DevO

ON A LIMB no 17 Sunday, Jan 20th 10ish at the Tranzac (292 Brunswick) http://www.myspace.com/onalimbseries Songs and Improvisations by all these fine people: steve mckay - guitar, voice & drums michael keith - guitar and voice ronely teper - guitar and voice dave clark - drums, voice and misc chris banks - bass and weeping 'on a limb' is a series at the Tranzac (front room) ....unrehersed.... so a couple of songwriters play their music. alongside of them are some experienced improvisers who are essentially following the songwriter's lead. the structure is pretty linear and loose in different ways in that i try to get different people playing together who have different musical backgrounds. it could range from country to jazz to in the same night. each night is different which makes complete sense. all in all, the reason for the night is for a good time. i am hoping people will take risks and challenge each other when they are playing. the name of the night is no coincidence. I might check this out tonight.. Looks cool! Has anyone out there ever checked out this series, or these musicans? I believe Steve McKay is in Bruce Peninsula.

Congrats!

Some pictures (and an illustration) from these two shows.. The illustration is by Ian McKendry (see his other stuff here) and the pictures are from our very own Phorbesie.

How 'bout: The Long & Winding Road Across The Universe Across The Great Divide Odds And Ends World On A String Borrowed Tune No Hidden Path

I'm looking forward to checking this one out someday.

I'm going to see some band called The Liras at Sneaky Dee's on Friday night.. http://www.myspace.com/thelirasrock Anyone know of them?

The tix were courier'd to me, a few days before the gig, but they didn't arrive in my mail box 'til about 2 weeks afterwards!!

Is the Dakota new?? Regardless, I love that bar too.

It's pretty cool that they (who?) managed to bring a group from Northern Canada way the hell over to Mali though! There are several more articles on that if you seach "Mali" on the Globe's site right now. Are you going to that other one Blane? Looks wicked!

I'll be going to my first ever Raps game on Fri Mar 28.. Should be good!

