A nice announcement. Paul Myers will be the support act on this weeks show at the Green Room in Vancouver. He'll start at 8:45pm so come early to enjoy Paul. You'll like it.
Look to the sky as quickly as you can. Say, “see you soon Gleek”. One of the great friends of the Odds David Gleekman has just passed after a brave battle with the big “C”. If any of you in the Detroit area or the international music scene knew him you knew how much fun he was. He set the standard for human lovability. Please say a little prayer in your own way for his friends and family who are now hurting more than him. Hey Gleek! Go wings go!
OK. The last line of the last posting was supposed to read. "Please let Rosanne know she is not alone". I tried using a cheat sheet to "hyper link" her web page (rosannecash.com) and whatever I did wrecked my ability to get back on that particular bit of type and edit it. I have pushed my technical abilities far enough.
So much has happened about things that don’t seem that important in the grand scheme of things. I guess that's why people lose touch. Something happens to them that they find interesting and simultaneously cataclysmic horrors are happening on a grand scale world wide . . .so they shuffle it under the rug and forget about it. Sooner or later everybody loses track of where the other people are and what they are feeling. It was sunny today and I heard a muted machine gun “brapp” and looked up to see a huge woodpecker trying to bore a hole in the aluminum vent tower on the west side of my roof. I recognized the sound immediately as the sound my mate has been calling me into the bathroom to hear every couple of days. She says, “do you hear that sound? I think it must be a plumbing problem and we better get on it right away before a flood or something”. We were about to call in a plumber at great expense to prophylactically deal with the pending “problem” before our house was damaged by flooding. How would we ever have known that a woodpecker had gone bonkers and was trying daily to get inside our aluminum roof vent? You would have to be outside at just the right time to see it. You see? That story would have held up as an interesting anecdote if people weren’t dying in a hail of bullets and shrapnel every few minutes. So I’ll be quick with the lesser information.
Shot a video for “Giddy Up” on Sunday. It was done at “Maureen Wilson’s Sweatco Studios” on Richards Street in Vancouver (thanks Mo & Gary). Loosely: I performed a faith healing for a class of women on spinning bikes. Bruce McCulloch directed and wrote and John Pantages’ Soulhammer Pictures made it all happen. I have many people to thank and you can see their names on the news page of the site. Two I would like to add are Jenn Cormier and Nate for all their efforts. A one point, with some help from Cirque du Soleil's Sandra Botnen, I was dancing, at night, in front of the headlight beams of a gold suicide door Lincoln. Picture me wearing a white jacket and tie, burgundy shirt, huge rodeo belt buckle and black cowboy boots making karate moves as my Baptist skinny rock dude henchmen in burgundy suits ate take-out fried chicken off the hood of the Lincoln.
The gig at the Green room tonight was a lot of fun. Shuffled the song deck a bit and did one long set featuring Doug Elliott (bass), Simon Kendall (keys), Geoff Hicks (drums) and me on pithy comments. Garfield Wilson (sang with us on Colin James “Fuse”) got up to sing harmony of “Something Good”. His wife Michelle did the cover for “Giddy Up” and I congratulate them on the pending birth of their first child. Hope to see more of you out next week.
Rosanne Cash’s “Rules of Travel” came out today and I’d like to thank Tim Der for buying and showing me the first copy I’d seen. The record is fantastic. I’m not just saying that. It’s truly great. Rosanne tells me its receiving great reviews and she’s really busy getting the word out but moreso helping to spread love in a time of war. Posted by Craig at 03:07 AM | Comments (0)
Just gathering thoughts is a tough enough task. Making sense of anything seems impossible. At some point the bombardment of negative information will pierce a hole in all hope. I haven’t lost hope but that fragment that was working on making sure a war never started is as far gone as a tissue in a typhoon. I don’t remember a time when war didn’t mean doomsday was imminent. There was a chance that each war could be the world’s last. WW2 was a romantic war with classic characters playing good and evil. It came with a “just cause” that was objective. Nobody ever dwelt on the pictures of dead bodies or the weeping homeless. We assembled scale models of P-51 Mustangs, played with G.I. Joes and watched “Hogan’s Heroes”. Those bumbling Nazi’s sure were hilarious prime time entertainment. Our parents laughed along with us and that fostered the idea that, except for a moment of silence on Remembrance Day, it could all go back to normal. As a teenager you discovered the more grisly photos and, as the whole picture took shape, your respect for the trauma’s of previous generations grew. You lived the moment. The “playing guns” eased off for me pretty quickly but I know other boys who held onto the Hollywood war. I see them on TV. I see them rise to power. I never see them with real blood on their hands. They keep the same distance from the flying bone and flesh of babies that the producers of “Sgt. Bilko” did. It all happens somewhere far away and we can watch it on our TVs. The makers of body count video games don’t live in fear in South Central LA or Johannesburg. If they do they are the ones with the walled compounds. The moguls who made all the hijacking and slasher movies have gathered all the evidence that life never imitates art. Cigarette company PR men probably only smoke during the press conference. Information is plucked from the tree and carved up for easy digestion. It can be used in any recipe. It can pad you shelter and build your nest. The same sentence can serve two sides of any argument. So many words with so few questions.
