Still not much current news to update you on, so here we go, doing the time warp again.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention that I saw The Williams at Hillside on the Sunday afternoon. It was a group of 5 or 6 guys, including Dave Clark and Louis Melville, who I think are just spiffy. They completely blew me away. Seriously. The Brad and I almost fell out of our chairs when the one guy attacked his guitar with a saw. But that wasn't the only reason they blew me away. It was an interesting concept; they'd all gotten together about two weeks before hand to put this together, and they took their favourite Shakespeare monologues, and set them to music. They're all amazing musicians, especially Dave Clark on drums, but it didn't stop there. Oh no, they had a second drummer. And they switched around on their instruments, too. And I'm fairly sure that at the beginning of the set, they mentioned something about recording during those two weeks they were preparing for Hillside, but I have had absolutely no luck finding confirmation of that. I would flove* it if they recorded their songs. Oh my.

(*I learned the word "flove" from Cosmorific, and it rocks, like she does. It means "fucking love". Woo!)

Okay. Now we fast forward a little to Saturday, September 7 and Sunday, September 8, 2002, for Ladyfest Toronto!

Well, actually, I might start this on the Friday before, where I was helping the organizers (my housemate eh-mee, and her friends Shannon and Cheryl) get everything ready for the next day. Stapled zines, got groceries, and chatted with Scott, the guy who drove me to my first Sleater-Kinney concert. As I'd worked all day before this night, and was falling asleep on the couch (as was Sarah, who was visiting eh-mee), we decided to forgo the photocopying party, and go home to sleep.

Saturday I actually hung out with my friend Anne before going to Ladyfest. We wandered around the St. Lawrence Market, and ate yummy cinnamon/harvest buns, and saw lots of yummy food, and had fun times joking around, sharing stories from university, and talking about Anne's current college program. Then we went our seperate ways.

I took the street car over to KYTES, this neat little space on Bathurst Street. The workshops and zine fair portion of Ladyfest was happening there. So much cool stuff. I mainly ended up helping staff jessika and allison's zine table, which was cool, and talked to a lot of people. I got to buy fun superfantastico patches, and Gayla and I talked a bit about Hissyfit, since I had my HF messenger bag with me. And I lusted after pretty much everything at the crackers and honey table.

Then we moved on to The Raging Spoon on Queen Street West, for the musical/performance portion of the night.

First up was a demonstration of Kalaripayattu, an ancient South Indian martial art. Very neat looking, and flowing. It's too bad there wasn't enough room to have a demonstration where other people could try it.

Apparantly The A Cups played next, but I must have missed that. I don't remember it at all. Sorry.

Matilda Sophmore was next. She's Jennifer, from the Ottawa band Sophomore Level Psychology, and as her bio states, "[she] put down her electric guitar and took the 'O' out of country." She was very good, if mellow. I'd like to see Sophmore Level Psychology play, now.

Monica S Keubler was the first spoken word artist of the night, and she was pretty cool. I’d heard about her before, but never actually seen her speak. Interesting.

Black Licorice Theory was up next. A very interesting duo; half of it was my friend Rachel, who I met at university. She was surprised to see me there, as she didn’t realize I’d moved to Toronto. They dub themselves a “spoken word-cello-sex-noise+politix collaboration”, and they didn’t disappoint. A really neat idea that follows through in the performance.

The Plath (now defunct) played next. I’d seen them before, but not with their newer guitarist. Half of the band are now my friends, which is cool. They were friends with eh-mee, and are friends with Scott, and half of them were also the organizers of the weekend. They’re good; loud and screamy vocals, and crashing guitar riffs. Much better than how I describe them, really.

More spoken word after that; Boo Jupiter! I like Boo. She writes good pieces, and is really great and expressive at reading them. And she’s so nice to talk to. Such a sweetie.

The Trembling from Detroit were up next. I’d never heard of them before, but I was heartily surprised. So. Good. I think they have an album out now, too, so I definitely have to look into that. Lots of fun to dance to (not that I did, though. I wasn’t in the dancing mood), and they were definitely entertaining to watch, with all their jumping and moving around.

Cynthia Gould rounded out the spoken word portion of the night. I’ve seen her read before, and I have her cd, so I knew beforehand it’d be a good show. Funny, interesting, and poignant, all at once!

The Squad 416 Radical Cheerleaders were up next; it was a lot of fun to see them. I’d never seen radical cheerleaders actually perform before that, so I was excited; I’d only ever heard about them. Really funny and biting cheers, and it looked like a lot of fun to do it.

Ending the Saturday night was Rocket Tits, a very fun all-girl band who do covers of punk rock and New Wave songs. Who wouldn’t like them?

Sunday, I was super tired, since I’d gone into work to do overtime. I actually ended up driving over a nail on the way home, but I didn’t actually discover that until my drive home from work on the Tuesday, when I was heading to my parent’s house. ANYWAY! So I missed the first part of the day, and when I arrived at the second venue for the bands, I was really hungry, and met up with Sheila, Jessika and Bridget, who were all going for something to eat. We ended up going to a vegetarian Chinese food place somewhere near Spadina, which was really good. And cheap!

We got back just in time to see Skarlett O’Hara play, who I’d seen play once before, at the Riot Grrrl Toronto fundraiser. They were good again this time. They’re sort of a funky acoustic rock kind of thing, and they don’t get as cheesy as Ember Swift with some of their lyrics.

Mariko Tamaki read from her book, True Lies next. I cannot do justice to how much I love this woman; she’s one of the founding members of Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, and she is absolutely hilarious while tackling some serious issues. I was excited to see her, as I’d read an interview with her a little earlier in Good Girl Magazine. So cool.

Then there was a reading from a writer I hadn’t heard of before – Trish Salah. She read some poetry, and I was really impressed. She’s had some really interesting and tough experiences being an Arab-Canadian transsexual, and it’s made for some really stunning writing. Wow.

People, if you get the chance to see The Barcelona Pavilion play, go see them. I cannot stress that enough. They absolutely blew me away. They’ve got a guy on the “drum machine” (a cd player, with the cd containing their drum tracks), a bassist (sometimes two), and singers. Check this out – their goals: “sets and songs had to be short, no set should be longer than 20 minutes, there could be not be more than two bass guitars in the band, all other instruments (excluding singing) were expressly forbidden, and an edict was also passed declaring that the two most important colours were red and blue.” And they’re awesome! It was my first time seeing them that night, and whoa. Knocked me over.

The closing act, Lal, was another group that bowled me over. They had what looked like a small farfisa organ that they used on some songs; otherwise they just had all their tracks on computer, and sang. Kind of trippy, but definitely good, and relaxing. Nice.

And that was the end of Ladyfest. I helped clean up a bit at the end, but I had to go, as I was really tired, and had to get up for work in the morning. Apparantly there was a bit of a closing party at our place afterwards, but I slept right through it. (I did know about it beforehand, too, so it’s not like eh-mee just decided to bring people over.)

Next time, in Part Three: The road trip to Halifax, the visiting with denise and Penelope, and the Halifax Pop Explosion.

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