Mind the gap. The gaps in my internet ramblings have been brought to you by an attempt at a balanced life. This should come with the warning that this is only an attempt. On a “news update” note:

1) I’ve almost finished mixing the new Bob Kemmis record (no promises on release dates) and its one of the best things I’ve ever worked on. No wine before its time.

2) Jesse Valenzuela and I have almost got our CD back on track. He started on the road a lot with the reformed Gin Blossoms just as we finished tracking the instruments. Combine that with my schedule and its been tough to finish the thing off. No wine before its time.

3) Ran up against some walls with the video to “Giddy Up” and we’re still trying to get it aired. I should have just resynched the audio to a Mitsubishi commercial and this would all be a lot easier. Alistair Calder & are juggling the idea of reconstructing this whole website so putting up video and audio will be easier. He’s a busy guy too. No video before its time.

4) The Colin James dates in California were great. Some of you saw them. I hope you agree with me. The Mint show in LA was pretty sparsely attended due to NO advertising whatsoever. That’s always a drag. One always prays to be the worst kept secret. I missed the Doheny shows as I was at a friend’s wedding but apparently Colin gave a good lesson on how it should be done at a big bluesfest. Anahiem with Ziggy Marley was fun. Nice to meet his band and hats off to them for coming and hanging at soundcheck to hear our sounds and talk music. Colin has a bunch of shows up on his website and I should be at all of those.

5) I’ll be playing one of these “intimate house concerts” that seem to be taking North America by storm. Its my first. Solo acoustic and ... well... "intimate". The price is right and seating is very limited so please RSVP to avoid disappointment (to getfamous@shaw.ca ). Craig will share the night with Olympia WA's Andras Jones . If you’re unfamiliar with Andras you can learn all about him at http://www.AndrasJones.com.

Tatiana's House Concert featuring Andras Jones and Craig Northey

3549 West 32nd Ave. Between Dunbar and Blenheim.

Saturday June 7th
Doors at 8 pm
Andras on at 9 pm
Craig on at 10 pm

$10 at the door
RSVP to getfamous@shaw.ca
Bring your beverage of choice and a cushion to sit on
appies provided

6) I’ll also be performing a Four Tops tune at the “Motown Meltdown” at the Plaza of Nations (Vancouver) on June 14th. Its a benefit for Shooting Stars (AIDS) etc. The event will be studded with local musical luminaries and Simon Kendall & Doug Elliott will join me to give a Sharkskin flavour to the larger Motownish ensemble.

7) Tomorrow...Thursday. I'm going to sit in at the Railway Club (Vancouver) for Chin Injeti's R&B night. Simon Kendall & Doug Elliott will join me for a tune or two.
posted by Craig Northey at 9:33 AM

Bumper crop in the field of dreams. If you've just read last night's post then you would understand why it would be strange for me to be out seeing a friend's play and run into Gene Simmon's and have a short conversation and a photograph with him (and his identical twin blonde escorts). When I told him what had happened he suggested I post last night's blog on genesimmons.com. I think there are few surprises in his life. What was the likelihood of this happening? I have spoken many times about my superstitions regarding an individual's powers of suggestion. These are the type of "coincidences" that drive people to madness. All you need is three in a row.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:06 AM

That old school bus had been there too long in the parking lot of the complex. Anything that sat too long around here got tagged, invaded or otherwise consumed by the fiery and restless bands of school age marauders. Not just the teens but the tweens and the preteens all hung together under the flag of twilight boredom. It was discovered that there was no lock on the gas cap.
If they weren’t out breaking something they were inside the apartment, when Mom was at work, listening to Kiss. Each kid had picked their Kiss member and would adopt his mannerisms when the air band took to the stage. The stage was bordered by an imaginary line drawn from chair leg to sliding glass door to Lazy Boy to hutch on which the Baycrest AM/FM stereo turntable sat. Tonight they would all be Gene Simmons. This would be the logical step next step after biting down on the pilfered A&W ketchup condiment pack suitcased neatly in the left cheek. Viscous blood that stains the shag were the precursors to actually breathing fire.
He didn’t even know how to syphon. The other guy had to show him. After snaking the four foot piece of garden hose down the neck & into the bus’s innards he put his mouth to the end. The vapour wave screamed, “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION!”. Its one of the few things you can taste so strongly without it ever touching your tongue. “Just suck until you feel it go up and listen hard for the upward sound. You can feel when it gets close and then pull the hose out of your mouth and stick it down in the bucket”, The boy who knew what he was doing whispered these instructions quickly. The bus was parked under the one lamp standard that still had a bulb that worked. Lucky the opening to the tank was on the far side of the bus away from the last building of the complex. You always get a taste of it in your mouth the first time and it numbs your lips and makes the inside of your mouth feel like it will never be the same. Its hard enough to wash the smell off your hands. Later it burns like poison clown makeup. It burns enough that you’re sure people can see it on your face ...but they can’t.
They filled the bucket and met the others on the back lawn of the prefab real estate shack across the street from the complex. It was darker back there and none of the houses faced this space. It took two guys to make it work. One guy drew the gas up into the length of thick garden hose. By “thick” I mean its the softer kind that is about an inch in diameter and features the corduroy ridges down its length. Its usually the pastel green not the solid darker green. You know the kind. The lawn was only lit by the moon and just a little bit brighter in the strips where the distant street lamp swath could cut sideways through the columnar cedar trees marking the perimeter. The boy who knew what he was doing drew a measure of fuel up into the hose and held the the other end up like Hamlet holds the skull in community Shakespeare. Another boy held the Bic to the end and cranked the flint wheel over. The cheeks of the garden hose trumpeter billowed Dizzy Gillespie big before he blew into the tube as hard as he could.
Six foot fireball. The faces of the six or so boys who had gathered for the event lit up under that glorious yellow and orange flare. Their smiles were more wicked and joyful than a parent wants to admit is possible in these circumstances. They cheered with “fuckin' ehs” and “fuckin'’ rights” and “holy shits”. Each one hesitated too long the next morning when mom asked why they smelled of gas after the sleep over.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:25 PM

