Lunapads

Now for those of you who don’t know me - I’m a big music fan and tend to go to a lot of concerts…and this long weekend was no exception! It also happened to be my boyfriend’s birthday on Friday, so there was much to celebrate!

We started the weekend off with a lovely hike to Dog Mountain, get some fresh air before cramming ourselves in to the sweaty crowds. It’s become a birthday ritual of Dave’s and this is our view from the top, right at the edge of Suicide Bluffs - yikes!

More photos on Dave’s Flickr page.

Saturday night was a date with Devendra Banhart – a young musician with an old soul. He was raised in the woods by hippies and you can tell – long hair, long beard, and a folk-y mellowness to his tunes. We’ve been waiting for years to see him perform anywhere near Vancouver and so this concert was highly anticipated. Being in Vancouver means we are often the start of a band’s tour, or the end. In Devendra’s case it was the very start and I think he wasn’t yet in to the groove. He seemed somehow distracted and it took a long time for him to get in to his set. Once in, he mostly played new songs from his album that has yet to be released…so we couldn’t even hum along, let alone sing along. I wanted more of his familiar classics and so walked out feeling somewhat disappointed that one of my favourite musicians didn’t wow my socks off as I’d expected him to…but all the same I’m glad I got to experience him live.

Sunday night was a different vibe altogether. We went to see Gogol Bordello, the self-proclaimed gypsy punks. Their lead singer, Eugene Hutz, brings his Ukrainian roots to the forefront of their music, in both the instruments they use – fiddle and accordion - and with his awesome Slavic accent. Their show was an eccentric, up-tempo freak show! It was so much fun, everyone singing along, jumping up and down. The energy was high from start to finish and I bopped myself silly!

On rainy Monday we lazed about the house before heading out to the annual Victory Square Block Party. This square happens to be located in the Downtown Eastside (DTES), which if you have read anything about Vancouver, you’ll probably have heard mentioned as ‘the poorest postal code in Canada.’ It happens to be the place where the down-and-out of our city congregate – and where our city is focusing its ‘clean-up’ for the Olympics. But it is precisely for this reason that they hold this little block party there. It’s a free event and all the funds from the raffles and donation jars go towards the DTES Women’s Center. It’s an all day affair with local bands, of which we have plenty. I must admit we only dropped in to see Secret Mommy (aka Andy Dixon) and so only caught a couple bands before they went on. Secret Mommy was worth having to bike & stand in the rain – he usually works alone, being an electronic artist, doing creative albums such as ‘Very Rec’ which is made of a sampling of the sounds of different recreational areas (he even managed to make a song from a yoga studio!) His latest album, Plays, was made by sampling only acoustic sounds from his many musician friends, and then making an entirely electronic album from this. It’s a beautiful album and for this live show he got together a quintet and mixed it all live for us. Full of jittery squeaks and bleeps atop accordion and vocals. Maybe not made for everyone, but I’ve grown to love it!

And then the speedy bike home to dry ourselves off before settling down to continue the saga of Battlestar Galactica (I’m hooked!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 4:22 pm by Sandra and is filed under Books and Music Reviews, Local Happenings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.