020795 The Tragically Hip/Odds/Change of Heart, Ottawa, ON
Look at this ticket; you’re looking at a lost art…
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.
020689 Cheap Trick/Eddie Money, Moncton, NB
On February 6th, 1989 I saw Cheap Trick at the Moncton Coliseum, a band I had coveted since hearing their incredible live recording of I Want You To Want Me back when I was maybe ten years old…
020599 The Tragically Hip/By Divine Right, Montreal, QC
Todd bless The Tragically Hip. Not just because they were simply a great rock band that wrote and performed anthems…
020411 Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, KY
Regardless of one’s stance on the sport he championed it is a widely accepted fact that Muhammad Ali was an icon and a hero…
020394 Meat Loaf, Hull, QC
On February 3rd, 1994 I went to see Meat Loaf for the first time…
020224 Mike Lynch/Liam Small, Harbour Grace, NL
Pop your head into any shed party across the island and you’ll surely find a Cecil O’Brien inside, bent crooked with age and telling tales in rapid-fire, barely intelligible dialect…
020201 Steve Earle & The Dukes, Ottawa, ON
The venue was in a carpeted salon area that I would eventually come to know as the home of the Civic Centre’s annual Christmas craft sale…
020188 FM, Moncton, NB
On February 1st, 1988 I went to Moncton’s Club Cosmopolitan (The Cosmo, we called it) to see Canadian non-icons FM in concert. It’s not like I was a big fan of the band…
012908 Bob Wiseman/Catherine MacLellan, Ottawa, ON
On January 29th, 2008 I walked down to Sparks Street for a taping of Fuse, a now-defunct Saturday afternoon radio show…
012806 John Geggie, Cuong Vu, and Kevin Breit, Ottawa, ON
When I was in my first year of university one of my profs arranged a jazz trio to play for one of our classes. I only remember one member of the trio – John Geggie – but I remember his performance that afternoon in my mind’s eye as vividly as if it were yesterday…
Todd Man Out 