The look on my supervisor’s face was one of overt relief, and not just because it was Friday afternoon. Handing me a folded sheet of paper, he began “Next week you are assigned to be ‘The Officer In Charge a) at…'” and his voice started to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher, as I embarked on a mental Flight of Fancy.
It’s always weird when you’re recovering from being really sick. I’ve just come out of two weeks of a knocked down, dragged out, cough and snorting extravaganza that left me gasping for breath, and wishing I’d bought shares in Kleenex.
When you’re that sick, when you spend less hours ambulatory and/or awake than you do face down on the futon, you watch the swirl of madness that we call politics with a jaundiced eye; you know it matters, very, very much who is elected to lead the country, but they all sound like Charlie Brown‘s teacher, and look more like distorted monsters from another planet than they do potential leaders.
For the last several years, I’ve waxed nostalgic about Christmases past. It is to be expected – I am in the sandwich generation that remembers tales of real candles on real trees, while also remembering the first time my family considered an artificial tree. I can only partially relate to how holidays are spent in these times, in our fractured, fast-paced society which – to quote Oscar Wilde – ‘knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.‘
I’m sure it wasn’t the Canadian government’s intention to play Lucy snatching the football away before Charlie Brown can kick it. But it’s getting harder and harder to trust that the Trudeau government has any intention of following through on promises to legalize, regulate, and restrict marijuana use, medically or recreationally.
After reading what I consider Cam Carpenter‘s best column ever this past week (if you missed it, read it here), I could not help but look back over my years in the business. The big difference between Cam and myself is that I spent all of my years on the bottomside, i.e. retail, and started those years looking longingly at the labels, hoping to score that most wonderful and elusive job in A&R (Artists & Repertoire— the people who spend ungodly amounts of time listening to live tapes and demos and sucking in smoke in scuzzy bars looking for that next big thing in music). Cam did that.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 