I watched some footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein at a diplomatic stroking some years ago. At that time the same words could describe Hussein as are used now. What words did he choose then? If he met him face to face right now would he try to kill him with his bare hands? Would he leap across the banquet table to poke out his eyes with a salad fork? Would he smile, do nothing, eat dinner, go home, make a phone call to command central, open a bottle of red wine, turn on the TV and watch the missile (he just asked to be launched) fall in a tiny orange arc into Hussein’s bedroom? Where is the coldest heart? If you owe a hundred dollars to a friend it weighs on your mind. If you owe $200,000 to the bank it can be forgotten much more easily. I’m thinking of those on the killing floor of the slaughterhouse right now. I hope they’ll be all right when the reasons for all this remain in question long after its all over. As soon as there is a question of “just cause” they will be the victims. They will be abandoned and betrayed by those who drank wine, watched television and made chilling phone calls.
It was a good night of music at the Green Room. The set included the usual suspects and featured some odd choices like: “Fingerprints”, “the Last Drink”, “I Am Bob Seger” and a full Sharkskin set. Jeff Hicks did a fine job on the drum kit after having only one run through the songs from “Giddy Up” and having “subbed” for Pat only once before in Sharkskin. Truly a fine musician. Tonight we broke the Sharkskin “no singing” code and I sang “Something Good” & “Mercy to Go” with the band. What happens now? Flash floods? Locusts? I thought Simon played his ass off tonight. Hope he can find it by morning
On the eve of imminent war I can't write anything that hasn't been said. You know how you feel. Let everyone else know. I think its total bullshit. There . . .I said it . . .the Dixie Chicks records are burning and I want to buy their records now even though I could have cared less about them before. I think the "respect for the office of the president" idea in American culture is in contradiction to the philosophy of the country when it protects that person from critical thought. The president is a citizen who deserves praise for his/her dedication to the nation but, lets face it, the percs are pretty good and absolute power corrupts. I think if we all turned our T.V.s off for a month we might stand a chance of thinking for ourselves.
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Home. My home is home. I wonder sometimes if my city is home. I feel comfortable in so many places. I was reading on a website that Vancouver had tied for 2nd in the list of the world’s most livable cities.
a list of the world's most livable cities
I know there will be a lot of people in this city gloating. I really despise that. There are plenty of cities I would try living in if my life allowed such flexibility. In some ways I have had a chance to experiment with quite a few different North American locales. This particular study is, “based on 39 criteria that included a variety of political, social, and economic factors such as the quality of health, education, and transportation services.” These categories are at the core of what makes a place “livable” but I don’t see art, culture, excitement, and tolerance in there. Vancouverites love to tout their city and its award winning ways. I say, “get off your friggin high Orca”. There are millions of places to have fun, learn about yourself, and enjoy the people around you. Vancouver is a bit player in that scene. Here is a quick list of North American cities I would live in for awhile. If your city doesn’t appear then its because I forgot to add it . . .there isn’t a place I hate but there are some I’d choose over others.
Montreal, New Orleans, Quebec City, Chicago, New York, Memphis, Los Angeles, Kingston Ont, St. Johns, Regina, Saskatoon, San Francisco, Winnipeg, Halifax, Austin, Atlanta, Athens, Edmonton, Calgary, Jasper, Toronto, Ottawa, Dawson City, Yellowknife, Fredericton, Detroit, D.C, Baltimore, Boston, Burlington Vermont, Tempe, Kaslo, Ladysmith, Wakefield PQ, Philadelphia
I could keep going on and on. I realize by typing this list that I resist heavily the idea that I should retreat into the countryside. I love cities. The smaller ones I picked were based on the fun I had there. Sometimes I had so much fun in a city I may have even obliterated my memory of the place entirely. This very basic and overly simplistic journal entry was brought to you by 3 pints of home-brew.
