Here’s the post I made earlier in the week about my new paintings.
Each painting is worth $150.00 CAD ($500.00 CAD for all four together). I’ll take the best offer that gets closest to my goal if you can either a) Pay in cash, or b) Pay by Paypal and cover the shipping costs. This offer will stand until they sell. *stickies the post*
Thank you for reading.
Lee.
So it’s an Stinson Community Association business day. Thought I might have had some free time, but I was incorrect. Writing emails, sending files, explaining positions, etc… Fun stuff.
Listening to perhaps my most favourite album of all time: Duke, by Genesis. It’s been thirty-three years since I first heard it, and it still commands my attention. I know some people feel it’s an overrated album, because it has hit songs on it as well as a few progressive rock tracks, and it’s not as experimental as their following two albums (ABACAB, Genesis), or as wildly popular as Invisible Touch or We Can’t Dance. I just think it’s the single most cohesive, most accessible album of their entire canon, and it happened in my biggest musical year, 1980. I’ve written about the album before, but I think perhaps it’s time I wrote a proper album review for it. I’ll do that after I get confirmation that the files are all at the printer.
Meanwhile, I should ask, did anyone read my posting of the prologue to THE UNINVITED GUEST (The Good Girl – Prologue: Friday night)? Should I post more? It’s been posted in its earliest form at Livejournal, but It’s been a decade in the making and it’s still not done. I’ve been thinking I’m going to knuckle down and write the first volume this summer. It feels like such unfinished business. I talk about the series all of the time, and yet almost no one has read it, and I really think it will be much more accessible than a lot of the other stuff I’ve been working on.
My plans to work on Passage to Bujah have been delayed because I’m trying to get over my need to make it a controversial piece of fiction by including polyamory and transgender issues. I still think the story demands it, but I know it will limit its accessibility to lots of YA readers, which is the intended audience for the trilogy. I’m having to weigh my need to express my politics and ideology in what was initially intended as light entertainment.
Dawn’s off to the gym. I should probably be rehearsing songs. Not sure I’m in a guitar mood now. Too many distractions. Might just grab a sandwich and spend a bit of time writing and waiting for emails.
Thank you for reading. Have a good day.
Lee.
“Pilot to bombadier. Come in bombadier. Pete! You awake in there?”
Pietro Manetti looked up from his comic book and frowned.
“I’m ready,” he announced to the burley little man scowling at him.
“Coulda fooled me,” Dino scowled. “Reading that crap will rot your brain. What do you think? We’re gonna use x-ray vision to figure out where he put it?”
“Go easy on him, Dino,” Uncle George interrupted. “He’s a kid. ‘Sides, we only need him to watch the door. It’s not like he’s gonna be in the room with us.”
“Giorgio, if he wasn’t Maria’s boy, I’d have put a bullet in his head already,” Dino spat. “Lookit ‘im. He’s a daydreamer. Nose in a funny book when he should be looking for heat. Last time I had to babysit someone like this, I lost three good friends, and the little fucker got himself arrested and nearly took us all down with him. That’s not gonna happen again, you got me?”
“Of course not, Dino,” George replied. “Pete’s a little wet behind the ears, but he’s a smart boy. He’ll make good. Won’t you, boy?”
Pete stashed his comic book in his inside jacket pocket and nodded firmly to his uncle.
Dino turned to Pete and pointed his finger menacingly into his face.
“Listen, kid. I agreed to bring you along because your old man was a friend of mine. But if you screw this up, I’ll take you down to the docks and drown you like a bag of sick puppies. Capice?”
“Yes, Dino. I won’t screw up,” Pete assurred him with what he hoped was the most sincere expression he could muster.
Dino had been a childhood hero of his, but it wasn’t the first time he’d heard the man voice disapproval of him. He hadn’t wanted to be dragged along for this, but his uncle was determined to mold him into his father’s son.
And deep down, he wanted to earn Dino’s respect. He was surprised how much it meant to him, considering the fact that he was pretty sure Dino had been trying to make time with his mother even before papa had died.
Pete gently patted the almost painfully solid shape of the gun stashed in his jacket pocket. He hoped to God he wouldn’t have to use it, but he swore to himself that he’d make this terrible man proud of him somehow.
Uncle George was the first to the door, already pushing the bump key into place and jerking open the back door to the Terminal Building.
Pete was already starting to get nervous. It was almost six, so the building would largely be abandoned. However, his mind was racing with questions; What if the old man wasn’t there? What if security was waiting for them? What if there was a shoot-out and the cops surrounded the building?
He reached into his pocket and carefully fingered the cold steel, the way he would a rosary. It seemed appropriate to him, and he drew strength from the act.
Then the unthinkable happened. They were passing the men’s restroom door when the stick-like night security guard came stumbling out, still buckling his belt into place. The young man looked with surprise at the three dark-dressed men before him and began fumbling for his holster.
From the corner of his eye, Pete could see Dino already pulling his piece loose, and Pete knew that in another moment, there would be a dead guard and the cops would be alerted.
Before he knew what he was thinking, his hand flew out of his pocket, still clutching the automatic pistol, and swung the butt against the guard’s left temple, sending him toppling sideways. The guard’s gun tumbled and clattered harmlessly across the floor. The guard lay very still, doing an amazingly convincing impression of being sound asleep.
Dino frowned at Pete, but George rapped the man on the shoulder twice, reminding him that they had work to do. Dino grimaced and reached for the guard, who remained quite limp. Pete began to breathe a bit easier as Dino proceeded to bind the young man’s hands together with a length of rope, and gagged him with a white handkerchief.
George took the guard’s other arm, and the two men quickly dragged him back into the bathroom. When they returned, Dino had a different look on his face. It wasn’t approval, but it wasn’t the usual look of disgust the man usually levelled at him. Pete tried to return a steady gaze, but Dino’s was too intense, and Pete was forced to look away.
The stalemate was broken by Uncle George, who reached over and gave him a gruff tap on the jaw, grinning. Dino hrumphed and started down the hall. Pete looked at his uncle and nodded. It wasn’t what he felt like doing. He felt like cheering. Dancing. But he knew he’d have to wait to celebrate his small victory. First there was a job to do.
The three men filed into the stairway, stepping as lightly as they could up the marble steps. The footfalls nevertheless reverberated off the walls in a staccato rhythm, like the sound of a jazz quartet playing some sacred jungle beat. It was the rhythm of war drums, like you heard in the picture shows.
Pete was beginning to tense up like the strings of the violin he’d promised his mama he’d learn to play properly when he was still a boy. He could almost feel the strings under his fingers. He hadn’t played in years. It was funny that he should think of that just then.
They reached the top floor and peered through the door. Pete couldn’t see past the older men, but a moment later, they were stepping into the hall. They were still stepping lightly, trying not to announce their approach with the leaden footfalls he feared he was making. Perhaps it was just his heart pounding in his ears that was making his footsteps echo.
He needn’t have worried. The front door to the offices of Clarence Dodson, C.P.A. was unlocked, and not a soul awaited them in the front office. The inner office door was closed, and Pete couldn’t hear a sound from the other side.
Dino reached for the inner door and twisted the knob softly, easing it open even as Pete could see the large automatic pistol rise into view. Pete looked to his uncle, who placed a hand on his shoulder and gestured with his eyes for him to take up his position beside the front door.
“What are you doing here? This office is closed at five. Please come back tomorrow,” a voice from inside demanded.
“We have an appointment, Mr. Dodson,” Dino explained, gesturing vaguely with his pistol for emphasis. “Maybe your secretary forgot to mention it before she left.”
“Well, she has been very busy of late. We both have. Perhaps it slipped my mind,” the voice replied uncertainly.
“Oh, we know you’ve been a very busy man. Very busy indeed. We’ll only take a moment of your time,” Dino replied warmly as he stepped into the room, Uncle George following. “We just want to ask you about a certain item that may have recently passed through your office.”
The door closed, and the voices beyond the door became too muffled to hear properly from where he stood. Even when the voices became louder and more desperate, the words were too hard to make out properly. His uncle might have said that it was the sign of a well-constructed building. His uncle was a great admirer of fine craftsmanship.
Pete knew his job was to keep an eye and ear out for witnesses, and to call for help if there were any. It wasn’t an easy job filtering out the sounds coming from the office to do this, but he was determined not to mess up.
Soon enough, the man in the office stopped calling for help and eventually ceased making any sounds at all. It was then that Pete thought he caught a whiff of woman’s perfume passing by. It was an enchanting scent, like the flowers in his mother’s kitchen window.
Almost terrified of what would happen to her if she had heard anything, Pete quickly pulled the front door open and peered out. He scanned the hall, but saw no one. He thought he heard the stairway door softly bump shut, and thought to go take a look, just to be sure. But then he thought of the man in the room. Any woman who would wear such a scent was probably too beautiful to wind up looking like what he was sure had become of Clarence Dodson.
Pete silently returned to his post and tried not to count the minutes as they rifled through the inner office in search of whatever it was they had come for. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what this was really all about.
He was also just as certain that he’d rather take up playing violin again, if it meant he wouldn’t have to come along on any more of these appointments. His desire for approval was already melting away, to be replaced by something he hadn’t expected; disgust. He loved his uncle, and still idolized his childhood hero, but he was quite sure this wasn’t what his mama and papa wanted for him.
He did in fact take up his violin again shortly afterward, more as a form of therapy than any desire to be come a competent musician. Unseen nightmare images of a battered woman laying at the bottom of the stairwell in a pool of blood had been haunting him for weeks. They were the last thing to go through his mind a month later, when he received his own appointment.
© 2013 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
It’s raining today. Got a Carter Park Adopt-a-Park clean-up today. Gonna be interesting to see who all actually turns out.
