Bob's Soundtrack
2009
Soundtrack - Observations on Travel
Thursday, October 08, 2009
I am amazed at the number of people who can go through the world and somehow remain oblivious to their surroundings. I feel sorry for them.
This morning, I awoke early, as I almost always do. Being an early riser on a tour bus can be a bit of a trial. Tours are routed and organized so that the bus arrives mid-morning. As an early riser, this often means I spend hours looking out the window, watching the world pass me by. I am used to it now, it has been part of my life for almost 15 years, far longer than anything else I have ever done. And there is much to see in the world, even from the window of a bus. High in the Adirondacks this morning, the hills are bright with fall foliage. Deer run along the highway, farms are asleep, and small nameless towns that I will never visit pass by in a whirl. At the truck-stop I stood in line in the bathroom with a group of stolid looking Amish gentlemen, bewildered by the high-tech sinks. Admittedly the last one was a low dignity moment, but still an experience worth remembering, part of a day in which something was learned. People have written narrative books based on less interesting experiences. I know, having read too many of them.
And sometimes there is nothing to see. The other day, In Joplin, my rather handy personal GPS unit told me that the mall where I purchased socks and underwear was actually situated alongside ‘Historic Route 66’, that coast-to-coast highway so prominent in US rock and roll mythology. Perhaps one needed to travel a little further to capture the magic, as the only interesting thing I encountered on the two miles I hiked was a Petsmart store. Also, I have a feeling not many people walk that road in Joplin. Everyone who roared past me, as I struggled along on the sidewalk-less verge stared at me as if I was mad. Again, though, I learned something - Route 66 is rather uninteresting. And dangerous.
America can be a bit difficult like that. It never ceases to surprise me. One day you are amazed at the ingenuity of the place, the next dismayed at how small some of its inhabitants have made their world. Canada lacks extremes, it’s the thing that makes it so easy to live in, but also one of the reasons it can be so bland. America is many things, but it is rarely bland.
University City, which is a part of St. Louis where we played recently, was one of the nicest pieces of urban planning I have ever seen. Everything I had read about St. Louis suggested that it was a city in decline, a place that time had passed, crime-ridden and blighted. The reality was nothing like that. Everyone I met was polite, worldly and interested, qualities you would hope to find anywhere. The stores and restaurants were unique, and full of strange cultural nuances. It was one of the most interesting places I have been in years. And then, in Joplin, (not to pick on Joplin, again) I had the opposite experience, the kind that makes you lose hope utterly. While purchasing the aforementioned socks, I tried to use my Visa card. As is the case with most Canadian and European cards, it contained the chip technology that will soon obviate the magnetic strip. These are unheard of in the USA, so right away my card caused some consternation.
I persuaded the reluctant clerk that the card would still work, and despite her suspicions, she bravely forged ahead. Soon, however, we met another roadblock. Presumably as a security measure, she asked me a question I was unable to answer.
“What’s your zip-code, sir?”
“I don’t have one,” I said.
She stared at me with some disgust. Plainly I was a smart aleck.
“Well, then I need the code associated with this card,” she said primly, with one of those steel-edged southern accents that brooks no argument...
“Seriously,” I said, trying my best disarming smile. “Neither of us have a zip-code. I am not an American, I don’t live here.”
She had a look of panic now.
“You have to have a zip-code,” she said.
“I live in Canada,” I explained, a little gingerly now. She was already waving at her supervisor. “We don’t use zip-codes.”
“You must,” she insisted.
“No, we don’t use them. And neither do the British, the French, the Mexicans or anyone else. We all have different kinds of postal codes. Only the United States uses this kind of zip-code.”
She and the supervisor stared at me for a long moment. Plainly we were at an impasse. I suppose I could have easily just paid the ten bucks in cash, but it was a point of principle now.
“Look,” I tried again, “this is Macys, this is a huge company, surely your system must allow non-Americans to buy stuff. There’s no way I can be the first.”
