Rock Shirts Draped My Torso in Leaner Years

You'd think I would learn.
I've written a lot of stuff since that day in July, 1997 when I walked in to the prairie dog offices and told them I was a writer. They were fool enough to believe me, and that's how it started. Probably 90 per cent of what I've written has not been about me--except when it secretly was about me--and that's for the best. In writing about other people (mostly short profiles of musicians), I learned a lot, about writing, about the world, and about myself. That's been great. Even though I don't take on as many assignments as I used, I still use arts journalism as an excuse to chat up people who do interesting things, like Richard Rosenbaum (editor of Can't Lit) or queer cinema legend Bruce LaBruce. These gigs are great because they're interesting, they're fairly easy to do, and they pay. I hear back on them sometimes. Mostly just, oh, you know, I saw that you wrote this, or I started to read this. That kind of thing.
But the stuff I really hear back on, the stuff that people write me long, moving emails about is, y'know, the other stuff. Where I reveal more of myself or write about something I care about. Which is, I don't know, pretty fucking great.

"The things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one."

I took a class last year. It was an adult education freelance writing class at Langara College. I hadn't written anything other this blog in about three years at that point. I was really into David Sedaris and the idea of being, I dunno, a personal essayist. Is that what he is? Nicole has loved Sedaris for a long time, even suggested Hugh as a name when we didn't know we were having a daughter, but for whatever reason, I was quite late to become fond of him. But that's what I wanted to get out of this class, I wanted to be David Sedaris. That's the way I get when I like a writer. I don't just want to read them and learn from them. I want to BE THEM. Kerouac, Brautigan, Hemingway, Meltzer, Thompson, Ames, Richler, Hiaasen, Ronson, Willeford--I have to work through these embarrassing periods of pathetic poseurdom and then, I cast off their skin and become me again, but a little bit (I hope) has stuck. It's a terrible way to exist, but it's my process and I'm too old to change now.
I didn't learn how to be David Sedaris, but I did get back in the habit of writing regularly, and I got some good advice and encouragement. The instructor was Mette Bach, who released her first book this summer, the very excellent Off the Highway: Growing Up in North Delta.

My point is that I got some great feedback from my Lou Reed t-shirt piece and some of my recent blog posts. People like me! People like to read about things I care about writing! I got one fantastic note from Maryanna Hardy, who went to Grade 8 with me at Georges Vanier (says Nicole: "Is that the school you went to after you got kicked out of the school where everyone beat you up?") in Saskatoon. Like Mette, Maryanna is releasing her first book this year. You can see the poster for the book launch in Montreal next Friday above. You should check out her blog for more of her illustrations and, of course, buy her book, So I've Been Told.

So, I'm going to write more (probably mostly here) about stuff that matters to me, like rock shirts and Superman and being a dad.

mp3: "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" by Andre Ethier (live)

