I noted that former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen was in Toronto recently, a guest at the convention that saw the replacement of Jean Chretien by Paul Martin as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. The manner of Chretien’s leaving strikes me as similar to the way Owen was shoved out of office by the local Non Partisan Association (NPA).

Politicians like NDP leader Jack Layton and left-leaning commentators like Linda McQuaig and Moe Sihota have been lately waxing positive about Jean Chretien’s last year in office. Paul Martin, as Layton would have it, is muscling in to pull the Liberals to the right just as Chretien was on the cusp of introducing a slew of socially progressive policies. For Layton it's a nifty manouver; use the outgoing leader for your own political gain, even if he's not in your party.

A similar tack was taken by Vancouver’s new mayor, Larry Campbell, in the municipal election of a year ago. Philip Owen, long derided as an establishment square, was reborn in the eyes of the left as a latterly-enlightened social progressive, thrust out of his party by scheming backroomers and an ambitous former ally just as he was about to go forward with the safe injection site experiment.

The media bought the line and the wily Campbell was off and running. He tapped into a silent but significant view held by many in Vancouver; that Owen was a simple but decent guy; not perfect, but easy to relate to on some basic level.

Is Layton onto something as well? Will the many Canadian voters who had a gut-level affection for the gushing Canadian-ness of Chretien turn on Martin? Certainly not enough of them to elect Layton as Prime Minister, but maybe enough of them on the left flank of the Liberal constituency to give the NDP a more respectable number of seats in Ottawa.

Without the simple ‘Canada is best’ patriotism of Chretien, it is unlikely that Paul Martin would have had the leeway to do what he did in the Finance portfolio. Many of Martin’s initiatives, particularly the cutting of programs and transfer payments to balance the federal budget, would have been seen as the thin edge of some ideologically conservative wedge had Chretien, with his open wariness of the American right and his years in the Trudeau inner circle, not been running interference.

The fact that much of the Liberal party can’t grasp this is reminiscent of the way the local NPA couldn’t see the asset it had in ‘Philip the Dim.’ Indeed, Martin himself seems to be the only one who knows it. We saw hints of this at his coronation as Liberal leader over the weekend. His acknowledgement of Chretien’s support while he was finance minster, his invoking of his father’s social activism, and his alliance of convenience with Bono all may allow him to create just enough of a small ‘l’ liberal face to stave off an electoral threat from the left.

Whether we'll still see this side of him when he's forced to make a few hard decisions as Prime Minister is another matter. It may well be that he performs best when someone else is the frontman.

My favorite New Year’s Eve bash took place when I was 18 years old. My band staged a performance in my parents’ basement. Afterward, we were whisked away via white Oldsmobile to a party at the posh Buckingham home of my childhood friend Winston Seto.

What was special about our show that night was that we were performing as an alter-ego band. Usually we were Trajan, a bunch of Burnaby headbangers. On that evening, however, we were The Boring Holmgrens, a punk band lead by the mythical Exciter Boy.

The thing is, The Boring Holmgrens were better.

I thought of this recently as I pondered the fifth anniversary of the release (or perhaps I should say the re-release) of the one and only album by the rock band Huxley.

Like the Boring Homgrens, Huxley was an alter ego band. It was the brainchild of Rob ‘Mule’ Hughes. He wanted to create a concept band that would deliver its listeners back to the early 1980s, the Elizabethan age of heavy rock.

So off we went, recording the whole thing in my dad’s house on corner of Moscrop Street and Huxley Avenue. Most of the bed tracks were done in the summer, but the real work came in November. It rained like hell all month, my dad went to Hawaii, and Mule and I settled in for a month of adolescent regression that ranks, I confess, as one of the best times in my life.

For me, the Huxley sessions marked a return to music. I had actually stopped playing my guitar altogether for a number of years; it was a no-hope addiction. I suppose I was pre-emptively taking the advice that the Mule himself would dispense years later:

“Stop it. Put that down. Take a break, go to school, get a trade. Make yourself useful. There’s way too much music out there in the world already. While I respect your need to spread your ‘message,’ please keep it to yourself.”

It was actually not a bad period. What it lacked in rocking it made up for in everything else. But then, out of the blue, JR McClelland gave me a call and the whole thing got rolling again.

Actually, come to think of it, nothing got rolling. We jammed about once every six months. It was only when Rob, with the Mule-like sense of purpose that is one of his hallmarks, decided that the Huxley project should go ahead in earnest that things began to change. A new era dawned in my life.

At the time it seemed utterly positive. It was a great year. I was like the Roman Empire during the era of Trajan himself. Settling into a month of rock and roll and booze in the old man’s basement seemed to be a perfect way to cap it all off.

And five years later I still get people talking to me about the “Huxley album.” Indeed, aside from its bargain basement production, it’s quite listenable. Lots of good riffs, conceived spontaneously and without inhibition.

Huxley was a four piece: Wes Byrne on guitar and vocals; Willingdon Black on guitar and vocals; Aljoz on bass; and Hugh Robson on drums. What I remember most fondly was sitting there amidst the cords, mics and amps, laying down guitar or vocal tracks some blustery evening, then adjourning to quaff down pints of the ‘Famous Ales of England,’ not to mention the not-so-famous ales of half of the rest of Europe and a good portion of Canada. There were some various malts and brandies comsumed along the way too. Recently, while cleaning up my father’s house, my sister came upon a large stash of exotic empties, archeological proof that Huxley did indeed once exist.

While Huxley were a typical British hard rock band, The Boring Holmgrens were something else altogether. Their origins lay in the fertile imagination of my long time pal Victor Keong.

“My puppet crawls, mortally wounded, as I kick the shit out of it.”

That from a song called “City of Desecration.” There were other tunes as well, among them “Cum Machine,” “Blood in Bombay,” and “She’s from Mt. Gonnga:”

“Oh great Shiva lend me a hand,
‘Cause I’m starting a rock and roll band.”

Perhaps you had to be there, but the Holmgrens' stuff rocked pretty well, and worked for the same reason Huxley did. It was not serious. Once you are freed up from trying to be serious, you end up being more real. The trying and the posing are gone, and all that’s left is the doing. It’s a good way to generate ideas.

And the ideas can then be used elsewhere. I have recycled pretty much all of the old Boring Holmgrens riffs. They’ve made their way into the first and (if it ever gets released) second Stoke records. I’ve also recycled a few of the Huxley songs.

You use the goof band as the catalyst to come up with the ideas, then you use the ideas in the real band.

The thing is, what if people think the real band is also a goof band? It came to dawn on me that if you play in a band called ‘Stoke,’ who play songs about Penthouse Pets and whose drummer twirls drumsticks, you may end up back at square one.

Of course, many of the most popular bands in Vancouver are goof bands. It says something about the emasculated, insecure nature of this town that cloaking youself in ‘irony’ is the only way you can safely express yourself.

And indeed, who are the ‘serious’ musicians these days anyway? For a couple of years I’ve been reading about how this place is an hotbed of ‘Alt-Country.’

Hmmm. We’re about as far away as you can get, geographically and philosophically, from Tennessee, Kentucky or Texas, yet a twang-accented hillbilly from Kitsilano or Commercial Drive raises no eyebrows?

More irony, I suppose.

“There are a lot of animals out there....some of them walk on two legs.”

Jack Lord as Steve McGarret, in ‘Hawaii 5-0.’


A few months ago I noticed that Hawaii 5-0 was back on the air.

The time slot is not perfect. Five past one in the morning on the brand new channel ‘M.’ The station seems to have some kind of multicultural angle; I guess that’s the only way you can get a license off the CRTC these days. If I went to the bureaucrats with my pitch for a WASP channel where people drink a lot, I’d probably be laughed out of town.

I can only assume that some programmer on Channel ‘M’ latched on to the fact that 5-0 includes a Chinese guy and a Hawaiian, and figured that it fit with the station’s multicultural values. The fact that the Chinese guy and the Hawaiian spend every episode doing joe work while Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett kicks open the front door to the bad guys’ hideout doesn’t seem to have registered.

Nonetheless, it’s a great show. Here’s why:


ONE: The opening theme.

One of the most recognizeable pieces of music in the world. The 5-0 theme leads in with a few bars of drums--a great device--then kicks into a number so groovily high-powered that Sammy Davis Jr. once adopted it as the intro to his nightclub act.

But the music is only part of it. If you look at the camera work and editing of the opening theme, it’s a monster of a pitch. The jagged zoom-in on Jack Lord, standing on a balcony at the Ilikai Hotel, is particularly superb. The rest of it is full of gyrating hula-dancers, jet engines, sunsets and bullet chambers, all pulsing to the drums.


TWO: The setting.

It’s amazing how many 5-0 characters have waterfront property. Judging by this show, every guy with a waterfront lot in Honolulu is a criminal. Even the small time hoods spend a lot of time near the ocean. You need to dump a body or a weapon? Try Diamond Head. Need to consult a hitman about a contract? Why not meet at Waikiki?

But the the 5-0 writers went a step further, cannily casting Hawaii as America’s last wild west; an isolated frontier ‘town,’ with McGarrett as the sheriff. Only it’s a different kind of wild. No grimy desperadoes or pancho-wearing bounty hunters. The 5-0 frontier of the late ‘60s and 1970s is full of Red Chinese agents, tripping hippies, acid-dropping cultists, whacked-out Vietnam vets, murderous ‘Eurasian’ vixens, exiled dictators, hitmen from Hong Kong, recycled Kamikazes from World War Two, tourist-devouring scam artists.... Even by 1970’s standards, the show has its own special menagerie of freaks, all fodder for the 5-0 deputies.


THREE: The guest stars.

