Huge shoutouts to mamishka, sksouth, jennygriffee, jessicac, her spouse Clint whose LJ I still can’t remember, kathrynt, llachglin, technoshaman, and ladyallyn coordinating me with and spazzkat and solarbird to get the disparate parts of our group together!

Also huge shoutouts to sticckler, seattlesparks, and especially auntmonkey, who I haven’t seen and jammed with in TOO DAMNED LONG I SAY.

Even saw and greeted several OKPers besides sticckler: shelleyroberts, shoegirl, and loulabelle! And there was a lady whose name I didn’t get who was kind enough to compliment my singing as I was belting out harmony during “Chemical Worker’s Song”! Thank you, kind lady!

But! EXTRA DOUBLE AWESOME SHOUTOUTS back to sksouth for getting me a guitar pick from the hand of The Doyle Himself. She saw it fall and scarfed it, and presented it to me after the show! In return, I bought her a copy of Up, GBS’ third album! THANK YOU SARAH! <3 I shall play only Awesome Songs of Awesomeness with this pick!

Lastly it must be said that Alan is not only still pretty, but solarbird and I are in strong agreement that in fact, he gets prettier the longer a show continues. By the time he gets to “Ordinary Day”, he is stunningly gorgeous. Trufax! Scientifically proven!

There is of course a longer full show review post coming, but that’ll be tomorrow, after I have my brain back. Watch this space for the fully detailed squee!

• Go to store
• Get moneys
• Purchase tasty things
• Bring them home and load them up in the cooler
• Go to zoo with spazzkat and solarbird
• Rendezvous at the zoo with kathrynt and the children
• Look at critters for a couple of hours
• Join the ZooTunes line at 4pm
• Commence fangirling, general bouncing, and bursting into random bits of song
• Enter the show area around 5pm
• Locate swag table and buy swag, on account of I’ve lost 25 pounds and I need me a new Great Big Sea shirt, by gods
• When B’ys appear on stage, commence serious fangirling
• VERTICAL MOVEMENT!

I love this plan! I’m proud to be a part of it!

And now, off to the store to put my plan in motion! ETA: Store accomplished! Soon there will be ZOO!

solarbird, spazzkat, and I will be gathering Team Cascadia for a mighty gathering! mamishka and jennygriffee and technoshaman and ladyallyn and jessicac and kathrynt and llachglin and Clint (whose LJ I forget DOH) and sksouth are all joining us!

The Cascadian Vertical Movement team (which y’all may recall totally took the Gold medal this past February) will also have the Junior Auxiliary of Lillian and Moira! I am looking forward to this with great, great glee. These are the children who beg me to play “Donkey Riding” on the Great Big DVD whenever they come over to my house, so I am VERY much anticipating the looks on their little faces when they realize holy crap Great Big Sea is real!

This is going to be huge, huge fun. And I’m taking that day off from work, too, so will be looking into a pre-show lunch and zoo thing of some sort! If you’re not directly involved with the herd I’m organizing but you are planning to be at the show, keep an eye out for me! Better yet, drop me a comment and let me know when and where you’ll be so I can keep an eye out for you, too!

*runs around in anticipatory circles* *practices her Vertical Movement* *puts SRS BZNZ consideration into what new swag to buy now that she’s dropped 25 pounds and TOTALLY needs a new, smaller GBS shirt*

I am ready, B’ys! BRING IT!

Anybody local want in on this with me? :D

(I wonder if it’d still count as karaoke if you actually learned the chords to the songs… *eyes guitar meaningfully*)

H/t to jesshartley who spotted this even before I did!