Notes on Tower of Song

In my previous entry, I listed 100 singer-songwriters supposedly greater than Leonard Cohen and supposedly lesser than Hank Williams. It was inspired by a few things:
I. Obviously, Leonard Cohen's aw-shucks humility in "Tower of Song".
II. The stereotype of obsessive list-making pop music devotees (exemplified by John Cusack's never-ending Top Fives in High Fidelity) that I curiously missed out on during my decade of music writing. Despite the fact that I've written (and continue to write) hundreds of record reviews, I don't think too highly of my skills as a critic. I mean, I'm a great listener and I'm a pretty good writer, and sometimes I'm able to bring those two skillsets together in alternatingly informative and entertaining paragraphs. But as far as being any kind of "this is better than this" authority? That ain't me.
My tastes are mine alone, idiosyncratic (and I don't say that as an elitist of any kind, but after some honest appraisal of how come so many of my favourite acts have failed to capture the minds and hearts of every, or sometimes any, other person on the planet) and irrevocably flawed and I'm in no position to shit on anyone for loving what they love. Nor would I want to. What I consider my real apprenticeship as a writer during the decade I covered the Hit Parade for the prairie dog and the Leader-Post was the feature-writing. Interviewing and reporting. Amassing the raw materials of a story and assembling them in a coherent and hopefully engaging narrative. I won't say that's where my strengths were, but that's where my strengths became. Certainly it's where my interest took me.
I've never been too chummy with other music writers, but I don't think many others looked at it like that. This is pure speculation here, but it seemed as though the features and profiles were--usually better-paying--means of subsidizing low-paying review-writing. That's how I saw them at first. In the hubris of youth, I figured that my talents as a taste-maker were being wasted on write-ups for upcoming shows. Reviews, man, were where I could really say something, and boy did I have something to say. Why should I let someone else's words eat up my precious column inches?
Features, or profiles, are far more restrictive in their structure and far less conducive to baring my tortured writer's soul. I had chops to work out, damn it! But, y'know, I got older and wiser, and actually started listening to what the people I interviewed had to say and started actually being curious about the people who made the music I had so many opinions about. I became something approaching a journalist, I guess. I cared less and less about telling people what I thought and more and more about showing people why they should care.
Despite my disenfranchisement with what I believed to be convential rock-write-think, I still love the pop critics and their endless list-making. I still took part in end-of-year listmaking, but as time passed, my lists became unwieldly and uncomprehensive.
III. I've been half-assedly interested in different ways the Internet and social media are changing the way content is generated. Blogger Dan Zambonini has done some interesting things pointing out the relationships between metrics and culture, and his recent post on The Januarist coincides with the basic premise of my Tower of Song list.
IV. The prairie dog's Gregory Beatty said some terribly snobbish things about Country Music that I felt needed to be refuted. I didn't quite address that in the list, but it was on my mind as I created it. Perhaps I'll compile a list of Awesome Mainstream Country Songs sometime.

SO. I created this list. It's inconsistent and there are some glaring omissions (John Hiatt, Alex Chilton, just for starters). I'm not that pleased with it, but I made it through to the end, and I even got a comment on it from perhaps the world's leading poet on the subject of Leo Cooper, Gus Braveyard. The list has already become my most popular posting on this blog since the time I wrote about Mike Reno's toupe. But, as an executed concept, it is a failure.

Some notes:

• If the fact that Cohen is on the first floor and Williams is on the hundred-and-first is to have any significance, the singer-songwriters must be greater as the floor number increases. Demonstrably not so on my list. I tried to rationalize that I was merely compiling a continuum of singer-songwriters who would fall into similar levels of greatness as Cohen and Williams and that, hey, there's really such a slim margin of greatness between the two of them than any gradation of quality on such a scale would be measurable only through quantum physics, right? But, come on.
• Youtube let me down. I decided early in the project that I wanted to back my claims up with links to proof of singer-songwriter greatness. The easiest way to do this uniformly was through Youtube. I left Neil Hagerty off the list because I couldn't find any decent quality vids of him as primary singer of a great song written by him. Surely he's written better tunes than, I dunno, Greg Dulli, but Afghan Wigs have better vids than Royal Trux.
• I know I said no roomies, but then I put Hall & Oates together. Coulda made the case they within a singer-songwriter continuum they exist as one being, but then I gave all three Bee Gees their own individual floors.
• Punk rock, heavy metal and rap are dismally underrepresented. What can I say? I don't listen to that much punk or metal lately, and rap songwriting credits are confusing. Sorry, dudes.
• Never mind that the order of the listings create the illusion of really poor judgment in ranking, there are some pretty questionable choices on here. Well, at one point, the criteria for making it on the list was that the singer-songwriter in question only had to have ONE SONG that was as good as or better than Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song", which is a pretty good song, but not one of Cohen's ten best ("There is a War", "Jazz Police", "The Captain", "Who By Fire", "Field Commander Cohen", "Sisters of Mercy", "Avalanche", "The Future", "I Can't Forget" and "The Law"). Still, some people got through who might not have lasted a more thoughtful compilation process.
• Floors 2-10, 12-16, 19, 21, 25-29, 33, 36, 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 83, 93 and 99 should be uncontroversial by any canonical standard.
• I had originally intended to leave Willie Nelson off the list entirely because I truly believe he is a stronger ideal of singer-songwriter-osity than Hank Williams, and would hence be on the 102nd floor, but I couldn't figure out how to make that explicit w/o explicitly saying it like I just have.

mp3: "When Will This Heartache End?" by the Blue Shadows

Even my rejection letters make me happy

"Fucking good writing and clearly informed but funny too," the editor wrote. Excepting only "mind-bogglingly large cheque enclosed", these are the words you most hope to read in reply to a submission query.

