Rough Around the Edg

At the Country Home again this weekend.

Today, as I did on Saturday, I took my Dad on a drive around the Glen. The backroads that he once knew like the proverbial back of his hand.

We ended up heading north to Vankleek Hill, a town that doesn't seem to have changed much since its late nineteenth-century salad days. My father wanted to show me the house he boarded at when he worked there 50 years ago.

He also wanted to know where the organic brewery was, so we drove out to the eastern edge of town. The craft beer I wanted to buy (whiskey barrel aged!) wasn't available at the time, of course, so I settled for a couple of wine bottles of their seasonal beer. When I got back to the car, my Dad noticed that one of the bottle caps was askew, and the bottle wasn't full (even yet he has a keen eye for such sacrileges). The kid behind the counter must have given me one of the sample bottles on the table by mistake, and I failed to notice.

Perhaps the most interesting thing this weekend, however, was the "boomfest" (as the locals called it) taking place over at the same facility that hosted the Tartan Mania two weekends ago. As the old man and I sat enjoying an afternoon beer, the pipes were not the source of the steady drone that drifted into the back yard. Rather, it was the bathic hum of an impossibly low bass, accompanied by the throaty vocals and the staccato drumming of a speed metal ensemble.

Turns out it was "Edg3 Fest 2012". Some kind of regional satellite of the Toronto-area polluza put on by the eponymous radio station.        

Later on that evening, it sounded like a Battle of the Bands was being adjudicated by Steve Albini and his house band Shellac. And I kinda liked it.


 

The Melanchollie

A melancholic river runs through my veins. Fed by both parental tributaries, it has determined the course of my life.

I have no need of a Livingstone or a Burton. I know where the sources of this malevolent spring can be found.

One strain originated along the shores of Loch Arkaig, west of the Great Glen. The other from an even more remote Hebridean hinterland.

The island of Scalpay, should it be afforded such a generous description, lies just off the larger island of Harris. During their Tour in the fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson proposed to James Boswell that they ought to buy it, and "found a good school, and an episcopal church ... and have a printing-press, where he would print all the Erse [Highland Gaelic] that could be found." As far as I know, that idea fell stillborn from the Great Cham's imagination.

Over the past weekend, as I partook of the Tartan Mania that grips the ancestral glen each August, I spent some time with my father, who is rapidly fading into the fog of a much darker melancholy than the species that enveloped me for many years before I was rescued by the Interruptnum.

My father built almost every stick of furniture that I own, in particular the three white pine bookcases that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Marvelous and sacred for their imperfections, they exemplify the relationship between my father and I. Each tiny mistake and uncovered nail is telling of a flawed template that structured his life, and troublingly governs mine.  Every knot in the wood tells a story. Not always a happy one, but an important one. Those bookcases, and everything else he built for me, will be one of the most enduring memories of my father. It doesn't matter that so many other memories I have are not so pleasant. It is unfortunate that my own memory is almost as retentive as Boswell reports Dr. Johnson's to be. 

My father no longer remembers making those things. So I took pictures of them with his camera. From every angle. Along and against each grain. I zoomed in on his signatures in order to furnish him with the indisputable evidence of his craftsmanship. To show him the authenticity of his authorial stamp. Otherwise he may not have believed that he had made these things. On certain days, seeing him as he is now, it is hardly imaginable for anyone to believe he did all the remarkable things he did with the resources he had at his disposal.

As I showed him the images on my laptop, I thought I could almost see inside his head -- the ideas and impressions struggling to coalesce into a solid memory. I didn't expect his next question when he asked when I had cancer. I told him. I think he was really asking when this happened to him -- when he started to forget. "It was exactly the same time", I said to myself. I think he had already suspected that uncanny synchronicity. 

I tried to keep it together, and I think I did. I thought of a favourite lyric written by a (usually instrumental) band that often speaks to me in such moments, and its become an important corrective in my negotiation of the lamentably persistent grudges and irrational messiness that scars our family relationships.

when you die
you have to leave them behind
you should keep that in mind
and when you keep that in mind
you'll find a love as big as the sky

Middle Drawer

Its spring cleaning time.

But not just the annual variety, which usually amounts to sweeping crumbs under the couch and running around with the Dirt Devil.

The long weekend kicked off an apocalyptic and antiseptic earth scorching of the apartment. Long overdue, the Machiavellian Moment had arrived. 

Tonight, the next geographical phase kicked off. In the midst of recycling the dozen or so empty protein powder jugs that camouflaged the kitchen table, I knew there was no turning back. I knew what had to come next. 

The middle drawer. The pharmaceutical graveyard.

I had been looking forward to this moment for years, yet had always postponed the assuredly cathartic event each time it crossed my mind. "Spring Cleaning 2012" was the proleptic vision.

And while, technically, I had until June 21 to carry out the deed, I took another look at the lid of the protein powder jugs, and a Popeye-fueled pragmatic sanction was imposed on the contents of the middle drawer. In order to proceed with the Spring Cleaning, the middle drawer had to be excavated and its unwelcome relics purged. 

Perversely, I felt a twinge of nostalgia as I greeted my old familiars. One by one, they were airlifted from the middle drawer into the appropriately named "earth bag". That's where they were going, one way or another.

No longer a sepulchre of the poisons and promised salves that I once eagerly consumed in order to "get better", the middle drawer yawned up at me. I had forgotten how deep it was, and how eagerly it seemed to want something new, and fresh, and good, to be put in place of the empty shells that are the casualties of biological warfare.  

There have been a number of these manufactured moments. Those temporal markers that, symbolically, and once and for all, were supposed to distance me from the Interruptnum. All of them bullshit of course, but that's what is so useful about historiographical heuristics, even when we conceitedly apply them to our own delusional and melancholic self-narratives.

