THE JOURNEY OF A HEART: BASIA BULAT

Sometimes art has a mind of its own, or a heart of its own.

Even if that art is your own.

Basia Bulat is an incredibly talented singer-songwriter from Toronto. She is a multi talented instrumentalist, playing guitar, piano and a range of traditional folk instruments such as autoharp and charango a kind of ukulele from the Andes. She also possesses a soaring voice filled with vibrato and depths of emotion.

Most of her music could be safely classified as "folk" and was largely acoustic. But she decided to make a change, for an upcoming recording she hired on Tim Kingsbury of Arcade Fire to help her go electric or, as she puts it, "modern"

But something happened on the way to the recording. Something sad. A very close friend of Basia's suddenly passed away. She already written most of the songs needed for the new album. But this thing happened to her, this terrible thing that was in her heart and would not go away. That's where her art came in, her art told her that this should be the record, that this sorrow was where her music should go.

The result was the recording Tall Tall Shadow and for me, it's one of the most beautiful things I have heard in a long time.

I have owned this recording for about a year now and either from a CD in the house or my iPod in my car I probably listen to it at least once a week.

Yesterday I happened to be watching Breakfast Television and was learned that Basia was doing a show at Massey Hall ... the next day. Credit card, internet, tickets bought. Collette and I went to the show last night.

Basia Bulat going "modern" is this tiny blonde woman a six piece band including two backup singers and a pair of percussionists one of whom is her brother. Her mandolin is electric but her autoharp and her charango are still acoustic. I've listened to this album a lot and I thought that this woman would be good in concert. I was wrong. She was a revelation.

She is winsome and sincere and funny. After she introduced her band she said "I'm guessing that you know who I am" After the audience chuckled she remarked "I'm such a dork"

Her playing is extraordinary. After this concert I can view the autoharp and as a perfectly viable pop lead instrument. But I think she has a technique that may be difficult to replicate for some. As she played she moved around, swinging her head, her long hair flowing across the instrument. The secret to the Basia Bulat sound: Hair in the strings

When you see someone perform live after first hearing the record it's an interesting thing. You want what you heard on the CD but you want something more. Basia Bulat gave us more. She gave us those spontaneous moments you can only receive from a live show; connections between herself and her band, one of her backup singers also played the charango and there were moments where Basia, playing her electric mandolin "battled" back and forth with her; connections with her audience, there were moments when she seemed genuinely affected by our reactions, at the first standing ovation she stood on the stage, hands pressed to her face, eyes enormous.

There are the moments in a live show where a song is altered from how it appeared on the recording. In the song Paris or Amsterdam Basia tries to reconcile the loss of her friend by imagining that her friend is simply travelling and perhaps someday will return. She performed a very stripped down version of the song allowing us to hear the emotion in her voice, drenching the song with an even deeper sense of sadness than can be heard on the CD

One is often taught to save the best for last and Basia certainly did. The song It Can't Be You is one of the most simply produced on the CD, Basia and her charango and a very simple arrangement that highlights her lifting, ululating voice. For the concert, she made it even simpler, even more pure.

With just the tiny instrument in her hand Basia moved away from the mic to the front of stage, her voice now amplified. She paced back and forth, strumming the ukulele, she began to sing. This woman can sing. It rose up into the rafters of Massey Hall; at first, without amplification it seemed thin and tenuous but as the song moved on and her emotion intensified that voice got strong and stronger, a shivering sweeping thing of beauty.

This is why we go to see an artist live

This where art can take you, into a journey of the heart, the heart of the artist and the hearts of those who have come to listen to her

TORONTO BLUES SOCIETY TALENT SEARCH

I'm still working on my Iceland videos and preparing them for publishing but in the meantime, life goes on. This past Thursday the Toronto Blues Society presented a free concert here in Nathan Phillips Square.

