At Home in Hespeler

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

It’s been a lot of years. Too many really, but you get out of things: work too much, raise a family, go back to school and finish that degree. Next thing you know you haven’t slung a Les Paul in anger in twenty years. Hell, I haven’t blown through Sweet Home Alabama, start to finish in eighteen.

It’s not as though I have been musically inactive. as anyone who has followed this blog for very long knows. I have spent ten years learning, working on the classical guitar. I Have practiced, learnt very complex music, and performed: the most significant performance (and nerve wracking) being in Oneonta New York two years ago where I sat at the front of a beautiful church, all eyes upon me, and played John Duarte’s English Suite, amongst others. Difficult music in a very intense environment. But occasionally the urge would get me, the Les Paul, or less often the old ’63 telecaster, would come out of the case, the Fender twin reverb cranked up to 8, and I would rock the house. Lately, the urge has grown stronger and come more often.

So there I was last Sunday, trodding the boards as it were, at the 20 Hobson Street summer luncheon for The Cambridge Memorial Hospital and The Argus Residence for Young People. Four songs, sans bass player:

I Saw Her Standing There
Squeeze Box
Brown Eyed Girl
Night Moves

It wasn’t Immigrant Song or Livin’ On A Prayer I admit, not the hardest rock in the quarry, but that’s irrelevant. As I said, we have no bass player yet, so we needed material that we could cover without the bass. And it was a smallish room in the afternoon with a pleasant, not rockin’ crowd. None the less, the old Goldtop got dusted off, the groove was found and hey, we were pretty good. And we’ll be back, with bass, kickin’ it up with some serious rock ‘n’ roll before long.  Now that I’m back in the game, I’m stickin around a while:

It used to seem to me
That my life ran on too fast
And I had to take it slowly
Just to make the good parts last
But when youre born to run
Its so hard to just slow down
So dont be surprised to see me
Back in that bright part of town

Ill be back in the high life again
All the doors I closed one time will open up again
Ill be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched me once will smile and take me in

And Ill drink and dance with one hand free
Let the world back into me
And on Ill be a sight to see
Back in the high life again

You used to be the best
To make life be life to me
And I hope that youre still out there
And youre like you used to be
Well have ourselves a time
And well dance til the morning sun
And well let the good times come in
And we wont stop til were done

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities.

Plus Eight Kate, the soon to be former Mrs. Gosselin, is currently working overtime to try and extend her fifteen minutes in the spotlight. While her estranged husband, the h-less Jon, is spending his fame cycle getting him some, Kate seems to have greater designs. On September 14 she steps out of the house to co-host The View.  Whoopie Goldberg and Kate Gosselin together on the same stage: that would almost be worth watching, if it wasn’t Whoopie Goldberg and Kate Gosselin that is.

Fans in Romania booed Madonna during a concert in Bucharest this week. Madonna introduced her Gypsy, er… Roma, dancers to the crowd and then posited that discrimation against Gyps… um… Roma made her, “sad.”

Aww. The crowd informed Madonna that if they wanted a lecture on how to treat Gyp… ah… Roma, they would go to a lecture. Turns out Romanian for shut up and sing is booo. Personally, I’d rather hear a lecture from Madonna than listen to her sing, but then again I wouldn’t go to a Madonna concert if you poked out my eyes and stuck needles in my ears.

Gerard Butler has been increasing his profile over the last few years. This week he became a-list when he was seen out and about with Jennifer Aniston, his co-star in a new movie they are filming in New Yorks meat packing district.  The pity of it is, he’s no Brad Pitt. If she’s going to go for average  looking guys, hey, I’m average.

Adam Goldstein (1973-2009) – DJ Goldstein, member of the rock band Crazy Town and DJ for such acts as Madonna, Will Smith and Jay-Z, was found dead Friday in his New York City apartment. He was 36 years old.

I come from a time and place where putting a record on a turntable was how you listened to music, not something musical itself, so I don’t get the whole DJ phenomenon.  However, Goldstein was in the news last year for surviving a deadly airplane crash with Blink 182’s Travis Barker. Four people died in that crash.

According to People magazine Goldstein’s publicist released a statement Friday confirming the news of his death. “The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear. Out of respect for his family and loved ones, please respect their privacy at this time,”

Fluffernutter Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Kate Gosselin, Madonna, Whoopie Goldberg

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

Thirty years seems like a long time.  Long enough that if you fight for that long, they’ll call it the 30-year war, unlike, say WWII, which they don’t call the 6.002 year war. No, in warfare, thirty years is a long time. Not so many years ago, 5 times 30 or so, 30 years was pretty much a human lifespan, much less if the Germanic countries are in the middle of 30 years of killing each other. Yes, thirty years seems a long time.

Then I woke up yesterday and check my e mail to find out it’s a thirty year anniversary.  On August 15, 1979 Led Zeppelin released their final studio album, In Through The Out Door. It’s not just their last album, however, it is also the only one I have a direct reference to it’s release. Being sixteen in the summer of 1979, I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan and had spent the last two years loving learning their catalogue. In Through The Out Door I waited for anxiously all that summer, as the release date was more a suggestion, and nobody knew for sure when it would hit the stores. I was in London at the time, where Led Zeppelin was in the middle of their triumphant return to English soil and were kings (or despised aristocrats who weren’t fit to lick the boots of the punks like the Sex Pistols and the Clash: sometimes point of view is everything). I bought extra copies because rumour incorrectly suggested the album would be released in Europe before America, and how cool would it be to be the first on the block to have a copy of the new Led Zeppelin album?

