It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

It will surprise exactly none of you, or at least shouldn't, that I naturally ripped this album right into iTunes and listened to it ASAP after I got home tonight. When I was done with the album, I promptly jumped over to watch everything on the DVD as well.

Fortune's Favour is heavy on the pop, which will put it over on the side of the discography that includes Sea of No Cares, Something Beautiful*, and to a lesser degree, Turn. However, this release has an atypical and unique style going for it, which I'm sure can be attributed to GBS letting someone else produce it for them. I suspect many fans may wrinkle their noses and go "it's different! Scares me!" Me? I like it.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, I'm biologically incapable of disliking a Great Big Sea album. ;) But that said, I hear only one track on this thing that didn't grab me in at least one interesting way, and in at least three different places, this thing has made me blink just because of stylistic choices that are so different from what GBS has done in the past that it surprised me to hear them. I highly approve of being surprised. It's the willingness to experiment and try new things with their music that I hope with all my heart will keep the B'ys vital and engaging musicians for many more years to come.

I'm pretty sure that this album won't dethrone the mighty The Hard and the Easy and the even mightier Rant and Roar for my all-time favorite GBS albums ever. But that said, I'm finding it a good solid listen and am delighted to have it join my collection. Here's to us all having a little more fortune in our lives!

And now, track by track reactions!

( Album tracks... )

( Bonus tracks... )

Onward to DVD impressions!

( DVD impressions... )

It is probably deeply appropriate that Great Big Sea's latest, Fortune's Favour, was waiting for me in the mailbox when I came home tonight from eating sushi--though perhaps not quite as deeply appropriate as it would have been had I done this when I got The Hard and the Easy. ;)

Only a day late, which doesn't surprise me, given that this thing was coming here all the way from the other side of Canada. That it's the very simple thin cardboard packaging, without a jewel case, doesn't surprise me either. I bet that it'd be in a jewel case if I bought it in a store. Also not surprising that I see "Russell" in the list of people being thanked in the liner notes, yay! It seems that the lovely and talented Mr. Crowe contributed some songwriting help on one of these songs, as well as on one of the extra tracks that the folks at greatbigsea.com were handing out.

What is surprising is that there's a DVD with this thing! Maybe it's got the same "making of" videos that are now posted up on the site? Clearly this will require investigation, as soon as I'm done listening to the actual songs. A review will of course be forthcoming!

So y'all pardon me, I need to go wine and dine this lovely thing for a while. <3

Great Big Sea in Seattle, October 1, at their now-usual venue of the Moore! That's a school night, but hey, these are MY B'YS we're talking about here. Anybody local want in on plans for this show, let me know!

For the interested all over my Friends list who haven't seen it already, the US leg of the official "Fortunate Tour" for the new album is up on the GBS Tour page. Presales for greatbigsea.com members are starting TOMORROW, so look sharp and grab tickets while they're hot and piping fresh!

And maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday, at the very least some time this week depending on how mail's been behaving between here and Canada, a certain album should be showing up in my mailbox.

And there will be Squee. Oh yes, there WILL. This is your final warning.

Greatbigsea.com sent over its news feed today new news: Fortune's Favour is now available for pre-order on iTunes!

Note that there's a confusing bit in this announcement that suggests that the only way that you can get these extra tracks is to pre-order the album via iTunes. For those of us who have already pre-ordered the physical CD, this would be annoying!

However, not to fret: if you go up on the iTunes store and search for "Great Big Sea", there's a new EP up there that includes "Walk On The Moon" as well as the two new extra tracks, which can be bought individually.

So go! Buy the new digital GBS goodness! The news announcement claims that these tracks will vanish when the album releases, and I don't know if that's also going to apply to this EP. Better not risk it, folks. ;)

(x-posted between my journal and greatbigsea)

I have been in a very strange, very stressy state all weekend. This is not a terribly good state to be in when Folklife is going on--and at the same time, having Folklife going on is actually a pretty damn fine antidote to stress. solarbird and I have attended the festival for the last two days now, and both times, it's been pretty awesome all around.

