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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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This has been stuck in my head for a couple of weeks....It started, a reddit thread about a song that's used in every movie about Vietnam. For good reason, it's of the era and it plainly states the politics of war. And the beat kicks to the rhythm of the chopper blades....
So I looked it up, gave it a relisten, it lead into some good playlists. Fine. And then the daughter sends me a video of her going upriver on a boat in Laos, and the song came back....
Damn, I don't usually like to listen to 'oldies', but there's no getting it out of my head now. No less because "Apocalypse Now" was a great anti-war movie....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
- Hits: 200
At the Poetry Slam Wednesday night, the standard mixed bag. A few of note, one young poet reciting the laws of Hermes Trismegistos, curious, he's disappointing, "Secret Knowledge" isn't so secret if you're giving it all away during a slam.
Various other artists, various degrees of skills, judging all over the map and par for every other slam I've been to.
I try and escape at half time, but another artist takes the stage, older fellow, with guitar, he begins strumming and I'm immediately taken by it: The song, "Walk Like A Sasquatch", by local sculptor/artist Cameron Douglas.
And I so want to share it with you, the perfect blend of humor, irony, self-awareness, funny as hell and it got the crowd cheering, but - search as I may I can find only mention of it on the web, no performances. Which is a shame, this song, performance, it deserves a much wider audience.
Strange to think that even in this day and age some things must be experienced, and have no online corollary or presence to be shared.
Maybe that's his point? Or maybe search again and it will turn up in the future.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Sunday, last night, finally forced myself to go out and do something.
I've been on the downlow, "Working" at getting bloody nothing done and doing a fine bloody job of it too, but all this do-nothing has seen me miss a few worthwhile events that I later regretted, and so I finally hauled my ass up to the church to check it out.
3 local artists, independent female singer/songwriters, a small audience of perhaps 70 people on the pews, the stage/altar they've done up to look like every folk musicians retro ideal, with old 50's, 60's & 70's style table lamps, a sheepskin rug, acoustic guitars...
And they were surprisingly good. Or, perhaps to better phrase it, not surprisingly, because this town has a superfluity of talent, and it made me realize that I have to make more of an effort to get out...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
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When I'm writing - it's often quiet, too quiet, hard to focus and I crave a little background music. Not "Muzak" - I abhor it, and while light classical sometimes does the trick I've been trying out some of the "Binaural Beats" videos on YouTube - listening with the headphones, strange - not music, more some sort of ... I dunno, low-tones, strange, as if someone went a little overboard on their new-age kick, imagine the lightest synth played at a quarter speed - yet it seems to work, and after an hour's writing or staring at the screen you take off the headphones and feel strangely discombobulated. It's almost a mental white noise...
I'm not sure that it's all that, but the experiment is free and it definitely can't hurt ...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Finally, the wrap up to a long season in the Kootenays, trip to the island, then Nick Cave in New Westminster.
I'm a fan, you know.
It wasn't a concert - although he played about a dozen songs, scattered throughout the show - starting with "The Ship Song", which has to be one of his most requested, although I was pleased he played "Breathless" as well - apparently, from the number of requests, a favorite of a few people.
This tour, though, wasn't so much about his playing his music as it was him simply answering questions to his fans. And boy, did they have some questions. In the beginning they were fairly straightforward - but as the evening evolved they got ever more entangled. One girl, reading aloud an essay she had written - he cuts her off "This isn't going to be a poem, is it...?" - he can sense trouble, he's been doing it a while, she turns over the sheet of legal paper she's brought with her as her cue card, breathlessly continuing on the back, it's not so much a question, he's as perplexed as the audience, it's not so much a question as it is an introduction to herself, the purity of her thought, and he graciously answers the question he could decipher and moves on...
There are a lot of these, fans, tongue-tied in front of the microphone, oversharing their own life stories, and I'm a little perplexed - why, it's supposed to be a Q & A, why has the train derailed, but it only takes a little figuring and I have it.
The thing with him - with probably any writer - is that he's touched so many people, so many people have imagined a connection, or an understanding of him via his work - that they have no questions for him, rather they take the opportunity to introduce themselves - they want him to feel the connection with them, to know them, as they feel they know him.
He's ever gracious, kind, compassionate, but a lot of this, it becomes like watching a lion being taken down by jackals, this opportunity to maybe ask real questions and arrive at a real understanding, well, it's turned into a sideshow of introductions and gushing adulation by fans suddenly awestruck that he's speaking to them...
It was good, always good, I rate Nick Cave very highly, his audience, well, less so, although it speaks well of him that Elvis Costello and Diana Krall were in attendance, he is, in a way, a legend on a par with Leonard Cohen.