Today is also Father’s Day. I don’t really have one. See, my biological father and my mother were divorced when I was a baby. The man who served the most years (early seventies to @1981ish) in the department of Male Role Model had an accident and died about twenty years ago. So I’ve been without that sort of guidance for so long, I don’t really know if I’m missing anything. I honestly don’t. It’s like a total blind spot for me. I’ve served briefly (1995-1997) as a surrogate father to a young child who is just about all grown up now, and whom I haven’t spoken to in several years as a consequence of the relationship I had with his mother. So Father’s Day is kind of a non-starter for me. *shrug*
I’m listening to old Adrian Belew this morning, while getting myself ready for rain and mud. Gonna be an interesting day, I think.
Not sure if any work is going to get done today. I also have to go clean at my mother’s, but I’m not sure what time it will be when I arrive. Probably late. Not ideal.
Can’t think of anything else to talk about this morning. More later, perhaps.
Lee.
I can still remember the days back in the early 90s (yeah, I know) when I started seriously pursuing the still much-maligned Progressive Rock train, reading magazines that occasionally broke into a debate about what Prog was and was not, while fans either tried to push back the boundaries to include more popular but slightly less Progressive acts, while others insisted on the narrowest of definitions, in order to exclude all of the Prog acts that had so disappointed them by changing with the times and actually writing a few songs that were in danger of getting radio play (and thus keeping them from being relegated to the scrap heap). I must have read a few of those epic discussion threads in the front of Guitar and Keyboard and Modern Drummer magazines, and most of it was spurred on to deal with the incursion of Progressive Metal acts that had been washing up on the shores of blighted old Prog Rock.
The funny thing to me is, much of that argument seems to have been swept aside, as new Neo-Progressive Rock and Metal and even Blues acts wander on and off the stage. It’s pretty fantastic, really. I don’t think there’s ever been a time more open to the prospect of listening to music both this diverse and expansive, and yet this accessible. See, that was the big catch with much of what was defined as Prog Rock in the late 60s and most of the 70s. Whereas, anything with a Mellotron of Mini Moog could probably be pretty safely categorized as Prog back then, there was a fair bit of what we’ll charitably refer to as ‘musical experimentation’ that really wasn’t particularly tuneful. Many post-Psychedelic/Space Rock bands threw as much mud and excrement at the wall as they could to see what would stick on the walls of commerce and popular musical taste, and perhaps got away with more than was good for them (I’m looking at you, Magma).
As the 70s dwindled and staggered into the 80s, all blinky-eyed and hung over, many of those old bands just ceased to be, failing utterly to reconcile themselves tot he new reality of commercial recording. The time would never come again when 20 minutes of vinyl at a stretch could be devoted to atonal combinations of kettle drum, keyboards, droning feedback and exotic orchestral instruments (including digeridoo). Oh sure, all of these would be stuck together on various Peter Gabriel and Frank Zappa tracks, but rarely in ‘epic’ form, and with the possible exception of Waffenspiel, not without at least a few juicy melodic hooks to keep the casual listener coming back to the conversation.
And by then, it was on CD, and so 20 minutes seemed like a dawdle in any case.
Now, you can’t turn around without bumping into some new Progressive Rock act. And yet, the radio insists on playing more Justin Bieber and Hedley at us, as if these define all that is out there to be listened to. I haven’t listened to radio of my own free will in over two years, and I stopped basically because I was getting tired of hearing the same sounds and effects regurgitated at me that I had been enjoying back in the late 90s, when Canadian radio seemed to fall into a giant blob of amber and get stuck there for all time.
I’m not saying the answer is more Prog on radio. What I’m saying is, it’s time radio woke up and realized how redundant it’s become, and do the decent thing and either embrace the wide variety of music being recorded today, or just go away once and for all, and let us get on with our internet searches.
Sorry for the rant. I’m still a bit tired. Maybe later I’ll compose something a little more poignant and relevant to your interests. Meanwhile, here… listen to some classic Pink Floyd: ECHOES
Lee.
So I’ve been up since about 3:30 AM, and I’m listening to a handful of prog rock albums that have been creeping back onto the virtual turntable a fair bit over the past few days: English Electric parts 1 & 2 (Big Big Train), Lifesigns (Lifesigns), Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep (Spock’s Beard), and Dimensionaut (Sound of Contact). I’m also trying to get into Steven Wilson’s The Raven That Refused To Sing, and I’m dabbling in The Pineapple Thief, but so far, these are the five albums that have been eating into my attention this year. Of course, I still haven’t picked up a copy of Anthony Phillips’ latest album (Private Parts & Pieces XI: City of Dreams), but I have hope of correcting all of that soonish.
What I’ve been doing with my early morning is harder to explain. I’ve mostly been just listening carefully, but I’ve also been digging through my picture archives for pictures of the gear I’ve been lusting after over the last half year or so. Not that THAT situation has improved any. Just wanted to remember the stuff I’d put on my Christmas list, so to speak, and see if any of it still jazzes me.
What I’m NOT doing with this spare time is writing, like I ought to, because I sort of hit a brick wall yesterday when I found myself writing something that I kind of feel like I’ve done before. That doesn’t happen to me too often, because I generally always take a new path in my writing. Sadly, yesterday, the story basically wanted to go into somewhat familiar territory, which bothers me, not least of which because it wants me to get deeper and more detailed, but I’m limited by my own lack of musical education.
See, I’m an experienced songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, but I’m not the most polished or professional of musicians on any of my chosen instruments. I also have some music theory study under my belt, but I have gaps that I’ve largely been content not to try to fill in, so I don’t ever become too educated and polished to write compelling, simple melodies. But when writing about a subject, you usually want to be as articulate, accurate and specific as possible.
What that means for the piece I’m writing (Perfect Strangers) is that I’ll have to do a bit of rewriting to remove the stuff that demands that I get more specific, and stick to writing the parts I know, so I don’t get stuck doing homework on scales, modes and progressions. I know about these things, but only enough to know what they are and why I don’t use them deliberately. Why this is a dilemma is because my instincts tell me I could use the refresher for what I want to do next, musically. I’ve been trying to write progressive pieces by instinct, and I’ve been running up against the twin horns of my lack of musical instrument practice (guitars, keys, bass, vocals) and my lack of compositional schooling.
Prog is actually relatively easy to mimic, stylistically, but it’s hard to do it without sounding unoriginal. You generally need musical motifs that suggest melodies and riffs the listener might already know, but that aren’t a direct rip-off. Very few Prog bands/composers are able to write completely original Prog music that never tips its hat to the past… and to be honest, it’s not as much fun if you don’t sneak in a few little clues here and there. With Prog music, there is a rich history of appropriation and mutilation, and though it usually denotes a band in its earliest stages, it’s the smartest way for a relatively new band to ‘play covers’ while still remaining true to the aesthetic of Prog to be as original as possible. If not for the financial considerations of being a musician in need of a full time gig, Prog Rock tribute bands wouldn’t exist, because too many of them would be too busy recording their own originals with liberal borrowing from/nodding to/winking at past masters.
Anyway, all of this is academic. The point is, I’m not making much progress with my music or my writing. In fact, I’m considering stopping the WinAmp and going for a nap.
But when I get back up, I’m going to tackle this story again. It can’t beat me. I’ve written stuff like this in Terminal Monday, so it’s not like I can’t do it. Finding a new angle isn’t as important as writing something compelling that people who haven’t or won’t read Terminal Monday might enjoy.
And I may do some more painting, too. Art Crawl is coming. I might not be showing anything (Dawn was invited, not me), but I’d at least like to have pictures of my current work to show people, so they know I’m not just screwing around.
Yeah, nap time. TTYL.
Okay, so I’ve been a little off kilter these past few days, so I want to thank all of those people who stopped by and read older articles while I was under radio silence. It’s gratifying to know that there are enough articles and blogs and such here that people can keep themselves amused for days without supervision or curation or whatever you want to call this… the guided tour, I suppose.
I should tell you folks that I’ve been busy doing a lot of graphic design recently. Volunteer work for the local community association, so no money, sadly. I could really use a few bucks right now, actually. *sigh* But I figure it might be alright if I show off the stuff I put together for the picnic, since most of you won’t be able to attend (particularly you folks over in Europe and Asia… how in the world did you find me!?):
So there they are. Not what I consider to be my finest work ever, but I was working under a lot of constraints, and had to make a lot of changes to suit. Still, they look pretty good for what they are, which is basically free information boards. The City will be picking up the printing costs, thankfully. I should mention that all of the boards have the web address on them. The first four screen captures were done before I inserted it, but it’s visible in the last two.
So, what’s next? I have plans to do a handful of paintings over the next few days, when I’m not cleaning or shopping for groceries on what little we have to get us through the month. If you fine folks have been waiting for a special occasion to buy my books, you wouldn’t go amiss making a few well-placed purchases by visiting the My Books page and picking out something, maybe fore the Dad, since it’s Father’s Day and all that next weekend.
Time to put on pants and get some work done. Thanks for reading.
Lee.
Right, so I kinda let this one get backlogged for a long while, but I’m up early, and it’s either this or I go early to clean my mother’s house (I’ve decided to wait a bit and go to the writer’s group first). Anyway, a quick reminder: the magic year was 1980. that’s when everything in music changed big time, and I include 1979 and 1981 as transitional years as well, to give the full spectrum of just what happened there. I don’t discuss the politics or the social mores (much). Just the music.
So, I left off at The Cars, which means it’s time for…
The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys (1979)/Boys Don’t Cry (1980)/Seventeen Seconds (1980)/Faith (1981): Yes, I’ve listed four albums, and they’re not even my favourites, but they are Important albums, because you get to hear how fast The Cure developed from a three piece punk rock outfit to the prototypical Goth band, pretty much from album to album, and even from track to track. It’s a fascinating evolution, and it’s a journey that Robert Smith keeps finding ways to revisit, even though most of his fans figure he peaked with 1989′s Disintegration.
