This link here ->>> http://www.myspace.com/chilliandsage <<<- yes that one. Click on it now. And listen to music. And become one of our elite (i.e. low) number of friends. You know you want to. I know we want you to, and that means more people want it, and you believe in democracy, right? Anyway, just go there. We have four of our songs on the player, and will cycle them maybe every month or so.
Our news this week mostly just involves our Monday performance - twelve songs in 45 minutes, all originals - which in turn could be best summarised as "Excellent, but a bit of an anticlimax". Many thanks to the people who came along to cheer. However, it was a case of being on first and thus getting a smaller share of the floating coffee-cafe audience - although we sure held their attention with what we did. Nothing much is likely to come of it; we'll have to go back several times to build up a reputation and get put on later in the evening. Which is fair enough.
We wrote another song, Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad, over the weekend and Sarah performed it as part of our set. And our Big Plan For World Domination has now been broken down into a number of S.M.A.R.T. goals... you know about this don't you? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely... Sarah has a most amusing story about my forgetting the exact acronym here.
Much love, Panda.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
The Empty Orchestra At Lindisfarne (Saturday 7 July 2007)
That sounds like a novel title doesn't it? All will be revealed. And a big welcome to Justine, who's reading the blog for the first time in ages, apparently. You slacker!
I now summon Mnemosyne, the muse of memory, in all her fashionable glory, who will remind me what we've done since June 19th. My suspicion is that we've done a lot, and are consequently exhausted. I shall just consult Mnemosyne's PDA to see what appointments she made for us...
Thursday June 19th: along to support Kim as she performed in Ceili Idol. Yes, I know. Even worse, it was in an unarguably Oirish Pub, Ceili's on Smithe. I can't honestly say we held our tongues; some of Kim's friends were in stitches at our various expressions of disgust. Among the many highlights of their menu was the Fighting Irish Steak Sandwich. For God's sake. Or the County Cork Calamari - because Cork is justly world-famous for its squid farms. I'm sure if I went to visit Cork I'd be asking to see them. (What is it about Ireland that everyone wants to be Irish? I hope Kim isn't too offended if she reads this, she is by no means the first person we've met who's in this boat, Abby being a prime example - but - if you're going to be attuned to, sympathetic with, devoted to, or otherwise expressing an interest in Ireland, wouldn't it be good to know (a) where it is? (b) that it's two countries, only one of which belongs to the United Kingdom? (c) why that is? (d) that pubs in Ireland aren't going to call themselves 'The Irish'? Et cetera.) Anyway, the place was horrible, so after entertaining the table with our precision decor-abuse, we gave up and concentrated on the music. There isn't too much to say about that. There were ten contestants, Kim went seventh and acquitted herself well, but events like this are all about getting the crowd going and bringing your friends, so the winning three were (1) the most talented person there, (2) a talentless freak with a bunch of friends, (3) a pigtailed blonde with a tight top and a pert attitude. Eh.
Friday June 20th: meal out with James & Susan. We meant to go to Kam's on Davie but it shuts at 9:30pm. So instead we went to a Greek place up the road whose name I forget. Everyone else seems to kinda detest it; it was okay for me. Back at midnight, all of us very sleepy, and we hadn't gotten around to any singing, so we just gave up by tacit mutual agreement, and so to bed.
Saturday June 23rd: (I think) - couch shopping with Susan. She drove us out to Grandview Highway and we tested about a hundred couches in three shops before making our selection. There was a couch entirely covered in blue denim! Sexy! We ended up with a very comfy dark-green couch, which to their credit arrived at our apartment less than two weeks later, and I'm sitting on it right now. Because it's my couch.
