Tag: Me and Mine

Last Night I Rocked…Again

I can’t believe I was in the same room as
the Chump. It’s been a big rocking year for the old man. I saw Sarah Harmer in February
(opened by the CBC propped up and badly managed Nathan Wiley – needs to meet more kids
his own age who play instruments), then Elvis Costello in
summer, Sloan two
months ago whose opening act was Boy (whose name makes them almost
ungooglable) and now this.

We will wait for 7 years before we are in a room with Al
Weeping Tile in 1996 with Sarah’s sister Mary (left) then on bass

Sarah Harmer and her old band
Weeping Tile do a Christmas benefit for the Sally Ann every year. Luther Wright was the MC and we
were sitting next to his granny. It was an all ages thing so there were teens
and grannies all over the place. This is the eighth and had, as an opening act,
Oh Susanna, one of the strongest
voices I have ever witnessed – one of those like you wouldn’t want to be in a
bad relationship with her kind of voices. She sang “Go Tell It On the Mountain”
backed by Weeping Tile. The other two acts were interesting. Jay Harris was good if only for the things
he was doing to that poor steel guitar. The tastebuds were challenged, however,
by The Dave Hodge Experiece, which you kinds got the feeling was made up for the
show. Drums, fender guitar, fender bass and a frontman (Dave Hodge) playing a
casio one note keyboard with an electric fireplace in front of him. It was kind
of nerdy, high voiced, elementary school Gang of Four
without the catchy stuff. Good humoured though. It was a great evening – we had
to cut out about 11 pm to pick up the kiddies, so missed much of the Weeping
Tile Set – Sarah music then was as dark as it is lithe now, lyrics as gritty.
Dandy.

The Dave Hodge Experience reminded me of a band playing at an early ’80’s
show at the UKC
pit impressarioed by Gillian McCain,
whose web bio seems to delete the Kings years.  At that show, when I
suggested, perhaps too loudly, that a certain keyboard player sucked, I received
the wrath that only a New Brunswick french fry princess steeped in new wave and punk
knowledge could unleash.  It was an envigourating moment.  In the
middle of the night during my campus police shifts, I used to read her cool,
rare and expensive new wave / punk ‘zines that came in the college mail.

Ed the Orange

So DutchAre the NDP on a national rebound? Or is it a really slow dead cat bounce? Who knows but all of a sudden Broadbent is back in town.

The biggest problem they have faced is the lack of credible leadership. Libertarians and evangelicals will gnash and wail that it is the wacky Volvo in cords vision that people reject. Foooohaaa, I say. These days we do not vote vision so much as visuals. With the “New Conservative Party”™ and the “New Martin government”™, Canada politically has just taken one or two tiny steps but firm steps to the right. As a result, the left is wide open and, supposedly, that is where the heart of many Canuck beats, at least on the social side. And when the visuals align with the heart, who knows?

All they need is a solid presence. Jack Layton has proven himself to be a quality leader – neither strident and ideological or shrieking from the pulpit. Reasonable, if opposing and socialist. A recent poll released three days ago places them, with a commanding 14% of voter support, ahead of all parties other than the Liberals (pretending that the joint 21% of the PCs and the Alliance are still separate – as most of their supporters still are).

I'm with wuzziznameIf I look back over 22 years of voting status, I have voted Green the last two times, NDP, against the Charlottetown Accord, Hec Clouthier as an independent liberal in 1993 and solid NDP before that – when Ed was king…if socialists had kings….which they do not… because they are socialist.

I like socialist politics given that we fundamentally believe in socialist policies in Canada: free universal healthcare, peacekeeping, welfare – even the wacked Ontario Tories only downloaded it and renamed it Ontario Works (expect that last link to die soon). It is just a matter of ensuring no rip-offs and no debt financing which, given the farcical dependency of Canadian conservatives on rip-off and debt, should not to be taken as much of a ideological challenge to the NDP.

First Big Snow

Hmmm...Atlantic Canada looks vulnerable...think I'll hammer them
Mom always said bright colours would help me get noticed

We have been lucky around here watching lake effects hammer Central New Yourk State to the south and nor’easters riding up the coast burying Maine and the Maritimes. It has been a long and late fall around here. Ended today with the north tip of this low pressure zone landing us with a few inches of Christmasiness. Thirteen weeks to spring. Order your seed catalogs now.

Stinky Roo and Tijuana Bibles, Too

I live right inside radio when I listen…

Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Radio,
like beer and soccer, is totally immersive. As Ian illustrates this
morning, the seduction of the immersive can lead to strange places and
thoughts. Indeed, as M.McL. went on to say,

Anybody who wants to moralize about radio has to
dump Gandhi and Hitler into the same pot.

One of my favorite
programs is Weekend
Mornings from CBC in the Maritimes. Like Brent, the
music is eclectic, though, perhaps, they might not play the Tijuana Bibles, whose members dress like Stong
Bad. Band member Super Destructor and I exchanged emails last night as I bought
a CD via paypal:

Me:

Thanks Super Destructor,

Money sent.

That’s great. Brent Bambury was all over your music the other day on his
drive home show [CBC Ottawa afternoons] and said you were the greatest thing
since something…something like the Stampeders…and that is something.

