Rockies and Bullwinkles

My BC tour continued last week, taking me to the last region on my list: the Kootenay Rockies. I'd always wanted to see the Rockies, and got a taste when work took me to visit the fine folks at Kootenay Rockies Tourism. This time I went out with my office roomie and colleague extraordinaire, Sarah, to a little town called Kimberley. It's a quaint, oddly Bavarian-themed town at the foothills of the Rockies, about three hours' drive from Calgary, Alberta. Sun was shining, our meetings went well and we even managed to squeeze in a quick drive over to the Fairmont Hotsprings. I stayed in a ski resort, hiked up a small bit of Kimberley mountain and had a bison steak for dinner. Awwww yeah! These are not bison. And they were not for dinner. But they bolted like they were going to be.

But not Baby Bambi! There was a wee deer, just snuffling in among the leaves at the side of the road. Mmmm, road leaves...

Soon, Dr. Doolittle and her sidekick came up upon the Hoodoos That You Do So Well. The Hoodoos are a cool bit of curvalicious slate rock that weirdly jut out en route to Fairmont. They're quite a bit different from the lush green alpiney mountains and so we dubbed them "pretty neat".

Then it was time for a quick dip in the Fairmont Hot Springs - which S. and I dubbed "The Fountain of Anti-Youth". Either a bus load of codgers had dumped off its cargo straight into the pool, or the pool's properties, combined with sitting in it for hours, caused many young people to turn old, flabby and wrinkly. Can't be certain. We escaped, though, and here, S. waves about her bikini - for it was, in fact, the only bikini to be seen amid miles of Size 20 crazily-flowered one-pieces.
In all, a fine jaunt to another corner of BC's verdant land!

Vancouver 2010 Olympics - Brought to You By Mikala

I'm pretty chuffed with myself today. A number of pages I created for the incredibly-busy-weirdly-designed OFFICIAL Vancouver 2010 Olympics website has gone live. I was responsible for working with the Olympics Games Secretariat and helped to coordinate the pages about, you guessed it, British Columbia. What this meant was cobbling together info from a billion sources, editing and rewriting existing copy and getting together one million approved photos. It's pretty cool to see one's copy on the VANOC pages actually, even if we did have to wedge in information about the province's economic development.

The sections I was responsible for were: British Columbia, Multimedia Gallery, History of British Columbia and Discover BC. I wonder if that means they'll reward me by giving me tickets to the Men's Ice Hockey Canada games? No?

From the Pit at Spiritualized

Free ticket. Awesome show. Borrowed camera didn't cack out. Awesome Saturday night.

Totally Random Musings About Music

It's been a monumentally dry summer for gigs (okay, excluding the enormo pop stadium bands that wheeled through. Bah, I still wish I'd seen the REM/National/Death Cab circus).

Still, for months now, nothing has grabbed me and made me want to hang out by the side door, knock on the tour bus window and lick the bassist...;-)

At least the silly season for gigs has hit once again. It's September and EVERYBODY knows that from September until the first week in December, the good bands are back on tour. They've grown fat and demanding from the summer's Yurpean festivals and they're now dithering about whether to hit the studio or...you know, just keep touring. Autumn is an excellent time for gig-age in Vancouver and pretty much all major cosmo NorthAm cities.

So why am I worried?

Tons of bands are heading this way. Tons of good indie bands. The cool kids with fans that have ironic mullets. The flavour of the mini-moment. The darlings of the NME (this week). But anyone I'm really, really retardedly excited about? Mooo, nothing yet. I haven't had a good drool in a long time and I'm bored.This past Sunday, I even found myself admiring Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio's glasses as he spent far too much time with his guitar and sequencer and avoided all audience eye contact. Boo. Read my TVOTR live review here. (And help contribute to my "get me a new camera body and zoom cos I need it so mutha-truckin' badly" fund ;-)

And Saturday night's Mogwai/Fuck Buttons gig? It's not like you can stare wistfully at Mogwai and then think "ahhh, there's a sexy band'. Sexy, dark, enormously loud and droney music? Yes. Fanciable? I'm thinking...erm, NO.They still blew the stacks out the venue windows and were - as usual - rather mesmerising. Feel like reading a Mogwai review? Okay.

I'm also awaiting word on whether I get review passes to this weekend's Spiritualized gig. Should be good if I do but I'm losing hope daily as I've not yet heard anything. Songs in A&E is fucking awesome and Vancouver will make, what, the FIFTH city I'll have seen the band in?

But that was eons ago and I find it tiresome having to chase people down who only remember you if they're prodded to remember you, you know, those five times in....anyway, not sure I'll buy tix if I don't get passes so digits crossed. Here's what I thought about A&E..

I've also plowed through and reviewed Primal Scream's latest recently. Struggled with that one but it's grown a bit less moldy with each passing day. Still can't get over the handclaps. Clicky the linky for the review.

So who's going to be the band that gets me really excited? Not a bloody clue. But I hope they come soon. After having front row seats to the Cure this past May, and giving great massage to the lovely and harmless Louis XIV boys (honestly, Jason Hill's hair smelled SO nice!), having a 10-year-old loose end get tugged when Mike Doughty came to town, meeting Howlin' Pelle from The Hives and getting hopped up on happy juice when Hot Chip exploded all over the Commodore Ballroom walls...well, plain old indie bands just won't hack it.

Like I said, it's not that there aren't a million cool little bands coming, and Dan and I just caught wind of a possible TINY venue DJ set by Moby in November (sent to make up for the fact that I'm missing Nick Warren AND potentially my Icelandic DJ friend who I haven't seen in 10 years, who may be touring with Sigur Ros, because we're in the UK and there are no good bands playing WHILE we're in the UK...)

But the bands I adore and implode over? Where the hell are you?

Rockin' and Writin'

Done did two new (though very belated) album reviews on Suite101.com this week, check 'em out. There's also a second Hot Chip interview thingie up, too, which I threw up about a month or so ago. Even got me an "Editor's Pick", w00t!

Anyway, articles are here:
Spiritualized - Songs in A&E
Primal Scream - Beautiful Future

Goin' to see Mogwai and (hee hee) F*ck Buttons on Saturday night - my free plus one to review the show means that never-heard-of-Mogwai-before-not-really-into-drone-rock husband will be attending the gig with me and mates Gregg and Anita. I'll be interested to see what he makes of it. And Sunday is tres exciting: TV on the Radio, wahoo! Excited for that one, fo' 'sho, and hoping to get some interview time with the band. Then next weekend is Spiritualized. Glad to have some gigs coming down the pipe...it's been a slow summer.