I’ve just accepted an invitation to perform live on a web show, in two weeks – save Tuesday, March 19th, 8-9pm Cascadian/Pacific time (11-midnight Eastern) in your planners. More details soon!
ECCC this past weekend; I didn’t take photos, but did see some really awesome cosplay. My favourite was Bizzaro, a really old-school version, because who wears him? Someone who is huge and not conventionally attractive and decides to damned well own it.
Well played, sir. Well played.
I may’ve gone a bit overboard on loot
Also there were a whole fleet of Korras and every single one of them was awesome. I finally got a close-up look at Torrey’s Prince Zuko armour, and my god, the hammer work! Just lovely. She says it took her 14 hours just for the patterning; I’d’ve guessed longer.
Jhonen Vasquez’s standalone panel got scheduled badly, so he couldn’t talk about anything new – all that was embargoed until his publisher’s panel, a few hours later. But turns out he’s hilarious when having to wing it. Wendy and Richard Pini have a whole lot of things coming out in the very near future, only some of which they could quite talk about, but two of those are two new Wendy art books! One’s Art of Elfquest, of course, but the other is a solo non-Elfquest Wendy art book, which has been on a lot of peoples’ wish-lists for just ever.
POSTARRRRRRS
I took a break from ECCC to record the final interview for the podcast pilot! And I’ve been editing like crazy ever since. I’m aiming for MARCH 11TH as the premiere. This will be a difficult date but I’m goin’ for it.
In between taxes and show prep and and and.
Anna has some commentary on Marvel and DC and the superhero sect with which I’m sad to say I generally agree. I have a long goddamn history with comics, and watching the core material for so much awesome stuff end up focusing more and more on being wank material? We are not amused. Fortunately, there’s a lot of other, better work out there, too.
Oh awesome, the nwcMUSIC preview pages are up! Check all these out:
This is the landing page, kind of an overview of what’s going on and what we’re about. Plus it has this picture of The Screech sitting on Richard Glover’s head:
The Screech is the one on top
Here we have the concerts page, which has playable tracks from most of the people who have stage time. Not all, because some people don’t do that, which is totally cool. But most.
Workshops, events, and more workshops! Did I mention workshops? Also panel programming, we have that too.
Pass these around to anybody who might be coming, or thinking about coming, to Norwescon this year. I’m really pretty happy with where nwcMUSIC is going, and people have a good time once they find out about it, so let them know.
I am thinking really hard about starting a geekmusic podcast.
In fact, I’m thinking so hard about it that I want to do a pilot episode. The idea would be for it to be released in early March, before Norwescon. I could bring in a few people who are going to be at nwcMUSIC, so it’d serve a dual role – pre-event publicity and pilot episode! – while having a bunch of different people on, to keep it interesting. Then, maybe monthly.
I’ve already made a bumper.
What sorts of things would make you, personally, interested in listening to a geekmusic podcast? Yes, I’m looking for content ideas here, because I’ve never done a podcast before, and while once upon a time I was in radio, I didn’t do that kind of programming – I was a DJ at one station, in sports at another, and sports director at my college station. But no interviews.
(Yes, me being sports director is in fact hilarious. But we had the best women’s basketball coverage in the city, so take that.)
Playing some music? DIY? Interviews? About what, particularly? Other musicians not on the show? Vicious backbiting? History of geekmusic?
As most of you know pretty well by now, I run a small geekmusic festival, nwcMUSIC, as part of the Norwescon Science Fiction Convention. We’re two months out now, so WELCOME TO THE GRID:
nwcMUSIC 2013
There are so many things to talk about I don’t know where to start, even. MONSTARRS OF NERDCORE is a two-hour multiband nerdcore extravaganza, featuring Death*Star and Klopfenpop, and possibly a surprise. Yes, that’s Molly Lewis, making her debut at Norwescon on Saturday night, with Vixy & Tony as her backup band. Yes, that’s Hello The Future on Friday. Yes, Alexander James Adams will be doing one of his rare shows this year at our event. Yes, that’s Guest of Honour Catherine Asaro – who is also a musician as well as a writer and a brain surgeon research scientist, doing the Buckaroo Banzai/Hong Kong Cavaliers thing on Friday afternoon; CD Woodbury will be bringing in some of his friends as backup. And yes, that’s 13 hours of workshops and panel programming during the day, all with our determinedly DIY/participatory culture emphasis in mind.