I once saw a list of the number of Academy Award winners and nominees who have guest starred on 5-0, and it runs into the several dozens. Add to that the actors who appeared on the show before becoming famous: John Ritter (Three’s Company) as a hippy killer; Gaven McLeod (Mary Tyler More, Love Boat) as a turtleneck-and-bead wearing dope pusher named Big Chicken; Martin Sheen as a shark-like lawyer; Loretta Swit (MASH), who appeared serveral times, either jumping off a building, getting pushed into the ocean or getting run over by a car; Ricardo Montalban (Fantasy Island) on two occasions, first decked out in hilarious ‘oriental’ makeup, playing a wayward Japanese ‘Bushido,’ then as a race car driver who had conquered “Watkins Glen and Quebec.”

I suppose a studio-paid jaunt to Hawaii, with a brief guest-star appearance and a week or two in paradise was a draw for the big names who appeared on the show. But it’s the countless no-name actors who went on to better things that intrigue me. For them, a spot on 5-0 had a Feng Shui-like magic to it; a crazy kiss of life.


FOUR: The supporting cast.

‘Book ‘im, Danno,’ is perhaps the most famous line to emerge from the series. It’s the line McGarret gives to his deputy, Danny Williams, whenever they catch the bad guy. Danny Williams was played by an actor named James MacArthur. He is the adopted son of golden age actress Helen Hayes and her playwright husband Charles MacAurthur. The shortish and stocky MacAurthur was, in the 1960’s, touted as ‘the next James Dean.’ This didn’t work out so well, and 5-0 producer Leanard Freeman, seeing him more as an everyman cop, cast him as ‘Danno.’ To his credit, MacAurthur put the James Dean aspirations aside and contentendly set about being a grounding foil to Lord’s somewhat haughty McGarrett.

The rest are Coronation Street-like pseudo-amateurs. There is, for instance, Zulu as Kono. I once thought of claiming that as a domain name, only to find that it had already been taken. A likeable presence on the show, Zulu could pass for a Polynesian rugby player except that his ass is so fat it lags in a different time zone (or, given that it’s in the middle of the Pacific, I guess it would be a day ahead).

Zulu, or Zoulou, as he is now known, was regrettably booted off the show after the fourth season following a tiff with Jack Lord. He was replaced by another Hawaiian, Al Harrington as detective Ben Kokua. Harrington had a nightclub act after the show finished. A former co-worker of mine went to see him, and was unnerved to find that he leered down her dress, commenting to the audience on how well-endowed she was. Harrington's departure in the show's 7th season marks for me the beginning of the decline of the series. A revolving door of token native characters came after him, none as robust as he and Zulu.

The best of the supporting cast is Kam Fong, who played the curiously-named Chinese cop Chin Ho Kelly. Fong was about 25 years old when his wife and two kids were wiped out in a freak accident. It was 1944, and two American bombers collided in mid-air over his house in Hawaii, crashing down on his family. The distraught Fong carried on aimlessly for a time before deciding to put a revolver to his own head, only to be interrupted pre-triggersqueeze by his mother. He rebuilt his life, becoming a cop for seventeen years. His name was put forward for a cattle call audition to become a extra in the 5-0 series without his knowledge. When he showed up on a lark, Leonard Freeman said “That’s him...that’s Chin Ho!” He was impulsively cast as one of the core characters.

Fong represents the endearing anti-professional streak that runs through the otherwise slick 5-0 production. He looked exactly like the kind of guy you would expect to be a career cop, and the fact that he couldn’t act didn’t get in the way of his getting the role. There are a lot of locals who got stints on 5-0 this way. Far from weakening the show, they add a nice touch of accessibilty and authenticity.


FIVE: Jack Lord.

Jack Lord was by most accounts a difficult guy to work with, but for me he warrants a certain admiration. A prickly loner, Lord came by his success late in the day. He spent many years scrounging for parts in Hollywood while generally hating the whole town’s guts. In his mid-forties, he got the lead in a western series, but it died in a year. Finally, at 48 (although he often fudged his birthdate on his bio), he teamed up with Leanard Freeman to do 5-0. It was fitting that he had to move to an entirely remote location to achieve his break.

In some ways he modelled the Steve McGarret character after himself. McGarret has little social life that we see. He’s an obsessive who cracks a smile about once every five episodes. And quite a few things piss him off.

“The 5-0 formula is as tight as a sonnet,” Lord once said, and he threw a lot of weight around to make things how he wanted them. He was even known to grab the odd unsolicited script from a fan and force it on the show’s writers. But it worked. 5-0 ran for a long time, from 1968 to 1980; until the Law and Order franchise started up it was the longest running crime show in TV history. It's been in syndication in one place or another ever since. The sun never sets on Hawaii 5-0.

The fact that we don’t know much about McGarret works to the show’s advantage. Large parts of his character are left to our imagination. We do know that he's a straightlaced stickler for the right thing, a trait that puts him at odds with the big-screen enforcers of the era--Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry; Charles Bronson’s ‘Death Wish’ vigilante; Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle.

“We’re cops, not judges,” he snaps at an underling in one episode, while trying to save the life of a dope pusher.

In many respects McGarrett, fused with Lord’s narcissism, is a prototypical metrosexual; in one episode, we learn that he gets his hair cut once a week. But he also has a deep and winning aversion to the smugness that is typical of most of the world’s jerks. Cool and aloof, but also a seething, dogged straight-edge, he’s the perfect anti-asshole.

There’s a scene in ‘Annie Hall’ where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are standing in a movie lineup. Allen overhears the guy behind him talking about Marshall McLuhan. Thinking the guy’s full of crap, Allen gets into an argument with him, then finally reaches around a sign and pulls out the real McLuhan, who sides with Allen in the argument.

I often wish I could pull out Steve McGarrett as I go about my business. He would be armed with his black shades, blue suit, and some of his quotes from the show:

“You’re liable to catch a bummer you didn’t figure on,” he’d smirk at obnoxious motorists.

“I'm fed up with your pomposity and bad manners,” he’d snap at snotty store clerks.

“Cut the juvenile jive,” he’d spit at irritating co-workers.

“Aloha, suckers,” he would hiss at local politicians when they finally get their electoral comeuppance.

And if we should get any apologies or penitent looks, he’d have none of it:

“Yeah, yeah....hotshots like you are always sorry when the damage is done.”

The first I heard of the British Columbian artist E.J. Hughes was when I was doing a university co-op program stint up at Harbour Publishing. I was looking through an issue of the popular Harbour perodical ‘Raincoast Chronicles,’ and found a piece on Hughes. I was instantly taken with his work. Done mostly in oil, his paintings depicted west coast scenes, and were full of vivid colour.

When I went down to the V.A.G. last weekend, seeing his work ‘in person’ almost gave me the same kind of thrill as seeing a favorite band live. I had seen so many of his works in books, on cards, and in print form that I was very pleased to finally be looking at the real thing.

Some would say his work is folksy, but in fact it’s the product of study and technique. His style began to develop in the early 1940s, after he studied the ideas of French artist Henri Rousseau. Rousseau was kind of an oddball, known for his ‘primitive, or ‘naive’ realism. Hughes was influenced by his vivid colours, his attention to detail, and his handling of proportion, space and depth.

The result was “flattened space, skewed perspective and simplified shapes.” Hughes often moves the horizon point higher on the canvas, giving distant objects a more immediate look. His goal was to create scenes of his native west-coast that were “more real than photographs.”

And that’s exactly what I relate to about his work. One of his most celebrated paintings is called 'Taylor Bay, Gabriola Island'. Tayor Bay is one of my long-time haunts. I spent practically every summer day of my childhood there.


In the painting, there are mountains in the background, much closer than in real life. The ferry coming round the point looms a little bit larger than it really would, and the shore on the opposite side of the bay is more intimate. But the scene is still instantly recognizeble to me, as are the two or three other paintings he’s done of various Gabriola landscapes.

Hughes challenges the camera. After all, a photo is not necessarily an accurate record. It is framed; it is one dimensional. You experience it with one sense only. Hughes seems to deliberately overcompensate for what you miss by not being there, capturing the sights that would register with you, things you might notice if you stopped to dwell in a place for a while. Things that would stick in your memory, but which might sink into obscurity in a photo.

The old abstract artists’ cliche/joke is to say “I paint not what I see, but what I feel.” Though he’s not an abstractionist, there is a component of this mindset in Hughes’ work. In compensating for the sensation of being there, he is attempting to re-create not only not you might see, but what you might feel if you were there. In much of his work, this is a feeling of peace; a sense of taking comfort in simple things. He puts something of an idyllic sheen on the setting at Taylor Bay, for instance, but not in a fraudulent way; it a genuinely serene and pretty place.

In looking at his paintings, I’m reminded of being a little kid, and being drawn to the boldest, simplest cartoons in the funny pages of the newspaper. They were, like much of nature, simply pleasing to look at.

Jacques Barbeau, a collector of Hughes’ work, makes the point that“if one is truly addicted to the natural attributes of this province, it is an easy intellectual step to becoming ‘hooked’ on the art of E.J. Hughes.” There’s no doubt that much of what draws me to his painting is the local nature of the work. It also helps that I like the same things he seems to like; the seashore, boats, arbutus trees hanging out over the water from the edge of the woods....all that stuff.

I also like how he fits in the art world. He’s not exactly hip. I doubt the phrase ‘enfant terrible’ has ever been used to describe him (and likely won’t be, now that he’s 90). There’s no radical chic, no dipping of the canvas in urine.

Just a guy who learned his craft, studying its history and honing his skills, and not forsaking what he wanted to do for something more fashionable. Not chasing after fame in some ‘center’ or ‘capital’ when the things that meant most to him were at home. He persevered, and over time others came to ‘get it.’

And I’m not sure if those of us who get it are a partcularly stylish bunch to have as fans. But at least we’re loyal. There was a good and attentive crowd at the gallery.

And there’s a lesson in that too. If you’re doing something creative, there’s not much percentage in trying to win over the hipsters. Just do your thing, and let the real folks come round.


***********************************************************************************

Speaking of art, I was amused to read this in 'The Guardian' a few months ago...an account of a visit by the British Minister of Culture to a recent art exhibit in London.....