But tonight, after "relocating" the contents of the middle drawer, I feel pretty good.

Tomorrow might very well be a different story.

But over the past few months, it feels like I am finally living a life again, and not rehabilitating one that could have easily slid away.     

The Kid

I just heard the news that Gary Carter has died from a malignant brain tumour at the age of 57.

I became an Expos fan in the summer of 1980. One morning during the winter of 1984, I woke up to the news that John McHale had reluctantly traded Carter to the New York Mets for a package of players including Hubie Brooks. I was so disappointed that I didn't want to go to school that day. It was almost as bad as the day in 1981 when I skipped school to watch Rick Monday's ninth inning home run off Steve Rogers end the World Series dreams of all Expos fans.

Gary Carter won a World Series with the Mets. His bust in Cooperstown wears an Expos cap.

Thanks for the memories, Kid. I'd like to be a baseball fan again.

Kinematic Constructs: the Sites of Cinema

A few weeks ago some friends and I were having dinner and a few pints at a popular downtown restaurant. We got talking about some films that were coming to town, in particular David Cronenberg’s new one. I suddenly remembered that the restaurant we were eating in used to be the Elgin Theatre, and twenty years ago, circa January or February 1992, I sat in the balcony – still intact as an upper tier of dining tables - and watched Naked Lunch.

Since that night I have been thinking about movies I have seen in theatres great and small, here in Ottawa and in other places I have lived and visited. I learned that many of those theatres no longer exist. Although the reasons for this are not hard to understand, some of us will lament the day when there are no longer places to go and watch a film, whether celluloid or digital. Perhaps it won’t be long before the idea of watching a movie anywhere else but on your smart phone will no longer be an option.

There is something about the experience of viewing a film in a space that is designed specifically for such a purpose, whether it is a palatial movie house or a strip mall multiplex. However nebulous that “something” may be (beyond the obvious audio/visual enhancements), and despite the convenience of streaming movies directly through a phalanx of personal interfaces, it’s a shame to see those spaces go.

Following my eye surgery a week ago, I have been restricted from exercising little else than my troublingly flabby memory, but I’ve tried to piece together some of the more memorable experiences – for better or worse - I’ve had going to the cinema: where it was, who I was with and other contingencies that combined to leave a retrievable trace. Some dates are approximations, while others were easier to pin down due to contextual circumstances.

To begin with, some prefatory remarks on the prehistory of my movie going. When you’re a little kid, it’s hard to exercise much agency in determining your cinematic itinerary (a dreary reality that repeats itself when your girlfriend or wife drags you to movies you really don’t want to see). I remember the time my Dad packed the whole family into the brown Mercury Marquis to go see Coal Miner’s Daughter, but the Ur-story dates back even earlier to the summer of 1977, when my father first decided that we all deserved to go see a movie. It was a double bill at The Garry Theatre in Alexandria, Ontario, a decrepit old movie house that opened in 1945 and closed in 1980. Like any 7-year-old kid, I wanted to see Star Wars. The opening feature was Moving Violation, a cheap Smokey and the Bandit/Dukes of Hazzard rip. But I took no small pleasure in the liberal sprinklings of f-bombs and nudity, all of it seemingly under the consensual umbrella of paternal wisdom. I remember a similar experience in the spring of 1982. At my request, my parents drove me into Ottawa to see Quest for Fire. I can remember seeing the words Le Droit on the side of a nearby building, so in trying to reconstruct the event, I felt it must have been at the old Rideau Theatre, but the Internet tells me it closed on January 20 1982. The film wasn’t released in Canada until March 1982, so it must have been the Nelson (renamed the Bytowne in 1988). Being a little older and more self-aware at that point, the Paleolithic sex scene between Everett McGill’s Noah and Rae Dawn Chong’s Ika was a little awkward. But I really pissed the old man off later that year. I convinced him to take me to the Brookdale Mall in Cornwall to see Conan the Barbarian. Maybe he thought I had misled him about the R rating – after we were turned away I had to sit through On Golden Pond.

Some other memorable experiences and venues other the years:

The Hollywood Theatre (W. Broadway, Vancouver) – a family owned independent theatre that was built during the Depression and only closed last May. The best second-run cinema in Vancouver during its day, I saw many films behind those double red doors. The Hollywood was a refuge for me during a dismal final year in Vancouver. Self-exiled to the southeast corner of town, I made regular pilgrimages to the more familiar environs of Point Grey and Kitsilano, where my good friend Whitey and I would take in the affordable double bills at the Hollywood. The Bourne Supremacy was a surprising highlight in 2004, as was Sexy Beast on one of those rare nights your girlfriend agrees to see a film you actually want to see.

The Ridge (16^th/Arbutus, Vancouver) – opened in 1950, The Ridge is another favourite, and it would be difficult to single out one film. David Lynch’s Lost Highway in the summer of 1997 was memorable, but probably not the best choice for a first date. I finally caught Wings of Desire on its huge screen a few years later – a few months before that, I had agreed to go with my girlfriend to see the wretched American studio remake with N. Cage/Meg Ryan on the condition that I could show her the Wim Wenders original. As usual, I wasn’t encouraged. I also remember watching Underground (circa 1997?) with the Cravat, my guide to all things Balkan.

The Paramount (rue Ste. Catherine’s, Montreal) – in October 1999, after getting my paper over with, I ditched the banquet at an 18^th-century studies conference to go out on the town by myself. After dinner at a fine trattoria, I came across the newly opened Paramount, a cinematic skyscraper with 6 floors and 13 screens. I had liked all of David Fincher’s previous movies, so I bought a ticket for Fight Club. Seeing that movie for the first time was quite an experience, and following the movie I enjoyed some of the best of Montreal by night. What a shame I missed that banquet, though.