Plus other artists I am so excited about I can’t even tell you. HeyLasFas? Pony Progrock. They released a concept album about the fall of Princess Luna, called Nightfall, and seriously it is amazing…
Now. Where. Were. We?
I’m not going to cover all this in one post, so I’ll talk about more in weeks to come. We have so much going on this year we had to make a hopefully-one-time exception to one of our rules, and overlap programming. And if you know me, you know how much I try to avoid that – but there just wasn’t any other way to fit it all in. Chiptunes, filk, Jpop, nerdcore, ponyrock… did I mention Leannan Sidhe’s CD release concert? Ah well, I’ll get to it next time.
As most of you know, I run nwcMUSIC, a geekmusic festival held as part of the Norwescon science fiction convention. It’s new, this’ll be our third year.
We have concerts during the evening, but during the daytime, we have participatory programming, including an intentionally silly talent contest (Cascadia’s Got Talent, which is really Cascadia’s Got a Gong Show, and if you want to look up The Gong Show, go ahead, I’ll wait.)
Back? Good. Cascadia’s Got Talent actually gives out prizes! Terrible, terrible prizes. But I have a rule: we give junk as awards, not garbage. Anything given away has to be what it says it is, and has to work, even our terrible, terrible vacation tours to Beautiful Downtown Kent’s Historic Warehouse District.
(For the record: it’s a pair of Metro ride-free tickets. BUT IT WORKS.)
We usually end up giving away a couple of albums, too. The one I’ll never beat was Slim Whitman: Yodelling, but I’m pretty happy with this year’s finds so far:
Nothing says Dream Along like The Stars and Stripes Forever on Steel Drum
I think Musical Treasures of Holland speaks for itself. Still in shrink wrap! But Dream Away with the US Navy Steel Band is something special. Monophonic TRUE HIGH FIDELITY. And you’ll enjoy the monophonic recording even more played back on both speakers of a stereo unit!
On the back of the album, they printed the microphones used, tape deck used, record master etching lathe model, and crossover circuit specs.
It still sounds like it was recorded in a washroom, but that’s not important. I think I kinda love these guys. <3
The album is visually pristine. It’s also been played, a lot – somebody loved this album. Side 1 played fine, but side 2… side 2 wouldn’t track, on my turntable. The tonearm just kind of slid across, hopping from groove to groove.
At first, I was hugely disappointed, but then I started screwing with tracking and skating controls – putting more and different weights and skews on the turntable’s pickup arm, basically – and it would play for a bit, faintly.
And then the needle would clog. Now, if you’ve never used a turntable, they work this way: a tiny artificial diamond is attached, facing down, at the base of a very small rigid metal rod. This diamond rests in the etched grooves in the vinyl (or other material) album service. Changes in the width and height of the groove create vibrations in the small rigid metal rod, which are converted via very small magnets attached to the rod and the tonearm head into very small electrical currents, which form the analogue sound signal.
(So really, records recorded early enough – off live etching techniques – are literally captured soundwaves. Think about that, it’s awesome. But I digress.)
A modern turntable pickup “needle.” Originally? Actually needles.
A needle clogging refers to the gem and metal rod picking up so much cruft from the album being played that it gets lifted out of the sound channel and can’t pick up anything anymore.
I cleaned this album conventionally before putting it on the turntable. The surface looks pristine. The grooves were filled with gunk, somehow. Not in a visible way, but in a way enough to clog the turntable needle.
