Category: Music

So, what’s gonna happen at Cthulhupalooza?

Well, there will be a Rock Band contest, for starters. You probably know that The Thickets got an exclusive track “Shhh….” on Rock Band this summer. Stewie and I have wrangled some hot amazing prizes from Jones Soda, Harmonix, Toy Vault, and others.

Oh, speaking of Jones Soda, they are going to provide us with literally hundreds of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets themed pops, including “Colour Me Green” Apple, Spacecorp Reconstituted Effluent, and many other cool flavours. This is exclusive to Cthulhupalooza in case you didn’t know.

We are screening the surprisingly great feature film “The Call of Cthulhu.” This is a silent film created by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, along with several other short Lovecraftian films like The Veil, The Summoning (for those who don’t read my blog, this last is the VFS short by the computer animation dept in which I get horribly killed by a Lovecraftian monster), and more.

Then The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are going to perform on the stage at The Rio with a brand new and one-time special costume presentation. No goat legs, no deep sea diving costume – something that we’ve always wanted to do but never had the venue for it. Now we do.

And the winner of the Rock Band contest can perform live with the band on stage for the track “Shhh….”!

Oh, we’re also making special Cthulhupalooza shirts and buttons – again exclusively for this event. And the whole thing is to support Child’s Play Charity!

Where oh where can you get tickets to this event?

From me of course ($16), or from any of these fine establishments:

Neptoon Records, Red Cat Records, RX Comics, Lucky’s Comics, Pulp Fiction Books (both locations), The Rio Theatre and Elfsar Collection in yaletown, High Life, Scratch Records and probably some other places.

If you only see one Thickets show, this will probably be the one to see. Just sayin’!

So visit http://www.cthulhupalooza.com to sign up for the contest (no extra charge! It’s FUN) and other details…

Don’t forget to listen to me on CiTR this Thursday – We All Fall Down every Thursday, from 13.00-14.00(PT) (that’s 1pm) on 101.9fm CiTR

This time I woke up in the hotel room, again about a half hour before the alarm went off. I enjoyed my first shower of the convention! Deanna and I went to the convention center and picked up some food from the green room. I reorganized the merch booth and business was steady, some may say brisk. Deanna and I took the time to wander around a bit. On the way out I tried to cut through Wil Wheaton’s line of fans (much quicker than going around) but Deanna pulled me back as it seemed a photo was about to be taken. Wil saw us and said that he was so glad he met me in a casual atmosphere – it made him appreciate the show last night even more. I failed my Good Boyfriend Check and quickly said “thanks a lot, I won’t hold up your fans” when I should have said “thanks a lot, this is Deanna she’s a big fan.” Oops.

We visited the annex building where all the tabletop games were going on and I was catapulted back in time to organizing gaming conventions here in town. Even at the grandest conventions you cannot escape the musky, tightly packed rooms of young and not-so-young men rolling dice, slapping cards and trying to speak over one another. Good times!

While we were gone Wil came to the booth and refused to take free pins and stickers, but overpaid for our latest CD instead.

When we got back I organized a time for the band to perform Rock Band at the Harmonix booth. Allen and Stewie came with their media recorders and there was a lot of reassuring bandmates that it was set on ‘no fail’ mode. We watched a few musical numbers go by with other players to get the gist of things (Warren and I were the only ones who had played the game before). We entered the stage from the opposite side of the “regular” people waiting in line, which caused some confusion. One little kid (maybe 10 years old) didn’t get the memo and he grabbed the guitar before Warren. Even when he was clearly on stage with strangers and not whatever group he was supposed to be with, he was still gung ho to play and had to be escorted off stage by the staff. Too bad, I was all keen to get some new blood in the band. We played “Shhh….” as seen here:

The rest of the day went by mostly at the booth. Throughout Sunday business was steady since by that point people finally knew who we were. Adam and Deanna left early but Stewie stuck around till the end. We packed up our stuff and as I was leaving I threw a “Worship Me Like A God” shirt at Wil Wheaton. I hope he wears it in the spirit it was intended. Stewie, Warren, Mario and I had a sort of band meeting at a sushi place attached to the Max Hotel and discussed what to do about following up on the Rock Band coup. I retrieved the rental car from the valet and, being Canadian and not a car owner, I completely forgot to tip him.

Jordan and Merrick had already left in the van with our gear and merch so we met up to cross the border at the same time. There were absolutely no hassles getting everything back in the country and after I dropped Warren off in Abbotsford and Mario in North Van I finally got home, a huge almost year-long weight lifted off my shoulders!

We want to do it again next year – and this time: band manager!