Toronto Roller Derby Championship

So last weekend, the inaugural season of the Toronto Roller Derby league came to a conclusion, with the first Championship match. The Gore-Gore Rollergirls and The Chicks Ahoy! - the two undefeated teams from the summer season - went at it on November 17 up at Rinx in North York. It had been a long time coming - the last public game had been in August - and part of the issue was that most rinks in the city went back to ice hockey use in September. The league was fortunate to get their hands on Rinx, a venue not designed for spectators so much; Rinx features ice rinks, bumper cars, bowling, and a roller rink. But the sweet bonus for all concerned was - provided you signed a waiver - we got to sit on the track, right in the thick of things.

The evening got off to an in auspicious start when the sound system kept crashing during the introductions. It appeared that the DJ's music board kept overwhelming the system, which was a shame seeing as the tunes are part of the whole experience. But they sorted it out, and by sitting on the track and not behind the glass, as it George Bell Arena in the summer, you could hear the announcements and play by play quite clearly. So for those of us who went through the whole summer with ToRD, we were well able to follow the action. I think the newbies who came - and there were plenty, which was very encouraging given the long lay-off - may have still had a hard time, especially when sitting on the rink surface, which of course makes it a bit harder to see things happening on the opposite side of the rink. But overall, I'd say that the crowd went home satisfied.

The match opened appearing to be a massive mis-match. While both squads went undefeated during the summer, the effects of a long lay-off seemed apparent when both sides skated a little slow off the top. This quickly changed as the Gore-Gores kept throwing numbers on the board, and the Chicks kept hitting the penalty box. By the end of the first period, the Gore-Gores had built up a seemingly insurmountable lead, in the neighborhood of 50 to 6. (I'm afraid I didn't write this down.) But the Chicks started to come back in the second, actually outscoring the Gore-Gores in the frame, and closing the gap - a bit. After 2, it was still about a 30 to 40 point lead for the Gore-Gores.

Sure enough, in the third, the hits started coming a bit harder, and while the Chicks made it respectable, they still couldn't get there, and the Gore-Gores wound up winning the first Toronto Championship Boot by a final score of 89 to 53. Led by their amazing jammers, including Bambi and Desmon Deck-Her who both fly through the pack like a hot knife through a baby's bottom, there was no way that the Gore-Gores were going be denied. The Chicks had nothing to be ashamed of, though, and both sides joined, along with the league referees, for a number of victory laps around the rink. Looking forward to next season - I'll keep you posted!

Blue Peter

Back on October 5, our friend Paul and the rest of Blue Peter played their first public show in something like 2 decades at The Mod Club in Toronto. Everyone had a blast and went home with huge smiles on their faces, especially the band, who showed that while they may have moved on with their careers they can still bring it, and bring it they did. The crowd was largely composed of friends and fans from the era - Blue Peter's last album came out in 1983 - but this wasn't some Police-style money grab: the boys just wanted to see if they could still do it, and exceeded expectations in the process.

The night opened with The Spoons, who led their own hit parade as part of the Canadian New Wave scene in the early 80s. They brought out classics like Those Old Emotions, Romantic Traffic and, of course, Nova Heart.
You got the feeling that The Spoons have been doing this a bit longer, and by that I mean the reunion thing - he was a tad slick, with the shout-outs and sing-a-longs, but they were still quite entertaining, and I think we were all shocked by how many of their songs we still knew. The only disappointment was that Sandy doesn't crimp her hair anymore.

But then Blue Peter took the stage, opening with Falling, the title track from their last album. The crowd was hyped, and just about everyone knew all the words - the band didn't forget a one, but we would have forgiven them if they had - and, I don't know if this happened back in the day or not, but the devil horns came out, too.

Here's a somewhat incomplete set list that I swiped from the facebook page for the show:
Falling, Chinese Graffiti, All Your Time, Unchained Heart, Don't Walk Past, Water On The Moon, Equalizer, Video Verite, Radio Silence, Take Me To War, Same Old Place


The order may be a bit off, but no biggee. They ended their main set, of course, with Don;t Walk Past - i am including the video I shot of that below. Forgive the audio quality, it's not the greatest. I understand that that the show was recorded that night, but have yet to hear what exactly will be done with the recording. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything.



In the short term, enjoy, the video and check out the band's site for updates about future shows, as I suspect there be some.



Oh, and check this out, a new Blue Peter compilation is on its way!

A Wedding in Picton

So, a few weeks ago - August 11, to be exact - we spent the weekend out in lovely Picton, Ontario for the wedding of our lovely friends Alex and Meredith. The countryside of eastern Ontario can not be beat, and the weather co-operated to supply a beautiful scene for the weekend. For the venue, they rented a farmhouse for the week, and set up facilities outside. The property features a couple of barns, and the ceremony was held in their shade. A large tent was filled with dining tables for dinner, and an additional tent sheltered the dance floor. There was a bluegrass band, and later on the DJ-stylings of Gabe.

We all go to weddings, and invariably have a good time, but I do think it's rare to have an experience as thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying as this. All the choices were perfect, from venue (a gorgeous house in the country) to the food (locally provided, and delicious) to the drinks (wine from the local Sandbanks winery, highly recommended) and the people. The mix of young and old was perfect, the weather completely cooperated, hey there was even a meteor shower that night around 2 in the morning. You could not have asked for a better weekend.

Oh yeah, and the bride and groom made a perfect choice in each other, as well. Congratulations, and thank you for making us a part of it.

Sorry, my bad

So, I've been rather busy lately, and just haven't been blogging like I ought to. I'm not exactly doing much of anything at the moment, other than saying that and getting ready for bed. But just to show you that I am still committed to this, here's some of the things that I plan on telling ya'll about in the near future:

• I actually broke down and joined facebook. It's not as horrible I expected to be, however it is not nearly as wonderful as everyone else says, either. Once the novelty wears off, I'll be back more often.
• The last 3 roller derby matches have come and gone, and I haven't even commented on them. I've got buttloads of photos to deal with, thoughts - there was a particularly good one a couple of weeks back - and the pending championship bout coming up.
• Last weekend we went out to lovely Picton, Ontario for Alex and Meredith's wedding - it was without a doubt the best wedding I have ever attended. The above photo is not from the wedding.
• Paul Humphrey's new album A Rumour of Angels has been released. Check out tracks at his MySpace page, and buy it at Amazon. I have my copy already, and will post a review soon, and hopefully a little Q & A with the man himself.
• I'm quitting my job.