“You have to have a zip-code, sir.”
“Okay, 0000000.”
The supervisor was on the verge of giving me the boot by now.
“That’s not your zip-code, sir.”
“But I told you, I don’t have one. Why don’t you try yours?”
With an audible snort, she typed it in. Instantly the receipt shot out of the printer, to the mutual annoyance of both the salesclerk and her supervisor. Without a word they handed me the bag, and I left to a conspiratorial whisper. No one likes to be proven wrong, but that experience took the cake.
Anyway, as this blog is supposed to be about music, here’s a couple of songs that might put you in the traveling mood.
‘Going Mobile’ by the Who is from their landmark album ‘Who’s Next’. One of a handful of band songs sung by Pete Townsend, it is a great peon to a lost age, when gas was cheap, the world a lot less crowded, and the highway really was limitless. Unlike so much of his work, Townsend actually sounds happy on this song, reason enough to savour it.
For those of a more folky bent, you might gravitate more to Anne Briggs, a singer from the great age of UK folk music - the early 1970s. ‘Travelling’s Easy’ also speaks to a different era, when packing up and wandering away with just a knapsack and a belly full of ideals was a reasonable thing to do, if not a rite of passage.
Either way, whatever your journey, it pays to keep your eyes - and your mind - open. I know I am lucky to have seen the world in such a fashion, but it is more about attitude anyway, even of you are just crossing the street. And, because as an English major I am over-fond of a good quite, let me finish with one from Thoreau, America’s great philosopher of thoughtfulness: ‘Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you,
opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.’
Summer musings redux...
Monday, August 17, 2009
For whatever reason, I am finding it harder and harder to write something for this blog.
Maybe it’s the summer. I have been traveling again - Europe, various parts of America, and unusually for me, Newfoundland. That always gets me thinking. I have also been writing about music for other projects, and talking an awful lot about traditional music. Not playing that much of it, unfortunately, but that’s another matter. Some of this writing is in the process into being transformed into a series of articles and real books. As the impetous to start this blog was the purchase of a 1st generation iPod shuffle, (immediately lost, too, godammit), perhaps the waning days of summer are a good chance to take stock.
It might be me turning into a geezer, but, *** me, I am finding it really hard to find anything new that’s interesting to listen to. The other day I seriously thought about ditching my entire collection of CDs. I never listen to them anymore anyway, and except for a handful of songs, I have all the stuff I like on the iPods I keep accumulating. If I could find one with the patience, I’d pay some kid to transfer everything to the digital realm. There is no way I’ll ever get round to it. To take a random example, there will never be an afternoon where I will have the time or inclination to listen to, say ‘Kiss Alive II’ again. On the other hand, if ‘Shock Me’ were to pop up on my headphones in between a set of concertina jigs by Jock Tamson’s Bairns and ‘Real Child of Hell’ by X, it might be a fine thing indeed. ‘But, Bob, you ungracious twat’, you might say, ‘don’t you make CDs for a living? How can you expect us to keep buying yours when you are busy tossing your own collection out the door?’
A fair question. It is not the music I wish to divest myself of, but the rather the luggage that comes with it. It is the cases the CDs came in, and the cases need to keep those cases in. The more you travel, the more you realize how little stuff you actually need. More than once I have come home with an empty suitcase, while all around me everyone else was struggling to fit it all in. When it comes to music, sometimes I just want to start to hear it all over again, from the beginning, and see if I can find some beauty, some excitement, some energy, some new links to the blurry past - in essence, everything that keeps me listening to and playing music at all. Travel is one way to get this frustration out of your system. There are others.
