Author: Todd Snelgrove

I've been having a lot of fun these past fifty-odd years. I've busked and bicycled through more places I can count, taught music and caught dengue fever, managed a band that toured all over North America and worked with Canada's National Orchestra for two decades. I've traveled countless miles to see a thousand concerts, played hundreds of gigs, won in Vegas and lost in Estonia, worked as a concert promoter, university instructor, janitor, and entertainment writer, seen the Grateful Dead and hiked the Dogon Valley, ran the stairs of the CN Tower and pedalled across Scandinavia once and Newfoundland twice. I've visited the graves of Alexander the Great and the great Robert Johnson, drunk excessively with some of the best and worst people you can imagine, and I've slept in some very, very weird places. Several years ago I started writing some of it down, and much of it is collected here for your perusal.
sports / Ticket Stories

031417 Senators vs Lightning, Ottawa, ON

On March 14th, 2017 I drove out to my hometown rink to watch the Ottawa Senators take on the Tampa Bay Lightning. Being mid-March the weather was starting to warm up a bit but with the thermometer still hovering around ten below zero my journey from the parking lot to the front door of the venue was fast and targeted…

Angela Hewitt / Ticket Stories

031120 Angela Hewitt, Ottawa, ON

This is the last concert I saw. Covid was just ramping up when I attended this wonderful show featuring Angela Hewitt playing the music of Bach, and while I enjoyed it immensely I sure am looking forward to seeing another concert sometime soon. Not since I started going to concerts at the age of fourteen have I gone a year without sharing a live musical performance with thousands of strangers, and I’m dying to do it again.

Prosetry

Code Grape, or Let’s Get Together, Canada!

Sure, I understand that Canada’s vast size and varying demographics demand tailored responses to the pandemic. I’m not saying that we should all simultaneously be at the same alert level, but wouldn’t it be nice if the next time someone tells you their province has moved to Code Plaid you knew what they were talking about?

Phish / Ticket Stories

030709 Phish, Hampton, VA

March 7th, 2009 was the middle night of Phish’s triumphant comeback run at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, a super-fun sold out string of shows that marked the end of the band’s second hiatus. In addition to spending the weekend attending a trio of great concerts I spent a whole lot of time socializing and meeting m’lady’s US concert buddies for the first time…

sports / Ticket Stories

030417 Red Bull Crashed Ice, Ottawa, ON

As part of Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations Red Bull sent their crew to Ottawa for the first time. They spent a month setting up a downhill ice-skating track on top of the Rideau Canal locks next to the Château Laurier hotel that was nothing short of an engineering wonder. Complete with jumps, bumps, twists, and turns, it looked like a frozen Coney Island roller coaster but instead of two metal rails running it’s length the iced track was painted into four positively suicidal skating lanes…

Bob Loblaw / Mike Essoudry / Videos

Bob Loblaw – Monkey Do

Back in the mid-’90’s I was part of a really interesting Ottawa freakrock band called Bob Loblaw. In 1996 we rented some recording equipment, set it up in the living room, and spent an intense week creating our only album – Monkey Do – which we released on cassette. For the record, Arrested Development didn’t start airing until 2003.

The Spoons / Ticket Stories

022189 The Spoons, Moncton, NB

Once I started going to see live music there was basically no stopping me aside from the fact that I lived in a geographical area (Moncton) that was largely ignored by musicians big and small (especially big). With such a dearth of options I ended up jumping at even the barest inkling of live music…