It may disturb you to know that I fixed it. Quadrupled the tracking weight, skew and antiskating boosted to unhealthy levels; it probably wouldn’t’ve worked as well in a stereo recording, but I managed to use the needle on my turntable to clean out the grooves.
Which, as it turned out, smelt of cigarette smoke. The album itself didn’t. The record sleeve smells fine. But the gunk coming out… kind of like cigarette smoke.
Fossilised.
And only on one side! Side 1 was fine! I don’t get that part. Side 2… well, it took a lot of work. I was cleaning and clearing the needle four to six times every song, the first couple of times through.
Honestly, it felt like archeological excavation. It really did. Every time, I’d get a bit more sound. A faint fuzzy noise would slowly resolve into distinct instruments. New background instruments would appear. One track, I’m pretty sure, was recorded live; you can now just faintly hear what sounds like audience, in the background, a couple of times.
Or something that sounds like that, anyway.
And now? It plays fine. It still sounds like the classic Old Record – lots of crackle, tho’ not nearly so much as it originally had – but entirely listenable. It works now. And so, it’ll be a prize at nwcMUSIC’s Cascadia’s Got Talent.
All of which is a really long excuse to post this awesome graphic:
First: Wednesday’s DIY post is going to be special. We have a guest appearance by Pegasus-award-winner Jeff Bohnhoff, of Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff. Jeff has been performing for 30 years, and has recorded and engineered literally dozens of albums from the studio he built in California.
Jeff brings far more experience and theory to it than I have, but is still delivering an affordable approach to the topic. If you’re into DIY and home recording, you will want to read this column.
As for me; Anna and I are back from VCON! Being all the way out in Surrey, it was Far Far Away times this weekend – I mean, I had to take a bus to the Skytrain – but the hotel was nice, and we brought home the usual collection of books (via a Friday morning run into Vancouver proper), bagels (courtesy Geri, who drive two dozen out to us all the way from Kitsilano, omg thank you!) and cider! Yum.
Lots of kaiju programming this year, which we thoroughly enjoyed, and the El Rons were funny as usual. We had to leave too early to make the Turkey Readings, though! So sad. I love acting those out. Schedule those before Sunday afternoon next year, guys! Some of us have to catch trains. ;_;
There was an extended panel on the pulp aesthetic which talked I quite enjoyed as well; I have a theory now that a lot of what broke the Action Hero Scientist – alive in well in the 1930s, mostly dead by the early 1950s – was the Nazi movement and World War II. Seriously, I mean it; that whole Ubermench/superman thing was entirely the point, and I think they threw it out of fashion for decades.
Before you say Jonny Quest: Jonny Quest tried to square the circle. He had two dads (and no mom: exploitable), effectively; Race was the physical half of the adventurer, Dr. Quest (Sr.) was the scientist half, and Jonny, the child of both, was of an age where he wasn’t either yet, but had the potential to be both. It’s a nice finesse, and I think has a lot to do with why it works. (Despite all its very, very, many problems.)
(And before you say Superman qua Superman: I think Superman survived because he isn’t human. But even with that, he went from “super-evolved/optimised super-man,” the pinnacle of ubermench achievement, to, effectively, “otherworldly demigod.” It’s a different category.)
KNEEL before SUPERGOD, KING of SUPERDICKERY!
Strangely, I saw no music programming on the grid. At opening ceremonies, a couple of different people asked what was up with that, and it turns out that their music lead had had to drop out on short notice before the convention, as had a couple of their music pros, so: no filk! But they also said that spontaneous filk was welcome.
And since, as Anna put it, she “can’t take me anywhere,” I found VCON Programming Head after opening ceremonies. Her first words to me were, “NO MORE CHANGES,” so I said, “Just gimmie a room, whaddya got?” She hesitated until I added, “You don’t have to do anything. Just give me a room.”