That’s where these iPods and their cheaper cousins get so handy. I love everything on mine - otherwise I would have not bothered in the first place. And therefore I do not have to dig too deep to have a bit of faith restored. For example, I have no idea what sort of hippie weirdness Yes’s ‘Your Move is on about, but it contains something wonderful. Jon Anderson’s voice has been described as worthy of a castratto, and the arrangement of this song is sheer perfection. When the band comes in with the descant harmonizing behind the final ‘give peace a chance’ movement, you have to stop and wonder, ‘why didn’t we ever try that?”. And the answer is obvious. It has already been done. And it’s already perfect.
A few titles below on the menu sits my one song from U2. A few people have asked me why I never write about U2, a band I loved when I was a kid, and am still rather fond of. I always felt like so much had written about the band that there wasn’t a heck of a lot left worth saying. The only song of theirs I have on current iPod is the ‘Three Sunrises’, which is pretty much just an outlandish and soaring chorus, with a bit of pulsing guitar riff to hold it all together. Bono sings it well, the sort of trumpet blasts of passion he handled brilliantly when he was young, so full of hope the notes literally come bursting out of him. It’s a delight to hear. And it isn’t even on any of their albums. It comes from their ‘Unforgettable Fire’ period, when they had so many good songs, they could afford to cast one this good aside.
Just below that on the menu sits The Undertones ‘It’s Gonna Happen’. I will not ever get tired listening to, writing about or just inhaling this song. This piece of musical brilliance perfectly captures the sense of relief, anticipation, and adventure awaiting that I felt when I opened my eyes on the day I turned 19. And perhaps that is one piece of baggage worth holding onto.
Listen to the radio…
Thursday, June 11, 2009
During the current GBS hiatus I have spent a lot of time in the GB studio and elsewhere, recording music, but also thinking about it a lot.
I recently heard a radio documentary, (or acoustic film as he would have it), by St. Johnsman and producer Chris Brookes. Brookes is a writer, producer and sometimes theatre director who makes unusual shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other eclectic radio outlets. As someone who has dabbled in this format a bit, I find his work fascinating.
Great radio is a bit of a lost art these days. For most us of radio is a fleeting moment, something heard amidst the cacophony of everyday life, offering tidbits of news and information, or snatches of songs and music. And yet even in some of our lifetimes, it was not like this. From the 1920s until well into the 1960s, radio was the dominant communication medium in the world. Whole families gathered around the crackling speakers, transported by exotic sounds carried into their homes from far away. In an era where few people traveled far, and movies were still in their infancy, radio was their outlet to the wider world.
Skillful use of sound effects and good writing can stimulate the imagination in the same way a good book can. Your own imagination is always more vivid than anything you can see on a screen. Most of us have lost the ability to listen without prejudice. We never really listen to anything; there are too many other visual distractions, or we are so used to watching our entertainment that we no longer have the patience to use sound to develop our own images. Children still have that ability - watch their faces sometime when they are listening to a skilled storyteller. Brookes was born into a pre-TV world, and somehow he never lost the ability absorb the world with his ears.
He has won many awards for his work, and rightfully so. His production What We Might Have Been recently won a Gold Medal from the International Radio Awards. It is a mesmerizing piece. Like many students of Newfoundland history, (myself included), Brookes is obsessed by the fate of the Newfoundland Regiment in World War I, in particular its virtual annihilation during the battle of Beaumont Hamel. The Regiment was a unique body of men - it had been recruited amongst the brightest and best of the Newfoundlanders of that era. An entire generation of Newfoundland’s best educated and most capable young men were wiped out in a single morning. Brookes uses sound to recreate the battle and its surrounding emotional and political climate. Later, he illustrates how that one event tipped off a chain of disasters that ultimately lead to Newfoundland surrendering its own independence. For a Newfoundlander it makes for uncomfortable listening. Almost a hundred years later World War I still looms large in the psyche of this Island, far greater than any other event in our history; Brookes shows us why.