"If this is the best British artists can produce, then British art is lost," he repeated last night. "It is cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit. Art has always been very central to my life and I was so disappointed when I saw that exhibition. It infuriated me. That is not artistic."

Nor was he prepared to apologise for the colour of his language:

"It is the sort of plain speaking that is always missing from discussions about art in this country."

Watching ruefully from the sidelines was the millionaire Ivan Massow, a New Labour convert from the Tories who was sacked as chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Art for saying the same thing. Massow had complained that much conceptual art was "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat" and accused the art establishment of talking down to the public.

"It is not much of a consolation to find eight months later your vision is endorsed by the minister of culture. Does this mean I can have my job back?"

Massow's fear is that the "dry elitist" brand of conceptual art championed by the Tate is in "danger of choking a massive hunger for art ... Of course, people like Nicholas Serota will say that new art has never been popular. Well that is just not true. New art was unpopular with the establishment but loved by the people.

"What is happening now is the reverse. The art and artists are pushed by the establishment and resented and resisted by the people. I, like everyone I know, want to be moved by art. I want it to make me cry; I don't want to be constantly taken the piss out off, to be sniggered at."

Thanks to the Mule-induced Great Leap Forward (at least by my standards), it is time for a short pictoral re-cap.

Varanasi and the Ganges.

Bobby Orr wins the Cup after taking the pass from Sanderson (who is behind the net to the left...trust me).

Scotty Moore jams with Elvis Presley, King of Belgium (?).

French rocker/social critic/film director Bernie Bonvoisin.

I wouldn't be the first to conclude that the rise in blogging is due partly to the lame-assed nature of much of our commercial media. In this town, as I've noted before, we have a situation wherein both major newspapers and the leading local television station are owned by the same guy, Izzy Asper.

I'd suggest that this imposes a certain uniformity on what kind of news you get; I don't think the Aspers represent the right or left, as much as they represent a kind of establishment smugness. If they were a local political organization they'd be the Non Partisan Association.

I've noticed, though, that many of the small time local papers have gotten sharper and more opinionated in their editorial content. Not that long ago 'The Georgia Straight' offered only celebrity-loving bullshit, with it's cover stories almost always devoted to Hollywood 'stars' promoting their latest half-witted movies. Now you can often discern a pointed editorial position. The 'Terminal City' usually has a couple of decent pieces in every issue; the 'Vancouver Scrum' column by Ian King is particularly noteworthy. Even the 'Courier,' which used to concern itself with 'Coyote Eats Cat' fare, has turned into a fiesty (if sometimes loopy) little paper.

And the thing is, all of these little rags are free. In that respect, they have as much potential to reach people as the big papers. I'd say the main selling point of the big papers is their sports pages.

I've also noticed that as both the political left and right become obsessed with bias in media, various big-time columnists are spending an increasing amount of ink attacking each other. One of my favorite places to keep up with various internicine media brawls is here.

The media is becoming an end in itself. Its politics are watched as much as real politics. Its stars are as big as the stars they cover. It is as much the observed as it is the observer. On the whole, I'm not sure if we're becoming more or less informed as a society.


***************************************

Special thanks to Rob 'Mule' Hughes for technical assistance. Teaching is in your blood.

I renewed my membership at Videomatica recently, solely for the purpose of renting ‘The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane,’ with Jodie Foster.

What a creepy but excellent film. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, with its low-budget, ‘Canada-France co-production’ ambience, but could never find it at any of the various chain video stores around town.

I’ve essentially had it with the likes of Rogers and Blockbuster, and their predictable assortment of product. I’ve grown particularly tired of the way the staff at Blockbuster are forced by some internal code to utter a cheerful but transparently insincere ‘hi’ to every person who walks in the door.

But Videomatica has restored my faith in my town. What shall I view next? How about ‘The Wild Bunch,’ with William Holden? Or maybe Elke Sommer in ‘Zeppelin?’

The world is my oyster.

Trust


"This French metal band were formed in the late '70s by vocalist Bernard Bonvoisin and guitarist Norbert 'Nono' Krief, with drummer Jean-Emile 'Jeannot' Hanela and bassist Raymond Manna. The band were musically influenced by AC/DC, but their lyrics reflected the anti-establishment punk ethos. TRUST was an enormous domestic success, and the outstanding L'ELITE stimulated international interest. Yves 'Vivi' Brusco replaced Manna and guitarist Mohammed 'Moho' Chemlekh was added shortly after the recording of REPRESSION, a superb effort which caused controversy in France due to the sympathetic treatment of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine in 'Instinct De Mort' and 'Le Mitard,' the latter using Mesrine's lyrics. An English language version, with lyrics translated by Sham 69's Jimmy Pursey, brought a good reaction from outside France, although Bonvoisin sounded slightly uncomfortable and much of the lyrical edge was lost. Trust were a popular support to Iron Maiden on their KILLERS UK tour, subsequently appearing at the 1981 Reading Festival. MARCHE OU CREVE saw Nicko McBrain take the drumstool, and was another solid release, featuring a tribute to late AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott in 'Ton Dernier Acte.' However, the band lost some credibility when 'Misere,' which attacked the Thatcher government, was omitted from the English version (retitled SAVAGE). A drummer ‘swap’ with Iron Maiden saw Clive Burr replace McBrain for 1983's TRUST, before Farid replaced him. Inner tensions broke Trust apart after the disappointing ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, with Bonvoisin recording two solo albums while Krief worked with Johnny Halliday. Renewed interest following Anthrax's covers of 'Antisocial' and 'Sects' stimulated a reformation, with Brusco on rhythm guitar and new bassist Frederick, a union which produced a live album."

The Mule's page had a link to a quiz on indie-pop. I didn't like the looks of it, but I did find a quiz on The Guardian's page regarding literary references in rock music. Here's what I got when I submitted my answers:

"You scored 9 out of a possible 10

Congratulations. You are a literary genius. You clearly have spent far
too many warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse to a
buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg. Go out and get some fresh air and
buy a Gareth Gates record. (and if you don't know what we're talking
about, you're a lot less sad than us)."

Who's Gareth Gates?

Got an e-mail from Smash the other day recommending that I (or we) write to the government to push for a new policy on cannabis.

Well...I'm not a pot smoker myself, but the real question is which government does one write to?

The issue, as I see it, is nicely summed but by this editorial in, of all places, The National Post:

http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=D72EE6D0-4677-4BE5-8BA8-4CE95B31F2E6

My goodness. My good friend Victor Keong has forwarded to me a comment regarding the Vancouver Canucks-Minnesota Wild series, made by the former Iraqi Communications Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf:

"The Vancouver Canucks have enshrined themselves in history again. They have given the Minnesota Wild the gift of achieving the previously unthinkable. It is written that it's better to give than to take, so thank you Vancouver Canucks for making history again. The primitive foundation of hockey - it is an undertaking that requires anthropologic instincts, physical ability and in some small way human intelligence - prevents those that are civilized and evolved to prevail. By deferring victory the Vancouver Canucks have preserved their continued civility and human dignity."

“I haven’t heard a guitar solo for a long time.” Gilby Clarke, in a recent interview.

I know what he means. The age of the guitar solo has diminished to such an extent that you can actually identify it as an age.

I noticed this recently at work. A co-worker, who sits about 20 or 30 feet from me, has her radio tuned to the local classic rock station. I can barely hear it, but from time to time I run over to her desk after picking up a bit of high-frequency fretwork (”was that ‘War Pigs'!?”). All the wailing and weedling on it stands in marked contrast to anything else I hear, even on CFOX or XFM. The younger, guitar-based bands don’t really do solos anymore.

It got me thinking about guitar solos, and the ones I like the best. I decided to make a list: my 20 favorite guitar solos of all time. Keep in mind that it’s subjective, and is not the product of a great deal of reflection. I made up my mind quickly, and went with my gut instinct. And, to an extent, I surprised myself with the results.

In making this list I’m talking about solos, not instrumentals (maybe that’ll be next). They have to fit into a song. This explains the absence of players like surf king Dick Dale. I suppose some may also be offended that I’ve left out some greats, including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eddie Van Halen. But I’m just going with what I like. If I was compiling a list of instrumentals, Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ would surely be on it. I remember hearing it for the first time. I was absolutely dumbfounded. I suspected trickery.

I’ve also omitted my heroes, AC/DC. But to me Angus Young’s guitar playing is an extension of his crazed gyrating, which itself is a product of the real essence of AC/DC: riffs and grooves. If I had to choose between a riff and a solo, or between a band that can groove or a band that can weedle, I’ll take the former every time.

Anyway, here it is. My 20 favorite guitar solos of all time.

***

-Heartbreak Hotel - Scotty Moore (Elvis Presley)

I figure there are about four tunes that make Elvis Presley’s legend as the King of Rock and Roll: ‘Hound Dog,’ ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ There are all sorts of cool histrionics in these tunes, especially using the drums. For instance, the drum roll at the end of the verses in ‘Hound Dog,’ or the cool drumming during the verses in ‘Jailhouse Rock.’

‘Heartbreak Hotel’ features the ‘Bang Bang’ thing during the verse, ie: ‘Well, since my baby left’ (Bang Bang) I found a new place to dwell (Bang Bang).’ This kind of cool factor is what has preserved rock and roll for half a century.

Oh yeah, the solo. It’s comprised of exactly three notes, and of those only one gets about 80 per cent of the work. There are a great many guitar players in this world who need to be force fed this song for about three months straight, twenty-four hours a day.

And if that’s not enough, Moore’s raucous, minimalist guitar work gives way beautifully to a cool little piano piece.

***

-School Day - Chuck Berry

A great chugging tune. In a sense, the whole song is a solo; I love the way the guitar answers back the vocal lines, like it’s an animal trying to get out a box. By the time the solo comes along the guitar surges out and struts around the room. It’s essentially a twelve bar tune, but the solo gets a head start on the 12th bar, like an old car revving up. That’s the best part.

