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Velvet

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Posts posted by Velvet

  1. I know it's early but I'm willing to start.

    I see Tom Petty is playing Toronto on July 15th with plenty of time off beforehand.  Here's hoping he'll be paying LeBreton Plats next summer, it would be a good score for Bluesfest.

  2. GnR dates:

    July 27 – St. Louis, MO, The Dome At America’s Center
    July 30 – Minneapolis, MN, U.S. Bank Stadium
    August 2 – Denver, CO, Sports Authority Field at Mile High
    August 8 – Miami, FL, Miami Marlins Stadium
    August 11 – Winston-Salem, NC, BB&T Field at Wake Forest University
    August 13 – Hershey, PA, Hersheypark Stadium
    August 16 – Buffalo, NY, New Era Field
    August 19 – Montreal, QC, Parc Jean Drapeau
    August 21 – Ottawa, ON, TD Place Stadium
    August 24 – Winnipeg, MB, Investors Group Field
    August 27 – Regina, SK, New Mosaic Stadium at Evraz Place
    August 30 – Edmonton, AB, Commonwealth Stadium
    September 1 – Vancouver, BC, BC Place Stadium
    September 3 – George, WA, The Gorge
    September 6 – El Paso, TX, Sun Bowl Stadium
    September 8 – San Antonio, TX, Alamodome

     
     
     
  3. 39 minutes ago, c-towns said:

    Cla3jnBUkAA_CeK.jpg

    I found this amusing for some reason, check out who #10 is.

    Also, many people believed #24 was Courtney Love. Apparently not...

     

     

    That's pretty interesting.

    So is this.  It's from Jerry Granelli's website: 

    Granelli moved on to the Denny Zeitlin Trio, a group that
    included bassist Charlie Haden...(and) shared bills at The Matrix and
    The Fillmore with Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead. They
    also accompanied the Dead on their first European tour in 1971.

  4. 8 hours ago, Hartamophone said:

    This is what I said on Facebook last night. It's all I got:

    Let us not forget this: each of us can still choose to embody love, hope, tolerance, and compassion. And nobody has ever needed the president's permission to reach out to someone in need. All those things we tried to do to make the world a little better yesterday we can still do tomorrow, albeit through clouds of disappointment and uncertainty.

    Much love, my friends. Let's keep on keepin' on.

     

    That was the single greatest thing I read on the webs yesterday.  It really, really helped.

  5. 9 hours ago, Pablo Sanchez said:

    I spent four hours looking at properties in Costa Rica and re-evaluating my life. Not some knee jerk reaction to the election but more taking stock of everything as it is and wondering if an escape to the jungle is the best course of action. lol

    Dibs on couch space.

  6. On 2016-03-09 at 6:45 PM, Hartamophone said:

    11660886813_344f3a7bd4_o.png

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/harvest-picnic-lawsuit-1.3801341

    An excerpt:

    "No payment" is a familiar refrain for many of the bands that played this year, who say they are still chasing Gauthier for money.

    Toronto's The Rheostatics is one of those bands. "[The show] was fun and we were happy and played a long time and then drove home. And waited to get paid. Which we have not," the band said in a statement provided to CBC News. 

    "We all feel let down by this. Promoters should pay musicians — whether it's $5 or $500,000. But Harvest Picnic has not. I suggest Harvest Picnic ticket buyers should know their money was not used to pay musicians — where their money has gone is anybody's guess — and think twice before buying tickets to their future events."

  7. Hopelessly shut out.  Like a newb, on the presale I clicked "Best Available" and pulled the million dollar tickets, and by the time I tried again it was just a sad, empty clickfest for the next 45 minutes.

  8. By the way, if anyone scores an extra pair of tickets for Gord Downie's Toronto show I promise I will happily take them off your hands, with many thanks.

     

    I will be in a weird time zone when the tickets go on sale and what my internet situation will be at the onsale time is currently a known unknown.

  9. 14 hours ago, Hartamophone said:

    Really pumped for the Ottawa show. Who else is in?

    IN!!!  We'll probably get onsite super-early, like 5pm or so.  

    If you want to buy a t-shirt get there early, the lineups for merch are insane.

  10. Twenty years ago today I fell in love with five guys from Kingston:

    On August 15th, 1991 I saw The Tragically Hip for the first time.  It was a night that will forever stand out in my memories, and it marked the beginning of a long-term love affair between The Tragically Hip and I.

     

    The Ottawa Congress Centre was packed, and I mean packed - there must have been 2,500 crammed in there.  Based on the success of New Orleans Is Sinking The Hip had made the jump from bars to concert halls, but when Road Apples dropped and exploded across the country the band found themselves seriously under-booked, honouring contracts in venues that were much too small for their burgeoning fame.  This was certainly one of those cases; I’m sure the band could have filled the 9,000 seat Civic Centre on this run.