One of his more recent projects was a documentary called Hark!. It starts from a fascinating premise, the idea that every sound ever made is still is out there somewhere in the atmosphere. Brookes and his collaborators use this proposition in an attempt to recreate a soundscape for Elizabethan England. For example, what did Shakespeare’s voice sound like in his own theatre? Or how did church bells affect people when they were the loudest things anyone could even imagine? It is an appealing idea, and the producers have a lot of fun with it. At the same time, the platform idea has a lot of resonance to my own work.
When given some context, traditional music can offer a small window into the past. At their best, old songs can offer a glimpse into our ancestors psychology - what made them happy, what they thought was exciting, what sort of stories they liked, or what made them sad. Even instrumental music can sometimes give us a few clues to their lives, as by its very transference from hand to hand we learn what our predecessors found valuable. My ancestors left no diaries or paintings, no novels, poems or plays. Their music is all I have. Still, it is a wonderful thing to imagine that I am sharing even that with them. Brookes has gone a lot further - he imagines what those spirits of our past heard. And how they heard it.
Turn the lights off, and tune into www.batteryradio.com. Then stop everything else, and really listen.
French Lessons
Thursday, May 14, 2009
North America doesn’t produce a lot of ‘regional’ success stories anymore, as least as far as the music business is concerned. Most places on the continent are pretty homogenous these days, at least culturally. The fact that just a handful of people program almost all the radio stations on the continent is one factor; the ease of moving around, the loss of local media, and general globalization all contribute.
We are lucky here in Newfoundland. Our general isolation, combined with sheer stubbornness, has allowed us to hold onto our own culture a little bit more than most. Local taste in music still means something here. There are a handful of other exceptions. The thriving music of Cape Breton is one, as is the persistence of a remarkable jazz and Creole music scene around New Orleans. Linguistic minorities also produce their own mini-stars; there are East Indian and Spanish musicians making a comfortable living right under our noses that we will never hear of.
Non-Canadians are always surprised at how separate French Canadian culture is from its English (or ‘Anglo’, as we might say here) equivalents. There are French Canadian acts that sell platinum albums who could not sell out a 200-seat club in Toronto; and many an English Canadian act finds their stardom ends at the edge of Anglo Montreal.
A handful of acts surpass all boundaries; Celine Dion was a major star in French before she broke open worldwide as an English singer. The same is true of Roch Voisine and a few others. Most French Canadian acts, however, pick their language and live within it. French acts that want to broaden their horizons usually do so in Europe, where a hundred million French-speaking fans await their attentions.
It’s too bad. If you spend time at European festivals, you are often surprised to encounter brilliant French acts that you have never heard of going down a storm. They are equally curious to meet us, a big Canadian band that they have never heard of either. One of our first such encounters was with La Boittine Souriante. Although they have made the odd foray into English Canada, ‘the smiling boot’ are way better known to European audiences. Although the membership has undergone endless changes, their music and approach has not changed substantially. In essence, they take Quebecois folk tunes, emphasize the foot percussion, and then add clever backbeats and counter melodies from a jazzy brass section. Many of the songs they sing utilize call and response vocals, which make them accessible even for the heavily language impaired. Their instrumentals often use Irish tunes that have entered the Quebec tradition via fiddlers like Jean Carrignan. The result is something completely unique in folk music, mixing several streams of traditional music into one effervescent whole. I am no dancer, but there is something irresistible about la Boittine.
Vishten are from Canada’s other French speaking people, the Acadians. The Acadians emigrated separately to Canada from the Quebecois, and have their own history, culture and French dialect. They are spread out across Atlantic Canada, and despite being a minority everywhere have managed to maintain a vigorous and vibrant music and literary scene. (They also have strong links with their cousins in Louisiana, the ‘Cajuns’). Vishten come from a couple of streams of these proud people, via the French communities of Prince Edward Island and the Magdalene Islands. Like la Boittine, their music has a pop sensibility all too rare in the folk world, where musicians often take things very seriously. There is no doubt that the band’s twin female singers have some serious novelty value. Still, putting that aside, their arrangements have a freshness and joy many strive for, but few attain. The singing and playing is back seat to none, and they pull it all off without a hint of fromage. Check out Mariez Moi and Monsieur L’Matou from a recent live album, available on iTunes. If the Corrs had been born in Shediac (and had not been sidetracked into Europopshit) they might have sounded a bit like this.
