Sunday, September 06, 2009

Raw Fun at Raw Sugar

On Friday night, local bloggers gathered at the Raw Sugar café in the Dalhousie neighbourhood. Zoom also blogged the night, with links to various attendees' blogs.

The event was ostensibly to celebrate the opening of Milan's photo show at the Café. Hella Stella also performed a couple of songs in anticipation of the upcoming broadcast of her performance on Vinyl Café.

Here is Hella Stella getting her banjo ready, as Milan ghosts into frame:



But the highlight of the night was certainly the performance
by local the brain-tickling troupe, Astronaut Love Triangle.

I had heard about them before, and wasn't sure if I would be terrified or delighted. Well, they are terribly delightful.

I made a point of not taking too many photos, because typically at the end of the night you end up with a bunch of photos that all look the same. This is not a wise tactic with Astronaut Love Triangle (though most of the time I was too busy enjoying myself--gasp!--to think to take a photo).

Many of the other bloggers' shots were taken with flash. But Mr. Gordon is not technically a member of ALT, and those photos seem to sanitize the warm atmosphere of the performance. Here is my photo with no flash:

ALT's songs are feasts for the imagination. At times abstract and experimental-artsy, but not the least bit pretentious, and always down-to-earth.

With all the things going on in Side Effects, the piano is only occasionally noticeable. This is a good thing; it serves as a resting place to gather your thoughts before shooting your ears back between the three vocalists. Definitely one of the better list songs I've heard, and until Friday night, the best list song I hadn't.

Ponzi brings with it a great metaphor for ALT: the implied references to pyramid schemes describe a figure that is triangular, yet has four sides (plus base), just as ALT is a triangle with four members. A brilliant act of subtle self-reference.

Blogger meet-ups are the best form of brain candy, because of the inevitable mental acrobatics required to navigate the multiple persona of the various attendees. Tragically, it's hard to understand this if you aren't there, because most of what goes on isn't documented out of fear of revealing a secret identity!

- RG>

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a clever deconstruction of Ponzi! Leave it to you.
"Twas, as always good to see you again and to meet up for brunch the next day. I always have a lot of trouble marrying the real life blogger with the blog, so I try to compartmentalize them into 2 separate entitites in my mind.

David Scrimshaw said...

RG!

We always love it when somebody gets us, but you've gone beyond that, you get us better than we get us.

RealGrouchy said...

XUP - I think quantum physicists refer to it as "superposition."

David - I was having some great conversations with your subconscious that night; you should have been there!

- RG>

Aggie said...

RG - you've managed to tap into our inner wankiness. I'm impressed!

Stella said...

Nice to see you again RG. I like the way my banjo looks in your picture!

I think ALT should be the house band of blogger meetups, yes?

RealGrouchy said...

Thanks, Aggie; you're too kind. No really. Much too kind. Really, really uncomfortable. Bordering on creepy. I'm, uh... going over here to talk to Stella now...

Stella - I agree, they certainly own the house. Feel free to steal the photo. I considered cropping it, but that made you look lonely.

- RG>

Milan said...

Due to a delay with the next artist, my photo show will be up for a few more days. The prints are also on sale until the end of the show.