The Eagles – The Long Run (1979): Brilliant closing statement or last gasp of a 70s dinosaur? Neither view is accurate, given that a form of Eagles reunion (these days minus the mercurial and brilliant Don Felder) is touring to this day. But it was a kind of send off to all of the notorious excesses of the 70s (to soon be replaced by the equally outrageous 80s, of course), and many of the tunes stand in sharp contrast to the rest of their back catalogue, given that they’d become so much more jaded and worldly by this time. Even throwaway tracks like Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks, a nod to much of the New Romantic sound of Blondie and Elvis Costello (amongst many others), is a picture post card of the times that resonates in the darkest corners of European sports bars of today. But you can pretty much write whatever you like when you have tunes like Joe Walsh’s masterpiece, In The City, on there.
The Kinks – Low Budget (1979)/Give The People What They Want (1981): Here are two albums that mark a sea change in sonic heft and cynical bite. Ray Davies has always been a hard bitten skeptic, but these albums were big and brash and scathing. They also cover the gamut of sonic styles of the time, including (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman (a very topical subject, given the Christopher Reeves movies), which is a fun house mirror disco tune about a guy who is in terrible shape, and the title track Low Budget, which describes the terrible conditions of late 70s England, but pretty much applied to everywhere at that point. Then on the flip side, you have Destroyer, the ultimate paranoid meltdown tune, perfect for the snowblind 80s of Reagan and Thatcher. Ray would go on to pen pop gems like Come Dancing and the master class crafted Do It Again, but here at the crossroads of 1980, Ray was rarely ever more relevant.
The Moody Blues – Long Distance Voyager (1981): Here’s an album that sees the band fully embracing the sounds of the early 80s, opening with The Voice, the first really solid hit pop song Justin had written since Question (in 1970!), and a perfect presage to what his work would be like throughout the 80s and early 90s, when he’d pen monster hits like Your Wildest Dreams, I Know You’re Out there Somewhere, and No More Lies. Truly a reinvigorated band, after years of coasting softly on the scent of pot and hashish and kaftans and Persian rugs and all the trappings they’d become festooned with in the late 60s and early 70s.
The Police – Zenyatta Mondata (1980)/Ghost In The Machine (1981): What trip to 1980 would be complete without stopping in to look at The Police? I included two albums here because of the sea change between them. The previous two albums had stuff like Roxanne, Message In a Bottle, and Walking On The Moon, but 1980 gave us Don’t Stand So Close To Me, and there was no turning back. They were growing, straining against the soft shell of the Ska/white reggae sound they had adopted after introducing themselves as a punk rock band to limited success. Don’t Stand so Close To Me didn’t break the mould (and neither did De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da) but it hinted at the break to come. That wouldn’t happen until 1981, with Spirits In the Material World, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, The Invisible Sun, Too Much Information, Rehumanize Yourself and Omegaman. I mention these last two because they outline perfectly that Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers weren’t going to be hiding in Sting’s shadow for much longer. The former presented us with Copeland’s road map for his upcoming solo career; the latter was practically the template for their swansong, the brilliant Synchronicity album. Both are brilliant, and neither were written by Gordon Sumner. This was a band of equals, which it took Sting the better part of 25 years to remember and admit properly.
The Who – Face Dances (1981): Now here’s a band that were forced to make a change, simply because their superstar drummer, the inexhaustible Keith Moon, had died in 1978. Other bands might have packed it in, but The Who were an institution, and Pete Townshend wasn’t quite ready to go it solo yet. So they hired on a new, less manic drummer, and wrote a new album, featuring the hit song You Better You Bet. I have to admit, I haven’t spent much time with this album, but no one listening to the song can argue that it wasn’t another sea change in the sound and the life of the band.
Todd Rundgren – Healing (1981): This is a bright, relatively happy album. Todd’s albums are always good for a few happy little earworms, but much of his work in the 70s was fairly progressive and fraught with cynicism. By 1981, his vision was changing, and he started writing what can only be called uplifting pop music. It’s a good album, but I’ve only played it once in recent memory, so it’s a little difficult for me to say more about it.
Tom Cochrane and Red Rider – Don’t Fight It (1979)/As Far As Siam (1981): Red Rider’s first album is littered with clever rock songs that defy easy categorization. It’s rock, yes, but littered with synths and occasionally very funky rhythms, and some of the coolest slide guitar heard in a radio-friendly format. Tom was a master songwriter even at this stage, and the band at this stage were a perfect foil for his work. And of course, their second album opens with Lunatic Fringe, one of their signature hits. Their music at this stage has a signature sound that they wouldn’t lose until their name was expanded to include Tom’s full name, presaging his eventual solo career. But for my money, his music was never cooler than when it was performed by Ken Greer and Jeff Jones. Thankfully, they’ve been reunited for the last decade. Sadly, this has not translated to a new album.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedoes (1979): Damn fine rock album. A shift in production values and sound, and a quantum leap in songwriting, as Tom started banging out whole albums of memorable tunes from this point forward. An absolute classic.
Tony Banks – A Curious Feeling (1979): Genesis keyboardist Banks’ first solo album is loaded with the sort of instrumental meditations and progressive-tinged songs that Genesis’ music had started to strip away at this point. But the revelation here is that, for the first time, you can really hear just how heavy Tony’s influence on Genesis music in the 70s really was. Sonically, it doesn’t tell you much about where he would go with his next solo album in 1983 (The Fugitive), or where Genesis’ music was going after that point, either, but as it and Mike Rutherford’s Smallcreep’s Day were recorded between And Then There Were Three and the watershed album, Duke, it certainly presents a convincing companion work to the quartet of albums. A very important album that most folks haven’t heard.
UK – Danger Money (1979): The swansong of the short-lived progressive rock super group–perhaps the finest such example of post-progressive mastery in the age of Disco and Punk Rock–contains some truly evocative pieces and a solid display of prog rock drumming from new member Terry Bozzio (of Frank Zappa and later Missing Persons fame). By this time, John Wetton and Eddie Jobson were doing all of the heavy lifting, compositionally, having dispensed with the services of Bill Bruford and Alan Holdsworth, and though John’s penchant for ballads would not really present itself until the second and third Asia albums, you do at least get a sense on this album that, despite the progressive trappings, it’s an effort to create commercially-viable prog music without writing singles, an exercise John wouldn’t repeat for many years after UK’s eventual break-up. In recent years, John, Eddie and Terry have reunited, using other drummers when Terry was unavailable, and using the guitar services of the immensely talented Alex Macachek to perform the Alan Holdsworth parts. I’m not holding my breath, but I’m rather hoping they’ll record an album together, as John’s return to Asia has been interesting, but the songwriting there is very much in the classic Asia songwriting formula, and I’d like to hear what he can do with a (Wetton-penned) prog composition again.
Van Halen – Women and Children First (1980): Yes, even Van Halen started shifting focus a bit in 1980. Their first two albums were loaded with solid hard rock diamonds, including the obligatory Kinks cover tunes, but by this time, the songwriting was starting to mature, and the lyrical themes were starting to get more poignant. Sure, there were also numbers like Everybody Wants Some–an indicator of where things like Panama and Hot For Teacher would come from a few years later–but in the main, though the songs are a little less infectious, the album as a whole is a much more shaded effort, lurking in the shadows where before the lyrics and tunes were designed for strutting in the limelight.
XTC – Drums and Wires (1979)/Black Sea (1980): The band hadn’t yet transformed into the studio-only unit of their later career, and as such, were still a fully-integrated post-punk band at this point. But that said, things were already changing. For one thing, the songwriting on the part of both Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge was starting to really set in. The opening track to Drums and Wires, perennial favourite Making Plans For Nigel, pretty much cemented their career; if they’d never recorded another hit, they’d still be remembered for this one. But though the album isn’t a wall-to-wall hit factory, it’s sonically a step above their previous efforts, and every tune is memorable, in a bratty punk pop sort of way. And of course, 1980′s Black Sea built on from there, giving us Respectable Street, Generals and Majors, Towers of London, Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me), and the strange experimental sound of Travels in Nihilon, an indicator of how far they had come from the days of Statue of Liberty.
And that brings us to the last album on my list of 1980…
Yes – Drama (1980): Here was an incredibly important album, as it was the first yes album to feature a vocalist other than Jon Anderson, and it’s a significant change, even if Trevor Horn did his very best to maintain a similar sonic quality to Jon’s voice. The really telling thing about this album is, though it had some muscular progressive numbers like Machine Messiah, it also contained Does It Really Happen and the classic Yes mostly-instrumental, Tempus Fugit, two of the most radio-friendly Yes tunes since Roundabout. This album is often overshadowed by the pop and rock sensibilities of Trevor Rabin’s era in Yes throughout the 80s and early 90s, but it is a watershed moment for the band; a real sonic shift, and a first taster of what Yes would be like without Jon Anderson at the tiller.
____________________
Well, there you have it, the third and final instalment of my thesis on why 1980 was such an important year in rock music. I left out a few other bands that I feel were really just treading water at this point, or were, for lack of a better way to put it, just a little too wilfully weird to be considered standard-bearers for the time period. I fully acknowledge that this is not a definitive collection of albums from this period. I don’t own everything every recorded in and around 1980. I don’t even consider this to be a 100 Best list or some such thing. It’s just what it says it is: an analysis of music from 1980 that shaped and changed what had come before into what was to come. While many of these bands would go on to greater hits in the later 80s, this was where a great many of them discovered radio accessibility for the first time, and that first taste of popular acceptance would colour much of what pop music would present from that point forward.
Anyway, I have to get back to designing graphics, Thank you for joining me on this strange little romp.
Lee.