La Vent Du Nord (a.k.a. the North Wind) have often traded members with la Boittine, but their take on French folk music has found an unusually large English speaking audience of its own. Unlike most such acts, they have managed to break into the mainstream Canadian scene a bit more, having made a serious effort to reach out to English audiences. Their music is a little closer stylistically to your typical Irish/Scottish/Breton folk band, but they bring with them the swing and lift of the Quebec tradition. They are also fine performers, and good singers. Not only that, they have a full time hurdy-gurdy player in the band. One can only imagine that he is one of the few aficionados of this weird instrument enjoying such a position.
A few years ago in St. John’s I saw La Vent pull off the single funniest piece of stagecraft I’ve ever seen. Just before the first intermission, the then-band leader Benoit Bourque cajoled a good chunk of the audience into gathering at the front of the stage to learn a French folk dance. A good hundred or so people joined in, holding hands awkwardly as they learned the simple steps. The rules established, the band struck up a tune, and Bourque led them in a shuffle back and forth across the small orchestra pit. This quickly got annoying, as there was no room to really get the dance going.
“Up the aisle!” shouted Bourque.
Obligingly, the mob of dancers joined him in a big folky conga, up and down the theatre aisles. After a turn or two of this, for some insane reason, Bourque decided to up the ante.
“Through the crowd!” he shouted, laughing manically.
Bourque is a big friendly man, but he has a bear-like presence that brooks no argument. He began clambering over people in a row half way up the theatre, dragging the whole tribe behind him.
A group chorus of “…oof...excuse me…hey!…uhh sorry...*** off, you idiot...watch what you’re doing…” soon followed, as toes were mashed, purses and boots kicked aside, and people fell all over each other, as a general orgy of embarrassment, discomfort and pique filled the room. Bourque and a few others made it across the whole width of the theatre, but the rest of the dance dissolved into a low-key brawl, as the sitters and the dancers wrestled over the same space. Bourque leapt back onstage and bounced back into the tune, leaving the audience in complete turmoil, with a grin on his face that would have lit up the stage on its own. Rarely have I laughed so hard. I have never had the nerve to try it with a crowd myself, but it is high on the list. Reason enough to dig out your college French textbook and have another go.
Media Relations 1001
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A series of interviews last week got me thinking about a few of the ancillary aspects of this job.
Doing interviews is one of the weird sidelines being a touring musician requires. There is no choice, really. Any band needs every ounce of publicity it can manage. Me, Sean and Alan do dozens of interviews a year. We understand quite clearly that it is at worst a necessary evil, and at best a pleasant conversation. The reality usually falls somewhere in between.
For example, morning radio requires a certain sense of humour combined with a penchant for brevity. In the gaga world of commercial radio, you will have at best two or three minutes to get it all in. You may also have to gargle a Queen song, judge a funny pet contest, crack a few jokes with the weather guy, make up a dirty limerick on the spot, or perform some other indignity. All for a good cause, one might say.
TV interviews can also be hazardous. If it is two or three of us the interviewer will invariably direct all questions to Alan. It is then up to him to share the burden as best he can; (“…wouldn’t you agree, Sean?” or “…actually, Bob was talking about just that topic the other day…”). TV is also where we tend to get the strangest questions. It is hard not to physically react with dismay when you get tossed something strange. Often such questions either require no answer at all, or one so convoluted you hardly know where to begin. Recent examples include “Is Newfoundland an influence on your music?”, “Do you really play all those instruments?”, “Do you guys like kids?” and a personal favourite, “You guys still play the pubs at home, right?”. (Answers: Ummm…yes, Uhhh…yes, Hmmm…, and, Errr…no.)
