Thursday, April 7, 2011

Good weekend. New home and The Swingatrons

Often Good Weekend posts are written in the present tense, but in reality the events I'm reliving could have happened 3-5 days earlier. This time however, this really is happening right here, right now.

It's 7:29PM on Sunday night. I'm leaning up against my car, on my first night of moving into my lovely new Linden flat. Right now, as I have before, I'm waiting for my old housemate, Matt Suttner, to rescue me. My car is parked between to security gates, half way through reversing out of the flat's parking.

This is the last in a series of rather unfortunate events on this Sunday, but I'd be getting ahead of myself if I started there...

The weekend began well enough with me spending my Friday night behind my mac, animating all kinds of things for a brand-new top-secret show that McFarlane and I am imagining. Saturday starts off with Jason and I driving around our lovely city, delivering copies of Crusades to some of our favourite spots around town. By the time we get back to the flat I'm happy to be able to tell the world that they could now buy our debut EP at Love & Revolution, The Street and The Bioscope.

I spend the rest of Saturday afternoon burning swing music onto CDs and finishing off the visuals for Take 5. Once I was done it was time to race off to Kitchener's. High 5 Ri, hook up the visuals, grab a drink and watch a steady stream of swing-styled kids flow into the party. It really is fantastic seeing the amount of effort people have put into their outfits and how obviously excited people are for the theme of this month's High 5.

Much awesome swinging times ensue. Charles Leonard's set is pure class. Ri takes over and thoroughly rock the hell out of the dancefloor. Keith delivers a set of solid swing and before I know it I have to rush off to take over from him. Initially I get confused by the way Keith's turned off the auto-cue on the CDJs and hasn't left the mixer's cross-fader dead center. The fact that I forgot that Keithe plays like this is such a sign of how long it's been since the era where he, Ri and I played Tokyo Star together ever single Thursday for years.

Following up a set as 100% swingalicious as Keith's I'm feeling like the stuff in my bag is a little inadequate, but then again, people have already been exposed to four and a half hours of swing. With this in mind I tell myself it'll be totally fine if I squeeze some soul and indie pop in between the big band numbers. Whether this is a relief for people or rubbing the hardcore swing-kids up the wrong way, I don't know. People are dancing and I'm having a lot of fun, so I guess it's all good.

I'm followed up by Warren, who takes a similar 50% swing approach. When I need to leave at 3AM he's still killing it. I race home, shower and pack. Find myself getting into bed at 4 and find myself getting out of it at 7. Cue the whole crazy ordeal of moving into my new house.

The "professional" movers I've hired to deliver my stuff have decided to do so with an open trailer. It's raining. All my stuff is wet. Wet bed and soggy cardboard boxes. Great. It's a long crappy process, unpacking everything, packing it away and blow-drying my bed dry so I can finally catch up on sleep after everything's done. Luckily with the help of my new flatmate Lezaane and the power of Simply Asia food the whole thing is a lot less painful than it would be if I were on my own. Eventually by 4PM everything is packed away, the soggy remains of my boxes are at the dump and my bed is dry - I can finally pass out. Which, now bring me back to the real present, having overslept a bit for my dinner with my previous flatmates and now locked my keys in my car, waiting to be rescued by my old housemate, Matt Suttner. And there he his!

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