Sunday June 24th: have I mentioned that my mother's bear controls the weather? Well he does. His name is Bear and he can change traffic lights and weather patterns in your favour. Sarah didn't believe this until one day she was walking home in Littlehampton and she asked Bear to sort out the mild rain she was experiencing. As she wasn't on 'the list', Bear promptly made it snow on her. A very unhappy Sarah got me to put her on 'the list' and now Bear is very considerate. Possibly too considerate. What does this have to do with our activities on Sunday? We went to a 'Harmonic Overtones Singing Workshop' in Nanaimo, five blocks down from the Skytrain station. And it was a bit sunny on the way there, and the Skytrain is going East-ish at that point, so Sarah, who had forgotten her sunglasses, was a bit dazzled. So - as you would - she asked Bear if he could make it a little less sunny. Bear, obviously distracted by the thought of bedtime in the UK, moved some clouds around but this wasn't quite enough. He therefore offered to move the sun. How we laughed at this amusing deal.
Little did we know.
The workshop itself, well, I hesitate to comment on it lest Sarah, proofing this in my immediate future, is forced to recall all the horrible details, and turns on me to rend me flesh from bone. Suffice to say that the idea is you made a sound in your throat, and then with your tongue moving up and down the roof of your mouth, you change the shape of your throat to create a different vowel sound, which adds a second tone which you can control to create specific intervals.
It's all very interesting, technically, but it has no particular use outside of its own specific kind of singing. You won't be singing two lines in a choral piece, for example. Add to this that the teacher, while stunning in demonstrating the technique, was pretty rubbish at teaching it, and you have a recipe for an extremely irritating three hours.
By the end of which time, there was a rainstorm lashing the area like something out of the opening scenes of Flash Gordon. Seriously, more rain coming down harder than we've ever seen. And in our heads, there was the very apologetic voice of a small brown bear saying: "I'm sorry! I've put it back! I've put it back!"
Bear: do NOT. EVER. EVER! Move the sun again! Got it? Thank you!
Sarah growled all the way back up the hill to the Skytrain station. What a tumpy bunny!
I don't think anything much happened the next week. Which brings us to this week...
Monday July 2nd: we have evolved a Big Plan to do with our music. It's this: we want to be rich. It's that simple. We have songs and we have skills, we just keep giving them away, and giving our time away too. Not gonna get rich that way. So, the Big Plan is to start performing, songwriting, schmoozing, and generally making an effort in order to get ourselves profitable careers in music. This is a long-term plan with many stages, but the first one seemed pretty clear: go and find places to perform. The obvious candidates, considering that we want to show off our own songs, are the many open-mic nights held all around Vancouver. There's a list here: http://www.openmicvancouver.com. I investigated them as best I could online, and we chose the Backstage Lounge on Granville Island as a starting point.
We got to the venue at about 8:15pm and signed ourselves up on the list to perform fourth. Just as well we did, as when we returned for the starting time of 10pm after a meal and a chill-out, we found the list was now full down to 13th place. It didn't quite start on time, but we were up there by sometime past 11pm. They had a very nice grand piano, and we performed Love, Dance & Sing and I Want To Be A Panda - to an audience of about ten, none of whom were really listening. The event was a bit of an audience-free zone, really, with the corresponding lack of feedback. Mildly disheartening if taken that way, but as Sarah pointed out, you can't expect everything to be wonderful.
However, on the plus side, two people there invited us to subsequent open-mic nights, one of which was on...
Tuesday July 3rd: ... at the Wired Monk cafe on 4th and Trafalgar. This meant a slightly inconvenient bus-trip with a keyboard and stand under our arms, since the guy, David, advised us that there was no piano or keyboard in situ. But we trogged there, we had a snack, and we went on second, playing I'll Rescue You, Fireflies, and I Want To Be A Panda to an audience of about twenty. This went down much more like it, with definite whoops and sincere applause. (It's fun but a little weird to sing I'll Rescue You as really it's Alexis's song. You should go buy a copy from Alexis's website.)
Generally the music at the Wired Monk was much better than at the Backstage Lounge, and several people said nice things, including a singer/guitarist called Tony with whom we had an excellent long chat. The best part was as we left, though. I went over to thank David and he invited us back to perform on the following Monday night, which is the Wired Monk's 'best of open mic' evening - and we've been asked to do a 45-minute set! Erk! So this weekend we're doing a lot of thinking and rehearsing! I probably ought not even to be taking time out of it to write this...!
