Dominion Club Saturday Night

[Kenyon]

Last night I had the opportunity to attend Gord's last show of the three night stand at the Dominion Club in Toronto. The band was set up in the large ballroom of the club which was formerly the great hall of the Dominion Bank of Canada headquarters. The audience was mostly owners of the condos/suites above the Dominion Club so a lot of people had never seen Gordon Lightfoot before. It was interesting to talk to them and find out what they knew and what they thought of him. All positive feedback I might add.

There were about 300 people in attendance and the ballroom itself wasn't too big, so as you can imagine, it was a very intimate performance. There was no intermission so Lightfoot and the band played for about 80 minutes with two encores. The sound was decent, although the flat walls of the ballroom didn't add for much reverb or resonance. Barry Harvey told me they had to keep the levels low to get any kind of decent sound out of the place. It was interesting to look around as the band played and see giant windows looking out onto the center of the banking district in Toronto. We were literally packed in between skyscrapers. Probably one of the most unique venues Gord has played at I would imagine.

Gord and the band were in fine form as usual. He opened with Carefree Highway, followed by Cotton Jenney. The rest of the setlist was similar to last year's shows, with some notable inclusions like Hangdog Hotel Room, which I had never heard live before. The Wreck was as haunting as usual, and Sundown got the otherwise conservative crowd going. He closed with a note perfect CRT, and did EMR and Blackberry Wine as his two encores.

Overall, a unique concert in a very different venue. Can't wait for Massey!

Kenyon

[Jenney]

Originally posted by Kenyon:
Last night I had the opportunity to attend Gord's last show of the three night stand at the Dominion Club in Toronto. The band was set up in the large ballroom of
Gord and the band were in fine form as usual. He opened with Carefree Highway, followed by Cotton Jenney.
Kenyon Hey Kenyon, love your spelling of Cotton Jenney!
So tell me, did it cost you $10,000 to go?
Also, any chance that you are going to wander down to Niagara Falls?

Jenney

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by Jenney:
[]Hey Kenyon, love your spelling of Cotton Jenney!
So tell me, did it cost you $10,000 to go?
Also, any chance that you are going to wander down to Niagara Falls?
Jenney [/QB]I trust that those of you attending the upcoming Niagara Falls concerts will not have to endure the obviously severe conditions visitors faced back in 1911
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/funthings/NIAGaRA_1911.jpg
Could they, do they really freeze?
a rare picture sent to me yesterday by the rez thanks Rex
(after a google image search I quickly found it on Phoebe Gloeckner's
Personal Web Site at:-
http://homepage.mac.com/phoebegloeckner/iblog/newblog/B1040083442/C1206067656/E866404023/
click the next button to see more strange pix
John Fowles

[brink]

Oh Kenyon, you went without me?
:(

[SilverHeels]

Kenyon, as we say over here: you jammy so-and-so!
(dont ask me to explain the meaning of that ridiculous expression) :D
Thanks for the report.
Wish I could have been there!

[char]

like me, kenyon has no wheels....so neither of us will be going to Niagara Falls...
:(
and Kenyon....I'm crushed that I wasn't your date!
;)

[Kenyon]

Sorry Char! But hey, Hugh's Room is coming up so you can be my date then!

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by SilverHeels:
Kenyon, as we say over here: you jammy so-and-so!
(dont ask me to explain the meaning of that ridiculous expression) :D cop out Bru!!

OK so just what does "jammy mean? those of us with the undoubted benefit of an British upbringing know instinctively what it means but for furrinners I found this:-

english
2. colloq
Said of a person: lucky.
3. colloq
Said of a job, etc: profitable, especially at little cost in effort.
Etymology: 19c

a google led me to:-
http://english2american.com/dictionary/cat_misc.html

where I also spotted this that previously perplexed Bru!!

blimey expl. A nice mild expletive, blimey is (in terms of rudeness) on a par with "wow" or "my goodness". It was originally part of the phrase "cor blimey", which was apparently a contraction of "god blind me" which was in turn an abbreviated version of "may god blind me if it is not so". To prevent alarm, though, it's worth saying that I've used this word a number of times and so far god has made no attempt whatsoever to blind me, whether what I was saying was true or not. Nowadays "cor blimey" is much rarer, but still used.
for "jammy" it says:-

jammy adj. Lucky. Slang - often seen in the phrase "you jammy git", uttered graciously on some sort of defeat

another good site was:-
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-98071.html
witch has several amusing responses to the question of what Jammy means when used in conjunction with the expressive little word "git"

an international example - and there are many (so apologies if this derails the thread) - but i used the term 'jammy git' in conversation wiv a yank this morning and got a completely blank look, possibly for iro both words.
Ok so what does the acronym IRO stand for the consensus of opinion indicates
" Acronym ... IRO, -, In Respect Of.

anyone know where the term 'jammy' comes from? ... or 'git' for that matter?

