The US Senate has done its part to remember and honour the second last line of their national anthem.
I Love the Internet, Part 96
I was looking at a blog post about the new Super Friendz new CD when I wonderwed who was in the band, cause I used to live in Half-a-slacks in the 80’s, went to the Grafton Street Cafe, was 1/2 of Bob the Dog on CKDU and I found this picture on the band’s old site and I think – that guy looks like the John Wesley Chisholm guy from Blackpool once drummed by my soccer pal Roger as well as the Chipster (nice togs). So I goog a bit and find this chart created sometime before 1995 by Chris Murphy of Sloan (also ex-Blackpool) which sets out the entire family tree from, what, the mid-80’s to mid-90’s, which references Basic English who I knew as a NSCAD band of Monctonians when I was at Kings who used to live above Sams (later the Silver Bullet and the Double Diamond) where my brother Iain would see Sarah McLaughlin sing at parties. I had no idea there was a link between the semi-proto Slone band Kearney Lake Road (who I saw play outside at TUNS before or after Sook-Yin Lee and her band Bob’s Your Uncle in the summer of ’88) and 100 Flowers, one of which band my roomie dated in around ’89. Best name: Al Tuck and No Action.
Later: I did not mention the early 80’s start of the Hopping Penguins – still going – which I think was key in letting then-high-school kids know that local music could be vital and fun live. I have also dug out my tape of the pre-Geffen Sloan on Cod Can’t Hear from ’92 and the 1993 CDOut of the Fog, Too – brother Iain got me both. It is interestnig to see on the tape liner notes that Sarah M is thanked right before Zippy Print. Ah, before they were stars…
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 10:04:57 -0400
From: "Andrew P. Rodenhiser" <rodenhiser@chem1.chem.dal.ca>
To: JRCOVEY+sloan@ac.dal.ca
Subject: A Band By Any Other Name
OK, for the benefit of the newbies, I'll post it to everyone. This came
out in the Coast last spring, the infamous Sloan edited issue. Set your
screens to >80 column and no word wrap!
Andrew
ps. Note the list address, This is the olden days :)
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Thu, 26 May 1994 10:03:17 -0300
From: "James R. Covey" <jrcovey@ac.dal.ca>
Subject: A Band By Any Other Name
To: gen4114+SLOAN@HUSKY1.STMARYS.CA
chris murphy's "a band by any other name" halifax music scene family tree
URBAN
SURVIVORS ATTACK STEPS AROUND
SUBURBAN | | | THE HOUSE
REBELS REALISTS | | TRASH
| | | MEDIA VULGARIANS VACANT KANZ
CLUB THE SPENT SHAG DOGFOOD BLITZ DUFF HICKS | LOT |
MED FLIES | | | OCTOBER | NOBODY'S
| | | DELUXE KILLER KARMA STAJATANZ GAME TOPSIDERS HEROES
| BLACKPOOL | BOYS KLAMZ WOLVES | | | | |
| | | | | AGRO FLAGS FOR RIDGE OF TEDD
| REGISTERED | KEARNEY 100 EVERYTHING TEARS
| VOTE | LAKE RD FLOWERS | | | | EUTHENICS
| | | | | | | SUSPECT DEVICE | BUBAISKULL | |
| | BLACKPOOL II | | | | | | | MISERY SYSTEM
| | | | | 100 FLOWERS II SEBAS- COOL | GOATS OVERLOAD
| LONE STARS | | | TOPOL BLUE THRUSH | |
| | | | | CONVULSIONS | HALO HERMIT | FALSE
| BLUEGRASS BLACK| | | ALL GOOD | | | SECURITY
| LAWNMOWER POOL | | HAPPY CO. CHILDREN THRUSH HERMIT II | |
| | III | | | | | | HIP MORAL
AL TUCK & SLOAN<-----------NO DAMN FEARS ESSEN | CLUB SUPPORT
NO ACTION RHINO | | GROOVE |
| PLASTY HOUSE OF USHER T A G | | QUAHOGS
| | | | | ONE INCH
SUPERFRIENDZ ADINSONG JALE CHAZ RULES PUNCH
| | | |
INFINITE LOOP SPIKE N SKREECH LEONARD CONAN
I had to leave out one band -- Jellyfishbabies -- in order to fit all
the rest on the computer screen. Chris has them located right next door
to "Registered Vote" but not connected to anyone else. His note reads:
"Chris Murphy's my name and I'm taking credit or blame for this Halifax
music scene family tree. The tree itself was actually more twisted than
this so I ended up eliminating some lines as it was getting too messy and
hard to follow. I didn't put every band I could think of either because I
couldn't connect them to anyone else or I didn't like the band. But the
lines I did draw I think are true. I was relying on others near the top
in the 'before my time' section. Sue me if I'm wrong."
