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great big sea

Great Big Sea, Photos

Great Big Sea at the Woodland Park Zoo, 7/29/2010

There’s only one thing really that could have kept me from writing this up in a timely fashion–and that’s the simple fact that I’ve been working all weekend with userinfosolarbird on our entry for the Great Big Karaoke Contest! But I assure you, I’m still in a warm and fuzzy afterglow from Thursday’s awesome show.

This time around we didn’t get quite as much long, protracted banter as we did the last time the B’ys played the zoo–but we did get quite a bit of delicious Murray-focused banter, as well as sly remarks about how the sun beating down on the stage clearly meant the lads were going to have to start taking off some clothes. Compare and contrast this to how Lillian and Moira, ages 4 and 3, loudly demanded for me to take them up front to the dancing area and got me going around in circles with them singing “Donkey Riding” at the top of our lungs. That’s a Great Big Sea show for you, folks. Vast, and containing multitudes!

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Great Big Sea, Photos

Brief pictorial teaser

I didn’t get too many pics during the show since I’m still learning the fine art of how to do a picture on the iPhone that doesn’t suck–and then how to actually save it in the best possible format. However, I’m pretty happy with this one of my B’ys! As you can see I wasn’t too far back from the stage, with only a small number of fans in front of us.

B'ys of Awesomeness

B'ys of Awesomeness

Great Big Sea

Well THAT was Great Big Fun

Just got back from the zoo, you guys! Picoreview: delightful as always, especially up in the dancing area surrounded by fellow OKPers and other people ready, willing, and able to bounce like crazy along with our B’ys.

Huge shoutouts to userinfomamishka, userinfosksouth, userinfojennygriffee, userinfojessicac, her spouse Clint whose LJ I still can’t remember, userinfokathrynt, userinfollachglin, userinfotechnoshaman, and userinfoladyallyn coordinating me with and userinfospazzkat and userinfosolarbird to get the disparate parts of our group together!

Also huge shoutouts to userinfosticckler, userinfoseattlesparks, and especially userinfoauntmonkey, who I haven’t seen and jammed with in TOO DAMNED LONG I SAY.

Even saw and greeted several OKPers besides sticckler: shelleyroberts, shoegirl, and loulabelle! And there was a lady whose name I didn’t get who was kind enough to compliment my singing as I was belting out harmony during “Chemical Worker’s Song”! Thank you, kind lady!

But! EXTRA DOUBLE AWESOME SHOUTOUTS back to userinfosksouth for getting me a guitar pick from the hand of The Doyle Himself. She saw it fall and scarfed it, and presented it to me after the show! In return, I bought her a copy of Up, GBS’ third album! THANK YOU SARAH! <3 I shall play only Awesome Songs of Awesomeness with this pick! Lastly it must be said that Alan is not only still pretty, but userinfosolarbird and I are in strong agreement that in fact, he gets prettier the longer a show continues. By the time he gets to “Ordinary Day”, he is stunningly gorgeous. Trufax! Scientifically proven!

There is of course a longer full show review post coming, but that’ll be tomorrow, after I have my brain back. Watch this space for the fully detailed squee!

Great Big Sea

Is this plan awesome or what?

Today’s Excellent Plan of Excellence:

  • Go to store
  • Get moneys
  • Purchase tasty things
  • Bring them home and load them up in the cooler
  • Go to zoo with userinfospazzkat and userinfosolarbird
  • Rendezvous at the zoo with userinfokathrynt and the children
  • Look at critters for a couple of hours
  • Join the ZooTunes line at 4pm
  • Commence fangirling, general bouncing, and bursting into random bits of song
  • Enter the show area around 5pm
  • Locate swag table and buy swag, on account of I’ve lost 25 pounds and I need me a new Great Big Sea shirt, by gods
  • When B’ys appear on stage, commence serious fangirling
  • VERTICAL MOVEMENT!

I love this plan! I’m proud to be a part of it!