Forbidden Pez part 4
At random intervals. . .well . . .they seemed random but probably averaged out into regularity, Hammond would uncloak the dark wood behemoth and fire it up. This was something his dad had forbidden the children to do on their own but had taught them the vaguely masonic ritual anyway. These are the subtle tortures perpetrated by parents. The one chance to “drive the car” when perched on Daddy’s lap on the back country holiday leads to a hundred reckless joyrides by the age of seventeen. Dangle the carrot then deny.
Flick the left hand toggle forward. Count to five steamboats. Listen for the whirring motor to speed up and then flick the other toggle. “Turn on run after start is on”. Committed to memory. Hardly dangling the carrot but still Hammond fired the beast up whenever his parents were sure to be gone long enough. He did it because he could.
Unwittingly he had fallen in love with the smell of warming oil and particles of house dust burning on the blue hot glass of vacuum tubes. It took five minutes or so to really float up from the belly of the organ and the amp at the bottom of the Leslie rotating speaker cabinet that sat across the room under the carpet of doilies and congregation of Hummel figurines.
Fetishism was indeed inherited. Infatuations substituting for real love until they felt like they must be real love. Obsessing could bring you so close to such tiny objects. You explored them with your fingers and committed their weights and dimensions to muscle memory. For Hammond it began with toys that simulated the real thing. He jumped the purple “Silhouette” Hot Wheel (tm) from bookshelf to table and made the sound of its trajectory with his mouth. He controlled and suspended it between his fingers in a way that allowed his eye to get close enough to see the red walled tires spin down after liftoff. He learned to simulate the arc . . .front wheels up . . .leveling off . . .lowering . . . and landing with that axle to axle rocking bounce. His eye was close enough to imagine himself inside the space-age bubble canopy in the tiny plastic bucket seats. Imagination could change your size and shape. Toys became tools of transformation like hammers were necessary to frame the house. For most of his wayward friends drugs had taken over this job by the twilight of high school. Toys had not evolved along with them. There was no “cool” and no coming of age in toys. Collecting was perhaps the only way to legitimize Hammond’s ability to stay connected to his powers of transformation and and allow him to travel into other dimensions. He protected and coveted. He lost friends who wouldn’t go with him. Their transformations included spiritual quests, childbirth, graduate work and world travel. He didn’t travel but still rose to the upper echelons of this boutique consumer underground.
There were people in Belgium who knew who he was but he never had to go there to be known. His name was broadcast like a 1-800 number in the 24-7 world of E-bay, fanzines and mail order houses. He was soon to be crowned king of this hidden world. He had pulled excalibur from the stone. How would he announce it to his subjects? This lost week had been his silent blowout. No hookers, no blow, no sweat soaked wantonly unbuttoned shirts and gob flying onto the long lenses of prying paparazzi. That did not happen to lords of his domain. His coronation would present two possible roads -- all the money he would ever need or a long and glorious reign over his peer group.
Quick confessions. I’ve been in LA for awhile working on the Colin James record. For all those who have not heard from me. I apologize. As you all know I am an “A type” completely obsessed with “the work”. This is a top secret operation so I can only fill you in a on a few details. We’re recording with Mark Howard (Lanois, U2, Lucinda, etc) at the Paramour. Its a sprawling 20’s era mansion in Silverlake. The band is me, Colin, Daryl Johnson on bass (Neville Brothers, Emmylou etc), Victor Indrizzo (Macy Gray, Avril Lavigne, Beck etc) and Dean Butterworth (Ben Harper, Morrissey) on drums. Jeff Trott (World Party, Sheryl Crow etc) has joined us on keys and guitar and written a song or two with us. Vince Jones (Sarah M, Grapes of Wrath, Cowboy Junkies, Craig Northey) has also plinked the ivories. More guests will drift in and out as we go. I can tell you we’re really excited and enjoying the best part of the process. Amongst the new tunes are a few cool covers that Colin has chosen. I don’t want to spoil the surprises so I’ll just tell you who’s tunes they are: Nick Drake, Hendrix and John Lennon. The Paramour itself has an incredible atmosphere. Ghosts all over the place. You can check it out at www.theparamour.com.
I will return with part 3 of my Pez serial in the next day or two.
yours
Craig