Okay, so it’s been a year and a half since I wrote THIS; Sadly, the debate rages on, with turgid little sites like STFU Moffat (on Tumblr) and the occasional high profile mainstream journo piece on the subject. The conclusion always seems to be that Moffat is overrated, and his attitude toward women deplorable because they all seem to be subservient to either their hormones or their male lead or both.
Of course, there had to be someone with something intelligent to say on the subject, and today I stumbled across an article I wish I were smart enough to have written myself. So meet my new favourite person: Rebecca Kulik, and read her brilliant article.
See? I’m not the only one who thinks there is a lot of fuss and bother about nothing (or very little, at any rate). I don’t presume to speak with authority on feminist issues, but I do know a strong, passionate, independent woman when I see one. I just don’t hold with the argument that every true feminist would basically tell the Doctor to leave and let her ride off with his TARDIS. That’s the catch, folks. The show is called Doctor Who, and it’s about this alien who is almost invariably a male, and a sexually stunted, romantically bewildered one at that, and he has a lot of friends, male and female, and the females have a history of being relatively attractive and occasionally very afraid. While the women of the TARDIS have not always been portrayed as feminist paragons, they have all been adventurous and brave and occasionally overwhelmed, much like the Doctor himself.
As Rebecca points out, the Doctor’s female companions pass the Bechdel Test (Google it) a great deal of the time, especially in the revamped series, and though it’s splitting hairs, I argue that most if not all of them have been models of feminist thinking in their time, even if they were clumsily written by a largely male writing staff in the pre-PC/Feminist Studies days, and even if a number of them did appear in clothing designed to titillate the male viewers (i.e. ‘Something For The Dads’). Television viewing audiences have come a long way since the days of Susan and Barbara screaming as the Daleks turn their cannons and various plunging devised on them.
I can’t write credibly from the Feminist point of view, as I am poorly educated in that field, and I am, after all, a (predominately) white North American male. But I am fairly sensitive to these issues, and find a lot of television misses the mark on this subject.
However, I AM a fiction writer, and though not an established one, I know a few things about what makes fiction work, and one of them is, the writer can’t be out of step with the times, or the story fails in its most important mission: to reach an audience. I could write nothing but gay panther anthropomorphic suspense/romance (well, no, not really), and it would be a hit with the Furry crowd, but the wider world would ignore it, or worse, would vilify it for its sexual content or its over/misrepresentation of gay felines. These are strange times, but there is still a lot of ground to cover before audiences will be fully integrated into the mindset that Feminist scholars would have them be.
But I will maintain to my grave that this either/or argument (either Feminist or Sexist) is a stalking horse debate. I was raised up to believe in a concept that doesn’t get much mention these days, in large part because it still hasn’t been implemented fairly across the board: Equality. The Sexist argument is that it doesn’t work because men and women aren’t built to do the same work, and on the Feminist argument is that Equality has never been implemented properly, because men still control the pay rates and promotional prospects of most companies, favouring men over women, regardless of qualifications and proven track record. Both are valid seen from a certain position, but can easily be disproved with exceptions.
And I don’t want to hear about ‘the exception that proves the rule’; that’s such a bullshit argument. An exception is an exception–no more, no less–which means things are improving, or at very least, that they aren’t immutable. Stop discounting progress. Not every exception is merely an outlier, and outliers are usually only noticed because the concept was interesting but still too unproven to gain traction; thirty to fifty years later, things have changed significantly for most of the recognized minorities of the 50s-to-80s, even if the ideal has not been reached yet. Much to the chagrin of marriage purists, Gays and lesbians are marrying and receiving full benefit for their partners. That such a reality has to be legislated into place is a sadness, and the fact that it’s being resisted in several places is not really surprising. What world did you wake up in, anyway?
But back to the original topic: Does Moffat deserve to be vilified for his unbalanced portrayal (some would say betrayal) of his female characters? Obviously I don’t think so, but I think the really important question is, why do you insist on discrediting all of the fine work and some of the strongest, smartest, sassiest females in modern television? About the only other show on television that portrays women with as much agency within the framework of the series is Criminal Minds, and I’ve been having trouble enjoying that series of late (but I think Elizabeth Bear has that subject covered better than I can).
I figure the subject won’t die until Moffat casts a female Doctor, and of course, there will be a geeksplosion when it happens, as ardent fanboys who have been dreaming of being the Doctor themselves have a complete meltdown when the Doctor shows up with boobs, thus denying them even that last bastion of Geektopian Masculinity (and yes, I’m resorting to making up words here, because I don’t think the argument against a female Doctor has a leg to stand on, so why dignify it with precise terminology when a made up word says it more succinctly?).
And this, I hope, will be the last time I write on this subject, because I’m sincerely hoping that Rebecca’s arguments will somehow put an end to the misguided rancour. It’s too much to hope for, I know, but still, a boy has to dream.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
Hello. This will probably be filed under Shop Talk, that underused portion of my website where I talk nuts and bolts about how I do stuff.
Today, I’ll be talking about how I came up with the logo and banner for the recently unveiled Stinson Community Association website.
First off, their old website was fairly static and had a series of banners for each page, using photos of heritage buildings in the neighbourhood. Not bad, really, but a bit hard to use for branding and labelling. I wasn’t the first pick for this job, as there was a contest held within the neighbourhood to get the best ideas from a number of sources. I wasn’t part of the judging panel, so I didn’t see the submissions that didn’t make the cut. All I saw were the four final submissions, which were uncredited at the time of the general vote:
001
002
003
004
Now, I know the names of the designers of these submissions, but I only know that Maggie Day-Myron was responsible for submission 003: the ‘tree-lined village, oh so heavenly’, which was hands down the most popular concept (it was recently revealed that the other concepts used were from Brian Goodman and Katherine Dymkowski, though I’m not sure which one was which). However, there was both a numerical vote and a comment section, and even Maggie’s logo did not arrive unscathed. There were suggestions for a number of changes to all of the logos seen above, and I signed on to make the project work without having to go outside of the community to bring in an impartial designer to improve the designs.
My first job was to recreate the logos as vector files (all I had to go on were the submitted jpegs) and see if I couldn’t solve some of the most immediate design problems in the process. This is what I came up with:
005 set
The first four (red) logos were the submissions Dawn and I originally put together back in the very beginning of the logo submission process, at the end of last year. The logo set you see beside it was my late entry for the final submission call earlier this year.
Upon receiving the job to recreate and modify the four finalist logos, I immediately hit upon the solution of integrating features from all four logos, and solving the one major critique of the winning logo, that the buildings were too basic and unrecognisable. Fortunately, I had already based my fourth design on buildings in the neighbourhood, and had what I thought would be a winning style, if I could just get the colouring right. My first designs were all in black and white or grayscale, because I knew I was initially only dealing with just the Stinson Press Club, and we had a fairly free hand in coming up with the initial design series. I borrowed the stylized S emblem from the second finalist logo, attached it to my recreation of the third logo, and started playing with variations on the logo presentation itself, based on the first finalist, and then stole the stylized tree emblem from the fourth to tie it into the design. This melding of ideas got some interesting results, but sadly, the trees weren’t solid enough; it looked too much like a fireworks display, which had its appeal, but ultimately failed to impress the Executive board.
What did impress them was the reworked S emblem and the next volley of tree-lined village shots, where I tried reusing one of my other design concepts (concept five) to give the trees a more full look. This sparked the idea to simply create back-canopy shapes to make the trees look fuller. I also had to modify the shape of the tree trunks themselves, which were based on my substitution of a capital T for the tree trunk shape of the fourth finalist logo, which was a little too simplistic, and incidentally a bit reminiscent of the Banyan logo (local non-profit organization). My tree trunks still looked a little too much like a T, so I reworked the shape to look more trunk-and-root-like. I’m not sure there was ever a real consensus of the tree trunks, but it worked so long as they were mostly covered up by buildings.
Then there was the great debate about what buildings to use, as some felt that I hadn’t used the most iconic buildings in the neighbourhood. I went away and rendered the most iconic buildings I knew of in the neighbourhood, and Natasha presented them to the Exec board. They eventually agreed that I’d gotten it right, though one discerning voice felt that the tallest building (The Fearman House) would have been enough. Personally, I was rather more proud of the Stinson School, but it doesn’t appear in the approved logo (it DOES appear in the banner, however; more on that later).
As you can see, none of Dawn’s or my ideas made the cut originally, but eventually I got to use elements of each for various iterations of the logo, until it was refined to the final version, which I did in three colour palettes, based on the printing and display needs of the project:
I’d explain the process of choosing the colours, which was based on the Stinson press Club’s mandate to assign Pantone colours for branding and printing purposes, but really, Pantones are boring. Suffice to say, we went with a Hamilton Brick orange (Pantone 179M), Forest Green (357M) and Pantone Black.
I completely abandoned the Pantone scheme for the banner, however (Pantones WERE used, but in gradients that rendered them moot). The banner was clincher for this logo concept; once the Executive board saw the final render, they realized what I had been doing, and subsequently approved the concept (almost) without hesitation.
It went through 21 minor revisions until I got it to the point where you see it, including the Stinson School Lofts, which to my mind is the most iconic building in the neighbourhood; so glad they haven’t torn it down since closing it, but are developing it (as of this writing) into condos. The association were suitably impressed with the results at the private unveiling of the website, and it is a mark of their pleasure that the logo and banner were adopted without any further modifications.
I may do more buildings in this style (still got old Cathedral school, the orginal Central Collegiate, and perhaps one or two of the larger apartment buildings with distinct modern features I can use, as well as perhaps one or two of those houses they’ve been shooting in The Murdoch Mysteries; I love that show), but I’ve assured them that I can’t afford to do it for free, so there may yet be payment in my future. We’ll see.