I'm not even going to post any music with this one, I'll let you hum or whatever. Better yet, scroll down to a previous post and press play on another track. Then come back up here and read that again:

• I'm quitting my job.

Wow, that does feel good. Well, to go with that, I do plan on posting some Quasi next time, as I have been re-discovering them this week. Until then,

Eat My Shorts

There's a fun thing on the Simpsons Movie website that's going around the net. Click on the Create Avatar button, and you can make your own character. Here's what I've come up with for me - they don't give you options to change your clothes, only their colors, but you have a fair bit of stuff you can do with the face. There's a further link you can use that will supposedly create a Simpsons character based on a submitted photograph, but I have yet to get it to work. I would have done something about the sideburns, too - they're not quite right. The quality, therefore, of the finished image, leads to this terrible pun of a segue:

Badly Drawn Boy - Spitting in the Wind



This being the single of Pissing in the Wind, from the Hour of the Bewilderbeast. I always preferred this single version to the album's, mostly for the saloon style piano and the heavier harmonica. Plus, the video features Joan Collins, in a brilliant set of casting.



You can get the album here. You should have already done so a long, long time ago.

Shrimp with Pesto Penne Salad

Feeling a bit inspired today, I decided to make a cold pasta salad for dinner. H had informed me that we had a couple pounds of frozen shrimp on hand, and when at the produce shop yesterday, i wound up with the biggest bunch of basil - say that one three times fast - that would likely go bad before I used the thing up. Enter inspiration - why not a pesto sauce for the shrimp, make it earlier in the day, so when H gets home, the dinner is cool, and so is the kitchen. Ah, you say, H does not eat milk products, so what about pesto, then? Well, I searched high and low for a pesto recipe sans cheese, only to find one and realize that you just leave the damn cheese out, and then there you go.

I keep meaning to document my cooking fun in the manner of Paul the Feeder, but typically I'm all hot and sweaty and cranky from making a mess and tripping over the damn cats and the fact that we have the most retarded sink in the world - seriously, what is that point of a double sink if neither half is large enough to hold anything? - but I got lucky with this one. Since it is meant to be a cold salad, I was making it early enough that I would be chilled and relaxed myself by dinner time, but I would also have time to screw around with the camera and document it. Up above you'll see a rather arty shot, if I do say so myself. I even made a little video of the finished product so you can see how it turned out. And yes, that weird background noise is a cat purring - that would be Buster, chat numero zwei. He hasn't made a visual appearance here yet, so he may as well get to talk.



Shrimp with Pesto Penne Salad
1 pound (uncooked weight) penne, cooked, drained, chilled
1 c pesto (see below)
1 lb cooked, peeled, chilled shrimp (31-40 count okay)
splash red wine vinegar/white wine vinegar
1 pickling size cucumber, thinly sliced
1 lb asparagus, cut into 1" segments, blanched in salted water, drained, chilled
3 tomatoes, wedged (I prefer what they market as 'vine ripened tomatoes' here - usually they still have stems attached. Don't eat those.)
1 green pepper, seeded, loosely diced
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1 tsp kosher salt

Pesto
1 cup basil leaves, packed tightly
1/2 packed cup flat leaf parsley, packed more loosely
1/4 cup pine nuts - roasting them is up to you
3 large garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt

1. For the pesto, take the above ingredients and run them through your food processor or blender. The yield for this should be 1 cup and pesto paste - exactly what you need.
2. Separately, cook, drain and chill the penne, shrimp (unless you are using frozen as I did) and asparagus. Don't overcook the asparagus, as it will get mushy.
3. In a large bowl, combine pesto with all other ingredients. Stir well, and chill in the fridge for a couple of hours if you can.
4. The use of vinegar, and which style, I would say is optional. I only added a little as most of the recipes I was using for input called for some. I put in so little I didn't notice its presence, and as such I think you could skip it altogether. I would also, next time, skip the cucumber, and perhaps add some other types of peppers, and maybe some mushrooms.
5. For the cheese eaters, sprinkle some Parmesan or Asiago into the individual's bowl.
6. Add bacon bits if you must, you philistines.

Perfect From Now On

They finally made it - Built to Spill played their first-EVER Toronto shows last week, and it was worth the wait, almost. I say almost because really, would it have been that hard over the years to play the odd show here? If you're going to come to Buffalo, and if you're coming to Rochester, what's a little trip across the border? They have played Vancouver and Victoria, so I have always wondered what the issue was with Toronto. And none of the Toronto papers thought to cover last week's shows, so no one got to ask. I have rather hoped to run into Doug out front before the gig but missed him, otherwise I certainly would've.

Lee's Palace was the perfect venue - decent sound, great sight lines and a small enough space that even at the bar you had a decent view. H and I and the rest of our friends stood near the middle, right behind the sound guy, which also let us have a sneak peak at the set list. Doug didn't veer from the list at all, so the inevitable shouted requests went nowhere; but he was scheduled to play most of them anyway. He covered material from most of the albums - my own prejudice is that I would have preferred to have seen a bit more from Perfect From Now On, but that's just me - and he did most of the bigger ones.

Car was one of the few stripped down songs - Doug played it almost solo, with the drummer - but everything else was, well, big. Carry the Zero, Strange and my all-time favorite Velvet Waltz were each on their own well worth the price of admission. The thing with Doug Martsch is that he will find these great riffs and build on them and build on them, and he likes to find these series of ascending chord patterns that feel so incredibly perfect; so when you get a song that lasts for 8 minutes, well, that sounds just about right.

Someone has very helpfully posted the performance from that show of Velvet Waltz on YouTube. Oh, Internet, what will do you for me next?



Oh, and then he came out for an encore. He only played one song, Broken Chairs, but he played it for over 20 minutes. The only thing missing was the whistling at the end. Over all, I have to say that this show was better than the show we saw in Milwaukee a couple of years ago, mostly due to the sound. Eagles in Milwaukee had a pretty cavernous ceiling, which ate up a lot of the treble and detail. You also can still smoke in clubs in Milwaukee, and I never really noticed how much of a nuisance that was in a club until they stopped letting you do it - it made it more enjoyable certainly. (We bailed during the encore last time when H couldn't take the smoke anymore.) I haven't spoken to anyone who attended the Wednesday night show, but if you heard anything about it let me know. It was pretty much a full house, so I'm hoping that Wednesday was just as good as Tuesday.