As a former print journalist, I rather enjoy those interviewers the most. The print reporter usually has had enough time to at least ask a question requiring a real thought or two. Although in era of many layoffs, even there the job gets harder all the time. The other day a reporter began the conversation by stating that he had (a) never heard of the band, (b) had no idea what sort of music we played, and (c) had no time to either listen to a CD or look at the website. I never saw the piece that resulted, but I can only imagine that it did little to enhance our fan base. Even so, I tend to feel a little sympathy for journalists in that situation. Many times in my TV Guide days I interviewed C, D and E-list Hollywood types I would not have recognized on my doorstep, about TV shows that I had not bothered to watch. Despite my gallant attempts to bullshit my way through those situations, I have no doubt my ridiculous questions were greeted with as much chagrin as the many we endure.
After 16 years at this, I doubt there is a journalist of any stripe in Canada whom we have not encountered. Though they are all probably well bored of us, apparently we have a reputation for being ‘good to interview’. To my mind, any aspiring rock star needs to master that skill as soon as possible. Therefore, as a way of assisting those who may find themselves in the spotlight, here are a few media relation hints, gleaned from painful experiences on both sides of the fence:
1) You and the media need each other; therefore, even when it’s difficult, help them out. They need a good story, and they need to spend as little time at it as possible. Give them what they need: good quotes, a bit of wit, and enough hard information to fill out the details.
2) Remember what the medium is: commercial radio likes it quick and snappy, so save the longwinded digressions for the CBC. Indie street papers want things edgier, and love a bit of profanity or a crazy road story. Daily print journalists just want the facts. Student newspapers are inherently quirky, and the funnier you are, the better the story. Give them each the material they want, and avoid unnecessary cringing when you see the results.
3) As a rule, web site journalists have a lot more time than your average commercial journalist. Save those types for long travel days when you have the time to answer complex questions that require thoughtful answers. Careful what you say, though - things last forever on the Internet. I abandoned an interview once backstage in Edmonton (in 1997) due to a sudden attack of bees. It seemed reasonable at the time - bee stings hurt. I have since seen that incident referred to literally hundreds of times, as if I was some sort of cartoon character, hiding in ponds and puddles like Winnie the Pooh. It just refuses to die.
4) Morning TV can be a trial for all concerned. We have done morning TV shows all over the world, and while we are probably only marginally better at it than we were a decade ago, here are a few pointers learned from my own sad and embarrassing experiences: Do not, repeat, do not, stay up all night drinking the night before. Do not perform your most difficult and heartfelt ballad at 5:30 am. Memorize where you are and to whom you are speaking; write it on your hand if necessary. Interpret stage directions literally. Do not comment on news events of the day about which you know nothing. Agree on any arrangement alterations before hand. Embrace the offer of makeup. Smile and look perky - remember, no one cool is watching, but your antics will be witnessed by thousands of people, including your Nan, your Grade 2 teacher, and every ex-girlfriend you have. They will be examining you from a critical perspective. Do not give them any more ammo.
5) If all else fails, ignore the questions. No matter what the reporter wants, you need to discuss the new album, the gig that night, or the DVD release on Friday. Pointed looks, a furiously gesturing director or an awkward silence should not prevent you from getting the word out.
6) When in doubt, keep smiling. Once they see the fear in your eyes you are doomed.
Fiddle vs. Accordion, a Digression
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
During the cruise just past I was waiting with a crowd of other losers, er, tourists, at the Hemmingway House in Key West, (and to quote Sean Cullen, ‘what a fucking rip-off’), when one of the passengers buttonholed me on the street to ask some extremely technical questions about the accordion. Among other things, the aspiring folk musician wanted to know if the tunes we played could be easily transferred to the piano accordion.
I was at a session in St. John’s the other night when a similar question came up. I had just run through a set of Newfoundland accordion tunes, the brisk ‘singles’ used for step dancing, when another player asked me if I could play them on fiddle. The answer to both questions is a qualified ‘no’.
