THE FROG IN HER THROAT, THE LUMP IN OUR HEARTS

Last night Collette and I spent an evening with a senior citizen. She was not feeling very well, recovering from a chest cold and had to stop from time to time to drink water and take a throat lozenge. She had agreed to share some music with us but due to her health, admitted to being ill prepared. At one point she joked "Welcome to our rehearsal"

Well, that "rehearsal" and her ill feelings mattered not a whit. Yeh, that senior citizen was Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt had 2/3rds speed still out performs many other performers at full strength, even it they're juiced, surrounded by dancers on exploding stages and lip syncing

With a band, some of whom have been with her for 25 years, who understands Raitt's every nuance and could help out in those brief moments when she struggled, you really had to pay attention to find any gaps that were in the music due to her, as she called, froggy throat. At one point she commented "Good thing I sing the blues"

Yes. A very very good thing

There is something special about live music. The things that can't be duplicated in a recording session, those unexpected moments

Last year, when we saw Basia Bulat, it was at the end of the concert when Basia, stepped away from the mic, stepped to the edge of the stage at Massey Hall and unmiced, all alone with her tiny ukulele, she sang out into the theatre and it literally made my spine tingle

Last night, it was the way Bonnie dealt with the limitations of her bad throat. No quit in his woman, that's a fact. Decades of slogging it out in the music business, sometimes being acknowledged by the masses, usually working in her own idiom, beloved but largely unrecognized. She played songs that she had not played live in over 30 years, songs that she had recorded but had fallen off the set list. Not many people have those kinds of resources upon which to draw

One of the highlights of a Bonnie Raitt concert, for me one of the highlights of any live performance, is when she sing John Prine's Angel From Montgomery. Her live performance of this song is one of those reasons why you go see a concert. Her live version is far superior to any version of it she ever recorded. It is a seminal moment. Like when KD Lang sings Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. I had to admit that last night I was a bit concerned

Yeh, sometimes I ain't so bright

There were a couple of reasons why Bonnie was able to deliver this song in a way that literally put a lump in my throat. First was her understanding of the song. She has been singing this song for a long long time. It is more than a song on a list that people want to hear. It means something to her, that is obvious. She knows what the song is, she knows what the song means. Her technical expertise allowed her to skirt around the tightness in her throat, still being able to achieve some beautiful harmonies with her band mates. But it was her emotional understanding of the song, and her understanding of her audience's emotions, that allowed her to give this song all the nuance and power you could possibly want

Understanding her music and understanding her audience is another important factor that Bonnie brings to a live show. Another high moment in her set is always I Can't Make You Love Me, not just one of her biggest commercial successes, but a song into which the singer puts everything. I've seen her have to take a moment after doing the song, letting her band rock out, to pull herself back together

It's a tough song for her to sing, both technically and emotionally but as she said "This song is important to me and I know it's important to you" and the road warrior understands why she was on that stage, to give us what we want

And she gave it us. The only song to which she did not accompany herself, just sitting on her stool (her comment about "us old broads need to sit down now and then" reminded me of when BB King would take a stool "we're not sitting down because we're tired, you understand") She sat there, for once her hands absent of a guitar and just poured her vocal chords and her spirit into this torch song

Yeh, that's why we watch live music

THIS IS NOT HOW JAMES CAMERON STARTED

So. Here's the deal

I used to make videos for a living. If no one wanted a video, I never made one. I worked on a wide variety of video for a wide variety of clients. I made the video but it didn't belong to me. It belonged to my client. I made the video on their behalf

No matter what my role on the video, writer or editor or camera or all of the above, I was making this video for someone else. I had to please them. Using my skill to give them a video that met their needs. And making the video within their budget and their timeline. For some that would be stifling creatively but it was not for me. I liked the deadlines, I liked the restrictions, I enjoyed the challenge of being creative while meeting that bottom line

I don't make videos as my principle means of income any more. But I still make videos. Commercially, I look for videos that are interesting and different and for clients with whom I can strike some kind of rapport

I've also been making non commercial "amateur" videos for fun. But even then, I've sought motivation elsewhere, entering film festivals with a theme or a brief as they are often called. And often with really tight deadlines. Yeh, that's my pathology.