Thanks to Chris Blake for inspiring this one:


New School Bio For a Emerging 4 Piece Male Rock Band
(insert name where it says “the Name”)

Way down in the well was a tiny rippling glint of light. The gang of boys peered over the edge with that “Killroy was here” nose and fingers listening to hear how long it would take for the falling brick to make that glorious sound. They were together and silent for one suspended second. So begins the complicity of making sound together. How long would it take for that long wicked firecracker to go off in front of the principal’s podium as they crouched behind the science room sink bunkers? How long would it take for old man Blake to respond to the doorbell as they fanned out like fireworks running across his manicured lawn and out down the halogen flood way of the evening street? They were together on these kinds of important sounds. Here was the genesis of their compositional skills. Co-conspirators in the effort to change the face of the neighborhood with sound meeting action. The neighborhood grew and the sounds grew. They memorized each other’s actions and reactions. They found new tools and new techniques. In an unfinished basement decorated with bicycles, baseball gloves, and the posters that didn’t cut it as legitimate art in the rest of the house, they drew out bigger sounds until the neighbors begged them to stop. There was never any question that they were together on this and that the power was growing. Nobody ever tried to name it, tame it or hold it back. They had knowledge of each other that meant it could just happen and it would sound “together”. It would sound better than “together”. It would sound like a band. In the margins of textbooks in the time one takes to forget they are in a class . . .in the fraction of a second before they are hit by the eraser thrown by the teacher. . .one of them wrote the name. It was “the name”. It was passed around on a hoarse whisper and their faces creased with knowing smiles.
When they were free of situations where they had to behave . . . they exploded. They exploded with the idea that they could take what they had built in the downstairs to the underground, wheel it out into the bright light and then set it on fire. They wrote songs with a dedication to tradition and craft and then used what they had as co-conspirators to blow it all up. The explosion even felt like it hung together . . .if you know what I mean. They were “the Name”. The brotherhood in the margins. The brotherhood of the knock and run. The brotherhood of the composed explosion. First the great song and then the mischievous and beautiful action.

“the Name”

__________ vocals, guitar, keys
__________ guitar, keys, vocals
__________ bass, vocals
__________ drums, percussion

Contact information


posted by Craig Northey at 9:52 PM

He liked the heal of the loaf of bread or the middle seat in the back of the car. Sure you sat on the martyr’s hump above the drive shaft but you were shielded from side impact by two warm bodies. He never had to yell “shotgun”. Placing third was the way to go. There was no pressure to stay on top and it was always good enough for a pat on the back. All his clothes were great deals. He sported the odd coloured running shoes of the highest quality, in the strangest 1/4 sizes, always dug from the pile on the folding table in front of the store -- 50% off. No one ever saw the tiny inch long runs in the fabric of his factory seconds. He volunteered to play goal ... against the easy teams. Life on the fringes of consumption and achievement should have given him an edge. He wanted what the picky eaters and label faithful wouldn’t touch. If logic prevailed he was destined to fit in. Never a territorial threat and never the hobbling calf at the back of the herd. No. If you don’t want what everyone else wants you are pushed aside. All must compete for the same prize in the same way and win or lose. Those are the rules.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:19 PM

