Darkness and Promise

THE REASON I, and no doubt legions of other no-longer-boys staring down hairloss and paunchiness, am so excited about this ridiculous new Springsteen box thing is that it chronicles the Turning Point in the man's classic oeuvre.

Simply: there is a transition in every man's life from Born to Run to Darkness on the Edge of Town, a time when, suddenly, the rah-rah defiance of Born gives way to the crushing weight of Real Life. “No Surrender” and “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” still mean something, they still rouse the spirit every time they're played, but it becomes a matter of nostalgia, whereas Darkness etches a place that has become much more familiar to him, a compromised existence -- “trouble in the heartland” -- that wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he was still young and girlcrazy and half certain he ejaculated rocket fuel. But there he is.

Make no mistake, he's still aflame with a desire to go out at night and find out what he's got, maybe more than ever before, but he's a little worried about what he might find. The confidence and certainty are gone. All he knows for sure are the love and faith that make getting up in the morning possible.


SONY IS PROBABLY the best of the majors when it comes to putting together these sorts of massive packages – maybe from all their experience cashing in on Miles' legacy – so I have no doubt that the box is worth delving into. But what seems more intriguing to me (and less likely to result in darkness in the middle of my wallet) is The Promise, the stand-alone double-album worth of material that didn't make the cut for inclusion on Darkness way back in 1978. This is the stuff, universally lauded as album-worthy, that Springsteen trimmed away to reveal the darkness of Darkness. This is the stuff deemed extraneous. You get the sense that there's plenty to be gleaned from these tailings, a sort of shadow version of the man's/America's mentality circa '77-'78.


SPRINGSTEEN IS A tough sell among a certain demo, mostly because the boomers think they own him. That makes it hard for some to think of him as possessing currency. But the fact is they own him like I own him, which is to say not at all. But it can be tempting, can't it, to look at the details of what an artist has produced, to feel a kinship, a recognition, and to declare yours the only generation who'll truly get it. “You had to be there.” Bullshit. Show me a time, a place, populated by people who didn't, at one time or another, seeth with the urge “to spit in the face of these badlands.”

But at work there's a crappy version of “Merry Christmas, Baby” in rotation, calling to my coworkers' minds the vision of a hunch-shouldered and pandering Bruce, grinning and beaming, dancing with Courtney Cox, hamming it up with Clarence. So when I express admiration in the face of such evidence of lameness, eyes roll. That's fine. I start up conversations with the older guys coming in to lay down their $100 for the thing, they smile and shake their heads and then they take it home and watch the DVDs alone, listen to the CDs alone, wives elsewhere, uninterested, kids scoffing. If I had the spare money, I'd do the same.


PICK A CLICHE and it fits me like a pair of size 11 Blundstones. The “writer” working retail. The father of three rushing headlong toward a midlife something. The jazz fan who thinks “if people would only give it a chance...” The white guy in plaid shirts who thinks Bruuuuce! a kind of demigod. But all I know is this: there are works of art, cultural artifacts, that seem to warp the very air around them, that hum and glow, overshadowing lesser works, speaking to something vital or unassailable. These things make so many of your other things seem worthless, trivial, unworthy of the space they occupy. Springsteen is, it seems to me, the author of several such works, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, and I welcome the chance to spy on the process of creating such a work that these two (undeniably cash-grabby) releases offer me. Call me curious. Call me a sucker. Call me old. I don't mind a bit.

1989

In 1989 I was 13 years old and just becoming politicized. I wasn't a militant young black man, but what I gleaned from PE was that there were things worth changing, and the possibility existed that we just might change them. We were going to create racial equality, harmony, understanding, tolerance. We were going to cure AIDS, eliminate hunger, colonize space, save the damn planet. The fuck happened?

Musically, holy shit -- pick a style, let me point to a seminal (or at least important, or at the very least "pretty damn good") album released that year. How about Full Moon Fever, 3 Feet High and Rising, Doolittle, Raw Like Sushi, The Stone Roses, Bleach, The Real Thing, Margin Walker and Paul's Boutique?

I don't want to fawn over what then held cache and now looks hopelessly kitschy ("the hair was funny! the pants were big!"), but try to remember what it felt like to be alive then (if applicable). It was naive and fresh and fun. We were smack in the middle of the Golden Age of Rap. Nobody had died since John Lennon. Am I remembering this right? The goddamned Berlin Wall fell! Communism was totally on its last legs. And even if the notion that The People made it happen turned out to be a romantic exaggeration (cf: Bulgarian blue jeans, heavy debt loads, inept leadership, wasteful and redundant systems... any of this sound startlingly familiar?), it sure felt like the future was a ripe oyster eager to split itself open and reveal to us, the youth, its slick and shiny treasure.

Ha ha!

Seasons Change

Suddenly gone are days at the beach and driving open-windowed, even the days of backyard apple harvesting have passed me by, and what remains is the inevitability of frost. The leaves here are kaleidoscopic and the air's got that tangy bite most days. All of this signals a change in music, of course. It's not as cut-and-dried as digging a box of sweaters and woolens out of the crawlspace, but somehow, what feels right just changes.

Just in time comes a new Walkmen album, Lisbon. Nice; almost like they planned it that way. You and Me is still necessary listening anytime I'm driving around town alone on a cool night. My hand gravitates toward it every time, without fail. There's just the right ratio of bluster to stillness on that record, and every bit of me wanted the new record to retain that feel. It does, mostly. There's a tad bit less introspection, a bit more, well, joy, but this being the Walkmen, it's tinted at the edges, the incoming rot, the sense of temporariness in the happiness that, if I'm being honest, I'd have to say feels true to how I experience happiness. It always feels conditional. I have a black, black heart.

What else? Destination: Out! posted some seriously crazy Masabumi Kikuchi shit that made my wife physically uncomfortable last night while we both shuffled around the kitchen. A bit like the polar opposite to the Walkmen, but worth mentioning, perhaps. It felt autumnal because it wasn't sunny West Coast comfyjazz.