The show featured the six finalists in their new talent search which, I gather, has been going on for some time. I missed the first act but got to hear the rest of the entrants. Over all the quality was pretty good and ranged from delta style blues, to a jazzier feel to wannabe Steve Ray Vaughns. Mostly, it was the kind of stuff you'd hear in a decent bar, enjoy for the evening but not necessarily remember a week later. But there were a few standouts.

Nicole Richardson is a very rootsy artist, giving a personal spin to some very traditional woman-with-a-guitar blues, her voice echoing that of Sue Foley, not a bad thing at all

Ken Yoshioka is a Delta bluesman by way of Japan .... a very respectable slide guitar and harp style colored by and ESL take on the lyrics. The man can definitely play, his harp playing is respectable and his lyrical interpretation is ... interesting.

Distillery is a trio, guitar, harmonica and female singer. Their sound was jazzy inspired, the musicians were competent but overall they seem uninspired. The singer sometimes had difficulty finding her range.

The Fraser Melvin Blues Band was a full outfit and tried for a rocking blues style. One would think that if a band was named for one of its members, that individual would be the strongest player .. but he was not. Melvin's guitar playing was adequate, he clearly wants to be the next Stevie Ray but has a long way to go and his singing seemed very forced. The sax player, however, was quite good.

Although I enjoyed the first two individual acts I was finding no inspiration .. until a man with horn rimmed glasses, a pork pie hat and a bobble head Jesus hit the stage. Bradleyboy MacArthur is a one man band; guitar, high hat, harmonica and a suit case as a base drum. This was Tom Waits visiting swamp blues and from the first frayed chaotic riff, I was pretty much in love

While Bradleyboy may not have fit as neatly into a blues slot as some of the other players, this was something primal and raw and the only thing that made me feel like dancing. Not only did his voice resemble Mr Waits, he also had the sense of humour. One of his songs begins: "When I was born at the age of sixteen ..."

I wasn't the only one in love with this darkly comedic one man band; Bradleyboy won the competition. Which means he may be soon coming to your town. Go see him. But you may want to check your back seat on the way home.






If you'd like to see the HD version of this video, click the link below:

Blues Contest

UNPLUGGED

The figures are soft in the darkness, inchoate, shapes humped over, colors blurred, a suggestion of movement and motion. The sound is more distinct. Lyrical and transcendent, skirling up out of the darkness, flickering like the candle light that wavers as if swaying to the music ...


When I was in Kingston last week, for the sad event of my friend Paul's funeral, something rather wonderful happened, something unexpected, which in my opinion often goes hand in hand with unexpected.


I was only going to be Kingston for that one night, and it was a Tuesday night and I know people have lives but still, it was a lovely evening and I have it on very good authority (as in my own) that they have beer in Kingston. So we all know what that means.


So I ended up agreeing to go downtown and have a beer (or forty) with my nephew Ken. My plan was to do some patio surfing, really the only sport that I can claim Olympic caliber skill at doing. When I left Ed's house to go down to the waterfront, it was not quite dusk and I ambled along, not thinking much about a traffic light being out, then another, then another ... Yes, I am indeed an idiot savant but one of those words applies to me far better than the other. I realized that the power was out. Power was out all up and down Princess St., Kingston's main drag, and for blocks all around.


When I finally met Ken down at the water, our plans seemed to be pretty much fucked up. We hit a few bars but nobody was serving; cash registers weren't working, those little bar computers weren't running, there weren't any lights. Damn. As we wandered back up Princess, Ken thought of Ben's Pub, a little place just off the strip. "If any body's serving" he said, "Margaret will be."


Indeed, Margaret was. Ben's Pub is a little place and as the name suggests, sort of British in theme, not uncommon in Kingston, not uncommon in a lot of places in Canada I guess. They had candles set up on the tables and the draft kegs were working. When we came in, the bartender asked us if we were OK with only beer and Ken and I looked at each other and said "Duh"


As we settled down we noticed a few people sitting at the tables with fiddles. Apparently Ben's has a regular Tuesday night caleigh. As time went on, they acquired about half a dozen fiddlers, three people on guitars, a lute and an Irish pipe. The lack of electricity meant nothing to the players, in a way they were in their element, playing celtic and gaelic music in an environment very close to how it was originally heard.