Somerset (Bank/Somerset, Ottawa) – this grand old space was around from 1937 to 2000, when it was annexed by the big grocery store we all love to hate to make room for more parking. Its art deco interior provided the perfect environment for my first viewing of Barton Fink in the fall of 1991. It’s been my favourite movie ever since.

Pacific Cinematheque (Howe St, Vancouver) – opened in the late 90’s, it is the closest thing to a Lincoln Center that I’ve seen anywhere in Canada. Around June 2005, during an Ingmar Bergman retrospective, I saw Cries and Whispers with, appropriately enough, a blonde-haired Swedish girl whose name, very disturbingly, I can’t remember.

The Bytowne (Rideau St., Ottawa) – the Bytowne (formerly the Nelson) has already appeared in the prehistory noted above. In the spring of 1995, I finally got to see The Wild Bunch, long a VHS favourite, in its restored magnificence. Lauzzy was, as always, a good sport when he joined me for that one (most Peckinpah films provoke a bi-polar response – you love them or hate them). Another long time TV/VHS favourite was The Exorcist. Lauzzy and I ran that one through my old Panasonic toploader a few times. I saw it on the big screen for the first time in the fall of 2000 in a downtown Toronto theatre with Booby Brown. However, it’s a Bytowne doublebill on Halloween night in 2007 that really stands out in my mind. As I walked down to The Bytowne to meet the X-man for an Exorcist/The Shining double feature, I began to feel the initial symptoms of the Interruptum with an alarming intensity. And while the print of The Shining may have sucked, it was a pleasure to introduce the X-Man to a couple of horror classics.

5^th Avenue (Burrard St./5^th Av, Vancouver) - opened in 1996 as a purveyor of so-called art films, it sat (and presumably still does) across the street from a Mercedes Benz dealership. In the fall of 1999, I watched one of the finest films of the decade with the Cravat and Bobby Brown. Prior to The Limey, Paul Schrader’s adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel Affliction made a profound impact on me.

West Windsor, New Jersey – on a December night in 1999, somewhere in a deserted outlet mall off the Brunswick Pike, my girlfriend and I and maybe 3 other people watched Magnolia. Nobody in the theatre said a word or made a sound until the lights went up. All I could mumble was something about a masterpiece.

The Vogue (Granville St., Vancouver) – opened in 1941 and restored in 1998, the Vogue Theatre is the primary venue for the Vancouver International Film Festival. In 2004, I met up with the Cravat for a festival screening of Michael Haneke’s Le temps du loup. Not one of his best, but still the only film of his that I have seen on a big screen. The Vogue is without a doubt the most impressive cinema I’ve ever sat in.

Capitol Square 3 (Queen St., Ottawa) – two years before it shut down in 1999, Lauzzy and I saw Cop Land. We had differing opinions of the film, but smoothed those over at another establishment just a few doors down the street. Lauzzy has been a film companion for too many films to remember. Some of the salient ones, beyond those already noted, are the World Exchange Plaza triptych of Seven, Heat, and Fargo during the 1995/96 season. Another memorable Coen movie we saw together was O Brother, Where Art Thou? in the spring of 2001 at an Egyptian-themed mallplex somewhere on the beltway between Washington and Baltimore.

Granville 7 (Granville St., Vancouver) – I remember a couple of things about this place. You had to ride three different escalators to get up there, and the central screen was the largest I’ve ever seen. Memorable films include Boogie Nights and The Big Lebowski with Bobby Brown and either Bobbi Socks or Bobbi Pinz.

Finally, perhaps the most memorable experience I’ve ever had watching a film wasn’t in a cinema at all, but in a plane. As highly unlikely as this may be, given the usual pap that airlines are mandated to play, David Lynch’s The Straight Story completely overwhelmed me during a long flight from Vancouver to Newark via Chicago. You won’t find many titles in the David Lynch filmography that are produced by the Disney Co., but it resonated with me for so many reasons: Richard Farnsworth’s terminal cancer during filming; his suicide (by shotgun) less than a year later; John Deere, me, and my Dad; and a magisterial final scene between Farnsworth and Harry Dean Stanton. It doesn’t really stand up to repeated viewings, which is just as well, as the first one punched me square in the forehead.

Super Sunday

Deja vu all over today.

Fours years ago, right around this time, it was the night before a radiation session early on in the uneasy reign of the Interruptnum. The New York Giants, coached by Tom Coughlin, were trying to slay another giant in the form of the unbeaten New England Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick. Eli Manning and Tom Brady were calling the audibles at the line of scrimmage.

Today, it is the eve of another medical procedure. And while tomorrow's procedure will be of a much more benevolent nature, it is to ameliorate something that was directly caused by the radioactivity of four years prior. And the New York Giants, coached by Tom Coughlin, are playing the New England Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick. Eli vs. Tom redux.

As it was four years ago, the game was won in the fourth quarter. Once again, Eli made a low percentage throw to an unheralded receiver to put the G-Men in a position to win.

The only guy who couldn't lose today was Bill Parcells, who coached both teams to Super Bowl berths in the past, and whose coaching tree boasts both Coughlin and Belichick.

Eli may not have led my fantasy football team to the championship final as he did last year, but he now has two Super Bowl rings, which is one more than his celebrated brother. Peyton may no longer be Archie's favourite son.

The best part of my day, however, took place before the game. As I was watching a great NFL Films documentary on Joe Namath, I heard my father - who is always sitting nearby while his mind is usually nowhere near - proudly tell me that he remembered Broadway Joe (another New York quarterback, who just happened to win the first game they called the Super Bowl - in the year I was born, no less).

After that, I stopped worrying about my little surgery the next morning. I began to feel really good.

