Sam Roberts/Arkells/Mother Mother concert

Sam Roberts, the Arkells and Mother Mother played Deer Lake Park last Monday. And while the bands were good, the venue was even better. Full review here.

Andrew W.K. and Evaporator photos up (but not here)

As per my previous post on the Andrew W.K. and Evaporator concert Tuesday night, photos are now up here on uptownsound.ca.

Worst. word. ever.

While, Sisqo’s “Thong song” plays in this Warsaw internet cafe/bar, I hereby declare that any song or book that employs the word “booty” as a noun not uttered in dialogue should thereby be destroyed in a burning inferno.

Snake Czarmer

Today, an interesting night out on the town which ended with listening to an AC/DC knockoff bar band called Snake Charmer at a bar called the Lizard King. I don’t really need to say any more but to add that the bass player was awkwardly Scandinavian with blond hair and the pronounced jaw line that allows one to spot a Norweigian from a mile away.

Still, it was entertaining, as was our other stop, a bar called Kaliska that was the focal point of a late-eighties art movemement that apparantly confounded both the communist authorities and the art establishment.

Tomorrow, back to Warsaw and then, from there, to Gdansk in the north.

Your band is called what?!?

In Zagreb we ran across a poster for a band with what has to be one of the best names ever. Period.

Talibam!

That’s the name, exclamation mark included. What else needs to be said. Hilarious.

Zagreb Rock City

One of the best things about traveling to new countries is coming across events that can’t be found in any guidebook. We had one day to spend in Zagreb and spent it trying to see everything worth seeing, including a couple of museums, the lacklustre botanical gardens and the old town. The city very much resembles an old European capital in the mode of London or Vienna.

With tourists few and far between, we basically got a personal tour of Glyptoteka, which houses the country’s main sculpture museum, during which we briefly met the artist who had a feature exhibition running and who was evidently (loudly) explaining his work to friends, or at least interested acquaintences.

But the best part of the day was stumbling across a downtown free concert, much like those staged in public spaces in Canada in the summer. Grabbing a beer and, for Magda, a hot chocolate (literally warmed up chocolate), we took in a pair of interesting bands.

The first featured a very enthusiastic frontman playing a harmonica over what can only be described as Croatian Rock. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Neither do I. Yet he was entertaining as he played his Gypsi-fied rock and roll, singing English words in a very strong Croatian accent. The second band lost the accent and replaced the harmonica solos with guitar shredding. They would not have been out of place playing an early slot at Funtastic and clearly knew what they were doing even if they were playing for a free crowd of a couple hundred.

Today in Prague, meanwhile, we stumbled across American track star (and alleged steroid user) Carl Lewis during a charity run being headquartered in Prague’s main square. Apart from the fact that I thought I would finally escape taking photos of charity runs by leaving my job at The Morning Star, it was quite the scene, backed by the spectacular Tyn Church.