Stephanie Nolen is attending the Festival au Desert music festival in Essekane, an oasis about 70 kilometres from Timbuktu, in the West African nation of Mali. She is there with a group of Inuit artists who were invited by the Tuareg festival hosts, as another nomadic people sharing the threat of global warming on their lives and culture. Man would I ever LOVE to go to this festival! CLICK HERE for photos! There was a front page article in the Globe on Saturday all about it.. Read on: An Inuit Adventure in Timbuktu STEPHANIE NOLEN From Saturday's Globe and Mail January 12, 2008 at 12:54 AM EST ESSEKANE, MALI — When Terence Leonard Uyarak looks up at the star-cluttered night sky over the Sahara, the four people running – ulaktut in the language of the Inuit – are there. Tuktgurjuk, the caribou toward which they head, is there. So is nunurjuk, the polar bear from which they flee. But they aren't where they're supposed to be. It's as if they have all stumbled, and slipped half way down the sky. Nunurjuk, the north star and all of the other stars by which Mr. Uyarak tells his way in the snow of the Canadian Arctic are laid out above the desert night. But they are skewed, down near the equator. He cannot tell his way by them, not here in this desert. Mr. Uyarak could hardly be farther from home – six flights, thousands of kilometres, in a place the polar opposite from the pole on which he lives. His jutting cheekbones are sunburned; there is sand in his nose and his hair and his clothes – he's ankle-deep in it all the time. Yet for all of that, Mr. Uyarak said, this place is not so different from his hometown, Igloolik. Inuit performers stand in the sand at the Festival au Desert. “The people are very calm, that's one thing. And the nuna, the land – the sand is shaped in the ways that snow shapes when there is a strong wind.†The land and the way they live in it are threatened too, by climate change, by the lure of consumer culture. And it is a desire to draw international attention to those threats that has led a group of Inuit performers to a quirky arts festival near Timbuktu in Mali. Talking to the nomads who invited him here, Mr. Uyarak is learning about camels, and they are not that different, in many ways, from the dog teams his father used to keep. He rode one yesterday, and concluded it was a lot like being in a kayak: You can't stiffen up, but have to roll with the waves. People here wear layers and layers of clothes, to keep cool instead of hot; they live in tents, just like the few people back home who still live out on the land. Even his language, Inuktitut, sounds a bit like the Tamashak spoken by his Tuareg hosts. Their language and traditions are both oral; like the Inuit, their written language is an innovation of recent generations. Both groups navigate by the stars. Then there are other, darker similarities: Many young Tuareg want out of here, the same way many of Mr. Uyarak's friends want out of Igloolik. They want to live in the city and watch DVDs and listen to 50 Cent. Few have interests like his – Mr. Uyarak has sought out people in his community to teach him the old ways, including that trick of nighttime navigation. He despairs of young people who can't even speak Inuktitut. “My girlfriend wants to watch The O.C. all the time and I always tell her, there are so many things that are more important than some stupid TV show from America.†Mr. Uyarak, an acrobat and actor, and seven other members of a troupe called Artcirq were invited here by one of the world's other great desert peoples, the Tuareg nomads whose camel trains have carried salt and gold across the Sahara since the 1300s, since Timbuktu was a thriving centre of learning and trade rather than the dusty, half-deserted museum it is today. Two years ago, a slight, courtly Tuareg man named Manny Ansar saw Artcirq perform in Mexico and decided, right then, that he had to find away to bring them to his festival. Mr. Ansar (who has a day job doing communications for the electric company) runs what must be the world's quirkiest, most inaccessible and magical arts festival – a gathering of more than 40 disparate acts, thousands of Tuareg, vast herds of camels and a few hundred hardy, wide-eyed tourists, at an oasis 70 kilometres northwest of Timbuktu. As a griot, a story teller, explained at the start of the festival on Thursday, the Tuareg are “ les enfants de grande tente,†who live a solitary, nomadic life much of the time, but gather, once or twice a year, “to share the news, resolve disputes and plan the way forward.†Such gatherings, held at oases such as Essekane, were traditionally accompanied by music and dance, camel-racing and storytelling. For the past eight years, the Festival au Desert has revived that tradition for three days in January. Hundreds of square, white cotton tents are pitched between the dunes; enterprising Malians set up to sell everything from bananas to whisky to heated buckets of water; and lights and speakers are rigged on a wide, concrete stage on the last dune before the Sahara begins in earnest. It took a lot of finagling and fundraising (a plane ticket from Igloolik to Montreal alone is $3,000, never mind all the way to Timbuktu) to get Artcirq here, accompanied by two throat singers from Iqaluit. The troupe was founded in 1998 after Igloolik was rocked by the suicides of two young people. Guillaume Ittukssarjuaq Saladin, who had grown up in Igloolik but moved away to tour the world as an acrobat with circus troupes, started teaching young people, with the support of Igloolik's great cultural force, the filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, whose Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner was screened here last night to a crowd of mesmerized Malians. Soon dozens of young people were training in the old town pool, drained of water and filled with junkyard mattresses for crash landings. “Okay, as Inuit we don't have ‘circuses,' †said Solomon Uyarasuk, 21, “but if you talk about Inuit games, we have all those things – clowns, juggling, jumping contests.†Mr. Saladin, 35, is glad to be preserving these traditional skills, but he believes Artcirq gives Igloolik kids something more. “Our biggest achievement is to create dreams, to make things possible – right now there are kids at home who know there are Inuit in the desert in Africa.†While Artcirq members were rehearsing in the sand yesterday evening, Abba Mohammed Najim, the mayor of Essekane, was watching young men speed their ancient pick-up trucks around the edge of the festival and shaking his head in disgust. “Kids today,†he muttered, in Tamashak. Mr. Najim, 64, despairs for the Tuareg future sometimes. “Young people today don't want to be nomad – to be a nomad is back-breaking. You haul water for your animals from the start of the morning until late into the night. It's not like swish, swish, you turn on a tap and fill a glass.†They all want to go live in the towns, he said – once Essekane was made up of people who travelled all the time, but now at least half of them stay put most of the year. “But this has serious repercussions for your character: Your life drains away until you forget who you are.†The lure of plumbing and less toil may be taking some young people into the towns, but there are greater forces at work as well: The traditional Tuareg way of life, like the Inuit, is imperilled by global warming. “There is less and less rain, and more and more sun, and so less grass,†explained Mamatal Ag Dahmane, deputy director of the festival. “A nomad relies on his animals, and when there is less grass, we have no choice but to become semi-nomadic, to stay in areas where there is water – and then, of course, the culture changes.†The Sahara grows steadily to the south, devouring five to 10 kilometres of farmland each year, but even within the desert, pastoral life is becoming nearly impossible, he said. Mr. Uyarak said he is a skeptic about the idea of permanent climate change – his grandparents tell him there have always been cycles on the land, that sometimes the caribou herds are huge and close, and sometimes they are small and many hundreds of kilometres away. But he, too, said he sees changes in the weather changing his culture. Last year, there were many serious accidents in Nunavut when people on snowmobiles fell through ice that should not have been thin, he said; when he went hunting seal pups with his family last spring, the bay was full of loose ice and there were few seals. When Artcirq goes on stage tonight, they will place a block of ice at the edge of the platform and perform for as long as it takes to melt. The Inuit have struggled to explain to the Tuareg who they are – they haven't heard of Inuit, or even Eskimo; sometimes, “from the North Pole†will do it. Nomads look disbelieving at pictures that show the now bare-chested Inuit in sealskin back home where it was -55 degrees the day they left for this trip. Tonight, Artcirq will find out how well the stories they act out and sing carry into this different-but-the-same place. Already, they have won the affection of many Tuareg. Yesterday, a tribal elder gave Mr. Uyarak a piece of heavy silver jewellery that is the traditional symbol of his family after the two had talked for some time about their lives. Etched into its face are the stars, the ones that guide them at night across the desert.

