My mother has been gone since April of 1992 … 26 years ago. There are days when it feels like we were playing a spirited game of Rummoli only yesterday, and other days when I can’t remember what it was like to have my own little family. After my mum and grandmother died just days apart in that horrible year, the tenuous link we had with Montreal was broken. While I’ve been ‘home’ a few times since then, Quebec hasn’t really drawn me back for decades.
Bruce Springsteen’s refusal to play North Carolina because of new, drastic LGBT laws might have shocked some people, but it didn’t surprise me at all.
Nazareth and Razamanaz; U2 and The Miracle (of Joey Ramone); Peter Gabriel and Red Rain; Diana Ross and The Supremes and Baby Love; Taiyo Cruz and Dynamite, Tommy James and the Shondells and Mony Mony (one of my all time favourite dance tunes).Then there’s Dirty Loops, Jordan John and Xprime. I dance….slinking, skipping and sashaying through the kitchen into the dining area into the living room. Thank heaven for open concept design!
Finally, after a long, cold winter, I’m coming up for airto a bright spring promisinga musical overload. Perfect weather, indeed, for enjoying Fergus Hambleton at Hugh’s Room on Wednesday, where he showcased his sunny signature sound and new CD “Written on the Wind. “
Of late I’ve been finding myself going through my album collection to find something, anything worthwhile to listen to during my 13 ½ hour shifts patrolling cemeteries in Toronto. I’m lucky enough to be driving a current model Dodge Avenger – which is a Dodge Charger on steroids – with a sound system that rocks. It’s fun to toss in a disc while I’m issuing fines to people for letting their dogs piss on tombstones or skiers running rip shod over graves.
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Anyone familiar with that Pink Floyd tune? (c’mon, who isn’t? It’s from “Dark Side of The Moon” for crying out loud). The album, released on March 1, 1973, made # 1 for only one week, but in total, spent 741 weeks on Billboard magazine’s album chart. Let’s put that into years shall we? “Dark Side of the Moon” remained on the charts from 1973 until 1988. If you know the song, then you’ll know that the next lyrics to the title at the top of the page are: “Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. New car, caviar, four star daydream, think I’ll buy me a football team.”
The lady with three boobs, nude pics of Emma Watson, bendy iPhones, lost-luggage sniffing dogs on KLM. Is Facebook really about to start charging for its ‘services?’ And is the U2 iTunes giveaway a recycling of a U2 cassette giveaway back in the 80’s?
Back at the turn of the Millennium (which was 14 years ago!) I worked at Sam The Record Man’s flagship store at 347 Yonge Street on the third floor. I was the content editor of their fledgling on-line shopping store. It was my job to review the newest releases coming in from the record labels – most specifically Canadian content. I had been hired to deal with CanCon due to my online presence with the Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia. It was usually kept to a few dozen albums. It was a dream job.
Are you grooving to your mandatory U2 record? In case you missed it (hard to miss, given how much it was hyped), U2’s 13th record, “Songs Of Innocence” (title stolen from long-dead English poet William Blake) is now in your iTunes collection. How is that possible, you ask. You didn’t buy it. Or want it. Regardless, you own 11 variations on advertising jingles to soundtrack the selling of Apple’s iPhone 6 and impending iWatch as well as possibly to let you know Apple can do whatever the hell it wants its devices, which we naively think we “own.” It probably says that in the long Terms and Conditions text everybody clicks “Agree” on without reading. Apple paid $100 million for this the marketing campaign. Nobody’s saying how much of that U2 is getting.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 