After a trip to the barn (short ride on Mitzi, mostly bending, and at one point I looked down and saw bear tracks in the mud at one end of the arena!) I'm in at work for a minute. I didn't feel like firing up the laptop in the office so I'm using a public computer, which has a mighty sticky keyboard. My apologies for typos involving several words all strung together!

Okay, so a bunch of us got together last night for the battle of the bands at the Moustache. I got together with Jeff and Tammy and a few of their friends for dinner at a Japanese place in our neighbourhood, and then most of us piled into Silver and went downtown. We met my brother there, although when we got to the Moustache we doubted our ability to find anybody at all--the place was so crowded I wondered what the fire marshall would have to say about it. Denise, one of Jeff and Tammy's friends, describes herself as a "table vulture"--great at finding tables whose owners are just about to vacate them, but even she was stymied. She did, however, find us a sort of an eddy a little out of the main traffic pattern where we could stand and watch the action. When we looked around we found ourselves pretty much right next to the table Gloryhound was sitting at with a bunch of their friends and family so, as Jeff remarked, "at least they'll believe us when we tell them we showed up!" And then Tammy spotted my brother and we waved him over, so the gang was all there.

( Further details, if you're interested. )

It was about two by that time so my brother wished us a good night and vanished, and then we got ourselves together to go. It was still noisy and crowded when Gloryhound and their folks left so we didn't speak to them, so I guess I'll have to congratulate them on Tuesday night--results apart, they did a great job. Jeff's question was "so when can we look for the record?" I told him I didn't know but recording was ongoing, which he was pleased to hear. I'm sure he hopes they move faster on that than Carmen Townsend!

Dunno if this is something we'll be doing again next year, but it was pretty exciting and a lot of fun to follow.

Okay--the Battle of the Bands finale happened last night at Your Father's Moustache. Just to get the suspense out of the way right now, the winning band was Mike Trask and Mudhill. They were really good, the lead singer had a vibe that sort of reminded me of Buck 65, although I have no idea why, and they came onstage drinking out of antifreeze jugs and then reminded us not to let our pets drink antifreeze. Jeff is convinced they won "because they had a moral!"

No, seriously, very good band, and luckily this week the sound was somewhat better so you could actually sort of tell what everyone was supposed to sound like.

We got tied up at dinner so we arrived late and missed the first two songs by Ryan Mcgrath and the woodenhouse, which was disappointing but they have a lot of shows listed on their MySpace so I'm not too crushed--we'll meet again. Dirty Poets' lead singer was apparently once in a metal band a couple of the people with us used to go see a lot, and you know, I can imagine that guy busting out the Cookie Monster death metal voice. Dirty Poets is heavy and features a viola player (I am told it was a viola and not a large violin) and by the end of their set we decided their genre was sort of gypsy metal. Stray Satellite was also good, featured a guitar player we decided looked like Russell Crowe in his much younger, non-cell-phone-throwing days. And last time I didn't really take to The Sorrys because they suffered a LOT in the sound mix and seemed uncomfortable, but then due to the wonders of the Internet I've actually been in contact with their lead singer, who seems like a cool guy, and that made me want to like them and I'm only saying this because last night I actually really did, you could hear them a lot better and their second and fourth songs especially came over really well. The whole gang I was with noticed a sort of British thing going on, possibly because of the shout-sing thing the lead singer does (it's a style, I'm not complaining) and they seemed to be having fun.

And this computer is about to shut down (public library) so I'll just add that Gloryhound sounded good, played "See You Round," "Free Of You," "Long Arm" (good idea, I thought, having two good singers) and "Far Behind" which is Jeff's favourite of theirs. You could hear everyone and they represented themselves very well.

More another time!

Gloryhound & the Skyhawks @ Battle Of the Bands.

Stolen from YouTube (have I mentioned that I love YouTube) and I apologize in advance for the sound quality. I may have mentioned the sound sucking. Still, it's fun to have this!

Oh--and with regard to the poster's caption on the video, this is from the qualifying round. The finals aren't until Saturday.

ETA: How much do I love YouTube? There are actually several more videos here. Cool!

Okay. After delays caused by a crapped-out sound system (and more on that in a moment), a snowstorm, and some sort of communication breakdown, Gloryhound & the Skyhawks managed to play their Battle of the Bands set Saturday night at Your Father's Moustache. Along with seven other bands. When I arrived it wasn't completely certain that everyone would actually get to play, which was frustrating to me, let alone the bands. But eventually assurances were offered and, because there were nearly twice as many bands playing this go-round as there should have been, the judges decided to put two acts from the night through to the finals.

( Ridiculous levels of detail about the whole thing behind the cut. I know, the suspense is killing you! )

Whew. So there we are. The finals, thanks to the earlier mishaps leading to cancellations, is on April 28th. I would not be surprised to find The Blank Stares as one of the wild cards.

Jeff and Tammy, if you did arrive and I didn't see you--sorry for not driving you home. But do mark that date on your calendar and we'll see what happens!