Deja vu! That's funny because Def Leppard at Copps was all set to by my first concert ever, back in 19__ (the Hysteria tour), but my parents wouldn't let me go.

haha nice one bokonon!

Yup, free WiFi! They rent out laptops too if you need one.

Damn, I'll be in Calgary!

Nice, I will try to swing by.

Hey Jay - I will check with the boss about having a threesome. It would be pretty tight quarters but it may be possible. What is the instrumentation?? Just wondering, in terms of space. Jayr, sounds great! We'd love to have either you solo, or you with the singer. Both, actually! When's good for you? (Not on Wednesdays)

I saw Spookey Ruben once in Golden a long time ago and thought he was pretty good too. Nice lineup!

I might be in town Friday eve. ANything good happening that night? Rev, good job on the house show!

Thanks Brad, consider him emailed.

Hello all, I work at the cozy Linux Caffe. Its great little spot, filled with artists, students, revolutionists and computer geeks. We are supporters of local arts and trade, and very much interested in community building initiatives too. Besides that we make delicious homemade food and baked goods (mostly vegan), etc. We've done live music events in the past, but we are looking to make live music a much more regular event at the cafe.. Up to 4 times a week. The owner was involed in film for 20+ years doing cinematography, stage design, etc etc, and has a lot of technical know-how and good sense of how sound travels and whatnot. So here's the deal: - We give you a meal and all you can drink fancy coffees - You pass a hat around and get some money - We provide a casual, comfy setting with capacity of about 20 for you to practice your chops and your various side projects or main projects - We're looking for mainly acoustic music, or ambient-ish music; maximum 2 performers - eclectic instrumentation encouraged (not necessary though.. basically both the owner and i like to see and hear different sorts of instruments) Other interesting endeavours: - We sell local independent music on consignment. Come in and drop off some of your stuff to sell! There are also plans in the works to eventually enable people to come in and make custom made mixed cds compiled of all the local music we have on tap, for a small fee - a new twist on the consignment idea. - There is also a rotating art exhibition. I think the walls are all booked for the next several months but the ceiling is available.. Yes, there will be art on the ceiling. I think one guy is making a giant caffeine molecule right now to hang up. Linux Caffe - http://linuxcaffe.ca 326 Harbord St. (at Grace) .... by Bickford Park 416-534-2116 If you are interested in playing at the Linux Caffe, drop me a line anytime.

I just went into my iTunes and arranged my library by "Play Count" and these were the 3 most played songs: Ryan Adams - Peaceful Valley Bonobo - Flutter The Spades - Ultrasound 1 I guess I must like those ones!

No problemo! Harry Manx & Kevin Breit will perform together at the following show: Friday, February 1, 2008 Gryphon Theatre - Barrie, ON 8pm

For the record, I would by no means consider that stretch of Queen St to be "cool"!

Oh yeah and also.. Not at The Rex, but worth noting: Fri Jan 11 -- RANDY BRECKER, BROWNMAN ELECTRYC TRIO => Lula Lounge, 7 pm, $20