My three-week Trip to Europe

Looking back… that’s what everyone does at this time of year, but seriously I need to give an update here. So looking back at the last 6

months I’ve had a pretty good time.

In October I went to Europe for 3 weeks. Highlights were Manchester, I met Andy Rourke from the Smiths (my bass idol) in a café and was a total star struck fan, “um, hii… can I get my picture taken with you?” haha. Check out the photo! I look nervous and dorky as hell. I saw Zoot Woman at the Chips With Everything nite which was amazing. I have loved Zoot Woman from a far in Canada for the past year, not being able to buy any of their records in Vancouver I had to settle for having a burned CD. What luck I had when I was standing on Oxford Rd and noticed a poster for their show 2 days later! They are pop genius and I love them more now that I’ve seen them. Stuart Price is hott. Oh, and Chips With Everything (chipsrecords.co.uk) is a really good night except I hear they had their last night last month. Still they have a record label and put out weird, but really good, records by the likes of Stazi and Troupe.

In Nottingham I hung out with Hot Hot Heat. We were actually on the same plane flying to London a couple weeks before so we planned to hook up in Notts. I was most excited to see Glasgow dance-rock band Franz Ferdinand who were one of the openers. They are my new favourite band of the year. I love HHH but I’ve seen them at least 10 times so new bands are always more exciting. After the show we went to the Social where Franz Ferdinand were doing some guest DJing but first we had to watch this band Whitehouse who were so bleeding awful! It was like constant static and noize for about 45 minutes. We all got fairly pissed and Dustin and I ended up going to this guy Ricky’s place for about 10 minutes, I ended up trudging back to Matt and Neil’s house at around 3AM when I realized I had lost my key and I had to wake them up with the door bell. Neil came and let me in he had a very large quilt wrapped around himself.

The next morning I was off to Holland. The reason I was going to continental Europe was I was supposed to drive Scout Niblett around on tour. But that’s not what ended up happening. I got ditched in Dordrecht! In a foreign country half way around the world from my home. I was totally freaked out but I got my shit together and I took a train across Europe for 8 hours and got into Berlin where I spent a wonderful week. Luckily for me I have rad relatives there who put me up and gave me lots of food and such. I partied down Deutsche style (which means drinking all night) and ended up lost at an s-bahn station in the early hours. So it wasn’t all bad, I ended up seeing Scout Niblett at the Berlin show. I really liked Germany I think I could live in Berlin (any one looking for a room mate?? Haha). I’m even taking German class in January for a few weeks.

Some sad news this week… January 2nd was the last Ewox show ever! I play drums in the Ewoks and we’ve been around for 4 years but our singer is moving to Montreal so we are going on a long hiatus and don’t know if we’ll ever play again. Boo! We played with Channels 3&4 who we are passing the torch of most annoying keyboard/drums 3-piece too. They’ve even covered one of our songs before!

Oh and Kayla from Fuck Me USA and I are starting a ladies DJ nite on Wednesdays at DV8 in Vancouver, it’s called CRIME. We are going to fuck shit up. Well, I’m just going to genre jump and play whatever I feel like it. So come down if you are bored on Wednesdays it’s no cover and the food at DV8 is tasty.

Ok, so I guess it’s new years resolutions time which I think are usually quite stupid but on my list of things I’d like to do this year are… move to another country, play some shows with my new band The Jangs, and be nicer! Haha. I don’t know… resolutions are so dumb no one ever keeps them.

Keep it real. xo Mar

Ps. Here’s my 2003 top ten

1) The Sounds – Living In America (New Line Records)

2) Franz Ferdinand — Darts of Pleasure (Domino)

3) Zoot Woman — s/t (Wall of Sound)

4) Star Spangles — Bazooka!!! (Capitol)

5) The Thermals — more parts per million (Sub Pop)

6) Death From Above — Heads Up! (Ache)

7) The Unicorns — Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? (Alien8)

8) The Hidden Cameras — Smell of Our Own (Rough Trade)

9) The Capricorns — In the Zone (Paroxysm Records)

10) Fuck Me USA — unreleased songs