ETA: My favorite part of the whole contest description: Do you ever sing along with GBS when no one is looking? Yes. YES I DO. Also when random passersby are looking, when an entire crowd of my fellow GBS fans are looking, when solarbird and I are busking, when I’m boinging down the street with my iPhone’s earbuds on, when I’m going past the fruit stand at Pike Place Market with the cute market men, when I’m browsing the shelves at bookstores, when I’m noodling around on the guitar, when I’m on the treadmill, and when I’m feeding the cats!

spazzkat

My review, overall? Um. Fair warning that if you didn’t care for Fortune’s Favour, you probably won’t care for this album either. There’s a lot of the same feel to its production and mixing, in that it feels slicker than older GBS albums have done, and the B’ys are experimenting with vocal styles and types of songs they haven’t historically played with. Which is awesome if you’re a band that’s had ten CDs and you need to mix stuff up a bit to keep it fresh–but if you’re a long-time fan who signed on for the tasty, tasty trad, this takes quite a bit of getting used to.

That said, there are so far two confirmed tracks I’ll be coming back to in regular rotation, “Nothing But a Song” and “Safe Upon the Shore”. There are four others that are potential repeat plays. This is about the same for me as Fortune’s Favour, which gave me ultimately only five songs I regularly go back and replay on the Favorites playlist. And both of these are pretty low overall for GBS albums for me. I’ll have to see how my opinion changes as I play through the album a few more times!

Track-by-track reactions behind the cut.

“Long Life (Where Did You Go)”: Well, they’ll be doing this one live, I’m sure. Strong Séan opener for the album; not sure if it’s clicking for me personally yet. Séan sounds a bit rough around the edges. And they miked the hell out of the bodhran, which was a bit startling, and when the bodhran in a GBS song sounds too heavily miked, you KNOW it’s a heavy bodhran!

“Nothing But a Song”: I recognize this one from previous live shows, and especially the bridge with the awesome sustained harmony. So far one of my faves for the album and a definite repeat play.

“Yankee Sailor”: Lovely ditty, this time Alan sounding a bit rough and wistful. Nice, though. Possibly will be included in the live rotation, but I dunno, it’s kind of low-key for a live GBS show. Potential repeat play.

“Good People”: HA yeah I remember this one from Bremerton, too. This was the one the B’ys kept riffing off of at that show last year, and of which jokes about good pizza got made! Still a bit country-ish and twangy for my true liking though.

“Dear Home Town”: Back to Alan singing lead but wait what there are horns here! That’s new! Definitely part of what they picked up doing this album in New Orleans, I’m sure. Alan gets some nice deep singing further in but isn’t really exercising his range.

“Over the Hills”: Why HELLO THERE, Bob! This is the obligatory Bob Gets to Sing Lead quota for the album, clearly. ;) The album credits say he wrote this ‘un, too, based off “Traditional”. Wonder what song he played with to built this. This requires looking up. Not enough of the B’ys in full harmony on this, though it’s always good to hear Bob taking the lead. So far though this is closest thing to something trad-flavored on the album… ooh hey, there’s a jig on the outro! Nice. That must be where Bob brought in the pipes he’s credited as playing–out of NINE DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS. Mr. Hallett is still, thankfully, playing EVERYTHING.

This is another potential repeat play just for being 1) sung by Bob, and 2) remotely in the neighborhood of trad.

“Hit the Ground and Run”: Here’s the ditty that Alan wrote with Russell, which doesn’t surprise me, since it’s got an overall similar feel to “Company of Fools” off the previous album. Not sure actually if I like it yet, though! Again, a bit too twangy for me to really groove on, especially with banjos coming in on the bridge, though I must admit that’s some pretty awesome banjo. I hear backup vocals in there too but again, they’re strangely subdued for a GBS album. Where are my B’ys in full-throated harmony?

“Safe Upon the Shore”: Oh, that would be HERE then! This is hands down my favorite track on the album so far, pure a capella Séan, getting some nice pure higher notes. And oh god yes the harmony on the chorus. THIS is what I buy these B’ys’ albums for! <3 Very neat too that this song has a trad feel, but is actually written by Séan and Murray. I'm betting this'll probably show up in live rotation, too, just because we have to have us some Shantyman goodness in ANY show.

