One of the things I miss about back home was live music. Sure there’s live music down here, but you can only listen to the same songs being done on the steel pan, or the same cover bands doing the same cover songs so many times. Even the “big shows” that are imported are cover bands like Nearly Neil, Bjorn Again, Elevation or Innuendo. Once or twice a year there’s a big-name reggae or soca star that comes over from Jamaica or somewhere and just once in the ten years I’ve been here, there’s been a major North American band down here. Last year The Tragically Hip played in May, co-incidentally when I was in Italy so I missed it.

Compared to Vancouver, where there’s an entire grid of big and small acts performing every night at big and small venues it sometimes makes your head spin. I wanna go here, I wanna see them, I wanna go to that concert…

Back in the 90’s before I left for Cayman, I used to drag my friends around town (and sometimes all the way out to Chilliwack) to see a couple local bands: Rymes with Orange and The Odds. Shortly after I left Vancouver in 1998 (with all four of the Odds CDs) they broke up. Imagine my surprise when a couple days ago I see a status update from one of my friends that he’s setting up a fan page on Facebook for The New Odds. What the? I jumped on the fan page and found out that they released a new CD called Cheerleader just a few weeks ago. Sweet! Then this morning as I’m flicking through the news feed, I see that he posted it on his web site with the catchy riff on the Who’s lyrics from Won’t get fooled again (A GREAT song to rock out to on Rock Band, by the way :) for the title.

SO to recap: I leave for Cayman in 1998, the band breaks up shortly after. I move back to Vancouver in 2008 and the new band gets together and puts out a CD shortly before I arrive…

Co-incidence??? Perhaps…