And that's almost everything except for Friday July 6th, last night, when we went out for a meal with James & Susan (and this time managed to reach Kam's before it closed) and then spent three hours back here singing. In that time we showed off the new song The Six Wives Of Henry The Eighth and the four of us put in some serious effort on Sarah's SATB arrangement of Air Conditioning, which already sounds not half bad. And is, naturally, sheer genius in its every particular.
So today we're feeling a bit peaky but we have only slightly over 48 hours to prepare for certainly our longest just-us performance and who knows, maybe an important one. The word has gone out to High Spirits and at Radical for people to come along. A report to follow after the event.
Wish us luck!
PS I forgot to explain the title but you're smart folks and I'm sure it all makes sense in retrospect.
I now summon Mnemosyne, the muse of memory, in all her fashionable glory, who will remind me what we've done since June 19th. My suspicion is that we've done a lot, and are consequently exhausted. I shall just consult Mnemosyne's PDA to see what appointments she made for us...
Thursday June 19th: along to support Kim as she performed in Ceili Idol. Yes, I know. Even worse, it was in an unarguably Oirish Pub, Ceili's on Smithe. I can't honestly say we held our tongues; some of Kim's friends were in stitches at our various expressions of disgust. Among the many highlights of their menu was the Fighting Irish Steak Sandwich. For God's sake. Or the County Cork Calamari - because Cork is justly world-famous for its squid farms. I'm sure if I went to visit Cork I'd be asking to see them. (What is it about Ireland that everyone wants to be Irish? I hope Kim isn't too offended if she reads this, she is by no means the first person we've met who's in this boat, Abby being a prime example - but - if you're going to be attuned to, sympathetic with, devoted to, or otherwise expressing an interest in Ireland, wouldn't it be good to know (a) where it is? (b) that it's two countries, only one of which belongs to the United Kingdom? (c) why that is? (d) that pubs in Ireland aren't going to call themselves 'The Irish
Friday June 20th: meal out with James & Susan. We meant to go to Kam's on Davie but it shuts at 9:30pm. So instead we went to a Greek place up the road whose name I forget. Everyone else seems to kinda detest it; it was okay for me. Back at midnight, all of us very sleepy, and we hadn't gotten around to any singing, so we just gave up by tacit mutual agreement, and so to bed.
Saturday June 23rd: (I think) - couch shopping with Susan. She drove us out to Grandview Highway and we tested about a hundred couches in three shops before making our selection. There was a couch entirely covered in blue denim! Sexy! We ended up with a very comfy dark-green couch, which to their credit arrived at our apartment less than two weeks later, and I'm sitting on it right now. Because it's my couch.
Sunday June 24th: have I mentioned that my mother's bear controls the weather? Well he does. His name is Bear and he can change traffic lights and weather patterns in your favour. Sarah didn't believe this until one day she was walking home in Littlehampton and she asked Bear to sort out the mild rain she was experiencing. As she wasn't on 'the list', Bear promptly made it snow on her. A very unhappy Sarah got me to put her on 'the list' and now Bear is very considerate. Possibly too considerate. What does this have to do with our activities on Sunday? We went to a 'Harmonic Overtones Singing Workshop' in Nanaimo, five blocks down from the Skytrain station. And it was a bit sunny on the way there, and the Skytrain is going East-ish at that point, so Sarah, who had forgotten her sunglasses, was a bit dazzled. So - as you would - she asked Bear if he could make it a little less sunny. Bear, obviously distracted by the thought of bedtime in the UK, moved some clouds around but this wasn't quite enough. He therefore offered to move the sun. How we laughed at this amusing deal.
Little did we know.
The workshop itself, well, I hesitate to comment on it lest Sarah, proofing this in my immediate future, is forced to recall all the horrible details, and turns on me to rend me flesh from bone. Suffice to say that the idea is you made a sound in your throat, and then with your tongue moving up and down the roof of your mouth, you change the shape of your throat to create a different vowel sound, which adds a second tone which you can control to create specific intervals.
