Tour Log:
I thought I'd give you a recap of our tour adventures. It was a blast, we had great weather, great crowds and other than some technical difficulties at Evolve, it couldn't have gone more smoothly. Watch for quotes, pics and a ghetto count in the next week or so.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004
On Tuesday, Aug 24th I picked up Rory Borealis, Scout & Mickey D in Fredericton. The van was packed to the brim - thank goodness we had a big white luggage compartment attached to the roof! We arrived in Saint John to pick up Collide of Curbside Prawjek about an hour late. Scout jumped out the van and skateboarded off, only to return with a foot and half long leg from a plastic doll. The leg became our unofficial tour mascot making the whole trek strapped to the roof with a bungee cord.
We arrived in Charlottetown and enjoyed a great meal (except for Scout's hard rice) at Myrons before performing. Unfortunately someone decided that our show should end at midnight instead of 2 am, so all our sets were a bit rushed. Charlottetown's Teknikal killed it with his beatboxing, surprising even his label mates K-Flo & Nevski. Since we finished at midnight, we bounced on over to the Velvet Underground to enjoy some karaoke. Scout & I brought down the house with Young MC's 'Busta Move' and a drunken Mickey D & K-Flo dropped freestyles over top of Da Brat's 'Fundafied.' Collide uploads his ongoing ghetto count using a laptop at the karaoke bar:
http://sexor.dns2go.com/newforum/index.php?DATEIN=tpc_orrtrusju_1093406592
After karaoke, Nevski convinced us to party on a beach in Tracadie. We convinced 5 random people to come along as well. Turns out one of them, Julia, books shows at Melons - we're now supposed to play there on Halloween. So we head to a bootlegger - a sweet lady in her mid-forties - then head off on the "10 minute" trek to the beach. Unfortunately the guy on the motorcycle who was leading the way misheard "Brackley beach" instead of "Tracadie beach". 45 minutes later we actually arrive at the right spot and meet up with two other carloads of people. Despite crazy winds coming in off the ocean, a fire was started. I somehow managed to find 10x more firewood than everyone else combined so the party is bumpin... at least until a guy from Vancouver (or maybe Halifax) decided that instead of using a stick to tend the fire, he'd use his hand. He burnt his hand pretty nasty so most of the party left to take him in town to the hospital. I hope he's all right. K-Flo & Shannon opted not to get a drive back, and instead left on foot - I hope they survived the wind! The wind was so strong that we had to tie the tent to the van with a rope to keep it from blowing away again. I slept in the backseat of the van, and the last thing I heard from the people in the tent before falling asleep for 3 hours was "it feels like Hurricane Juan out there."
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Julia had to be to work for 10:30 am, so she set her cell phone alarm for 8 am. We were all quite tired, but found time to take a picture of Scout standing in the overturned port-a-potty. He stank for hours after that. We drove back into town and enjoyed a nice breakfast at Checkers, before meeting up with Mickey D at noon. As it turned out, the place he stayed at was an hour & a half walk away from our meeting spot - his sore ankle was none too impressed :) Rory & Scout checked out the skate park, where Scout managed to step barefoot in dog shit, before we headed out of town :)
We took the ferry back from PEI to Nova Scotia, which saved me some driving time. It brought back childhood memories. On the way to Halifax I took a wrong exit by mistake only to discover a lawn full of mannequin people rigged up to motors so that they move. We did a u-turn and headed back to check it out more closely. An older man emerged and turned on music to which the "East Coast Dancers" got their groove on - it was pretty cool. He even showed us his stock out back, one of which, a drummer, was a highlight of the tour!
We arrived in Dartmouth to stay with DJ Beef (of The Maple Mothership at CKDU) in the early evening on Wednesday. He's got an amazing pad and greeted us with open arms. His pets (Neige, Quiggly & ??) were some of the friendliest critters I've met. We all enjoyed showers before taking on the Khyber. We only got 10 dollars in donations to do this show, but it was a real nice crowd and we all had fun. I got to meet a ton of people I only knew via the Internet, so that was awesome! Cal & Alpha Flight rocked the place, and the freestyle session at the end was real nice. Scout went out skateboarding to let out some frustrations to do with a few blunders in his performance, only to get docked a $128 fine for skateboarding without a helmet. Ouch! It just wasn't his night. The show ended at 1 am, so we jet mottoed over to Stage Nine to check out Skratch Bastid. The "King of the City" killed it... it makes you truly appreciate that Halifax's own is now of world-class caliber. www.skratchbastid.com
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Thursday, August 26, 2004
We headed back to DJ Beef's pad where I enjoyed my only night of sleep on a mattress. Up by 11 am on Thursday, we sauntered around lazily chatting with Beef until 2:30 pm at which point we gathered by the lake for group photos, re-packed the van and met up with Collide, who had spent the night with an old friend Mike Plourde.
