Playing Music In The Twilight Zone!

Two very strange things happened this week that I thought I’d share with you. I’ll start with the most recent while the memory is fresh. Gorgeous Saturday weather here in Toronto yesterday and things started out a bit slow at our weekly matinee. But there were some great folks listening intently, so we were enjoying it.

About halfway through our first set, a small group of people came into the club to help their friend dismantle the art show that had been up all month. She had taken a few of the pieces down before we started playing but I guess needed some help with the harder to reach ones and was waiting for her crew to finish the job.

So there we are, mid-set, mid-song, and they pull out a 10 or 12 foot ladder and start climbing it and pulling down the art. They were calling out directions to each other, all right in front of the stage, completely oblivious to the fact that we were performing. We soldiered on for a bit although it was incredibly distracting…until….they started asking the people who were trying to listen if they would move so they could get at the art behind them. Now it was not only distracting, but slightly dangerous for the audience who were shuffling to get out of the way of the ladder while trying to pay attention to us.

First time ever, we stopped wthout finishing the song and said we were going to take a break until they were done. As we were putting our guitars down, Dwight and I looked at each other and said “There’s one for the memoirs” at exactly the same time…ha ha!

We received a “Sorry, but…” apology from the crashers. Not sure how they felt any “but” attached to the sorry was justified. They didn’t seem to get it. One person there said “If I didn’t see it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Coincidentally, Dwight is reading a book right now called ‘Roadkill On The Three-Chord Highway’…we feel like we added a new chapter yesterday.    

Okay, so here is the other weird thing that happened this week…I was busking at Osgoode station for about an hour around noon on Thursday. Occasionally looking down at the coins in my case, I started to notice that, although people were dropping in Loonies and Twonies, the amount of money in the case didn’t appear to change at all. I even checked around the case to see if the coins were landing outside it, but there was nothing there.  It was the oddest thing, like my case was a big Black Hole! Now I’m not an expert on quantum field theory, but hmmm!