While the Clash were hardly the only band that ever mattered to me, I personally sure owe a tip-o-the ol’ snout to the one, the only Joe Strummer for most vividly helping me see The Light back in that dark, dank cultural wasteland known as the mid-Seventies:
The single greatest living Canadian since Stompin’ Tom, who loudly and proudly celebrates a Date of Birth once again on July Five, answers: Continue reading
Very late one evening in the very late 1980s, my oldest pal Doug and I were dejectedly roaming the Rogers cable when we suddenly chanced upon footage of these two guys pounding music out on someone’s porch.
Our collective jaws – to say nothing of the remote – immediately dropped.
It was exactly 56 (!) May birthdays ago that I received my very first “big record” …yes, just like the countless Count Basie and King and I albums in mom and dad’s big oak record cabinet. Needles to say, Capitol Canada T-6054 remained lodged on the Pig Player clear through Christmas ’64 …when I received my second big one.
Bob Dylan’s ex-wife sits on the bleachers in a smoky little Hoboken nightclub watching her latest son-in-law belting out his latest demo tape to an appreciative but slim audience of friends and scene-schemers. Bob Dylan’s ex-wife’s looks certainly belie her too many years of lawsuits and sleepless months: she’s still slim, dark, and her eyes still sparkle mischievously with the magics of eras gone by.
As hard as it may be for us to recall all these decades later, the extremely late Eighties somehow found Dave “Rave” DesRoches touring his home and native land alongside ol’ highschool buds Teenage Head, extolling the second-hand virtues of carpet kissin’ Hawaiian beer-drinking parties… as the remainder of the music biz moved uncaringly along to George Michael, Guns N’ Roses n’ other such comparative pleasures. However – and this is a big, all-important However however – Dave had spent most every down-hour he could during those distant days squirreled away within the nearest quiet zone, creating a veritable treasure trove of words and music which, while wholly incompatible with his Teenage night job would serve him more than well when, as 1988 became 89, he began seriously considering stepping out upon his very own.
“Yeah, right,” I remember so many of my American pals – musicians included! – asking me whenever push came to glove: “What the hell good ever came out of Canada?!!”
Well, besides the Quality Record-era Guess Who, SCTV, and of course Young Neil, for seventy-seven years there roamed across the Great Wide Northlands a man, a myth – dare I say a LEGEND who cast a long, black, yet somehow barely perceptible shadow over every guitar lasher who means a half hoot on either side of the dreaded U.S. / O Canada border. A man who possessed a wicked tongue, beaver-sharp mind, commanding left leg and, above all, a wit and wisdom before which few others dare even stand, let alone deserve to approach.
That man, that myth, and/or that legend was, and forever shall be…
Stompin’ Tom Connors.
So even though Tarantino’s latest failed to put Paul Revere or his Raiders back up at the Toppermost of the Poppermost, and American Funnyman Neil Hamburger’s long-too-awaited Still Dwelling seems to have passed totally under the fryer, the Pig Player this past year was kept busy as always spinning, alphabetically as always…
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Well then! Your fearless columnist stayed up on line all night all last week, scouring the virtual globe as it were, asking anyone and everyone he surfed across out there that timeless and timely musical question:
“WHY WOULD YOU REALLY RATHER BE LISTENING TO THE BEACH BOYS THIS DECEMBER 25th?”
IRWIN CHUSID (author, Songs In The Key Of Z):
Outsider music is a slippery genre. It’s musicians who tend to be self-taught, untrained, working certainly way outside the channels of mainstream music. There are very important qualifications; they are sincere about it. They mean it. They’re not doing it to be funny. They’re not doing it to be outrageous. This is a sincere musical expression. Wild Man Fischer in many ways is a poster child for outsider music.
Bullseye Records of Canada