***

-Sunshine of Your Love - Eric Clapton (Cream)

Although the British started to rule the guitar rock roost from 1963 or so, it has been said that, aside from Eric Clapton, no one in the British scene could really play very well until Hendrix came along. Part of this is because, when it comes to the electric guitar, the amplifier is part of the instrument. Amp technology lagged behind guitar-making technology until about the mid-1960s, when Englishman Jim Marshall started making units that could pump out huge volume, and could be overdriven in such a way as to give electric guitar players some real sustain.

Much of the soloing you’d hear on 1950’s rock and roll songs is either blues-oriented picking (Chuck Berry), or stuff built on chording or specific rhythm patterns (eg. Bo Diddly or Buddy Holly; actually Bo was a bit of both). The surf rockers of the early 1960s pushed the electric guitar sound into new territory, but the lack of sustain meant that they stuck with reverb-soaked speed runs, as well as some wonderful riffs and melodies.

Eric Clapton was one of the first to suss out the power of heavy amplification. He cannily used it to create more sustain, which actually slowed down a lot of lead playing. If you could play one note and let it ring for a while, you didn’t have to worry about dead air, and you weren’t pushed into always playing busy little solos. The result was soloing that was often more emotional and tuneful (and yes, sometimes more wankish). Of course, more speed was possible as well, but it was speed that now made use of sustain-generated pull-offs and hammer-ons (eg. Hendrix) as much as Dick Dale-style picking.

When Eddie Van Halen pushed things along in the late 1970s, he was, like Clapton, taking advantage of even more sustain, created by some of the high gain amplification and high output pickups that started appearing around that time. Hammer-ons became hammer-on/finger taps. But there’s only so many types of tunes you can play a speed solo to. While many of Van Halen’s solos were fairly simple and melodic (‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love;’ ‘Jamie’s Crying’), it seems to me that many of the guys who came after him wrote the tunes around the solos, rather than the using a solo to enhance a good tune.

But getting back to ‘Sunshine of Your Love;’ I suppose this is the song that cemented the ‘Slowhand’ legend. The solo is played over one of the killerest riffs in rock history. It seems to me that Clapton was at his best when he had two macho-man egomaniacs (Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) to push him. Through the 1970’s his swagger seemed to disappear, replaced by laid back, easy listening fare. Or worse, the coma-inducing wankery of ‘Cocaine,’ a song that has the exact opposite effect of its subject matter.

***

-While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Eric Clapton (The Beatles)

It’s a Beatles tune, but Clapton played the lead on it. There’s maybe a tinge too much melodrama in his ‘weeping’ vibrato, but I like it anyway.

***

-All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

There are a few Hendrix solos I could include. I like this just because of the ambience. I’m not sure what pedals he’s using; a wah wah and something else. I don’t know. It sounds cool. I like what he does with this song in general, and the solo enhances it.

***

-Paranoid- Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath)

This song is remarkable in that you could drop it into an FM playlist from 1969 to the present and though it would sound a bit different, it could still be fully contemporary. I always liked the tune, though I’ve become a full-blown Sabbath fan rather late in the day. Iommi’s reputation has grown over the years, with his disciples spanning the various harder rocking genres. I saw an interview with him recently, in which he stated that he always considered Sabbath to be simply hard rock: ”Heavy metal...I don’t know where that came from.” Exactly.

***

-Whole Lotta Love - Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)

One of the great moments in all human history takes place when the bizarre sound effect portion of this song concludes with a long Bonham drum roll and erupts into a sequence of BOOM BOOM tick tick tick tick tick BOOM BOOM tick tick tick tick tick....over which Page layers a solo that is note perfect. A thundering echo, I’d say, of some of the old Presley tunes.

***

-American Woman - Randy Bachman (The Guess Who)

This solo defines cool. Using sustain, tone, taste, and some well-placed grit, Bachman sets his measured playing perfectly against the surging riff that drives the song. An idiot guitarist would simply have wanked out on this, achieving nothing and ruining the tune in the process.

***

-Can't You Hear Me Knocking? - Mick Taylor (The Rolling Stones)

Man, I adore the Stones, especially Keith Richards, and this is the only tune of theirs that makes it onto my list? Well, as with AC/DC, I’m talking solos here, not riffs. In the early days, Keith held down most of the lead while Brian Jones played rhthym guitar/sitar/xylophone/moroccas. With Jones’ departure, Mick Taylor was recruited from the ranks of the London blues scene.

According to one story, he left the Stones in a huff after they edited out a portion of his solo on ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’s’ ‘Time Waits For No One.’ I have the album, and, frankly, if they did edit it, they did good. You can say what you want about the Stones, but they’ve never really degenerated into instrumental wankery.

Except, ha ha, in ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ (maybe the exception that proves the rule). The song starts as a lurching raunch-rocker and turns into a latin-flavoured jam. Taylor’s playing is rough in places (he wouldn’t be a Stone if it wasn’t), but it hits the spot nicely nonetheless, and has a good, jammy, off-the-cuff feel to it.

Another well-played Taylor solo can be heard on ‘Heartbreaker.’

***

-Time - David Gilmour (Pink Floyd)

A sweeping, soulful and dramatic masterpiece from ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’ The exquisite sound of a rosewood neck stratocaster. I never tire of this solo.

***

- Lazy - Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple)

There are a couple of guitar solos in this long, groovy shuffle. Both are great, and what’s more is that almost every note is memorable, though unlike tunes like ‘Highway Star,’ Blackmore is not repeating refrains. It’s just a fast-flowing stream where virtually every note hits the mark. Brian Burke once described Pavel Bure's genius as being that he could stickhandle while skating fast. "Usually players either dipsy-doodle, or they just go fast and push the puck ahead of them; very few do both at once." Guitarists are similar, except that they usually sacrifice taste when they speed up. They just go as fast as they can, pushing a forgettable array of histrionics in front of them. In ‘Lazy,’ Blackmore stickhandles deftly at high speed.

***

-Jesus Just Left Chicago - Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top)

Nice gritty tone on the guitar in this solo, and great bluesy playing, ending in a super-cool descending refrain. From ZZ Top’s ‘Tres Hombres’ album, which I highly recommend.

***

-Baker St - Gerry Rafferty

This song has a nice little verse that takes a superb turn into something a bit darker, but what really drives it is a slow heavy progression that introduces the tune, then reappears in between the verses. There’s a brilliant sax riff that layers the progression most of the time, but later on the guitar takes over with a piercing, singing refrain. Resonant and far more muscular than 98 percent of any hard rock playing you’ll ever hear.

The thing is, this kind of stuff used to be a staple on AM radio. You could be a little kid listening to the radio and you’d hear this kind of kickass guitar on a regular basis. If you picked up a guitar yourself, this was already in your bloodstream. Another example of great guitar that was always in your face would be Lindsay Buckingham’s playing on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way.’ You can hear a snippet of that solo and know what song it is.

***

-Hotel California - Joe Walsh; Don Felder (The Eagles)

These guys are kind of a bunch of pricks, but I have to be honest and put this solo on the list. It’s a great one. Walsh and Felder trade off some great parts before joining up in a memorable double lead melody. It’s really a very good song, and playing lead guitar over well-written progressions makes for better solos. There’s no point in having the chops if you don’t have the tunes.

***

-Calling Dr. Love - Ace Frehley (Kiss)

Kiss hit the big time with their concert album 'Alive.' After that, they released a superb piece of bubblegum metal, the Bob Ezrin-produced 'Destroyer.' Putting together a credible follow up to 'Alive' was of critical importance to the band’s world domination agenda, and no expense was spared in getting 'Destroyer' right. This included getting a lot of outside help in the songwriting department, and, as Gene Simmons has recently let on, in the guitar playing department as well. Apparently, the hard-to-discipline Ace had so many run-ins with the taskmaster Ezrin that a pinch hitter was hired; a guy who once played guitar for Lou Reed.

After Destroyer came 'Rock and Roll Over,' which included 'Dr. Love.' It is a strange album, clearly intended to capitalize on post-Destroyer Kissmania in that there’s something stripped down about it, as if they were trying to keep new product moving onto the shelves before their fans grew out of puberty. It includes some very cool tunes, even if it lacks the Seventies teenage dreamworld/apocalypse ambience that the artfully-crafted Destroyer conveys so well. Nonetheless, it is still a letdown from 'Destroyer,' and a forshadowing of the largely crapless 'Love Gun,' a record that even the most naive pre-pubescent kid could see through.

Simmons, in his recent autobiography, says almost nothing about 'Rock and Roll Over,' and based on his comments about the guitar work on 'Destroyer,' I’m not sure whether to give Frehley credit for the fretwork on 'Dr. Love' or not. If it isn’t him, though, it’s at least someone paying superb tribute to him. It features some of the Frehley hallmarks--the way it opens by repeating one note for instance--and it has that Frehley staggering quality to it, made all the more sweet by the ballsy Les Paul tone. A great piece of work, set in one of the greatest trash rock songs of all time.

***

-How Soon is Now? - Johnny Marr (The Smiths)

This song by itself is enough to put the lie to any suggestion that the 1980’s were a musical writeoff. The guitar is absolutely mesmerizing throughout; if it was an instrumental it would work fine. The solo is simply an opportunity to savour Marr’s playing (I really have no idea how he gets the sounds he does) without the vocals getting in the way, though to be fair, it’s one of Morrisey’s best moments as well.

***

-Sweet Child ‘O Mine - Slash (Guns ‘n’ Roses)

The first part of this solo has a gentler, melodic feel, played with the pickup set either on the front or middle position, against a progression that acts as a kind of departure in the song. It’s not bad, but halfway through, Izzy, Duff and soon-to-be-fired-for-being-on-smack drummer Steven swing back into the chorus, Slash flicks back to the bridge humbucker, stomps on the wah wah, and, as the expression goes, gives ‘er.

