One of the things I sorely miss about Ottawa living is the abundance of live musical thrills. Jazz fest under the stars in the summer, concerts of up and comers at grimy bars full of people looking the same trying to look different and hockey stadium sellout shows that cost way too much.
Right after I moved, Kanye West played an outdoor show, and I was aching to see him live. My little sister went with my Dad (she’s still young enough that his company was not embarrassing). She called me from her cell phone and held it up towards the speakers so that from 5,500 km away I could hear the screaming fans, pounding base and lyrical rapidity of Kanye’s performance of Gold Digger. It was nowhere near as cool as being there, but it wasn’t a half-bad way to get a sense of the show I was missing.
Since then my sister called me from the Toronto Spice Girls Concert and I nearly lost my mind. I was baby spice at my friends’ grade 7 Spice Girls sleepover party, and we sang Spice Girls songs at the Junior High talent show. I remember playing their CD to my then 3-year-old sister, teaching her the words to “Stop.” And there I was a few weeks ago listening to them sing “Wannabe” a decade after their prime with my 13-year-old sister sitting in the 100-section, and me sitting on my bed.
Last night my brother called me from the Justin Nozuka concert in Ottawa at Babylon, which he attended with his girlfriend and my sister. I clued him in to the tour date after checking with doubtful hope that Justin Nozuka would for some reason play a Whitehorse show. No suck luck. But hearing him strum and sing the words to my new favourite song “After Tonight,” I melted both at the magical tune and my siblings’ heart-warming efforts to make me feel included.
The cell-phone can never come close to duplicating the tears-to-my-eyes feeling of hearing Coldplay perform Clocks in a giant arena, nor the beauty of Jason Mraz sitting cross-legged on a purple round cushion playing “Plane.” Those are memories I’ll just have to hold onto until I’m once again in a musical tour date locale.
But I thank my family for making me feel like I’m not so far away.

Labels: family, music, Ottawa

All my friends knew the words to Rent songs, starting in grade 5 when one of them must have seen it in Toronto, or got their hands on a CD (or was it still tapes then?) of the soundtrack. I didn’t appreciate the “light my candle” references, and I didn’t think it was necessary to ‘moo’ with anybody because I ad no idea what Rent was. Some musical, I guess.
A tour of it came through Ottawa when we were in grade 12, and so many people liked it, I figured it’d be worth the $40 or so to see it with my diehard Rent fan friends. They brought along their CDs, and blared the soundtrack from my parent’s Subaru all the way downtown. I didn’t let on that I still had never seen it. I tried to sing along the way we all try to do when we don’t really know the words: I kept my voice low and faked each syllable, hoping decibel-breaching level of my friends’ singalong would drown me out.
We sat in our seats, and saw there was an empty balcony spot empty. Using our developed smarmy charismatic teenage girl skills, we filled up the balcony spot with our giggles, coats, jean purses and Orangina.
The show started. I recognized songs from my friends’ impromptu concerts, although these performers hit more ear-pleasing notes. :) The intermission came and the lights came up and I was lost. What had just happened? Some struggling artists had sang some songs and I know it was around Christmastime because of the stage props, but otherwise, I had no idea what was going on. Why did she need her candle lit? And were they really singing about killing a dog?
The play ended and all I could gather was that one of them had died, but even that was hard to “get” because the scene was played out with wind-blown white sheets, symbolic dancing and subsequent actors’ grief.
We left and I tried to play scenes over in my head, figuring out what Rent was about and secondly, why people liked a play that was so convoluted and difficult to understand.
Internet was around at this point, so when I got home, I researched Rent plot synopses. I really should have done that before the show, because a light bulb went off in my head, “oooh, they had AIDS...”
I read a few more and finally pieced together critics’ descriptions with the scenes I had just observed. It made sense, but my initial confusion was not saved, and I remained a tentative fan of Rent, for the sake of my friends.
It really wasn’t until the movie came out (this admission is lame and so not-cultured of me, I know) that I saw detail, facial expressions and finally understood the hidden meanings to things. “Oh! she dropped her bag of drugs...”
And it was like an awakening. As the movie came to an end I actually cried at the funeral and gave a little cheer when Mimi woke up. It was so nice to have some more clues, like figuring out who April was, and that Maureen was protesting something I now understood.
Either way, the DVD came out and I watched it and the behind the scenes features as I usually do. It was then I learned of the story of Jon Larson and the whole movie/play was elevated to a whole new level of appreciation in my mental realm of understanding.
The poor dude was writing about the life around him in poor New York: AIDS, poverty, Jewishness, making it. He based it on Puccini’s La Boheme, sure enough, but the play was his life, his songs, seven years of his work. And then right before it was supposed to open, he died of a heart aneurysm. He didn’t even get to see the labour of his love play for an audience.
Rent’s near 12-year Broadway run is scheduled to end, the New York Times told me today. Ticket sales are down and the diehard Rent head lineups aren’t as long every morning. (I know my friends would totally be in that line if we lived in Brooklyn).
It made me kind of sad that it won’t keep playing (live on Broadway, anyway). But at least now, community and high school theaters can start performing it, making it more accessible to the people who will likely “get” the play better than I. I hope.
So this is my ode to Rent, the songs I now sing in the shower and while stirring pasta in my kitchen. The words to which I reaad from my own soundtrack CD jacket and memorized.

Labels: high school, music

Wintertime, and the living is...harder. Grocery carts now must manoeuvre over bumpy snow, my car windows fog and then ice up in a frustrating daily cycle, the produce flat out sucks and when I leave the house, I look like the Michelin man, all bundled up.
When I do outdoor interviews, I take my pencil, because pens freeze up and then I can’t do said interviews. My oil heating bills come in at a whopping $500, and just when I need my sun friend the most, I cannot tan in the middle of a swimming pool because the sun is only up 5 hours a day and also it is usually -30 degrees Celsius.
That said, I have found some things I file under the Cheap Thrills heading in my brain’s organization system. Things that tickle my pickle (I never thought I’d be the kind of person to use that saying), that cost little and that surprise me.
Here, in no particular order, are the cheap thrills of the morning:
1- Finding the box of English Breakfast tea just when I thought a cup of tea at breakfast would be perfect.
2- Listening to the new Hilary Duff album on my way to work, singing along to “With Love” and even moving my head and shoulders as if I am performing, and the guy in the red truck next to me isn’t staring.
3- Laughing as a giant Grate Dane comes barreling at my puppy on our walk this morning, his owner hollering from about 100 metres away, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly” and my puppy whines and hides behind me. What a wuss! So I clearly moved out of the way and let this Grate Dane named Charlie run full throttle at Skylar and slobber all over her as she looks at me with fear. She’s fine.
4- The absolute silence surrounding my mountain house.
5- Ripping off yesterday’s page of my Living Green page-a-day desk calendar. It’s so fun, this little ritual, and to see what today’s tip will be. Maybe I won’t take reusable grocery bags with me to the store every time (gotta have something to pick up dog poop!) but it’s a thrill. :)
6- Satsuma body wash and body butter. A wonderful pick-me-up that keeps smelling awesome. It’s thrilling because of its sweet smell and because there is no Body Shop up here, so it kind of counts as a luxury.
It’s only 10 a.m. and I’m sure there’ll me many more cheap thrills before day is done. But it’s much more fun to sit and thin about those than to get back to work, which I must now do. Editor will notice if I’m typing all morning and don’t actually hand in a story.

Labels: music, puppy, Whitehorse, winter

Labels: music