A Bottle and Friend

To all the diasporadic Scots out there, I hope you took a moment yesterday to savour some Songs, Poems and at least a couple of drams.

Last night Bomber and I enjoyed an extended toast to the most neglected of the Romantics. Selected Specimens from our respective collections were exchanged under the sign of the Oak. The pipes were perfectly shrill, the haggis was spicy, and the Extra Special Bitter was flowing.

Lauzzy and Cousin were missed.

For the second consecutive January 25, we swung a blockbuster hockey pool trade.


Here's a bottle and an honest friend!
What wad ye wish for mair, man?
Wha kens, before his life may end,
What his share may be o'care, man?

Then catch the moments as they fly,
And use them as ye ought, man:
Believe me, happiness is shy,
And comes not aye when sought, man.

1787

Reconciliation Rock

I heard some good news yesterday.

Not only have David Lee and the Van Halens patched things up ...

Relationship of Command was released way back in 2000. Yet by the end of 2011, it still stood near the top of my unwritten list of the very best albums of the decade.

Hardcore? Post-Hardcore? Prog-Punk? You'll have to consult with Patti Schmidt for that call.

Whatever it was, its on its way back.

When At the Drive-In split apart eleven years ago, two new bands were created that never really caught my attention. While I'll always have a soft spot for the proggy element in rock music, The Mars Volta's sound seemed to regress, rather than progress, after a decent debut in 2003. As for Sparta, I never really lent them a fair listen.

But ATDI's full lineup will reassemble with an eirenic enthusiasm to play at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California in April, along with Godspeed You! Black Emperor (themselves missing in action for many years), Explosions in the Sky, Radiohead, Feist et al.

Now that's a BigRockShow, as Les Claypool might say.

Or a BigPostRockShow, as Patti Schmidt would surely say.

2012

Happy 2012 to all.

Tho I may be suffering with my annual distemper, today is coming up Roses.

I realized, many years ago, the truth behind the futility of Resolutions. Things are really only resolved in the crucible of contingency and change. They are resolved in the wake of revelations. After the apocalyptic unveiling of our true natures.

The counterfactual rests on the flimsiest axis. The most unstable of fulcrums.

And yet, the calendrical reboot provides us all an opportunity to Project, however vainly.

But this time, it could be different. The unintended consequences of my Interruptnum will continue to germinate and cross-pollinate.

Gather ye rosebuds while you may.

Alt-worlds. Alt-ideas. Alt-attitudes. Altered states.

They will be written. They will be read. They will be seen. They will be loved.

Emancipation from expectation. The salving, the solving, even the celebration of the anxiety of influence.

Long live, quite literally, the new flesh.

The Interruptnum has, and will continue to cost me Money. Good Money, and Bad Money.

Yet it has also freed me from Money's tyrannical grip. I love that about the Interruptnum.



Have a good year, my friends.

Oh, and go Oregon Ducks Go.

Mike Judge is pretty cool

I was flipping through channels the other night and stumbled across a revenant from the mid 90's.

Yes, Hank Hill may be gone, but Beavis and Butthead are back!

(Mr. Anderson is back too, so Hank Hill never really went anywhere).

I may actually watch a music video again.

Black Friday

I had a busy day on Friday.

It wasn't just any Friday. It was Black Friday, a truth that was only to be revealed later on that day, in all its gory majesty. It is a day, I learned the hard way, when otherwise rational and restrained human beings succumb to the most primordial of their acquisitive natures and engorge themselves in a communal orgy of commercial exchange and borderless cupidity.

It began just like any day, although it was a Friday. The week long tedium of Work was coming to a close. I must have suffered a nasty and febrile dream Thursday night, as I woke up with the melody of a KISS song reverberating in my head. As I ground my coffee beans, I caught myself mouthing the lyrics to "2000 Man". I don't like KISS, and never did (but hearing Gene Simmons imitate Geddy Lee's vocal stylings was a happy event for me earlier this year). As a nine year old kid, however, I did buy the "Dynasty" album. I had seen too many kids wearing their older brothers KISS Army t-shirts to school, and I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. I was very disappointed. But I still played the shit out of that album on the family stereo unit because, as bad as KISS seemed to me, it was still better than my older sisters' Supertramp and Meat Loaf albums.

On Friday morning, as I drank my morning coffee, I performed the usual routines. I checked out my fantasy sports results from the previous night. My hockey team (defending champion hockey team, I might add) was still resting all too comfortably in fifth place. Nor did my football team harvest much on American Thanksgiving Day -- Dez Bryant and Jermichael Finley combined for a heady 6 points. At least my Harbaugh had prevailed in the epic Battle of the Harbaugh brothers.

After cramming a day's worth of work into a morning, I had to get on with other things. My poor mother has been waiting for a laptop computer for a long time. First it was her birthday gift. In 2010. Then it was a Christmas gift. Then a Mother's Day gift. Then it was a birthday gift again. Then, as the days drifted unrelentingly towards the end of another year, it was a Christmas gift yet again.

I had bought everything on Tuesday, when the waters were much calmer. I even snagged myself some sweet headphones, the obscene price of which was salved by a store credit that had been hard won and well deserved from an incident a couple of years ago. But I was picking up the laptop and its accessories on Friday. Little did I know what was, quite literally, in store for me.

I rounded up everything I needed for a weekend in the Glen, including my own laptop and its accessories, and embarked on my way down to the suburban entrepot. "2000 Man" was still playing clumsily inside my head in a rather anti-virtuosic manner, despite my frantic search for a radio diversion. I had to remember to pick up a "chill pad" for the laptop, as I had forgot to add that to the package on Tuesday.