Sooner or later I'll probably dig out the Philip Glass, too. Because I'm deep, deep into my rut now. Before long my kids will lament my reliability. "Shit, it's fall. Dad's gonna drag out that Dracula music."

Don't Give Up On Us

I REMEMBER having a conversation with a friend one night in a noisy, crowded club, the sort of place I can’t imagine stomaching now, though back then it was something akin to a natural habitat. I knew this friend and I shared musical tastes – in fact it was a time in my life where that was pretty much a prerequisite to friendship. Now it seems to have been replaced by a need to find people with young children, like my wife and I do. That’s the fucked up way that your life determines your relationships. Anyway, this friend and I somehow started talking about the Replacements, I think because I’d been telling him about a course on the history of popular music I was taking at university, an elective outside my regular course of study in history (though for me the two were, and remain, very much connected of course, popular music sitting squarely in the pocket of my personal theory of cultural history, which I’d be happy to elaborate upon over a beer, if you’re interested). I had a paper to write, and I think I was telling him that I was thinking about make the ‘Mats the focus of that paper. I can’t fully replicate the conversation – some of it is lost to memory, other parts of it I never heard in the first place, buried as they were beneath rivers of bass and wailing treble (remember the setting) – but I do know with absolute certainty that we discovered a deep common love of Westerberg and Co., and I know that my friend said this: “The Replacements helped me survive high school.”


I GUESS I EXPECTED, if indeed I ever really thought about it, that songs like “I’m in Trouble” and “Bastards of Young” and “Here Comes a Regular” and “Can’t Hardly Wait” and would mean less to me by the time I hit my early-mid-thirties. I anticipated outgrowing the mix of crushing doubt, intense desire and unsubtle antipathy which supply the lifeblood of the Replacements’ music by the time I was married, had a child and a mortgage in a place geographically (if not spiritually) removed from the sodium-lit streets of my upbringing. So why do I need those songs now more than ever? Is it a simple, and paralyzingly depressing case of an early-midlife crisis?

Look, I’m ripe for depression these days. There’s no sense denying that. We moved to a new town last year and the truth is I haven’t taken to it so well just yet. It was a big change, and we were primed for it, sincerely hopeful. I also kind of felt like I had pretty well scotched things in Ottawa, why not try someplace new? And Peterborough is a good place, a nice town. But I haven’t really settled in yet, haven’t met anybody, haven’t joined anything. I stay at home with our daughter, take her to the library, the YMCA, talk to other parents, almost exclusively mothers. We live in an enlightened age, I know, and Peterborough’s a thoroughly liberal town, but a stay-at-home father’s still an anomaly. There are emotional barriers to forging friendships with those mothers. To boot, the move has exposed to great relief those guarded aspects of my personality; I don’t make friends easily (it doesn’t help that I never know what to say). So here I am, spending most of my days speaking only to my wife and our toddler. Night falls and I consider heading downstairs to my basement office to do some writing, but damn it, I’m tired, so a beer and a ballgame on TV is just about my speed. Then wham, it’s 11:00, I’m braindead exhausted, and I hate myself for wasting another evening.

Those are my days.

I’m isolated, treading water. And yeah, that’s got me down. So anything with the rosy tinge of the past, the faint whiff of a time when I felt more hope, is bound to appeal to me right now, and I get that. But with the Replacements, it feels like it’s more than that. It has something to do with the feeling that you’re running out of time.


MY WIFE is good to me. She basically understands what I’m feeling these days. She knows that while she’s landed in a new job and worked her way into a social circle, for me there isn’t the same joy concerning our new situation as there is for her. So when I say, “I need to head out to a movie tonight,” she’s fine with that. And when I said, “I think I need to get away for a weekend, by myself,” she was fine with that, too. She didn’t have to say, “Watch your budget,” because I understood that. It wasn’t as though I thought it would be prudent to fly to New York City for the weekend. But a short, economical road trip around Lake Ontario? Yeah, she was alright with that.

So Google Maps and I devised an itinerary: I would hit Buffalo, rattle around, have a bite and then take in a ballgame on Friday, all before the big prize, Rochester.

When I was a kid all our American network TV came from Rochester. I was raised on Rochester TV, so it’s maintained an undeserved air of nostalgia and mystery. I knew neighbourhoods, street names, business and personalities. I had this sense that, even without ever having gone there, I could find my way around the city; might actually feel a little bit at home there. Drive the streets, see the sights, go to a ballgame, and then cap it all with a visit to the great House of Guitars.

If you’re not lucky enough to have been in broadcast range of a station showing commercials for the HOG, then I pity you. They were fantastic. The proprietors, brothers Armand and Bruce Schaubroeck (who opened the store in ’64), and one or two employees (I guess) would clown it up in front of a camera, repeat the motto “The Store that Ate My Brain,” and hock instruments, records and tapes. Sometimes one of them wore a costume. In one version, somebody in a bunny costume spent the whole commercial saying “Hop, hop. Hop, hop.” It doesn’t sound like much, maybe, but they made an enormous impression on me as a kid, and they made the House of Guitars seem as though it must be pretty much the coolest place on the planet. If you absolutely need to see them I assume they’re on Youtube; otherwise it’s enough to take my word for it.

So I loaded up a box full of CDs, packed some clothes and left on a Friday morning. A beautiful day, the music loud. Had a good time in Buffalo, then drove to Rochester Saturday morning, visited the photography museum, then drove north through town to Irondequoit where the House of Guitars, in an old house-cum-storefront, like somebody’s basement shrine to rock ‘n roll, sat among the dry cleaners and butcher shops and tailors and video rental places.


I TOOK that picture, the one people put on Facebook, of themselves with the co-subject, in this case the store, visible over their shoulder. I held the camera at arm’s length, peered at the bulbous lens and fired. Then I did it again, to be sure.

Up the steps and into the store, greeted by walls of guitars and amps. I don’t know why I expected anything different. Glass cases with guitars leaning upright like statuary. I don’t know what music was playing. There were people everywhere trying guitars, talking guitars, looking at guitars. A sign must have caught my eye, because I began walking with purpose toward the back of the room, past the wall of amps, and then down a little stairway. RECORD STORE DOWNSTAIRS. A-ha.

