Pat Blythe – Airport hell, a grant gathering, CMW, Sam Taylor and a little Side Hustle

Flying the friendly skies…..nope grounded…..

Where to start….where to start. Loads of stuff going on, musically and otherwise.  Let’s roll tape backwards. We’ll start with Air Canada’s GIANT, international debacle on Monday leaving  thousands of people not high, but dry, at Toronto Pearson International Airport (not to mention the thousands across the world). System down…..the entire system…..worldwide. Now, I don’t know all the details, precise timing and the tiny little intricacies but I do know this, I dropped my friends off at the airport, heading south for their pre-wedding honeymoon, and ten hours later I’m picking them up from the same airport, tired, explosively furious and drained.

Pat Blythe – Rights, Nights, and Music

Okay, we’ll kick this off with the weather…..freezing cold, snowing, raining, freezing rain, sunny, cloudy, pluses and minuses all over the map, exploding pipes, sinkholes, warming trends, arctic air masses, blankets on, blankets off…..we’re screwed! Somebody make up their mind!!!! This keeps up I’m whipping out the 3″ summer sandals…..winter be damned!

The Stories Behind the Songs – Part Two

It’s snowing!!!! Not those big, fat, fluffy flakes where one can almost cover your face. But it’s snowing…. Sigh. The grey, dull days of January with just a mere hint that the sun actually exists…..which begs the question, why doesn’t Bell Canada hold their “Let’s Talk” campaign on Blue Monday? That makes infinitely more sense than say, Robbie Burns Day. Why in heaven’s name would you pick the 25th of January for mental health awareness??? According to a number of sources, the term “Blue Monday” was coined by holiday company Sky Travel in a 2005 press release. Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at Cardiff University, had come up with a light-hearted formula to determine the most depressing day of the year which commonly falls on the third Monday in January. It’s now a worldwide phenomena. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and the term is used repeatedly by companies and organizations (there’s even a BlueMonday.org) and stories in all sorts of media abound. Newspapers recommend taking the day off, there are various sites that will calculate, on a yearly basis, which Monday is going to be “blue” so you can prepare…..the power of suggestion. Although the entire idea is considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, Blue Monday is not going away anytime soon. Did you know mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as any other colour?

Pat Blythe – Much Music, Pics and Other Stories…..

Baby’s got a new camera!!!! Chris’s camera finally bit the dust….shutter is stuck in the closed position, the “motherboard” is cooked. Ahhh….the digital age. ….and yet, his two 31-year-old “analogue” Nikons are in perfect working order. Complete with two motor drives, three lenses and a flash. Pop in a film canister and away we go. Planned obsolescence? Good question. Same goes for cars, major and minor appliances….just about everything we use today is all run by computer, and yes, computers run out of gas. That brain we call the motherboard, well….she just stops firing on all cylinders, or maybe, shoots off the wrong command. Her synapses aren’t synapsing (so to speak). I then found out today (being Tuesday) that digital cameras actually have an internal “odometer”. There are only so many pics that can (or should) be taken, then….sputter, sputter….you’re shooting on a wing and a prayer. Those aforementioned Nikons? Odometer? I think not. There is truly something to be said for analogue, vinyl, cassettes, 45s, my mom’s wash machine, stuff that was made to last a lifetime…..literally.

Pat Blythe: Keeping The Music Alive…Part Two

Good morning!! It’s Tuesday which means this must be “writing day”. It’s catch-up time once again. A myriad of events and happenings over the past few weeks this column might be longer than usual just so I can bring you all up-to-date. …..and of course all those lovely pictures (she says tongue-in-cheek). I’ll just take a minute to figure out where I left off……

Pat Blythe: This, That and the Other….

I have been in a quandary about what I am going to write about for today’s column. The past week, and especially the weekend, have disappeared in a flash, everything just jumbled together, one thing overlapping the other. Now here it is Tuesday night and I’ve started this piece four times!

Pat Blythe: Synchronicity….

Life happens (or maybe it occurs), either way my plans for today’s column were short circuited by a few happenstance events that tumbled into each other this past weekend. A visit, a text, a ticket, a song and two remarkable performances by two gifted artists. One who is just beginning on his journey and another who’s journey began over 50 years ago. This is the blues.