Presenting...

... Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan's first rock band.

Hat tip to Alan Cross of The Edge.

Walking around

I remember learning about traffic circles or roundabouts in elementary school. It seemed like such an exotic form of traffic control. Lately, it seems like a fair number of them have been cropping up here and there. In the last year or two, I've encountered them in Ancaster and somewhere in the Waterloo Region. If any traffic circles existed anywhere nearby when I was learning to drive, I wasn't aware of them, and I don't think my driving instructors were either, because they never gave me any advice how to navigate them. My usual strategy is to go when I feel like it and rely on the politeness of others. So far there has been no honking of horns or crashing of cars. If you're a pedestrian, on the other hand, you don't need any guidance of walking instructors, even if you learned how to walk before the age of roundabouts. The Waterloo Region was kind enough to make a video to help you.

Ripoff artists

After Dave Matthews released his second major album, there were accusations that he ripped of David Bowie. The only song I know from David Bowie is Ground Control to Major Tom [1]. The only other work from Bowie that I knew of was his portrayal of Andy Warhol in a movie about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. To the best of my knowledge, Dave Matthews wasn't portraying Andy Warhol on his latest album, and therefore it was unlikely that I would have picked up on the similarities between the two artists. About two years ago, Dr. McNeil pointed out the similarities between The Who's Pinball Wizard and David Francey's Skating Rink. I knew both of these songs, but it had been a long time since I had heard the former, and they are also different genres, so I didn't notice. More recently, another friend told me that James Blunt ripped of Elmo. Not being familiar with the music of either of these artists, I never would have noticed. The oldest example of creative borrowing that I can think of is Beethoven's 5th symphony. While it's not a exact ripoff, the opening rhythm and melodic contour [2] of Beethoven's piece are noticeably similar to the main motif of Bach's Fugue in D from Book 2 of The Well Tempered Clavier.

Then, today, after seeing this video [3], I'm wondering perhaps Gentil Montaña should have appeared with Cypress Hill in the Homerpalooza episode of the Simpsons, instead of the London Symphony Orchestra.

[1] Moments after writing Ground Control to Major Tom, I loaded iTunes and played Ground Control to Major Tom. As of the writing of this footnote, Icarus from Enter the Haggis is playing.

[2] The melodies are not exactly the same, but at the very beginning of the respective pieces, Beethoven's notes go down when Bach's go down, even though the musical distances are different. The influence is not implausible, since Beethoven was known for playing pieces from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.

[3] Hat tip to David Koyzis.

Saturday Night Lyrics

In honour of the NHL playoffs that I'm not watching, I'm offering up some hockey related content.

A humourous addition to Stompin' Tom's well known Hockey Song due to Tim Hus and performed by Corb Lund.

Well goodness me,
Fox TV
where did you get your sight?
Can't you keep track,
the puck is black
that's why the ice is white.

And that big red glare,
that you see up there,
well we've seen that for years
Heaven sakes,
all it takes
is a couple dozen beers!

----

The Hockey Monkey
By the Zambonis

all the scientists are running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids

and all the mothers are running around
looking for their children but they can't be found
cause they're down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

national guard is running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playin hockey with the kids

and all the teachers are running around
looking for the children but they can't be found
cause their down by the pond playin hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

it's 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaaaaaaa

Back to the matter at hand

Not too long ago One More Epicycle asked what deep country was. I'm at loss myself. Googling for the phrase brings us back to the post in which the question was asked before we get anything close to an answer. As an adjective for country music, deep seems to be used primarily to describe The Be Good Tanyas. So things have come full circle. Deep country is what The Be Good Tanyas play. The Be Good Tanyas play deep country. Not very helpful. Call me crazy, but I hardly think that a band from urban Canada is going to define a type of country music, especially since much of the music on the CD of theirs that I own consists of covers and reinterpretations of traditional tunes.

A bit more sleuthing seems to indicate that deep country is "white man's gospel music". There's at least one song on Chinatown, which I own, that resembles gospel music to me. The Be Good Tanyas being white people, by this definition that song would qualify as deep country, so maybe this is what is meant. The term also seems to be used to describe country music that hasn't been corrupted by Nashville or at least is in an earlier stage of corruption[1]. This too would fit, but it's too vague of a description for me to think that that's what is meant when calling their music deep country.

Whatever was meant by deep country, it's got to be a better descriptor for their music than "like Led Zeppelin" as Conan O'Brien said. Owning one of their albums and having listened to it, I have no idea where he got that from.