First you come to a wall of framed photos, members of KISS and autographs from blues legends, stuff like that. A mugshot of David Bowie from when he and Iggy Pop were caught with weed in a Rochester hotel room. Then you come around the corner and there are the rows, the unruly rows, CDs stacked everywhere. Above you, on the high peaked ceiling, more posters, flags. Every inch of wall space bears more memorabilia, most of it autographed. Everywhere piles of stuff that make no sense, bear no order. Just chaos.

That’s when I did that thing, the thing which annoyed me perhaps most of all when I was a record store employee and customers would do it to me: I completely blanked. I had no idea what I was looking for. I had come here with the vague notion of picking up something new to listen to on the ride home, just to get something because I was here, but that constant running list of CDs that I want, that list which never actually gets written down, it completely disappeared on me. And so I wandered around like some music buying novice, feeling stupid and overwhelmed. Suddenly the camera around my neck felt very conspicuous, too.

First thing I pulled out of my head was the Replacements, for those reasons I alluded to above. I was hoping to find some of those shiny reissues. But the shelf was empty, or rather, the general alphabetical area where the Replacements should be, while incredibly crowded, CDs in their longboxes (I know!) jammed into too tight a space, was bereft of anything by the band in question. I wander over to the jazz section, and there I discover that it is perhaps best to stick to rock when shopping at the great HOG, for their jazz section is, well, a token jazz section. Back to the rock section.

Did I mention that this whole time, the store’s stereo is blasting Sabbath? Did I say that?

Hey, I know, how about some Zombies? Yes, the latest Odyssey and Oracle remaster/repackage/reissue. I’ll take that. Then I see the New Release section, or rather, the cardboard boxes sitting atop other stock, dates Sharpied onto their sides, filled with releases from last Tuesday, and the Tuesday before that, etc. At the HOG, this is as organized as it gets. But there was nothing in there I cared to drop $15 on, so I decided to scuttle this visit. I took the Zombies disc up to the cash.

I was pulling my wallet out and trying to downplay the presence of the Olympus E-410 hanging around my neck when the woman at the cash – short, 40s, dressed in black, with black hair, looked like she’d worked in the store since graduating high school 25 years ago – asked in that practiced, offhand way, “Were you looking for anything else?”

“No chance you have any Replacements in stock?” I said. “There wasn’t anything on the shelf. That I could find.”

“Oh man,” she said, “they’re like my favourite band.” That was a good sign. “I think we got those reissues in. They can’t be sold out.” And with that she raced out from behind the counter and led me toward the section. Here she came up empty, too.

“They might be in the back,” she said, and we charged off to a pair of storerooms (closets, really) tucked in the corner. In typical HOG fashion she had to go back and forth from one to the other a few times, because nothing was where it was supposed to be. She asked me which one I was looking for. I said might as well start with Sorry Ma… Forgot to Take Out the Trash. Finally she hit paydirt. She was smiling as she handed me the disc. “Oh man, thanks,’ I said. On the way back to the cash I put the Zombies album back on the shelf (budget, remember).

As she was getting ready to ring up Sorry Ma… she said, “God, I love these guys.” Then: “Wait, you gotta see this,” and again she raced around from behind the counter. In a second she was standing in front of one of the building’s columns, moving a very dusty pile of vinyl. She moved pieces of the stack until she found what she was looking for: a pair of framed shots of the Replacements, one Warner press shot and one snapshot of the band signing autographs in the HOG, probably around 1985 or ’86. Both photos were autographed. I said to her, “Mind if I get a shot of these?” I turned my camera on and fired away.

Back at the counter I paid for the disc, refused the plastic bag, and was on my way when she jerked a thumb over her shoulder and said, “That’s them too.”

And there, chicken-scratched on the wall in black marker, among the band's signatures:

DON’T GIVE UP ON US – Replacements

My head rang. There it was, the meat of those records, and their continuing – rising – appeal to me. Distilled to their essence. Because that’s it: that’s the pulsing, bloody, ragged heart of these songs, and of their effect on me: Don’t give up on us. Meaning: take our stance of disinterest with a grain of salt, but see beneath it; see that what we need is to hope for something bigger. We encrust it all in these layers of bullshit losers’ sloganeering in case, as we half suspect, there’s no point in hoping for something to deliver us. We’re steeling ourselves for the fall we’re almost certain awaits us if we strive. But without the slim hope, the minute sliver of a chance that somebody else is also holding out hope that we might be worth something – anything – we might as well be fucking dead. If you give up on me, I give up on me, and it’s over; I can just sit and wait to die.

I had come all the way to Rochester, to goddamned Irondequoit, to see this, to receive this bit of hope, like a grain of rice. I put it in my pocket and I headed home, back to my wife, my daughter, to my 30s.


I PLACE too much stock in music, depend too much on epiphanies gleaned from Westerberg and Coltrane and Joe Pernice and David S. Ware. I know that. If we’re all running around in 2009 creating self-contained worlds for ourselves and inventing the religious systems therein, then I’m taking musical performances as my scriptures. It might not be healthy, I suppose, but I’ve come too far, done it for too long to stop now. Something about the act of listening (the art of listening?) opens me up and renders me fertile for the seed of goodness. This sounds trite, but it’s true. It’s true that there are times when I simply don’t feel pure enough, good enough, in some way worthy enough to listen to John Coltrane. In those times I have to redeem myself with mind-blanking hard work, or a sincere act, before I feel right enough to listen to “Spiritual” or “Afro Blue” or, most religiously of all, A Love Supreme. There are also three or four pieces of music which have the power to centre and calm me, physically and mentally. Those are the things I plug into as I lay in bed at night, and the things I hum to myself when I feel anxious. With the Replacements, I knew they were right for my mindset, but before I saw that graffiti on the wall of the House of Guitars, I don’t think I could sum up just why, or what it was they said to me. Now I know: Don’t give up on us.