I wish Collette had been there. My first "date" at her house involved a room full of musicians like this, playing and jamming and feeding off of one another. I am always in awe of this kind of event. That night at the pub, a fiddler would begin playing then the others would jump in, playing along with lively skill, everyone on time and at the end of the song someone would lean over and ask "What was that one?" They didn't know the song but were still able to join in as if they had. That frankly amazes me.


There were a few songs where everyone just really clicked, where the instruments played in perfect harmony, the music layered and complex and in no need of vocal accompaniment. Combine that with the darkness and the candle light and the lack of TV, electric lights etc ... it was kind of a special thing. Even Ken, who's musical tastes run more to rage and snarling, appreciated the moment.


I guess it's a black out cliche to not how we find alternate ways to connect with another, to engage with each other. What is interesting of course is that they tend to be very old ways, as in a night of acoustic music, lit by candles, flavoured by ale as it would have been a couple of hundred years ago .. OK, so the beer was cold but that is one comfort I will allow myself.

BLUES, WOMEN, MUSIC

Last month Collette and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Women's Blues Review here in Toronto. The event has been hosted for 22 years and I don't think we've missed more than two shows. It began at Trinity St Paul church and is now hosted at Massey Hall, where they generally sell out.


Anybody who knows me, knows that I love the blues. It is a musical passion that Collette and I share. Although I can say that I love pretty much the entire spectrum of blues music, from the Delta, to Chicago, to the current day, I have always had a fondness for female blues singers.


Women like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Sippie Wallace and Memphis Minnie were the original superstars of blues music; they toured in fairly large shows (at least Smith did) and had the first well selling recordings. Minnie was an innovator in both guitar playing and song writing and you can hear her influence to this day.

Women sang about everything, but they were primarily know for their raunchy songs. And of course women record the blues to this day, but their commanding popularity did wane, and men began to dominate the blues field in the early days.

When I talk to people about the blues, particularly women, a common lament is that they find it difficult to relate to the music. The complaint is too many of the songs are by men crying over the no good woman who done him wrong ... My thought has always been that just switch the genders in the song to suit you. Make it a man doing you wrong, accept it as universal constant.

At the concert, the amazing Lily Frost took an old Koko Taylor song and deliberately changed "all the boys" to "all the girls" which of course made the crowd go crazy. It was a cute little tribute and quite fitting but it got me wondering about all this "gender stuff" in music. Does it really matter if a woman sings a song from a male perspective and doesn't change the lyrics to affect the difference in gender? I remember Linda Rondstat never did that, she would sing "she" or "him" as originally written in the song, it was unusual at the time and it made me take notice.

So the Women's Blues Review is all women .. duh. Women singers and an absolutely smoking all women band. That changed this year. ShoShona Kish is a native Canadian singer who performs with a partner, a stunning guitarist named Raven Kanatakta and she brought him to play with her. I don't know if a male ever graced the stage at this particular event. It caused a ripple through the audience. Collette and I were sitting alongside a large group of women who seemed convinced that Raven was a female. Well, he has his long hair of course and in our white culture most Raven's are female but there was little doubt to his gender. I think they just did not want to accept that a man was involved in this all-woman event. And, while I don't go to this concert to watch male singers, Raven's inclusion did not bother me. From all accounts he and ShoShona work as a unit, they have never performed apart .. and damn, it was something to watch this guy play with Marg Stowe, who has been playing guitar with this from (I think) day one. It gave me chills.

But was it appropriate to have a male perform in an event designed to be an all female event? One of the appeals of the show is that it does give women an opportunity to play this music and to play with each other. I can't think of many other instances where that occurs. In the past glory days when women were the stars of the blues, they were backed up by male bands. Most of the female blues performers I can think of play with men. And here you have a show that is all female ... it is refreshing.