We'd already decided to do the Celtic Band Scramble again this year, although I almost backed out of it due to my weird frame of mind. I waffled back into it though and I'm glad I did. Even if it turned out that this year, there were only six, count 'em, SIX people in the Scramble--so we had only the one band, myself and Dara and four other people.

On stage, we wound up doing three songs; "Old Black Rum", an instrumental cobbled together from a couple of ditties the guy with the recorder knew, and something called "Maid on the Shore" that the other guitarist in the group knew.

I went first, with "Old Black Rum". And lest you not grasp the significance of this, people, I sang a Great Big Sea song on a stage at Folklife. In front of actual people. To wit: EEE! The only possible way that could have been any scarier is if members of Great Big Sea had been in the audience. Or maybe on the stage. Yeah, that would have been scarier. And by scarier, I mean "the coolest thing in the HISTORY OF TIME". I think I babbled out something into the microphone to the effect of "this is a song by a band who's way better than we are, and I hope we do it justice; it's called 'Old Black Rum'".

The instrumental was way shakier than it should have been, in no small part because the recorder guy played the A part for an extra time through and I changed keys on Rags too damned early. Oops. But I did figure it out and I did keep going because On Stage Now Can't Stop. Again, EEE!

"Maid on the Shore" was last and that went better, and it wasn't a half-bad little song. Kind of a downbeat thing to end on, though, and I hadn't really had time to pick up enough of the lyrics to sing along much with the other guitarist. But all in all I was pretty damned pleased to be up there on the stage with my little Rags.

However, today's activities were even more awesome than that. For the first time in our lives, Dara and I busked.

We did every GBS ditty I could play and sing at the same time ("Old Black Rum", "Lukey", "Mari-Mac", "Trois Navires de Ble", and "Jack Hinks", with one attempt to go through "Goin' Up" even though I'm still kinda shaky on the lyrics), Meg Davis' "Elf Glade", and several of Dara's pieces. People stopped to look at us. One girl went WHOOP as I was belting out "Elf Glade". A couple other young girls sashayed past us in the middle of one of Dara's flute pieces... and another one made an elaborate point of gifting us with a stuffed horse toy which she laid in the case.

That was pretty neat, even though it turned out that the toy had been dropped by some poor kid whose mother recognized it when they went past later. So of course we let the kid have the horse. But we were kind of sad to see it go. ;)

And we actually were given MONEY. A couple of older folks made a point of hanging around to listen to entire songs, too. Dara's pieces got the best attention in general, especially when she whipped out Splinter, the big flute. We made a whole $6.50, just enough to buy me a piroshky. Hee!

We're going to do this again next year. Maybe even more formally. I've already told Dara that if we're doing that, I need a guitar with more muscle to it. Rags is a scrappy little guitar, but just does not have the carrying power to busk at Folklife. And if we get on a stage again... well!

So yeah. Busking at Folklife: AWESOME, with a heaping helping of WIN on top.

ETA 5/26/08 8:42am: Oh yeah, we played "Captain Kidd" too while we were busking. I left that one out!

For those of you who are registered members of GreatBigSea.com, they just put Fortune's Favour up for pre-sale. If you order through the site, you ALSO get extra bonus download links for not only "Walk On The Moon" but two extra songs as well that aren't on the album!

Go! Order! Purchase the shiny new Great Big Goodness!

Mad props to otoselkie for pointing this out: the shiny new revamped greatbigsea.com, if you haven't noticed it already, has a new version of a song player clickable on the front page. It's got not one, not two, but three new songs off the new album on it: "Walk On The Moon", "Here and Now", and "Love Me Tonight".

