Hello Blurt readers, it's Jon Eaton from The Spinto Band.

It is Monday night. The Spinto Band has set up a sweat shop backstage in Montreal, but instead of sewing machines we have laptops. The weather is turning as are the bands on stage. A few kindfolk from Toronto just completed a set of spook-pop. They are known as Spiral Beach and have delightful haircuts ("Mattie's keyboard became volcanic tonite or last night or whatever past tense you're using. word for word/verbatim." -Daniel Woodhead, Spiral Beach). Frightened Rabbit, Glaswegians who been pleasin', are about to start, so I need to send this along and go listen in.

I wanted to mention one of the most satisfying rock n roll related event The Spinto Band has encountered in recent memory in this inaugural Blurt. It was a battle of the bands at Philadelphia's Swedish Museum.  Instead of performing music though, we performed with Denmark's most popular plastic brick--the Lego.  Each band had an hour to build, check out the photos:

Here is the early stages of The Spinto Band's piece titled The Surrender of General Cornwallis. We found we had a surplus of tire-Legos, so we put them to use to build a giant creature who represented George Washington in Yorktown devouring the British redcoats headed by General Cornwallis. The final result looked something like this:

We received the prize for Most Imaginative, which is kind of bullshit. Meanwhile, three of our comrades, The Sw!ms, The Brakes and National Eye, were hard at work on their own Lego buildings. 

Here is a shot of The Sw!ms's Brian Langan seperating his legos into different colors as if he were an eight year old not wanting his peas to touch his carrots.  His organization paid off though in his beautiful Lego piece, Excaliburger:

Then there was the award for Most Nautical, which went to National Eye and their lovely ocean scene. With the whole Somalian Pirate Resurgence grabbing headlines around the world, we all felt like this piece really struck a powerful chord, not for what is featured, but what is implied. Is this ship going to be ravaged and destroyed by lawless savages?  Excellent question National Eye, excellent question:

Unfortunately we do not have a phot of The Brakes's SS Croissant. They were almost disqualified as they invited a ringer. They had an eight-year-old Lego expert help them build, but once we all realized that this tyke embodied everything Lego building is about, we motored on, letting the eight-year-old in all of us dig through multicolored blocks and create whatever our inner-8-year old heart desired. 

So--check back soon and we will let you in on some other happenings taking place on our tour with Frightened Rabbit. Day 1 was a Lego Building Battle of The Bands, how the heck are we going to top that?