Most of those videos have been music video format, no dialogue, no acting, none of this pesky actors or those cumbersome scripts

But I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something I've never before done and I wanted to do something a little more complex than shooting footage and marrying it to music

I came up with the idea of a documentary based around the fan (comics, sic fi, anime etc) that I attend here in the city. Two years ago I spend four days at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto, shooting my brains out. The doc I had planned was not going to happen for reasons too prosaic to go into here. But I had all that footage

Well, I could still do something different. And I've done that. A video I've never before done. Something a bit more than music video style. Interviews, footage, script narration, titles .. ta da

It's not a documentary, really and it's not a promotional vid, god knows I've done enough of those. I guess you could call it a commentary. For the first time I got to write a script in my voice .. yeh, I know, that's a risk. But that's what doing new things is all about

I'm not really sure what this thing is or to whom it would appeal but all of the content is original so it qualifies to be entered into film festivals, something else I wanted to do

So, you've been warned. Here is Fan Love Love Fans

FanLoveLoveFans from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

CANADA I DO NOT SING OF THEE, I JUST MAKE A LOT OF NOISE

OK let's talk National Anthem here

Our National Anthem. The Canadian one.

Here in Toronto it's come up a couple of time cuz some jerk on city council decides the lyrics need to be changed to be more "gender neutral" I thought a neutered gender was a eunuch but that's another story. Also another story: Why is some street level city politician whose duties should include fixing street lights and counting manhole covers concerned with a national anthem

It came up (the anthem that is) this weekend as Toronto hosted the NBA Allstar game. Canadian singer Nelly Furtado has become a social media pariah (seriously, how difficult is that these days) for her interpretation of the anthem. A new arrangement, one could say. And sang poorly for what I heard of it

People seem genuinely upset by her changing the arrangement and to that I respond: Who the fuck cares

For as long as I can recall, seriously, I have never felt connected to the anthem. I've always had a problem with it; well a couple of problems actually

Problem the First: The song itself. Aesthetically, it just sucks. Musically, it sounds like a funeral dirge. And not one of the fun kind. Isn't one of the notions behind a national anthem is that it's supposed to inspire? If the purpose of this is to inspire me to take a nap well, job well done

Let's get to the lyrics. The song as we know it was based on a poem by R Stanley Weir from 1908. It was modified but I wonder to what degree. My point is: How does this represent Canada? Aside from the line about the "true north" this song is incredibly generic. It's like something written my committee. It's an example of our country's infamous lack of confidence "Oh know, let's not to be seen as bragging or whatever, let's have our country be represented by lyrics that could be played in a supermarket"

The version of the song often used at sporting events etc has no real mention of Canada or its history or its geography. The longer four verse version does refer to pines and maples and rivers but yeh, lots of countries have those. Nothing to actually inspire here and nothing to promote what this country is. But oh yeh, we have to be patriots and stand on guard for it; "nothing much going on here son but be ready to shoot that gun when I tell ya"

There are things here that make me understand why people have so many PC objections: Dang, it's so religious it may as well be a hymn. And specifically religious as in Christian. And it has that colonial ring to it: "maidens" and "sons" etc. Yeh no thanks, I ain't interested in bowing down to any entity that refers to women as maidens

This country has a disproportionate number of high quality poets and song writers and musicians, surely we can come up with something much much better. Something written by an individual inspired by their country, not some committee who seem more interested in conversion than inspiration

The other problem I have with our anthem is the issue I would have with any anthem; the fact that I'm supposed to just except it and sing it and somehow view it as something to which reverence must be paid

Um, come again?