Picoreview: this is GBS getting back to a more pop-type sound, which I don't like as much as their trad, and yet, I certainly like this just fine. ;) Interesting too that these songs have a bit more musical muscle behind them than past pop-flavored GBS; if you compare the style here against oh, say, the lighter touch on Something Beautiful*, it's pretty noticeable. And ooh--of note on both "Here and Now" and "Love Me Tonight", we have a bit of a departure from older style here in how they're doing the bridges. Some ear-catching stuff here on the part of The Doyle. Oh yeah. Bring me this album now.

It is also worth mentioning that this new player on the site also has three older Great Big Sea songs which are very worth listening to if you're not familiar with them: "Consequence Free", "Feel It Turn", and the holiest of holy Great Big Sea songs, the one for which this journal is named... "Ordinary Day".

Go! Listen! Enjoy!

I was just waiting for this: the fine folks at GreatBigSea.com have overhauled the site again in honor of the forthcoming Fortune's Favor. It is gorgeous. Very nice figures of Fortune herself here and there all over the place, and plus, there seems to be some new stuff to look at as well--there's a new journal that's apparently going to be all about Séan's dog.

Best of all though is that they have a page up now for the album, including a complete track list, though I don't see cover art up yet or any lyrics. The liner notes however are HY-LARIOUS and remind me yet again exactly why I love my B'ys:

We honestly can't remember who played each track on each song. Somebody played the strumstick on "Banks of Newfoundland". We suspect it was Bob, but we can't find it to dust for prints. Hawksley and Kris played the drums, but Alan swears some his can be found on "Oh Yeah". Sean figures he played guitar on several tracks but couldn't, for the life of him, discern which ones. Hawksley insists that Sean played banjo on "Heart of Stone". Sean insists he does not know how. There are no bag pipes in the studio, but there are some on "Heart of Stone". We suspect Bob is responsible. Alan is a terrible piano player, yet he may very well have played the piano on "Walk on the Moon". Murray has a vague recollection that Kris hit one of the bouzoukis like a hammered dulcimer on "England". There is a cheap Casio keyboard part on "Long Lost Love" that no one will own up to. It would be impossible to count the number of passersby that sang the gang vocal on "Oh Yeah". We do know for certain that the lovely gal you hear sweetly singing in "Dance Dance" and "Hard Case" is Jeen O’Brien. She's an awesome writer and singer.

Looking forward to this album more and more. And to the TOUR that should be coming shortly thereafter!

"Walk On the Moon", the first single from the forthcoming album Fortune's Favor, is now available to listen to up on greatbigsea.com! Just scamper up there and look over on the right part of the page--they've got an embedded player there that you can launch to play the song.

Having listened to it, I can now say with assurance that I'm more sold on this being the lead single for the album. It's got BELLS! <3 And ooh, very nice full harmony on the choruses. As I was suspecting, the studio version gives the song a bit more weight than the YouTube video of a live performance of the song that raise_a_jar linked to in my earlier post.

So get this, folks: the fine folks at greatbigsea.com have just put out a call to the fans for photos of "great accomplishments". Any they accept will be used in the forthcoming video for the single "Walk on the Moon".

I just sent them the three photos solarbird took of me and the full manuscript for Faerie Blood back in 2005, 'cause yeah--finishing a novel? Definite walk on the moon.

If I can't get that book sold, having its manuscript show up in a Great Big Sea video wouldn't suck. ;)

So I want to do me a series of GBS fandom icons to go with my "my fandom plays bouzouki" one. I need a bunch more similar phrases! I have a few already:

- My fandom's boat is painted green
- My fandom's got Bobby on the squeezebox
- My fandom is goin' up tonight
- My fandom beats the drum
- My fandom does vertical movement
- My fandom bewares of the Old Black Rum

I just went over to turple_purtle's journal and snagged a bunch of her lovely GBS bases and may well be using them to make several of these icons, with duly appointed credit. But anybody got icon bases they want to donate to the cause, or additional phrases for the list, sing out!

Straight out of the mouth of Alan The Doyle, who has posted a new From the Road:

But things are looking up. Way up. Labels, management, and band are gearing up for the launch of the new CD. “Fortunes Favour” will be out on Tuesday June 24th in Canada and the US. Much work going on behind the scenes for touring throughout the Summer and Fall.