My life is insanely great right now. It's not perfect, not by a long shot. But stepping back and looking at the big picture, things have never been better. I could list them all, but that'd just be cocky, and would probably jinx all the great things that are right around the corner.

mp3: "I Believe In You" by Lambchop

"We had to endure it and want our revenge."

Ebert again. On the role of The Critic. Right now The New is more in need of discovery and defence than ever before, as our politicians try to score points by railing against imaginary elites they fear secretly rule the world.

And there's no bigger secret elite the rockers of Saskatoon. They're so secret, hardly anyone's ever even of heard of them, let alone heard 'em. So consider yourself priveliged. You're about to get Saved By Saskatoon, which is the name of a brand new compilation from Saved By Radio/Saved By Vinyl, a Calgary record label that puts out some of the finest CanRock this side of the Canadian Sheild.

mp3: "Class Action Lawsuit" by Junior Pantherz
mp3: "My Ghost Your Ghost" by Pearson

Some Fictions Are Faker Than Others

When I was young--when I was younger--I wanted to seem important and interesting. What I didn't yet realize was that in order to be important and interesting, you had to actually do important and interesting things.
Since my childhood experiences were fairly undistinguished--swimming lessons, action figures, comic books, etc.--I quickly began to create a fantastical, infinitely more interesting autobiography.

It began, as most double lives must surely begin, with an imaginary friend. Johnny stayed up past 8 o'clock. Johnny liked to boogie dance. Eventually, I came to see Johnny for what he really was, a stuffed doll. Instead of projecting my fantasies on an inanimate object, I internalized them.

My softball career was entirely unremarkable save for the time I cried after being counted struck out when the pitcher had plainly only thrown two strikes (my dad intervened, and, if I recall, I was allowed to properly strike out on the next throw), but in my secret life I was nicknamed the Saskatoon Slugger, and was regularly carried on my teammates' shoulders to the nearest Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars after I saved the game with yet another grand slam. One afternoon, I sat down and put pen to paper, listing all the different fictional nicknames I had fictionally earned in the factual activities I was factually mediocre at.

• Softball : the Saskatoon Slugger
• Track : Speedo
• Karate : Karate Kid (hey, I'm about to say my fantasy life was satisfying, not original)
• Drama Class : who has a nickname in drama class? Get real, Matheson!
• Spelling: The Wizard of Words (I have always been preternaturally good at spelling, so while the nickname is fictional, the merit of one is not)
• Swimming: Dolphin or Shark, I couldn't decide whether my pretend excellence at swimming was flashy and playful or swift and deadly)
  

To this day, I have yet to actually earn the kind of endearing and glowingly favourable nickname I have always desired. But I'm still working on it.
Sometimes, I would blur the line between what was a rich and satisfying imagination, creatively developing my mental prowess, and my humdrum quotidian existence. One wintry day while I was in Kindergarten, amid a fingerpainting project with three classmates, the subject of birthdays came up. Tommy said that his birthday was coming up soon, Matt said his was too. Chris said his was coming up in only twelve sleeps. My birthday was months and months away. I felt different and inadequate. "Oh yeah," I said defiantly, my cheeks hot with five-year-old indignity. "Well, it's my birthday today."
Before I knew it, what had been meant as simple one-upsmanship of my fingerpainting table had spiralled out of my control and the entire class was singing "Happy Birthday" to me...in French. It was embarrassing, but also flattering. My brain told me it was wrong, but the adulation of my peers told me it was so right.
Le lendemain (as we who went to French Kindergarten say when we feel like "The next day" sounds trite), I figured the whole thing would have blown over. As I had already a whole hand of fingers' experience with them, I knew that birthdays are a big deal; the day after is not. But I underestimated how much my stock had risen on my fake birthday. Chris, who had been at the fingerpainting table with me when I made my bold deception, had brought a gift. Wrapped it and everything.