So she did and I, um, kinda, fixed the hotel printer (you’re welcome, Sheraton Surrey) and Doctor Who-ed my way through VCON Ops for supplies. And that’s how there were eight hours of filk programming and notices and wayfinding signs, and if I’d had any of my own equipment around (or wanted to fight the hotel’s systems some more) there also would’ve been branding, because that’s the kind of shit I do.
Then I went back to the restaurant, finished dinner, and had dessert. Custard. It was lovely.
Actually, creme brulee. Not so different.
I have to admit, I love Doctor Whoing my way through an organisation. And I love that fannish organisations tend to make it easy. “Hi, I’m the Musician. I desperately need gaffers tape and a marker of substance. What’ve you got?” XD
Friday night was a bit thin and only ran two and a half hours, but Saturday filled the Cypress Room. Hopefully everyone had a good time – we were going until something like 1:30 so that’s certainly a good sign. I certainly did. (Overdid it a bit, to tell the truth – my voice on Sunday was a tad… gritty.)
Sadly, I missed the Battlestar Galactica fan club party! I got there literally 30 seconds before they closed. I wish I’d got up there earlier, guys! I honestly didn’t expect Saturday filk to run so late. Thanks for the cupcake, though; it was yummy. ^_^
Anyway, that’s what I did. I hope you had a good weekend, and tell anyone interested in studio DIY about Jeff Bohnhoff’s guest post on Wednesday; they’ll want to give it a look. See you next time!
I’m in Vancouver, at VCON! Or will be by the time this schedule post goes live. XD Here, have some toys while I’m gone:
ONE: The Mighty If! shot this and was kind enough to let me repost it. If you’ve ever had terrible, terrible, terrible housemates – as so many of you have, and I have too? Well, then, this song is dedicated to you:
TWO: This is a working radio built in the form of a map of the London Underground. There’s a video at the article; play it, it’s worthwhile.
THREE: One million-millionth of a second exposures. That is, yes, 1,000,000,000,000 frames per second. Watch light pulse through a bottle, and observe the shockwaves. It is utterly astounding:
The last day in St. John’s didn’t involve any playing at all, in the end – tho’ I did have a couple of people come up to me saying they loved that pirate song I did on Friday. 😀 This last day was nothing but soaking in the sun and hanging out at festival. PREPARE FOR PICSPAM!
Yet another sunny day on the tropical island of Newfoundland
Morning! We went to the Francophone tent. It was fun! Note the bouzouki. I always have to explain what the instrument I play is, in Cascadia, and even moreso in the States. Here? Yeah, they play that. <3
Even the Francophone tent!
Then we went to lunch, and caught some of the buskers at the Busker Festival also going on that weekend. Did I mention these people like their performing arts? This guy was hilarious:
On spikes. Not quite on fire. But on spikes.
We made it back up to the festival, and basically just kept it relaxed and groovy, because it was the end of the tour, and because the festival was just awesome, and we knew we were going to be there until close.
The Raw Bar Collective
I resisted the urge to add, “and Spinal Tap.” Barely.
When we went off site for dinner, we walked down to George Street, like y’do, and picked a place that looked good, like y’do, and one of the Irish Descendants popped in to do a set.
Yeah, like they do. Just like that, why not? It’s George Street.
Then into the our last evening before flying back! I gotta tell you, not without reservations, because I really didn’t want it to be over. At least I’d already bought THE BEST T-SHIRT EVER:
Disagree? You’re wrong. Sorry.
We saw The Once, who are an up-and-coming deal, and who – in rehearsal… played the zouk just a little like I do. Which is a first, frankly. Not identically, but I was very much in a “…I have to hear this” mood after that. Sadly, the song they were doing in rehearsal and sound check they did not do in their evening set. Dammit!
Still good tho’
And as the last official act of the night, Darrell Power’s band The Seven Deadly Sons! Featuring Young Bill Gates on drums.
Am I wrong? No. I am not wrong.
