rocketman!

If you've been living under a rock for the last 3+ months, you maybe weren't aware that Sir Elton John is on a Canadian Tour.  A huge tour where all the shows sold out in 3ish minutes.  I live under a small-ish rock, so it's no wonder I didn't really know when tickets were going on sale in the first place and no real surprise that by the time I realized they were going on sale they were sold out.  So, ummm, no Elton for me.

I was okay with it, I'm not Elton's biggest fan or anything, I don't own anything with his name or face on it except the Lion King DVD.  But, it is Sir Elton John we're talking about here.  So when last minute tickets became available, the only reasonable thing to do seemed to be purchase them.  It's not like he's going to live forever and be back anytime soon.  Or ever.

Arriving at CUC we had no idea what to expect in terms of seats.  The tickets were "bleacher" seats and weren't on any of CUC's seating plans.  I didn't understand how magically, 12 hours before a 100% sold out show, a whole batch of tickets could come available.  Until we found our seats.  Behind. the. stage.  Seriously.  They found some hockey bleachers in a closet somewhere, lifted up the screen a little, and sat us directly behind the stage.  Turns out?  Some of the best seats in the house.

True I have no idea what kind of crazy faces the guitarists may have been making, or what was on the giant screen, but we were second row kind of close, with the bonus of being up a level so we could see everything going on.  We were essentially right on top the percussionists, which was very fun to watch.  I might even have developed a wee crush on the secondary percussion dude - before the show he totally raided an elementary school band room and was playing every gizmo under the sun that you could hit or shake including a set of cowbells, two vases, martini shakers, and more tambourines than any one person should need.  He also liked to entertain himself by making faces at the other band members (or maybe no one) and throwing his various hitting things around.  Fun!

Elton was of course awesome.  40 years later and he's still amazing.  He's pretty entertaining to watch also.  He's quite stiff in his movements and loves to point at himself and then the crowd.  It was a little unreal to see the crowd from almost the band's perspective - 10 000 people is a lot!  The sound quality was fantastic, me thinks Elton and his crew must carry some supplementary equipment or the CUC has really upgraded their stuff since the last time I saw a concert there.  He also finished with my favourite song, so thanks for that E!

juno festivus

Oh Juno weekend, how you turned my little city upside down for about 48 hours. You made so many of us very very happy indeed!

In all honesty, I really didn't want too much to do with the actual Junos themselves since I rarely watch them and tickets were astronomical prices. To pay close to $200 for something I typically ignore seemed totally bonkers. I stand by my decision.

Junofest, on the other hand, was SO worth it. True, there were way cooler people who could have agreed to play shows (Tegan and Sara, Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Joel Plaskett, Sarah Harmer, Trag, and cool French bands where were you guys?!? Especially you Sarah, I know you were in town!) I digress.

Friday evening saw me at the Pat. Oh dear. This in itself is a sign of my love for Wide Mouth Mason. We arrived promptly at 10, and avoided massive lineups by mere minutes. A large-ish amount of beverages were consumed to make being at the Pat for 3 hours listening to terrible music bearable. However, it was all worth it. I wound up front row for pretty much the entire show and - terrible sound system excluded - wasn't disappointed. I realised about 15 minutes in that I have been standing in that exact same spot at WMM concerts for 10 years now. They played most of my old favourites.

Saturday evening we went to Louis'. We arrived early as I would have killed my concert going companion if we would have not gotten in. The quality of the evening was WAY better than the previous evening. I enjoyed all the groups, except the first. Enjoyment aside, I was really there to see David Usher. He was amazing. The small venue, the sound quality, I was pretty much bursting with happiness the entire show. So much love for Dave. He even played St. Lawrence River for the last song of his encore which pretty much proves he loves me too.

So thanks for bringing Dave to town Junos!