He also writes a list of "Honourable Mentions": Null Set, Redd Leader,
The Nerve, Next X, The Quirk, Cooter Family, Roland Blinn, Basic English,
Phycus, Aimless, Donner Party Reunion, Merge, Tetris
That's 68 bands on Chris Murphy's chart and I can
claim to have seen 17 of them live (=25%). There
must be some longtime scenesters on this list who
have seen many more than that. Anyone?
james
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ _ James R. Covey <jrcovey@ac.dal.ca>
___| | ___ __ _ _ __ _ __ ___| |_ the "halifax scene" mailing list
/ __| |/ _ \ / _` | '_ \ | '_ \ / __| __| to join or leave, send a note to
\__ \ | |_| | |_| | | | | | | | | __| |_ our list manager: Scott Schuman
|___/_|\___/ \__,_|_| |_| |_| |_|\___|\__| <gen4114@husky1.stmarys.ca>
--
"People say you have to travel in order to see the world.
Well I think if you stay in one place long enough,
you'll see all that you can handle" -- Harvey Keitel, in _Smoke_
Andrew P. Rodenhiser, Ph.D. Candidate RODENHISER@CHEM1.CHEM.DAL.CA
Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada or APRODEN@AC.DAL.CA
Thanks to Katrina Grentz for sending this to me.
Man Walks Into a Pub, by Pete Brown
I bought another beer book. I picked up a copy of “Man Walks into a Pub” by Pete Brown on Thursday after noon and it was done by Sunday. Not bad for guy with kiddies. The Guardian said:
So, as well as the irreverent approach Brown takes to beer’s history, he has a refreshingly sensible take on its present.
Sensible is an interesting word. Most beer books are written by nerdy homebrewers or self-appointed gurus like Michael Jackson. Both have a technical interest or at least the desire to impart a reverence for the subject. …I hope the bag of chips are for him…Brown is an advertising executive who has handled both the Heineken and Stella Artois accounts and a someime talking head for TV in the UK on things beery. It shows. He treats fans of real ale as hobbiest and treats them with slightly less contempt than temperence unionists and government regulators. But most of the time not without reason.
That being said, the book is easily accessible, funny and, but for a few factual errors you would only know after having a collection of books and subscriptions to a couple of magazine about beer, a pretty good history of the subject from a 2003 English, rather than even British, perspective. Unlike any other book I have read, Brown focuses on why and how people in England actually drink beer, how they are affected by advertising and changes in pub ownership, and how lager has come to dominate the market while being vapid bubble water – even if from something of a natural apologist’s point of view.
Find a pint of Hook Norton Haymaker or Old Hooky and have a giggle at the expense of lager drinkers.
Asleep on the Beach
As my life as PEI resident comes to a close – the water test was clear – I thought I would pull an old chestnut out of the photo album from one of my first “” experiences in the Province.
Taken in 1986, it shows your gentle correspondent in repose on the beach at dawn after about 14 hours of wild-eyed pintin’ at the shore at a cottage in the Darnley area. You will see in the foreground both an empty Keiths and a film case laying next to my sandy head. Through the night I took about 5 rolls worth of pictures of the 30 or so of us which, care of the tripod, came through the event far clearer than I did.
This photo was taken by my buddy Jonny with the last frame of the last roll before he himself keeled over one night, one summer seventeen years ago.
Pay off Google?
From this morning’s Kingston Whig-Standard in a story about efforts to counteract the decline in local tourism from America and elsewhere:
…popular Internet search engine Google was paid to rank the www.kingston-itsabouttime.com Web site high in Google searches so that people who are looking for information on Kingston or tourism in Canada are sent to the campaign site first.
Surely Google would be useless if rankings were to be affected by payment.
Hand Up Project
A few blog authors I am associated – code named WARTAPEI – with have loosely begun to share some of what they have learned in small start-up business, and in web software development. If you have any questions about my part in the hand up project, the work in progress Contracting and IT, post here.
Dead Ducks
One of the neat things about this picture from the 1930’s of my grandfather-in-law Stuart Penny and his brother Rae at the end of a day’s hunting at Honey Harbour, Ontario is that I have two of the decoys they used, one with buckshot in its butt.