(Interjection from solarbird as The McCann is warbling about corpses: “BRAINS!” *sporfle*)

A little bummed though that it ends only on Séan on a wistful note, but on the other hand, that seems appropriate for the song.

“Have a Cuppa Tea”: Alan, dude, you really are in a country mood for this album, aren’t you? But hey, okay, a song about the virtues of tea doesn’t suck. And oh hey Séan takes over for some lead too, nice. NOT a GBS-penned song, I note; seems to be a cover of a ditty by the Kinks. Not sure at all that it works for me as a GBS ditty though.

“Wandering Ways”: Oh wait hey I already know this song! This one showed up as an iTunes EP when the last album came out. Sounds like the exact same take, too, though I’ll have to play them back to back to be sure. Séan in definite salty mode, here. Don’t know if I’ll come back to this regularly; I didn’t when I got it before, so.

“Follow Me Back”: This is a nice sweet little ditty, although I have to admit that I had a bit of a doubletake reaction along the lines of “wait wait there’s a GIRL singing on this song?” Which there is: Jeen O’Brien, who also showed up on Fortune’s Favour. Interesting to note that Jeremy Fisher and Jeen both helped Bob write this, though I’m genuinely flummoxed as to whether the B’y singing with Jean here is also Bob. He’s singing low enough that it’s hard to tell!

This is another potential repeat just because it’s one of the few songs on the album that doesn’t sound over-produced to me. It’s just two voices and a guitar, and I like that. The album credits say in fact that nobody produced it, since it was done in one take on the back of a basement couch. That alone gives it nice contrast to the other tracks.

“Road to Ruin”: Okay, they’re TOTALLY going to do this one live, there’s just too much roaring out the chorus for them to not to! And so far this is the closest thing to a traditional GBS-style foot-stomper on the whole album. Another potential repeat, but will have to take a few more swings through it to be sure. May be a bit too close to “Straight to Hell” for me in flavor, though.

“Gallows Pole”: This is the other track on this album I was already familiar with, since it was handed out by greatbigsea.com as an extra track for people who pre-ordered Fortune’s Favour. Also, Séan’s been doing this one live, so it’s a known quantity now. I think I definitely like him doing it live better, he tears through it a lot better on the stage. And now that I know that this is a Zeppelin cover, it makes a lot more sense to me, but it still doesn’t really parse to me as a GBS song.

“Don’t Wanna Go Home”: More twang, more Alan drawling out lyrics more than is normal for him. Here are the horns again, clearly picked up from recording in New Orleans, and I do like those, although I’m not sure the song as a whole is working for me.

I’m sure we’ll be getting this as a concert ditty, too. And you can tell I’ve been a GBS fan for a while when I can peg not only which songs on a new album they’ll have in the live rotation, but whereabouts in the show they’ll probably show up. My money’s on this one as an encore.

Your thoughts, my fellow GBS fans?

I am of course ALL OVER THIS. Any local people want me to snag tickets, please to sing out NOW. I’m pretty sure I’ll be limited to eight, and three of them will already be spoken for since I’ll be buying for myself, solarbird, and spazzkat.

Anybody who doesn’t need me to buy tickets but will be at the show anyway, please also sing out because I’d love to know who to look out for. If you didn’t go to the zoo show they did in 2007, seriously, consider going to this, because it’ll be a kid-friendly setting AND outdoors and the zoo is an awesome place to see the B’ys perform. Do please note that July 29th is a Thursday, if you need to rearrange your work schedule–and according to the band’s site’s tour page, the doors (well, the concert area, in this case) will open at 5pm and the show will start at 6pm.

Looking forward to seeing you all there! :)

ETA: All of my ticket slots are claimed now! But don’t let that stop you from joining the greatbigsea.com site and jumping in on the presale yourself. Signup’s free, and sometimes being a site member means you can get advance goodies on album releases as well!