"The expression mentioned earlier "jammy git" meaning a lucky person relates to jam of course. There is another expression about wanting "jam on it" refering to someone who wants more, they want jam on their bread.

Anyone who has jam on their bread is lucky or "jammy". I used to hear this in Devon but I think it is fairly universal. Git is just a bloke and is vaguely perjorative but in the case of "jammy git" the sense is one of jealousy...

I would add "Where of course git means a so-and-so"!
John Fowles

[ January 23, 2006, 14:11: Message edited by: johnfowles ]

[SilverHeels]

Gee thanks, John. Now we can all sleep easy. ;)

[johnfowles]

OK OK I knew that was Brewing!!!
The lady in question has now asked me to display her fetching snap of Gord taken at the December2 2005 Stratford ON Concert.It is a suspiciously small (and very dark) jpeg only 17954 bytes which suggests that it is only a thumbnail?? Whatever I am going to upload it to a free web site I discovered earlier at:-
httP{://www.ripeway.com
who allows hotlinking and told me:-
"You have a free account, with 30 MB of storage space, and 15 MB of daily downloads."
It allows files up to 10MB to be uploaded; But if you want to use it for sharing large files the 24 hour bandwidth total/download limit of only 15Mb is rather restrictive IMHO
here is our journalist/photographers pride and joy:-
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005.jpg
John Fowles
It was only fitting that "our bard" sang in Stratford: I recently spoke to "Jim Nasium" by phone and he told me that in 2002 after the second Orillia concert was cancelled he visited Stratford and was surprised that in aping its British original the Ontario one is also called Stratford-On-Avon

[ January 23, 2006, 15:41: Message edited by: johnfowles ]

[johnfowles]

Thid board is causing me grief .I had trouble yesterday getting the icy Canadian Falls picture to display and could not get the bold formatting to work initially now it is refusing to show Bru's picture dammit so I'll try againhttp://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005.jpg
John Fowles
I aver that there ain't nuttin' wrong with my UBB code and in any case I used the cheating "image" instant UBB core anyway
Sod it where's Florian when you need him!!!

[johnfowles]

Most aggravating I pasted in the exact same code on a test forum test found a superfluous spsce between the jpg and the[/img] removed it and the picture appeared
Third try here
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005.jpg
John Fowles
Flippin' Nora... Stone The Crows

[johnfowles]

from http://www.barbelith.com/topic/23455
http://www.barbelith.com/art/logo_new.gif
Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community

"Flippin crickey moses missus!!! M.M. is ace! I can't believe I'm going to be stuck on a train heading home while they'll be chatting away. Flippin nora crickey etc."

[char]

you're right John - our Stratford is based on the British one. It's a charming little theatre town and somewhere I've always wanted to see Gord perform.

Kenyon - I'll be in touch about Hugh's Room...hopefully I can make it down to TO somehow!
lol
I can get to Sarasota Florida butnot downtown Toronto!
lol
sheesh...

[SilverHeels]

Originally posted by johnfowles:
Most aggravating I pasted in the exact same code on a test forum test found a superfluous spsce between the jpg and the[/img] removed it and the picture appeared
Third try here
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005.jpg
John Fowles
Flippin' Nora... Stone The Crows John,
thank you! I think the pic looks grand. I like the dark - very atmospheric.
And it was certainly NOT a thumbnail.
Thanks again.

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by SilverHeels:
quote:Originally posted by johnfowles:
Most aggravating I pasted in the exact same code on a test forum test found a superfluous spsce between the jpg and the[/img] removed it and the picture appeared
Third try here
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005.jpg
John Fowles
Flippin' Nora... Stone The Crows John,
thank you! I think the pic looks grand. I like the dark - very atmospheric.
And it was certainly NOT a thumbnail.
Thanks again. [/QUOTE]OK OK yes the original is "atmosopheric"
However I now have enlarged Bru's jpg file from 480 pixels wide to 750 pixels and mildly adjusted the brightness and contrast.It is still to me a satisfying picture and one that appropriately cropped would look great as the basis for an up to date CD jewel case insert design:-
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005-750.jpg
Now regarding the jpg's file size; even after the enlarging operation it is still only 20860 bytes (compared to the original 17954 bytes)whereas the normal size of a compressed jpg from the standard of digital camera that Bru has would be rather more than say 250,000 bytes.Indeed the charming country scene taken two days later showing the Lightfoot Trail near Orillia she has used on the corfid map when viewed full sized at a pixel size of 2288 by 1712 is a whopping 1,179,552 Bytes but then maybe that was a different camera?? Hence my reasoned suggestion that she had only sent me a thumbnail picture
John Fowles

full of thoughts, all full of rhymes Listen to the pictures flow

I can picture ev'ry move that a man could make

[SilverHeels]

John,
I take everything you say on board but now the enlarged edit is 'fuzzy'. I agree it would make a great sleeve pic. Can you crop it, John?

[Cathy]

I have to agree with Bru. The dark one is better... clearer and it has a certain mood to it.

