4th House Band Reading Series: July 2009

Friday July, 24th, 2009, 9-11 pm. Raw Sugar Cafe, 692 Somerset Street West, Ottawa

Each evening of the House Band Reading Series features Brendan McNally reading from his novel "Up the Ottawa, without despair" and launching the next chapter of the novel.

July, 2009: Chapterbook 4

July special guests: DJ Eric Komsomol, Amanda Abdelhadi, + Megan Butcher, rob mclennan.

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Up the Ottawa, without despair

It's the mid-eighties in Ottawa. What fun. No, really: the recession is mostly over but there still might be a nuclear war; video is trying to kill the radio star and Patch celebrated his sixteenth birthday by sleeping under a bridge. He's living downtown now, here and there, but mostly in and around the Byward Market. Sleeping rough and crashing on couches, eating at the soup kitchen, you know, to make ends meet. Then one day his buddy Li'l Jim finds a new apartment. An empty apartment. Sure, the whole row on Rideau Street will be gentrified in a few months. But for now its empty and it's free.

It's a good deal for Patch, who doesn't have much else, aside from the bridge and his pals. And music. Stuff like The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Buddy Holly and Hüsker Dü. You know, the other teenage hit parade that most radio missed. Aside from CKCU down at the Carleton University campus, that is. They play a whole lot of cool stuff. He isn't an indie music snob, and he's even less of an Alice Cooper fan since being expelled, but for Patch, schools out for more than summer. "

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