With a hat tip to technoshaman, spazzkat, solarbird, and fredpdx, here are the Great Big Sea ones we all came up with so far:

• Young Brown’s Mother
• Acting Third Lieutenant Taylor
• The Day Pat Murphy Got Sick
• Nagging Girlfriend
• Showing Up At the Kitchen Party With Mrs. White

Dara and Paul and I also came up with these:

• Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Bedtime” and “School is Just Starting”
• Simon and Garfunkel’s “Construction Crew Arriving at Bank of Troubled Water”
• Elvis Presley’s “(You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) OMG PUPPY” and “I’ll Do Anything to Get Into Some Blue Suede Shoes”
• Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the Colonies, I Was”
• The Day the Music Bought a Cheap Ticket on a Small Plane in Bad Weather
• Slightly Darker than Usual Day of the Heart
• Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star
• From O Brother, Where Art Thou?, “Boy of Periodic Sadness”
• Kenny Rogers’ “You Picked a Fine Time for Our First Date, Lucille”
• Duran Duran’s “Peckish Like the Wolf Cub”
• Kiss Him Hello (may be more obvious if you sing “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, HELLO”)
• And last but definitely not least, from Dr. Horrible, “Misbehaving Pony Solo”

Got more? Drop ‘em in the comments!

solarbird

I do have to admit it was very awesome that they got dinged to be the headlining performance at the Victory Ceremonies last night–which featured a celebration of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. (For those unfamiliar with Canadian provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador are officially one big province.) You couldn’t have chosen better ambassadors, really!

That said, Dara and I were not expecting other acts to show up as preliminaries, which was awesome as well. This led off with a nice drumming and chanting dance by a First Nations group whose name I didn’t catch, but it might have been the Nunatsiavut Drum Dancers who are featured on the Atlantic Canada House site for the Olympics? Don’t know.

Then we got surprise Irish Descendants! Y’all may recall I’ve posted about them before, so it was great to see them live even though they did only one song. Their lead singer is a rotund little guy with a voice much bigger than he is, it turns out.

Other performers that showed up were Ron Hynes, who I think I remember Bob Hallett mentioning in his Bob’s Soundtrack posts; fiddler Kelly Russell, who was featured in a video that kept running of his performing all over the world and getting people to do a Thread the Needle dance; Tara Oram, a young singer; and Hey Rosetta!, who were a pretty lively group as well.

Meanwhile, a couple of perky announcer types, up on a raised platform facing the main stage, were doing initial banter and throwing trivia questions out to the crowd. While all that was going on, Dara and I chatted with the girl sitting next to us on our row. Our seats turned out to be farther back than we’d hoped, but we did have a lovely conversation with Michelle, who like us was pretty much there to see Great Big Sea and who told us that her husband was in fact from Newfoundland. We stayed in our seats to chat with her before the preliminaries, and while they were handing out the medals. From there I was able to get a good view of pretty much everything that was going on. The whole place was done up in blue, green, and white, which amused Dara and me to no end since those are the colors on the Cascadia flag. ;)

Watching the medals handed out was pretty cool. They alternated between where we were, BC Place, and up on Whistler to hand out for various events, including Men’s Freestyle Skiing, Men’s 4×7.5km Relay, Ladies’ Parallel Giant Slalom, and Alpine Skiing Ladies’ Slalom. I was charmed to see Norway take the gold in the relay, and that the Norwegian team was visibly singing along with their national anthem. After each medal handoff, at least at BC Place, they shot metallic confetti in gold, bronze, and silver into the air. That looked very neat. The medals themselves were also very pretty, quite large but sort of crumpled-looking discs, which was an interesting artistic touch for them. And I must also note that I was quite charmed, during one of the Whistler handoffs, to see several people wearing cow hats on the big screens in their audience. COW HATS! <3

But then we got down to business and introduced the B'ys! We got a countdown on the screens for them, and the audience started going suitably berserk. And we got LASERS cutting through the air over our heads, which was very, very cool. Dara and I had already noticed a wide standing room only area before the stage, though--and as the B'ys ripped into "Ordinary Day", their first song, we abandoned our seats and bolted for there. We got out there only because we showed tickets to the harried-looking BC Place personnel, but we did make it safely out!

