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Nash and I haven't been to Montreal in over a year so we're both looking forward to this latest adventure. We'll be staying with our pal Thom in Cornwall so we leave Toronto at noon on Saturday and drive the five hours to Cornwall. From Cornwall it's a short one hour drive to both Montreal and Ottawa so this is a good location to start out from. After the long drive from Toronto we settle in at Thom's apartment. I curl up on the easy chair while Nash and Thom talk about music and watch a movie called Snatch. Nash thinks this film is very cool. The script is brilliant and so are the performances. Dennis Farina is one of Nash's favourite character actors (Crime Story). All I remember is being aroused from my deep sleep by loud groans of sick laughter from Nash. The film also has a dog as one of the main characters and, like me, the dog is a crucial part of the story. On Sunday we head to Montreal with Thom and his friend Matt who's along to help us with the equipment. The Jupiter Room is a new club that has been started by the same people who ran Jailhouse Rock. For those of you keeping track of my adventures, you can read about the Jailhouse in my previous diaries about Montreal. This club is better located and has a nicer look to it but the place has only been open for six weeks and Nash hopes the club has done a lot of promotion on this. If people don't know where you're playing, then what's the point. The dressing room is a tiny office behind the stage so I decide to hang out with Thom at the merchandise table. From this vantage point I can see what's going on as well as greet the folks who come over to buy t-shirts and CDs. Some say in amazement "Is that the Digger?" Thom tells them to say hello and maybe I'll write them up in my diary. We meet Scott, who had come to Toronto for the Halloween show back in October. He was glad Nash was in Montreal so he didn't have to drive so far to see the show. We also meet Gerard, an experimental performance artist/musician who first saw Nash live at The Edge in Toronto over twenty years ago. Gerard gives Nash a CD of his latest music and it's pretty good stuff. There are a lot of musicians in the crowd tonight, including members of the Planet Smashers. Nash does two sets of pure Thrash and the audience is right into it. The encore of Baba O'Riley is a fitting end to another exciting gig in Montreal. . . . We'll have to get back to Montreal this spring because a whole year is just too long to wait. Back in Cornwall, we have a day off on Monday before we head up to Ottawa on Tuesday. It's snowing but not too cold. At two AM Monday night, Nash lets me out the side door of the apartment building to take a pee. As he stands inside the door, Nash doesn't see me take a dump as well. I figure he can find it in the morning and deal with it then. At seven in the morning, there is a knock on the apartment door and a loud voice shouts "This is Property Maintenance. Clean up your dog shit. I've already called the bylaw officer". Even in his half-awake stupor, Nash knows how to take the piss out of petty dictators. Without opening the apartment door Nash says "Bylaw officer? What the hell is that? Is that like the dog shit police? Are you sure it's my dog's shit? We better wait until the expert gets here because I wouldn't want to touch someone else's dog shit. You know you aren't supposed to disturb a crime scene. Why, I could easily plant someone else's dog shit and then you'd have to blame that Shitsu across the hall!" With a resigned expletive the royal groundskeeper had met his match. Nash eventually put on his coat and went down to remove the offending turd. I took another dump and we both went back to bed. Digger |
