Iggy Pop is a man on a mission. His own mission, that is. What it is, only he is privy to it.
I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don’t believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet. Iggy Pop
I’ve never been a real big Iggy Pop lover but the man on stage is raw and inspiring. He work with the stooges is well known and now the man and his band is set to play in Toronto at the Yonge-Dundas Square stage. It’s all part of the NXNE Festival concert line up this year.
I’d love to go and check his show out live tonight but I have previous plans for today that cannot be changed! I just found out about the show yesterday morning after coming home from an early doctors appointment down the street from Yonge-Dundas Square.
I was walking to the subway to go home and get ready for work when I saw the stage being set up, so I had a few minutes to spare, so I just walked around a bit. I saw this cool older couple sitting a this outside venue at a table and they were having a smoke and a coffee. So I walked up to them and asked then what was up and they told me of the show. Damn, not enough time to change our plans.
Has anyone out there seen these guys live? Am I nuts for not ditching my plans today for the chance to see the great Iggy Pop and the New Stooges play that is 7.9 km (4.9 miles) away?
Our new Kindle 2 eBook Reader showed up a day early and I couldn’t be more excited! Well truth be told, if a 1957 Strat was delivered in place of the Kindle then I guess I’d be REALLY EXCITED! Sorry, just had to get that one out of my head.
After taking our dog Midnight out for her morning walk and just before giving her, her breakfast a UPS driver knocked on the door sending Midnight out of her mind. All I was thinking was how to keep her from waking my wife up with her barking! As I opened the door she ran out to investigate and welcome the driver with lots of licks, I actually know him from work. After all the commotion had ended he handed me a package and right there I knew that it was the kindle!
So my wife just got up and we opened the package. The packaging was easy to open and quite sturdy looking. The screen of our new Kindle instructed us to turn it on and the welcome screen showed up after taking a few seconds to load up the program.
I picked it up and I was the first one to turn a page on the Kindle – kind of cool! This thing reminds me of something from Star Track! The reader is set up for easy use if your a left or right handed readers. My wife then hit the button Aa that is directly to the right of the spacer bar on the Kindle’s keyboard. It activated a menu that allows you to initiate the Text-to-Speech software. You have the option to use a male or female voice. The default setting is set to use a male voice. Damn it sounds a lot like the genius Stephen Hawkings!
Later on today we are off to an appointment and hopefully we can download one of the new books that my wife had uploaded to her laptop yesterday before leaving. I know this is not music related post but when we start becoming more literate with this thing, we’ll try all the music related options that comes with it. Wish us luck!
I just met the legendary Nash The Slash the other day at a patio in my neighbourhood! Holy crap, it left me speechless for a second! Imagine that, another musical icon living in my neck of the woods?! My hand s are still shaking a bit believe it or not.
It all started off as just a regular outing. My wife and favorite brother in law Terry were coming back from taking our dog midnight for a swim at Cherry Beach. After the walk we wanted to get a little something to eat on a patio, trying to take full advantage of the current warm spell that we we experiencing in our area. Going to Cherry Beach we drove along Queen St E. taking in all the pedestrian traffic just wanting to shake off some of the winter blues.
We drove past this legendary restaurant that has a great patio that was originally called Stratengers. Now it’s called Stratengers Bar & Restaurant. When it was a bar, we went there to check out the great line up of bands that were always playing there. This is the bar that I did some fabulous video work of a band called The Big Kahuna.
After Midnight’s swim and walk along the beach, we decided that this would be the best place to have a late snack. When we finally arrived there, we quickly located a prime location on the patio and sat down. After we ordered a menu and a drink I went up to the little boys room. While walking upstairs, I noticed this tiny cut away in the wall that had some glass covering it. When I stopped to investigate it I realized that it was a shrine to great Nash the Slash! It had some neat pictures, media/website info and a collection of his work.
I’ve read on line before that this was one of his favorite haunts but that was it. Before going back out to the patio I ran into someone who worked there and inquired about Nash. He told me that he came in quite frequently around this time of the day and that he’d love to chat with me if I wanted. He also said that he’d probably talk to me for hours if I had the time. Holy crap, he shouldn’t of told me about that!
With a skip in my stride, that of a little kid just before Christmas, off I went to tell my clan about what I had just found inside. I was now on the hunt for the illusive Nash the Slash on the exact same patio that I was in.
The sun was just starting to set below the top of the roof of the house across the street and we knew that very soon it would be getting cold so we asked for the bill and began to get ready to leave. BUT I HADN’T SEEN NASH YET, in a child like voice in my mind but my wife knew what was going on inside my old brain box!
As I began to untie my little dog Midnight from the patio railing, the owner came up and tapped me on the back and shook my hand. He said, so you’re the one that wants to met Nash? Well here he is! I then turned around and THERE HE WAS! I stood there speechless for the first time in a long while.
He said Hi, I’m Nash. I immediately took off my sun glasses and started babbling something to him. I was in shock.
During a gig at The Edge in the late ’70’s to raise awareness of the threat from the Three Mile Island disaster, he walked on stage wearing bandages dipped in phosphorous paint and exclaimed: “look, this is what happens to you”. The bandages became his trademark.
Imagine that, right there in front of me was the guy that in my mind, made the band FM so fascinating to listen to. Playing an electric violin and mandolin? I had never thought about electrifying instruments like that before. Remember this was in the late 70’s mind you. I understand that he is such a force of musical nature in his own rite but it was with the band FM that exposed me to his musical genius.
As a impressionable young guitarist, I can’t remember how many times that I placed my parents stereo speakers out the front windows of their home for all the neighbourhood to hear. Blasting the entire album Black Noise through it and literally soaking up all their musical prowess. Often while listening to this album I tried to focus in on individual tracks to pick out what it was that each member from the band was playing. It was so foreign to me at the time. I ate it up whole and then attempted to spit it out through my guitar playing. Most of my buddies thought that I had either left the planet or that I was really on to something here.
So thanx for listening to me ramble on for many a paragraph. I know that I have not been all that active on this and on my other blogs but I guess that after many years of playing and blogging it can burn you out after a while. I hope to have re-energized my battery’s engine and resume more work
![The Strat Pack: Live in Concert - 50 Years of the Fender Stratocaster [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kJ5kV3DpL._SL75_.jpg "The Strat Pack: Live in Concert - 50 Years of the Fender Stratocaster [Blu-ray]")
![U2: 360° at the Rose Bowl [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41xqc189opL._SL75_.jpg "U2: 360° at the Rose Bowl [Blu-ray]")
![There Goes the Neighborhood [Explicit]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611eMbyCPVL._SL75_.jpg "There Goes the Neighborhood [Explicit]")