There is music for every emotion, for every longing and for every need, from ecstasy to lust to blackest depression to bemused indifference, etc. At different times I have need for all of it. The music of the Replacements is dear to me, is something I need more often than many others, because it says something I so badly need to hear, because it takes me someplace I desperately need to go: a place of hope amid the bullshit. For a couple of years now I have placed all my hope in my daughter – that’s what parents do, what they should do – but lately I have realized that I must reserve a small bit for myself, too. And that’s what the Replacements have helped me rediscover: the hope that we might be measured not as the people we are, but as the people we want to be.

Lady Gaga and Me: My short, thankless career as a wedding DJ

When one of your dearest, closest friends asks a favour, you agree. When he is getting married and asks you to serve as one of his groomsmen, you accept. When he says that the groom's party will be wearing off-white suits, you dutifully run to your nearest chain menswear outlet and rent an ivory tuxedo with champagne accents. And when he asks if you and your other old, dear friend, Miss Imperial, will handle the music for the ceremony and reception, you fire up your PC and scour the hard drive for appropriate songs.

In the final weeks before the big day I prodded the bride-and-groom-to-be for direction. “What kind of music do you want?” I asked. The answers indicated to me that what they were looking for was music to shake their rumps.

But the first challenge was the first dance. “No Celine” was all the input I got for that one. No problem; after a few days of indecision I came up with “I Love You Because” by Elvis Presley, and they loved it.

But what to play after that?

Miss Imperial and I put our heads together and came up with a vague direction, and I went to work putting together a four-hour set that we figured would appeal to folks of our age and mindset. It ranged from old favourites to hip hop to reggae to the Clash to modern dancefloor rockers (Justice, LCD Soundsystem), with a lot of funky detours along the way. It was a good set. We would load the MP3s into Miss I's laptop, create an iTunes playlist, add a few songs from her library, then press PLAY and walk away to join the party.

Everything started well. We had tested the PA system and it worked fine. The ceremony music – JS Bach's Orchestral Suite in D Major, Air for the processional, and the Beatles' “Here Comes the Sun” for the joyous recessional – had gone beautifully. The outdoor ceremony, beneath shading trees and just feet from the banks of the Mississippi River in Carleton Place, Ontario, was airy, sun-dappled, fragrant and just about perfect. Then all retired to the Canoe Club, in the hall on the second floor with the balcony overlooking the river, for dinner, cake, and then dancing.

Fed, watered and increasingly relaxed, we began. I looked around during the first dance: smiles. Then a second slow song, “Loveable” by Sam Cooke, in case anyone else wanted to be rocked gently. Then we gradually increased the tempo. “To Love Somebody” by Nina Simone got my three-year-old daughter to the floor (during the ceremony she had been the escort of the flower girl, a chihuahua in a wedding dress), and she was joined by a few others during the Stones' “Get Off My Cloud.” All seemed to be going well. An upward trajectory in the dancing population was a good indicator, Miss I and I felt.

But then it plateaued, and soon it began to fall. Before long the dancefloor was a sparsely populated region. We started to panic. Maybe the Pixies, scheduled next, wouldn't get quite the reaction we had anticipated. We axed that. “American Girl” by Tom Petty was only mildly successful. Everywhere you looked: unimpressed faces. This was bad.

Then teenaged Cousin Jeffrey pranced up to the table. He handed us a CD. No case, no liners. “Lady Gaga,” he said. “Play track four.” We did so. It was “Pokerface.” Family members, young and old, flooded the dancefloor, danced exuberantly, climbed up onto the stage. Cousin Jeffrey knew every word. There were high fives, smiles, laughing, shouting. Oh heavens.

This, Miss Imperial and I knew, meant trouble. It was an extremely humbling moment.

Maybe, if you're of a certain age, you know the precise moment you first realized that you were completely irrelevant, but probably you don't. For me, that moment occurred at a friend's wedding, on Saturday, June 27, 2009, at the Carleton Place Canoe Club. It was early evening, warm and close, the sun dazzling as it set over the river. I was surrounded by good friends, my wife and daughter, even my parents. I was thirty-two years old, and in the realm of youth, relevance, with-it-ness, I no longer mattered.

We scrambled. Luckily, Miss Imperial has a deep iTunes library. We scored with the Peas' “Boom Boom Pow” and Beyonce's “Crazy in Love” (a classic, apparently). But our choices grew slim. “How long can we keep this up?” I asked her. She looked worried. Improbably, Justin Timberlake cleared the floor. But as the evening wore, older disco stuff kept the people moving. Cousin Jeffrey was judgemental, folding his arms and scowling when something wasn't right, laughing and clapping like a circus seal when we got it right. Over the course of night we would play Lady Gaga's “Just Dance” and two or three more from The Fame that I can't now name. Every damn time they filled the floor. My faith in humanity was rocked, and I was reminded of the Sean Paul Rule, which was taught to me several years ago when I became a product buyer for an HMV store in Ottawa. Soon after landing the job I happened to run into an old friend who was doing the same job in Toronto, and I asked him if there was anything I should know. “Just don't run out of Sean Paul,” he said, “and you'll be fine.” And he was right. (Cousin Jeffrey also requested Sean Paul, coincidentally, and it too was a hit.) Likewise, as a wedding DJ in 2009, just don't run out of Lady Gaga, it seems.

I need to step back here and thank Miss Imperial profusely, if she reads this. It was her, six-months-pregnant belly and all, who took over the laptop and saved the evening, remaining chained to the table and constantly fretting over where to go next. She eased us into the disco (Cousin Jeffrey seemed particularly taken with Diana Ross' “I'm Coming Out”) and from there, into the '80s stuff, where were in something of a comfort zone, and from there we were able, finally, to steer ourselves into material we felt closer to, the night having fallen and many of the guests having taken their leave.

When the night was darkest, we knew that anyone left on the dancefloor was probably loaded or old like us, so we had some more freedom, though I never did get my Horace Andy-Toots and the Maytals- Skatalites-Clash-MIA set in. Finally we were able to hand off responsibility to the groom's brother, plugging his laptop into the PA and letting him take things in a Diplo-and-hip-hop direction while we packed up and joined all our friends (minus the bride and groom) in heading back to the motel for the after-party.

