Good Week, Better Weekend, Screeching Halt

I great week kind of… fell apart at the end. Is it a cosmic balance? If things go too well, we need to pay the price?

MONDAY – Monday night I joined three other members of the Capital Slam team on John Akpata‘s Monday Night Scribes show on CHUO. We discussed poetry and CFSW. John gave my book a big plug. It was just a lot of fun.

THURSDAY – I got advance copies of ‘Live at Capital Slam 2011’. This is going to be available this coming Saturday, Oct. 1st at Capital Slam. You WANT a copy of this. With a line-up that includes: Sense-Say, Loh El, Prufrock, Poetic Speed, Bruce Narbaitz, Sean O’Gorman, Mack Cannon, Elle P, Danielle K.L. Gregoire and MORE (including me). Excellent CD.

FRIDAY – In the morning I went on Friday Special Blend on CKCU. We plugged the CD, my book, and my show that night (more about that in a moment…)

During the day I found out that an on-line Q&A I had done with Rob McLennan was now up. I love this interview. So cool.

That evening I had to miss my first ever Once Upon A Slam so that I could feature at Urban Legends. What a great show! The Slam was excellent with the 2010 Capital Slam team (National Champions) throwing down a couple of team pieces. Just Jamaal took the win but there were also great showings by ArRay-of-WoRds, Loh El, Sean O’Gorman and more!

My feature set was a lot of fun. People seemed to really dig it and I had a great time!

My set list:
Why Art?
The Stranger
FN
Moving to Arizona
The Four Horsemen (debut!)
Four-Colour World (debut!)
Library

Lots of fun.

SATURDAY – More low key. I went to poker. I didn’t win, but it was a really fun game. I had a good time. Meanwhile Ruthanne went dancing with Nadine Thornhill and Natalie-Joy Quesnel at the Mercury Lounge (my home away from home). I swung by and picked her up (after a late meal at Zak’s… home away from home #3). Then home.

A good evening. A good night.

SUNDAY – Lunch at Sushi-Kan (home away from home #2). The Kymeras did a show with Brendan McLeod at the Merc (h-a-f-h #1). It didn’t go as well as we could have hoped. Doing a show on Sunday is always iffy so the crowd wasn’t as large as the last time Brendan was in town. Ruthanne asked me to do a couple of poems as an ‘opening act’. I did Why Art? and The Stranger, but the crowd wasn’t into it. In fact, they were pretty dead the whole show. They EVENTUALLY started laughing at Brendan’s stuff… but overall, not a stellar show. Too bad, but it happens.

Then home, and my back started to hurt. I guess I had been going pretty hard and was starting to pay for it. Eventually I decided I had better take a day off to rest my back.

MONDAY – If the lacklustre reception Sunday night followed by a sore back wasn’t enough… driving home Sunday night the brakes on the car started making a pretty bad grinding noise, so today the car went in to Midas.

The brake pads grinding MAY HAVE actually saved our lives. (That is me trying to put a positive spin on things) Our rear brake drum cylinder was leaking. Left alone, that would have been it. Suddenly no more brakes. Because the brake pads started to wear, we got it checked out.

Lucky… but I don’t feel lucky.

$1000 to fix it.

Holy crap.

I mean, we’ve got the money, but it REALLY hurts. That is money that should have been paying down our debts. Damn it.

Friday Special Blend

I was on Friday Special Blend on CKCU this morning and despite a little problem with the track numbering (totally my fault), it went great!

We lived up to the show’s name as we covered a lot of material in the time allotted, from my start as a poet to my inspiration for poetry now. We listened to three tracks from ‘Live at Capital Slam 2011’, which will be released at the October 1st edition of Capital Slam. They were (in order):

Loh El – A Real Man
Rusty Priske – Angst
Sean O’Gorman – Forget the Cartoons

(Apparently we said fuck at least once in each poem… there is a reason we have started calling our team ‘The Capital Fucking Slam Team’.)

(As an aside, we recently had someone ask us to start performing ‘clean’ and stop swearing in our poems. Apparently we are responsible for corrupting him or something – his words, not mine. My kneejerk reaction was to say ‘Fuck you’ because I am juvenile and it would have been funny, but instead I gave him the real answer which is that we don’t censor our poets.)

We talked about my new book ‘Rusty Priske: Trapeze Artist’ and a whole slew of upcoming shows.

Here they are:

Urban Legends Season Opener, feat. ME! – Tonight, 6:30, Carleton University
Once Upon A Slam Season Opener, feat. Daniel Richer – Tonight, 6:30, Mercury Lounge
Brendan McLeod & the Kymeras – Sunday, 6:30, Mercury Lounge
CAPITAL SLAM, feat. Canadian Individual Slam Champion OpenSecret and the release of ‘Live at Capital Slam 2011’ – Oct. 1st, 6:30, Mercury Lounge

That Wasn’t Me – And Next Friday!

There was a little crossing of wires this morning. Susan Johnston of CKCU’s Special Blend had asked me for a track to play. I told her she could use any of the ‘Live at Capital Slam’ tracks and then we got talking about the 2011 version, not yet released so I asked Andrew Brittain at Mudshark if we could get a track to play on the radio. He said sure and I passed it on.

Somewhere in there Andrew and I were thinking ‘promote the CD’ while Susan was still thinking ‘a poem by Rusty’…

So, ‘Ransom Note’ by Poetic Speed was played, but I was billed. Sorry Komi. (Though I imagine anyone that has heard either of us would realize that was you and not me.) 🙂

Next Friday I will be on the show (at about 7:10 am) to promote my book (see above left), the forthcoming CD, and my appearance at Urban Legends.

