The Curse of Marnie Mains

King of the Universe – Marnie Mains

Years ago, back when I lived in Edmonton, my friend Paula gave me a Marnie Mains CD for my birthday. She’d seen Marnie play live, loved her music & had her CD on regular rotation around the apartment. The spirited sassy lyrics are impossible not to sing along with & the CD has been in my go-to mood booster pile ever since.

After we moved out to Vancouver (aside: that was 2 years ago now! crazy. feels like I’ve been here forever), I was thrilled to stumble upon Marnie’s Facebook page. Oh yeah! She’s from Van!!! I’ll get to see her play live, hear new stuff…rad! And all would have indeed been rad, except for The Curse.

I’m not sure exactly when I found Marnie on Facebook, but I’m guessing it has to have been close to a year ago. Since then she has performed TONS of gigs around the city & every single time, something has come up. I’ve still never been able to see her play live. The gig will be Thursday night, the only night of the week I have class. Or on the weekend, the one weekend that my parents are in town. Or I’ll have plans to go, the mister is on board, we’re ready to rock & then I’ll come down with a brutal bug & spend the night by the toilet instead.

The clincher came this week when I was psyched to see Marnie was doing a group jam thing at Chai on W Broadway. I figured it was a cozy coffee shop type place & planned a date night with the mister. He cooked a big dinner, I got all dressed up & we headed down around 9 o’clock. And then we found out it was $25 per person. (!) Plus a donation (!!) as there was some kind of charity thing going on. As a starving artist living in the recession/depression era, I had to go with “ouch”.

For the record, the $25 was actually a really good deal. Aside from the live music, it also included a 7 course buffet-style dinner & I would love to try that place out another time, but that particular night? We’d just eaten. We were thinking more along the lines of a cup of chai or a glass of wine. Drat! Foiled again.

I tried not to sulk on the way home & we did end up having a good night anyway. From the comfort of the couch, we sipped our own homemade chai & laughed our tails off watching Flight of the Conchords. Unfortunately, the curse lives on.