There things were nice and comfy, all thirty-somethings who were fairly appreciative of all the stuff we had chosen. We put the playlist on random and sipped bourbon and coolers (though not the pregnant lady, of course), ate salty things and chatted into the small hours. By my fourth bourbon, after several gin & tonics back at the Canoe Club, I had more or less forgotten the trauma of coming face to face with my own old-and-lame nature. But there was a residual sting, and it lingers still.

In retrospect it's hard to imagine what I had been thinking in assembling that playlist. What fantasy gathering would I be attending where the guests would enthusiastically greet music by Steinski and the American Princes? Who exactly was going to shout “Oh snap!” when I dropped that Editors remix right after the Chemical Brothers and Justice? What the hell was I thinking? It would have been the wedding reception that I longed to attend, wearing through the soles of my replacement shoes (no way I could dance in those rented plastic things) as we all pogo'd, skanked, vogued and bopped the night away, but it bore no resemblance to reality.

So here I am, days later, gradually coming to accept my folly and the commentary it provides about me and my life. I don't mind being old. My friends are old, and for the most part we're happy. But I worry for a future populated by people who could find something appealing in the music of Lady frigging Gaga.

PS (July 1) - I've just spent a few minutes ruminating on the rich tragedy that is the fact that I didn't even get a chance to play "Losing My Edge," when in fact, that's exactly what was going on. Losing my edge. Huh.

The 21st Century never done me no favours.

Over the weekend my wife and I were doing some housepainting, and in the course of choosing some music to soundtrack the chore she said to me, "Let's relive 1995," and proceeded to throw some Verve, Cardigans, Massive Attack and Superchunk into the deck (yeah, we were those people). It was an enjoyable excercise, but yet another in a string of moments that make you think, Will I ever be relevant again? Which is to say, have I discovered all the music I'll ever love?

Fast forward to today, a rainy Monday, and my daughter and I were futzing around the house, making guacamole, hacking up a watermelon. These activities required musical backing, so I fired up a bunch of MP3s. None of which were from the current century, as it happened. None.

The culprits: Fela Kuti (pictured), Charlie Parker, Woody Shaw, Tlahoun Gessesse, Otis Redding, Mongo Santamaria, Toots and the Maytals, the Lovejoys, Eric Dolphy and Tony Allen.

Maybe the 20th Century didn't make any sense, but the '00s make even less. I miss "sir" and "ma'am." Rotary dial. Looking it up in a book. Formalities.

And right now I'm watching a ball game, Diamondbacks-Dodgers, and digging it because Vin Scully is doing the play-by-play, and I love Vin Scully. Why do I love Vin Scully? Because he works alone, and because he sounds like 1950.

All of which begs the question: Am I a man out of time?

Less-Than-Great Expectations, Immensely Pleasing Results

I had put off getting Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer, but I've now rectified the situation, and I'm glad I did. I loved both their debut EP and Apologies to the Queen Mary with an intensity reminiscent of the sort of devotion I lavished on bands like Superchunk in high school. It was innocent and riveting and it produced an almost physical swelling in my abdomen. Springsteenian songcraft, ELO chorusing and naive, anthemic bluster. This band, I thought, will soundtrack my early 30s. They produced something as torn between jubilant uplift and crushing sorrow as the Arcade Fire, but with a sound that appealed to my ears just a little bit more (which is not to denigrate the AF and their brilliant Talking Heads-meets-U2-and-Springsteen-on-the-Plateau-for-some-50s-and-some-deep-conversation sound). But their sophomore album came out, and for some reason, I sort of avoided it. In retrospect, I recognize that I was dreading a letdown of the sort common when you give your heart to a debut record. Let's don't spoil what we have, I felt. And I closed myself off to what Wolf Parade might offer me a second time around. It was shortsighted and wrong, but my instinct for self-preservation extends to golden memories, it seems. It didn't help that I wasn't particularly in love with Sunset Rubdown.

To make a long story only slightly less long, I finally bought At Mount Zoomer, and I'm both annoyed with myself for not getting it sooner, and pleased that it seems primed to provide the churning, soaring, diving, burbling and whooping soundtrack to my autumn (alongside the mellower charms of You + Me). It's proggy in ways that I not only forgive, but love. It's a bit more grown up, a bit less spastic than Apologies..., but then, I guess I am too.

Here's to Wolf Parade for confounding my expectations.

Where Do the Days Go?

Wow, sorry about that extended absence. I guess the fact is that, after the hubbub and clamour and fuss of moving from one town to another subsides (which is not to say that it's all over, alas), you kind of sit back and wonder if you still are the person you thought you were when you lived in that old town. Such life changes offer handy access points to inspect life's moving parts, to dissect and to reexamine. They are perhaps the most convenient times to affect a degree of self re-invention, if in fact self re-invention is something you are interested in doing. Simply put, I guess I had to ask myself if I still wished to be an obsessive music consumer, listener, lover, worrier, thinker, postulater, pontificator and, yes, blogger. I wasn't really sure I had my answer until I unpacked the CD collection the other day. Poring over the spines, fussing over the correct alphabetization, coveting the objects as artifacts both personal and cultural, I knew I had my answer.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

But yes, I'm still a music broadcaster, or as much as I ever was, if you can call sharing a weekly jazz show on a campus radio station with 4 other guys broadcasting. Anyway, all that to say that this very minute, over at CKCU world headquarters, my first show in absentia is being presented. It's a re-edited, extended, re-cut version of the Michael White profile I did back in January, and my IMC cohort Ron is in the studio at Carleton U in Ottawa playing the digital files I have prepared and is inserting the appropriate ads (and many thanks to him for doing so). I've heard this show a hundred times now, what with the editing and so forth, and I've edited recordings of many of my previous shows, but this is the first time I have ever actually heard myself actually on air and I must report a strange, detached, almost out-of-body sensation as a result. Knowing that several other people (dozens? hundreds? thousands!?) are also hearing my voice as it is pushed out into the ether and onto the internet lends it a queer anti-weight. I am floating on invisible waves.