You figure the arc of your team’s success and failure might mirror your own life. Since my head and heart are so securely attached to the Canuck wagon it stands to reason that my life might follow the same rhythm as the team. I don’t want to extend the metaphor too far but the stenciled letters , “so close you can taste it but...maybe next year” really can be laid over my year and have all the letters fit quite nicely. I don’t say this in a “woe is me” me way at all. There are a lot of people who never feel they even get to play in the big games. On the contrary I think I’m lucky to keep getting the chance to diddle around with the puck. Its hilarious if you look at the team’s record as a graph on a X,Y axis and lay the same graph of my musical life over top. Creepy. This is where my bad Russell Crowe acting should kick in and I whirl into a surreal “Beautiful Mind” schizophrenic double reality situation.
The coach Marc Crawford will come to my door in ten minutes and tell me they (the Canuck coaching staff) need me to practice scales more often and analyze the out takes from my old Odds video footage for the next two weeks. He will advise me to tell no one that the connection has been made and I am to put my demos and notes in a “drop box” out behind the old Coliseum. It will be marked “P.N.E.. sanitation, do not remove”. I am to find a way to never miss Monday night M.H.L.. hockey scrimmages and work on my backwards mobility -- If I ever need to play bass in the future this defensive work will come in handy. I am to scout other musicians who play hockey poorly and provide lists of what gear they bring to a surprise studio call. This will gauge their commitment and ability to perform in a playoff situation or gig where an A&R man is present. Marc Crawford will show up the next day and take me to the third dressing room of the Karen Magnussen arena (during school hours) in North Vancouver to have a radioactive chip put in my favourite guitar for tracking and security purposes. I will be given no number and no official jersey and I will complain a lot about this. Instead he will hand me a single unmarked puck and tell me it was the one that scored one of Greg Adam’s overtime winners in one of the games of the ‘94 Rangers final but he can’t be sure which game. I will believe him and carry it in the crotch of my pants for the next two months. My mate will discover the puck in our bed and I will wake up in a white room with very soft walls wearing very restrictive clothing. Eventually I will learn how to deal with my affliction but Stan Smyl and Orland Kurtenbach will always be at my gigs, winking at me from side stage. They will follow me to the dressing room saying, “this isn’t working Northey. You can’t just ignore us like this”.
posted by Craig Northey at 9:37 AM

The blades of the whirring push mower created that surging, warm pleasant rhythm that arcs upward and then dies in waves. It was five or six front lawns away up the next street. It was a quiet enough neighbourhood that you could hear it from where they were. Some of the kerosene spilled onto his jeans as it dripped out the nail hole in the last tennis ball can at the bottom of the cannon. No matter. It evaporated fast in the sun and the jeans were pretty stained anyway. Five cans were taped end to end with the gaffer’s best and only one end was sealed. The nail hole was where you held the lighter. They’d been building their makeshift bazooka all afternoon out back behind the shed. After that ounce of fluid had made its way down to the bottom he swung the tube like a windmill to get that explosive vapour roiling about inside and on the edge of evaporation. They liked the smell as it heightened the event with a cheap high. Boy #2 heard “NOW!” and tilted his hand sideways over the nail hole with the Bic lighter wheel cocked under his thumb. Boy #1 dropped the fluorescent greenish yellow fuzzy ball down the tube and swung the cannon up onto his shoulder. Buddy’s hand tracked the hole as it moved up behind Dan’s back and simultaneously cranked the flint wheel of the Bic. There was a roar that deafened them both. They couldn’t hear the whirring of the mower stop in mid wave. They couldn’t hear the old man fall with a quiet thud to the freshly mown lawn. They couldn’t hear him get up and mutter “jesus christ”. They couldn’t really hear for two days.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:41 PM

Five year olds write good songs:

Name My Dog


I don’t know if I have to go
when my name is Mo
I got a dog yesterday
and I don’t know what my dog is gonna be called
and I don’t know when the sun is bright
if I can walk my dog across the bridge
I don’t know
I think of my dog
and I don’t know what his name will be
what will I do when I have to say my dog’s name?

If you sing it like Nick Drake in an open tuning it seems quite ominous.


posted by Craig Northey at 10:40 PM

In the half light at the beginning of a day. I can see the shapes that sound makes when I’m halfway to sleep. I am sensitive to temperature because the skin is fresh from the cocoon. Out the rose tinted window plastic cups and bags and wrappers roll around in the remnants of last week’s snowfall. Road grime fringes the brown grass that fans up the walls of the highway. Utility buildings run off for miles. Built to become something else just in case today's new venture doesn’t work out. Nightclub is warehouse. Warehouse is grocery store. Identically painted trucks all need a paint job. Some have mixed pink into the umbers and beiges to almost make a statement with the massive expanses of stucco on the strip mall. The anesthetic of repetition. Peaks and gables of stamped out teal metal pocked with the shit of seagulls way too far from the sea. Scavengers have made their way into all things. Intended uses are never enough. What will we do with the giant inflatable cell phone on the roof of the store when it looks too low tech? Now the sound barrier wall rises up on either side of the bus to force me back to what is going on in here. Keep your thoughts out of our bedroom communities. Soon I will find the hidden bathroom in the largest mall in the world. Dolphins backs will break the surface near the Radio Shack. Fluorescent light will flood the families in bathing suits at the rubber beached wave pool. Take it all inside. Take it all inside. The sea of humanity is the best distraction from the idea of the mall.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:44 AM