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Great Big Sea

I’ve been a raving fangirl for Great Big Sea from Newfoundland since I discovered them in 2000. And I post about them a LOT.

Great Big Sea, Music

Song prequel giggles

Those of you on Twitter may have seen the #songprequel trending topic, wherein the idea was to post titles of songs that came before actual songs. Much hilarity ensued!

With a hat tip to userinfotechnoshaman, userinfospazzkat, userinfosolarbird, and userinfofredpdx, here are the Great Big Sea ones we all came up with so far:

  • Young Brown’s Mother
  • Acting Third Lieutenant Taylor
  • The Day Pat Murphy Got Sick
  • Nagging Girlfriend
  • Showing Up At the Kitchen Party With Mrs. White

Dara and Paul and I also came up with these:

  • Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Bedtime” and “School is Just Starting”
  • Simon and Garfunkel’s “Construction Crew Arriving at Bank of Troubled Water”
  • Elvis Presley’s “(You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) OMG PUPPY” and “I’ll Do Anything to Get Into Some Blue Suede Shoes”
  • Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the Colonies, I Was”
  • The Day the Music Bought a Cheap Ticket on a Small Plane in Bad Weather
  • Slightly Darker than Usual Day of the Heart
  • Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star
  • From O Brother, Where Art Thou?, “Boy of Periodic Sadness”
  • Kenny Rogers’ “You Picked a Fine Time for Our First Date, Lucille”
  • Duran Duran’s “Peckish Like the Wolf Cub”
  • Kiss Him Hello (may be more obvious if you sing “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, HELLO”)
  • And last but definitely not least, from Dr. Horrible, “Misbehaving Pony Solo”

Got more? Drop ’em in the comments!

Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea at Olympics Victory Ceremonies in Vancouver, BC, 2/26/10

Most of the rest of the world may have converged on Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics, but and me? We were there for Great Big Sea, baby!

I do have to admit it was very awesome that they got dinged to be the headlining performance at the Victory Ceremonies last night–which featured a celebration of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. (For those unfamiliar with Canadian provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador are officially one big province.) You couldn’t have chosen better ambassadors, really!

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About Me, Great Big Sea

And now, a gratuitous icon post!

It occurred to me that if I was going to go around calling my LJ “Ordinary Day”, I should damn well have a default icon that reflects that. So for the benefit of those of you looking at this on my various LJ-flavored sites, check out the Alan and Sean loverliness. That shot is of course from the video for the song. The icon is by , who was the provider of just about all of the GBS icons I use.

And if you’re looking at this on annathepiper.org, here!

Great Big Sea, The Murkworks

For those of you not on Twitter

Here are a couple of quick pics I snapped today!

Last night, like I am wont to do, I was whipping through my “Anna’s Set” playlist on my iPhone, which is the various songs I can play to one degree or another on the guitar. And while there’s even stuff that isn’t Great Big Sea on that list, it was somewhere just after “Lukey” when I looked at my pick and realized it suddenly had extra points on the end. Oops!

GBS Kills Another Pick

Meanwhile, the cats have gotten very fond of parking on the windowsill in the kitchen and staring out to the walkway just behind the house. I still don’t know what they think they see back there. And by “they” I mean “Fred”, because George is clearly a slacker when it comes to being a watchcat.

Kitties on Watch

Great Big Sea

Songs about horses falling through ice!

asked me if I had the chords to two of the ditties off the mighty GBS album The Hard and the Easy: “Tickle Cove Pond” and “Concerning Charlie Horse”. I’d pulled “Tickle Cove Pond” off the OKP at one point but did not have chords for “Charlie Horse”, and so I’ve spent a chunk of my afternoon with my guitar, working those out!

“Charlie Horse” is a fun ditty in no small part because it changes keys, which is unusual for a Great Big Sea song. So in order to accommodate the key change and the key they recorded it in, I had to figure out what would work best for chord transcription. This led me to do two sets of chords, a set with the capo on 3 and modulating from D to E in the chords, and a set with the capo on 5 to modulate from C to D. Persons way more comfortable with the key of F than I am could go completely capo-free, since the ultimate goal here is to get from F to G.

Anyway, here are some chords! Enjoy!

Tickle Cove Pond

Charlie Horse Capo 3

Charlie Horse Capo 5

Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea in Bremerton, WA, 11/21/09

This past Saturday was my second Great Big Sea show of the year, and stands out for being the first time I’ve ever seen them in the Admiral Theater in Bremerton–which is very possibly the most aptly decorated theater for a GBS show it’s ever been my pleasure to visit. And since this was in Bremerton, , , and I actually went over and back on the ferry, which was kind of fun!

Picoreview of the show itself: the crowd was fairly heavily laced with GBS regulars, but there was also a big presence of older folks who were clearly not part of the fanbase. The B’ys were in high spirits, though, and highlights of the show include Séan discovering Cosmos, two brand new songs, a rendition of “Gallows Pole” that knocked me nearly dead, and “Old Brown’s Daughter” coming back to finish me off.

Let’s do this thing then!

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Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea at Malkin Bowl, Vancouver BC, 9/12/09

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the highlight of , , and my trip to Vancouver: the Great Big Sea concert at Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park, Saturday night, September the 12th!

Fangirly squealing behind the fold, and this time, y’all, thanks to my beloved Dara, I am bringing pictures. There are links off to suitable tasty videos as well, and mad props to OKPers sticckler and katy for those!

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