Anyway, if you're not listening right now, but would nevertheless like to hear the show, download it here:

Now's the Time - August 21: Michael White profile

Going forward, of course, all my shows will be presented this way (excepting those that aren't, I guess), which is a double-edged sword. There's no question that pre-recording gives the advantage of cutting, reconsidering, tweaking and perfecting, and all in all I know it will make for tighter shows. But there's an undeniable energy associated with sitting in that studio and working live into the microphone, and I'll miss that. Regardless, I'm glad I can keep up my association with the show and with the IMC. Seriously, those guys scare me with their knowledge, their passion and their devotion to the music and to the show.

Anyway, moving on...

If 2008 Ended Yesterday

No secret that this blog began as a simple list, an electronic version of the liners I used to make for the annual Best Of compilation that I, like countless other music obsessives, produce every year and foist onto friends too polite to tell me they don't really care. With that in mind, and because I'm terribly impatient, here's a pre-list, sort of a gestational version of the monster I'll unleash in December/January.

In not-yet-particular order:

The Walkmen, You + Me - this record made me cry last night, as much for its bang on evocation of what it means to be here and married and no longer prodigal as for its sheer perfection. It is as carefully crafted a set of sounds as you're likely to hear.

Portishead, Third - they had no right to produce something this incredible. None. They were over, washed up. What's impressive is that they recognized that a simple return to their sound would not fly in 2008; that the core ingredients of cinematic sounds and Beth Gibbons' unsurpassedly vulnerable voice were all that could remain; everything else had to be blown up and built again. Stunning.

The Hold Steady, Stay Positive - Frankly, it's no Boys and Girls in America, but then what is? Fact is nobody makes better classicist rock informed by punk, hardcore and '90s indie rock than this band, and the lyrics are always good.

The Night Marchers, See You in Magic - Rocket From the Crypt are no longer with us, but Speedo is, and his latest fling, The Night Marchers, continue with that band's basic M.O. This will kick your ass six ways from Sunday, and leave you happy it did. The perfect soundtrack to my re-insertion into suburbia.

Also:

Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
The Dodos, Visiter
Angles, Every Woman is a Tree
Various, Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-sounds and Nigerian Blues, 1970-76
Dave Douglas, Moonshine
Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight
The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust
Titus Andronicus, The Airing of Grievances
The Vandermark 5, Beat Reader

More to come. Promise.

I'm Sorry

Dear REM,

I’m sorry, but it’s time to come clean: I have strayed from you. In recent years, I have felt alienated from you; distant. I have maintained the illusion of fidelity, gamely stood by your side – I actually bought Reveal - but in truth I have had doubts about whether we truly belonged together.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. We were both younger, and your dark Southern Gothic jangle-pop struck a nerve in me, incomprehensible though your words were. Document and Life’s Rich Pageant made me swoon. I couldn’t help it; I was devoted to you. Look at you up there! Three geeky music guys, and the dark, brooding artist. Dreamy! I hung a picture of your lead singer in my bedroom (my parents, briefly, thought I was gay).

And I was never more in love with you than midway through side one of Automatic for the People. Somehow, magically, you had remained yourself, only moreso. I was dazzled. More than most, you accommodated your superstardom, made it work for you. You comfortably and ably wore the mantle of megaband, and I was proud of you. Not that I had anything do to with that success, but what wasn’t to love?

High off your intoxicating assuredness, I bought Monster the day it was released, way, way back in those halcyon days of 1994. Do you remember those days, REM? I was certain, given the savage strength of “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”, that the whole album would be strong. It would be killer. After listening to it many, many times, I came to feel that, well, okay, I really liked “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” Great song. Also, “Strange Currencies” – not bad. As for the rest, “Maybe REM is tired,” I thought. That’s okay – that happens to everybody.

But, oh, then New Adventures in Hi-Fi happened, and my god, was I thankful for that. Something to reinvigorate our connection, to once again justify my love.

But then? Then…

Something changed in you when your drummer left, and I understood that. You seemed to have trouble finding yourself, figuring out where to go next. This explained to me a few irrational decisions, excused them. I can’t say I understood Up, but I knew where it was coming from: confusion. But as the years dragged toward and beyond the millennium, you imposed on my goodwill, REM; took advantage of it. Around the Sun – what the hell was that? Were you trying to make me dislike you? Was that your game, like people who can’t dump a lover, but act like such a jerk or so disinterested that they force their lover’s hand, make them become the dumper? Well, I didn’t dig that, REM. Not at all.

I could never entirely give up on you, of course. We had shared too much, over too many years. Even when you did whatever the hell you were doing in this picture, I still counted myself a fan. I love REM, I’d say. You just watch, I’d tell doubters, they’ll be back. But what I really felt was this: does loving a band who are no longer making relevant music make me irrelevant? Does their apparent oldness make me old?

The truth was this, REM: all those things I used to love about you seemed to have gone, replaced by studio trickery and the artistic equivalent of grasping at straws. It was sad, REM. It made me sad.

But here we are in 2008, REM, and you have finally given me a sign that you still remember those long ago days. I’m sorry I ever doubted that, but you have proven it to me with Accelerate, surely intended as a love letter to our shared youth. The other day I heard you interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR (see? old!), and what was obvious to me was that you have accepted your status as living connection to the days of underground American college rock, and also that you knew - and regretted - that you had spent years jilting me, REM, by promising but not delivering music that was at least grounded in that old sound. Accelerate tells me that you know you can’t go back again, but you can create something real, something with a heart, that references such a vital period in music history.

We’re none of us young anymore, REM, and it’s true that there’s nothing sadder than aging men attempting to recreate something undeniably lost. Accelerate isn’t Murmur, or Fables…, or even Green. But it’s good, and it actually remembers those other, earlier records. And what’s the harm in remembering? What’s wrong with moving into a future resplendent with the memory of the people we once were?

So thanks, REM. Thanks for Accelerate. Thanks for remembering. Thanks for – finally – returning the love.

Yours, etc.

/a

Dedicated to You: Cut Your Hair

"... And that's a pretty nice haircut!"

