Intrepid reporter
Sith in Heels, of the
SEI message board, was at the Live 8 concert in Barrie on Saturday. This is the second part of her three-part eyewitness account. As before, all clickable images lead to a larger size.
Bruce Cockburn was up next. He was a good speaker and one of the few people whose music actually applied to the cause. During the whole show, Mr Heels and I kept hoping that there would be a ‘duet’ with him and the BNL doing ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Time’ (written by Bruce, later covered very well by the Ladies).
(Apparently I’ve already got my order wrong, Sam played before Brian and the big shout out.)
There was a cut to Green Day at Berlin Ok, I think I’ve totally screwed the order up but in general it’s ok.
Next was DobaCaracol featuring Kna’an. They were an African fusion group. Their tunes really rocked but the crowd wasn’t very responsive because it’s the first time any of us had heard of them. I want to get a disk of them as well. Great to belly dance to.
Next up: Simple Plan. Good tunes but they kept calling us Toronto and we were getting pissy at them. No wonder the crowd wasn’t responding to them. Mr Heels kept mocking them by calling them by different group names everytime they called us Toronto.
I think Bruce C. actually came after these guys…
And then there was some French group called Les Trois Accords but I didn’t see them, that’s when I took my first journey to the porta potty. I took a pic of the porta potty line up but it didn’t take. 10 min wait.
Trying to make your way through the crowd between sets was a bitch. I’m surprized I didn’t step on anyone. I learned later that crowd maneuvering was easier when everyone was standing.
I got back just in time for what was supposed to be Bachman/Cummings but Cummings had laryngitis so it was just Bachman. This was the first set of the day that really truly got the crowd rocking.
The next band was Deep Purple and Tom Green came out to intro them and got the whole crowd singing the ‘Smoke on the Water’ riff over and over again. Hush was great! Good set.
After that was African Guitar Summit. Another band I’d never heard of but they were pretty good and were actually African and had some good things to say. Next was Great Big Sea. These guys are a great group from Newfoundland. I’ve seen them a few times before. Great band to drink to.
Unfortunately GSB got their set cut short in order to get the time table back on track…on track for the next act…
Celine Dion ‘Live from Las Vegas’.
Tom Green came out and all he said was “Now live from Las…” and the boo’s started. The diva oh so desperately wanted to be a part of the show but couldn’t leave her cushy million dollar show for a day or even a few hours to actually come to the venue to perform. Tom Green was a little speachless when we started booing and then Dan Aykroyd gave us shit. Celines’s little ‘I’m so sincere and about to break out into tears’ speech took way too long. No pics of this.
After Celine’s ego-fest was done, the crowd started chanting Great Big Sea. After the chanting died down one of the guys next to me cried out “Celine Dion” in mockery. Everyone laughed at him: “He’s got sun stroke, get this guy some water STAT.”
Remembering the order is still a little shaky…
I believe Blue Rodeo was next. I’m a fan of these guys but they weren’t as tight as they usually are live. My stage pics of them didn’t turn out at all.
I think Gordon Lightfoot was next. He knew he was a mellow act and prefaced himself as such. The crowd loved it though. It’s good to be local.
Our Lady Peace followed. They did a cover of a Leonard Cohen tune and altered some words to make it African applicable. Good set.
I’m making another change to my database so some entries might be affected. I stayed up till around five this morning editing half the database, so at least all entries from 2005 and 2004 should show up correctly. Anything older than that will show up, but without a title.
Welcome to a new dawn in the science of music ripping. It always bugged me how MP3s add a slight split-second of silence to the beginning of every audio file, adding unwanted gaps between songs, interrupting segues or crossfades, breaking up the flow of live albums. Apple has recently released a crude Terminal-based app called ChapterTool which I’ve found handy in getting around this problem. It’s intended to be used to create enhanced podcasts, to add access points in longer recordings with which to create chapters; which in turn allows one to add artwork or a URL to each cue point. For instance, if someone does a podcast on music, he or she can include different cover art for each album mentioned plus links to the artists’ websites — as Apple itself does with its New Music Tuesday podcasts. What I like best about it is that it can be used to rip entire albums to my iPod, keeping them intact as single files, but with chapter markings which still allow access to each song. I’m having great fun re-ripping a lot of live and concept albums (anything where the sound is pretty much uninterrupted) and, finally, be able to retain and present the music with gapless playback.
I’m kind of missing my old template. What do you think?
I take back what I said about podcasting. I created one over the weekend. I have little intention of signing up with any podcasting services and won’t be posting it anywhere else other than here. And it’s a video podcast rather than an audio one. It explains why updates have been so slow here (and why I’ve been running a little slow myself):
This story dates from last week, but I’m only hearing about it now. Turns out Republicans have no problem with White House lies.