The traffic was heavy, even for an early Friday afternoon in a government town. And everyone seemed to be driving in the same direction as me. Except, unlike me, most of them appeared to be frothing at the mouth in anticipation of some kind of bacchanalian ritual that would whip them into a rabid frenzy of an unhealthy sort.

I was getting worried. "2000 Man" was still in my head, but it wasn't reassuring me. Rather, it was considerably distressing me. I needed a chill pad of my own. I wanted to get down there, pick up the goods, and get the fuck out of town before rush hour. I knew I still had to do a bit more work once I got to the Glen, and then I had to setup the laptop, the printer, and all of the other stuff.

When I finally got into the store, I knew something was very wrong. People, old and young, were everywhere. A sea of wretched humanity. Gnashing their teeth. Clutching and grabbing for every shiny bauble that danced before their deadened eyes. Disturbing moans and groans gathered into a crescendo above the bubblegum pop soundtrack of the store as many of these unfortunate creatures were told that the treasure they coveted was no longer in stock, while others shrieked in paroxysms of delight as they fled towards the cacaphonic symphony of the cash registers. It appeared to me as hellish as a detail from the right panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Fuck the chill pad, I thought to myself. I'll get it another day. I just gotta find that cute little Filipino salesgirl, get my stuff and get out of here alive. Then I dutifully got in line, completed my business, and loaded up the New Idler. Earlier that morning, over my first cup of coffee, I had hatched an elaborate scheme to pick up some other badly needed things during this rare foray into the commercial abyss. But waiting in line had sent me into the rush hour. After aborting the original plan, I sped out of the city in a Bournean/To Live and Die in L.A. flourish and set out for the bucolic sureties of the Country Home, bearing the long awaited laptop and all the accessories.

But then don't you know, I'm a 2000 Man.

Fulcrum

Downtown walk in an autumnal Arcadia
Weekday faces fade away
Almost makes you feel
The past is not here today

It is time.
It has always been time.

There and Beck Again

Cousin and I have a relationship analogous to the one between Tony Soprano and Tony Blundetto. Brotherly throughout our early lives and into our mid-twenties, then we each went our separate ways. I cut my teeth on life out on the West Coast, and Cousin has been doing time down in Huronia.

But Cousin has a hall pass this weekend, and is heading north to the old hood.

Almost exactly 22 years ago, when I was a pimply teenager at the concrete bunker in the northern hinterlands of Toronto known as York University, Cousin drove down to Toronto in his diesel Datsun, filled to the brim with empty Little Caesar's pizza boxes. We navigated the Byzantine labyrinth of the TTC, and got ourselves down to the feet of another concrete bunker, the newly opened eighth wonder of the North American world. SkyDome.

The roof was closed, and inside was the latest stop on the "Guitar Heroes" tour: Jeff Healey, Jeff Beck, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Vaughn had just released "In Step" that summer, and was the de facto headliner of the tour. I had bought that album a few months earlier, and had recently snagged Jeff Beck's "Guitar Shop", his first album since "Flash", an ill advised experiment that was intended to vault Jeff Beck into commercial viability, and not just universal respect and veneration amongst his peers. How could he miss with Donny Osmond as a guest vocalist? Not a bad album, just Ambitious.

I had been caught in the Crossfire all summer, and was just beginning to revel in the virtuosity of "Guitar Shop". With the great Terry Bozzio on the kit.

Cousin and I found our seats in the nosebleeds (undergrads and pizza deliverymen didn't rake in huge dollars back then). We decided it was time for a pint. I walked the concourse a few times, and all I saw was McDonald's. There were more McDonald's than bathrooms. There were more McDonald's than people. Dumbfounded, we proceeded to our blue plastic seats with milkshakes in hand.

The late Jeff Healey went on first. Nice set. He had just released "Hell to Pay", and was riding a wave of celebrity, at least in Canada and with George Harrison.

Then it was Hello Jeff time. The reason Cousin and I were there, slurping our milkshakes. Jeff didn't tour much back then. He preferred to stay in his castle and work on his collection of custom cars. The rest of the crowd liked him, even if they were there for Stevie Ray. Jeff appreciated it.

Then Stevie Ray rolled out, and the real rock n' rollers around us began to cry out for some real rock n' roll. We stayed for a bit of Stevie Ray's set, then we finished our milkshakes and headed out for Yonge Street. There was drinking to be done.

Tragically, it turned out to be one of Stevie Ray's last tours, as he died in a helicopter crash in August of 1990.

Jeff is a survivor, literally and figuratively. He has traversed the decades and the genres: late 60s/early 70s hard rock, jazz fusion, session man for Billy Cobham and Stanley Clarke, the ambient turn, alt-country. If you can find it in the history of contemporary music, Jeff's done it. Or worked with those who did. After hearing "Guitar Shop", Roger Waters had to recruit him for his "Amused to Death" album. His work on the opening track "The Ballad of Bill Hubbard" haunts me still.

Tomorrow night, almost exactly 22 years ago, Jeff Beck will be performing at the National Arts Centre. After not releasing a single album between 1989's "Guitar Shop" and 1999's "Who Else?", he has released three albums in the 11 years since. Cousin and I will be there, as will Snakey, who was supposed to be there in 1989.

Its been a long, strange trip, there and back again.

We're gonna Head for Backstage Pass.

Cinematic Soundings

For me, great films are great primarily due to their extraordinary images. Narrative, characterization and dialogue run close behind. But an inspired soundtrack also has its place, and can often lift a film out of mere goodness and propel it into greatness.

Not all of the films I'd like to talk about are great in my estimation. Some absolutely are. Others are films with soundtracks that lift them out of mediocrity and into memorability.

By "soundtrack" I'm not only referring to film scores composed for the occasion, selections from which perforate the entirety of the movie.

I'm also including a director's use of recordings, both popular and esoteric, that he/she chooses to be a part of the soundtrack to their film, even if only of a fragmentary nature.