He played a cut or two and I am sure going to whistle your tunes while at the
workplace.

I am just so happy being able to write someone by the name of Super
Destructor I want this email to last forever. I’ll probably do a review on my
website (10,000 visits last month) [Ed.: you are always in my
thoughts]and you can come over there and brag me up. That’d be great.

Super Destructor:

thx for the kind words amigo. there’s a reason
europe keeps bringing us back for tours – forget about the masks and how we
look, just LISTEN – we have good songs! our next cd Fists Of Fury is gonna
smoke, we got 10 songs recorded, 5 more to go! pkg’ll be sent our mon or tues, i
have some other mail to go out…

adios,

SuperD.

The band’s name refers to slang for Mexican ’60’s
porn and their get up and names are a respectful homage to the
contemporaneous Mexican wrestling scene, cousins to Atlantic Grand Prix
Wrestling of ATV of the 70’s and my love, the Cuban Assassin. Apartment
Wrestling, their first CD will be mine soon.  Driving Mexicali
sounds.  Zounds.

The host of Weekend Mornings is Stan Carew, who our daughter at 3
dubbed Stinky Roo. The music is a bit corny and comfortable and aimed at seniors
laying in bed drinking tea and contemplating a tumble mostly without the
bibles. Stan and the crew play with the conventions of radio,
sometimes sounding a little like an old time dance hall live broadcast,
sometimes like Orsen Wells toying as a teen.

Playing with the knobs all around.

Ottawa

neat-oWas up in Ottawa overnight last night at brother Dougie’s. Played a little 1980’s Coleco and a little 1960’s Munroe, if you know what I mean. The old sets are getting a little tired but I still smoked him. He and me are hockey junk nerds and I took the opportunity to scan a few things including this dandy Golden Seals patch just like the ones I wore on my jeans jacket in elementary school. Made at Voyageur Eblems, New Hamburg, Ontario between Kitchener and Stratford and sold at every Canadian Tire front counter in the mid-70’s.

Took the kiddlies to the Canadian Museum of Civilization – and again wondered why there are not regional Federal museum branches with this stuff moving across the land rather than playing to pretty empty houses in Ottawa. Up on the fourth floor there was a pretty neat-o exhibit on the 1570’s summer iron ore mining expeditions of Martin Frobisher, namesake of my cat, to Baffin Island. [Did anyone call Martin “Frobie” and scratch his belly?] Exactly the kind of small exhibit that could move from province to province every 4 months or so on a tour.

Bag of real bagels for lunch.

Mars! Bringer of Prudent Warning

So, did everyone see Mars? We were out to Charleston Lake Provincial Park last evening visiting Wally and Laura who have been there all week and on the drive home there is was…[turn on your copy of Holst’s The Planets…riiiight..now!]…Mars! I suppose in the days before flashing antenna tower lights what went on in the sky was more a impressive thing. One web writer notes of Holst’s tone poem on Mars:

The full horror of mechanised warfare confronts us face to face in this bleakest of all tone poems. Its face is unrepentent, unrelenting and merciless and it offers us no hope of redemption. Thousands of pairs of jackbooted feet parade across the landscape, scurrying to their graves. Tanks pound cities into rubble. Bullets fly and bombs fall. Airplanes swoop low overhead. How surprising it is, then, to learn that Holst completed this piece long before the opening of the First World War, before the invention of the tank, before any plane had ever been fitted out to carry bombs, before the slaughter in the trenches, before the use of poison gas.

For me Mars, his war god, stood out in the sky more closely resembling a big automated safety indicator than it has for 60,000 years. The coolest sky phenomena – among those not able to sweep away trailer parks – was the night in January 2001 when the moon was closer than ever. I read a book on the front lawn of our house in the country by moonlight [cue the theremin]…by the light…of the moon.

I hate Jiffy PopWhile at the park, I had occassion for the first time in at least five years to make Jiffy Pop. This guy has it right. It is not jiffy and rarely pops. In the making you have to stay stooped over a campfire with your face in the heat. You also usually have to maintain a posture which wreaks havoc on the back. Wally and I figured 35 years ago our fathers swore under their breath in the same positions. Most jiffy pop moment? Taking off the cardboard cover and holding up a small part of the cardboard to read, squinting by the campfire light, “do not remove this cardboard tab”. Do they think people make this stuff in full daylight or read instructions before setting out? The children fell upon the jiffified stuff as if a truck from the Mint had driven through a casino parking lot, its loads pouring out from open back doors.

Laura Carr

It’s a sad day when you realize both your cars suck. The VW has been in the family for ten and a half years. Friends point out that no one I know has owned the same new car for over a decade. From the lot to the wrecker. The van, also a 93, makes new expensive noises every month. Both are to go.

Laura Carr is what “little red car” sounds like when you are half asleep. A city car. 2003 Ford Focus SE wagon. Motor like a hairdryer but space to throw a dish washer in back. BBC’s car show Top Gear gave it a very high rating for safety showing very graphically the results of various small cars in crashed. The doors of the Focus opened despite the front end imploding.

Horror stories? Speak now or forever hold your peace.