BOOYEAH. Bring it. I'm ready!

So, um, yeah! Much, much larger video of the Russell/GBS/Carbon Leaf appearances have been made available by GBS show veteran Lynda Elstad (go straight here to drop her grateful comments for sharing the loveliness). The vids have converted down quite nicely to my iPod. <3

And boxer_ferret, all hail be her name, has gotten a whole pile of lovely screencaps off these videos. I am particularly fond of the good shots of Russell, Alan, and Séan, which is a musical OT3 for me if there ever was one. I'm going to have to see if there can be ICONS.

(This should tide me over quite well over the weekend, while I go down to Norwescon. Assuming that I hang in there with the Martian Death Cold trying to make a comeback--I just can't shake this cold for the life of me, and have had to get more Nyquil and some Rite-Aid-brand Mucinex clone to see if I can wrestle it into submission. Bah. I had BETTER NOT get sick over a convention weekend, that's all I've got to say.)

This came over the official greatbigsea.com RSS feed this afternoon: much, much better YouTube vids of Russell's jumping in on the GBS show!

Russell & GBS 1 - this one's got Russell's intro to "Folsom Prison Blues"!

Russell & GBS 2 - the complete performance of "Molly Malone", with Russell and Alan trading off singing lead!

Two words here, people: SEVENTH HEAVEN. The only way this could get any better is if I'd have been there to see it.

(x-posted between my journal and greatbigsea)

I heard rumors last night that the lovely and talented Mr. Crowe was spotted at a Great Big Sea show in D.C.--and today, checking in on the OKP, I am finding reports of this confirmed. Apparently Russell popped out during an encore, making the audience and the press who were present go absolutely nuts; one poster is saying that even the security guys were taking pictures on their cellphones. I'm not finding pics yet up there, nor video, but I am desperately hoping somebody scarfed some video. Because I mean, damn.

Russell apparently did "Folsom Prison Blues", and then stayed on stage as Carbon Leaf also came out and joined the B'ys for a final encore. Wow. Russell's take of "Folsom Prison Blues" is one of the tastiest things he's ever recorded, and the thought of it with GBS' instrument mix and backup vocals...

Ahem. I'll be in my bunk.

ETA 7:13pm: YouTube video has now appeared, courtesy of Paulawalla of the OKP! All hail Paulawalla!

ETA 7:53pm: Here is another Paulawalla video, a partial for the Russell + GBS + Carbon Leaf "Molly Malone" encore. <3

First of all to gamera_spinning: I got the Amazon package. Thank you very much for sending some Harry Dresden into my mailbox. That was very, very kind of you.

Secondly, as a general PSA to the GBS fans on my Friends list who are not already listening on greatbigsea: turple_purtle whipped up a big shiny batch of icons featuring our B'ys, all yoinked off the concert footage and the videos from Courage & Patience & Grit. You can go ogle the Newfoundlander goodness here! As you might guess, I yoinked quite a few of them. And now I am faced with the delightful dilemma of whether to drop the axe on several of my current less-used icons, or to just say ctrl-alt-fuckit and pony up for the extra icon slots. Regardless, those icons brought a much-needed smile to my face. I thanked turple_purtle over on the icon post, but I'll say it here, too.

Thirdly, although I've already said it to their faces, I must express some appreciation for my chiropractor and the staffers at her clinic. They sent me flowers; I came home last night to find them.

Fourth, a thank you to aerialscribe not only for recommending The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but also being very patient with me about getting my story edited.

And last but not least, continued thanks to all of you who have been following my BFFN posts. Even if you're not commenting, it helps me just to know you guys are out there thinking of me. It's very much appreciated. Thanks to each and every one of you. <3

Now I'd better go work on that story!

