Tag: Music and Sound

Hall Of Fame

The other day when I did rock, I stood for a moment before the tour t-shirts and decided that, no, I would not buy one for 40 bucks even though there was a brown one with orange printing displaying the large Queen crest on the front. It was not that I would not have occassion to wear it or that I could not find the 40 bucks in the wallet. It was that I could not foresee it entering the hall of fame, that particular pile of t-shirts, soccer jerseys, ballcaps and hoodies that are retired from active use to be pulled out at the right moment years from now seemingly unworn yet displaying information from a point decades past.

There are not enough in the Hall of Fame as I was not as careful in the past as I might have been but that is no reason to judge unwisely and presume. That the 1988 Bill Bragg T is too thin now is testimony to its beauty. That the 1970s “Radio Sweden: Keep In Touch” T from high school is now appropriated by others does not mean its place on the shelf should now be filled by another. Yet entropy is and, despite best efforts, the temptation to wear causes wear and tear and, like ourselves, these things do fade. But for the decade, the brown Queen tour T with the orange ink may well have deserved the place in the pile.

Friday Later-Better-Than-Neverer Chat


Rocking for Al as excellently portrayed in today’s Star

Back. Just like that. Two hours and a bit ago I was in Toronto and now I am not. Intercity highways are the business:

  • Here is the question: Queen – yea or nay? The concert was good value. I realized along with the elder brothers that our Queen existed from 1973 to 1978 or so. The extended occupation with 80’s pop Queen was a bit wearying but there was enough of the 70s metalesque Queen to satisfy. This morning, under sunny sky scrapers, I bought Queen II, their 1974 version of Led Zep’s Houses of the Holy with its own take on the world of orcs and other LOTR-y-ness, at Sams on Yonge to honour my early teens properly. The role of Paul Rodgers, of Free and Bad Company, playing the role of Not Freddy was well done. He was on the stage 2/3s of the time with a tape of the late Fred doing half of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” At moments Rogers was like the dream of David Brent to be Paul Rogers fronting Queen in a reunion tour. But it was good as an expression of both pre-punk and 80s pop.
  • What else is going on? I have a sense that my NCAA picks are all wrong but I think I am one with all of North American manhood on that one.
  • Ze life sometimes provides somethings which better than trying to make up ze jokes.
  • Cambridge Suites in Toronto is a good place. It has all the things I like in a slightly more than cheapest place to crash. It actually has different little spaces so it is cheaper to put two brothers in one suite than getting two hotels rooms. It has a fridge and a bar fridge – one for my beer which is good and costs and honest price and one for their overly prices corn sugar buzz water. It is well located near C’est What (where I ate a burger with the meat of two mammals) and what other places people might like to go in Toronto. It is also a skip off the Don Valley Parkway, the parkway through the Valley of the Don, which makes it slightly like not being downtown in a bigger city.

Two more thoughts. I was impressed how the exposure of shoulder musculature was key to the entertainment experience at the concert. I was unimpressed how the lady in front of me – devoid of any sense of rhythm or shame as she was – had secretly for years harboured the secret love of “Radio Ga Ga” and unleashed her spastic passion therefore directly in front of me. I never knew there was something other than finding a cat air in one’s mouth that made one feel like one had found a cat hair in one’s mouth.

My Leonard Cohen

It was quite sad to hear about Leonard Cohen finding himself in something approaching a view of the poor house due to a legal dispute in this era when he should be being dipped in gold as a national treasure. And I don’t even like his songs that much. I do like, however, what he stands for as a symbol of individual autonomy to make the world the poem that you see it to be. So it was good to read this in the Globe this morning:

A judge with Los Angeles County Superior Court has granted Leonard Cohen a default judgment of $9-million (U.S.) against the Canadian singer-songwriter’s former manager. Judge Kenneth Freeman made the ruling earlier this week in response to a civil suit Cohen filed last August alleging fraud, negligence and breaches of contract and fiduciary duty on the part of Kelley Lynch, who served as his business manager from early 1988 through October, 2004…The Montreal-born Cohen, 71, has alleged that Lynch over eight years had siphoned off more than $5-million of his savings, so that by late 2004 his retirement nest egg had been reduced to about $150,000. Westin, now teaching law at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, was named in the claim because Cohen alleged that Westin helped Lynch with the $12-million sale of both Cohen’s music-publishing company and artist royalties. Most of these proceeds went into a Lynch-created company, Traditional Holdings, of which Lynch had 99.5 per cent ownership.

