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.

Gogo’s full set of pictures from the tour, including autographed body parts and tour bus exposés are here and I encourage you to check them all out. I thank my rock and roll brother for documenting our experience every night. It’s the first time anyone’s ever done it, and seeing all of them together like this is quite moving for me. Hopefully you enjoy it too.

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.

And all his gear fits in a backpack.

Stay tuned.

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.

A pre-debut release of Connor’s new video.

Also, check out the story at Connor’s new website.

“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.

“The Sweet” was a British “Glam-Rock” band that had hit records in the 1970’s. We played with one of the *two* currently touring versions of the band. One version contains only the original bass player, the other, the original guitar player. The Wikipedia page for The Sweet lists a total of 12 singers over the years – not counting the one who actually sang “Little Willy” and “Ballroom Blitz”.

“CCR” (”Creedence Clearwater Revival”) was an iconic American band fronted by the amazing one-of-a-kind talent; John Fogerty, who wrote, sang and played guitar on the CCR hit records. After going solo, Fogerty tried to stop the drummer and bass player from Creedence Clearwater Revival from advertising themselves as “CCR” (”Creedence Clearwater *Revisited*”) and touring all over North America with a singer who mimicked him – but he was unsuccessful. This was the band that we opened for in Waterloo Ontario last week.

This has happened before. Canada’s “Guess Who” toured successfully in America for years without Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings. “BTO” did the same without either the “B” (Randy Bachman) or the “T” (Fred Turner). To be fair, Randy’s brother, Robbie Bachman, BTO’s original drummer, was in attendance.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to imitate famous front men and women. Singers for cover bands all over the world do it every night and some do it shockingly well. I did it for years. (In fact, back in the day I did a pretty convincing John Fogerty!) “Tribute” bands do note-for-note emulations of the groups they are paying tribute to. Some singers, like Shania *Twin* and *Nearly* Neil, make a living pretending to be their similarly-named heroes.

None of these singers, though, pretend for a moment that they are the *actual* singers featured on the hits they are singing. If, however, one of them were drafted to be the next singer for “CCR” or “The Sweet”, they would, at the expense of what I believe is a sizable portion of their ticket-buying audience, be doing exactly that.

And I don’t think that’s right.

People who buy tickets to see Shania *Twin* do not expect to see, nor do they pay the premium ticket price commanded by, Canada’s best looking country singer. I have to believe that many, if not most, of the people buying tickets to see, say, “CCR” headlining a big-ticket concert are expecting to see … well … CCR! And I don’t think they’re stupid because they didn’t know otherwise. The band should be billed as: “WHOEVER, featuring Stu Cook & Doug Clifford, formerly of CCR” – so there’s no possible confusion for the public.

I saw a poster the other day that stopped me in my tracks. It was promoting an upcoming show for “Doug and the Slugs”. Doug Bennett’s distinctive voice and inimitable stage presence were always the heart and soul of the tunes he wrote and recorded with his band and the shows they performed. Doug died a tragic death only a few short years ago. I’d like to humbly suggest that the band do as they once did when they released a single that Doug played no part in. They called themselves: “The Slugs Without Doug”. I think that would be a much more appropriate name for their current project.

The Roxy is on Granville street in the heart of Vancouver. Jordan is also the singer for Cozy Bones, one of my (and Connor’s) favourite Canadian bands.

Bob posts the vids right there on his site but, because of Twitter’s 140 character limit, I can only supply a link and hope that my fellow twitterers will click through to what I want them to see. In my case, these are songs by favourite artists whose careers, for one reason or another, have played out somewhere slightly below the popular music radar. I’ve kept a list of all the links with the intention of sharing them here on my site, where an unlimited spew of characters is possible (and often, in my case, probable).

I’ve been experiencing an overabundance of mental disarray this week – with both taxes and an out-of-date contract rider calling for my undivided attention – so it took until last night to realize that I could probably embed the youtube videos the same way my good friend Bob does.

Once I learned how, I couldn’t decide what song to post first, so I experimented with a random (but very sweet) video of two teenagers singing the first verse of a song I wrote forty years ago. Sarah and Kayla are the least well-exposed artists on my list, so they’ve turned out to be a very good place to start.

Today I’d like to present John Gorka, singing “Love is Our Cross to Bear” in what looks like someone’s basement, but is probably a small club. Please notice his amazing songwriting and captivating voice.

If you like this one, check “Armed With a Broken Heart” and “Gypsy Life” – which contains one of my favourite observations on life as a gypsy: “People love you when they know you’re leaving soon”.