The 23rd is a tough night because two shows I really want everyone to go to are both on the same night. When Sean O’Gorman and Sarah Musa asked me to feature at Urban Legends I was flattered, but it fell on the same night that Ruthanne’s show, Once Upon A Slam, is happening. Not only do I want to support Ruthanne, but I really love Once Upon A Slam. I have a lot of fun playing DJ and listening to the great stories.

In the end, after talking to Ruthanne, I decided to take the Urban Legends gig, but I want people to go to both.

So, your challenge over the next week is to perfect cloning technology so you can go to both shows.

No?

Well, if not that, at least go to one of the shows. Both have doors at 6:30 or thereabouts.

So, here are your choices:

A: Go the the Mercury Lounge to see the season debut of Once Upon A Slam.

B: Go to Carleton University to see the season debut of Urban Legends (featuring me!)

C: Do neither and risk my everlasting enmity and disappointment. (Well, maybe just the latter.)

Urban Legends

I am excited to announce that I will be featuring at the Urban Legends Season Opener on Sept. 23rd.

This is really fun for me as I do not do many solo features – most of my opportunities come as part of the CapSlam team or the Copper Conundrum.

I have a 20 minute set… what should I perform? Any requests?

I will be promoting my book ‘Rusty Priske: Trapeze Artist’, so come by, hear some grooves and pick up a copy!

Before that, on Sept. 17th we have Capital Slam. I didn’t get a chance to slam at our opener so I am pretty sure I will slam this time out. The feature will be former Victoria poet, current Montreal poet, Megan Ann Ward! I have seen her a few times at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and I am excited that she will be part of our show.

I have also been booked to feature at Dusty Owl… but that is in March.. Heck, before we get to that we have VERSeFest where Capital Slam gets the honour of presenting URSULA RUCKER!!!

THIS Ursula Rucker.

THIS Ursula Rucker.

THIS Ursula Rucker.

THIS URSULA RUCKER!!

You NEED to be excited about this!

CapSummerSlam and Urban Legends

As mentioned, this was one of those poetry weekends (following one of those poetry weeks after another poetry weekend etc.)

It turned out to be too much.

Friday I was going to go to the Urban Legends Slam Finals. Meanwhile, Ruthanne was going to go out to Almonte during the day to visit Danielle and that got delayed… long story short, I was feeling the burn out, and we decided to head out Almonte for a visit, evening bbq, and games.

I heard that Urban Legends was amazing, though.

Once Ian Keteku and Poetic Speed decided not to compete, it left the competition a little thin in numbers but still long on talent. Marcus invited some notable luminaries to perform to fill out the show and everyone had a good time.

In the end, the first Urban Legends team, who will compete at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word to be held in Ottawa this October, will be: Synonymous, Marcus Jameel, Hodan Ibrahim, Hyfidelik and (alt) D-Lightfull!

It is nice to see some female representation as Ottawa hasn’t had a woman on repping the town since Danielle was alt in ’07.

I missed the slam, but we had fun in Almonte.

Then came Saturday It just so happened that Saturday was our wedding Anniversary. Ruthanne and I were married July 3rd, 1993, 17 years pre, to misappropriate a Prufrock phrase.

Yeah. I’m a lucky guy.

It was also a Capital Slam Summer show. Nathanael thought he was going to be out of town so he recruited Brandon Wint to host. He also signed DJ Prufrock up to spin some tunes. However, Nate’s trip was cancelled so he showed up anyway. 🙂

The first round was hot with 11 slammers, including a newcomer by the name of Rose who blew up the stage. Festrell threw down the highest scoring poem of the night with a new thing she wrote DURING the Urban Legends show, but she also went way long and knocked herself out with a time penalty. I performed my new Angst poem – memorized for the first time. It went over pretty big.

When the dust settled, the top 5 were very tight, ranging from 29.6 to 29.1 – Sean O’Gorman, me, Jenna Tenn-Yuk, Rose, Nathanael

The Capital Slam team featured. The flow was rocky but the poetry was tight. Amazing perfromances by Chris Tse, Open Secret, Prufrock, John Akpata and Brandon Wint.

In the second round the top 5 went up in reverse order from the first round (a change from our old rules). I read a poem called The Great Adventure, which I will share here soon, that I wrote in honour of Ruthanne on our Anniversary.
This time it was Nathanael who scored highest, but when the dust settled there was a three-way tie for 1st place! That may happen more often at shows that throw around a lot of tens, but there wasn’t even one ten on the night. It was just a mathematical fluke.

Nathanael – 29.1 / 29.5 / 58.6
Rusty Priske – 29.5 / 29.1 / 58.6
Jenna Tenn-Yuk – 29.4 / 29.2 / 58.6

I, for one, am happy to share the win! (Good thing Jenna was in there. If Nate and I tied for the win, people might think it was fixed.) 🙂

Rose and Sean O’Gorman rounded out the top 5.

Sunday was the CapSlam team featuring at Dusty Owl. I went, but then Ruthanne had to come get me. I spent a bit too much time outside on a very hot day and started getting the early signs of heat stroke.

I love Ottawa, but I can’t deal with the heat.

The reason I stopped posting poems here is I had reached a poem I wanted to keep secret for the moment. The secret is out now so I will put it up tomorrow!