***

-The Real Thing - The Edge (U-2)

During the 1980s, when hard rock guitar was degenerating into wankery, the Edge offered an alternative. Over time, he’s expanded his repertoire, but he generally eschews the blues-based string bending of the 1960s and 1970s guitar gods. Maybe U-2 saw themselves as a better fit in the punk camp, and yet the Edge is too accomplished to be a punk. His trademark is a kind of chiming, two-note drone sound that he layers to great effect over Adam Clayton’s no frills bass lines.

In 'The Real Thing,' (on the ‘Actung Baby’ album) he only goes into his chime thing near the end. I really like the way he holds back for the first four bars, letting the bass and drums carry things by themselves. Then he comes in with what I think is an e-bow. His notes are very nicely chosen.

The Edge is a great and unique guitar player. If there was a rock guitarist security council, he would be one of the five permanent members.

***

-Smells Like Teen Spirit - Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

A lot of Nirvana’s songs are built around simple, slightly off-the-wall progressions. What made Cobain great was the way he layered vocals and guitar. A good example is ‘Heart Shaped Box,’ (which also has a short but very neat guitar solo). There are a lot of hooks in Nirvana’s sound, and most of them come at the vocal level, not the riff level.

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is built around a simple but effective progression, but what makes the tune is the meandering but well-constructed melody that is placed overtop. If you listen, the progression stays the same (it ramps up heavy-wise during the ‘chorus’ part but keeps the same chords), while Cobain changes the melody three times on top of it. He had a great instinct for this. Few people do.

The solo basically just re-inforces the melody. He bends the strings to match his vocal inflections (this sets him apart from other punks...most punks don’t bend strings; it’s beneath them--or beyond them. They leave that sort of thing to the old school dinosaurs). So what you get is a heavy, string-bending solo (a la Clapton or Iommi) that takes after the song’s vocal melody (a la George Harrison). Obvious and yet unique. You can tell that he really listened to music, as well as just playing it.

***

-Erica Kane - Nash Kato (Urge Overkill)

Probably the most obscure entry on the list, a crazy little song about the American soap opera character from...what was it...All My Children? Anyway, the solo comes across like a hail of machine-gun fire.

Urge Overkill never threw the baby out with the bathwater. I’ve heard them derided for being retro, but I think it’s more accurate to say that they refused to toss out what worked simply because it wasn’t fashionable.

If the electric guitar is to survive, not simply as a fashion accessory, but as a tool for making music, we need more bands with the U.O. stubborness. And more fans with it as well.

******************************************************************

And that’s it. What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be much more of it on the way. It seems to me that most of the bands of the last decade that can actually offer guitar solos of any calibre have guitar players that are creeping through their late 30s or early 40s.

The guitar playing world seems to have settled on Jack White and a few others as its saviours, but the era of rock guitar may well be gone for good. I’d liken it to the British Empire. Just as the English dominated the world in the 19th century, rock guitar enjoyed a kind of Pax Axeana from the mid-Sixties to the the early-Eighties. And just as every empire is ruined by excess, so was the guitar empire; built substantially on ego and flash, and ruined by the same thing.

I often tire of the punk sensibility, where any hint of ability must be purged, like Pol Pot’s henchmen rounding on people with glasses because they exhibited a telltale sign of being able to read. Nonetheless, the punks have always had a point; when you put the weedling before the tune you end up with nothing. The guitar solo became such an overwrought farce that you can’t play one now without a sizeable portion of the audience writing it off as ironic, regardless of its musical merits.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s all over. To further the empire analogy, Great Britain has settled into being a good and reasonably influential nation. It just doesn’t dominate everything anymore. The same goes for the electric guitar. It still has a place, it’s just that it’s place is alongside other strains of music, not on top of them.

Nothing wrong with that.

This I like. A quote from England's 'The Guardian' on "horrible corporate rock."

"Some of the corporate rockers dress as punks, but they might as well dress as King Alfonso IV of Portugal for all the relevance it has to their music."

A story came to mind today about the heyday of the Boston Bruins. Actually, it takes place in immediate pre-heyday Bruin history.

Of course, when I say ‘heyday’ I don’t mean the era in which Don Cherry was the coach. I mean the period before that, when Harry Sindon was coach, when Bobby Orr reigned at the blueline, when Esposito crashed in on net from the left wing, one hand on the stick, the other outstretched, shielding the puck.

In the mid-Sixties, the Bruins drafted a scrappy young player named Derek Sanderson. He actually assisted on Orr’s electrifying give-and-go overtime winner against the St. Louis Blues in the 1970 Stanley Cup final. He was the ‘give’ to Orr’s ‘go.’

Anyway, when Sanderson arrived in Boston for his first training camp, he was knocked headlong by legendary tough guy defenseman Ted Green. On the next shift, Sanderson went back at Green.

“Listen kid,” said an unamused Green to Sanderson. “Here’s how things work here: I hit you. You don’t hit me.”

This story came to mind after watching Boston native Paul Celluci, the U.S. Ambassador to Ottawa, fire off his “we’re upset and dissapointed” speerch about Canada’s Iraq war decision.

This country has taken a giant middle finger from the Bush adminstration ever since Dubya got into office. And when any attempt at assertiveness is made, we are basically told “we hit you, you don’t hit us.”

Having said that, I’m not particulary sold on Chretien’s foreign policy, not that I can figure out what the hell it is. It’s just the Ambassador’s failure to recognize his own country’s contribution to the current diplomatic cold spell that irks me. (Not to mention his typical American ignorance of our contribution in past conflicts, including both World Wars, but I’ll leave that for another time.)

What is doubly tiresome is the reaction by the Canadian media to the Ambassador’s rant.

“We’re in trouble,” fussed one ‘Globe and Mail’ scribe, coming across like a kid about to wet his pants. And speaking of piss, our Premier’s brother did his usual urinating from the pages of the Vancouver Sun.

The ‘National Post’ went into hysterics. At least I think they did. They spend so much time stewing in their own red, white and blue juices that it’s hard to know when they’re really upset about something. I actually rather like the ‘Post,’ as it employs many good writers. I just can’t figure out why they insist on living in a country they clearly hate.

I like the U.S.A. I grow tired of gratuitous anti-American sentiments. But why does any alternative to that kind of thinking have to involve crapping on my own country?


______________________________________________________________________________________


My feelings are largely summed up by his article I found in the ‘Toronto Star.’

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1035779954917

I can’t quite recall exactly when, but some time ago I was sitting at a table in the Cottage Bistro with JR McClelland, Lord and Lady Mule, and M’s sister Barbara. It was during a Roadbed show. At one point, someone asked what everyone’s favorite movie was. I remember I said ‘Apocolypse Now.’

That was the wrong answer.

I don’t exactly remember what everyone else said. I do recall that Barbara said she liked ‘Point Break,’ which is a much better answer, because it’s more honest. It’s exactly the kind of film one would adopt as a favorite (and I must say I liked it in spite of myself when I caught it on television one night).

As for me, what I should have said was ‘Withnail and I.’

‘Withnail and I’ was released in the late 1980s, and I saw it in the theatre with, of all people, JR. Since then I’ve seen it a number of times. Over the past two or three years alone I must have watched it about five or six times. Everytime I see it I laugh at a different line, or a different situation. It always makes me laugh out loud.

For those who don’t know, its storyline is simple. It is late September, 1969. Two thirtyish, out-of-work actors living in London decide they need to get away for a weekend in the country. One of them, Withnail (we never learn his first name), has a rich uncle (Monty) who owns a rustic cottage in the north of England. The other, ‘I’ (we never learn his first or last name), suggests they get the key to the cottage off Uncle Monty and head north.

And that’s it.

Well, not quite. They’re a heavily-boozing pair who get into one fix after another, each of which is blown into suitably theatrical proportions, all underscored by the fact that they, as ‘I’ puts it, “have drifted into the arena of the unwell, making an enemy of our own futures.”

Not long ago JR informed me that he purchased the DVD version of the film. He watched it, and found that it depressed him. Well, it never depresses me, and not because I think I’m somehow better off than its two lead characters. On the contrary, my personality is a combination of the worse traits of each of them. I’ve matched the paranoid, overly worried demeanor of ‘I’ with the self-absorbed, bitter frustration of Withnail, with less time to spare than either. And I have the housekeeping skills of both.

If anyone has drifted into the arena of the fucking unwell and made an enemy of his future, it’s me, and yet in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I love the film more all the time.

There are a few elements of the movie that keep me coming back to it. One is the dialogue, both the writing and the delivery. I think this is where you either get the film or you don’t (and many don’t). To me, even the most innocuous line is a masterpiece. In many films, much of the dialogue is simply an exchange of banalities, meant to further the plot. In some of the best comedies, the dialogue is constantly sparkling and witty. I don’t think the dialogue of ‘W&I’ fits quite into either category. The lines work because they suggest something in the characters’ personalities that you can relate to, or which at least makes them believable.

One thing I only recently noticed about ‘W&I’ is that there are basically no female characters. I like this. Both Withnail and ‘I’ appear to have drifted into a period where they’re spending too much time in male company. Some us have been there.

My dad used to tell me that looking for a job when you’re unemployed is difficult because “no one wants to hire you when you’re not working. They only want you if you already have a job. They always want to steal you off some other bugger.”

When it comes to relationships, women are like employers. They look for gaps in your resume. Our two lead characters are on the verge of being, romantically speaking, chronically unemployable.

(ahem)

The absence of women, and the presence of characters like the doped-up pseudo-philosopher Danny, underscores the fucked-up maleness of this movie. Is this something unique? Well, maybe not, but it’s done very well, and in a world of ‘Sex in the City’ chickfare, it’s as refreshing as a pint of ale and a quadruple whiskey.