This was unexpected.

Hesitantly, I opened the wrapping. Inside was a plastic replica of something similar to the Pontiac Firebird Jim Rockford drove. Thanks to two C batteries in the under-carriage, it moved around on its own, turning occasionally, eventually running into a wall. It wasn't in any packaging, and it looked like it came from his own toybox. There was no remote control or anything fancy like that, but still, a birthday present. I just went from being a fabulist to a fraud.

I brought the car home and played with until my dad got home from work. He asked me where I got it, and I told him. He told me I had to give it back to Chris. When I did, the next day, rather than admit that it hadn't really been my birthday and that I'd played him for a sucker, I told him that my parents wouldn't let me keep it because they didn't let me play with violent toys. Which was mostly true. My parents wouldn't let me keep the car, and they didn't like me to play with violent toys. That the two things had nothing to do with each other in this instance was beside the point. The matters of the car and my claimed birthday were never mentioned again.

As a shameful coda to my early education as a liar, when my real birthday did finally come around, I invited nearly every boy in my Kindergarten class. Except Chris.

This would not be the worst of my pre-teen perjuries. Or at least not the one that still bothers me.

By the 8th Grade, I had evolved in my truth-bending ways. I was, at last, starting to becoming interesting in earnest. The year before, I was hit by a car on my bike one day after school. I wasn't even scratched, the front tire was bent just a little, but the worst damage was to the comic book I was carrying in my backpack. I landed on my back and skidded a little, so the front cover of Green Arrow #17 (the single most gruesome and profane comic I had ever read at that point in my life--seriously, I can't believe anyone would let a 12-year-old buy that filth) was ripped off the rest of the issue. I was some pissed off when I discovered this later. I wanted the driver who had hit me to replace it, but I had no idea who he was. I skulked on the corner where I had been many afternoons that spring, hoping to track down the offender. But like so many of my adolescent vendettas, nothing ever came of it.

My narrow escape from the clutches of death wasn't too impressive among my classmates, however. Especially since no one they knew had witnessed it, and I had no scars from the ordeal. I might as well have made it up.

Being young, sensitive and imaginative, I had my share of schoolyard crushes. One such was a gal we'll call Sadie Mendelson. She was smart, witty and had that natural gift for sarcasm I have always admired in other people. She had read Catcher in the Rye. She wore denim shirts with cow prints on them. She wasn't really into me. Like pretty much everyone else our age, though, she was into Saturday Night Live. This would have been 1990, maybe '91. So this was the best time to be into SNL. By this point, I was really more into Kids In The Hall, but to miss an episode of SNL in the 8th Grade was to be horribly out of step with your generation for the next seven days.