Money notwithstanding, it’s been a fun and gratifying project, and I’m glad I was able to do this for my neighbourhood. If I don’t get to do the mural on the Claremont Access, I’ll at least have helped to properly brand my neighbourhood (now, how about those Marquee banners? 
).
And that’s it for Show and Tell today. Thank you for reading, and if you would like to see the results of the website recreation (which was mainly the work of Ralph Meiers and my wife, Dawn ‘DSKI’ McIlmoyle), please go HERE:
Lee.
Hi Gang,
I have to go mail a book and CD to a friend around the world.
I have a lot of poster boards to design, including illos, but I have no data to work from.
I have paintings that need to be mounted and/or painted before next Saturday. This also requires a trip to curry’s for mounting boards.
I have to pay my internet and my rent.
I have to buy groceries before we starve, or worse, dine out.
I have to do some laundry, which requires change I can’t get unless I cross town to a CIBC chain that’s open today.
I have to go find a clean shirt and go start running errands. Maybe visit my friends in South Sherman for their neighbourhood yard sale.
I have a set list of songs to continue rehearsing, on the off chance that I score a gig to play this summer.
I want to go see Terra Lightfoot in Westdale today, but it might not happen.
I should go now.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
Good Morning, Limbophiles,
BUSY BUSY BUSY
I feel like cranking Billy Joel’s ‘Pressure’ up on the stereo while I work, because I have a crap-load of things to take care of today. Good thing I don’t have any events on my calendar for today. I’ve already finalized a poster, revised a featured image for a website, updated said website, posted posters on the local ‘unofficial’ neighbourhood Facebook group, trimmed two art pieces for Dawn, looked disparagingly at the results of the mounting job I did for an older painting of mine that I’m looking to sell at the yard sale, and I still have to write this post, the summary report for the PBW2 site and the detailed report for the man in charge, and go staple up PBW2 flyers in our neighbourhood. That and I plan on doing at least a little painting myself today, if I can fit it in.
There are a couple of events in town tonight, (a poetry reading and an album release), but I haven’t committed to either yet. Somehow, I suspect I’ll just want to collapse once all of this is done. Now, if The Rest was playing tonight, that would be different. I’m already upset that I’m going to be missing their final gig next weekend (family plans, which better include us or I might just disown them ;D ).
TOM
I went to Tom’s public viewing last night at the funeral home. There were a LOT of unfamiliar faces there who didn’t recognize me either, so I decided to make my visit brief and save on social embarrassment. I signed the guest book; walked to Tom’s coffin, which had a photo of him from roughly around the time I first met him; quietly wished him a safe journey to wherever Christian comic sellers go to spend their afterlife; smiled when I saw the copy of Cerebus’ Church & State, still with the hand-written orange price tags that Tom has been using on OGN covers and mini series collections for about as long as I’ve known him; and carefully weaved my way back out. I was probably there for no more than two minutes. I meant no offence by leaving so abruptly; I just didn’t want to interfere with all of those nice peoples’ grieving process by introducing a veritable stranger into their midst.
The argument could be made that I shouldn’t have gone at all, but I really felt I needed to say goodbye to the man properly. So I walked back to King Street, walked all the way over to the comic shop itself, took a photo, and said goodbye to Tom properly; somehow, not having been able to see Tom himself in the casket (for whatever reason, which I’m sure were quite reasonable), I just needed to lay eyes on something that will always be the face of Tom to my eyes, long after they close the shop and it becomes something depressing, like a Baby Gap.
TIME TO GO
Well, I have lots of stuff that needs to get finished today, so thank you for reading. Stay cool, keep hydrated, and watch out for speeding bullets; it might just be me running my various errands.
Lee.
When I was a boy, I used to frequent my local convenience store, reading comics. It was how I learned story plotting. But there was a problem; my local corner store was owned by a very sweet Pakistani man named Mr. Jain, but whom we all called Mr. James. He had two boy, Sanjay and Achel (sp?), and they were also comic fans, and had first pick, so there were a number of comics I didn’t get to read or collect.
But then one of my school friends, (I think it was Jason McGuigan) suggested we visit the local flea market, which in those days was housed in Eastgate Square on Sundays. This was before the makeover that made it into the mall it is today; it still had golden yellow brick tiling and high white metal ceiling girders in plain view. And there parked in the corner just before the diagonal turn toward the Food Court (including the unforgettable Steak and Burger) and Sam the Record Man, the old Cavalier Hair Salon, the original Red Hill Library and the arcade, outside of what my memory tells me was either a jewellery store or a shop for shoes and hand bags (I’ve forgotten the name, if I ever knew it), was Tom’s Comic Stand. It was small in the beginning; just a few racks and some long boxes (LONG BOXES! Who knew?). I hadn’t even realized that someone could or would devote their sales entirely to comics.
It was a revelation to me. Lightning storm moment. Flashpoint. Ground Zero. I’m not kidding. I was amazed and dumbfounded. I became a fan of Tom and his curious profession right then. In some ways, it’s incredible that I didn’t follow him into the trade, but I had deeper ambitions; I wanted to MAKE comics, not sell them. I think in a small way, I always wanted to make a comic that I could see on the racks at Tom’s place, but I get ahead of myself.
Tom kept his stall at Eastgate until they were all given the boot and moved their various stalls and chattels to Roller World, which didn’t get a lot of business on Sunday’s (in stark contrast to later years, when the Sunday crowd was pretty much the (last remaining) roller rink’s bread and butter). Roller world lasted for a few years in this configuration, but sadly was going out of business even then. The Disco era had passed, and New Wave and Heavy Metal kids didn’t want to roller skate any more. But Tom hung in there and grew and grew. I still have happy memories (amidst memories of a tense and unhappy home life beleaguered by drugs and alcohol, but that’s another story) of parking myself on the corner of Barton and Centennial, reading my comics while perched on the legs of the sign outside the Esso station (or was it the Shell… there was a gas station on every corner in those days). I spent many sunny afternoons there, barely noticing the traffic or the high winds. It was bliss.
When the roller rink was shut down and demolished, we all wondered where Tom might wind up next, and the answer soon came when it was revealed that the flea market wound up at Queenston Mall. When I got there, it was well lit, and he was in a prominent spot where he could really display his comics in full view of the passers-by. By this time, the 80s indie comic boom was in full swing, and comics were starting to become a going concern, so Tom has to start wrapping everything in mylar bags and asked us not to open the bags. I’m pretty sure I got around this somehow, as I remember spending many Sunday (or was it Saturday by that point; I’m pretty sure the days changed, and his frequency at the flea market increased) reading strange titles like (the original) Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Colleen Doran’s earliest incarnation of A Distant Soil (which I was actually properly introduced to by my old school buddy Scott Mitchell’s high school sweetheart, Sue Cormier), along with all of my favourites.
Then the news finally came; Tom was leaving the Flea Market. He’d outgrown it, really, taking up practically two stalls worth of space and growing. But the good news was, he was setting up shop not too far away, in ‘down town’ Stoney Creek. It wasn’t too far for us to make the pilgrimage, and so a new tradition started; and we got our first taste of an actual comic shop, with posters and shelves and stacks of long boxes. It was a somewhat modest shop, and I don’t think Tom ever quite managed to fit all of his comics in there safely, but he seemed happy, and it was a nice shop that felt safe and never catered to the ravening hordes of belligerent teens who wanted their comic art as close to cheesecake art as possible.
What I haven’t told you in this diatribe was that, over the years, I had really grown to like–perhaps even love–that sweet gentleman behind the counter and his crazy world of comics. Sure, there were other comic shops in town, and when I moved closer to the downtown Hamilton area (where I still live), my visits to Tom’s shop became far less frequent. Still, most of the classic comics I have in my collection were bought in his shop, and more importantly, my love of the medium and much of my skill and invention for plotting adventure scripts came from spending those many, many weekends visiting, reading and buying comics from Tom Laing.
I just got the news today that Tom passed away suddenly this past Monday. I hadn’t visited his shop since bringing my future wife to meet him (she doesn’t remember it, so I may be wrong about that) in the early part of the 00s, so it’s safe to say I’d allowed my membership in the fraternity of the Friends of Tom Laing to lapse. I’d meant to get back down to Stoney Creek to visit him at least one more time, and now I’ve missed my chance. But for the record, he was a great guy, and I’ll miss him very much.
I plan to attend the friends’ viewing at the funeral home tonight.
Lee.
I’ve been told never to apologize for not posting, and it sounds like good advice on the face of it, but I like to think I’m building a rapport as well as a repository for my insane ramblings here, and I feel somewhat responsible to you fine people. So for the record, I apologize for the service disruption of the past week. I DID maintain a series of blog posts over at my old WordPress site, and going forward, I’m going to be cross-posting my articles adn such there as well as here, to maintain some kind of mirror in case this happens again.
So, without further ado, thanks for hanging in there, and here’s a little something I did some time ago but hadn’t posted before, to amuse you for your patience:
This was dreamed up as an idea based on people sacrificing their front yard lawns to create vegetable gardens. This was also the more PC version, as my wife saw the original version and advised me to do a more positive, uplifting one. You can thank her for that.
For those of you who aren’t so PC:
I was feeling a teensy bit militant about the subject on the day, which is odd for me, as my wife is the gardener in this family, not me.
Still… if anyone would like a tee shirt of either of these designs, please notify me and I’ll post them on RedBubble for you.
And that’s it for show and tell today. Welcome back, and thanks for your patronage, so to speak.
Farmer Lee.
Okay, the title is a bit misleading. This isn’t something the Auditor General cooked up. This is just the numbers that Spectator journalist Steve Buist dug up on the OLG fiasco and the still-on-the-table Casino Hamilton/Casino Toronto plans.
First off, PLEASE, go read Buist’s article. I’d simply repost his numbers, but I haven’t finished my coffee yet, so I’m liable to make mistakes.