Apparently he has settled out of court with other money grubbers. Good. But why do I like him so much but not really his music? I do recall a documentary on his likely 20 years ago when he was having new fame with the Famous Blue Raincoat CD and it was done in his apartment in Montreal that looked like a normal sort of apartment except that everything was white. He said something to the effect it made the outside more a part of the inside. Then I got to like him more when he won a Juno for singer of the year and he said only in Canada could his voice win singer of the year. But best of all was his stumping of Gzowsky the ultimate but early beacon of political correctness and all that is wrong with that when Cohen said he was stopping his European tour early. Why, says, Gzowsky. Can’t afford the wine. Gzowsky stammered. When you drink 3 or 4 bottles a day, Cohen goes on, you need to buy the increasingly really good stuff and as this tour was so much longer than he had done before he was buying bottles now each worth thousands and that was costing more than the tour was bringing in. Gzowsky stammered some more.

When I was a kid in the poorer and plainer Maritimes you assumed everyone in Montreal was like Cohen – cooler, smarter and looking better in black while knowing where the best window to look out of while drinking coffee could be found. You felt that your friends from Nova Scotia who got jobs or went to university in Toronto sold their soul; people from Nova Scotia who got to Montreal would wind up like or even be pals with Leonard Cohen. His expression of that sort of style of the international man was something that added to Canadian-ness in a way that equalled all the canoes. Good to see that he will now have his wine and black turtleneck expenses covered off in his reclining years.

String Fever

The Rukster has reminded me of my early steps into bluegrass. I wrote a brief summary of my place in my pickin’ and grinnin’ edjification:

I am following a similar path in bluegrass discovery, Peter, and I can heartily recommend String Fever on NCPR Thursdays 4 to 6 your time. It’s a local show on my local NPR station with an excellent name which it has inspired me to declare 2006 the year of the mandolin, but only if I learn ten licks on the guitar. All very diddly-diddly. Perhaps you now need to pick yourself a bluegrass name like “Slim” or “Del” if only to keep it private in your own thoughts.

I daydream now of mandolins and imagine myself like these folk in a future I am not certain can be attained. The other day I learned of the existence of the mandocellos and other points on the mandolin sliding scale. I have bought books of tablature with titles like Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar. I have a plan. I will go to Old Forge on the way home from Easter in Portland. I will pick up a mandolin and play a lick and say “that is one sweet mandolin” and I will buy it. How better to welcome my 43rd year later that week.

This all, however, may go off the rails as I learned last evening that I am going to see Queen in Toronto in three weeks with the brothers to renew our periodic rocking out as with Elvis Costello in July 2003 and the Pixies in November 2004.

Brent Doesn’t Fear

I was listening to Brent on CBC Radio’s last remaining good show, Go, this morning and he played “Don’t Fear The Reaper”…again. I checked the old notes for his musical choices that I kept when he was on CBC Ottawa and didn’t see that he played the Blue Oyster Cult classic but he did play it on that afternoon show he did right after the lockout, though only a cow bell-less cover.

I am starting to think he obsesses about the song. I also am starting to think that it is the seminal piece of art from the 1970s. There may have been better tunes but there was not a better 70s song. Compare and contrast, class.

Professor Longhair

Someone I know says “longhair music!” with a humph when the wrong sort of classical music comes on the car radio.

There is another sort. I was thinking – as I am thinking too much – of the flooding down south and I remembered that I used to have a live double lp of Professor Longhair, the New Orleans blues pianist, probably on Atlantic records. I probably sold it in the great purge of ’92 when I sold my worldly goods to travel west. I recall the guy who bought it at the flea market saying “why are you selling this” – just like the person did who bought my They Might Be Giants CDs and like the kids did who I let pay less for my KISS comic book by Marvel (with real blood from the band members in the red ink!)…except they worked “woa” and “dude” into the question a few times.

There was something bouncy dancing about the piano played by Professor Longhair that I figured today I needed to get back – especially on “Big Chief”. I only found one cut, “Tipitana”, on a mixed discount CD of generic blues piano. Not good enough. I know I bought it in the 80s and I know I sold it over 13 years ago. It appears though that his albums were all live and pretty much all had a version of “Big Chief” [clip of version #37] and “Tipitana” [clip of version #841]. I would have thought the internets would have figured this stuff out by now.

Now it is all memory work, playing each 30 second cut from “Big Chief” from each CD – the concert in Germany (too fast), the concert in London (too slow) – over and over at Amazon to figure out which one it was. Thank God I held on to all my punk lps. That is all I can say. Thank God.

John Peel Day

I like this idea. To celebrate the memory of the massively influential BBC radio host John Peel, who died last year, people are encouraged to put on their own gig of some sort:

The very first John Peel Day will take place on Thursday October 13th. The day will be a celebration of John’s life and massive contribution to music and broadcasting with as many venues as possible staging gigs across the UK under the banner of Peel Day.

Maybe Gordon and the Salty Hams will reform for John Peel Day. That and a drum and cymbal parade around the living room surely are in order.

Update: On a somewhat unrelated note, if you have broadband, check out Hayseed Dixie on BBC Player. That is why the internet was created.