The Scope

Ah Halloween! Too bad it’s over.

Unlike Christmas, which as soon as the 26th comes around I don’t ever want to look at another friggin’ Santa or Christmas tree or smiling child ever again. Halloween, unlike Christmas, is something I never want to end. People are so much more interesting when they think you don’t know who they are, and life is much more interesting when you spend the night in a skull mask standing motionless in the corner of darkened bar staring at people. Sadly there’s no other time of the year when that’s acceptable behaviour.

Anyway, I spent my Halloween weekend like I spend most of my weekends: hanging out on the deck taking videos of people making fools of themselves.

AE Bridger wrote me out of the blue and asked me to make a poster for his big Halloween show he was planning. I hadn’t done a show poster in ages and I don’t think I’d ever done one for a show where I wasn’t on the bill, but AE Bridger is hands down one of the most interesting bands playing out there (check out my previous post about the AE Bridger band on the old blog here) and they’re all good people, so I figured I’d give ‘er a shot.

It took a bit longer then I expected but I think it turned out pretty good.

All of the bands playing this show have been blogged about here previously, but they’ve never been filmed wearing silly costumes, so this still counts as fresh content (it’s my blog so my word is law, don’t you forget). Although I’m breaking my own rules of not posting the same song twice with this Ye-Yeti clip. But how often do you see a banana getting intimate with a Roland keyboard on stage?

Local Tough’s Anthony Breton had my favourite costume of the evening when he came as an ashtray. Outside on the deck people were using it as the real thing. It didn’t last very long into their performance, as Anthony abandons it about a minute into the second song (posted below) to get properly rowdy in the crowd. This was the liveliest I’ve seen Anthony since he became a daddy a while ago.

Here’s a video that I’m sure will make his children proud twenty years from now:

I think AE Bridger should stick with this look for all their shows. I’d have to say Steve Cowan was the prettiest woman in the group, but Alex was definitely the most authentic, if that makes sense. Alex got me to do a guest guitar cameo and I brought down my special psychedelic hand painted guitar “Mjolnir: The Hammer of Thunder!” to the show.

Unfortunately my lady friend had to go home early and I couldn’t find anyone trustworthy-looking and/or sober enough to handle the camera and film me while I played a lot of clumsy A-minor pentatonic scales over one of Bridger’s tunes. Maybe this was a fortunate turn of events now that I think of it.

Anyway, Steve Abbott took the guitar from me and the by’s ended the night with a ludicrous improv jam session which branched from Captain Beefheart to Doctor and The Medics. Some of it ain’t pretty at all but I just love watching my guitar in the hands of someone who actually knows what he’s at.

Fun times, fun times.

Finally, here’s a slide show of all the Halloween foolishness I caught. Cheers.