[SilverHeels]

Cathy, that was the reason I took the picture. I saw how great he looked and hoped the camera would capture the mood, which I think it did.
I'm pleased you can see it too.

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by SilverHeels:
John,
I take everything you say on board but now the enlarged edit is 'fuzzy'. I agree it would make a great sleeve pic. Can you crop it, John? OK OK I agree that in my attempt to simply resize the original very small jpg a fair amount of fuzziness inevitably crept in
I have now cropped the original and adjusted mainly its brightness resulting in this, which is as you can see the same size as the allegedly non-thumbnail original albeit after cropping it is now reduced from 480x360-17954 bytes to 404 x306:-
http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord_at_Stratford_ON_2December2005-cropped.jpg
Note that this is still a relatively tiny file of only 10726 bytes.
I am now obviously curious to know whether Bru has bothred to check her other jpgs from that batch of shooting to see if the norm is around 1 megabyte (like her Lightfoot Trail pic) or the tiny 10 kilobyte of this example???
John fowles

If you're lookin' to get silly you'd better go back to from where you came
from
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

[SilverHeels]

thanks, John. That looks good.

[char]

the pic that john lightened isn't the result of my tinkering with the image first posted.

mine is still a dark background - just the red out of his face is gone and it's still in focus with the same shadowing on his face etc..

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by lighthead2toe:
quote:[/QB][/QUOTE]and you were saying Ron??

[SilverHeels]

and RJ has the nerve to send ME blonde jokes! ;)

[Janice]

Great picture, Bru - thanks for posting it, John. Although, I must agree with Bru and Cathy that the first one (smaller and darker) is actually the best. I see no problem with smaller files - actually in this setting, I believe smaller is better as it takes less time to load.

Kenyon - sounds like my kind of show. The 250-300 seat acoustic concert series I work with has spoiled me to the point that if there are more than 300-400 people, it's almost too crowded :eek:

[Kenyon]

Someone should send that photo in to EMP in case they are looking to release a live album of some kind. I know they have all of the recent Massey shows recorded, and who knows, Gord might decide to release a live album in the meantime if he's not currently writing. There were a couple of stellar photos taken during this past year's Massey concerts as well, that I'm sure EMP would love to see.

[Kenyon]

Here's the setlist from Saturday night, if memory serves. I'm pretty sure these are all the songs, but the order might be slightly different:

Carefree Highway
Cotton Jenny
14 Karat Gold
Harmony
Couchiching
If You Could Read My Mind
Hangdog Hotel Room
Beautiful
Sundown
Wreck
Alberta Bound
Waiting For You
A Painter Passing Through
Shadows
Baby Step Back
Song for a Winter's Night
Old Dan's Records
CRT
EMR
Blackberry Wine

The show ran about 90 minutes, including the two encores.

[SilverHeels]

Kenyon, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I will send the pic. to Barry. If we could only get his email addy ...

Thanks, too, for the set list. He obviously knew I wasnt there ... no CHristian Island. ;)

[johnfowles]

Originally posted by SilverHeels:
Kenyon, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I will send the pic. to Barry. If we could only get his email addy ... Bru I am working on a plan to achieve that desirable action. I'll email you later with details.Meanwhile:-
OK OK apropos my earlier comments aboot how small the jpeg file that Bruna had originally sent me was.In a subsequent AOL Instant Messaging session we established that it had come from the "email" setting on her camera and she then emailed me what turned out to be a huge bitmap (bmp) "lossless" i.e. raw format version of 3501KB.
I converted the bmp to the jpg compressed "lossy" format using MGI Photosuite which also told me that it was only 1280 by 960 pixels or aboot one megapixel.
the resulting jpeg is only 75KB (76,259 bytes)
but still 1280 by 960 pixels which is far too wide for this forum so I resized it to 800 wide
thereby further reducing the file size (and reducing the dial-up loading time) the file is now only 27KB (27037 bytes)

http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord-Stratford.jpg

I noted that the redness (which varies from monitor to monitor I found) may be reduced if required by tinkering with it in any mumber of photo editing programmes as Char has done in a version she emailed me but I seem to have lost:-
and for CD insert use where a squarer image is necesary it may be cropped as I demonstrated previously
cropped then resized to the same 800 width hence file is 32.8KB (33.505 bytes)

http://h1.ripway.com/johnfowles/lightfoot/Gord-Stratford-cropped.jpg

In preparing this message I did a bit of research into digital picture file sizes to include in an overal tutorial I am working on, but rather than clutter up this message and be reminded yet again to use the small talk forum, I have started a new topic over there at:-
http://www.corfid.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000783
John Fowles

Listen to the pictures flow Across the room into your mind they go

I can picture every move that a man could make

[ January 26, 2006, 16:26: Message edited by: johnfowles ]

[SilverHeels]

Gee, John, you know that IS a good picture I took!
;)

And RJ, you shall be forever 'blond' in my mind.
lol