Weblog and Playground of Gord Fynes

I’M BACK FROM LA BELLE PROVINCE as of yesterday. Thanks to Marc, Adam, Matt, the organizers, crew and good people of Wendake. The show was great fun, despite the rain. Photos to follow in the days ahead. Thanks also to the lovely staff at Nyk’s in Montreal and to Stella Artois. No thanks to the olfactory assaults from various group members’ flatulent offerings in various hotels and stages of travel. You staubling bastards!

I’d posted about seeing Jaga Jazzist a few weeks back. They’ve made mention of our meeting on their current news page. Cool. I’ve also got some photos happening from their show pasted up.

I’m off to Quebec City shortly, at an ungodly hour when only shift workers and rust are awake. We’re off to perform at Wendake as the headliners for the first night of the festival. I haven’t done a road trip with a bunch of guys in quite a while, so I’m sure there’s much silliness and hilarity ahead. For this trip, I’ve been asked to bring along my minidisc recorder to keep an audio journal, which may or may not turn up as part of a future Nadjiwan radio piece. There’ll also be plenty of photos from our trip. I’ve decided not to bring the digital camera and give the Lomo LC-A a good workout. Marc and I have already started brushing up on our grade ten conversational French. Mais oui!

WELL, IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that I get to see the word FUCKING in, of all places on-line, the Globe and Fucking Mail. Then again, it’s an interview with Sebastian Bach, so I really shouldn’t be all that surprised. Frequent G+M‘ers: you now have to register to read articles on-line.

But hey, it’s free.

WITH NEXT TO NO KNOWLEDGE when it comes to PHP, a lot of patience and understanding with the wife and boy being out of the general home computing area for long periods of time, multiple windows open on the desktop which are tabbed through more often than the wind audibly rustles leaves in the trees outside my window and fine scripting on the part of the developer, I can now say that I’ve finally managed to get PhotoStack happening for the photos section of this website.

While I’m still wrestling with a few back-end features, things should look okay for ya. For the time being, use your brower’s back button to get back to this page.

Yes, some photos are larger than others.

THE EVENT I’D BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO for the past month was the Toronto debut of Norwegian electro-jazz collective Jaga Jazzist at the Harbourfront last night as part of the Beats, Breaks and Culture: Toronto Electronic Music Festival. Without a doubt, the best live band I’ve seen this year, and not just because they’re one of my favourites. I took the wife and the boy with me; her, because she loves the band too, and well, it was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while; him, because he’s a fan of “Kitty Wu”, the opening track on their disc _The Stix_. He likes some of their other stuff too.

We arrived a bit early so that we could grab a bite to eat and nose around some of the stalls set up. We wound up meeting the group’s drummer/bandleader, Martin Horntveth, and let him know of the little fan’s appreciation of the Wu. Just to give you some insight on the boy’s ear, a live version of said song appears on the group’s recently released _Day_ EP. Within the first minute of hearing it, he lets me know that “this is a different version.” Sniff, sniff [dry away the wee tear]. That’s my boy! The coolest was that our pre-show meeting was announced to the crowd and “Kitty Wu” was dedicated to our wee man. Does that rock or what?

On the way back to the car, a stray balloon was adopted and brought home. His master decided to name it “Cat Willie, the green balloon.” In fun, dad-like fashion, I brought out the Sharpie, drew a face on it and had ‘im talkin’ trash to great laughter. Sadly, the family’s new addition had quickly deflated overnight. Time to buy a bag of party favours and brush up on those silly cartoon faces I used to draw all over my notebooks in grade school.