We were really interested in seeing them, since part of the point of Darrell leaving Great Big Sea was that he simply didn’t want to tour anymore. So his new band doesn’t! Not as a group, not outside the Atlantics, anyway.
Fifty Shades of Green
And everything was awesome and fun and stuff, and we were in that sleepy kind of good mood where you’re totally wiped out but in a good way, and then I heard Darrell start to say something about how he’d done something the night before he hadn’t done in ten years, and something about the way he said it made me go, “…no fucking way.”
And I wormed my way as close to stage as I could just in time for the other three founding members of Great Big Sea to walk on stage and do a number with as the old band again, just for the locals.
And us.
Because we were there. And I had a camera.
YOU CAN DANCE NOOOOOOOW!
God dammit, I wish my still camera did better video. I tried to pull the white back in, but there’s just no data there to retrieve. I looked. At least the sound is good.
And that was the last of it, the impossibly good end of the festival.. or almost the end. The festival organisers brought all of the scheduled performers who were still around back on stage to say goodbye, and this is how they did it, with the entire crowd singing along:
We Love Thee Newfoundland
Yeah. We really do.
And that’s the last of the tour posts. Next Monday? Honestly, I’m not sure yet. The last few weeks have mostly been either about nwcMUSIC – this is a crunch time for us – or getting the house ready for winter. Most of the music I’ve been doing myself has been working on my bass skills and trying some new vocal technique lessons, the kind of thing you do when your day jobs have your life. Thursday, though – DIY day! Yay! ^_^
Right, back to Newfoundland and Labrador! Well, okay, St. John’s and Torbay.
We woke the morning of our third to the only rainy day we ever saw in St. John’s, and frankly, it wasn’t very rainy. But we decided to go visit The Rooms, a large museum of Newfoundland and Labrador history and culture.
It’s modelled from the outside as a collection of outsized fishing and fish-prepping buildings that every fishing family would have in the old days of Newfoundland, and there are a huge supply of exhibits – and also a large artspace showing work from Newfoundland artists. There’s also a small bookstore, where I bought a couple of histories; if you go, it’s entirely worth your time.
I took a bunch of photos of exhibits, but I’m only showing one here. Remember Red Dwarf?
Sound as a dollar-pound!
Ah, the shit you could get away with on the gold standard with fixed-exchange rates. 😀 Of course, you really couldn’t, there were all sorts of arbitrage tricks anyway, but, well, that didn’t stop people from trying. XD
Then we stopped for lunch, where there were bee-shaped light fixtures I posted on Twitter because it was CONTINENTAL DAY OF BEES! apparently, with everyone talking about bees.
Anna is not concerned about your bees.
…before it was time for the folkfest!
The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival really got this whole trip started. Anna found out about it, and had long wanted to hear Newfoundland music on Newfoundland soil, and also, the third book in the Faerie Blood/Free Court of Seattle series is set partly in St. John’s, which means it’s RESEARCH!
Genuinely was, too. We walked that downtown like warders.
The first thing to understand is that like the Maritimes in general, and to some degree Quebec, this is a musical culture. That means music is something people do, rather than just watch or hear. It has cultural importance in a way that it doesn’t, say, here where I live; recorded music might be omnipresent, but if you do it, you aren’t generally thought of as a contributor – with the occasional and possible exception of classical. It’s frivolous, or worse. (I’ve been called a parasite at farmer’s markets for showing up to play for free.)
Basically, you have to have a special kind of magic to be accepted as that, which is something I’ve been working on.
So when you see festivals like this, don’t think Folklife. It’s not like Folklife. There’s one of these pretty much every week in the summer, when the weather permits, and people play all winter, too, and this event isn’t “for the tourists.” Tourists are welcomed, and they get them – from as far away as, you know, New Brunswick. Toronto? Well, sure, a few, once in a while.
Cascadia? Not so expected. Or that’s certainly the impression I got from the degree of shock we got at being from so very far away.