And now, off to the store to put my plan in motion! ETA: Store accomplished! Soon there will be ZOO!

Great Big Sea

And speaking of Great Big Sea

T minus 7 days and counting until the B’ys are HERE for the Zoo show next week!

userinfosolarbird, userinfospazzkat, and I will be gathering Team Cascadia for a mighty gathering! userinfomamishka and userinfojennygriffee and userinfotechnoshaman and userinfoladyallyn and userinfojessicac and userinfokathrynt and userinfollachglin and Clint (whose LJ I forget DOH) and userinfosksouth are all joining us!

The Cascadian Vertical Movement team (which y’all may recall totally took the Gold medal this past February) will also have the Junior Auxiliary of Lillian and Moira! I am looking forward to this with great, great glee. These are the children who beg me to play “Donkey Riding” on the Great Big DVD whenever they come over to my house, so I am VERY much anticipating the looks on their little faces when they realize holy crap Great Big Sea is real!

This is going to be huge, huge fun. And I’m taking that day off from work, too, so will be looking into a pre-show lunch and zoo thing of some sort! If you’re not directly involved with the herd I’m organizing but you are planning to be at the show, keep an eye out for me! Better yet, drop me a comment and let me know when and where you’ll be so I can keep an eye out for you, too!

*runs around in anticipatory circles* *practices her Vertical Movement* *puts SRS BZNZ consideration into what new swag to buy now that she’s dropped 25 pounds and TOTALLY needs a new, smaller GBS shirt*

I am ready, B’ys! BRING IT!

Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea Karaoke contest!

Check this out, you guys: my beloved B’ys have announced a video karaoke contest! They are handing out instrumental tracks for three of the songs off the new album and telling people to get creative with video responses!

Anybody local want in on this with me? 😀

(I wonder if it’d still count as karaoke if you actually learned the chords to the songs… *eyes guitar meaningfully*)

H/t to userinfojesshartley who spotted this even before I did!

ETA: My favorite part of the whole contest description: Do you ever sing along with GBS when no one is looking? Yes. YES I DO. Also when random passersby are looking, when an entire crowd of my fellow GBS fans are looking, when userinfosolarbird and I are busking, when I’m boinging down the street with my iPhone’s earbuds on, when I’m going past the fruit stand at Pike Place Market with the cute market men, when I’m browsing the shelves at bookstores, when I’m noodling around on the guitar, when I’m on the treadmill, and when I’m feeding the cats!

Great Big Sea

Safe Upon the Shore album review!

RIGHT THEN! userinfospazzkat texted me when I was on my way home this evening to alert me that the desperately awaited Safe Upon the Shore had finally arrived in the mail. It should surprise none of you that I ripped that envelope open as soon as I kicked off my shoes and changed clothes and got some dinner in me! And I slapped the disc into the actual stereo with actual speakers, not just the penny-ante little speakers on my laptop. ‘Cause if I’m going to listen to a shiny new GBS album for the first time, I’m going to listen to it right.

My review, overall? Um. Fair warning that if you didn’t care for Fortune’s Favour, you probably won’t care for this album either. There’s a lot of the same feel to its production and mixing, in that it feels slicker than older GBS albums have done, and the B’ys are experimenting with vocal styles and types of songs they haven’t historically played with. Which is awesome if you’re a band that’s had ten CDs and you need to mix stuff up a bit to keep it fresh–but if you’re a long-time fan who signed on for the tasty, tasty trad, this takes quite a bit of getting used to.

That said, there are so far two confirmed tracks I’ll be coming back to in regular rotation, “Nothing But a Song” and “Safe Upon the Shore”. There are four others that are potential repeat plays. This is about the same for me as Fortune’s Favour, which gave me ultimately only five songs I regularly go back and replay on the Favorites playlist. And both of these are pretty low overall for GBS albums for me. I’ll have to see how my opinion changes as I play through the album a few more times!

Track-by-track reactions behind the cut.

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