This show clearly appeals to women. Many men attend, but I would say the numbers tip in favour to the female side. What is it that draws women to all women events? What is it that bothers some males when women become involved in some "boy's club" ritual? "Why is that girl playing hockey? She can't play hockey!" Maybe she can, maybe she can't, it doesn't seem to matter, she shouldn't be there.

Generally, I don't care about gender mixing in these kinds of situations. Yes, I like the Women's Blues Reviews because it is unusual and I do enjoy female musicians and I love watching women perform this music because for the last forty years or more it has been a male dominated musical form and I just naturally gravitate towards anything that goes outside the box. And I love women's voices and the perspective they bring to the table. But I've gone to all male blues shows and enjoyed them as well.

Many years ago when I was living in Kingston I was in a used a record store (yes, records, you've seen them in museums) where the owner was piping music into the store. It stopped me cold. It was a woman singer and her voice and her lyrics immediately caught my attention. The guy told me her name was Ferron and I could buy the record he was playing, and I did

A couple years later I was playing one of the songs from the album and someone said "Oh yeh, the lesbian anthem" It had never occurred to me that Ferron was a lesbian or that any of her music was an "athem" The songs were about love, loss, redemption, struggle, joy ... life. Stuff I experience, stuff lesbians experience, stuff everyone experiences. I just don't care about the gender pref of the singer/writer. Its the stuff we share, not the stuff we don't, that interests me. Hell, I am big fans of Indigo Girls and Melissa Ethridge ... I'm also a fan of Muddy Waters and Lonnie Johnson, neither of whom could ever be considered .. um .. feminists. I can't get into music (or any art form) that is blatantly misogynistic, but I don't expect artist to tip toe through the politically correct tulips either. Life is life. I want singers to take that on. Deal with it.

So boys sing about girls, girls sing about guys, men sing about men, women sing about women and Tom Waits sings about Tony Franciosa ... Women can sing about things exclusive to their gender, like child birth, which I will never experience but it doesn't mean I can't connect to it, as long as it's honest. That's all I want; give me the truth and even if it's beyond my experience, I can relate to it. Hell, that's what I want out of art, a different experience.

THIS POST HAS A SOUNDTRACK

I'm a musician. Let me pause to make some room for the snickering. OK, for those who know me that is outright raucous laughter. I understand it. For those who do not know me let me make this perfectly clear: I cannot play an instrument. I can barely hold a guitar the proper way. I'm the only guy who can blow into an empty plastic pop bottle off key. And I can't sing. No, I mean I can't sing the way Mike Tyson can't write iambic pentameter. I remember telling this woman that I couldn't sing and she calmly assured me that of course I could sing and that that I have just been conditioned by cold hearted music teachers in school ... then I sang. I sang so badly not only did she go deaf, she went blind ...

Still, I'm a musician. And it all relates to video. When I was inspired by Elizabeth McClung's weekend adventure challenge to cut a video with every one's pictures and video, I began thinking about the music before I had seen any of the images. For me, cutting often is all about the music, it certainly begins there. Particularly if it is images only; music becomes tremendously important. In the video business we call this "music video" style editing; not in the annoying lip syncing, belly button flashing, hair flipping, bling flashing actually promoting a song sort of way, but simply putting image to music, or the other way around.


For the Weekend Adventure video I wanted something upbeat with a nice pace to reflect the fun implicit in the images but I always wanted something with a little substance, with lyrics that conveyed optimism and yet could also understand the poignancy of Elizabeth's challenge: Go out, live life, have fun, cause life oft times throws you a curve ball regardless of what you may be planning. Jem's It's Just a Ride fit the bill perfectly. An upbeat, catchy melody, and a message that was life affirming because it acknowledged that the ride is filled with bumps and detours and doors opening in your path but it's still a ride and all rides should be enjoyed.

