Yesterday I went through all of the private messages I’d shared with Frank Gutch Jr, since I’d first encountered him. It was in 2013, just after I’d begun writing this weekly column, and right from that first message, it was as though we were separated at birth.
I’m going to start out with something completely off the wall for me. Note, I am not a sports nut. Hockey (quelle horror!), baseball, basketball, volleyball, foozball….even Canada’s official sport, lacrosse…..don’t watch it, follow it, listen to it or talk about it. Sports is not something that ever turned my crank…..but then there’s Scott Foster. Foster is a 36-year-old accountant who’s never played in the NHL. He is a man who plays in a amateur league at Johnny’s IceHouse in Chicago, a man who was called into action by the Chicago Blackhawks on March 29. Foster is an “emergency backup”…..he fills in if the regular goalies are unable to play. Continue reading
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.
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!
Curled up on the upstairs couch this morning, enjoying my little Christmas tree with the snow gently falling outside the window, once again leafing through Lisa MacIntosh’s book Music Makers: Stories of The Great Hall. I’m discovering pictures of people I have also photographed during my treks through the Toronto club and concert scene. Faces I recognize but didn’t necessarily know their names or even who they were. (I keep hearing the voice of my friend Sam Taylor in the back of my head….”you know him, you shot him at the Kelly Jay benefit….ya, you know her/him too from (insert show/club/etc. here)…”
I try and start the column with the actual focus of the column, which is music. Then the squirreling happens and my brain starts to meander all over the place….and nowhere in particular. Again, researching something entirely different I came across this quote from a video I stumbled upon. The video is actually produced by Canon (which happens to be the maker of camera I use).
Openers…….
Today is a bright but chilly October day. (great opening line huh?) Then there’s Snoopy’s book opening….“It was a dark and stormy night.” Okay, how about “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Tales of Two Cities – Charles Dickens) Or, “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen) THAT was a different time….most definitely. Then there’s, “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.” (Earthly Powers – Anthony Burgess). I can’t even begin to imagine explaining that one. How about, “I write this sitting at the kitchen sink”. (Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith). That’s sure to grab attention…..and apparently it did. “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs and I don’t know what I was doing in New York.” (The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath). Confused, frustrated, a chronic depressive, Plath committed suicide by sticking her head in a gas oven at the very young age of 30, leaving behind two young children. “You’ve no choice, look back.” (The Story of Hansel and Gretel – Louise Murphy) We must learn from the past. “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (1984 – George Orwell) Canada’s pants would do well to pay attention. Apparently they’re not paying attention to Hansel or Gretel.
My heart is heavy and my brain is trying to digest what has happened because it doesn’t make any sense. But then, suicide never does, at least not to the living. ….and so I start with the first new column in five weeks talking about a topic that has been highlighted in the news far too much lately……but the famous are not alone in their despair. I know, I know, not a very uplifting subject but it’s one that has hit precariously close to home…..twice in exactly one week.
As I sit here ruminating on what should appear on my screen, I listen in silence to clacking on the keyboards and the chirping, binging, ringing and a kind of swishing/chiming sounds of messages coming in on various devices. Colleen and my sister Chrissie are busy standing, or perched on a chair, at my kitchen peninsula working away on their various gadgets and pieces of equipment. I am stretched out in my usual writing position on the couch with the fan keeping things comfortable.
The morning was spent running around the city dealing with the detritus that had accumulated in my backyard. Prepping for an my very first summer BBQ has started and is going to take the better part of the week (the prep that is, not the BBQ itself). Curtains closed against the bright heat of the sun, fans going, air conditioner in place, maybe I can get some writing done…….maybe…….
Have a safe and happy Canada Day…I love you all. And yes…this IS the Greatest Country in the World…even if some of us don’t know it.
Portions of this column originally appeared in FYIMusic, Cashbox Canada, and DBAWIS.
Bullseye Records of Canada
