To Beard or Not to Beard

I am thinking of doing the beard thing again to keep myself warm while taking the bus.
Besides the obvious good reasons of making me more of a hipster and upping my indie cred these demonstrations are really helping me make up my mind.

Here are a few good reasons to have a beard:And of course.....

Songwriters Circle

On Monday night I took a group of friends downtown to the Library and Archives building for a neat little concert that was part of the Ottawa Writers Festival. Not being a writer, I had hardly taken notice of this festival. This sounded interesting enough though and having missed the Great Lake Swimmers show on Friday I sure felt like I needed a concert. Plus Justin Rutledge was there so that pretty much sealed the deal for me. The other two artists were Glenn Noutio and Kyrie Kristmanson.
I really had no idea what it was going to be like but it turned out to be quite an intimate and informal affair of wine sipping and trading song writing info between the artists. After waiting for Junot Díaz to finish a reading from his new book 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' we were let in to the auditorium and introduced to the artists. Glenn Noutio, since he is a super-gay guy, had to make that obvious every time he opened his mouth. I know not all gay guys are like that but really so many are. We know you are gay, now stop reminding us. Kyrie Kristmanson has this amazing voice and she sang a couple a capella and the rest with a guy on double bass. I bought her cd even though it did not have 'Blackwind' on it. Check her out here. Justin was, of course, amazing with his strong voice and sweet guitar. Check out some of his stuff here.They took turns performing and talking about the lyrics and how the songs came to be. I love hearing that kind of background. To me it makes the songs mean something more. I get a deeper satisfaction from them. It turns out that Kristmanson is studying music in Lyon, France. She is transposing some of the first real recorded non-religious music into a more modern playable style. It was written by wives of men who were off in the crusades and apparently it is often said that these 40 women invented love and courtship as we know it today. Rutledge is currently working on a play/reading of a new book by that famous Canadian author whose name is escaping me right now. Was it Ondatje? Anyway, he wrote some songs for one of the characters.

Overall it was a great night although a reaction from one of my friends was 'I liked my Backstreet Boys concert better'. Read into that however you want. It wasn't really a true concert though. But I did like it better than any Backstreet Boys music I have ever heard.

These pictures are courtesy of Lenny Wu (a fellow Radio3 listener and blogger)

How Facebook was Invented

This is how facebook was invented.
from ApeLad.

Pretty bird, yeah pretty bird

I ran across this article about a spider catching a bird in its web and eating it. This, of course, happened in Australia where it is normal to be attacked by insanely huge arachnids.
Now excuse me while I go and kill that spider in my kitchen.

A lesson learned....don't wait for people

We waited to long for some people to make up their minds and now the Great Lake Swimmers show is sold out. I guess we weren't the only ones blown away by the awesome performance with Basia Bulat the last time the played at the Black Sheep.
It will be such an awesome show.
Next time I am just going to buy the tickets for myself and not bother trying to convince other people that they might will like it.

On a brighter note we may get to see Justin Rutledge on Monday night with Kyrie Kristmanson (kind of like Fiest) as part of the Ottawa Writer's Festival. This show is right downtown so hopefully it isn't sold out......

Also on a brighter note, I picked up two cds tonight. Imogen Heap's Speak for Yourself and Kathleen Edward's Polaris nominated 'Asking for Flowers'. Both are fantastic.

Steal This DRM-Free Comic

Thank you xkcd. This is one of my favourite web comics and this most recent strip agrees with my view on this situation perfectly.
It is something that our conservative government regrettably is not agreeing with. And for that we can thank the Americans (not the Danes).
Down with Itunes! I'm with AC/DC on this one!

400% More Caribou

In reference to my previous post about the Polaris winner, apparently his cd sales are up 400% according to Radio3. It was sold out in the entire city of Vancouver and also broke into the Top 30 on Itunes which is no easy feat when you look at the usual bands that are up there.
Not bad for a guy from small town Ontario.