It's all very interesting, technically, but it has no particular use outside of its own specific kind of singing. You won't be singing two lines in a choral piece, for example. Add to this that the teacher, while stunning in demonstrating the technique, was pretty rubbish at teaching it, and you have a recipe for an extremely irritating three hours.
By the end of which time, there was a rainstorm lashing the area like something out of the opening scenes of Flash Gordon. Seriously, more rain coming down harder than we've ever seen. And in our heads, there was the very apologetic voice of a small brown bear saying: "I'm sorry! I've put it back! I've put it back!"
Bear: do NOT. EVER. EVER! Move the sun again! Got it? Thank you!
Sarah growled all the way back up the hill to the Skytrain station. What a tumpy bunny!
I don't think anything much happened the next week. Which brings us to this week...
Monday July 2nd: we have evolved a Big Plan to do with our music. It's this: we want to be rich. It's that simple. We have songs and we have skills, we just keep giving them away, and giving our time away too. Not gonna get rich that way. So, the Big Plan is to start performing, songwriting, schmoozing, and generally making an effort in order to get ourselves profitable careers in music. This is a long-term plan with many stages, but the first one seemed pretty clear: go and find places to perform. The obvious candidates, considering that we want to show off our own songs, are the many open-mic nights held all around Vancouver. There's a list here: http://www.openmicvancouver.com. I investigated them as best I could online, and we chose the Backstage Lounge on Granville Island as a starting point.
We got to the venue at about 8:15pm and signed ourselves up on the list to perform fourth. Just as well we did, as when we returned for the starting time of 10pm after a meal and a chill-out, we found the list was now full down to 13th place. It didn't quite start on time, but we were up there by sometime past 11pm. They had a very nice grand piano, and we performed Love, Dance & Sing and I Want To Be A Panda - to an audience of about ten, none of whom were really listening. The event was a bit of an audience-free zone, really, with the corresponding lack of feedback. Mildly disheartening if taken that way, but as Sarah pointed out, you can't expect everything to be wonderful.
However, on the plus side, two people there invited us to subsequent open-mic nights, one of which was on...
Tuesday July 3rd: ... at the Wired Monk cafe on 4th and Trafalgar. This meant a slightly inconvenient bus-trip with a keyboard and stand under our arms, since the guy, David, advised us that there was no piano or keyboard in situ. But we trogged there, we had a snack, and we went on second, playing I'll Rescue You, Fireflies, and I Want To Be A Panda to an audience of about twenty. This went down much more like it, with definite whoops and sincere applause. (It's fun but a little weird to sing I'll Rescue You as really it's Alexis's song. You should go buy a copy from Alexis's website.)
Generally the music at the Wired Monk was much better than at the Backstage Lounge, and several people said nice things, including a singer/guitarist called Tony with whom we had an excellent long chat. The best part was as we left, though. I went over to thank David and he invited us back to perform on the following Monday night, which is the Wired Monk's 'best of open mic' evening - and we've been asked to do a 45-minute set! Erk! So this weekend we're doing a lot of thinking and rehearsing! I probably ought not even to be taking time out of it to write this...!
And that's almost everything except for Friday July 6th, last night, when we went out for a meal with James & Susan (and this time managed to reach Kam's before it closed) and then spent three hours back here singing. In that time we showed off the new song The Six Wives Of Henry The Eighth and the four of us put in some serious effort on Sarah's SATB arrangement of Air Conditioning, which already sounds not half bad. And is, naturally, sheer genius in its every particular.
So today we're feeling a bit peaky but we have only slightly over 48 hours to prepare for certainly our longest just-us performance and who knows, maybe an important one. The word has gone out to High Spirits and at Radical for people to come along. A report to follow after the event.
Wish us luck!
PS I forgot to explain the title but you're smart folks and I'm sure it all makes sense in retrospect.
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