The opening scene of ‘Withnail and I’ is set against a version of 'Whiter Shade of Pale,' performed by the late tenor sax guru King Curtis. The background music is one of the best things about the film. Actually, there are long stretches without music at all, and I love that too. But when music does come in, it is to maximum effect.

After the opening number, there is virtually nothing musical until Hendrix’s heavy but wistful ‘All Along the Watchtower’ cuts in as the lads head out of London in their beat-up Jag. Hendrix, in fact, bookends the lads’ excusion to the north country; on the way back we get the crashing intro to ‘Voodoo Chile,’ heralding a once-more-into-the-breach run down the motorway with a pissed Withnail at the wheel. In between, there is a piece of original soundtrack, a sweet, calming melody that hints at melancholy. We hear variations of it troughout the film, evocative and nicely placed.

The setting of Uncle Monty’s litttle northern cottage is perhaps my favorite thing about ‘Withnail & I.’ In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day,’ there is a passage where the main character sets out on a drive across England. He is a serious, repressed butler named Stevens, and at one point, in his travel diary, he notes what he finds most appealing about the English countryside:

“....if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.”

I suppose we are meant to laugh a little at Stevens, but I’ve been all over England, including the north, and I actually think he’s onto something.

For all of 'Withnail & I’s misadventure and melancholy, there is also a calmer, underlying sense of pleasure and beauty. There is good food, there is booze. There is friendship, with all of the peculiarities of individual personalities that come with it. There is the beauty of nature, and the beauty of youth.

I think that’s what I like most about it, more than the angst and hijinx. Just the reminder that there are a few good things in life that are just there for the taking.




**************************************************************************************




There is a developing tradition around the viewing of ‘Withnail and I.’ I don’t think I’m the only one who practices it. That is, you have to have a drink or two while watching it. It’s kind of like getting dressed up to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show (not that I’ve ever seen that film....and do people still get dressed up for it?).

I’d suggest following the Withnail staple of slinging back a strong shot of hard liquor, accompanied by a nice, luxurious pint of some English ale.

And whatever you do, don’t water down your shot of gin or whiskey or rum by mixing it with pop (and no lighter fluid either).

Why?

Because I don’t advise it.



Chin-chin.

“Like all rich people, Keith lived in fear of being exploited.”

Tony Sanchez, “Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.”




The Ganges River originates in the Himalayan foothills in north-central India, and flows roughly south-east for about twelve hundred miles, emptying into the Bay of Bengal near Calcutta and Bangladesh in a massive, hydra-like delta known as ‘The Mouths of the Ganges.’ Along the way, approximately halfway between New Delhi and Calcutta, sits the city of Varanasi.

Varanasi is the holiest city in the Hindu religion. It is roughly to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam or Jerusalem is to Christianity. It contains, officially, about a million people, but Indian cities always seem to consist of a large number of ‘unofficial’ people. Varanasi’s proximity to the sacred Ganges is what gives it its significance.

I arrived there by train early in the morning, about six or so. The town stretches back from the banks of the Ganges like New Westminster does from the Fraser, except unlike New Westminster the land stays flat. The Ganges is about as wide as the Fraser. The oldest part of the town is near the river, a labyrinthine maze of narrow, twisting streets and exotic, Indiana Jones-like midaeval buildings.

The train station is about a couple of miles from the shore. I had read about a guest house, right down on the shore of the Ganges, that was noted for being reasonable and reliable. I decided to walk. I would have had to haggle for a motor-rickshaw, and the negotiating that seemed to be part of every frigging transaction was wearing me out.

I was also getting the distinct impression that I was something of a walking dollar sign. A few weeks earlier, in the western town of Jaisalmer, I had paid a kid about five rupees after he guided me to a hotel. I saw him the next day, and he recognized me.

“Five rupees to walk down that street,” he said as I wandered down a little alleyway. He ran after me.

“Five rupees to look at that building.”

Things got wose in New Delhi. After being swarmed by shoeshine boys day after day, I finally relented, figuring that once I got my footwear polished they would lay off. The next day a kid came up to me, telling me he’d shine my shoes for two rupees.

“I had them shined yesterday,” I said trumping him. “I don’t need them shined.”

“They don’t look shined,” he said, shaking his head. “I can do a better job.”

“No no no. They’re perfectly fine.”

“They’re still very dirty. I use special polish. I’ll make them look much better.”

This went on for a few exasperating minutes, with the kid running beside me the whole time.

“Look,” I said to him finally. “They’re fine the way they are. I like them the way they are.”

“You like them the way they are?”

“Yes.”

“You like them like that?”

“Yes.”

“You like them dirty?”

“Yes,” I sighed wearily.

“For two rupees,” he said with a smile, “I can make them dirtier.”

Getting right down to the shore of the Ganges may not have been possible by rickshaw in any case. There was a huge crush of people coming back along the main road from the river, even at the early hour. In fact, the early morning is a busy time, as many people bathe in the river at first light. There was also a major Hindu festival going on. I got down there by foot, and found the place I wanted.

That night, I sat on the roof of the guest house with a small cadre of travellers, looking down on the murky silhouette of the Ganges. There was a very beautiful girl from Naples; she had darkish skin but blue eyes, who said that the guesthouse was "verry seeemple but verrry goood.” There were a few standoffish English people. There were two haggard forty-something Austrian guys who spent chemical summers in Khatmandu and relatively non-toxic winters in India (“we come down here to cleanse our systems,” said one of them to me), and a guy from Montreal, happily the only Canadian I met in India, who was carting around an accoustic guitar that he scarcely how to play. He was French, and though he knew a bit of Pink Floyd, he asked me to show him some other songs. I chose 'Come Together,' by the Beatles, intending no significance; it was the only one that came to mind.

And then, as it got very dark, an enchanting event unfolded. Imagine the Illuminaires festival at Trout Lake. Then multiply all the laterns you would see there by ten or twenty or thirty times. Then imagine all of them being placed on tiny rafts or floats, and set adrift on a river in the dark. That’s what happened. They looked like a flowing constellation of stars, some big, some small, making their way past the shadowy shores of a very ancient and exotic city.

In the morning I would get up early. My room was on the ground floor, and it had it’s own shower, which was a bit of a luxury. I would go up to the roof, and hang out until this local kid, apparently known as ‘the boy,’ would show up and take orders for breakfast.

I had been in the country for a while, and knew enough to order ‘black tea,’ as opposed to ‘tea,’ which would in fact get me a cup of chai, the milky, sugary version of tea common in India. I learned that if you wanted toast, you asked for ‘toastbutterjam,’ so that you would get something to put on the toast as well as the toast itself.

I didn’t order omelettes or eggs of any kind, out of a sort of respect for the proprietors, who were clearly vegitarian. They offered omelettes as part of the unofficial menu, but seemed uncomfortable about making them. I decided to be a vegetarian for the time I was in the city, and it seemed, along with the fact that I didn’t smoke pot, to endear me to the owners of the guest house.

I spent a number of days in Varanasi, generally wandering around by the river, through the old town, and simply sitting on the roof, soaking the sun and observing all the activity below me.

Much of it centred around the ghats. A ghat is a series of steps leading right down into the river; the bottom steps are actually under the water. There are bathing ghats and burning ghats. Burning ghats are the sites of cremations. Bodies are burned at the edge of the river and the ashes usually scattered into the Ganges.

The purpose of fire is to cleanse the soul on the way to heaven. The bodies of young children are not burned as they are deemed to be pure already. I took a ride on a little rowboat one day at dawn, and was stunned to see the body of a dead baby boy float past the boat.

In the boat with me were a middle-aged English couple. The man was so complete a caricature of the pompous Englishman that it hardly seemed possible that he even existed. His wife wore tan fatigues and a pith helmet. Back on the banks of the river, we numbly dug into our pockets to pull out a couple of hundred rupees or so for the boatman. I wasn’t sure if we had given him enough.

“We just paid him the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average person in this country,” said the English man protested to me. “Oh, I don’t care,” he then shrugged. “Pay him what you want.”

A day later I was heading out. I figured I’d go to Darjeeling, up in the Himalayan foothills. I asked the owner of the guesthouse how to get to the train station. He gave me directions.

“You’ll have to get a motorickshaw,” he said. I asked him how much I should pay, telling him that Indian motorickshaw drivers seemed to be getting the better of me.

“About ten rupees,” he said. “Maybe twelve at the most. If you want, I can send the boy with you to negotiate.”

I sheepishly told him no thanks. I made my way through the maze of old town streets to a plaza full of taxis and rickshaws, and found one to take me to the station.

I paid twelve rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents. I was pleased with myself that had I paid no more.

I went to a ‘conference’ for work the other day. This one wasn’t in L.A. or New Orleans, but it did have an exotic element to it; it was at the Sutton Place Hotel, formerly known as the Hotel Meridien.

The last time I was in there was when I had a summer job there as a ‘houseboy,’ a job procured for me by Rob ‘Mule’ Hughes. I wandered up to where we worked---the mezzanine-level fitness club once called ‘Spa Sante,’ now merely known as ‘Le Spa.’ It brought back the proverbial flood of memories: mopping up the Quebec Premier’s wet footprints...sweeping up Zamfir’s hair in the little salon. The Mule did better than me, helping Jodie Foster find the elevator, and fetching a toilet plunger for Kelly McGillis.

What’s that, you say? The rich shit?

Yes, they do. In fact, I recalled the story Mr. Mule told me about how he once had to scoop a piece of excrement out of a crowded Spa Sante swimming pool.

“No one seemed to care,” explained a perplexed Mule, “they just kept frolicking around in the crap-infested water.”

The spa was a swank place. As I mentioned there was a pool and a hair salon. There was also a weight room, massage room, suntan beds, whirpool and sauna. Mule and I were the ‘housemen.’ The staff also included a gaggle of estheticians, each one as luscious as the next. One of them, a delectable blonde called Teresa, once bared her breasts for the Mule.

