Roxanne Tellier: The Best Medicine

Here’s a shocker for you: sometimes life ain’t fair. Sometimes your best laid plans are not gonna work out, and all of your hard work will be ignored. Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.

I had one of those weeks, just last week.  A combination of disrespect, petty behaviour, chintziness and general meanspiritedness made what should have been a fun volunteer experience into something more akin to a shift at a Chinese iPhone factory. Ok, clearly not quite as gruelling, but I approached each of the three days with a similar feeling of dread and fear.

Darrell Vickers: On the Isle of Caprice

Right off the top, I’m going to categorically state that I’d rather stick my head in an Asplundh Whisper Chipper than get into a discussion about Woody Allen and his present ex-familial travails.  So, for the purposes of this sociological treatise, let’s all pretend that the Woodster never drew his first neurotic breath.

That being said…this bespectacled “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”, this nerdy non-gentile who does not exist anymore than The Perth County Conspiracy, does shine a bright light on a peculiar and startlingly capricious aspect of the human condition.  I.E. the separation of the artist from the art.

Cameron Carpenter: The ABC’s Of Rock’n’Roll – Quality Control

Quality Records was my training ground. Back in the seventies there were no school courses teaching the music business. If you wanted to work in a studio you hung around studios and hopefully someone would ask you to pick up a broom or maybe get the engineer a coffee. If you wanted to work at a record company you needed to know who to talk to and where they might hang out. A good in was getting to know the label publicists and the easiest way to do that was by writing album and live reviews for your school newspaper. I starting doing this in high school and by the time I reached college I had a couple of good ins at the labels (as well as lots of free albums and concert tickets).