Looking at those numbers, it certainly appears that someone goofed, because they don’t look anything like the numbers ex-OLG CEO Paul Godfrey was delivering to us last fall/winter. It’s eye-opening to learn at last that we really were being played by the big guys, and that we weren’t just being irrational NIMBYists.
I recall numbers like 12,000 employees, and my memory is faulty, but I recall the proposed Hamilton Casino was going to employ a lot more than that, except that we noticed no one was saying every employee of the complex would receive those ‘living wages’ that OLG was promising us; that was only going to the employees of the casino proper, which in our case was only going to take up a fraction of the building. Doesn’t take a Math Professor to tell you that we were being baffled with BS. All those sexy numbers they kept coming back to, like they were reading from a carefully prepared script–lo and behold, it appears that’s exactly what it was.
I also recall us being told endlessly that slots and horses were a dying industry, and it appears that the only profit–which is considerable–has been made by slots and horses. Funny how that worked out, eh? So whether you believe that the horse racing industry has been in a steady decline, or whether you believe it was but is now in a sort of resurgence (for reasons that have yet to be explained), it seems fairly certain that the OLG has been doctoring the numbers to make the old, seemingly unprofitable business look less desirable, despite the fact that it’s just about all that was making the money needed to support OLG’s expensive publicity machine, busily trying to retrain us to throw our money away with a smile.
And now that the rats have left the sinking ship, it becomes clear that the reason they were pushing so hard was because they knew the true numbers, which they were trying to keep us from discovering. Sounds like a gambler’s bluff to me.
That brings me back to the title of this here Op/Ed. I meant it when I said (several times over the last year) that Ontario has a gambling problem. I want to believe that, with the ousting of Godfrey and the subsequent ‘resignations’ of his entire board, that with a clean slate, OLG can get back to doing what I’ve always believed they were commission to do from the start: regulate and moderate gambling in Ontario. But it doesn’t seem likely.
See, I was born in 1970, so I missed the bad old days when gambling was illegal in Ontario, which made it highly attractive and highly dangerous stuff organized by our local criminal fraternities. I’m not talking about Guys and Dolls here, with Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando singing and dancing and throwing around Monopoly money while trying to romance good girls who like bad boys. Real illegal gambling was (and still is, in some countries) a blood sport in thinly-veiled disguise. We really don’t need to see a return to those days.
The problem is, gambling is a part of human nature. We all do it in one fashion or another. It’s how our mammalian brains are wired. We’re risk takers. We J-walk, or run across the intersection on the yellow light. We come up short on the rent so we can buy a few more groceries. We drive the car a few months after the warning light goes off to get a little more life out of the engine before we take it in for work. Everywhere you look, even the most pragmatic and ostensibly reliable of us cut a few little corners to save on a bit of time and money, because we have to. So gambling is a variable in all of our lives.
But when it comes to Gambling (or as the OLG tried so charmingly to retrain us to call it, Gaming), only our most inveterate, superstitious, chance-taking society members truly take it to the limit and beyond, and though the OLG tried to convince us that it’s a paltry, insignificant number to worry about, we knew that that so-called 3% problem gambling number would look a lot less paltry if it took place in the downtown core, where lots of marginal types and those just hanging on by a thread would be tempted to try their luck and almost certainly lose their shirts. 3% of a the population starts to look a heck of a lot bigger when the actual population is bigger, and when accessibility is made as easy as jumping on the bus (or heck, just taking a short walk, for most of us who already live within walking distance) down town.
Hamilton has been in an ever-spiralling, financially-depressed state for going on three, maybe four decades, and it hardly seems to have bounced back from one recession before the next, bigger one hits, and more shops close as more and more money flows to the outer boroughs and out to the GTA. The last thing we need is knight in shiny black armour riding into town and promptly closing everything around it to make room for what Christopher Cutler calls the ‘blast zone radius’ effect, where nothing within a certain area (governed chiefly by the size and number of services offered by a casino complex) effectively wipes out it’s local competitors.
Always remember, the casino’s main function is to keep you inside those doors, spending money until you reach (or exceed) your spending limit. By the time you come staggering out of Dizzyland, you aren’t interested in taking in a movie or grabbing a bite to eat at what remains of the local fine dining establishments; you just want to get in your car and drive home (or, you know, take the bus/train, because those free drinks have got to take their toll).
I haven’t even mentioned the potential for bottoming out and committing suicide. Most folks can’t imagine how an evening of entertainment can result in someone attempting to take their own life, so mentioning it always confuses and angers them. If you’ve never been to the bottom, folks, I’m sure suicide just seems like some nigh-impossible bogeyman argument. Perhaps it’s best that you keep thinking that way. I hope you never learn how wrong you are.
And for those of you who think suicide is somebody else’s problem, believe me, it costs everyone, both in tax dollars and in sheer mental health of the society that has to live with the knowledge of the death toll. It’s a spiritually draining and demoralizing thing to enshrine an industry that literally sucks the life out of a community. There are small towns and cities all over the continent that experience the daily grind of knowing that their city runs on blood money, and it affects everything from citizen engagement to civic pride to just the social certainty that the people you vote for in the election (if you even have elections) are doing what they can to help.
So there you have it, folks. All of the really big promises have been shown to be lies, and all the problems we presented as arguments against them still stand. So whether you’re one of the so-called 97% of the responsible casino gambling set (numbers for which have been dropping since 2007, remember), or part of the 3% who need to be monitored, your Provincial government has been acting like a problem gambler, putting your futures on the table because it has grown too dependent upon money gambled away. I’m not asking that the OLG be disbanded; I still believe that it performs an important function, and if the profits of gambling have to go somewhere, I’d rather they come back to our communities and keep people working.
But no amount of candy-coated numbers can make me believe that we weren’t being conned by a group of very experienced gamblers. I can only hope the new boss won’t be the same as the old boss.
Lee.
Seems that Progressive Rock’s reemergence from the shadows as an acceptable musical genre is being vindicated by the plethora of new acts coming out with full on Prog Rock epics and no consideration to other musical genres that might make the medicine a little more palatable (or salable). However, one thing is marking this reemergence that the original incarnation and various efforts to reawaken the beast often failed to do: be tuneful. This album is a perfect example of epic rock made with tunefulness in mind.
tl;dr Version: Another day, another Prog Rock Supergroup… or is it?
‘Splain, Lucy Version: A supergroup with a difference, because the musicians involved are largely unknown on this (North American) side of the pond, but are well known amongst musicians and progressive rock fans in the UK and Europe.
Boring Version: I’ve been a passive follower of John Young for a few years now, since we sort of brushed against one another a year or two ago on Facebook while talking about other music. I vaguely realized he was a great keyboardist, but I really didn’t know much about him, even after we started following one another on Facebook. Now, the thing is, as a passive follower, I hadn’t actually gone out and hunted down any of his music, because as near as I could tell, he didn’t have any that wasn’t music by bands with established songwriters. If I was going to invest in some new music, I wanted to know it was coming from John, so I could take the full measure of the guy.
Ironically, I technically knew the work of Nick Beggs (Drums)(Bass & Chapman Stick) and of Frosty Beedle (Bass, Chapman Stick)(Drums; thanks for the corrections, JY. ~Lee) a little better, based on my prior knowledge of Kajagoogoo and Cutting Crew respectively. But John, the keyboardist and lead vocalist of Lifesigns, was a bit of an enigma to me, even though we had been chatting briefly for some time. I knew he played keys for the modern incarnation of The Strawbs, and did other studio and live gigs to order, as well as playing in his own solo band, but still, not a note had I heard.
So when the Lifesigns promo finally came out, I checked it out with great interest, and was highly intrigued by what I heard. I waited quite a while before finally getting hold of a copy to review, and that’s why we’re hear so many months after the release. I’m behind on my reviews by several months, and stuff I thought I was going to review I probably won’t, simply because I don’t have a lot of time on my hands (except for this afternoon, when I’m taking a much needed ‘break’ from other duties). But this album has something, and I want to talk about it, if I may.
THE REVIEW
Lighthouse opens with moody atmospherics and a bit of cinematic flavour, but as this is an epic of almost thirteen minutes, of course it wouldn’t stay like this for long. Drums, keys and guitars start creeping in, and then the first riff starts; a bright guitar and synth riff with some very nice bass playing, but this is merely the calm before the storm, when the bridge kicks in and the real progressive hook power of this band is revealed. The chorus is an edgy and moody, and a brief instrumental passage guides us to the first proper verse opens with a slightly Genesis-like melody, and John’s voice is revealed to be capable of pastel shades as well as dark washes. A not-quite-Yes-like vocal refrain passage follows, vocal harmonies and pastoral instrumentation; a lovely section, perhaps more Genesis than Yes, which leads to a bridge segment that turns it up a notch in intensity, though not in tempo or raw power. A new section follows this, with a slightly pop-inflected melody that could very well come from a tune by A-Ha or some other hit-making 80s band. Very tasteful and gorgeous, though; not a tweezy synth and drum machine feel. It has the sound quality of a David Hentshel production. This leads into a rather stunningly moody and effective instrumental passage that takes you on something of a journey through a cloudy landscape, fine guitar and stormy seaside sounds. Lovely close, and it hardly feels like it played for over twelve minutes.
Telephone bass and drums start this exercise, sounding for all the world like a Peter Gabriel number, because Nick Beggs (corrected) has that rare ability to play a Chapman Stick and capture that near-inimitable Tony Levin sound. The chorus eventually lands, and it’s an interesting hook because the melody is very radio-friendly, but the counterpoint bass line adds a density and complexity that just demands a more careful listen, and when the riff comes around for a second pass, it’s layered in harmony vocals that make it sound almost fugue-like. This in turn leads to a pleasant instrumental passage riffing on the same melody, before it shifts slightly in the bridge, including dueling lyric lines. The song is slightly longer than nine minutes, which affords the band a chance to explore themes a little more, bouyed up by a positive vibe and some lovely keyboard work. There is another hook introduced, a bridge beyond the first, I suppose, and then we move to a Pink Floydesque verse section that just feels like it’s going to explode, until the positive vibe melody returns, and eventually leads to an alteration of the opening Gabrielesque rhythm, and the original chorus melody. Nice finish on this. Makes you wish for more.