There is a reason many traditional players eventually make their way to the violin, no matter where they start. (Or maybe it’s just a Newfoundland thing. As a rule, in Cape Breton, Ireland and other places where traditional music still thrives, you generally pick your instrument, and then stick with it until you are great, or get fed up and take up curling. Thanks to polymaths like Kelly Russell, around here it’s considered childish to only have one instrument at one’s disposal. The laziest have a handle on two or three, and the best can easily work though a half dozen at a good session). At any rate, the prosaic say that the violin imitates the range of emotions offered by the human voice. There is some truth to that. And compared to limited diatonic instruments like an accordion or a tin whistle, the violin can just do a lot more stuff. You can play notes outside the scale, and if that Celtic mysticism is your thing, hit notes in-between the notes on the scale, and even slip and slide in-between those notes as well.
Each button on a diatonic button accordion plays one note when you push it in, and one note when you pull it out. The single-key versions I play can only play notes in the key of the instrument. In other words, there are no black keys, if you want to use a piano metaphor. This means they are great for playing driving, fairly simple melodies, where powerful rhythms are more important than complex intervals. Nothing beats the button accordion for muscular punch, at least in the traditional world.
Most Newfoundland dance music played on accordion is all about economy. The tunes themselves were learned and played as an adjunct to set dances, dances usually performed by a large group of people. The tunes emphasized the beat of the dance first, and whatever melody was necessary to underline the moves of the dance. Anything else was extraneous, particularly in the hands of accordion players who functioned as one-man bands. Even now, these tunes do not work that well on fiddle. Fiddle likes long flowing phrases, double-stops and a fluid change from one note to the next, not a bubbling and popping chop from phrase to phrase.
That’s not to say that there is no cross-over. It is just that various tunes just flow better on one instrument than the other, and over time your repertoire adjusts accordingly. The elaborate fiddle tunes of Rufus Guinchard and Emile Benoit, (the two patriarchs of Newfoundland instrumental music), sound kind of half-baked on accordion. You can play most of the notes, but the nuances tend to get lost in all the pushing and pulling. On the other hand, driving accordion polkas like ‘The St. John’s Girl’, or the tunes by Minnie White, Vince Collins, Harry Hibbs and many others, sound simplistic and colourless when played on fiddle. They end up being all back and forth sawing, with none of the fiddles lyricism making it through all the bow strokes.
The piano accordion is another issue entirely. That instrument is essentially a portable keyboard, a substitute piano or pipe organ. Although a few local players use them for instrumental music, (Ray Walsh, Joe Tompkins and Alan’s mom among them), the big boxes never caught on with the public at large. Because piano accordions are fully chromatic, the pushing and pulling which is so much a part of a diatonic accordion’s sound instead functions just as a way of moving air through the instrument. It allows the sound, rather than forcing it. While the piano accordion is infinitely more subtle, and way better at playing a range of notes, like the fiddle it lacks the brawny power of its’ buttoned cousin. It is actually quite easy to transfer button (or even fiddle) repertoire onto this instrument. Will it sound the same? No. Does it matter? It all depends what you are trying to do. Ask a painter why he doesn’t just take a photograph, and you’ll get all the answers you need.
And so to answer a couple of the other questions that stem from all this, first, finding examples of all this does require some effort. You can find Harry Hibbs 70s’ style button accordion on Itunes, as well as a pretty representative album by Frank Maher, but after that you’ll need to dig deeper. Emile and Rufus’s music has been well recorded, and their stuff is out there, as are other examples of the two instrumental worlds. Both O’Brien’s Music Store and Fred’s Records both have good websites, if you can’t find anything interesting call the stores. They are both old-school - the people who work in them know the inventory, and have reliable opinions.
The answer to the second question is obvious, (well, obvious to me, anyway): learn them all.