Film scores that belong in the former category, it seems to me, are within the generally normalized tradition of international film production. Within the past 15 years or so, however, I have been impressed by a number of complete film scores contributed by musicians outside the traditional film scoring guild. Notable examples are original compositions for a couple of P. T. Anderson films, Jonny Greenwood's for There Will Be Blood, and Aimee Mann's for Magnolia.

In his earlier films, P.T. Anderson (and other contemporary American filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, whose films have varied wildly in terms of quality, but that's a blog for another day) are surely influenced by the use of contemporary music in the films of Martin Scorsese.

There are also many of my favourite filmmakers who consistently work(ed) with one film score composer. Ennio Morricone with Sergio Leone. Howard Shore with David Cronenberg. Carter Burwell with the Coen Bros. Angelo Badalamenti with David Lynch. Michael Nyman with Peter Greenaway (although that association seems to have ended as Greenaway slips further away from narrative coherence and into increasingly esoteric experimentation).

It is surely no coincidence that many of my favourite films feature judicious choices of music while having no general and consistent film score. Lars von Trier's chapter cards in Breaking the Waves include period pieces, played at nearly full length, from Jethro Tull, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople et al. Kubrick, of course, sprinkled Strauss, Beethoven and Ligeti throughout his movies from 2001 through A Clockwork Orange to The Shining. These choices can even lift an otherwise pedestrian genre film into a memorable one. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later includes a significant chunk of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's epic "East Hastings" that arrives at a crucial point during the opening scenes and does not overstay its welcome.

28 Days Later also includes a brilliant piece from Brian Eno, who after leaving Roxy Music in the mid-70s went on to create the ambient genre (not to mention working with David Bowie on his two best albums and producing, with Daniel Lanois, some of the best albums of the 1980s and 1990s, including U2's "Achtung Baby").

Jack Bruce wrote a "Theme for an Imaginary Western" a few years before Eno's ambient turn, but it was Eno who created a genre of interesting, cinematic soundscapes for films that didn't exist.

"An Ending (Ascent)" didn't seem to fit the visuals at the end of Boyle's homage to the zombie film (a good movie that should have put an end to the zombie genre but unfortunately did not until, regrettably, the vampire film secured its succession).

However, it perfectly fit the ending of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, and that final scene transformed that movie, in my opinion, from an interesting to a great film, even if Soderbergh ripped it off from a British television series.

I wish more selections from Eno's soundtracks for imaginary films (Music for Films volumes 1-3, Music for Airports, among others) found their way into actual films. No doubt they have.

Another filmmaker who, usually, makes very good choices is Michael Mann. None better, perhaps, than the decision to replace his original (and very conventional) choice of end music for Heat with Moby's magisterial "God Moving Over the Face of the Water". As if it needed any further reason to be remembered as one of the finest American films of the 1990s.

The cheapest trick of all

I was going to go to this show.

I changed my mind on Sunday morning, largely because of the heat wave that has been scorching the earth around these parts since the beginning of July.

I was going to go to this show because Cheap Trick was once an important band to me. Perhaps the most important one.

When I was eight and nine years old, our family stereo unit held a secret cache of LP's and 45's. My Dad had his collection, mostly consisting of Charlie Pride and Tanya Tucker. My mother had her Olivia Newton-John and Nana Mouskouri albums. And my much older sisters (at least they seemed much older at the time), they had their records.

On most occasions when the family stereo unit was in heavy rotation, I had to endure a rather unhealthy dose of Supertramp (Breakfast in America was indelibly branded upon my brain before I turned ten years old; a cruel and unusual punishment if you ask me), Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell (the album cover looked cool as hell, I thought, but it sure didn't sound cool as hell), or K-Tel compilations subjecting me to the truly hellish excesses of late Disco, the Bay City Rollers, K.C. and the Sunshine Band et al.

But to their credit, my older sisters record collection also introduced me to some glories of late 70s rock, particularly Queen's News of the World (now there was an album cover that looked cool as hell and so did the music) and Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan. Like much of the material that generates the playlists of putative "Classic Rock" radio stations, I don't know that Cheap Trick's music (let alone its band members) has aged very well, but at one time they were the biggest and baddest band in the world, at least within my eight-year-old world. When I saw them on TV Variety Shows/Specials, that peculiar late 70s/early 80s species of mass entertainment, I would marvel at Rick Nielson's five-neck guitar and Bun E. Carlos toiling away on the drum kit while the ubiquitous cigarette dangled from his mouth. When I started to buy my own albums a year or so later, one of my initial acquisitions was Heaven Tonight, advertised on Live at Budokan with "Surrender", probably the most enduring song they've ever released.

While Cheap Trick has not survived as a sonic companion of mine since those years (frankly, I couldn't believe that they are still touring), I was nevertheless considering checking out their gig at Bluesfest, if only for nostalgic reasons.

Might have been a hoot, had the stage not collapsed.

Luckily, nobody was seriously injured.

Yup, they're all alright -- they just seem a little weird.

North by Northwest

I've always been drawn to the Pacific Northwest.

Especially the state of Washington and the city of Seattle.

As a eight year old kid, I was fascinated by books on cryptozoology. I used to pour through accounts of Bigfoot encounters and wistfully imagine that one day I would go hiking among those rain forest conifers and come across a North American Great Ape. Then I watched an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man that revealed that Bigfoot was really a robot from outer space, and I lost interest. I didn't care much for space when I was a kid.

As I got older, I started to read some science fiction, and Frank Herbert quickly became my favourite. I burned through many of those Berkley Books paperback editions of his novels, and not just the Dune series. I learned that Frank Herbert was from the Seattle area, and that the sand dunes on the nearby Oregon coast were, reputedly, the inspiration for the series. But I enjoyed his other novels as well, and a few of them had a Northwest setting.