Fridge Full of Stars sails in on a huge synth pads and a minimalist rhythm, before piano and vocals introduce a sparse, spacious verse section. Then the intro hook returns, this time with strings and classical guitar (provided no doubt by guest guitarist Steve Hackett), when the chorus proper arrives, it’s very Yes-like without feeling derivative (I love using that phrase, but it’s true. Hammond under Squire-like Rickenbacker bass playing and dense major key vocal harmonies do that.). Then we’re treated to a section of flute playing by the legendary Focus leader Thiis van Leer, somewhere between Ian Anderson and Zamfir, without the excesses of either; a jazzy treatment that spans the quiet divide. Guitar creeps in in the background, and we are reminded that this piece, which is over eleven minutes long, has other things to do. The synth solo makes this apparent, as the whole song shifts into late 70s Genesis/Styx territory, followed by that Yes-like chorus again. Lovely, and we’re only two thirds there. A piano bridge section with backing vocals sails through briefly, followed by a return to soaring guitar. This drops down to a section of piano and vocal duet, which jumps up into the Yes chorus again, and nearly rides out on a sea of synths and Rickenbacker bass glory, until an extremely Yes-like vocal fugue breaks out, followed by a curious mix of Yes and Genesis for the outro. Great piece.
At The End of The World starts off atmospherically, with pads of bass and carefully sedate Chapman in the low registers, followed by classical guitar and piano, as the vocals enter and the harmonies kick in. This is a lovely piece with a peculiar mix of Peter Gabriel and The Eagles, but not in the way you might expect. There’s a lovely return to the bridge harmony section, which builds up a bit, and then slides into a soft passage with vocal harmonies, joined by a few splashes of classical guitar, and then cello and haunting vocal harmonies. It occurs to me that the piano here reminds me of a pianist most of you haven’t heard of: Liam ‘Corwyn’ Birch. This section eventually makes it around to the real chorus, and a hook big enough to nab Moby Dick. Very cool. A late 70s Genesis vibe, but with something else a little harder to explain. This piece successfully rides in at 8:23, a fully satisfying piece with radio appeal, though we know we’ll never hear it on regular radio.
Carousel meanders in on a sea of guitars and keys, the rhythm section just carrying them along until the organ introduces a real melody, which is another infectious hook, this time of a Rabin-era Yes flavour. The piece is another epic, at almost twelve minutes, and the verse is the first positive sign of this, as it breaks down to piano and vocals, surrounded by restrained guitar and synth, followed by flute and keys playing in harmony, joined by guitar, and then breaking into a slightly jazzy downward progression, which itself shifts into a slightly Jethro Tull instrumental middle section that soon gains some synth to make it a tad more upbeat, only to slam into a wall of moody synth vox humana, and an Emersonian piano figure, leading to a vaguely Gabriel-era Genesis segment featuring electric piano and vocals. Guitar joins in, and vocal harmonies clinch the Genesis comparison, and THEN… twelve string and synth flute. Nailed it. The drums just add to this, and suddenly I’m back in Foxtrot, but this too cannot last, as the refrain takes us out to a Yes-like segment and back to the flute-laden segment that sounds to all the world like Yes and Tull had a bipolar child together. The Rabin section returns, and then shifts to the Gabrielesque refrain segment again, which breaks down to an ELP piano fugue moment, and after a moment adds vocals and closes the section on an almost Crimsonian vibe, until it shifts to a Genesis vibe once more, and then a true instrumental fugue that crashes and into a delicate wash of synths sailing the whole album away.
SUMMARY
I apologies for resorting to the comparison game on this album, but in so many places, it’s hard to resist the urge to play trainspotting on this one. The important things to keep in mind are, these guys are NOT the usual suspects on a prog album of this magnitude, the vocals are actually really quite unique (in a good way), and the album has the added benefit (if you care for such things) that it definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome. Five pieces at approximately 8-12 minutes a piece means it doesn’t even crack the 60 minute mark. Not bad for a start, but we could definitely do with another helping over here.
With much apology to John for waiting so long to finally actually listen to some of his music, and with the hope for much more from this band. Great stuff, guys.
© 2013 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
A new gunslinger is in town, and his name is Simon Collins. For those new to the program, we like to foster new Progressive Rock acts who have something distinct and entertaining to add to the canon, and this album certainly fits the bill. It is due for release on May 20th, 2013. Don’t ask me how I came by it two days early; you don’t want to know. But I will say that I will be buying my copy as soon as I get some money in this house again. This is a keeper.
tl;dr Version: A concept album co-written by the son of a famous pop star? Can that possibly be any good? You bet your ass it can!
‘Splain, Lucy Version: Sound of Contact may be new, but Simon Collins and his band mates (David Kerzner, Kelly Nordstrom and Matt Dorsey) have been around a while, and this album is proof that they know what they’re doing. It’s not quite a supergroup project like Flying Colors or TransAtlantic, but it’s very much in that vein of Moving Forward/Looking Backward Progressive Rock acts, but with a difference, because Simon has made his name as an electronic musician as well as a world class drummer in his own right, and this album reflects that, too. Yes, you will hear Mellotrons, but you will also hear cutting edge synths, modern guitar effects, and top shelf production values from the one and only Nick Davis. And you will hear some fantastic songs, because that’s what this concept album consists mainly of; toe tapping, thoughtful and infectious melodies that sacrifice nothing to either the small deities of pop radio OR the Gods of Prog.
Boring Version: Simon Collins is a funny figure in rock music. So few sons or daughters of famous pop stars really ever emerge from under the shadows of their famous parents, despite being gifted musicians, singers and songwriters in their own right (e.g. Alexa Ray Joel, James McCartney, Sean Lennon, and perhaps Dhani Harrison, although his band, thenewno2, is making inroads as well). Even famous and successful solo musicians such as Julian Lennon still have to answer questions about his famous father, almost thirty years after starting his solo music career.
Simon, as some know, is the the son of famous singer/songwriter and retired Prog Rock drummer Phil Collins of solo and Genesis fame (tell me you didn’t know that). And he has released a short but distinct catalogue of electronic pop albums under his own name over the last decade, whilst moving towards building a band he could tour and record with. Well, after meeting and working with keyboardist David Kerzner (whom I cannot say enough nice things about, so I will refrain here; the highest praise I can give him is that he is a modern day synthesis of Tony Banks’ and Kevin Moore’s writing and playing styles) on his last solo album, including the remarkable Genesis cover ‘Keep It Dark’ (with guitarist Kelly Nordstrom), Simon found the songwriting partner he’s been needing to take his music to the next level. Building from the band he created for that album, they went on to found a remarkable (there’s that word again) Progressive Rock band, and wrote and recorded what is threatening to be my favourite album of 2013; Dimensionaut, by Sound of Contact.
Dimensionaut is a concept album, but don’t let that moniker deter you, or for those with dreams of theaters of progressive compositions gilded in distortion and drenched in the blood of musicians playing in 13/6, relax. There are chops on display here, but they aren’t the main feature. This is one of the most accessible-but-powerful progressive rock albums I’ve heard in a while, and believe me, I’ve been listening. And for those keeping score, this truly is a band effort. There are co-write credits on all of the songs, and in case there is any doubt, Simon’s name is in every one of those credits.
01. Sound Of Contact (02:05) (Collins/Kerzner)
02. Cosmic Distance Ladder (04:43) (Collins/Dorsey/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
03. Pale Blue Dot (04:44) (Collins/Dorsey/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
04. I Am (Dimensionaut) (06:24) (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
05. Not Coming Down (06:01) (Collins/Kerzner/Seigel)
06. Remote View (03:54) (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
07. Beyond Illumination Feat. Hannah Stobart (05:53) (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom/Stobart)
08. Only Breathing Out (05:56) (Collins Kerzner/Nordstrom)
09. Realm Of In-Organic Beings (02:52) (Collins/Kerzner)
10. Closer To You (05:05) (Collins/Dorsey/Kerzner)
11. Omega Point (06:29) (Collins/Dorsey/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
12. Möbius Slip (19:35)
Part 1 In The Difference Engine (Collins/Dorsey/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
Part 2 Perihelion Continuum (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
Part 3 Salvation Found (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
Part 4 All Worlds All Times (Collins/Kerzner/Nordstrom)
Sound of Contact are:
Simon Collins – vocals, drums
Dave Kerzner – keyboards, backing vocals
Kelly Nordstrom – guitar, bass
Matt Dorsey – guitar, bass, backing vocals
With
Hannah Stobart: vocals
Wells Cunningham: cello
THE REVIEW
Sound of Contact opens the album with radio signals and then a quick burst of rock instrumentation, followed by some ambient sounds and acoustic guitars and piano. Simon’s voice is joined by Hannah Stobart’s, and then a very Yes-like vocal chorus of snippet vocals, like something from Tales of Topographic Oceans, closes the short numbrer, but leads directly into…
Cosmic Distance Ladder is a mid-tempo prog rocker with drums and guitars to the fore, a long instrumental passage with great 80s and 90s synth textures and riffs, and some outstanding bass playing in the background. The song diverts into a slightly jazz fusion-fueled middle section, a real proof of concept section to demonstrate their musicianship without bludgeoning you endlessly with scales and time shifts. Think late 80s Rush with a bit more keyboard. That closing passage builds in tension before releasing and leading into…
Pale Blue Dot opens with synths and guitars buzzing and humming quietly while the cymbals tap out an intricate pattern that lead into the main riff. This is followed quite suddenly by the chorus, which jumps to the first verse, and the first revelation that Simon has a great lead vocal voice that only sounds the slightest bit like his father’s. The second is, the lyrics are really smart and well-fashioned. The bridge arrives at almost three minutes in, and it becomes clear that this band has no trouble coming up with hooks. The bridge leads to a refrain and then a chorus that builds to the outro. No notes wasted, no efforts to squeeze in a few riffs or scales, just a very effective rock song.