One Year Ends... (A New Year's Thoughts)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
And thus ends another year, slowly and quietly, and here in Newfoundland, a bit on the chilly side. No one is in much of a hurry around here in the post Christmas hangover, - January is a slow month in St. John’s. And thus my attempts to update this journal in any remotely timely fashion get harder and harder.
In the media I follow, it is the time of year-end lists and whatnot. I started to write this entry a good while ago, with just such an idea, and then immediately realized it was the act of the lazy and cynical. In my journalism days we would mock such lists for what they were - an easy way for our columnists to recycle their previous work. And anyway, what would I write on such a list? I would be lucky to find five new songs I heard this year that stayed with me for more then ten minutes. I saw a handful of shows, and left most of them dissatisfied for one reason or another. After starting this entry and abandoning it a dozen times, I am feeling like I may have written myself into a corner. The original idea of this blog was to use songs and music I like as a platform to discuss the band, its music, and everything else that made sense. Having written some 50 of these small essays now, the ‘everything else’ has gotten more interesting to me than the songs themselves. Or perhaps I am on the wrong track altogether.
One song I have listened to more than most recently was ‘Suzanne’, by Leonard Cohen, a song I first heard over 20 years ago. The reason I came back to it was watching Cohen himself do it live. That was over a year ago, and yet I cannot stop thinking about the song and his performance of it. For years, ‘Suzanne’ and the early greatest hits collection it appeared on has been a guilty pleasure of mine. In my university days I aspired to that same sort of mysterious poetic intellectual drunkard persona Cohen cultivated so well in the 70s, and his lyrics spoke to me at every level. I was a bit reluctant to see him play, actually - I did not want that memory ruined by a shit rendition. At the last second I decided to use my ticket, and bailed on a studio session to catch the second act of one of his St. John’s shows. ‘Suzanne’ was the second song I caught, and I was instantly relieved. Cohen was utterly convincing. He has lived every syllable of his words and music, and offers wisdom and acceptance to go with his considerable gift for melody. The song had changed immeasurably in his skilled hands, yet it was still perfect. And in fact, seeing the great man perform it live really changed the way I have listened to any song from then on. I have spent a year thinking about this, and trying to put the conclusion into something useful.
In a way, my efforts on the last tour with the solos kind of did the same thing. Granted some songs worked better than others, but it was an interesting learning experience. The idea was to force an element of musical spontaneity into every show, especially those nights when we might have just gone with the familiar and known. When you are out there by yourself, (a couple of times without even the benefit of an instrument), it really does depend on your delivery of the lyric and the melody. Without the crutch of arrangement and rhythm and hooks and whatnot, you really do have to offer a performance that comes from the heart. That statement is weighted with cliché, but you just don’t have anything else. Everything Cohen sang was like that, and I am envious.
The recent death of Ronnie Drew, a singer I love, sent me into the depths of youtube, where dozens of videos of his huge catalogue exist. There was a man who lived and loved every word and note he sang. Like Cohen, his voice was limited and eccentric, yet he conveyed a passion and emotion that shone through even the most dire of arrangements and circumstances.
I am slowly coming to believe that my efforts to hear and learn new music all the time may be a bit misguided. Cohen has been singing the same 30 songs for a lifetime, but yet his audience drank them in like a good French red wine, one that has the capacity to be different with every sip. He has the ability to fine-tune the meaning of each note and phrase, to paint the same picture from many different angles, with many different colours. Ronnie Drew had the same quality, an uncanny ability to sing a song and make it flow like a good novel, one you can read over and over again, always finding something new. Thinking back to the solos we played on the last tour, the ones that worked the best had little to do with their musical merit or relevance to the audience at hand, and more to do with the passion and meaning (and even humour) we were able to put into them.
That, I have come to believe is the lesson of Cohen and Drew. Perhaps I should cease to search for the new, and instead really learn the songs I already know.
Either that, or start writing about books and wine.
