Not that Pat's Pub: Rah Rah plays Vancouver tonight

Tonight at Pat's Pub in Vancouver, Regina's very own Rah Rah!

mp3: "F--- NAFTA" by Rah Rah
mp3: "The Innocent One" by Rah Rah

NAFTA Please: 2008 in Review

You know you're getting old when the coolest band in your hometown is led by your friend's kid. True, Marshall Burns of Rah Rah's dad Mike is, like, way older than me. And y'know what? I'm fine with being old, cuz I was young long enough.

I try to think of Regina with nothing but affection, but sometimes I can't shake the feeling that it really is the cultural wasteland it pretends to be sometimes. Putting aside the question of whether or not there was any real merit to spending $18-million so that a handful of privileged kids could vie for glory while a dozen or so blocks away hundreds of kids live in abominable squalor, the most annoying thing about the Big Dig was the unimaginative and tiresome name. Nobody asked, in commemoration of the Big Dig's fifth anniversary, here are five better names for the megaproject:

5. The Excavation Proclamation
4. Shakes on the Plain
3. The Behemoth Burrow
2. The Fiacco-Goodale Canal
1. The Tunnels of Moose Jaw

As easy as it is to laugh at Regina from afar, there's no denying the musical renaissance underway right now led by Rah Rah and the Polymaths and who knows who else?! Rah Rah released their debut long-player in 2008 called Going Steady. It's a heady mix of pop, politics and pah-rump-a-pah-pum-pum hapless romance and it's worth mentioning again.

mp3: "F--- NAFTA" by Rah Rah

I think the Invisible Hand that guides the Economy just touched me under my bathing suit...

But seriously, folks... I guess this the kind of intervention that results from economic policy that doesn't believe in government intervention. Strangely, Stephen Harper doesn't want to influence any elections, not the one down there, and especially not the one up here, by giving his opinion. Probably because in the past he's supported and promoted the same kind of laissez-faire approach to the economy that led what looks to be of the biggest corporate welfare grabs in history. As the NY Times puts it, "It is the financial equivalent of the Patriot Act."

The Rock & Roll equivalent of the Patriot Act, an album called Going Steady, meanwhile, was released in Regina over the weekend. The mighty Rah Rah, a conglomerate of kids born in an era when jowled titans like John Crosbie and Joe Clark roamed the earth. They write beautiful songs about the ugly things, and they live in Regina--where there's a lot of ugly things to write about. I'm still waiting for a song about the old Superstore building where Downtown meets North Central, where the city shrugs its shoulders and claims no responsibility. While I wait, though, here's a song that mentions good ol' Dave Batters, the beleagured outgoing Tory MP for Palliser. Immortalized in song! That oughtta raise his spirits.


mp3: "The Innocent One" by Rah Rah

Pat, You Fat Cat

Pat Fiacco, the darling mayor of Regina, seems more disappointed that someone is pointing out that North Central has HUGE problems than he is that there are, you know, ACTUAL PEOPLE IN HIS CITY living in horrible conditions.
From the Leader-Post: MAYOR COMPLAINS MAGAZINE STILL WRONG.

"Well, at least it's not the Detroit Ghetto," the L-P sighs in their editorial, before suggesting a Liberal Media Anti-Fiacco Conspiracy.

I grew up in Regina, and I currently work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, which formerly held the title of "Canada's Worst Neighbourhood" (and still does to most of the world). I've never been to THE DETROIT GHETTO, but I'd imagine it's pretty similar to the DES, or was in its heyday, give or take a few thousand guns. There's poor people, there's drugs, there's violent crime. But it's still "a neighbourhood like every other" with people who go to work, raise their kids, pay taxes, etc. That doesn't stop it, or Regina's North Central, from being home to people who live in pretty abject misery. For Fiacco to complain that the national media didn't highlight his boxing school, or his bungled housing projects in the face of such horrors as child prostitution is, as someone once said, "small town cheap."

For what it's worth, here's the original Macleans story by Jonathan Gatehouse. It's actually really good.
EDIT: Okay, that link's dead. Sorry.
EDIT AGAIN: That link works again.

As a bonus: Ode To Pasquala mp3 by Rah Rah.