was just getting done, and you had that whole weird crossover between the indierock hipsters and the cheesy dance crowd. I played to a good audience but there were definitely some barneys in attendance.
This one guy was right up front being a bit of a pest. I stopped my set right in the middle of “Audio Message: Press Play” and held out the microphone to him. He was waving around a twenty-dollar bill and he said into the microphone, “I’ll give you twenty bucks to let me get up on stage and do better than you.”
I thought about it for a second and said, “How about you give me twenty bucks to get up on stage and do better than you.” He must have been drunk because he mumbled some kind of acquiescence and I took the twenty-dollar bill out of his hands and held it up for everyone to see. “Twenty bucks!” I yelled. Meanwhile the barney slunk off to the side of the stage, never to be seen again.
“Queen Elizabeth the Second! In the house!” I was showing off this twenty-dollar bill with considerable pride. “Make some noise for Queen Elizabeth” and then I slammed right back into the song.
That’s one reason why my set had such a triumphant feel. Also, I kept making jokes about Balls Creek, Cape Breton. There was actually a dude in the crowd from Balls Creek and he was right stoked. Balls Creek is the name of a place we passed on the way to Sydney, after driving through North Sydney, Sydney Mines, Sydney River, Southwest Upper Sydney, Sydneytron 3000 and Sydneyville.
“Something truly amazing happened to me in Balls Creek last night,” I said. “But I can’t tell you what it is, because I’m hoping it will happen again tonight and I don’t want to jinx it.” I noticed you laughed when I made that joke. Believe me I noticed. But enough said about that, tonight I’m in Halifax and I don’t want to jinx it.
I’ve been travelling in the van of Nick, that’s Nick of thekettleblack.com, who is on tour with Mothra, that’s Mothra of mothralovesyou.com. At the all-ages show I was sitting at the merch table and I shot a video on my crappy two-megapixel HP digicam. I pasted in Nick’s van, plus Nick and a banjo, there’s no sound and on the whole this video is a little weak, I wanted to have him come out and have his mouth move and he would say a bunch of things in a Mac robot voice but now I realize this video will never be finished.
swordfight-gobblefest.mov [500KB QuickTime]
Here are a couple of tattoos I drew on the arms of girls.
Mr. Happy
“Screamo Blows.” This is Poison Ivy from the band myspace dot com slash gilbertswitzer. Yes, there was some pile of screamo-type boy-bands at the all-ages extravaganza. I’m not slaggin’, they generally could all play and all had their moments, but I had a bit of trouble after a while telling which band was which. Nobody seemed to be fucking with the formula. How come none of you kids are fucking with the formula? Gilbert Switzer, The Kettle Black, Mothra: fucking with the formula, big time. There you go kids.
Someone found this pink guitar strap with “EMO STRAP” written on it. I promptly grabbed a marker and changed it to “EMO STRAP-ON.” Here I am in my Miss Congeniality pose.
And then the batteries died on my camera. When the batteries die, they die fast. I’ll get a red low-battery warning and I have ten seconds to shut off the camera or else it will power down with the lens sticking out and will stay like that. Which is what happened in Sydney. So I carefully tried to put the camera away but somewhere along the way it must have gotten fucked up because when I put fresh batteries in this morning the lens just wobbled around back and forth instead of retracting. I can hear something rattling around inside.
However all is not lost because the camera will still take photos, I just have to pull the lens out and push it back inside with my thumb when I’m done, but the focus is screwed. Lots of crappy blurry photos, coming soon to swordfight dot org.
Dartmouth in the morning, looking towards Halifax
Alderney Gate, downtown Dartmouth
I caught the ferry to Halifax at Alderney Landing. I think it’s rad that the Halifax Regional Municipality’s public transport system involves a boat ride across the harbour. It was a perfect day for a boat ride.
And here I am enjoying a samosa at the One World Cafe.
In conclusion, come to Gus’s Pub tonight for Mothra and The Kettle Black, and tomorrow in Saint John NB at Elwood’s, and then I’m heading back to the country to see how all the beaver dams are doing.
