First thing I did was wake up at 7:30 and notice that it was raining outside. That didn't bother me; I was in too good a mood. I wallahi thought to myself then "I hope they play Made Again tonight". See, I was going to a Marillion concert that night in Montreal. For those of you who don't know, Made Again is the last song from my favourite album ever, Brave. It is also far and away my favourite love song ever. I think it is, as a whole, both serene and ecstatic, confident and uncertain and all those other paradoxes on the topic that seem nearly impossible to properly capture in a song.
So, after that I promptly rolled over and went to sleep for another three hours.
Of course, I didn't just book it for Montreal; that would be a waste of a few hours. Sabrina introduced me to Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not its unfathomably groovy ancestor), which I actually won't hear hate for thus far. As AG and I have made clear by our intentions to start a party with an anti-robot platform, we don't like robots. So a show with robots as the bad guys gets points. Plus, it's got a classic grisled vet, who is my second favourite character archetype, right beside the Tank. Oh, and possibly the genius, but the genius in Battlestar is a dingus.
I guess I also decided that I didn't want to leave for Montreal with my dignity intact, as I decided to get shown up by a giant puzzle. Okay, that's not fair; that was the day before. I was looking for about 40 minutes for a piece with a Granny on it, and after swearing more than a few oaths of retribution it turns out I wasn't even the one to find her.
So sooner or later I booked it and left Purcell in charge of the house. Don't ask me how he scored that bit, but he did. I was in the Audi with AG and the Old Man. AG and I had our hate on TOO nicely, and more than a few egos would have been mutilated by Two Brothers: One Destiny had they only heard us. Turns out we didn't make it to the signing, but I wasn't that let down.
AG and I got in the venue and got awesome seats on this staircase that was both close to the front and right by the bar. Now, guess who I found.
Yeah, so Alex made it up. Man, was I surprised to see him. But we got our rap on pretty nicely, and it was good to catch up.
So, my folks being the great people they are allowed AG and I to pillage the bar as we saw fit. It was great. We got our swerve on pretty properly.
The first guy on was the keyboardist for Rufus Wainright. He was actually pretty good. Then Marillion came on.
What a show! Honestly, I'm not just saying that too. The atmosphere was great and the song selection was off the chain. We got Sugar Mice, Enlightened, part of Ocean Cloud, Cover My Eyes and Dry Land, to name a few. That late in the show AG and I were nicely swerved and were yelling for Made Again at the top of our lungs. There were these dinguses beside us yelling for Beautiful too. So, they come out for the last encore and the last song they play, after our battle with the dinguses was Made Again. I almost cried. It was just awesome.
Over the course of the night AG and I were throwing up the Bulldoggz salute some wicked. By the end of the show, after the band booked it, we, wallahi, got a good portion of the crowd throwing up the salute! No jokes! ARR ARR ARR!! That blew my mind.
Oh, at the end of the show I shook Steve Hogarth's (the lead singer) hand. Got really close to the
stage too:
Yay! So AG and I booked it to a pizza place by our hotel and ordered two giant pizzas and took them back.
*Side Disclaimer* If you don't want to hear exactly what I think of you, don't let me drink. Just ask the Marillion Jacket Man, the Pizza Guy, AG, Humphery (or however you spell it) Bogart, and the bouncer at the show.
Anyways, when I got to the hotel I was still feeling pretty good. AG and I hated on some terrible TV movie and I sang a heart-warming version of "Ten Storey Love Song" by the Stone Roses while doing some dance moves that I picked up from the end of Hitch, which I had seen the day before. I've been all over the Stone Roses of late. So here's a publicity shot. Just so you all don't think we're totally tragic, the night did NOT end where the following picture might indicate. We were a lot more pulled together than that and did, in fact, sleep in seperate beds.
So that was day 1. The next day Dad, AG and I booked it down to Toronto for the Deep Purple show. First we went over to see easily my favourite cousin, Michael, who was also going to the show:
Why is he my favourite cousin? Take note of the Usual Suspects Megaman shirt. What a great guy.
Anyways, Deep Purple was great, though they weren't Marillion. AG and I still managed to get our swerves on though. After another classic show we rapped with Michael for a while and booked it back to the hotel where AG and I bombarded possibly the meanest looking black guy I have ever seen with takes. Then AG, Pops and I went to Fran's and munched out before crashing at 2:30 or something. Though not before AG and I had another heart-warming duet of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
For day 3, we went to a record store in Toronto with Dad and watched him buy himself $300 of father's day vinyl. Oh! He also bought us The Chronic and The Chronic 2001 instrumental on vinyl. w00t. There was also a good father-to-sons talk (Johnny went home after Marillion, bear in mind) considering it was Father's Day.
Okay, Dinner's on.
Say Hi to your Dads for me, and have a top 10er yourselves.