For Addy, on the occassion of her first (and probably overdue) haircut, a jaunty pageboy number that makes her face look rounder, but that's okay because, you know, she's a year and a half old.

You don't know Pavement, daughter 'o' mine, and if/when you do, they probably won't sound as good to you as they did to people my age. But take my word for it: they were kind of a big deal - especially to the boys who, decked out in full slacker regalia, would show up to the bar to drink Newcastle and dance to this band and this band only (an awkward dance that involved standing in a circle and looking at the ground). So, to you, sweet baby: "Cut Your Hair," off the seminal Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

I expect you'll like, and quickly start to sing along to, the goofy "Oooh-oooh oooh-oooh- oooh-oooh" refrain. That's okay; I sing along to that part, too. But like both the scraggly hockey hair you've left behind and those Pavement fanboys, who are probably family men like me now, let the song serve also as a reminder: don't forget where you came from. Silly as it all looks to us now, it's part of who we are.

In Threes

I have been in a decidedly non-pop mood of late, opting instead to fill my ears with improvised and twentieth century classical music, but three records have coaxed me back into the guitars-and-drums fold.

The first is by Matthew Houck, who records under the name Phosphorescent. It seems to be an apt handle; his latest, Pride, is the sound of torch light on the cabin wall. It's twenty-first century backwoods gospel - reverent, haunting, yearning. This is Phosphorescent's third (plus an EP), but the first I've heard of him. A quick scan of his press yields scores of comparisons to Will Oldham, but Pride's got me thinking of an all-male Low. Whoever else it may sound like, the album's got a stillness at its core that I'm particularly drawn to right now.

Next, I've had a week now to live with Jukebox, Cat Power's latest, a sort of a thematic follow-up to The Covers Record, and a sonic sibling of her last, The Greatest. Flak will be dished because Jukebox's covers don't reinvent the originals the way The Covers Record did, and Cat, a.k.a. Chan Marshall seems to be getting comfortable in the skin of a palatable chanteuse, a skin she first donned on The Greatest. But here's the rub: it works. Call sellout if you must, but I'm at a point (age?) where I see it as a trade-off: we're losing a volatile and unpredictable artist, a cauldron of nervous energy and stylistic tics; but we're gaining a helluva soul singer. Maybe artists don't have to reinvent the wheel with every release. Maybe it's enough to cut a good set of songs.


And finally, nothing revelatory here, but after hearing an inter- view with Mick Jones on NPR earlier this week, I dug back into the Clash's catalog. Started with London Calling, then spent an afternoon with (Super) Black Market Clash. What's there to say? The Clash are peerless. The albums are cultural milestones, not frivolous pop artifacts.

There are few (non-jazz) artists I can return to with as much regularity as I do to the music of Joe, Topper, Paul and Mick and not feel that I am chasing my own youth or attempting to recapture some lost feeling of excitement. The Clash are still startlingly relevant, and I imagine they always will be.

Young Folks

What a wonderful long weekend – sunny, warm, easy. I celebrated my 31st birthday with family, and it was good. My wife, my daughter and my parents celebrated with me, as did my niece and nephew and their mother, who were in town from the coast. We went to a ballgame, ate hotdogs and cotton candy, watched the home team win it in the bottom of the 9th, and then returned to the scene of my upbringing for food and fun. The kids played and laughed and fairly fawned over the babe while the adults looked on contentedly.

And imagine my surprise when, in the middle of the proceedings, my sunny 15 year old niece began to hum a tune I recognized. I turned, flung an accusatory finger at her and said, “Peter Bjorn and John!”

In Rotation: Scream, Dracula, Scream!

What? Scream, Dracula, Scream! by Rocket From the Crypt.

Why this? Why today? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. RFTC defined swagger – they owned it. RFTC were far cooler than you’ll ever be. RFTC sweat motor oil and tequila. Head RFTCer John Reis would remove the toothpick from his maw just long enough to growl and spit and claw his way through 14 sides of aural scorn.

And yes, it depresses the hell out of me that this record came out 12 years ago. Just like last night when CC and I got a little weirded out by the fact that Daydream Nation is now TWENTY YEARS OLD.

Dedicated to You: Work Song

In honour (or is that sombre acknowledgement?) of my wonderful wife CC’s return to work, after a year of raising our most perfect and beguiling daughter, I present a musical dedication to CC.

Duke Ellington composed a “Work Song,” as did Nat Adderley. My personal favourite is the Charles Mingus tune by that name, which manages the not insignificant trick of sounding at once slinky and downtrodden. But I have a feeling that CC would prefer Adderley’s “Work Song” as performed by ex-Maniac Nathalie Merchant, so I’m sending that one out to her.

It can’t be an easy thing, putting your life on hold and completely revamping the way you do things in order to give birth to and then raise to toddlerhood a lively little girl, and then to put all that aside and reenter the work force. Today, surely the cruelest Monday of all, I know that CC is feeling a little less “Whistle While You Work,” and a little more aligned with the work song tradition of field hollers and the quasi-musical chants of chain-gangs.

If it means anything, CC, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

In Rotation: The Best of the West Coast Sessions

What? The Best of the West Coast Sessions by Stan Getz. It’s a single-disc compendium of this set.

Why this? Why today? Laid back, but with that undeniable swing. Stan Getz had chops, a fact his bossa-nova fueled visit to the top of the hit parade often obscures. These sides are easy, breezy, beautiful and light but, like I said, they’ve also got that unassailable verve (pun unintended), making you feel sophisticated while you savour the summer sizzle; your every move imbued with savoir faire even while the temperature demands a laissez faire approach to living. Life in short sleeves, brother.

Let me also vouch for the fact that these songs – especially though not exclusively “Four,” “Of Thee I Sing” and “Blues for Mary Jane” – provide the perfect sonic backdrop for a late July garden party, especially if that garden party is in honour of your daughter’s first birthday, and the green, expansive lawn is studded with frolicking children, the air peppered with their giddy cries, blankets and toys and wading pools strewn everywhere. The grandparents tucked aside in the shade, observing it all. The girl of the hour in a sundress and wide-brimmed hat, walking (tentatively) about, making time for everyone, all smiles. Dad trigger-happy on the digital camera. Cupcakes and punch for all.