This is something that's never really worked for me. This is supposed to be a democracy, we put the govt in place (even if we do that poorly) the point of which is: The govt works for us. We pay em, we hire em, they work for us. Yeh I know, I'm hilarious

In Grade Two I got my first ever strap from a principle because I wouldn't sing God Save the Queen. Even then, I knew we didn't have no queen so why should I sing about her. That is no longer required in schools, to sing that song

You're welcome

The govt's job is to take of the things that we can't, to manage the country. It's not to tell us what we should sing, what we should say, how we should feel.

Hey, if someone wants to sing the anthem please go right ahead. I don't mind waiting for you. You want to pray to your god, yup, by all means, I'll be over here sipping my beer.

I've been told that "people died for our freedom so don't dishonour the anthem" Yeh, exactly. I'm free not to sing it. You're free to sing it. It's that simple

The PC people are offended by the song's lyrics. But it's also PC to expect me to accept something just because I'm told to do so. You want me to sing this song, you want me to acknowledge it, give me a reason to so so. Make it about my country. Make it something that actually represents me and everyone else in this crazy country

Let Nellie Furtado mess with the music. Let anyone change the lyrics. That's actually democratic, that's actually "freedom" If the song is sung differently by everyone who sings it, well hell, that would actually be Canadian; province to province, region to region, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, everyone in this country is different. We throw around this term diversity. All right then, let's go out

Don't try to make us uniform, don't ask us to conform. You want an expression of this country? It ain't gunna be in some song. It's gunna be a lot of voices, singing different words, mostly off key

Hell yeh. Pass me the maple syrup

GASLIGHT: WEAPONS SHEATHED IN THE FLICKERING LIGHT

Once upon a time there was a movie called Gaslight. I remember watching it when I was quite young and being bored because there were no cowboys in it

I caught it again, years later, in my early teens because I realized it had Ingrid Birgman in it. Yes, I had grown away just a bit from cowboys. This is a 1944 film also starring Charles Boyer and directed by George Cukor. I remember watching the film, I remember enjoying it but aside from the bare bones of the plot, I don't remember much else. After all, there were no space ships in it

There is an earlier version of Gaslight, from 1940, which I've never seen.

I recently learned that both movies were based upon a play, from 1938, written by Patrick Hamilton. I can now say that I've seen that play ... well yes I can, actually. Because there is a new production of Gaslight running at the Ed Mirvish Theatre

The Mirvish Theatres love to run big productions: Kinky Boots, Titanic, Cinderella (yes, Cinderella, it was great so shut the fuck up) but it's nice every now and then to see a smaller more intimate production. Gaslight qualifies as such. The entire play enfolds in one setting, the living room of a Victorian house in 1800's London. There are seven characters in the play and two of those are essentially walk ons

The plot, as well, could be typified as "small" A psychological drama, really, about a young wife and her powerful husband and her very delicate state of mind. The Victorian setting is perfect in many ways. The temporal atmosphere; a foggy London night, creepy old houses, the flickering gaslights that give the story its name

Also perfect are the social conventions of the Victorian era, where women were expected to defer to their husbands and that the questioning of that authority could be seen as hysteria, and madness

Mrs Manningham is just such a woman and here husband is the kind of man who make any woman begin questioning ... things. Mrs Manningham begins to question her own sanity. Is she forgetting things, is she misplacing things, is she taking a picture down from the wall and if so why and if so why can't she remember These are questions of some import, her own mother died in the madhouse and Mr Manningham is quite afraid that he may have to send his wife there, for her own good

Yeh, right. That doesn't stink at all, does it

It stinks so much that shortly into the play a detective, or former detective shows up. There is history here, and suspicion and like all good Victorian stories, something nefarious going on behind locked doors in the attic

The storyline veers between mystery and psychological thriller. When Gaslight adheres to the latter, it gains it's greatest strength. The interplay between the married couple provides the play with its most powerful moments

