It’s no secret that I love my job. The CBC is home to some pretty wonderful Canadian content. Here’s a video showing what we Canadians get for just $34 a year. My fave program—besides, of course, my beloved CBC Books pages—is Radio 3 for great new music and fun podcasts.

What are some of your favourite programs?

Here’s my last push for a great event coming this weekend. Join the volunteers of All Rights Reserved Literacy Journal Association on Sunday October 4 at the Pogue Fado from 5-9 p.m. No cover, live music, cheap food, and plenty of auction items to bid on.

This year’s event has been a long time in the making. Thanks to all the local businesses who answered the call for in-kind donations. I also want to send a special shout out to everyone on Twitter who pitched in with promoting the event and to those who contributed auction items.

Here’s a list of just the donations from Twitter, with the value listed by each item. There’s a whole range of items at different price points up for grabs. We’ll be accepting cash or credit card on site (via PayPal).

@AliceinParis: Lovely prints ($20)
@authenticcoast: One night bed and breakfast stay, plus two rounds of oceanfront golf. ($289)
@brianlarter: Family Portrait Session from Brian Larter Photography. ($250)
@mokshayoga: One two-week unlimited pass to Moksha Yoga. ($70)
@RemedySpa: Two self-serve facials at Remedy Facial Bar and Spa. ($50)
@smistephen: Website Analysis from Razorwire Consulting. ($150)
@wryandginger: Handmade cards. ($6-$13)

All Rights Reserved is on Facebook, Twitter, and you can also check out the blog.

In the meantime, here’s a song from The Tony Nader Band who kindly donated their time to play at the event.

[Check back next week for another East Coast Guest Posts series, this time from local makers and purveyors of wine & beer. And we've got a very special contest that you won't want to miss out on!]

I have a dreadful confession to make: I’ve never been to a concert before. At least not in the the colloquial sense of the word. Sure, I’ve been to various symphonies. Jazz festivals. The opera even. Not exactly the kinds of events you go to dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with the expectation of drinking beer, entering into the fray of some kind of mosh pit, and smoking…substances. Anyway, I think you get what I mean.

What seems like ages ago, I got the opportunity to attend CBC East Coast Sessions one evening to hear Nathan Wiley and Jill Barber playing. I think that was my first real introduction to the fantastic folk music that’s produced both here and across Canada. Lots of these artists are also featured on CBC Radio 3.

Annual festival dedicated to the music and musicians of the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.

Well, this weekend, Cokebaby and I made an impromptu overnight trip to Wolfville to catch the Deep Roots Music Festival. And, even though I didn’t leave there with the newfound ability to crowd surf, the concert we caught was pretty spectacular. To be honest, we had never heard of the festival until it was mentioned by a friend earlier this summer. Can someone say “best kept secret of Nova Scotia”?

Although we went to hear Garrett Mason, a new fave of Cokebaby’s, we were impressed by the line-up leading up to them as the concert’s finale. Through a series of work schedule conflicts we didn’t think we’d actually make it to the event this year. But, we did and it was so great that we’re planning on making a yearly trip of it.

Deep Roots Music Festival is a weekend of great talent with bands playing all around Wolfville in many small venues along with formal concert halls. One note to restaurants though: if you’re not staffed to serve the surge of customers, you might want to mention it to them at the start of the meal and not an hour after the order is placed. I’m looking at you Library Pub. The only reason I’m willing to give a second chance here is because your food was delicious and server was friendly.

If you get a chance, check out some of these artists that we heard on Saturday night:

Annabelle Chvostek—One of my faves from the evening. She’s also playing at The Company House in Halifax, tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m.
Sultans of String—A musically diverse group, playing a range of world music.
Ari Hest—Another fave from the evening. His ballad “When and If” was just lovely.
Steve Poltz—Also the MC for the evening, he was absolutely hilarious. Check out this Sewing Machine video to see just a sample of what we got.
A.J. Croce—Indescribably talented on the piano.
Garrett Mason Trio with guest Steve Marriner—The guest blues-harmonica player was a pleasant surprise.

Finally, if anyone knows how I can get my hands on a Deep Roots logo tee (women’s size small, preferably in dark brown) please get in touch with me. You will be my garment hero.

I’m not by any means a culture vulture. At least by some standards. Sure, I like watching some indie or foreign films, am passionate about world food and wines, listen to a wide variety of music, and am fairly well travelled. That all being said, when it comes to things like ballet or opera performances my experience is pretty limited. By that I mean mostly through secondary school field trips. (For the record that’s a long time ago).

It’s not that I don’t enjoy these types of cultural experiences. It’s mostly because a good deal of my adult (and therefore able to afford things) life has been spent in a small city. Frankly, since moving here it seems to me that the options are fairly limited and I’m not about to repeat the brutally uncomfortable experience at the Halifax Metro Centre when we went to see the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo with Cokebaby’s family and accidentally heard some beautiful opera performed by Measha Brueggergosman.