     

    (A cool fact: The Hip said in an interview that nobody in Canada would have to pay more than $20 to see them on this tour.  A fan in Toronto wrote to tell the band that with service charges the Toronto show cost $20.50 so The Tragically Hip hired people to stand inside the Toronto venue and hand fifty cents to everyone who walked through the doors.)

     

    I grabbed a pair of beers and wedged myself into a spot about twenty feet from the stage.  Beyond that I didn’t move for the rest of the night, except as the tide would take me.  It was so packed in there we were jammed together like commuters on a Tokyo subway, and with the crowd raging to the band the whole room would drift one way or another as a single, amorphous beast.  One minute we would be standing straight up, then the crowd would shift and I’d be leaning to my left at a forty-five degree angle, another shift and my body would be pitched in the opposite direction, again standing at a perilous angle.  It was a weird feeling almost falling over again and again while knowing I could never actually fall down - there just wasn’t room.

     

    At one point the kid in front of me craned his head around and said to me, “My feet aren’t touching the ground.”  Honestly.

     

    Up on stage the band was absolutely on fire.  The newly-shorn Gord Downie commanded the stage with teeming confidence, fronting a band that was well-juiced from an obviously relentless touring and recording regimen.  And with just the EP, Up To Here and Road Apples to draw upon the material was utterly top-notch.

     

    This was the end of the era of real rock and roll shows.  I’m talking balls-to-the-walls, screaming, fist-pumping, general admission, stage diving rock and roll.  Not the ticket-scanning, stay out of the aisles, two-beer limit, print at home, big screen, VIP section, two-song encore, “sit down I paid for these seats” concerts of today.  Back in the day a concert was an event, just as weight-lifting and javelin-throwing are events.  

     

    Yes friends, back in the day a concert required sweat, stamina, and a good deal of training to get the full experience, and I think this may have been the last real rock and roll concert I ever attended.

     

    Throughout the evening a couple of people had jumped on the stage only to turn and jump immediately back into the swarthy crowd.  But during New Orleans Is Sinking some moron leapt onto the stage and as he ran back towards the crowd with security giving chase the guy grabbed Gord Downie, pulling the singer down with him into the pit area between the crowd and the stage.

     

    From my vantage point it looked like Gord went down pretty hard, and he wasn’t coming up.  The band played on, looking down into the pit and back and forth at each other quizzically, and still there was no Gord.  I was convinced he had gotten hurt and the show would soon be stopped.  It seemed like at least a minute or two before he finally dragged himself back on the stage, shirtless, sweaty, and clearly very, very angry.

     

    Teeth and fists clenched Gord paced back and forth across the stage furiously as the band chugged along exchanging worried glances.  A few times he went up to the microphone as if to speak, only to turn away, utterly speechless with anger.  I was 100% sure it was just a matter of seconds before he stopped the show and stormed offstage - I can’t remember ever seeing someone that angry.  

     

    It was like watching an animal that had just been caged for the first time, crazed with fear and indignation and just waiting for an opportunity to attack.

     

    And then, finally, pumping with adrenaline Gord Downie went to the mic, and instead of lashing out, instead of cancelling the show, instead of screaming at people that love him and still try to pull him down, he sang:

     

    “I had my hands in the river, my feet back up on the banks.  I looked up to the Lord above and said ‘hey man, thanks’.”

     

    And the room absolutely exploded.  This was pure rock; a true moment in the cosmos of three-chord emotion and certainly the most unbridled display of pure rock and roll ethos I’ve seen, and it made my soul explode with that feeling.  And it wasn’t over yet.

     

    “Sometimes I feel so good I gotta scream.  She said ‘Gordie, baby, I know exactly what you mean’.  She said.  

     

    “I swear to God she said…”

     

    When Gord screamed the scream that comes after that line he let all the anger out at once and we all felt it - the demon escaped and took over the room.  He screamed again, and people started throwing their beer cups.  

     

    Downie came to the front of the stage, shirtless and without a mic, his arms at his sides with his fingers spread wide and his head raised to the ceiling, screaming for his life.  His eyes clenched and his head shaking from side to side, a thousand beer cups bounced off his body as the crowd pelted the angry beast.  I can see the beer cascading through the air, lit up by red and blue light cans, Gord taking it in like a Baptism of fire.  I can still hear Downie’s acoustic screams audible above the electrified band and the manic crowd.

     

    Watching those beer cup bounce off of that man as he screamed primally at a rabid audience hypnotized by rock and roll is probably the single most enthralling moment of my entire concert-going history.  It’s not just a visual memory, it had nothing to do with the song, it was a magnified burst of that feeling that made me fall in love with live music in the first place, that intangible, indescribable orgasm of intense emotion that makes you go blind and senseless with bliss, makes you throw your hands in the air and scream like a madman on fire.

     

    The kind of feeling that makes you throw a pair of $6 beers into the air at a rock and roll show.  

     

    I haven’t felt that since. 

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