Power comes from the performances. The wife is portrayed by Flora Montgomery and she has a heady task ahead of her; she has to keep her Victorian housewife authentic but we need to see her as a fully capable woman, both victim and hero, at the same. Montgomery is more than up to the task. She gives us a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a young wife clinging to her husband for strength, a woman who realizes that her strength must come from within and a woman who finds her voice all combined together. It is a credit to her performance that we never

Power also comes from the performance Owen Teale as the husband. If you watch Game of Thrones you will know, and despise, Teale from his portrayal of Ser Alliser Thorne, the lovely gent who is responsible for the death of John Snow

Take a breath. I'll give you a minute

So, another villainous turn for Thorne in this play. And damn, the man is good. He exudes a slow, smoldering rage that threatens to erupt at any minute. His sense with Montgomery, when he is attempting to impose his will upon here provides the production with some actual goose pimply moments

Another Game of Thrones alum graces the stage here. Ian McElhinney plays Ser Barristan on GOT, recently slain in his service to the Khaleesi. He plays Inspector Rough here and strikes the only off key notes in the play. He wants his detective to be more Columbo than Holmes; a doting old man disguising a steel trap mind. Problem is, occasionally, he is just a bit too jaunty and humbly. He had a little issue with his lines but being a professional was able to sail past it, with aid of his cast mates

The plot of the story is not exactly complex but it doesn't need to be. The meat of this play is in the interplay between husband and wife, a kind of battle where the psychological knives are sheathed for most of the duel and only bared at the end; but a deadly battle at the end. Montgomery and Teale are more than up to the task and when they are locked in they battle of words, you can't take away your eyes

I could have used much much more of that duel but I'll take what I was given and be happy about it. And every time the lights flicker, I'll be looking up at the ceiling (Now you have to find the movie to know what the hell I'm talking about)

THE MUSICIAN MAY DIE, THE MUSIC DOES NOT

It's been a rough couple of weeks for music and those who love it

As I write this Glenn Frey of the the Eagles has passed. Earlier, of course, David Bowie died. And shortly before that, Lemmie of Moorhead shuffled off his mortal panhead

It's sad for anyone who was a fan of these musicians. It's remarkable when you think about it, that you can actually be saddened by the passing of some person whom you've never met. But that's how music affects us, it literally affects us, in that it can change our mood, our emotions, perhaps even our outlook. It's powerful stuff and when one of our artists dies, it can affect us powerfully

I've written before about this compulsion we seem to have to try to quantify things. Everything. And yes, to some extent, you can quantify music. That note was off. That refrain is derivative. What the hell kind of rhythm is that. But you can still like the music. It doesn't matter, even if you can quantify the piece of art, it can not and should not change how you feel about it

Yet there are those who want to do exactly that. They are called music critics. And generally, I guess they do that job cuz their local McDonalds wasn't looking for new help

Some of the stuff written about the Eagles has me wondering if some of these so called critics actually listen to music or even enjoy it at all. I have a feeling they don't care. Because a lot of the crap I have been reading is more grade school social commentary than music appreciation

Apparently I should hate the Eagles because they are from California. I should hate them because they were really successful. I should hate them because they made music that people wanted to hear. I should hate them because that over their career they generally stuck to their guns, musically speaking

The proximity of Frey's death to Bowie's was an unfortunate temporal event. Although people shouldn't compare the two, of course they did. Bowie was an artist who had a major impact on music, whose career spanned decades and who constantly reinvented himself. The Eagles were integral to a sub genre of music, California southern rock, they also spanned decades and they really never tried to reinvent themselves, even with the late addition of Joe Walsh

Bowie was probably a genius. Frey was a gifted songwriter and performer. You liked them or you didn't Really, that's what it comes down to. I am a huge Bowie fan, I've been listening to his music since high school. I am not a huge Eagles fan but I enjoy a lot of their music. If Take It Easy comes on the radio, it's getting cranked

I can give you reasons why I like both artists. To a degree I can quantify why that is. If we were discussing music, I may share that with you. As you would with me. But really, that doesn't mean very much in the long run. The long run is all about how the music affects you, how you relate to it, how you feel. There is no right and wrong in this