I was not so lucky, though the thirtysomething masseuse offered to give me a massage after I complimented her on her tidiness. The offer went right over my head. The obtuseness that is my hallmark was with me even then.

I quit the job in a fit of rage after a disagreement with the den mother, Maryanne. On my first day, I had been warned by the Persian beautician Fawzia that Maryanne was “a totale beeeetch.” Eventually, I came to the same conclusion (though of course I would never use such language to describe a lady).

Sigh.

Anyway, after the conference I headed to Burnaby to do a bit of recording with J.R. He has to be the only guy in the world whose mother buys ‘Guitar One’ magazine. Later on I stopped by my dad’s place. He was switching back and forth between a Canucks game and ‘Law and Order.’ Only a crime drama could pull even with a hockey game in his house.

“Mark Crawford will not have time to savour this win,” said the announcer. “He’ll have to prepare his team for the next game. It will be a big one.”

“Why?” I asked my dad. “Who do they play next.”

“I don’t know....the Badgers or something.”

“The Badgers?”

“I don’t know,” he groaned again. “I don’t know half these teams. Like these guys ...Atlanta Thrashers...I didn’t even know they had a team.”

“Yeah,” I said, “They’ve been around a couple of years. Curt Fraser used to be their coach.”

“Oh yeah,” said my dad. The T.V. picture got a bit fuzzy at that point.

“Sometimes I get a bad picture on this channel,” he explained. He whacked the remote across his knee.

I pondered this. Does hitting the remote help the picture? Or is this a symptom of encroaching old age? Getting up to hit the T.V. is too much of a chore, so taking it out on the remote has to suffice.

My dad might have made a good Spa Sante houseboy. He would have been better able to put the elite in their place.

He once told me of how the King visited Canada when he was a little kid. His father, noting little Angus’ excitement over the impending royal visit, commented dryly that the royals were nothing special: “they have to go to the bathroom just like you do.”

“That did it for me,” said my dad. “All the mystique was gone after that.”

The thing is, it was not the blueblood clientelle who were the stars at Spa Sante, it was our dazzling array of co-workers.

If I could slow down the world, things would not come clear too late.

Time for some housecleaning.

No, I don’t mean literally...ha ha ha...

I mean writing wise.... Here’s something.... A while ago I tried to devise a list of Office Manager Personality Types, based on English monarchs. I gave up; who the hell would relate to it?

Anyway, here’s how far I got:

Richard Lionheart - Often absent manager whose very absense contributes ironically to an unearned reputation for administrative ability.

Prince John - Meddling middle-manager who usurps authority from legitimate but often absent senior manager.

Sheriff of Nottingham - Ambitious but low-level supervisor who increases clout by executing unpopular decrees of a more senior manager.

Richard III - Sociopathic manager who uses any means necessary to climb to the top.

Henry VIII - Manager who disguises his/her flaws by repeatedly firing those around him/her.

Charles I - Manager who stands by convictions in face of a changing organization. Often ends up getting the axe.

Charles II - Lacksadaisical manager who takes just enough action at key times to keep everyone happy.

George III - Manager whose entire reputation and/or career is tarnished by one glaring mistake or wrong move.

Elizabeth I - Wise manager who presides over an organization of creative, prospering staff.

Elizabeth II - Nice manager hampered by disfunctional staff.

It seems like every few months or so we get a little blurb by one of the resident asshole scribes in The Georgia Straight or The Nerve about how the uptight local building inspectors are keeping us all from having a good time with their stupid rules about overcrowding in clubs.

Well, it looks like we’re not the only city with this problem. Civic officials in Chicago evidently don’t know how to party either, ordering the E2 nightclub not to use its second floor because it violated a number of buiding code regulations. The owners of E2, apparently concerned about their town wearing a ‘No Fun City’ label, decided to defy the order, and in a stampede to the exits---triggered after a few shots of pepper spray we’re fired---twenty-one clubgoers are now dead.

It will be interesting to see whether our own oxygen-deprived music press learn anything from this.

I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been afraid to so much as spit on the sidewalk these days for fear that it might “send the wrong message” to the Olympic bid selection committee. We can’t hold a vote or it will “send the wrong message.” We can’t debate the bid or it will “send the wrong message.”

Well fuck that.

When’s the last time the Olympic organization, with it’s bribe-taking officials, fixed judges and doped up ‘athletes’ worried about sending the wrong message?

I was initially dismissive of the Mayor’s plebiscite. It was conceived, without a doubt, as a means of patching differences within his newly-adopted party; a way to appease the anti-Olympic faction in COPE without encumbering the mayor with a potentially damaging ‘spoilsport’ label at election time. It’s frankly not much different from Gordon Campbell conjuring his land claim referendum to avoid alienating the redneck vote. The concept of referenda, far from furthering democracy, is increasingly and cynically being used by political organizations as a tool, or more specifically a valve, to keep their ranks from fracturing under pressure.

Having said that, I’m starting to relish the idea of having a say in this thing. I have two basic problems with the Olympic bid.

First, after spending the better part of two decades building leaky, sopping junk, our town’s developers (and Gordon Cambpell was once one of them) are lined up for a feast at the trough in the form of Olympic construction contracts. Supplying the money will be the federal and provincial governments, both of whom have offered little more than a giant middle finger to owners of shabbily-constructed condominiums and homes.

Second, if we accept the premise that events like the Olympics represent an opportunity to showcase Vancouver to the world, should we not then question whether this particular event represents the best bang for our advertising buck?

Why not spend some money over a period of years on selection of events and festivals? The City of Montreal and the Quebec provincial government pay good money to attract excellent talent to that city’s comedy and jazz festivals, both recognized to be among the best in the world. Hong Kong hosts the annual Rugby Sevens tournament. Edinburgh has its Fringe Festival. All these events are yearly advertisements for their host cities; annual tourists draws. Not one-time-only events.

Still, I haven’t quite made up my mind...

* * *

I saw an article in a music publication the other day, stating that Avril Lavigne’s songwriting team had been signed to a new contract.

The thing is, if Avril Lavigne “writes her own stuff,” as her Vancouver-based manager Terry McBride has said (and as she often maintains), then why does her songwriting team need a new contract? Indeed, why does she have a songwriting team at all?

I have nothing against little Avril, and I don’t care if she didn’t write her songs. Elvis Presley didn’t write his own songs either, and that didn’t stop people from calling him the ‘King of Rock and Roll.”

But the spin involved in all of this pretty much sums up the rancid, politicized nature of popular music. McBride wants to sell Avril as an anti-Britney; a do-it-yourself rocker. He also knows that 90 percent of Avril’s audience, or for that matter 90 percent of those reading interviews with him, will not bother to check songwriting credits on her records. So why not just lie about it?

How long before this guy takes over from Gordon Campbell as Premier?

* * *

One of the more ridiculous hallmarks of the local music scene is the proliferation of rock bands who pretend to take the piss out of the music they’re playing. The hipsters in the audience laugh at the cheese on stage, though one suspects they’d rather be listening it than to whatever the local university station deems vital.

Surely this is an onerous way to exist. If everyone just liked what they liked without looking over their shoulders or disguising it in irony we’d all have more fun, and we’d likely end up with a less constricted musical enviroment.




Happy Valentine’s Day.

It occured to me, while watching Johnette Napolitano at the Commodore last weekend, that it was utterly refreshing to finally see a real woman on stage for a change.

Of course there are plenty of chai house vixens and dance divas and gurrrl ‘rockers’ to choose from, but they’re all mostly just different kinds of pop tarts, some with more icing, some with more jam. What we see less and less of are the likes of Janice Joplin, Chrissie Hynde, Tracy Chapman or even P.J Harvey. I’m not saying they’re not out there, but they have as much chance, say, of conscription into Terry McBride's pantry of McMuffins as I do.

At one point during last weekend’s show, Napolitano and her band Concrete Blonde played Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows.’ Cohen’s version is an art-house staple; it has a European flavour, sung by him in his dry pseudo-monotone. Napolitano makes it a full-out rocker. She delivers the verses with more menace and sarcasm than Cohen, and belts out the choruses with such exhilarating elan that Friday’s crowd let out a spontenous roar in mid-song. Her version simply has more balls.

It is the touch of the masculine in Napolitano that makes her all the more believably feminine. The audience, an equal mix of male and female, seemed starved of this kind of thing.

She is also a virtuoso vocalist; I can’t think of a better female singer in rock. Together with co-Blonde James Mankey---whose guitar playing nicely combines muscle and elegance---they put on a great display of chops.

This is another thing you don’t see much of. The ability to play; not show off or wank, mind you, but simple, considered, technical musical flair. Chops are viewed by the ‘in crowd’ in this town’s scene with the same suspicion as a university education in Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

No doubt this is due to the old ‘anyone can do it’ punk posture. But what exactly is it is that anyone can do? Play poorly? Yes, anyone can do that. But even writing and playing a great punk song is no mean feat. I mean, the Ramones and Sex Pistols were both as tight as a spring. The disparagement of craft is stupid, and it writes off most of the best music ever made.

Concrete Blonde were never quite punks. They emerged from the same Los Angeles music scene that threw up Wall of Voodoo and X, and like those bands are not so easy to pin down. They're more mainstream and riff-rocking than their contemporaries, but were not disparaged for it in their hometown. Indeed, their biggest hit, “Joey,” is a tribute to Wall of Voodoo guitarist Marc Morland.

I’ve always liked them, because to me they represent everything a band could be. Heavy (‘Bloodletting’) without being ponderous; riffing (‘God is a Bullet’) without being metal; punk (‘Still in Hollywood’) without being a tiresome fucking poser; melodic (‘Caroline’) without being too syrupy. All put together in a simple three-piece unit.

They possess style without affectation; they have an unposturing confidence. The simple pleasure they seemed to get from playing their music, and playing it well, left me inspired to believe that this is what matters most. And if that's the case, then in a sense, anyone can really do it.