I knew it rained a lot in the Pacific Northwest, and that was fine by me. Unlike most other people, I soon realized, I liked the rain. I still do, even after living for the better part of nine years in Vancouver. It matches the melancholia that I inherited from my Outer Hebridean ancestors. I seem to think better when its raining, and a sublimity sets in that elevates my mood.

One of the first Sports Illustrated magazines that was given to me featured Paul Westphal, who just left the Phoenix Suns to play for the SuperSonics. I knew and cared little about the NBA then, and that hasn't changed over the years, but at the time I knew that the SuperSonics had won back to back NBA titles not long ago.

In the other three sports that I truly cared about at the time, Seattle had made little impact. They didn't have an NHL team then, and its not likely that they ever will. The Seahawks and Mariners were expansion teams in the later 1970s and therefore were simply awful. For some reason I still found myself following them. Before my dear old Dad unknowingly torched them all in a fit of pyromania, I had football cards of Jim Zorn, Dave Kreig, Steve Largent, Curt Warner et al. I don't remember being interested in the Mariners until the late 1980s when Mark Langston was the best lefthander in baseball. The Expos then traded Randy Johnson to the Mariners for half a season of Langston before he moved on to the Angels in free agency. The rest of that sad story doesn't need to be told.

I also knew that Jimi Hendrix was born and raised in Seattle, and that seemed pretty cool to me.

My initial visit to Seattle was in the fall of 1997. Five of us crammed into the Old Idler and embarked from Vancouver on a pilgrimmage to Powell's, a legendary used bookstore in Portland Oregon (this was before ordering books online became a part of my ordinary life). Crossing the border was a bit of an adventure, as the Idler was full of international students, including one from Mexico. The border guard refused to believe that we were entering the US just to visit a bookstore. Needless to say, there was a considerable delay. We stayed overnight at a friend's apartment near the University of Washington. The Huskies were hosting Ryan Leaf and the rival Washington State Cougars, so it was a bit nutty.

I returned to Seattle and Portland the following spring. While the atmosphere inside the Old Idler was vitriolic, as my ex-girlfriend and I were at each others' throats the entire time, the drive back up the Pacific Coast Highway from the San Francisco Bay area was unforgettable. I finally saw the white beaches of the Oregon coast as well as the sand dunes that had inspired Frank Herbert so many years ago.

Over the course of my remaining years on the West Coast, I took the opportunity to return to Seattle, if not Portland, many more times. Unlike Vancouver, Seattle is a port city that makes good use of its downtown shoreline, which I remember as dotted with bars and cafes.

Recently, it seems that I'm more familiar than ever with the daily events of Seattle. While I work each day, I listen to KEXP, a local radio station that allows its disc jockey's to program their own music sets. (Thanks to the Cravat in Van City for that tip).

Oh yeah, and the music that broke out of that town in the late 80s and early 90s was really fucking good.

Songs from the Road

A happy July 14 to all my fellow sans-culottes. May you storm the Bastille of your chosen oppressor, real or imagined.

And a very happy birthday from Little Brother to Big Sister.

I recently returned from my first post-Interruptnal road trip.

It started with a little night music in Confederation Park. Robert Plant and his new band played a set that included many satisfying reworkings of some of my favourite Led Zeppelin songs, including Black Country Woman. And Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Jean-Luc Ponty trading sonic soliloquies under a setting sun.

The next morning I packed up (I no longer travel lightly), loaded up the New Idler, and took off on the two-lane blacktop for parts known and unknown. Ahead of me on the temporal horizon, almost two weeks of liberation from the tedium of Work and the prerequisites of Policy and Protocol.

The New Idler's CD player never stopped Whirring as I floated down the 401 on a River of Pride. That old white line was sure a friend of mine, and it was good time I was making.

After a sleepover at Big Sister's house on the outer rings of the gas giant that is the GTA, I GOTrained it downtown. Its been a long time since I lived in the megalopolis, so not surprisingly I took a wrong turn out the worst possible exit from the thoracic mass of transportation options that is Union Station. It was rush hour, of course, and on this particular late June day it made Penn Station look like a rural route that requires you to lay across the tracks to force the train to stop and pick you up.

When I emerged into the sunlight, I seemed to be trapped in a canyon of industrial wasteland tucked somewhere within a diabolical pentagram triangulated by the CN Tower, the Gardiner Expressway, and the concrete monstrosity formerly known as Skydome. Despite this post-apocalyptic environment, there was a senseless number of commuters going to and fro, walking at me, not with or around me.

Finally I found a dozing cabbie who appeared to be convalescing from the mind melting heat, and we were off for the Annex, where I spent two wonderful days with my dear old friend Curry and his charming family. On another one of the hottest days of the summer so far, I made a puzzling decision to walk east on Bloor from Bathurst to Yonge, only to then turn south down Yonge to Dundas, then all the way west back to Spadina. When I returned to the Annex, blood was seeping through one of my socked feet a la Curt Schilling in the 2004 World Series. I didn't feel like a "gladiator", as Mr. Schilling was preposterously anointed, but it was grotesquely visible enough for the twins to inquire about over dinner that night.

On my way back to the downtown train, my affable cabbie and I almost drownded, as the Young Artist would say, in a wave of baseball fans (really? in Toronto?) rolling down the road, sweeping everything along in its wake. Must have had something to do with Roy Halladay starting for the Phillies. Hard to imagine that I was once a subscriber to Baseball America and knew the names of most middle and long relief pitchers in the league. That ended almost 20 years ago -- and that had something to do with 1994, I'm almost sure.

