It had stopped raining by the time we all rousted ourselves from our stupors, so we decided to venture out onto the streets of Toronto. Our first impression was that it was kind of dingy - all of the local architecture seemed to have sprouted during the sixties. Later we would discover that this was due to the neighborhood we were in. The city is actually an intriguing hodge-podge of the old and new, with beautiful old buildings (mostly churches) resting in the shadows of the sleek, modern glass edifices of some of the tallest buildings I've seen, and presided over by the blinking finger of the CN Tower. Down below, we cast about for a restaurant, but the only one that looked like it held promise turned out to be dingy and virtually deserted inside. We kept walking, heading towards St. George the Martyr Anglican church, where Current Ninety Three were due to perform later. We trudged down Queen Street, which seemed to be the place for aimless groups of young people to gather - with its bars and establishments such as "Condom shack" to entice people in. Finally we arrived at John st., and the church, which proved to be a nice, old brick structure complete with a lush green courtyard and ivy covered tower. A few people already milled around outside. We decided to check out the courtyard, and were quickly spotted by David, who let us in. He introduced us to (among others) Simon Finn, who was also slated to play later. These were his first gigs in roughly thirty years, and somewhere along the line he had attracted a TV documentary crew, who barged around the church with their equipment, seemingly randomly interviewing attendees for the first two nights. Willow got filmed, so will be seen on TV in Canada at some point. Maybe. She sure was excited to be there though.
As the doors opened and the hall filled, we ran into more people we knew. Some of them came from quite far away. Nigel, who drives a tube train in London, was there. Jose came from Portugal. Some guy came from Mexico, but didn't have a ticket for friday night, which meant I could sell one of the extra tickets that a friend who couldn't make it to the show had sent me. Steve wandered in and regaled us with tales of cod, the fishing and preparing of which is the only industry on the island he's been staying at up in the arctic circle. He has been making sound art using whatever is handy on the island, such as ship graveyards and whatnot. The works in progress are then broadcast over the island's one radio channel, interrupting broadcasts of bingo games and other exciting things, and no doubt really pissing off anybody attempting to play bingo. He clued us in on an interesting occupation as well - cod sniffer. The island is apparently home to a champion cod sniffer, whose job it is to smell cod and sort it according to quality. All of the best cod goes to Italy.
But I digress. The show itself was great. Simon Finn opened, and reminded me of Leonard Cohen. Jen thought he sounded a bit like Nick Drake. He played songs from his 1969 record and some new ones as well. Next up was Six Organs of Admittance, which for these shows was just Ben Chasny, who is an amazing guitar player, but appears very humble and shy on stage. He was wearing a summer science camp shirt, which is kind of funny since I'm going to be teaching summer science camp next week. He said he got it in Santa Cruz, where he currently resides, but has never taught science camp. His set was short, possibly due to his desire to see Current 93, who he had never seen before. Current 93 also did a relatively short set, which included mostly old songs, a rousing rendition of "Lucifer Over London," and David singing a couple of Simon Finn's songs while Simon played guitar. Right before the encore, Willow shouted out, "yeah! yeah! yeah!" and received applause from the audience.
Afterwards, we decided to go eat. The recordists, William and Sherry (sp?) took us to a nice chinese restaurant. The staff took a liking to Willow and gave her lots of fortune cookies and a green lollipop, which made her sticky.


to be continued...

Oh, and only five more delivery days left...

cds I listened to while delivering: Current 93 "The Courtyard/Jerusalem", Ex-Girl "Endangered Species", Orphaned Land "Mabool", Simon Finn "Pass the Distance", Finntroll "Nattfodd", and Sainkho Namtchylak "Who Stole the Sky?"