When I sang the song in my head (even singing in my head caused my cat Gypsy to wince, that is how pathetic I am) I looked at the images on the computer and it all just came together for me. In my editing style the song goes down first ... first, even though this is a video. Music first so the images could follow the music. Sure, I had an idea what I wanted the images to do; grouping them by "adventure" starting off with each individuals pics in a group to help with identification (I had some quotations rolling as well) and theme. That was pretty obvious and I certainly could have done that without music. But video has a rhythm. It has a rhythm even without music, without a soundtrack. We've all seen static images left on too long ... it can illicit a physical sensation that is almost painful, like your chest tightening. Maybe that's just me. I feel it. An image not given enough time I feel right behind the eyes, like a brief flaring headache. So I put the music down first, and let that be the rhythm of the images.


In the editing software that I use (Final Cut Pro for all the geeks in the house) I can set a duration for any still image I bring into the program. The default is 10 seconds .. way, way, way too long. I have two presets: One at five seconds and one at four. Four seconds is actually how long I want the images to last on screen. I think that duration gives even a completely static image enough time to "tell its story" to give its information without overstaying its welcome, if you will. So why the five seconds? Because if you put transitions on either side of the image (like a dissolve, fade to black etc) that eats up some of the time that each image lives on the screen.


That length is not a hard and fast rule of course. If you watch the Weekend Adventure video, there is a section just before the chorus where Jem sings "break down, don't you break down, break down .." and I cut photos into each one of the "break downs" which is less than four seconds, more like two seconds or so. I'm betting that those photos don't seem less than half the length of others, because the images are moving and they are matched to the music in a way that it makes sense; it flows.


I think I've always seen images and music as elements that should not only exist together, but need to go together to be at their most effective. This probably comes from the movies. A great soundtrack does not just accompany a movie, it enhances it, improves it, embellishes it. The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed; the use of the zither as Joseph Cotton chases Orson Welles around the streets and through the sewers of post war Vienna ... the jarring music and Reed's off kilter camera angles and the brilliant black and white chiaroscuro all combined to give those scenes a breathless, edgy quality. Combined, mind you. Reed's camera work and editing is brilliant but that music adds so much to the scene, it would not be as effective without it.

There are dozens of examples; a bit more recently The Ghost and the Darkness, set in colonial Africa, uses African inspired music to great effect. The music is heavily percussive and filled with chants and not only does it reflect the film's location, it pushes the movie pace. In the early scenes, when Val Kilmer arrives in Africa to build his bridge, all optimistic and filled with testosterone, the music is big, orchestral, effusive and with the African rhythm more subtle, hidden under the strings. As the story progresses and the man eating lions begin to terrorize the area, as all of Kilmer's beautiful clean engineering is destroyed by feral violence, the strings are stripped away from the soundtrack; the drums come out, thudding like blood and the chants become more guttural, grunting, like the hunger of the lions and the fear of the men that leaves breathing short and blood hammering. The scenes are not cut to the beat but the beat informs them, it adds the poetry to the language of the visual images.

I certainly don't aspire to such artistry but I think I understand that power of music to inform image. I have a certain reputation for it in my field. I have worked with other editors on long, complex corporate videos; usually in such cases where the bulk of the video is highly expository, there is a desire to break up the talking heads and close up shots of steel presses with musical montages. These little scenes provide a reprise from the pure information but they still must have a purpose, they still must illustrate something about the product or company. Often, working on these kinds of videos the refrain was "let Kellar do the freaking montage".

Cutting to music is more than just matching cuts to the beat. It is understanding how images need to match up to the rhythm; when cutting to extremely fast beats I like detail shots, extreme close ups, like a pair of eyes or a just the logo from a large machine or the curve of a neck of a bottle of chef sauce (hey, I never said corporate video was romantic). In corporate video you use, largely, instrumental music, because you do not want to distract from the imagery and the message.