Yup, perfect.

Death of a Teenager

Facing facts: I'll be 31 in a couple of weeks. I have a daughter and a lovely wife and a house in the country. I still listen to a lot of music, and I don't see that changing. But live shows? I’m coming to grips with the fact that that's more or less a part of my past now.

I still make it to the odd show. Very odd. Maybe a couple a year. Now that fewer friends' bands are active, that might dwindle to one. Or none. I think the thrill of being a part of something larger, a nascent social milieu grounded in music, has worn off to a degree. The shows that thrill me the most nowadays are by artists who fit beneath the broad umbrella term "improvised" - jazz, New Thing, fire music, out music, etc. The very fact that an artist is operating atop the precarious wire of improvisation is compelling enough to hold my interest. But rock shows, punk shows, even the best of these often feel rote to me. In truth I know that the charge is still there to be had, just not for me. I've mellowed, aged, settled down. I get that. I sure as hell didn't anticipate it, but there it is.

But, in the way of things dead and lost, I am moved to an unforgiveable nostalgia by thoughts of the things I have seen, and which I now acknowledge are largely in my past.

I remember knob-twiddlers – the spectacle removed from performance – men standing hunched over boards, seemingly ignoring the crowd. A single man at a desk, with a laptop, in a largely empty room, playing to a handful of people, coaxing forth drones and clicks. I remember not knowing if and when to clap. I remember “legends” doing nothing but spinning records and dropping anecdotes that seemed to anticipate LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge,” as well as calling back to Gregory Corso (“I did those then, but that was then, that was then”). I remember sitting onstage – literally on the stage – with a handful of other bewildered kids during a Fugazi show, and Ian McKaye having to lean near me in order to pick up his guitar from its stand. “Uh, hi,” he said. What the fuck were we doing on that stage? I remember Superchunk in Frankenstein make-up on Halloween in Montreal. I remember an impromptu show by a band stranded in town by a busted van. I remember sweating buckets – even the walls were sweating! – while the Planet Smashers played a small room, and thinking that I’d discovered, in ska, a new direction. I remember being wrong about that.

I remember Archie Shepp in the heat. It had to be 40 degrees outside, even as night fell on Montreal. And inside the hall, the air was bottled, still, thick as fabric. I rolled up my pantlegs and opened some buttons on my shirt. No relief. But then I remember not caring. Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd blowing sweet and furious. I sweated. I hollered. I stamped my feet, arched my back, clapped my hands. Andrew Cyrille’s drumbeat smacked against me, provided the only movement of air. My clothes clung to my skin. It was glorious. I remember that heat so vividly.

I remember interrupting Kahil El’Zabar during a conversation at the bar between sets. I said, “Thank you for bringing this music here.” “It’s my pleasure to do it, brother,” he said, not a bit perturbed that I had been so rude only a moment before.

I remember standing next to a friend while he had a similar conversation with Alan Silva. This was in Montreal again, on the way back from a show by the Hives. We had both been profoundly underwhelmed by that show and the people we found there. “That felt like the final nail in a coffin,” my friend said. “Problem is I don’t know what coffin.” So we headed home, or so we thought. Headed up the Main and, on a whim, and still disillusioned, we pulled over to see what was happening at Casa del Popolo. Who was playing but Sunny Murray, with Silva on bass. We peeked in the window, and the guy at the door said, “Set’s almost over – go ahead in.” Charged us nothing. We stood there for maybe half of one piece before they wrapped up the set, but what we saw and heard lasted a full ten minutes. And then my friend approached Silva, who was taking his rest near the bar, and said, “Thanks. You played on records that changed my life.”

I remember, too, accosting Joe Pernice one evening while I was on my way back from the washroom. He was humble enough, after I introduced myself and he put his water bottle beneath his arm and took his cigarette from his teeth, to say “My name’s Joe. Good to meet you.”

Such gracious people, these musicians!

So I remember it all, or most of it. The shitty little shows. The big ones that felt beforehand like they might prove momentous, life-altering, only to turn out to be something rather less. The surprises, the festivals, shows in tents, in churches, in basements, high school auditoriums. Taking in three shows in one night and driving home, arriving by the light of dawn. Being so broke I could only afford the cover charge and so drinking water all night. Stuffing my ears with wadded toilet paper when I forgot earplugs. Fred Anderson with a bottle of Jack Daniels smuggled in my pocket. Pulp, at the height of BritPop, attended by the strange feeling of being in the presence of celebrity, which ran counter to what I had learned to feel about punk bands. Hothouse Flowers in the pouring rain singing “Don’t Go.” Furnaceface. The Skatterbrains at a shitty club in Gatineau on Canada Day. Shotmaker. Kids on acid, drunk kids, hyper kids. Shouted conversations at merch tables, winding up with the wrong sized t-shirt as a result.

So yes, these things have largely passed me by now, or I them. Jazz/improv concerts likely pepper my future, and if the Pernice Brothers happen to be nearby, I’ll be there. But as an exercise, as a regular part of my life, live music belongs to those extended adolescent years, the passage of which I can no longer deny. And nor do I wish to. As a culture we're behaving like teenagers well into our 20s. There's really very little to differentiate one from the other now. Both are marked by fecklessness and restlessness and dissatisfaction. Well, my dissatisfaction’s still there; it’s just aimed at different targets. And the nervous uncertainty has morphed, in that I know what I want, I just don’t always know how to achieve it, or why anybody else would care to deny me my small rewards, nor those of anybody else on this planet. My life isn’t a project or a question mark the way it once was, it’s a life, attended by all the usual compromises and sacrifices and impossible decisions. What I don’t require is a musical culture to identify me. I don’t have to search for a tribe. I am me, and music is something I love. Period.

There’s an enormous freedom in that. It’s a personal choice; evidence of life hewn closer to my own truth. It is a glorious and wideopen and supremely democratic thing to feel as though you are approaching a state of knowing yourself, and that you are capable, in your mounting years, of tuning out the hivemind and connecting with something in a very real way.