Tag – You’re It!
…and I am going to quit playing for a while. 11 days off. Drove for 4 of them. 3300 km or so. Other 7 full of cleaning out the house which appears to have sold pending closing. Some thoughts from between Kingston and PEI, the length of the St.Lawrence:
- The two best looking parts of Canada on the drive are both in Quebec: the Kamouraska areas between Riviere-du-Loup and Pocatiere on Highway 20 (huge granite mounds in the river and on the land, between which the river and the road flow respectively); and the waterfront road at the foot of the cliffs at Levis across from Quebec City (active working river, old rail bed used by hundreds as we watched for biking and roller blading, Chateau Frontenac in front of almost as many layers of mountains in the dusk as Montpellier, Vermont);
- Old car tapes are a minefield of emotions. Bought before my CD buying days began around 1993, I was brought back to a rawer time. Garnett Rogers is pretty damn good. Damn song about a damn pigeon makes me cry every time I hear it;
- Worst service in the world: The Kentucky Fried on the west 401 at Cornwall. Stood with wife and children at a till for five minutes as teen staff walked two feet past us setting up a fan for themselves to be told when we said we were leaving becuse the service was so bad, that the sign at the other end of the counter said “cash”. As there were five tills each with other families waiting, the meaning of this message eluded us. Please shun this establishment on your travels;
- Cars are amazing. For about 75 to 80 bucks (Canadian) you can go 1500 kilometres either in one day (my trip to PEI) or over three (the return);
- Best diners: the Irving Big Stop at Salisbury NB on the Trans-Canada (good diner food including a very respectable Ruben and 2 buck, 12 oz., large tomato juice), the Normandin at Levis (a favorite for over a decade – draft beer is a moslons ex and the waiting staff help you do the whole thing in our respectly poor english and french) – maple beans (aka “the bomb” in a couple of respects) with your breakfast; and
- Best hotel in the Maritimes – the Sheraton at Fredericton. Great waterfront location in what looks like a park. Staff are capable and relaxed. Room service is fast and the wine celler is respectable. In 1999, they had no rooms left in the class we had ordered and we got the Royal Suite. Literally the rooms the Queen gets when in NB. We could have played basketball in the livingroom. The dinner table sat 12. We paid the same as the basic room we booked. Somnewhere we have a photo of our daughter, then 11 months having a pee on the floor. Although in the the same room, she was too far to run to in time but the camera was not. You have to think way ahead if you want to embarrass the hell out of someone at their wedding reception.
- NPR – 90.1 Calais Maine; 106.1 Presque Isle, Maine, 106.5 Fort Kent Maine, 104.7(?) Vermont Public Radio St. Albans, 89.5 North Country Public Radio, Northern New York State.
Well, that is it for now. Thanks for stopping by during a slow posting week and a half.
The Road
Two cats. 1000 miles. How many Tims?
[Sorry, Brazilian guy – that last bit won’t make much sense to you.]
Kołobrzeg! Kołobrzeg!
When looking through the web stats, I got to wondering why, outside of North America, Holland would be the hotbed of the greatest number of my readers when I realized it is the Google effect. Having used the word Nederlands and therefore been linked by a few Dutch blog trolling spiders or bots or whatever they are, I get a bit of a boost on Dutch Google and, bob’s your uncle, I stand tall in the low countries. So…can this be manufacturered?
My wife and I met in Ko³obrzeg, a resort city on the Baltic Coast of Poland where the Nazis met a well-deserved, nasty fate at the hands of the Red Army on the beaches after running out of both land and options in the spring of ’45. The ever patient Ellen and I both taught ESL there and, unlike most others who travelled to Eastern Europe to teach a decade or so ago, briefly enjoyed a rather splendid if corney luxury lifestyle – Bulgarian wines, tinned elk and boar, first walkman in the province, at $400 a month an income 3 times that of a doctor. A sense of the place can be seen in some of its websites for a sanitorium/spa, a hotel/spa, spa-tourism, spa-fishing-poets, spa-investment, yacht-spa, people at the spa town…I suppose I could go on…Anyway, this is an open invite for discussion of all things Ko³obrzeg. What the hell.
PS – if your computer shows a small raised “3” between the two o’s of the name, it is spelled Kolobrzeg with a little bar across the “L” kinda pronounced “e-u”: “Ł” or “ł”
[Update in 2016: proof of the finding of Kay…]