It turns out, ladies and gentlemen, that the ZooTunes series of summer concerts are an excellent showcase for Great Big Sea. We had a fabulous time in the open air with the sun at our backs and the B'ys before us, and even if most of us remained seated for the duration of the concert, I and mine made up for it by singing at the top of our lungs and clapping our hands with all the vigor we could muster.

( Pre-Show Outside the Zoo: Who knew the zoo was so well armed? )

( Pre-Show Inside the Zoo: Jaguars and otters and a randomly lounging Newfoundlander )

( Opening Act: Jeremy Fisher, honorary local boy! )

( Main Event: The Lion King and Jerome the Telepathic Giraffe )

The concert closed for me on an up note as a complete and utter stranger came up to me, while we were getting all our things together, and informed me that he'd never before been to a concert where someone knew each and every word of all the songs like I did. He high-fived me, and I thanked him profusely, feeling very much made of Great Big Fangirl Win. *^_^* And on the way out I saw several OKPers and exchanged happy words with 'em! Had I known there was going to be a contingent heading to Kells after, I'd have been seriously tempted... but alas, Kells was in the direction of downtown, directly opposite the direction of home, and our car was headed homeward. Maybe next time there's a show closer to downtown!

And on a final note, I left out an attempt to describe the B'ys' themselves and how they looked and what they were wearing, on the grounds that when it comes to that, pictures are worth several thousand of my words. Pics of the show can be found here and here (some really great ones here by a new OKPer! Some really fine Séan--oh, aheh, I'm sorry, "Jerome") and here. Enjoy, all!

Picoreview: Alan is still pretty, Bob still plays a hell of a fiddle, Murray still hits bass notes that make me shiver with glee, and Séan is apparently in actuality a telepathic giraffe named Jerome!

Watch this space for these and many more details in my traditional Great Big Concert Review Post, including a shiny brand new song from the forthcoming new album, to come as soon as I have enough brain to compose and post it. Which may have to be tomorrow, because I am exhausted and giddy and zomg my throat hurts. *^_^* YAY!

Okay folks! According to the FAQ on the ZooTunes page, if you're coming to the show by car, they encourage you to aim for the Lower Woodland Park lot, just east of the south entrance of the zoo at N. 50th and Fremont Ave. N. (Otherwise, you can park in the zoo lots for free any time after 4pm.)

Me, I'm hoping to get to the park around 1ish. Since the FAQ is asking to aim for that particular lot, I am going to try to get us there at about that time. Those of you who would like to meet up with me, please look for me there! I'll have my cell, so if you can't find me, feel free to ping me that way. (If you don't have my cell # and you need it, email me and I'll send it to you.) Once a suitable number of us get together, I'm hoping to move off into the park and take over whatever area looks good for hanging out and picnic-y purposes. Three hours or so should give us plenty of time to have a nice lunch and enjoy some sunshine, and I might, just might, bring my bouzouki. *^_^*

So! If you're in, please sing out so I know to look for you! Looking forward to seeing you all there!

If you're one of the folks on my Friends list coming to the Great Big Sea show at the Zoo on Sunday and you'd like in on a pre-show picnic plan, here is my proposition:

Step 1: Gather in Woodland Park early afternoon-ish
Step 2: Eat food and generally enjoy the company of nifty people and sunshine and a park and stuff
Step 3: Go get in line around 4
Step 4: Watch Great Big Sea sing!
Step 5: (Well, okay, if you're ME) Swoon! ^_^

Please to note that tickets to the concert do not also get you into the zoo, they are just admission to the concert itself. Which is why I'm thinking, picnic out in Woodland Park.

Things to settle:
1) Time. I'm thinking 1ish for a gathering time, unless I hear huge objections; this should allow for plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely picnic before line time!
2) Specific gathering place in the park. I'm not familiar with park details so I don't know specific landmarks to shoot for that can serve as a gathering spot. Suggestions welcome!

Last but not least, I have one, count it, ONE EXTRA TICKET. Anybody local wants it, you can have it for what I paid for it at Metropolitan Market: $21. Sing out if you want to call dibs!