I Am (Dimensionaut) starts quietly, just Simon with a bit of fretless bass and chiming electric piano. Somewhat Marillion-like, here, but as the band starts to work its way into the chorus hook, the song comes to life. The verse returns, and again, I get a slightly Marillionesque vibe, but there’s a distinct quality to Simon’s vocals here which makes this feel fresh. At about three minutes, they go into a very Marillion/Saga style instrumental passage, which is just beautiful in scope and brevity. The chorus returns in a quiet refrain, and the verse returns likewise, before the slow build to the hooky instrumental chorus passage, and then the chorus proper, which just feels like a rallying cry to come outside and breathe the fresh air in the sunlight. Beautiful.
Not Coming Down is a well-constructed rock song with a classic Marillion feel (think Misplaced Childhood/Clutching At Straws) in the verses, and something a little more like Catherine Wheel in the chorus, plus some Hogarth-era Marillionisms in the instrumental passages. Very effective use of strings here. This is the lead-off single, and the story is illustrated pretty strongly in the accompanying video, which you should really scoot over to Youtube to watch. The instrumental section is dark and moody, while the outro is bright and uplifting, like a psychedelic Beatles outro. Very cool choice for a first single.
Remote View enters with psychedelic keys and guitars and big Bonham drums, before the chorus hook kicks in, which just sounds so fresh and interesting, I have trouble drawing immediate comparisons. There is more affected psychedelic vocal treatment in the bridge section, and the guitar solo is vaguely Beatlesque. The refrain leads back to the verse, and the chorus is joined with call and answer vocals, and all the while, you’re hearing Simon singing in a fashion you haven’t heard before.
Beyond Illumination opens like a Vangelis piece, CS-80 sounds in full effect, followed by a reggae verse section that succeeds in sounding both like and unlike Ghost in the Machine-era the Police and early-80s Genesis flirting with reggae before opening up into a beautiful, affected chorus. The reggae verse returns the third time, with Hannah Stobart adding a beautiful vocal performance that then shifts into a bridge section with call and answer vocals, and a beautiful return to the chorus. Very moving piece.
Only Breathing Out creeps in disguised as a lovely ballad with a few tell-tale sustained buzzing Hackett-Steurmer-type guitar notes, but then a great hook to the chorus arrives, and the song builds into a barnstormer of pop rock grandeur. Strongest chorus hook on the album so far, and it doesn’t overstay before the quiet verse treatment returns. That chorus makes its way around again, and it still doesn’t lose its flavour. The instrumental kicks in quietly enough, but with a dexterous show of tom runs to punctuate the otherwise fairly ambient mood. Then a return to an instrumental chorus riff, and then the chorus itself, and the outro builds with strings until a release on pianos and vocals, with a bit of fretless bass ebbs away, affected vocal samples punctuating the sussurus.
Realm of In-Organic Beings slips in sounding for all the world like a combination of The Great Gig in the Sky and The Waiting Room, overlaid onto a catchy rhythmic riff with enough layers of reverb to drown an oncoming Egyptian cavalry. Gorgeous meditation.
Closer To You chimes and a soft wall of guitars join a piano to introduce this song. Here I can almost, ALMOST hear some of Simon’s father’s sensibilities in the vocal melody. It’s a pretty intro, and the second verse builds with a harmony vocal that then leads to the chorus (another very cool hook), which actually has some pretty complex background vocals. The second verse burbles along with some heft before the chorus returns, and then repeats more stridently, leading to an instrumental passage that features a brilliantly understated guitar pattern. The build up to the outro is like something straight off of a Genesis album, but I can’t decide if it’s Wind and Wuthering or Duke. Lovely. Big chorus outro. Nice finish.
Omega Point is a chopsy intro affair that builds to the verse, with a heavily affected, powerful vocal performance from Simon. Strong piece that rumbles by like a train. Some great bass playing underneath the solid drum pattern and ambient waves of guitar and padded piano. Gorgeous chorus hook. Relentless drive. Washy, treated keys in the instrumental break, which leads back to that irresistible chorus. The song goes into a second instrumental passage, this time with a synth string passage and wending, intertwined guitar leads. Very cool and not at all overblown. The drums pick up a little more insistently during the bridge, which leads to a break that carries into the outro, winding down slowly to make room for…
Möbius Slip is the four-part epic closer to the album, running at over nineteen (19) minutes long, and filled with very modern sample sounds of signals and static, building on string box orchestral sounds, like a modern revisitation of Little Neutrino from Klaatu; a beautifully constructed instrumental section with some wonderfully tuneful playing and great atmospherics. The segue to the second part is reminiscent of Pink Floyd, including the slightly chugging sound of rotors in the air. This makes way for a slightly middle Eastern riff, which makes room for Simon’s vocal introduction at about five minutes into the piece. This second section sounds just a little like a mash-up of Soundgarden and Porcupine Tree, but doesn’t sound derivative, for all that. The acoustic bridge brings us to a strange melding of Pink Floyd and Steve Howe-led Yes, and this bridges into a PT-type instrumental passage, complete with slightly heavy metal riffing, which transforms into a Led Zeppelin section, but again using vocal effects taken from Steven Wilson’s playbook. This section transforms into an instrumental section that chops it up even more, with a slightly Dream Theateresque instrumental section, complete with very prototypical Portnoy-type drumming. Very cool. The instrumental shifts to a quieter but equally choppy section, a little less Dream Theater, establishing Sound of Contact as its own creature. Finally, part four arrives, a change-up that sounds a bit like a Synchronicity era Police piece, but with a drum sound closer to John Bonham again. A lovely bridge here, very Phil Collins in drum flavour, the vocals sounding like a young Peter Gabriel, and yet not sounding like a Gabriel-era Genesis piece. HUGE CHORUS sound, including walls of guitar not entirely unlike Brian May, but a little less melodically perfected. Then we get synth melodies like Tony Banks on And Then There Were Three, as the band manoeuvres through a beautiful Genesis-style outro, lots of uplifting notes and riffs here. Gorgeous. You have no doubt that the story ends well, even if you haven’t been following the lyrics too closely. Which, really, you should, because this band’s lyric writing is as good as it comes. A Day In the Life closer, wending treated piano and synths and walls of guitar and Mellotron and winding down drums… ahhh… the radio signals return, and the album ends.
SUMMARY
I need you all to go out and buy this album, capice? This is modern Prog, and it’s accessible and lovely and built to appeal to a wide range of audiences, without throwing in an obvious radio-accessible hit. It IS a concept album from start to finish, and it doesn’t stray from that. It merely takes pages from other successful concept albums, including Duke and other such not-quite-a-full-concept-but-close-enough albums by having melodically and rhythmically challenging instrumentals and infectious songs intertwined. You can’t really miss with this one. Simon and company have taken away all of the road blocks to Prog assimilation on this one. Go tell your S.O. that a new heavyweight Prog Pop/Rock band has come to the rescue. Then tell them I sent you, because I want to be invited along too.
© 2013 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
…to let people know that I’m still here, still breathing, still doing stuff. I’m tired and groggy, so I’m not feeling particularly eloquent just now. I’ll try to come back later today to post something more interesting. Thank you.
Lee.
So I’ve been up since just before 6 AM and I still haven’t started my write up about last night’s ArtCrawl event on James Street North in Hamilton. We do this once a month, so it’s not imperative that I get this done and dusted right now, but I want to get stuff down while my memories are clear. I recorded myself mumbling into a digital dictaphone/mp3 player as I observed and analysed a series of paintings and styles of bodies of work, but I haven’t listened to any of it yet to make sure it’s audible.
I’m listening to the Kinks discography through headphones today. I hadn’t really heard their earliest stuff before. Very Stonesy, which I guess is just how most London bands sounded in 1964, really, so it stands to reason. Still, looking forward to getting to the part where their distinctive style asserts itself. Oh! There it is. *smiles*
I think I’m going to work on a painting today, once Dawn gets up and I have the coffee taken care of. I may also tinker with my recordings from last night to see if any of them are usable. My throat’s a bit sore, so I don’t plan on doing any recording or travelling around today, if I can help it.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
So I started painting today. I plan to do many more piantings, but today was just a ‘dip your toes in’ day to get back into the feel of covering surfaces with paint and getting a feel for fast composition again.
The pieces are abstract expression, and raw; really raw. I didn’t really visualize everything I was doing so much as felt my way to some vague forms I’ve been trying to capture for a while. I feel like I made some progress, and look forward to picking up some more canvases next month and doing the next stage better.
Still got four big canvases, one of which I’m contemplating doing a large abstract riffing off the leftover marks the smaller canvases made on it. that was deliberate, though I wasn’t sure what I’d get to work with, so we’ll see what happens.
It’s going to take some time to dry these canvases, and I’m pretty sure that three out of the four aren’t finished yet, but the moment is passed, so I’ve elected to leave them for now, and work any other ideas into the next iterations.
So there you have it; back to work, and back to making abstract paintings after a 20 year hiatus. I plan to apply a coat or two of gloss medium over them at some point, when I can get my hands on some, and try to get a smooth, glassy effect without varnishing and buffing. Then I’ll sell them, even though they’re kind of preliminary. I’ll just sell them relatively cheap. Any offers?
Thanks for viewing. Comments are welcome, but not necessary.
Lee.
