Where was his mind?

Yesterday, I saw Frank Black play a small acoustic set in a graveyard. From what I can glean from his website, encores rub him the wrong way; they've been reduced to an forced intermission rather than what it was originally, an acknowledgment between audience and performer that something special was rewarded with more of the same. To counter this, he's been playing 'precores' on his European tour. He's been announcing a street location in each city and playing a few songs acoustically for anyone on the ball enough to know about it and show up.

Someone from Jason's work was, in fact, on the ball. I got a call about it around 2pm and by 4:30, you could find seven of us biking our way out to find the grave of Herman Brood.

It seems that Frank Black is a big Brood fan, and the grave seemed like an appropriate place to do the Amsterdam precore. He showed up on time, toasted a glass of Grand Marnier to Brood and then proceeded to play a lovely acoustic set. The audience was small; maybe only thirty people, the setting was beautiful and tranquil and it was touching.

With respect to Frank Black though, who played an absolutely beautiful set, was charming, personable and warm, the show was stolen by the uber-fan in the dad sweater. He managed to restrain himself through the most of the show, allowing the rest of us to focus on what we were there to see. By the last song though, I can only guess, but he must have been feeling the pull of Frank Black, and the crunch of time because he stepped out of the crowd, stood almost directly to Frank's left side, and then had his daughter (or what I certainly hope was his daughter) take several photos of him looking very much like he was a part of the show. Needless to say, what had been a quiet, respectful acoustic tribute became one of those moments where you concentrate very hard on not laughing out loud. Well done, dude. Well done.

Like a rolling stone

After a long, long, long hiatus, I've decided to start updating my blog again.

To catch up all of my 2 remaining readers....

-I left China in mid-December. We tried to make it work. We really did. We left on amicable terms, but ultimately, it wasn't meant to be.

-I spent a whirlwind month at home over the Christmas holidays catching up on all kinds of paperwork and not managing to see anyone that I was supposed to. If you are one of those people, I apologize.

-I arrived in Amsterdam in mid-January to join my partner, Jason. Unlike China, I think the Netherlands and I have a chance. My first hint was that there is cheese here. Lots of cheese. Everywhere.

-I have spent the last month acclimatizing, and have now settled into looking for jobs (Canadian jobs of the work from home, contract variety) and trying to teach myself Dutch).


Naturally, this means I'm at home, in front of the computer quite a bit. Keep an eye on this space, there'll be more of this heading the way of the interweb on a semi-regular basis.