In fact, outside of that experience, one of the few others I’ve had with opera is through a very small collection at home that includes safe bets like Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. However, on our trip to Italy last year we made it to The Barber of Seville at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and were so amazed that we wanted to repeat the experience. It was an opulent opera house and overall wonderful performance which I enjoyed immensely despite undergoing the early stages of a sinus infection that would make the flight home almost unbearable.

At the Cours Saleya Market

This is all to say that we had some high expectations of the Opera de Nice on our recent trip to southern France. So, on our first day on vacation we took in a day of walking around Old Nice, stopping by the opera house to find out that all the main tickets were sold out and that we’d have to come back at 16:30 (not 6:30 as I almost made the mistake) to purchase last minute tickets in the upper tier. It was to be expected so instead of being disappointed we spent the rest of the morning touring through the market stands where we picked up some souvenirs and the best sun-dried tomatoes ever made.

Eventually we made it back to the opera house where I’m pretty sure I asked the ticket agent in French if he wanted two seats at the opera. To his credit he didn’t laugh at me and continued to converse in French without switching to English. As the assigned seating was sold out he lamented that the only tickets available presented poor to no visibility. But they were also only 8€ each.

From where we were seated we could see only part of the stage and that was only when standing. Although there was an overhead with captions to follow, that too was half obscured. It seemed that I understood all but every fifth word but it also seemed that every fifth word was the most important.

The opera itself was one that we’d not heard of: Les Contes d’Hoffman. Not Le Comte Hoffman as we originally thought while listening to the performance. A somewhat important distinction. You see, one of the main characters sounded like he was the Count from Sesame Street and every time he entered the stage with that distinctive laugh I thought we were about to get a lesson in French numbers (which actually would have at least been educational in some way). The unmistakable laugh only further confused my understanding of what was going on because I naturally assumed he was “Count” Hoffman when, in fact, he was actually the “nemesis” Lindorf.

From the set of Les Contes d'Hoffman

Then, at some point—no word of a lie—a giant baby’s head emerged on the stage. For a little while it was all we could look at. We were transfixed and beyond perplexed and losing the plot line with every passing second that we weren’t paying close attention to the words or overhead.

That’s when it got really weird. A bald-headed robotic woman sprang out of the head. All bets were off at that point. It felt like we were watching a live-action episode of The Simpsons. I imagined Lenny and Carl standing by the enormous tête asking, “Ain’t you never seen a bald chick leap out of a giant head before?”

Even after the automaton proceeded to sing the very beautiful aria, Les Oiseaux Dans La Charmille, we couldn’t put the oddness out of our minds. Yet we persevered.

Then, the stage was flooded with identical blind couples tapping their way with white canes across the stage. By the time Act II came along Cokebaby and I were entirely lost.

Apparently there was an Act III but we never saw it.

For us, the opera didn’t end when the fact lady sang. In fact, there was no fat lady at all. And maybe in the absence of one, it ends when the bald chick leaps out of the giant head. I’ll have to test that theory out on our next operatic excursion.

Photo credit: jbelluch from Flickr

[I'm probably on a plane en route to Nice, France at the moment. But I scheduled this little travel related post to hopefully keep you entertained. Next week, I've got a special treat lined up for you with guest East Coast bloggers filling in for me while I get a little R&R. Until then, here's a post about a travel experience during my youth that left me scarred musically.]

When I was growing up my family was all about the road trips. We saw most of Canada and the continental United States of America by car.

It was torture.

When we were younger, my sister and I went through the whole whiny “she’s brushing up against me” phase where we couldn’t even breathe the same air without there being some kind of issue. Then my sister had bouts of car sickness for a while that allowed her to sit up front with our parents. And even though that helped us get through our quibbling, it brought on another element of torture.

Here’s some non-numerical math to paint a picture for you:
Stench of vomit + heat – air conditioning + rolled up windows = a car full of nauseous unhappy campers.

Plus, we weren’t the kind of family that played car games. We had to maintain silence for the most part so our dad could “concentrate on driving.” The only thing that got us through our long trips were things like reading, writing, and music.

In high  school, I got my first Walkman which I happily brought along on our last family road trip to Quebec city. I only had a small collection of audio cassettes at the time but I didn’t want to have to listen to whatever lame talk radio station my father would invariably tune into. Of the collection that I brought I can only remember two, but they provided a life lesson about music that I have not since forgotten.

And that is: some music is timeless (e.g. the When Harry Met Sally… soundtrack as sung by Harry Connick, Jr.) while others are not to be repeated in an endless loop during an eight hour drive (i.e. Stone Temple Pilots’ album Purple).

To this day even groups that remind me of STP get under my skin. And whenever I hear one of their songs, I feel like my ears are bleeding. In fact, I don’t listen to the local radio stations on the off chance that they might play something by them. Well, that and I’m of the mind that too much pop music makes the brain explode…ella…ella…ella…Thanks Rihanna for making me shudder every time it rains.

So, there you have it. My musical tragedy. What kinds of things have you done that you’ve regretted while travelling?