We ventured downtown checking out the record shops while I scurried around putting my record in stores on consignment. By 6 pm we were desperate for our first meal of the day so we stopped at an Irish pub for some grub. After that I dropped Rory & Scout off at the skate park while Mickey D, Collide & myself dropped by CKDU. Outside of CKDU we discovered a statue that I swear looks like a deformed penis. Seagram donated it to the university after Expo 67. Upon returning to pick up Scout, we found out he had gone to the hospital with a guy who had broken his arm quite badly. Scout returned, but wasn't too keen on doing much more boarding so we departed around 9 pm for the Evolve Festival in Antigonish. Unfortunately a group vote left me with no choice but to go on a wild goose chase looking for a liquor store, an hour later our cooler was stocked and we were back on the road again :)
On the trip from Halifax to Evolve, Scout brought out his beat making machine, the "DJ-X" where we indulged in a 2-hour freestyle session and yes, even I dropped a freestyle. Around midnight we arrived at Evolve, and set up tent. We ventured about discovering other cohorts from New Brunswick. I was tired, so I headed back to the van to sleep around 4 am, while the others partied until the sun came up - and apparently Mickey D dropped an amazing half hour freestyle that I missed.
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Friday, August 27, 2004
On Friday we were up by 9 am in time to move our tents and get ushered out of Evolve by the sweep team (because we didn't have our passes yet). By noon we had tracked down our passes and enjoyed some Frisbee while waiting. We were off for our show in Sydney, but not before stopping at a small diner a few miles up the road where I enjoyed the best pan-friend haddock I've ever tasted. It was definitely the best meal of the tour. We hit the road landing in Sydney around 3:30 pm, leaving enough time for me to explore their Value Village - note that Value Village is to me, what a record shop is to a DJ. I picked up a $5 pair of black Velcro sneakers, a green hat to complement my green suit, a yellow 'Star' foam hat and 2 copies of Kenny Rogers' 'Kenny' for DJ STV. I wish Fredericton had a Value Village!!!
We made it downtown with time to spare, so we took some photos and played Frisbee until 7 pm. We ventured to the Maple Leaf Lounge where we set up and hung out with the sweetheart of a bartender - Virginia - and the super-enthusiastic promoter - Rod. The place was cozy with comfy chairs, setting up a great atmosphere for my most energetic show of the tour - I was jumping on chairs, running outside and dancing in the street. It was loads of fun. Marc Cee opened up and impressed me with how much he'd improved. Unfortunately KNZ's drive left at midnight, so he didn't get to perform. The freestyle session at the end of the night was abuzz with a ton of energy from the likes of Cem LP from Ottawa and locals Sickkookies.
There's no sleep for the weary. After the show, we packed up the van and headed back to Evolve. On the way back, I pulled over at a random campground and Rory & I used their facilities to take a shower - which felt amazing because I'd worked up a good sweat at the Sydney show. The others didn't miss a wink, sleeping the whole way back to Evolve. We arrived around 6 am. We ventured to the tents, but I returned to the van to sleep.
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Saturday, August 28, 2004
At 10 am on Saturday, we were up and ready to kick it live on the Roots stage. We met up with Loc Dog and dubbed the stage as the "ghetto stage." It was wobbly, dusty and the plywood for the break dancers was full of rough wooden edges. At noon we started to tear things up only to have the amplifier overheat in the blaring sun - after 3 songs and a whole lot of trying to fix the system, we were done. AC, Leah, Natalie and a few others surprised me by showing up - thanks for your support! So, Rory, Scout & I ventured down to the waterfalls to cool down. It was a 25 minute walk, but well worth it. We got back from the waterfalls just in time to catch Skratch Bastid (or Scrach Bastid as the program said). I watched for 30 minutes and went back to the van to drop off my backpack. I was so exhausted that I laid down on the grass and immediately fell asleep for a couple hours.
Saturday night was a blur. I checked out Jimmy Swift Band, a lot of the artists from Change The Game Records (Mic Jones, Cess, Quake, Jofo, Spesh K, Big Fela, etc), Spearhead, a couple trance DJs, hung out with Douce for a minute, hung out with Joe MacEachern (Evolve organizer) for a minute, chatted with Jay & Luke from Element Kontrol and wandered around on my own. The highlight was the renegade stage around 3 am where I danced my ass off in the dirt surrounded by strangers with just enough free room to give 'er good - after so many months of hard work it was a great release! By 4:30 am I was passed out exhausted in the van yet again.
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Sunday, August 29, 2004
At 10 am I was awoken by these thug-looking dudes blasting a DJ WhooKid mixtape out the back of their large delivery truck. I met up with Gary Flanagan (I disappointedly slept through his set) and checked out Alexandre (producer of Spoof Le Grand). Then, we packed up and were on the road by 12:30 pm. Mickey D, Rory, Scout & Collide all slept until 3:30 pm as we made the trek back home. We dropped off Collide, and as we headed back to Fredericton I stopped off for cheap gas (86.9) in Welsford. In my tired state, I managed to fill up with Supreme instead of Regular, thus negating any savings I could have had... we all had a good laugh. Mickey D read through our quote book, leading to more laughs, bringing a great tour to an enjoyable close.
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