Personllay, I'd prefer not to think of The Be Good Tanyas as country music at all, since I like them, but I don't like country.


[1] I really can't stand country music radio, metonymously known as Nashville, on the whole. Occasionally I hear something that doesn't make me want to change stations immediately. Lately though, I've come accross a fair amount of country music that I do like. It crossed my mind that my attitudes toward country music might be changing, so I tried to listen to country music radio or watch country music tv to test that possiblity. But no. I still can't stand it. It's not my attitudes that have changed. It's the music that I have access to. Thank you internet!

Tuesday night CanCon

"Writer"
Al Mader
The Minimalist Jug Band
[If only you could hear it--ed.]

I hear you're chasin' the golden egg
Relocatin' to Winnipeg
For a Ph.D. and a career

Well don't expect me to beg
Go ahead and break a leg
But there always a place for you here

And You can always just be a writer
If nothin' else goes right
Scribble your thoughts on a napkin in the morning
And perform them up onstage at night.

And you can always just be a writer
If everything else goes wrong
Take your heart break and misfortune
Transform the into a song

Well I know that poets are annoying
Even the ones who are good
At least they have
an understanding of
What it's like to be misunderstood

And You can always just be a writer
I put your name on the list
Well you're after the girl
with the bleach blonde curls
And the bandages on her wrist

And you can always just be a writer
There's no real shame in that
Well it's a gift that you got
And like it or not
It's not a gift that you can take back

Well Henry and William were brothers
You could hardly tell them apart
But Willy James chose the machinations of the mind
While Hank chose the beating of the heart

And I didn't bother to do any research
But I'd be more than willing to bet
Henry James had the better life
And died without regrets

And they told Henry
You can always just be a writer
If nothing else goes right
Scribble your thoughts on napkin in the morning
And perform them up onstage at night

And you can always just be writer
I'll put your name on the list
Well you're after the girl with the bleach blond curls
And the bandages on her wrist

And you can always just be a writer.

--

Brought to me in audio form courtesy of Steve Fruitman on his CIUT radio show Back to the Sugar Camp.

I bothered to transcribe this quite some time ago in response to an email, the contents of which are also amusing, and appear below.
(I'll link to who sent it,
if he will consent to it.)

RJN, at First Things:

--
Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words, which
he did. (I'll get to what he wrote.) Black Book magazine issued the same
challenge to a slew of well-known contemporary authors. Norman Mailer
wrote this: "Satan -- Jehovah -- fifteen rounds. A draw."

John Updike: "'Forgive me!' 'What for?' 'Never mind.'"

None of them come close to what Hemingway wrote: "For sale: baby shoes,
never used."
--

It's lines like that that make me realize I'm never going to be a writer..

La Musique du Quebec

In the summer before I came to Queen's I spent a month in Chicoutimi, Quebec to learn French through the Summer Language Bursary Program. While there, I learned that Quebec had traditional music of its own, comparable to that of Cape Breton. The songs are usually of the call-and-response variety, though not always. The instrumental repertoire contains a lot of tunes that are similar in form to Scottish and Irish traditional music (which generally falls under the ambiguous term "Celtic"), namely reels and jigs (or gigues).

There was at least one wave of Irish immigrants to Quebec and they brought with them the musical traditions that the Irish themselves are now popular for. Some of that stuck and became part of what I assume was a pre-existing musical tradition in Quebec. There are other types of tunes in Quebec such as the quadrille, which probably would translate into something like "square dance", but may not resemble what we know as square dancing (the instrumental component of traditional music, from Cape Breton, Scotland, Ireland, Quebec, or the Appalachian mountains was dance music before it was "listening" music, so a quadrille is a type of dance. Calling a tune a "quadrille" means it was meant to accompany the dance by the same name).

The songs, in my opinion, don't resemble songs in any of the traditions mentioned above in their feel. In modern recordings of the tunes, it is sometimes easy to hear the resemblence to the other traditions, and sometimes it would be impossible to mistake the Quebecois tradition for anything else. In older recordings of tunes, it would be hard for me to pick out what's Quebecois and what's Irish, Scottish, or any other tradition (though I've heard only a few old recordings in any of these styles). The experts say that in the Quebecois tradition the tunes are played with more syncopation (though there are other traditions in Canada with more, and more obvious, syncopation).

The fiddle by far is the most important instrument, followed closely by the accordion. Musical spoons and Jew's harp are frequently heard as well. One characteristic that sets the music apart, by and large, is the foot-stomping that accompanies most of their tunes (again, there are other traditions within Canada where foot-stomping is the primary rythmic accompaniment).