The key attraction during this period of SNL was "Wayne's World". It had yet to become a movie or a sequel, but there could be no doubt that Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar resonated true to a pack of 13-year-olds. You couldn't walk down the hall to play full contact floor hockey without hearing a "Not!", "Schwing!" or "Asphinctersayswhat?".
In a move that subconsciously laid the groundwork for my brief career in entertainment journalism, I figured out that if I could somehow connect myself with someone that other people liked, other people would ipso facto like me. (Yes, I used the phrase ipso facto in the 8th Grade--is it any wonder I had to make up fake reasons for people to like me?) And who that I could plausibly associate myself with did people like and admire more than almost anyone else? And that's how Mike Myers became my uncle.
It wasn't such wild lie. I really did (and still do) have a show business uncle who has at various times been based out of the Toronto area. He just doesn't happen to be Mike Myers.
Sadie Mendelson arched her eyebrow at this revelation, and I'm sure that I could see a new respect for me in her eyes. "Really? Wow."
And that was it. I had completely betrayed my real family to further my own questionable agenda, like Peter did to Jesus before the rooster crowed.
Being the fake nephew of Mike Myers paid absolutely no dividends. Sadie Mendelson just wasn't into me. Sensing what a dud of a claim it was, I didn't repeat the lie for the rest of the school year. I went to a different high school than the rest of my 8th Grade classmates, and a year later left Saskatoon completely.
Strangely, when I moved to Regina at 15, a complete unknown free to create a whole new backstory entirely of my own creation, I managed to get by socially without the help of my imagination.
As the 90s wore on, I, along with the rest of the world, pretty much forgot about my fake uncle Mike Myers. So I Married An Axe Murderer had its moments, but it wasn't really worth selling out my family in order to seem interesting.
I eventually grew up...some. I did some interesting things, travelled some, had some esoteric jobs. I became, ridiculously, a writer. I mean, not a good one, or a well-known one, but I was actually making a very small amount of money on a regular basis from writing. I had finally become the interesting person I had always pretended to be (which is maybe an argument in favour of being full of shit for the first part of your life--at the very least, it gives you practice). And so it was that a carload of my cool and interesting friends and my cool and interesting self ventured up to Saskatoon one blustery night in the late 90s, a year or two after the first Austin Powers movie was released, to see some indie rock awesomeness too cool to book a show in Regina.
Of all the people in all the world I never expected to see at some indie rock show in Saskatoon, there was Sadie Mendelson (I actually would have been more surprised if it was Chris from Kindergarten--though how a five-year-old could get into a bar is beyond me--or the guy who hit me with his car, but what the hey? This is a real true story here, not some fake fiction, I can't force symmetry on it), with her still-arched eyebrow (perhaps it was a muscular dysfunction, and not a representation of hip cynicism after all), recognizing me even though I'm about 20 now, instead of 13, and it feels like an entire lifetime has passed since I last saw her. Really, it has been a lifetime, so many major events happen between 13 and 20, none of which merit great detail here. There's so much I want to tell her about the man I've become, about the things I've done. I want to impress her, I want to show her and the world how I've transcended all the inadequacy, all the shitty, ugly, awkward things I felt about myself when I was 13. I want someone who knew me then to see me now and bask in the glory of all I've become.
But what does she say to me? What are the first words out of her mouth after we acknowledge one another? What is the one thing about me that stands out in her mind after all this time?
"So, I see your uncle's still doing well for himself," she says.
All the self-growth, all the personal development, all the things I've accomplished--a beard, I can grow a beard now!!!--THE INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT PERSON I'VE FINALLY BECOME disappears and I'm reminded that I'm nothing but a lousy lying liar.

-------

I don't know what any of that means, but Chicago's the Fake Fictions have a new album called Krakatoa coming out soon on Comptroller Records, and they were kind enough to send a couple of mp3s along for me to share with all y'all as a sneak peek. In terms of fuzz-pop trios from the American Midwest, they're pretty much the pips. At least that's what they tell me.

mp3: "(Don't Drink The) Office Coffee" by the Fake Fictions - okay, this is quickly becoming one of my favourite songs of the year, easily the best song of Spring 2008. There's a wicked bit of Historia De La Musica Rock trashcan rock vibe under Nick Ammerman's desperate wail about being "skeletons with personal computers" full of malice and menace. It almost makes me wish I worked in an office again so that I could adopt it as a theme song.

mp3: "Lasers + Mirrors" by the Fake Fictions - Sarah Ammerman takes lead vox on this one, a disturbingly catchy sci-fi epic about being alone and doing magic tricks. I think.

Because I like you, and because you've come this far with me today, I'm going to throw in a bonus MP3 from the Eff-Effs' 2005 Experimental Cheerleading EP (available as a free d/l in its entirety at the Eff-Effs' website!).

mp3: "Lasso the Moon" by the Fake Fictions

All the (Blog) Critics Love U in New York

Don't mean to brag, but they read me in NYC. Yeah, I'm a big shot. I'm awesome. I know. And I'm going to see Jim Gaffigan on Saturday night. Jealous? I don't blame you. And y'know what's weird? I almost never get to watch Conan O'Brien anymore, but I did on Monday night. And y'know who was on? Jim Gaffigan. And you know where Conan is filmed? New York. It's a fact. I don't even have to make this up because it was already true before you even read it.