I guess music journalists have to write about something. It's actually a pretty specious exercise. Cuz, you know, they can't tell you how to feel about music. They can tell you how they feel and that can be legit but it has nothing to do with how you feel

But these articles are trying to do exactly that; here is how you should feel about the Eagles. And since they can't really speak to our emotional and deep personal connection to music they have to come up with all this grade school sociology and weak urban commentary to justify their point. The point is, they have no point. It's just air. Black marks on a white screen

Yes, and these are my black marks on a white screen. This is my air ... you may want to open a window. But I'm not trying to change your mind about how you feel about music. I could not and I would not (I channelled Dr Seuss just for a moment there)

What I'm trying to do is the opposite. Love the Eagles. Revile the Eagles. Worship David Bowie. Think David Bowie was a weirdo (though he'd take that as a compliment) It doesn't matter how I feel or how anyone else feels

You feel. That's it. Just do that. Just play the music and feel it

Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair (Bruce Sprinsteen) And when Lemmi grunts out The Ace of Spades, just turn the radio up

WURDS BE DIFF OCCULT EH

Yup. Words. So tough to deal with sometimes. So obtuse. Good thing we don't need them in order to communicate. Eh

Two stories that highlight the problem with trying to communicate with words, one from the big old scary world and one from less big but equally scary personal world

Let's start with the real world. A tale of words and how the enemy of all humanity, Political Correctness, wants to use them to control our very thoughts.

Laurentian University in Sudbury has a psychology professor named Persinger who teaches a course in which he uses "salty" and profane language. In this day and age where our precious little school students would rather Instagram than think about things they find icky, he realized that some of his pupils would find this language offensive and, god forbid, "micro aggressive"

So Persinger had the students sign a waiver. It included examples of the language which included the f bomb, the c word (no, not cat) and an insulting term for a homosexual person that resembles an old expression for a bundle of sticks. If you didn't like this sort of language, perhaps this course would not be for you

Well. A student complained. About the form. About even having to think about something they may find offensive and dealing with it. "Er, you want me to decide what I find offensive? Um no, Mommy said I don't have to think. You think for me, and just don't offend me. Or I will cry. And Mommy will sue you"

Well, universities, apparantly these days, are places for suppressing thought, not encouraging it. So when the little darling got his Gap nappies in a twist, the administration came to his rescue. "There there darling, no need to think, this institution of learning will save you from that. Now just make sure Mommy keeps writing us those cheques"

And Persinger has been pulled from teaching the class. The admin says this has nothing to do with freedom of speech, it has to do with the prof overstepping his station and asking the students to sign a contract. Tsk tsk. The university does not allow this sort of thing, this is interfering with curriculum and had they been aware ...

Well Prof Persinger has been handing out these forms for ten years. On the recommendation of his dean at the time. So, yeh. If the admin was unaware of this practise .. well let's just say I find that concept fishie as fucking hell (You did sign the waiver before reading this post didn't you)

Now, I live for irony and there is some major pants swelling irony at play here. The course that the prof was teaching? It was on the power and impact of language. Hence his use of possibly offensive words. THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THE COURSE WAS THAT SOME PEOPLE GIVE WORDS THE POWER TO OFFEND. Well, I guess we now know that that is true.

For the love of god, if the little sphincter of yours that mommy wipes every day cannot deal with "bad words" why the hell sign up for the course in the first place.

Of course, the Political Correctness Nazis know all too well the power of words. And they want to take them away from us

OK big sigh now. And let's move on to something not quite as contentious. I know you need to dry your eyes and wipe your sphincter

I walk dogs. Or rather, I play with dogs. I play with them in a private lot owned by the man for whom I work. It's a fenced in lot, with trees and grass. It's in an old industrial area just on the northern border to Toronto's portlands. It is tucked behind a waste management company and a bus garage, there are no signs and there is no yellow brick road. It is private and we like that you can drive right by the place and never know it's there. In this city where people poison dog cookies in public parks, we like our anonymity.