I happened to hear Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on the radio the other day. I hadn’t heard it for a while....it’s a cool song. What I especially like is the middle instrumental part---full of drama and turmoil---that climaxes with a single sustained guitar note. That note strikes me as a musical beacon of sorts, signifying a new dawn, or a way out. It takes the song back into the final verse, and the final resolution.... “and then we started to fly.”

When I was in junior high school there was a girl a year older than me---I didn’t know her, just heard about her---who killed herself by jumping off a freeway overpass. Apparently a bunch of guys had phoned her one night and told her that they had decided that she was the ugliest girl in school.

I’ve known a few other people (or known of a few other people) over the years who have done themselves in. A couple of guys in high school hanged themselves. My cousin’s fiance killed himself. A guy at work who I didn’t really know killed himself (in fact I’m not sure if I ever met him, I just heard a story about how he showed up at work one day and was unusually serene, and was dead by his own hand shortly after).

Suicide is kind of a taboo subject, yet it features fairly prominently in human storytelling, usually as a defiant way out. The Jews on Masada, Romeo and Juliet, Thelma and Louise.

So how come we glorify it on one hand, and condemn it on the other?

I think the reason people fear it is because it is in many ways the ultimate weapon. Someone who is ready to kill themselves has nothing to lose, and that makes them dangerous. Take any murder/suicide situation you can think of. L’ecole Polytechnique, Columbine. Without the willingness to die, the willingness to kill may well not have been there.

The Catholic church countered the suicide-as-weapon idea by making it a cardinal sin. Kill youself and you forfeit salvation. Radical Islam, ingeniously and diabolically, has reversed that notion. Kill yourself in the service of your religion, and you guarantee youself the sweetest possible afterlife.

I just finished reading a piece by Noam Chomsky on how we have nothing to fear from Saddam Hussein, even if he does have ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ because his using them would be suicide. So the real weapon is not the weapon, it’s the suicidal impulse. This was also the premise of the Mutual Assured Destruction theory that held sway during the Cold War. If one side attacks, they will be destroyed. Therefore they won’t attack. All of these theories become useless once you throw the possibility of a suicidal leader (eg. Hitler) into the mix.

I’ve always been disturbed by teen suicide. For one thing, kids sometimes attempt (and succeed at) suicide to get attention. But killing yourself to get attention is a flawed concept. As Freddy Mercury wryly advised in one of his songs, “nobody gives a damn.” People have to get on with their own lives. The other thing is that the ‘solution’ is arrived at in the absense of any perspective. Kids don’t know how young they are, and how quickly things can change.

Or that sometimes things change over time.

Recently I came across the story of a musician named Danny Gatton.

Gatton, according to a biographer, was a guitarist who “explored a musical backwater of his own invention.” He referred to his music as “redneck jazz.” He was short, pudgy and self-effacing, the antithesis of the typical rock star. Nonetheless, he toiled away in the Baltimore/D.C. area for most of his life. He gradually came to the attention of other players, and made a few independent records. His perseverence paid off when became “one of the first, perhaps the first act in what can loosely be called rock music to make his major-label debut at age forty-six.”

Holy cow.

It didn’t really work out; he was “not a product of major-label culture.” Nonetheless, to invent your own scene, get a brief stint in the big leagues, then go back to making independent records as you approach the age of 50 is no mean feat. Today young players cite him as an influence, and you can even buy a Danny Gatton signature model Telecaster guitar.

A perfect example of the no hope misfit who hung in there.

Well....maybe not.

He killed himself with a shotgun just after his 49th birthday.

Imagine if you will the cast of ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ Now try to picture Mrs. Howell. Try to envision her neatly pressed slacks, her modestly elegant shoes, her selection of blouses, her dyed short blonde hair.

Now imagine what she would look like if she had Mr. Howell’s face.

Got it?

Good. You now know what my grade seven teacher, Mrs. Hunter, looked like.

I thought of Mrs. Hunter on Christmas eve. I had gone to my dad’s place, and was about to turn in around midnight, but decided on a round of T.V. surfing. To my delight, I came across the 1951 classic ‘Scrooge’ just as it was starting.

‘Scrooge’ is a black and white British film that features Alastair Sim in the title role. There is a colourized version out there, courtesy of that jackass Ted Turner, but it is to be avoided. Charles Dickens’ tale is full of ghosts and spectres, and works better in stark, etherial black and white than when laden with the kind of pastel shades you would expect to find in some womens’ clothing store in Brentwood Mall.

I’ve seen the movie a few times. I’m always on the lookout for it around Christmas, mainly because of Mrs. Hunter. Just before the holidays she read ‘A Christmas Carol’ to the class. She didn’t read to us all that much. She generally left that task to the school librarian, Mrs. Lafavour.

Mrs. Hunter arranged her classes in boy-girl-boy-girl seating plans (I was placed directly behind class supervixen Sandra Ackland, which was a mixed blessing). She liked art, but scorned pictures with the colour green in them (purple was her favorite). She insisted her students adhere to the MacLean’s method of handwriting.

She was, on the whole, not to be messed with. When she read ‘A Christmas Carol’ we all listened intently. Each word was delivered with the benifit of decades of practice. Unlike Mrs. Lafavour, who seemed to be perpetually auditioning for a role in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Mrs. Hunter emphasized only what needed emphasis. She applied theatrical tones sparingly and to maximum effect. She was an old pro.

After reading the novel, she let us in on a secret. There was a movie of the book that we could watch that was actually very good. Usually movies weren’t as good as books, and while one was better off reading Dickens’ story directly, one couldn’t go wrong watching this particular film. It was called ‘Scrooge,’ it starred a guy name Alastair Sim, and it was so good that Mrs. Hunter had been known to reschedule her Christmas dinners in order to watch it.

I remember catching Roger Ebert on T.V. once, trying to convince his viewers to see the film ‘Eve’s Bayou.’ He was pulling out all the stops; it was a great, important, heartwarming film...blah blah blah. Have I ever seen the movie? No.

But I watched ‘Scrooge’ the first chance I got. Ebert needs a Mrs. Hunter as a sidekick. If she told you to watch ‘Eve’s Bayou,’ you’d be down at the video store in about five seconds.

‘Scrooge’ is a short film, about 90 minutes long. It’s nicely paced, yet is full of flourish and detail. Alastair Sim is not a household word now, yet in his day he was one of the best the British theatre had to offer. He is, to paraphrase Tiny Tim, the best Scrooge ever.

I like the character of Scrooge. His behaviour is perplexing to others, but to him it is a necessary defense mechanism. Rolling Stones’ hanger on Tony Sanchez once said of Keith Richards that “like all rich people, he lived in fear of being expoited.” Before you judge Scrooge, try taking a trip to a place like India, and see how long it takes before you are haggling doggedly over cab fares and rickshaw rides, always against a backdrop of utter poverty, even though the sums in question add up to nickles and dimes once they’re converted from rupees to dollars.

The story of Scrooge continues to resonate partly because Scrooge’s society is essentially recognizeable. The industrial revolution has taken place, and Scrooge has gained wealth not from priviledge or title, but because he’s hard working and ambitious. The people around him are of the burgeoning middle classes, to use a stock history book phrase. The world of commerce in which Scrooge makes his living seems almost unchanged; buyouts, takeovers, alliances. Indeed, Scrooge and his business partner, Jacob Marley, rise to financial power after the principals in their company commit fraud. Enron, circa 1843.

Dickens’ Scrooge, though extreme, is not the goofy caricature of Canadian Tire commercials. His 'scroogeness’ was not always with him; he was once young, engaged, in many ways unrecognizeable from what he became later. But, as often happens with people, he drifted into a pattern of behaviour caused by his reaction to events and circumstances. The trips we take throught the past, present and future are meant to convey a transition. Scrooge’s estrangement from society came in bits and pieces; his behavior causing isolation, his isolation reinforcing the behavior.

“God Bless us, every one,” is perhaps the most memorable line in ‘A Cristmas Carol,’ yet the story seems more secular than religious. There’s even something pagan (or maybe new age) about Scrooge being visited by a series of ghosts. The first is the ghost of the tormented Jacob Marley. Like Scrooge, Marley lived a life in isolation, always on the defense. On his deathbed, he summons Scrooge, and implores him to save himself. Marley has realized their mistake, but Scrooge was not yet ready to listen. When we see Marley’s ghost, anguished and weighed down by chains, he is not suffering a punishment delivered by God, but rather one brought upon himself. His chains are those of regret and remorse.

Alastair Sim is particularly fun to watch during the scene where Scrooge wakes up from his long succession of nightmares. He realizes he’s still got a chance at redemption, and bounds around like a child. The look of the film beautifully reflects the new dawn. Scrooge’s long, harrowing Christmas eve seems mostly dark. Christmas morning, by contrast, is vivid and bright.

In a sense, Scrooge’s redemption would not be as magnificent had he not wasted so many years. One can almost see him sitting next to Danny Bonaduce and Charlie Sheen on Oprah, telling her “I regret nothing, because everything I’ve done in my past has brought me to this point.” Scrooge is like Team Canada in the 1972 series against the Russians; the exhilaration of winning would not have been as potent had they not fucked up the first half of the series and the first two-thirds of the final game.

Of course, in hockey it doesn’t really matter if you wasted most of a game or a series. If you win, you win. Life is different. Once you’ve thrown away youth and time they’re gone, no matter what kind of comeback you pull off later. For all its hope and salvation, the story of Scrooge is a still a cautionary tale. Mrs. Hunter may have been right to make it a cornerstone of the school year, but the problem is, children don’t believe it can happen to them. Time is the last thing they worry about.

Perhaps she figured that her students would come back to the story later in life if she impressed it upon them firmly enough. Like great records, her lessons made sense over time. There were occasions when Mrs. Hunter herself seemed pretty Scrooge-like, but on reflection she was more like Scrooge’s ghosts; scary as hell, but usually right.