Today I am doing something I have wanted to do since 1977 - seeing Elvis Costello live.   He is playing the Ottawa Blues Fest this evening with the Imposters, 2/3's of his band from the second lp on, the Attractions.

I remembered on the drive up that I had an intense Elvis experience in grade 10. I was misdiagnosed as having gas at the emergency ward at the Truro hospital on a Saturday evening. [Truro hospital, you will perhaps know was spoken of warmly at the time in the late '70's - if you are sick enough to go to hospital, you are sick enough to go to Halifax.] So, I go home and as the glowing appendix warms to its day in the sun, I slip into a night of barf and fever in the middle of which Elvis Costello is live on SNL and, in my fever, I am there with him on the stage. It was better than recreational drugs. Fortunately a real doctor was in Dad's church the next day, swore in the manse where I lay and directed my delivery to the surgical ward where I was sliced asap.