I’ve just returned home from the last Trooper show of the summer. There are a few more shows coming up in the fall and winter but the “Trooper 2011 Summer Tour of Canada” has officially concluded. It was, without question, the best, most successful and most fun tour I can remember. As he did last year, my brother-in-arms Gogo snapped photos from his vantage point at the keyboards. I’d like to thank him again for this. Just like last year, I’m blown away by seeing pictures of all the shows in one place. It was a helluva tour.
There are 29 shows here – shown in chronological order. The Curacao show is missing (despite the fact it was the Carribean, and hot, it was technically pre-summer), as is the private birthday party in Ontario. Otherwise, though, I think they’re all here.
In the van the other day, somewhere between Sydney Nova Scotia and Rita’s Tea House in Big Pond, I was trying to describe a vocal performance by Amy Winehouse that I’d seen on YouTube. Today I downloaded it so I could show it to my band brothers next time we’re out. I figured I should show it to you as well. It’s one of my very favourites and not on any CD that I know of. It’s just Amy and someone playing a Rhodes Electric piano. I’m in awe every time I see it.
I haven’t written here much this summer. I did manage to contribute a bit to the Twittersphere, but anything more that 140 characters seemed to be beyond me. I was pretty busy.
Luckily, for the first time ever, Gogo took photographs at every show this summer from his place at the keyboards – so you can get an idea of what my life’s been like for the past few months. Many of these shots necessarily involve the back of my head, but all of them show the party in front of us. Short of standing up there yourself and feeling the palpable love that overwhelms us every night – it’s a stage-side look at what we did this summer. Three of the shows (Parksville, Olds and Cochrane) have two pictures each (Cochrane, so that the collection wouldn’t end on an odd number) but the rest are individual shows and roughly in the order we played them. Every show we’ve done since Canada Day is represented here except for the private one we played for our multimillionaire buddy in Muskoka.
Connor performed his first Indie/Dance/Mash-Up set last night at a downtown hole-in-the-wall called the Soundlab. It was a guest-list only event featuring three DJs. Unlike the two turntablists, Connor did an Ableton Live set – a seat-of-the-pants high-wire act where all the musical pieces are prepped on the computer and then selected, beat-matched and spat out in real time – the all important groove totally dependant on split second jabs at a bewildering collection of knobs, buttons and faders.
He’s been creating mash-ups (digital re-mixes wherein one or more popular songs are mashed together) for fun for months, but started working on his set in earnest when he learned there might be an opportunity to try it out live on a room full of drunk and dancing twenty-somethings.
He’s posted three early mash-ups and an original electro/club/pop track on his “Pack Mentality” MySpace page – where he has quietly but steadily been building his Nu Disco persona.
This is another musical left turn for Connor – but probably a welcome and rewarding antidote to the frustration of trying to assemble a band of great players and then keep them together for more than one or two cash-challenged shows. His MacBook Pro, Reason, ProTools and Ableton Live allow him to create and perform solo – not with an acoustic guitar like Rev. 1, but with the power and the glory (and the block-rockin’ beats) that only an infinite collection of digital samples can deliver. Add to that the undeniable ear-candy of layered iconic pop slices and you can begin to see the appeal – both for him and the dance floor.
For a long time now, I’ve kept my camera, my flash drives and my noise-cancelling headphones in my backpack, which resides under my desk here at home, so it’s at hand for road trips. I use it as an auxilliary desk drawer.
I also keep doubles of my computer power cables, adapters, USB, ethernet and audio cables in the backpack so I can ready my laptop for the drive to the airport in the time it takes to unplug it and pack it away. Since the camera, drives and headphones are stored in there already, I’m less likely to leave them behind.
Jumping up and leaving town is such an expected part of my everyday reality, this routine seems eminently logical …
Until this morning, in the early days of Trooper’s traditional winter break, when I paused for a confused moment wondering where to put my camera.
I might never have known about Jonah Smith if we hadn’t walked into that square behind the church in Barcelona in September 2007. We assumed, not unreasonably, that the band sound-checking on the large outdoor stage was from Spain, and it took some time to realize that the words being sung were in English. The band was tight and the singer, playing a groovin’ Rhodes piano, was great. Before we left I asked the sound guy who it was.
“Jonah Smith from Brooklyn New York” he said.
Jonah hits on pretty much all of the qualities that I think a great songwriter and singer needs. And his band is one of the most empathetic I’ve seen – leaving lots of space for the best parts.
Here’s a live vid of Jonah playing my current favourite song, “Little Black Angels”. This is not the original arrangement, which I also recommend. I couldn’t find a vid of “Stay a While”, which is another favourite, but your instructions for today are to go and buy both of these tracks, now, on iTunes.
Here’s a clip of the song they were playing at soundcheck:
When I was young, I believed there was an agency that monitored TV commercials in order to ensure that all of the claims made were true. As time passed, I began to realize that advertising was simply an unregulated free-for-all battle of competing claims, at least one of which was not true.
In 1962 I went to see Little Stevie Wonder at the Gardens Auditorium in Vancouver. Stevie was 12 years old at the time, and so was I. He stood awkwardly at centre stage and sang along with his records. There was no pretense about it. You could hear the needle drop on each track, and Stevie was the only performer on the stage. Everyone knew that he was just singing along – you could hear both his voice and the recorded original – but the audience understood that he wrote the songs and sang them on the records. He was the heart and soul of the tunes we loved, and we were honored to be in his presence.
Last week we opened for CCR. The week before we did the same for The Sweet. Both bands were paid very large sums of money to headline these shows. Neither of them featured the singer who sang (and in the case of CCR, wrote) their hits. (continue reading this post …)
ra mcguire dot com is mostly about music, culture, and minor celebrity in 21st century Canada. For more about me, this site, and my career in music and media, click here.
This collection of hard science snippets - presented in the form of a new-age self-help book - is fascinating and entertaining, but I found myself jonesing for deeper and more detailed information.
Brubaker is writing some of the finest stories in comics today. This visceral collection of dark, super-realistic crime fiction might be the best of those.
Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium Trilogy' was a revelation. Individually and as a collection this was the most engaging and entertaining reading experience I can recall. As I said recently on Twitter, after finishing 'Hornet's Nest'; "It is my sincere hope that Stieg Larsson faked his death and is currently working on his next three novels." I recommend these books to every kind of reader.
An annoyingly sparse and off-putting-ly flip book about how the authors ignored traditional business wisdom in the creation of their web empire. Their recommendations? "Pick a fight" - which was not convincing. "Planning is guessing" - which could possibly be true. Since it is an online sensation and only took a few hours to read, it was worth a look.
A truly contemporary book that wanders shamelessly through time, observing the tumultuous lives of a cast of characters all vaguely associated with the music industry. I liked it a lot.
Another crime fiction roller-coaster ride with today's second best protagonist (recently bumped by Lisbeth Salander), Jack Reacher. Two down, twelve to go! I will read them all.
A powerful and personal book about God by one of Canada’s greatest writers. “I believe that all of us, even those who are atheists, seek God — or at the very least not one of us would be unhappy if God appeared and told us that the universe was actually His creation. Oh, we might put Him on trial for making it so hard, and get angry at Him, too, but we would be very happy that He is here. Well, He is.”
I have failed in my first attempt to read this much-acclaimed magnum opus. The same thing happened with Ulysses. I’ll try again one day, once I have steeled myself to not be so annoyed by it.
An important book about the food we eat and the difficult choices we face in a world suffering from what Pollan describes as a “national eating disorder”.