There is much more to the music than I know, or want to bother to explain in a simple blog post. Not only that, it's better to hear the music than to read about. So I will leave you with a few names so you can get a feel for it.

Probably the most popular group within Quebec is La Bottine Souriante, which I found out about through the CBC (hey, they're good for something!). They have been around for nearly 30 years now. Their early music is mostly traditional, though polished up, no doubt, for recording purposes (field recordings of the unpolished music might make you wonder why anyone even showed up to dance). In later years they added a horn section which definitely changes the feel of the music, but nevertheless the traditional character shines through. It would be worthwhile to catch a live show, not just for the thrill of live music, but also to see the dancing that usually accompanies the music. More than once, I've seen live concerts on TV, though only when I'm not looking for them. You can listen to three of their tracks on either of the French or English home pages. Hit the play button at the bottom right of the home page. You can also hear samples of tracks (no complete tracks though) from each of their albums by clicking on the album covers under the discography section.

Another group is Les Chauffeurs a Pieds. This name is intended as double entendre that, not being competent in French (the Summer Language Bursary Program was only of short term success), is lost on me. The name refers in part to the foot-stomping mentioned earlier. I can't remember the other half of the double entendre, nor do I remember from where I learned of this, so I can't look it up. You can download about 20 complete tracks, a few short samples, and one corrupted file (La Lombardie. I don't reccommend downloading this one for one obvious reason. For those who don't like classic Irish folk song Raitlin Bog, I don't reccommend listening to "Dans ce joli bois". After many listens, I have concluded that it is the French language equivalent of the Irish song (the tune and words are very different), though I still haven't fully understood the lyrics. ). I'm listening to them as I write. (Thanks to Steve Fruitman, host of the CIUT radio show Back to the Sugar Camp, for informing me of this group.)

Yet another group worth mentioning is Le Vent du Nord. I think the CBC can take credit for pointing me to this one too (though annoyingly, they can also take credit for talking to the group more than playing their music, confirming a well known and well worn right wing stereotype of CBC personalities). The band features a hurdy gurdy player, which, to the best of my knowledge, is not usually a component of traditional Quebecois music (it is in French music, so it's not unreasonable that it would be used here). Sadly you cannot hear any complete tracks at their site, only partial. The hurdy gurdy is instrument you hear at the beginning of the track "Les Amant do Saint-Laurent" under the Albums tab. Much to my dismay, I missed a performance of Le Vent du Nord when they appeared in Kingston a year or two ago. It doesn't look like they're going to appear here any time soon, if the calendar on their webpage is any indication.

I'm sure that these groups are only the tip of the iceberg of traditional Quebecois music, but it's a good start. I should also mention that this is probably only the tip of the iceberg in terms of traditional music in Canada. Wanting to learn more about the Quebecois music has prompted me to find out what goes on outside of Quebec. I have discovered that there are lots of musical traditions in Canada, some associated with provinces, some associated with regions, and some with particular cultures within Canada. Most of it is rooted in the European cultures associated with the two major colonizers of Canada, the British and the French. But it is not limited to those. This is a subject for another day, however.

Fine Malt Lickers

For some fine banjo playing, download and listen to the tracks found here, here, and here, by Arnie Naiman, Chris Coole, and a few others. If you're looking for the car chase music usually associated with the banjo, you'll be sadly disappointed. Most of the tracks feature a playing style known as clawhammer which predates the more popular bluegrass style. I'm not sure if I could explain well the technical difference between the different playing styles to someone who doesn't already know something about finger picking a string instrument. Google will help you find someone who can tell you about clawhammer better than I could.

While the technical differences between the two styles might not be easy to explain, the difference in effect is easy to hear. Bluegrass style is what most people associate with car chases, and can be quite brash. Clawhammer style, at least as it's practiced by these folks, is gentler.

The track "Cold Tea" is bluegrass. All others but "Rambling Boys" are clawhammer. Take a listen, and see the difference for yourself.

The track "Rambling Boys" is in the rarely heard Irish tenor style. Unfortunately, the track is corrupted. It plays, but it doesn't sound right. (I sent an email to the artists quite some time ago to tell them about this, but they never responded. If they read the email, they didn't act on it.)

Music

While I was in Hamilton this past weekend, I was listening to the radio (something I don't normally do in Kingston). I heard a song that I liked, but neither time that I heard it did they annouce what the song was or who it was by. You wouldn't happen to know the name or the artist, would you?