That kind of cutting is challenging, both on a technical level as well as a creative one. Where it gets more purely creative for me (let me whisper the word "artistic" in your ear in my most manly of voices) is not just cutting images to the beat, its using music to illustrate the image. This is where you you lay down the images first then stripe in the music afterwards ("striping" is a perfectly archaic video term for inserting a video element, it has to do with the way old school video decks used helical heads to record image and sound onto tape ... wake up, we're done with the geek speak now). Here, the challenge is to find the music that not just compliments the image, but illustrates it. I've been told I have a talent in this area. My friend Karen Baldwin-Porter, an actual for real can play an instrument musician asked me to put together a memorial slideshow for her husband David; when she saw it she told me "You got me with the music, I knew you would get me with the music" I created a similar slideshow as a memorial to Collette's mother Margaret ... and really, you know, I'm happy to do it, but its a duty I do not want to make a habit of. People also complimented the music, were even surprised at the song choices but agreed that it gave impact to the pictures. You can also take a look at this Hayley video where I had some fun cutting to the music.

That is how I am a musician, I think. I'm never gonna be able to play an instrument. Tom Harpell, my friend, my teacher, my mentor in all things video and a pretty mean blues musician, once told me that he could teach anyone, even me, how to play the blues harp. Tom, I love ya brother, but we all know that ain't gonna happen. Its ok. No regrets. I have my own way of playing music. You tune up your harp. Give me a second while I start the computer ...

JEFF HEALY: MARCH 24 1966 - MARCH 2 2008

Jeff Healy died this past march. I have been thinking about it since it happened and, as is the usual case with me, it took some time for the thoughts to coalesce into something I could actually write about.

I don't know how famous Jeff Healy really was. Certainly here in Toronto he was well known; musician, bar owner, radio show host, a pretty big fixture in the town's music scene. He had some success in Canada with the Jeff Healy Band, a couple of hit records including Angel Eyes; ironically because that was a song least Representative of what this man could do. So he had some national fame but he took himself off the "record charts" turning his back on popular music and devoting himself to what he loved the most, blues music and (his preference) traditional jazz. I suppose he had some international fame as well. You can see him in the Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse; although Jeff's character is called Cody (or something) he was playing Jeff; a blind white boy with a sense of humour with his guitar on his lap who played some of the most blistering blues/rock you ever heard. The movie won't to be everyone's taste but it has two things to recommend it: Sam Elliot ("that hurts, don't it?") and Jeff Healy.

Living in Toronto I was fortunate enough to have seen Jeff several times at concerts, blues festivals and at his original bar Healy's. I loved Healy's. It was this little basement place at Bathurst and King. Not sleazy but not fancy, small and dark and crowded just like a good blues bars should be. Collette and I saw Long John Baldry there most recently and it was a perfect venue to watch the Big Man do his thing. In Feb of last year Jeff opened Healy's Roadhouse just down from the Sky Dome on a very touristry strip that include Gretsky's, Second City, Don Cherry's etc. Its a big place, there is good music but boy, I miss that hot little basement.

I don't really recall what year my brother Ed and I saw Jeff at the Skydome. A baseball stadium is a shitty place to watch a concert but who could resist this: Jeff Healy, Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughn. C'mon. Could have shot me. Would have died with a smile on my face. I could not have imagined then that I would be writing this, not much more than 15 years later and of those three musicians, only Beck survives.

A personal memory of Jeff was when Collette, myself and her niece Billie-Marie went to see the Woman's Blues Review. In those days this annual event was held at this intimate church. When we seated ourselves Billie was looking around then turned to us with this excited look on her face "That's Jeff Healy! He's right behind us!" She had not been living here for long at that time and was still surprised to see "famous" people in everyday circumstances (a pretty good definition of a Canadian celebrity). She looked back at Jeff then at me and said "I keep looking at him but I don't want to be rude by staring" I pointed out "Its ok sweetie, he can't see you" I looked at Jeff and there was this little smile on his face.