Once I picked up the New Idler back east of town, I got back on the two(six?)-lane blacktop and Highway Star-ed it west into the heart of Huronia. I hadn't visited Cousine in his backyard since the summer of 2001. It was surreal to have conversations with his near-teenage boy and girl. Cousine and I had our obligatory evening of obliteration - Darts, innit? - and it seemed to me that I had once again sailed across oceans of Mill Street and Sleeman. However, perspectives and horizons, not to mention youthful stamina, have inevitably diminished. We were both a Victim of Changes as we re-enacted the Days that Used to Be. And Yet, we talked and drank until the daylight began to break, the temporal and physical distance between us dissolving into the rosy-fingered dawn.

I spent four nights with Cousine and his family, and one more overnight visit with Big Sister, a Circean bacchanalia that sent me off in fine style the next morning. Then it was time to move on to the closing books of the epic road trip -- the voyage home.

Once again the New Idler's CD player was put to good use as I Noodlanded my way towards the End of Music and O-town.

Once I got home, and still had a few days of vacation remaining, I slept like a log. A Victim of Changes, indeed.

http://youtu.be/AaTYdUQzgg4

Underneath

I was up late last night.

I watched Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. If only because I have not missed a Cup-clinching game since ... 1980, I would guess. The spring that witnessed the end of one NHL dynasty and the beginning of a new one. Back in an era when dynasties were still possible.

Even in the midst of a disastrous Greyhound bus trip across the country with a frigid female companion in the summer of 2000, I still managed to catch Jason Arnott's overtime goal behind the analog fuzz of a tiny TV atop the diner refrigerator in a charmless Calgary bus station.

But last night, after the entirely predictable (yet obviously unfathomable to Canuck "enthusiasts") Game 7 loss, I couldn't tear myself away from the CBC affiliate in Vancouver. Soon after their Cup hopes were efficiently extinguished by the Bruins, the civic humiliation escalated right under the paternalistic eye of the national broadcaster.

Not to exaggerate, but I was spellbound with a morbid fascination while witnessing, at a digital remove, the desecration of my familiar lieux de memoire in the downtown core. So little of that downtown has changed, it seems, since I spent the better part of a decade in that city. I probably know that downtown better than I do the downtown where I now live. The iconoclastic stripping of the altars around Georgia, Granville and all the other familiar streets had a surprising emotional impact on me. With the exception of the dear friends that I made while I was there, some of whom still reside in that beautiful city, Vancouverites always seemed, to me at least, unnaturally frozen under a patina of affected coolness and detachment which supposedly rendered them unencumbered by the societal stresses of the East, towards which they often wagged an empathetic or condescending finger.

But underneath there seemed to be a repressed sense of marginalia and neglect, leavened with a bizarre sense of superiority and entitlement.

When that reaches a boiling point, and the primordial sludge bubbles to the surface (it penetrates far beyond the parochial yet passionate milieu of NHL hockey), all it seems to take is a few combustibles and an igniting agent.

What bothered me most about watching things unfold last night was less about the fully loaded cretins who were burning and looting, but rather the non-participants who were obviously enjoying the spectacle of watching, and photographing/videotaping with their insipid 'smart' phones, the property and psychological damage being inflicted on both their home city and their international reputation. Smilin' and wavin' to the rest of the world as the flames flickered. The downtown, not to mention the social order, was momentarily turned upside down during a bizarre charivari of carnivalistic mob rule while the police watched from the sidelines. I have to believe that any global currency that the city and province might have accrued during the hosting of the 2010 Olympics (itself a problemmatic "event", but that's a debate for another day) went up in smoke bombs and tear gas last night.

Which begs the question. If Sid hadn't have squeezed that puck through Ryan Miller's short side, what might have happened in downtown Vancouver? Surely nothing of the sort that took place last night, as the 'international community' was there to chaperone. When left to their own devices and resources, its a different outcome, apparently.

Last night, I kept waiting for Hugh Dillon's elite reponse unit to show up and restore some order.

http://youtu.be/VclaeaajDiU

Y Cymry

As a diasporadic Scot, I feel a fellowship with other occupants of the Celtic fringe, including those from the Brythonic branch of the lingual tree.

The shiring of Wales by England may have taken place in the 1530s and 40s, but by then the Cymry had infiltrated what was arguably the most powerful institution of sixteenth-century England. The Tudor dynasty formally consecrated its Welsh lineage by including the Red Dragon in its royal arms. Earlier the future Henry VII raised the Red Dragon with its Tudor green and white background when he defeated Richard III and his supporters at Bosworth Field in 1485.

A little more recently, and right on the heels of their fellow Celts in Scotland, the Welsh regained their own parliament. It remains to be seen what Devolution will ultimately deliver to both, but it is interesting to watch.

In between, the Cymry have made their own disproportionate contributions to not only “Britain” and “Britishness”, but to the wider world. But fear not, I have no intention of assembling a list that irrefutably demonstrates how the Welsh invented the “modern world”. No doubt you can find something of that sort in a bargain bin at your local book bizarre of choice. Such claims have become what Trojan founding myths were to nascent European nation-states.

I do need to mention, however, a few Welshman that have meant something to me, if not the modern world, which, surely, is a more important cause than I am. Although I am open to contributions, as always.

Bertrand Russell never meant anything to me. Mathematicians never make good philosophers.

Richard D. James may not mean something to a lot of people. But Aphex Twin might, but not really that much to me.

It means more to me that Roger Glover is a Welshman. But not all Welshmen are Highway Stars.

It means much more to me that Peter Greenaway is Welsh. But not many Welshmen have made films as wonderful as The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover.

And while it might not be traditional Welsh music, a power trio originally from North Wales has recently captured my ear.

Hwyl am rwan ...

http://youtu.be/9kNQeDlgBoc (switch to 1080p)