And here's the original album version of what is one of my favorite songs ever (listen for the cello on the second verse, it kills me every time):

Built To Spill - Velvet Waltz



Get Perfect From Now On at amazon.com

I in the sky

Recently in my You Tube travels I came across this nugget from my childhood, possibly my all-time favorite Sesame Street bit:

The great thing about this bit is that you learn absolutely nothing about I and what it stands for. I also used to wonder just how they got that ladder inside, and where did they keep it?

Here's a rather obvious, yet strangely unrelated musical link to go with it.

Alan Parsons Project - Eye in the Sky

Streetcars or... or... or... subways??

Just a follow-up to my earlier post on the new streetcars Toronto is seeking.

When I attended the info session at Yonge and Dundas, I crossed paths with a gentleman who was just giving it to one of the volunteers - his argument basically boiled down to: "it's all fine and dandy to make the streetcars wheelchairs accessible - what about making the street wheelchair accessible?" If we are truly going to emulate the euro model as Minneapolis did, we'd be looking at converting major streets into ROWs - I don't see the merchants of Little Italy allowing this for the 506, for example. What makes the Minneapolis line work is that among other things they took entire blocks in the downtown and converted them to ROW combined with pedestrian ways. Now, I'm all for it, but I don't see how that would fly on some of our major routes.

This same gentleman was also passionately arguing against streetcars in the downtown, period. He asked the billion dollar question, "Why aren't we building subways instead?" Naturally, I piped up that no one exactly has $20 billion floating around, and his response was basically, find the money. Now, I know this has been beaten to death here, but he had what sounded like intriguing ideas about funding that I am simply too ignorant of the basic laws of economics to refute, so I thought I would try and recall them here as best as possible and see what you might have to say.

His main example cited the city of San Francisco in the Depression, wanting to build one of the bridges that crosses the Bay (it wasn't clear to me which one). No one had the money for this, but the city secured an interest-free loan from the State - possibly the Federal level too, this was after all a conversation in a crowded mockup of an LRT - that they were able to pay off by 1960. I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons why this wouldn't work here - but could it? The other thought he had was that the City could sell bonds to raise the capital funding. Again, it strikes me as improbable, but I'm not in a position to say.

The reason that I felt it worth sharing this at all (and didn't chalk it up to the ramblings of some nutter) was that the gentleman in question identified himself as the owner of a well-known restaurant downtown that has been there for years. So, fine, he knows a little about money. He also said that he has a disabled son, which is why he's more passionate than some on the issue of accessible streetcars. I suggested to him that he's the one with the ideas, he should be contacting City Hall with them, but he didn't seem to think it was worth trying. So what I'm wondering is, whether we're talking about subways or streetcars, do his funding ideas hold any water? With the recent threatened budget cuts, it would seem that thinking outside the box is overdue anyway.

A Smashing Time Was Had By All

Saturday was once again Roller Derby night in Toronto, this time the Gold Digger Grudge Match, in which the Chicks Ahoy! simply crushed the Bay Street Bruisers. (I really ought to start writing down the scores at the end of the matches - you can get the scores at Toronto Roller Derby.) Penny Whistler, as usual, was superb as a penalty ref. The game got a little sloppy later on, with plenty of wipeouts - but still nothing deliberate - and to everyone's great disappointment the manager of the Bruisers did not get thrown out for repeatedly arguing with referees about scoring and penalties. Most of us in the crowd were certain that the manager was performing some sort of theatrical bit to fire up his team, or was trying to get himself "thrown out" for fun. Penny assured me that no, he was pretty serious, and that Sir Refs-A-Lot came pretty close to tossing him.

We did a pretty good job of representing - between H and myself, we managed to bring 17 or 18 people, including my folks, as it turns out that the whole family thinks this is pretty cool. My father videotaped some stuff to show to Grandma, and even got himself quoted in a news article. (I guess I wasn't engaging enough as a boyfriend of a ref. Hmph.) Also in attendance was our friend, Paul the Feeder, from Diary of a Feeder. (I have feeling he will not be writing up the arena's French fries, which another friend described as the worst fries in the history of fries.) I have already had a couple of suggestions from friends that I sign up as a ref next season, supposing that H will move out of the ranks to become a competitor. Well, we'll see. Right now I'm very happy supporting her in this thing, which after all is her thing, not mine. But I'll keep it in mind. I will accept suggestions for derby names as well.





Here's Penny with our newest convert to the Derby crowd, Alex. The derby schedulers have very helpfully scheduled the next 2 matches on either Saturday that straddles Alex and Meredith's wedding, so we can all still go, and all still go to the next derby event!

The next match will be Saturday July 28th, again at 8 PM at George Bell Arena, featuring the Death Track Dolls versus the Smoke City Betties. I know Paul will be sporting his Dolls' shirt to support the team - I think he just liked the logo, but why not? Pick a team! Come one, come all, cum on feel the noize. Be there!

Ed is dead.

Ed Mirvish was a hero to Toronto, a mover and shaker and builder of the city, but also a man who loved its people, especially the newest citizens, its immigrants who helped make it great. His life's story and achievements have already been extensively catalogued elsewhere, but I'd like to talk a little about his best-known achievement, Honest Ed's Bargainhouse.

At Honest Ed's, you could get just about anything. Clothing, light bulbs, candy, tablecloths, electric fans, you name it, he had it. You knew when you walked in the door that you were about to have a no-frills shopping experience. You knew going in that there was a no ifs ands or buts No Refund policy, which was no doubt part of what kept the prices so low. Most things could be purchased for garage sale prices. Unlike Sam's, which recently shut its doors for good, I can recall the first time I set foot inside Ed's. I was 11 or 12, and going to school across Bathurst Street - it is now a girl's high school. Trust me when I say that it wasn't back then - and after school went in through the side entrance on Bathurst, which was later moved to the Bloor Street side. You walked up a long slanted walkway, and either side was the record section - he had as many vinyl albums as, well not Sam's, but definitely more than they had at Eaton's. I think that the first record I bought there for myself was Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, which no doubt is still kicking around at my folks' place.

My first apartment was 2 blocks south of Ed's, and anything that wasn't parental surplus came from places like Ed's - the neighborhood also featured then a Bi-Way, which was more like a giant dollar store, although you could get remaindered Levi's there for $20. But Ed's was responsible for blankets, T-shirts, glasses, can openers, Christmas lights (at $2 a string, even if they didn't work you didn't really mind) and a still have at least one tie I got there - it too was probably less than $3. With its kitchy hand -lettered signs that advertised everything as a potential "Ed's Gift Idea" - one Christmas someone had set up a window display with a pyramid made of boxes of tampons with such a sign, leading me to imagine some twisted version of Gift Of the Magi, well, anyway... Ed's was an institution, and still is today.

His death last week at the young age of 92 notwitstanding, I believe that, unlike Sam's, the store will go on, as will the rest of the Mirvish empire, including the theatres - I suppose we have them to blame for the Lord of the Rings musical last year. But I have no doubt that this Christmas, David Mirvish will still be there, as Ed was for many years before, handing out free turkeys. And it will still be possible to get a DVD player, a bust of Elvis and a jumbo pack of diapers all for under $35 for years to come. Ed's idea was to let a young family, new Canadians, or whoever needed it, get the help necessary to get on their feet in the first place. I think he firmly believed that given the chance anyone could work their way up to be who he was, a man loved by his city and his customers alike. The past week there have been a lot of photos of Ed Mirvish in the paper, and you'll notice that in everyone he is beaming, and I think that is perhaps how he will be best remembered, for his infectious smile. Ed is dead - long live Ed Mirvish.

And, no, it would not be appropriate to post that song by the Pixies.

Back in 5 minutes

So, I've been away for a little bit here, got a little busy with life stuff, and also got a little busy fighting a computer virus. (yay limewire) So I may be laying off the music posting for a little bit while I sort of my business. Something seems to have infiltrated my Internet Explorer, and while I'm hoping I can get rid of it, it's such a drag messing around with software... I almost toyed with the idea of Firefox, but I don't really like the interface on that one. So, anyway, I'm back in spirit anyway, and with any luck there will be some more music soon. I also need to sort out a better embedded flash player than what I've been using. If anyone can show me where to find a better one, by all means point me in the right direction. And now, on with the show.

Happy Canada Day

Well, hi there everyone, and a happy 140th birthday to dear old Canada. I know, if you'd known you'd have baked a cake. Well, you're here, I'm here, Canada is here, let's all sit down together and have a little music party.

I've put together a handful of some very Canadian songs for your listening pleasure.

Stompin' Tom Connors is definitely a legend - let's call him a Canadian Johnny Cash without the drugs and the booze. There's nothing more Canadian than combining Tom with that other Canadian passion - hockey.


Stompin' Tom Connors - The Hockey Song



I don't know much about these guys, but this would definitely qualify as Canadian Classic Rock.


The Kings - Switching To Glide



Great band from the late 80's, early 90's - The Grapes of Wrath. Think they're still out there somewhere - look them up on Google.


The Grapes of Wrath - You May Be Right



The last time I saw these guys was at a movie theater downtown - literally, the lead singer and lead guitarist were going in to see a flick. This is the original of a song ruined by Hootie & the Blowfish. No one sings like Neil Osbourne.


54-40 - I Go Blind



Larry Gowan's Strange Animal album was huge when I was 14. It is worth tracking down a video for this song on You Tube - oh, hell, I'll show it you myself. Check out his earring.



In a very odd development, Larry Gowan is now the lead singer for Styx. No, seriously.


Gowan - Strange Animal



And what would a Canadian musical tribute be without the greatest of Canadians himself?


William Shatner - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds



ps ... welcome to Canada Alex!

Covers: Different Drum

Okay: who had a favorite Monkee? Come on, it's okay, I won't tell anyone... okay, if you don't pick someone soon, I'm going to pick for you, and then - okay, that's better. No, I'm not going to wait for your answer, you had your chance. Besides, this is my blog, and I can do whatever I damn well please. And it pleases me to share that my favorite Monkee was Mike Nesmith. He wasn't the goofball, he wasn't the ladies' man, he wasn't even the one who danced like Axl Rose. Maybe it was the toque, foreshadowing my soon-to-be move to Canada. Maybe it was his height. Maybe it was the fact that you could tell that he really just wanted to be writing and playing songs, and especially in later episodes didn't seem as keen on the cheeseball "acting" sequences.

Nesmith always was a songwriter. The other guys all chipped in, and later on even wrote some of their own original material. But Nesmith had more of a gift - my favorite Monkees song, period, has always been You Just May Be The One. Here it is on YouTube, and notice that the audio is slightly different from the version that usually surfaces on Monkees recordings:





Anyway, that's where my appreciation for Michael Nesmith started. Now we move on.

Like everybody else in the history of the world, my musical interests were molded somewhat by what my parents were listening to when I was a child. This explains Meat Loaf, ELO, and the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as The Beatles, Billy Joel and the Rolling Stones. It also is my explanation (excuse?) for Linda Ronstadt. (As an aside: yes, I promised both here and in a comment on Armagideon Time that I'd be posting about her soon, and am only now getting to it. Better late than never.) So, here goes.

My parents had Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits album, which played a lot in that house on Long Island. There's a bunch of covers in there to begin with, like Desperado and That'll Be The Day, but my favorite was Different Drum, which it turned out was written by, you guessed it, Michael Nesmith. I didn't learn this until I was much older, but maybe this too had something to do with the choosing of my favorite Monkee.

And look at her back then: such a cutie. Damn. I know that for the Living In the USA album, they did a photo shoot with her in short shorts and roller skates, which seemed a natural fit as I keep going on about roller derby lately, but I can't for the life of me find the image I recall. Not that this isn't a marvelous picture to begin with. Taken around 1970, I think, which would be around the time she recorded Different Drum with the Stone Poneys. I've dug up a couple of other reverential covers of the song by appropriate people, who get it.

Michael Nesmith - Different Drum



Linda Ronstadt (Stone Poneys) - Different Drum



Matthew Sweet with Susannah Hoffs - Different Drum



Evan Dando - Different Drum (Live)



You can get Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits here.
You can get Michael Nesmith's early hits "The Older Stuff" here.
Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs' track comes from Under the Covers, available here:
The Evan Dando track was apparently on the Lemonheads' Favorite Spanish Dishes EP, which appears to be out of print. Not sure if this was a separate recording or the original.
As usual, enjoy them while they're here, and if you really enjoy them, go out and buy them.

Our new streetcar

The TTC has started its public consultation process regarding new streetcars and light-rail vehicles for its fleet. The current fleet - those on the left in this photo - is nearing the end of its anticipated lifetime. Plus, there is the hoped-for Transit City plan, which would result in the vast expansion of high (or higher) speed rapid transit throughout the city of Toronto. We may possibly be looking at two different types of vehicles - more traditional-style streetcars for the downtown fleet, and euro-style light-rail for the new suburban right-of-way routes. I'm kind of excited about this, as it is the first time in years I can recall a genuine interest on the part of the province and the city to properly invest in intelligent expansion of transit here. (And no, the Sheppard subway does not count - basically that was the result of a tickle fight between Mike Harris and Mel_Lastman that continues to suck money.)

This is where you and I come in. We get a say, of sorts, in what sort of vehicles the TTC gets. First of all - if this interests you - you should read up on the history and pros and cons, at both Steve Munro's website, as well as on Spacing. For a handy guide to other systems around the world that use light rail and streetcars, check out The Toronto LRT Information Page and its blog. Then, have a look at the site the TTC has set up to gauge public demand and interest: mynewstreetcar.ca. There are virtual tour slide shows to see, plus a survey to fill out, of what you would like to see in new transit vehicles, and what does not work that we have now.

Personally, I have a short list of my own requirements:

• vehicles should be low-floor to allow for full access to wheelchairs and strollers
• ideally the same vehicles used for downtown routes and other right-of-way or tunnel routes uptown to allow for interchangeability
• air-conditioning a must
• placement of maps and route information on board
• seats a little further apart - my 6'5" legs get bent out of shape in the ones we have now
• wider aisles required anyway for wheelchairs, but extend that area for more standing access

Aesthetically, I would like to see something that reflects the heritage of the older vehicles, like the PCC car on the right in the above photo - most of the others that the TTC is looking at are uber-modern, European looking things. This coming Thursday from 12 to 8 pm, at Yonge/Dundas Square downtown, the TTC is holding an information session including, among other things, a short version of the cars used in Minneapolis to see in person. I'm going to try and make it after work to have a peek, and have a say.

Heh-heh. Heh-heh.

Oh yeah. So, there was a roller derby event last weekend - I'm not kidding when I tell you that this was absolutely the coolest thing ever. Three hours of full-tilt skating, and wipe-outs, and screaming and yelling - it was a right blast. I know that the D-VAS defeated the Smoke City Betties, but I can't for the life of me recall the score, nor can I find it anywhere. I suppose I could just ask H, but that somehow seems too easy. In the above picture, she's more or less dead center about to start a round. I haven't used this camera for much more than taking pictures of the cats around the house, so I wasn't prepared for the complete inability to take action shots that are decipherable. I was hoping for some action shots, but what I kept getting was blurred all to hell. Next time I'll probably bring along the Pentax and do it the old-fashioned way.
Andrew from work came with me, and he's posted a couple of video clips from the night on You Tube. Have a look:


I'm hoping to organize a bit of a posse for the next event - July 14th at George Bell Arena, I believe between the Chicks Ahoy! and the Bay Street Bruisers. Tickets again appear to be $10 in advance - through Soundscapes or Rotate This. Other venues for tickets are on the Derby home site - there's also links to all 6 teams, so you can have a look and decide if one squad is more deserving of your support than another. Or let me know, and maybe Penny Whistler can hook you up. (No word on the intermission entertainment - this time around it was the Pillow Fight League, which is exactly what you think it is.)

I think as time goes on, you'll see more animosity creep in to the matches, as at this point I think many of them are still pretty friendly and haven't made their enemies yet. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a competitiveness there and passions and tempers flare a bit. But you're not going to get the flat-out fist fights that no doubt 50% of the male audience is there to see - so if that's you, don't get your hopes up. And, as with Nascar, the main reason for some people to watch roller derby is for the accidents and injuries. Nothing too serious happened last week - I think one woman sprained an ankle.

I'm digging the rockabilly aesthetic with derby, and I'm still digging the Detroit Cobras.

Detroit Cobras - Bad Girl

End of another era

So on Monday I was downtown getting my haircut. (This woman took an hour to cut my hair, showered me with baby powder at one point, and even cut her fingers on the scissors. But this is not that story.)

Anyway. Afterwards, I walked in to Sam the Record Man, which is, alas, closing its doors for good at the end of the month. I've been going there as long as I can remember going downtown, and have bought probably most of the cassettes that are sitting in a box somewhere, because after the advent of CDs you realized that listening to tapes is such a pain in the ass, so you don't do it anymore. Now CDs are the new pain in the ass - everything's online now anyway.

So I walked in, likely for the last time, and poked around. They've thinned stuff out a bit, but there's the makings of a great sale there. There's a bunch of 99 cent bins - if you need a copy of The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart they've got about 50 of them - but it was an interesting piece of nostalgia to walk around in there. I miss the smell of the vinyl. Once record shops ceased being, well, record shops, they lost a lot of their charm. The sound that those plastic security cases that held tapes or CDs slapping against each other wasn't the same, either.

Sam's was also more of a Canadian institution. Once upon a time there were a couple hundred locations across the country. When I was younger there was one in my neighborhood, near Bloor and Jane. A friend of mine worked there at the time, in an era when the top 30 singles would still be represented by an ordered stack of 45s. There was a community feel to Sam's too - at this location, Trevor was generally the one who got the task of hand lettering little signs for the Top 30, usually with really awful, like Evil Dead awful, puns. One in particular that has always stayed in my mind was for a Paula Abdul song. Trevor drew a little sketch of the CN Tower, and the caption, "The CN Tower goes Straight Up". With any luck, this will be the only mention of Paula Abdul ever in this blog.

There will still be 2 independent Sam's locations left, holdovers from the old franchise days, in Sarnia and Belleville, I think. But losing the flagship store on Yonge Street will be a loss for Toronto, certainly. Those neon records were one of my earliest memories of Toronto, from a 1980 vacation with my parents the year before we moved here. We Stayed at a hotel a couple of blocks away, and our hotel room faced that way. At night I'd sit by the window for ages and watch the flashing lights simulate spinning. They were awesome. A note on the Spacing wire suggests that the sign will not be saved with the building, but will instead be auctioned off with the rest of the leftovers.

So. I browsed around for a while, but there wasn't much that was screaming out at me to liberate it from the shop, but I did pick up this:

Blue Peter's old albums have been remastered and are finally available on CD for the first time. Sam's is selling them for $5.99 each, or all 3 releases for $14.99, I think. I picked up Radio Silence, which comes with the ep Test Patterns For Living and a live track from 1983. It's incredible how well this stuff has held up. Video Verite in paticular kicks, and the title song as well. One of the pre-eminent Canadian New Wave bands of the late 70's early 80's, Blue Peter reassembled for a reunion gig in November that I was fortunate enough to attend, and rumor has it that there will be another in Toronto, maybe later this summer, or in the autumn. If hear anything definitive, I will pass it on asap.


In the meantime, you can get your Blue Peter fix at their site or their MySpace page. The former includes some video and a whole bunch of audio clips from back in the day.

And, to get you started, I'll pass this on to you:



Don't Walk Past was probably their biggest hit back in the day, and this is unfortunately a poor recording of it's video. Watch it more clearly on the band's site. And go down to Sam's before it closes for good - and while you're at pick up some Blue Peter why don't you.

Coming soon: the threatened Linda Ronstadt post.

Femme Fatality!

Hey. I don't make this shit up.

But this coming Saturday, the 16th, I'm going to see my first roller derby match. Does one cheer for referees? I'm gonna give it whirl. Full info is available over at ToRD. You can get tickets at Rotate This and Soundscapes, or from me - I've got a couple of H's, and the friends I thought would want to come are otherwise engaged - apparently the Ultimate Fighting match takes precedence, in one of those my-form-of-violence in better than your-form-of-violence sort of things. Anyway, it'll be a gas, and I will have full report next week some time. Apparently there was a feature on MTV Canada this week in which H (Penny Whistler) makes an appearance. I'll figure out a link for it at some point, too.

Here's yet another in my series of not-trying-hard-enough mp3 links:

Call and Response - Rollerskate



I have no idea how I came by this song. It's been in my collection for a few years, though. Anyone who knows anything is welcome to volunteer.

Hell yeah

Evil Dead: The Musical (yes, I'm serious) has announced it is extending its Toronto run through August 4th - if you haven't already gone to see this, you must do it now. You can order online at their website, here. We've seen it a couple of times, in its earlier ghetto incarnation, and the current production. It's more than worth the price of admission. I earlier wrote about it here.

I'm feeling a little lazy right now, so here's a couple of obviously-themed pieces of musical enjoyment:

The Zombies She's Not There



The Zombies Time of the Season



You can pick up their Greatest Hits on amazon.com.

Too Young To Move On

When H and I first started dating, like most guys, I had a phase of trying to make myself seem more interesting than I actually am. (HA! It worked!) And looking for something different to do on a date one night, because "You wanna go grab a couple of pints" doesn't seem all that alluring, I noticed that a club downtown was holding a Jeff Buckley tribute night. When I suggested it, H balked a little, and we wound up... going to the pub to grab a couple of pints instead. Turned out that her co-worker (and my friend who had introduced us) had said "Jeff Buckley's who guys use to get women in bed." I guess she thought I might have been showing my cards a little soon. My friend was right, though; Buckley's music was a bit of a panty-remover. Such a talented singer, writer, guitarist. It's too easy to say the usual bits about tragedy and such-a-waste and gone-too-soon... I mean, really, you think so?

Like everyone else I head heard Last Goodbye on the radio - CFNY (now: "The Edge") had it in medium rotation, I think. And when I heard that he'd died, and in such an odd way, it really struck me, somehow, and I wound up heading to Sam's and picked up Grace the same day. It quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time - if I don't play it as often these days, it's not because I don't love it anymore. I think now I just bring it out more for somewhat special occasions, when I can really give it a good listen.

There's a must-read great post on I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS. She's assembled a great series of rarities, as well as a wonderful list of tribute songs to Buckley by other artists. I especially loved the Aimee Mann story. Read it here.

My favorite song of his, after all this time, remains Lover, You Should've Come Over. I have a few different versions of it, as it showed up on a couple of EPs. This, version, however, would be my favorite, Live @ WNEW-FM in 1995. It's a song that can still break your heart into a million little pieces, and you don't mind at all.

Jeff Buckley Lover, You Should've Come Over (Live)

Or, if you prefer, here's a You Tube video of a different performance:




This will be a good week to give it a good listen.

And if you still don't have a copy of Grace, what the hell is wrong with you? Go buy it right now.

You do know how to whistle, don't ya?

Well, to my continual amazement and glee, H has followed through on her intention to get involved with roller derby. The skates she got don't look as I has hoped (see here) but they're pretty rockin' all the same. Toronto Roller Derby kicks off the summer 2007 season this coming weekend, and H has joined up as a referee for this season - I'm told that the referees pages will get put up eventually. It seems like this has come together pretty quickly, and given that it appears there was tremendous interest in the first place, I'm surprised it wasn't established sooner. By an odd coincidence, the rink the league secured is in my parents' neighborhood. Pretty much any kid I knew growing up who played minor hockey played out of George Bell Arena, not to be confused with this other George Bell:


One of the best outfielders The Toronto Blue Jays had in the 80's, George Bell is perhaps best remembered as:

a) the first (and so far only) Jay to be AL MVP

b) telling reporters that Jays fans could kiss his big, purple ass.

I can't say that I recall why he said this, but we do have a tradition of athletes in this city telling people to kiss their asses. Todd Stottlemyre - another Blue Jay, natch - once told the mayor of Philadelphia to kiss his ass in front of 50,000 people, at a victory rally after the 1993 World Series. I have no doubt whatsoever that the advent of roller derby will lead to additional requests for ass-kissing, although I suspect that the press coverage will be less significant. And I really have no idea about the George Bell for whom the arena is named, nor do I know anything about the color of his ass, purple or no.

But back to the matter at hand...

H has adopted the derby handle of "Penny Whistler". ('cause referees have whistles, don't cha know.) Seeing as all of my suggestions featured the words Boobs, Knockers, Hoo-Hah, or some combination thereof, it's probably just as well that she went her own way on this one. If next time around she joins a team, maybe I'll run a contest for the naming rights.

Here's a couple of tracks which for different reasons seemed appropriate to mark today's theme. See if you can guess why.

Detroit Cobras Hey Sailor

Bright Eyes Pull My Hair

Listen. (part 1)

A happy byproduct of having been home sick this week - I believe today will be the last day off, but we'll see if the fever returns - is that I've had plenty of time to spend online and listen to music. I thought today I would share a few of the things I'm finding I cannot stop listening to. Maybe you'll like them too.

I first stumbled upon Maia Hirasawa a while ago, and she's got to be the best thing to come out of Sweden since IKEA. Well, maybe that's a cheap reference. She's got this wonderful breathy thing going on. Well, here, you decide how you want to categorize it. It's fantastic:




I think all videos from now on should be filmed in dingy bathrooms. Dig the giant drumming rat, too.

This is my other favorite track by her right now:

Maia Hirasawa You and Me and Everyone We Know

Maia Hirasawa is also part of Hello Saferide, who I suppose would be the other best thing to come out of Sweden since IKEA. (I should really stop that.) Slightly different sound. There's a drum in this song that I keep hearing even when it's not playing:

Hello Saferide The Quiz

You can learn more about both acts, and buy their music, at their label, Razzia Records.

Going in another direction, you can't seem to go anywhere without coming across a reference to The National. (SIXEYES has posted a lot of stuff lately.) Right now, I can't seem to get enough, either. Here's what YouTube has to offer:



Check out "Fake Empire" on their Myspace page. This one's an older track, but killer (forgive the heinous pun):

The National Murder Me Rachel

The National's new album Boxer (the one that everyone is raving about) is available at Insound. Get it.

Finally, if you were at all like me a few years ago and couldn't stop listening to the Elephant 6 stuff (Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk, etc.) you might find a fix with The Decemberists. It may just be that voice, as I don't recall Jeff Mangum ever using a saloon piano:

The Decemberists Bandit Queen

You can buy The Decemberists at krs records. You should.

Where have you gone, Jason Chayka?

When I was a kid I lived on Long Island, in a town called Bethpage. It was pretty much the place between the two malls, or at least that's how I remember it. We lived at the halfway point on a county bus route that literally went from the mall in Hicksville (no, really, that's what it was called. yeah, I know.) and the one in Massapequa (got no smart-ass comment for that one, do you?). I don't really have much of a specific point in raising that tidbit of info, but let's see if I can link it in somehow.

I'm sick today. Leave it to me to get sick on what is normally my day off anyway, and on top of that, it's a holiday too. (Happy May 2-4 everyone.) Well, I'll show them - I'm gonna take tomorrow off. Hang out on the couch watching old Family Guy episodes and maybe some old movies. Daytime TV sucks. Anyway, feeling this cold? infection? syndrome? develop over the weekend I tried to ward it off with meat fest - next time I'll take pictures and post it, H had gone away to Milwaukee for the weekend and took the camera - but that didn't work out so well. I did however decide to watch Star Wars for the first time in years. (One of the many assets that H came with was an extensive collection of Star Wars paraphernalia, including an R2D2 collection.) After not seeing this film for like 20 years or more I'm surprised at how ell it stood up, considering how crap the "prequels" were.

Man, these decongestants and antihistamines are wiping me out. And the tylenols.

Oh, right. The link - and this will all become clear in a moment - is that watching the movie made me think of my childhood. I was old enough to see it in the theater when it came out (I'll bet Grandma took me to RKO Keith's in Flushing, which is no longer there, alas.) Man, when that movie came out, it was, I imagine, bigger than Harry Potter today. Every kid at school had to see that movie as soon, and as many times as possible. I would have been in the first grade, I guess. And I was friends with this kid named Jason. Jason could do (for a six-year-old) a pretty decent imitation of R2D2. He'd walk around the school yard at lunch time whistling and chirping in the company of this other kid, Tim, who would do the best attempt at an English accent a kid from Long Island could do while walking around in a stiff-armed posture as C3PO. I suppose I'm painting these kids as total dorks, but come on, we were all of 6 years old. Or so. Hell, the amount of drugs I've taken today it could have been last week for all I know.

Anyway, Jason and I became friends, and when I moved to Canada at 9, he was one of a couple of kids I stayed in touch with. Every couple of years when I would go down to visit family I would go out o the Island and see him. We shared an affinity for cats and cartoons, The Monkees and Dr Who (although I wasn't the one who made his own Tardis out of a box a refrigerator came in. Again, I guess that was pretty dorky. Somewhere I have the picture he sent me of it. If I get it scanned, I'll let you judge for yourselves.) Anyway, this long distance friendship carried into our twenties, and the dawn of emailing, and somewhere around that time we lost touch. And watching Star Wars the other night all smashed on Neo Citran made me think about Jason again and wonder what became of him. I'm pretty sure that at some point I tried mailing something to his old address and never heard back, but that may be another hallucination. I do know that online searching has turned up exactly nothing about him or, as near as I can tell, his folks. He had a sister named Rachel, and I don't recall his parents' names. I think his father had worked for Grumman. So, if you know Jason, or are Jason, by all means drop me a line.

For anyone else who waded through this, as a little reward, here's a piece of All Time Quarterback, one of Ben Gbbard's many side projects from Death Cab. I first heard this song online a few years ago, and I liked it so much I bought the album, and you should too. You can get the album here. I see they also have another song linked there too.

All Time Quarterback! Plans Get Complex

Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea

Just a quickie to say how thrilled I am with the Michael Penn compilation that's just come out (thanks sweetie!). Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea (the line is taken from a voice over in I Can Tell, from Resigned) is a collection that Michael Penn was given the opportunity to choose, and now finds him back on a label. From everything I've read about him over the years, I know he's not had the best experience with them, and as such released his last album (Mr Hollywood Jr. 1947) on his own label, Mimeograph Records, part of United Musicians, the label he and Aimee Mann founded with their manager to fulfill what United Artists was for film actors back in the day. The liner notes are pretty interesting - he notes that the alternative cut of Try presented here was actually the idea of some "wing ding" at the label, but it turned out alright in the end. Material from all 5 albums is covered, and as he himself says, the goal was to create an album anew, as opposed to a boring chronological a to z thing. Long Way Down, I may have preferred the album version; the singing was a little more visceral, but the sound has improved. This may be simply because until recently I only had Free For All on cassette - found it at Sam the Record Man last month for $5! - but Coal shines out. Lucky One and Don't Let Me Go come from MP4, an album I somehow missed all together, and they form a wonderful entry. I'll be ordering that one soon.


Here is Michael's video for Walter Reed, the first track off Mr Hollywood Jr, which also makes an appearance on Palms & Runes...




You can find Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea at Amazon here.

Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

Well, H and I had the best freaking time you can possibly have out at the theatre the other night, at Evil Dead: The Musical. We don't go to see regular productions. You're not going to find us at Les Miserables or Mamma Mia or even the ultimate Andrew Lloyd Weber craptacular Phantom of the Opera (easily the most hackneyed romance ever perpetuated on stage) but wait, I'm not talking about that crap. Start over.

So, as I was saying, we're into the weird stuff. Let's do a quick recap of the previous two shows we went to:

Lord of the Rings: The Musical. This was, unfortunately, not especially good. There was a reason Peter Jackson spread it over 3 movies, and even then could not cover everything from the books. So, cut the running time by 75%, add singing and dancing, and then cast this alleged actor as Gandalf (the man's delivery of lines makes William Shatner into Olivier). What do you get? A right mess. On the plus side, the effects were fantastic. Hobbits they got right. The Balrog, well, that was a lot of flashing lights and smoke effects. The spider was cool. The music? All instantly forgettable. I really wanted to like it, I really did. I see that the London edition is about to open, perhaps they have improved it. I know that they've cut some characters, and they also very wisely did not bring Brent Carver along. They did bring Michael Therriault, Toronto's Gollum, which is also wise, as he was hands down the strongest performer in it. Best of luck to them.

Edward Scissorhands. This turned out not be so much a musical as interpretive dance. No, really. But it was not all that bad, either. The story was tricky to follow, a) if you had not seen the film, as there is no dialogue at all, nor are there lyrics to any of the pieces of music, and b) even if you had, elements of the film are in some cases changed or skipped, and other events and details are added. Again, some of the techniques used for scene staging and props are cleverly done, and the music is largely taken from Danny Elfman's contributions to the original film, so you get what you expect. This only played in Toronto for a few days on a tour, so who knows where it is now.

I'm still glad that I saw those two productions, though. While the former did not live up to my expectations, and while my expectations for the latter were simply wrong, I got exactly what I wanted, and then some, with Evil Dead. We had seen it before, in the summer of 2003, when it was still in its early ghetto version with cardboard props at the Tranzac Club in the Annex. Even then, lineups went down the street. But even then the basis was there, the crazy campy songs, the purposely cliched dialogue, in some parts from the movies, in others new. We've been looking forward ever since for the eventual return of the show, after its Montreal and New York runs, with the promised better and bigger production, and Friday night we went to see it.

Well, they've put the money in exactly the right places. They've now got lighting and better sound than before, they may have spent some of it on better actors on the female side, but the originals weren't that bad to begin with. I only mention the women, because Ash is still, as he has since the beginning, being played by Ryan Ward, who does a fantastic job. His best bud in the first act, Scott, is still played by Matt Olmstead, who is drop dead (sorry) funny. They also seem to have increased the budget for blood - a highlight now is that the first 2 or 3 rows are designated as a "splatter zone". Most people seated there wore white t-shirts to better show off the carnage. The worst we got was the woman next to H lost track of her beer in the dark and dumped it into H's lap - didn't apologize either, just handed her a napkin. (What a stupid bitch, as Scott would say.) The show is deliberately campy and messy, and as such, succeeds where those other shows failed. It knows exactly what to deliver and how best to do so, and it even gives you songs to take away in your head - "Cabin in the Woods", is certainly a toe-tapper, although I think we are both partial to the tango stylings of "What the Fuck was That?", and you haven't lived until you've seen Ash sing "Die" while cutting off his girlfriend's head with a chainsaw and trying to sing through a mouthful of blood. You really haven't. See it. See it now.

Getting Freaky on the TTC

Having lived in Toronto for most of my life, and spending most of it on the TTC (I still don't have a driver's license at my age, and at this rate doubt that I ever will) I rather thought that by this time, I had seen everything. I mean, from the mundane weirdnesses (mumbling psychopaths, guys playing with themselves, the girl who flashed her cooch at me, old men cutting their toenails - seriously, what's wrong with some people - even this guy by some standards blends in with the scenery) but the other day, I found that citizens in my city had reached a wonderful new low. I'm getting on the subway around 6:30 pm on my way to the pub from work, and at Royal York station, there's a section of platform that's wider near where the escalators are. Because it's wider there, there's some large columns to support the ceiling, that also create blind spots. A couple of months ago, I happened upon a guy openly writing on the wall with a marker - I didn't say anything to him, but decided that if I saw him again, I'd say something, because, again, what's wrong with some people. So this day last week, I'm walking down the platform, and I see something out of the corner of my eye, so I turn, and there's a guy pressed up against one of these columns. I'm about to turn towards him, when I realize he's not alone. In between him and the wall there's a woman, and they're totally banging each other. (Once more with feeling: what's wrong with some people?!?) I suppose I should give them some credit, as they were being relatively subtle about it - he was holding his jacket out around her waist, so you couldn't see the "point of entry", as it were, and he, being the more visible one, was standing still, while she was rocking back and forth. But, holy crap, she was getting nailed on the subway platform in rush hour. The most obvious thing to say would have been "Get a room", but shock won out and I simply got on my train. They happened to be fairly averagely unattractive people, but the thing was, they looked somewhat, averagely normal, also. As in, they didn't appear to be a couple of crackheads oblivious to their surroundings, nor did they seem to be the freaky sex-in-public type (mind you, I'm not sure I'd recognize that type in a lineup anyway). They just seemed like everyday, bland mundane people, who will now disappear into the earlier category of weirdos on the subway that you ignore. I shudder to think of what will come next.