Goldschmidt Etcetera

I've been at the Goldschmidt conference all week, which has been different from other conferences I've been to...in a good way. My talk was this afternoon, and I'm pretty happy with how it went, and I think it got a good response from the audience.

Then, after the session, I went out to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival at nearby Jericho Beach Park. It is a really nice outdoor venue, and the weather was of course beautiful like it has been here all week. Now you might be wondering why I would take time to go to a folk music festival, but it just so happens that Aimee Mann was playing tonight. She played a great set, mostly songs from her new album, but also a few older songs, including a couple of my absolute favorites, "Today's the Day" from Lost in Space (which used to be my cell phone alarm clock when I'm on travel--now it's "Skin of the Night" by M83) and "How am I Different" from Bachelor No. 2. The headliner for the night was Ozomatli, which I had heard of before but never really listened to, and who are now going on my list of bands who sound crappy on CD but awesome live. They really got the crowd standing up and dancing (except for the hippies, who will dance to anything). Speaking of hippies, there were tons! Old yuppie hippies too. Vancouver used to be the hippie capitol of Canada (true!) and I guess many stuck around. But I guess hippies like to hang out at folk music festivals. This was also the first festival where there were trash nazis making people separate plastics, trash, and compost!

Between Aimee Mann and Ozomatli, there was a little feature showcase with one of the performers from later this weekend named T. Nile, and she was fucking brilliant! Great singing, harmonies, original songwriting, and banjo! It was basically an acoustic set, and I wonder if her songs sound much different with a backing band. I'm pretty sure I'll buy her new CD when it comes out.