Jeff Healy was one of these disabled people who was not disabled. He battled the cancer that finally killed him his entire life. It took his eyesight at age three. It didn't see to slow him down much. He had the music career, the bar career, a career as one of this country's leading experts on traditional jazz music, he did some film work. He had his wife and he had his children. I can't imagine how difficult his life actually was; certainly in the last few months of his life he was dealing with terrible pain but he finished up a new blues recording and was preparing live performances.

I recall watching one live TV taping with Jeff. Although he primarily sat on a chair and played with the guitar in his lap, he loved to get up and dance around when the mood struck him. As he got up, Jeff yelled "I have no idea where the camerman is but you may want to move!" as he bopped around the stage, head back, the guitar held across his waste, smiling and the music .. the music just flowing out of him

I will miss you Jeff. Good journey. Say Hi to Stevie for me.

Here is a video of Jeff Healy doing a cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER WATCH WE WILL ROCK YOU ON YOUR iPOD

This past weekend Collette and I attended a performance of We Will Rock You here in Toronto. This is the musical based on the music of Queen. You remember Queen; big hair, big guitars, big hits, big music, big ambiguous lyrics filled with big words that had some of my high school buddies scrambling for a dictionary. "Hey, look up Bohemian ..." Well, at least they had finally opened a dictionary. Hell, they had finally opened a book ...


I digress. Not surprising, really, because I think digressing is the whole point of this blog. So when I don't digress and stay focused and on point, I am defeating the whole point of this exercise. Except defeating pointless points is also the point of this blog. Again. With the digressing.


Back to We Will Rock You. This won't be a review of the show but it was great. Collette and I are Queen fans of varying degree and we like the music, the performances and singing were solid and the "book" (see, I took theatre in school) was quite funny.



The story concerns itself with the homogenization of music. One of the characters states "The music began to die with the creation of something called American Idol that produced singers whose careers were shorter than the songs they sang" (Paraphrasing, imagine a more humorous and melodious syntax) Real music made by real guys with real big hair wearing their sisters make up in their daddy's garage had been replaced by corporate created muzac distributed over the Internet.

The instruments were taken, the leather jackets where shredded and people's ability to create had been compromised by commercial pablum. Well, hard to argue that. But, when did this happen? A recent phenomenon? Was there actually some long grace period where free spirited artists made their music as they wanted and everyone was able to hear it?

Maybe in the Delta, in the juke joints and the booze parties, where Leadbelly and Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson played for pennies and still liquor, often making it up as they went along cause nobody read music or knew the words. (OK, my blues name will now be Sighted Tangerine Kellar, just cause I can)

I grew up at the tail end of rock and roll, pre Brit invasion rock and roll, the era that We Will Rock You casts as some kind of musical utopia. Cept it was during this era that Fabian was signed to a recording contract before anyone ever heard him sing cause he had wet eyes and a taut butt. And Pat Boone was doing Little Richard covers and selling them. I often bemoan aloud that in this day of the music video, people get record contracts based on their looks; but Fabian was there already there and the Beatles really didn't get huge until they were on Ed Sullivan

Image has always been a part of rock and roll. Maybe rock and roll was so hugely successful because of its image. The leather jacket and blue jeans are visual icons really, associated with an aural art form, can you have one without the other? Rock and rollers enjoyed mass market success long before the bluesmen even though rock began as an expression of blues. Why is that so?

Cause more rockers were white, more rockers were young, and more rock and roll happened in the age of TV than did the blues. Sullivan, American Bandstand ... I am not forgetting or ignoring racism. Blues records weren't sold to white kids and blues music wasn't played on white radio. Though, even this art form was chained to commercialism; many blues greats, including Sonny Boy Williamson got their start on the King Biscuit Boy radio show. King Biscuit Boy was a flour label.