In the Bad-News-For-Formerly-Balding-Guys Dept., Guy Lafleur plans on turning himself in to authorities on Friday morning.

In the Shit-You-Might-Already-Know Dept., the Moutain Goats are going to be playing at Richard's on Richards on Feb. 22. That's in Vancouver, yo. You can check out the video (speaking of questionable haircuts) for "Sax Rohmer #1" (from the MGs forthcoming album Heretic Pride) RIGHT ABOUT HERE.

mp3: "Up the Wolves" by the Mountain Goats

Credit where credit is due

Saskatchewan's population has jumped by over 6,000 since the beginning of July. What's the reason? Probably this blog. It must have been around July that I started my series of Saskploitation posts (actually it was August, ed.), and brought the idea of Saskatchewan to the masses (or the five or six people who read this blog for something other than Howling Hex mp3s).
Or maybe word had simply spread since August of 2006 that I was no longer there. Either way, I'd like a lapel pin or something.
In other Saskploitation related news, the Sask Party dropped their plan to drop the wheat sheaf logo. Probably because Brad Wall and his dubious hairline read my blog and changed his party's policies to reflect my knee-jerk reaction.

mp3: "Ride the Funky Mule" by King Kong

Timely Words: RDY can't fail

Sunday night I went to a party. Let's call it a Walt Whitman party, for it contained multitudes. It was a Welcome Home Party, a Birthday Party, a Pleased-to-Meet-You Party, and--most relevant for our purposes here--a CD Release Party. I was invited.
I arrived late. As I walked up to the building, just off Main, a smiling face saw me out the window and said, "It's open."
It was. I walked through the door to the main floor apartment, and the first thing I saw was Shaun Brodie, crouched over a cymbal on the floor, rubbing it from the centre out. The smiling face from the window was right behind him, amid a drum kit. I later found out the drummer was Cary Pratt, whose name you might've seen mentioned a few times in the recent Best of Vancouver issue of the Georgia Straight. At the other end of the living room, near a freakishly large frozen dinner, was Mark Beaty on a stand-up bass (not pictured), behind him was CS Rippen, variously known as "Chris" or "Ripper", or "that amazing guitarist from the Tin Cup." In the middle, originally from Lacombe, Alberta (the same small town what issued forth another Bulldozer fave The Neins Circa), stood Roger Dean Young, with his hauntingly clear blue eyes and his trademark cowboy hat, which is more cowboy than hat. All together, that's Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup. Which meant I was in the right place.
Like I said, I was late, and so had missed all but the last two songs of their first set, thus I missed most of the new songs. The CD being released was their own, it's called Threshold, and Roger tells me that it's his pop album. Which means that the atmospheric meanderings that made Casa such a beautifully haunting album are, well, contained a little bit. The songs are, on average, shorter but the ideas are still big. Roger says they're mostly 3-minute tunes, but I did the math, and the average length is about 3.5 minutes.
Otherwise, though, Roger Dean Young is about as trustworthy as musicians come. As a person and as an artist, he's one of the most gentle and humane folks I've ever met. The rest of the band are eminently likable as well.
If Threshold is the Tin Cup's pop album, "Two Step" and "Manyberries Soul Revival" are its hit singles. For sentimental (and self-indulgent) reasons, however, I'm posting "Black Water" for your edification. It's a song about Regina, and Roger says it's inspired by yours truly. I'm humbled.

If you're in Western Canada (and if you're not in Western Canada, you should ask yourself some hard questions), you've got a few opportunities to spend an intimate evening with the Tin Cup. It's perfect timing, since Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup sounds best in the fall. It's harvest music, its tones all orange, brown and gold. It gets under your skin and sticks to your ribs like oatmeal laced with cinnamon and brown sugar.

Sept. 26 at the Railway Club in Vancouver (with Greg McPherson!)
Oct. 2 at the Ironwood Stage & Grill in Calgary
Oct. 3 at the Blue Chair in Edmonton
Oct. 4 at the Exchange (Club) in my dear, sweet hometown, Regina
Oct. 6 at Candor Books & Music in Winnipeg
Oct 13 at Rime, back here in Vancouver


MP3: "Black Water" by Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup