SappyFest 7 happened at the beginning of August. Sackville, New Brunswick's music and art festival is one of the greatest little things in the world: a tiny village assembled just once a year, filled with racket and song. It is a place to make friends and cherish them, to fall down and get back up. Tiny stages filled with the world's greatest noisemakers, heartbreakers and pals, where nobody wants anything more than for the moments to be special.

At SappyFest I write SAPPY TIMES, a daily newspaper of the things I hear. SAPPY TIMES is proudly printed, on real paper (!), and distributed for reading throughout Sackville, NB. But paper gets wet, or gets lost, or maybe you weren't at Sappy at all, you poor daft sorry fool. So as in 2009, 2010 and 2011, for archival purposes, and for the interest of Said the Gramophone readers, I offer the digitized SAPPY TIMES right here:

This year's festival highlights include: Metz, YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN, Canailles and Man Forever's hullabaloo, as documented in Saturday; Fucked Up, Christine Fellows, Eternal Summers, and the Talking Exploding Diamond Talk Show, which did feature an exploding diamond, as remembered in Sunday; and Bry Webb, the Mouthbreathers, Silver Mount Zion and BA Johnston, as documented in Monday.

If you've never been to Sappy, I'll say it again: it's so special and small and of exceptional quality. If you enjoy the kind of music I do, and the songs we do, you owe it to yourself to book a trip to the Canadian maritime provinces. See some swans, some beautiful songs, then drive to the coast and swim in the sea.

And finally, a little awkwardly, if you run a festival or an event or a zeppelin race or anything like that, and you would like to bring me to where you are, to write something like the SAPPY TIMES, I would always love to talk to you. This is my email address.