Lets face it, if music didn't have ties to commercialism we would never hear it. Guerrilla radio stations aside, most of the music we hear is because some one is making money from it. And if someone is making money from it, that someone damn well has their hand in the creative stew.

Early blues music was organic, shows sometimes just happened spontaneously and bluesmen often "duelled" with other (and duelled with each other, like with guns and razors "You bring the knife, I'll bring the gun, we'll go down to the alley and have us some fun" Hoyt Axton sang) Early rap music was similar. Totally uncommercial, a form of expression devoid of instrumentation cause no one could afford it. Now look at it. Queen Latifa (who once declared on black person could be racist so don't jail them) hawks lip stick and Run of Run DMC has a reality show that looks like the Cosby show.

In the mid sixties a lot of old bluesmen were "discovered" by a white audience and were applauded as real, organic, "folk" music. You could actually "find" a Bukka White album and pass it around and be pretty sure no one else in your circle had ever hear of him. I heard KT Tunsall on a little underground internet site and it seemed before I could write her name down, she had her own Bravo special. Technology has made that different, as We Will Rock You declares. But is it bad? Bukka White never got to sell a million records or play to thousands of peoples and sign and endorsement deal and make a sex tape that gets onto the net and go to detox and national TV and clean up and become a Christian for four seconds before going back on tour and producing some tiny little white chick with big tits who makes him even more money ...

But I bet he would have liked too.

Oh yeh, one final irony about the whole thing. We Will Rock You, the musical that denounces the commercialisation and branding of everything was staged in the beautiful old Pantages theatre ... except now it is called the Canon.

And life goes on.

DEFINITIONS

What is the hairy edge?



It is a place that exists inside my mind. Its as real as the memories in my head and as fantastical as all the fiction I have written. As concrete as the faces of the people of love and as ephemeral as the piece of music I've been writing for twenty years and don't have the ability to record.

"The dreams made of smoke and the reality hewn in Stone" Gunter Grass



It is an almalgam of all that crap that has filtered through my brain in 50 year. It reads like Samuel Delaney and James Dickey and Phillip Dick and Margaret Atwood and T Jefferson Parker and Harlan Ellison and bill bissett. It sounds like BB King and Leonard Cohen and Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rankin and the Rolling Stones. It looks like frames created by Sam Peckinpah and John Ford and the Cohen Brothers and Ridley Scott.



The Hairy Edge falls between the things I've done, the stuff I'll never do, the work I will most certainly do, and the dreams of "someday I'll get to it"



The Hairy Edge is the moments when I am physically alone yet still connected to the people all around me. Like walking through a snowstorm for two hours, the flakes on my eyelashes, the city all quiet and frozen and not moving and I don't see anyone but I'm thinking of what I'm going to buy my wife for Christmas. When I'm driving from Toronto to Kingston at 2 am, the highway empty, the wheels humming, John Lee Hooker rumbling in my ears and my mind is thinking of my brother and how the next day I am just going to get him drunk. Solitary. Not alone.



The Hairy Edge is a space I create when I am writing, not the words on the screen or my fingers on the key but just that moment, that place, between the words forming in my mind and the letters appearing. That place is quick and temporal and the most salient of all.



The Hairy Edge is out there. Well, not really out there. I was out there once when I was young and I came back with less teeth, more hair and underpants that smelled like Jose Cuervo tequilla. I am old now. I don't want to be out there. I want to be in here. In here with my wife and my dog and my John Wayne westerns. I live in here and its a nice place to live. But sometimes I have to be away from here so I got someplace that is not here and not out there but perhaps some place just south of both of them, where my sould remains the same but my mind kind of bleeds off a little.



The Hairy Edge, for purposes of this site, is my musings. The ones I usually keep in my head. The thoughts that compell my wife to ask "Hon what you thinking about" and when I don't answer she knows where I am



Now the Hairy Edge has a space.



Lets see if I can fill it