I describe this place as a park. I always call it a private park. And oh my goodness, that seems to confuse some people.

When I say park, even when prefaced with "private" people think they know this place. "Oh Cherry Beach, I go there"

No, not Cherry Beach. That is a public park. This one is private.

"Oh yeh right, I know the place, south of Lakeshore"

No, we are on Lakeshore, the north side

"Right, in the offish area"

No. You are thinking of a public park. This is a private park

"You can't have a public park"

Well, we do

"Right, I know where that one is ..""

Yeh, big sigh.

Wurds bee diff occult

THE ROM POMPEII EXHIBIT: THE LIVING CITY THAT DIED

It's a new year so let's start it off with a little death, shall we. In actuality, a lot of death

In the year 79 AD the Italian resort town of Pompeii, and its sister Herculean, were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It has become one of the most famous volcanic eruptions of all time, and one of the most well known mass tragedies of human life

The carnage and sadness has been brought to Toronto through an exhibition at the ROM. It's the Holidays, let's go celebrate!

On that day 2,000 people lost their lives, many to suffocating ash, some to the boiling pyroclastic flows from the volcano. What the ROM always does well is giving you an opportunity to see beyond the numbers and get an impression of what the town was, before and after the tragedy, and who it was that lived there

The first part of the exhibit gives us glimpses of what life in Pompeii was like before the eruption. Most of the pieces are arranged to show us the bustling, living town that was kind of the little jewel of the Roman empire at the time. They loved their theatre and they had two, both of which would have been as good as any in Rome at the time

Theatre was not their only form of entertainment. Of course they loved their gladiators and they sported a coliseum long before Rome did Here is some gladiator armour excavated from the site

But it wasn't all violence in old Pompeii, on no sir. You gots to have some sex mixed in with that, and golly gee, did they ever lover their sex. Prostitution was legal in the pre Christian Roman empire and the citizens of Pompeii were very much into expressing their legal rights. There were many advertisements for brothels and even in the homes of regular citizens you could find art depicting a wide variety of, er, adult fantasies, like this nymph being seduced by a satyr

Like all Romans, the people of the city sure did love them some religion. Not only worshipping their own gods (well the ones they liberated from the Greeks) they were eager to bring more exotic deities into their households, in particular the Egyptian goddess Isis, around whom they manufactured their own particular brand of worship. They worshipped something called Isis and their town got blowed up .. yeh, let's leave that one alone

The people of the town were fairly wealthy by common standards but in the long run they were just people, into their gardens and the bounty of the sea on which they feasted

Who knows what the future had in store for the city of Pompeii. Probably it would have grown, it would have lasted, maybe as a resort town you could visit today. But Vesuvius had other plans. In the course of a day the volcano wiped out the city. And years later it was rediscovered, literally dug out from a mountain of ash. Ash that fell down from the sky, burying all those humans, hardening, remaining intact as time dissolved the bodies and left their impressions so that archeologists could pour in plaster, and in a sense, reanimate the citizens of Pompeii

Some sought shelter in wine cellars yet were still overcome by the ash. Some left their shelter when the ash seemed to stop falling, only to be caught by a pyroclastic flow. Humans, overcome by something greater than themselves

Some seemed to be able to come to peace with their fate, and simply waited for the darkness to take them

 Humans were not the only ones to fall to the volcano. The people of Pompeii loved their dogs, as evidenced by this famous entranceway tile. Cave carnem it says. Beware of dog

And beware you should be. He guarded his house right till the end.

All sad stuff, much of which I knew, or had read about. But the exhibit brought the reality home. By giving me a view of Pompeii as a living, vibrant city, I truly felt the tragedy of its death. Sad that all those people died. But the remnants they left behind, even the impressions of their own bodies, really serves to remind us of their lives, lived so long ago