I promised a lot of video this post, and you’re getting it. This is a minute I shot to try to capture atmosphere.
Note most of all that this is not an old-people audience. Old people were there, absolutely, do not get me wrong; but this isn’t A Generation’s Thing, this is something people just do. I didn’t get a good shot of the headbanger pit at The Once’s show, but the fact that it was unironically and unapologetically there, I think, communicates the difference.
The next day was another glorious sunny day on the tropical island of Newfoundland:
And we always thought Alan was joking
Mornings at the Festival have a lot more participatory/educational programming, scattered over many tent platforms; we learned about Acadian chair-dancing podorythmie, sat in on a session, and! I even got a surprise chance to perform:
photo by Rick West, courtesy of the Folk Arts Society of Newfoundland and Labrador
People were coming up to me two days later saying they loved my pirate song. That was awesome. 😀
But the biggest part of that day, of course, was not in St. John’s, but heading up to Torbay to see the first Great Big Sea show of the 20th anniversary tour. It was also Torbey 250, their 250th year celebration. We met up with Krista and Sile, local fans Anna knew through GBS fandom…
Actually from dinner the night before…
and got there super-early…
Queue position… 12 through 15?
Which meant we got set up here…
Front and God Damned Centre
…for the show. Now, non-GBS people won’t know that Murray Foster wasn’t their original bassist; that was Darrell Power, and he left about 10 years ago because he just couldn’t deal with the touring anymore. And Murray’s great; the boy had a lot to contribute. But we were thinking, just maybe, for the 20th, right here where he lives, maybe, just maybe, we might see Murray show up. For the 20th.
Then a gust of wind blew this literally to our feet:
I am not even lying
…the Great Big Sea setlist for that evening. Now, if you’re not a GBS fangirl, you won’t know that EXCURSION means “Excursion Around the Bay,” and that it’s in the encore, and that it was Darrell’s signature song. They’ve still been doing it since he left, but, well, in the encore? That was kind of a big fucking hint right there.
But first! Other bands! Repartee opened; they’re good, and a rising thing in Newfoundland right now. Lots more experimental and synth-rockish; I liked a lot of what they were doing, and went to their tent later; when she found out I was a musician too, we traded CDs, or, as she put it, “really expensive business cards.” It’s true. 😀
They were followed by The Trews and Jimmy Rankin. Both acts were quite good but not my thing, so we’ll skip past those. Cute roadie, tho’:
…but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what that labrys he’s wearing means…
And then, at last, Great Big Sea! The boys put on a show heavily on the trad and heavy on the goddamn well rocking – it was very much a show straight out of 1999, in a lot of ways, which, as far as I’m concerned, is perfect. To be honest a moment – their last couple of albums, while wildly successful, have really been moving towards country/folk. And, while I wish them the best of continued success – that’s not what I care about.
I care a lot about a lot of original music. I like their older originals, which were more in the Newfoundland style, and less in the western/country style. But not where they’ve been headed. So for them to do it up old-school for the home crowd? That made me extremely happy. And if I had to go to Newfoundland to see that kind of show again?
Worth. Every. Goddamn. Penny.
Here’s what the audience is like before they’re really worked up:
Hear us? We just took over on some songs. Alan would lean the mic out, like y’do, and let us go for a bit. Straight out of the Great Big DVD, honestly. It was fantastic.
And then, well, it’s encore time, and…
…guess who steps out of the fuckin’ shadows…
HI DARRELL! 😀
And he does exactly what we expected:
Aw, Yeaaaaaaaah.
And we were right there.
I’d really intended to wrap up the tour with this post, but it’s so long already, I just can’t. So next week: one more day in St. John’s, some more performance video of awesome, and some closing thoughts.