Not surprisingly, this was only a one-set show, and a somewhat rearranged one at that. It was pretty much full of Great Big Sea's best-loved standards, with nothing off the forthcoming album, and only "Love Me Tonight" and "England" from Fortune’s Favour, too. Here’s the full set list, transcribed out of my hastily scribbled notes:

• Ordinary Day
• Lukey
• Love Me Tonight
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• When I’m Up
• Jack Hinks
• England
• When I Am King
• Sea of No Cares
• Helmethead
• Consequence Free
• Mari-Mac
• Run Run Away
• Encore: Excursion Around the Bay/Fortune

There was minimal banter as well, which wasn’t really surprising either due to the Serious Business of this particular performance. This didn’t stop Alan from letting out the obligatory crack about “the lovely and talented Séan McCann” while introducing Paddy Murphy, though–or from announcing his opinion that there should be Olympics every year, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and inviting the audience to think of the events they could have. (Clearly, Vertical Movement would have to be a regularly featured event.)

It must also be said that the B’ys all looked very, very fine. Alan’s lost the beard and has gone back for the nonce to his soul patch look; he had his black jacket, black long-sleeved shirt, and blue jeans look going on. Séan looked very fine with his hair slicked back, a sort of blue-violet shirt, and a really swank gray striped jacket on over that. Bob had a jaunty scarf on, and Kris had some red-and-black-checked bandanna action going on back at the drumkit. Only Murray looked his usual understated self, with that green shirt I’ve seen him wearing at pretty much every show. It only took a couple songs in for Alan and Séan both to lose their jackets, though!

Hands down, the best fun Dara and I had with this was being among an extremely lively crowd out on the floor. There were a group of Russian girls right ahead of us, and when Dara and I started singing, they turned back to us with these startled grins; Dara said they totally looked like they were thinking, “We do not know how you are, but we like you! You know how to party!” Especially when we whipped up the Cascadian flag between us.

A Newfoundland flag showed up just to the right of us a few songs in, and one very lively gentleman kept bellowing happily about how this was music to dance to. He encouraged us to come back to the back of the crowd where they’d get some old-time dancing going on the next big song; the only reason Dara and I didn’t do that was because we were too busy representing TEAM CASCADIA! <3

And a Polish woman showed up just behind us as well with her red and white Polish flag. She wasn't really getting how to hoist her flag, so Dara helped her do that! And we got her flag to show up on camera with one good clear shot--there was a camera on a high wire sliding back and forth over the crowd, so there were all SORTS of crowd shots that kept showing up on the big screens next to the stage. We got the Cascadian flag up several times, too, although we didn't keep it up all the time. Didn't want to completely block the view of folks behind us, and a few girls did ask if they could scooch up ahead of us. We let them, naturally.

But man, it was a truly international crowd, and seriously, seriously awesome. The energy was astounding, even for a Great Big Sea show. You could tell a lot of GBS diehards were on the floor since we did get the obligatory "GREAT! BIG! SEA!" chant going, and although several of the international folks in the crowd didn't know what that was at first, they caught on fast. By the time the B'ys left the stage after their one encore, I was absolutely limp with exhausted delight. Dara turned to me, grinning from ear to ear, and proclaimed that that was AWESOME. She was correct. I'm not sure it would be physically and biologically possible to top the awesomeness of that crowd, unless it involved us going to St. John's and seeing the B'ys perform on their home turf.

Dara scarfed a few snippets of the metallic confetti off the floor as mementos, and on that giddy, glorious note, we rambled out of BC Place and out along the crowded, chaotic Robson Street. More on that in the post I'll do on this trip in general! All you need to know from this one, really, is that Great Big Sea + Olympics = unremitting awesome. Team Cascadia takes the gold in Vertical Movement!

turple_purtle

And if you’re looking at this on annathepiper.org, here!