PS: have 37 more seconds of Darrell and Great Big Sea being awesome. You’re welcome. ^_^
I didn’t have any playing set up in St. John’s; the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival had been the starting idea that got this whole tour+trip going, and it’s for maritimes musicians. But Anna’s wanted to hear Newfoundland music on Newfoundland soil for a long time, which sounds good to me (ar ar ar), and besides, with the third book in the Free Court of Seattle series being set partly in St. John’s, she wanted to see it for herself.
So that formed the nucleus of the original trip plan, and everything else I’ve typed about got bolted on to that.
Pretty much as advertised
We spent the first day mostly wandering around downtown, getting a feel for it. A big theme in Faerie Blood and its sequels to come is that warders of towns – magical protectors, more or less – know their towns by walking them, and that comes straight out of, well, that’s what Anna and I do, whereever we go. I also take about a zillion photos.
Which is why this post is mostly photos. 😀
We stayed at the B&B on the far right
Strongbad’s new business
Downtown by the waterfront
Trekkies Only Need Apply
So many row houses, so many colours
Of course, we hit George Street
No sign of Captain Blue or Captain Scarlet
I mentioned that this was a musical culture, and I carried around my zouk a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot. So when we stopped late for ice cream at Moo-Moo’s:
Stop here, seriously
…the guy who took our order was all, “What’s in the instrument bag?” and when I told him it was a zouk, he didn’t need to ask what it was – he got all excited and wanted me to play it right there. Which, of course, I did, and people were all excited by that.
They have music festivals there all summer; we’d just got in late for one on George Street, and were arriving for another that was coincident with a busker/street performance festival.
So, yeah, already, my kind of town.
We’d arrived too late in the day to get to either Fred’s Music or O’Brian’s:
Pilgrimage stop achievement: unlocked!
So we hit both of those the next day. Anna bought CDs, I noticed they were selling the Quebecois spoons I’d got in Joliette, we nattered, and got advice at Fred’s about the more interesting hiking paths up Signal Hill.
Now, if you don’t know, Signal Hill is a big historical deal, in part because it’s the site of the first battle of the Seven Years War, and guards the entrance to St. John’s, the easternmost harbour in North America, and was all strategic and such during the Napoleonic Wars and even later.
But more relevantly to my interests, it was also the reception point for Marconi’s first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission – a supposedly impossible feat, due to the curvature of the Earth. (They didn’t know about the ionosphere yet, which bounces radio waves, which lets you transmit around the world.)
The original receiver set is long gone, of course. But a shortwave station is maintained at Cabot Tower, and if you’re wondering: yes, they do contact postcards. I have one now! In person doesn’t entirely count, of course, but I had to.
Trail up!
Oh look, the lowlands of Skyrim!
Easy-peasy. Hop up this like a goddamn goat.
No, really
Green means gold mine, right?
The hiking was really pleasant. We took the more aggressive routes – you can pavement it all the way up to the old gun fortifications and towers and everything if you want – but the trails are really just nice. It feels like you’re really pretty far out there, even though you’re not.
Napoleonic Wars Gun Emplacements
Nice views, too:
St. John’s, from about a third of the way up
Lighthouse at the Narrows
The fog was rolling in pretty thickly.
Music from the Edge of Heaven
Cabot Tower
After touring the museum (which is mostly placards and such; super interesting, but not hugely photoworthy)…
Well, okay, one
…Anna and I went back outside the tower and played like we were shooting a goddamn music video. It was awesome.
Okay, I want the musicians in that courtyard, and we’ll bring the helicopter shot up the hillside on the right. See it?
Eventually we headed back down the hill. We stopped at a geology centre, ironically for food and not rocks…
No, Anna, put it down
The boring way up the hill
There are lots more, but the photo count here is crazy already. So we went home for dinner, ate at a little Chinese place, wandered downtown a little more and went on a ghost tour.
Hey! The Atlantic is cold!
Down the hill from our house
One second exposure, handheld
Next up: Festival! I sing stories about how you don’t become a pirate! And! Great Big Sea in Torbay!