Can it really be thirty years? Suddenly thirty years doesn’t seem like such a long time.

In Through The Out Door is a much maligned Led Zeppelin album, undeservedly so. Even Jimmy Page has disparaged it, citing All My Love as not a very Zeppelin song. However, the music world was changing leading into the 1980’s, and whether Jimmy Page likes it or not, the long solos and extended jams where not going to cut it much longer. The three to five minute song was back, and Led Zeppelin let it be known with In Through The out Door that they were ready to face the new decade. All My Love may not have been a very Zeppelin song, but was very much a song of it’s time.

Besides, the album also had Fool in the Rain and In The Evening on it. For all their great music through the years, Fool in the Rain belongs among the top few. A great song that sound so unlike something Zeppelin would do, and yet was immediately identifiable as Zeppelin. And it’s not just Robert Plant’s voice that gave the game away, John Bonham is recognizable as the drummer on Fool in the Rain within a few bars of the opening. Not many drummers have such a unique sound, but not many drummers back a band as good as Led Zeppelin.

As for In The Evening, When Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Plant got together in the 90’s for a couple of albums and tours In The Evening was one of the songs they played. How bad can it be if they still considered it worthwhile fifteen years later, especially when you have Zeppelin’s catalogue to pick through.

In the world of rock and roll, however, a good to great album is not in the hits, not in the top three songs, it’s in the filler. Sometimes, the filler is just that, throw away music that had negligible impact on your listening life. In better albums, the filler is almost as good as the top songs. In Through The Out Door has some very effective fill. South Bound Saurez, full of honky tonk piano and vocal hooks. Hot Dog, the mock-country song that you can’t help but laugh along with.

In Through The Out Door is not one of the seminal Led Zeppelin works, although it ranks among my favourites. Historically it is important because it was Led Zeppelins last. But in truth, it’s anniversary is a big deal because I will never be sixteen again, never be that excited because band is releasing new music.

It can’t really have been thirteen years, can it?

The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep, This Week on my I-Pod 1979, In Through the Out Door, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, London, Sex Pistols, The CLash

Saturday Fluffernutter – all the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities.

Oh, oh! Jon and Kate’s separation has turned to the ugly side. Kate arrived at their Wernersville, Pa. home Friday when Jon was supposed to be having his quality time with the Plus Eight. Turns out Jon called in a babysitter; turns out Jon has been tutoring the babysitter, or so says a) the tabs b) Kate. Which is odd, because Kate keeps using her couch time on their TV show, “Jon and Kate Plus Eight,” to talk about how the tabloids make all this stuff up. So suddenly she believes them that Jon is boffing  23-year-old Stephanie Santoro, the “babysitter” in question? Well if it’s good enough for her, well I guess it’s good enough for me, Kate is the torrential bitch the tabs have been saying all along.

Led Zeppelin rumour of the week, courtesy of Ramble On:

John Paul Jones new band, Them Crooked Vultures, premiered last weekend at a post-Lollapalooza show at The Metro in Chicago. The Vultures (TCV in the appropriate newsgroups) feature Jones, Foo Fighters singer/guitarist/ Nirvana Drummer Dave Grohl on Drums and Queens of a Stone Age guitarist singer Josh Homme on, well, guitar and vocals. Reviews are suggesting that TCV are the greatest band since, um, Led Zeppelin.

Them Crooked Vultures are said to be releasing an album on October 23rd titled  “Never Deserved the Future.”

Les Paul (1915 – 2009): Three summers ago the family and I were in New York. After dinner, we decided to stroll to the Borders in Chelsea. For the first time in two days, I didn’t have a 5 pound camera slung over my shoulder. We walked in the store and this little old man was wrapping up a book signing. “Hey, that’s Les Paul,” I said.

“Who?” the family asked.

“You know my guitar at home, the Les Paul guitar?”

“Yea.”

“Les Paul,” I said, waving my hand in his direction.

As I said, he was wrapping up, talking to his rep and, well, he looked 100, so I didn’t want to bother him. But there I am without my camera. The family established a new New York rule after that, never go out without a camera.

Last fall I was back in NYC, and passed a club with 20 or so people lined up outside. “Who’s playing?” I asked.

“Les Paul.”

Ninety-three years old, and still playing. That’s what they call a working musician. But it’s not for his playing that Les Paul will ultimately be remembered – even now he’s barely remembered for that.

Les Paul was an innovator. In the Buddy Holly Story, a studio tech asks Buddy (played by Gary Busey), where he learnt to overdub? “Same place as you,” Holly says. “From Les Paul.” The whole idea of using two or more tape heads to layer sound one upon the other. In the early 50’s, Paul had specially made an 8-track tape recorder. By the late 1960’s, the Beatles where busy making Sergeant Pepper on a four track player, half the player Les Paul innovated out of thin air more than ten years earlier. A remarkable improvement in the way recorded music was produced. But really, who will remember him for a technical innovation, no matter how significant.

Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitar.

As Paul McCartney sang, “Who’s that movin’ cross the stage, it looks a lot like the one used by Jimmy Page.”

There can be no mistaking the visualization: Jimmy Page moved across the stage with a Les Paul Guitar. In rock and roll circles, it is the guitar. A stunning visual and audio instrument, the Les Paul is a perfectly balanced hunk of Mahogany that drove rock and roll from the mid-60’s to the present day. Jimmy Page, Slash, Cream era-Eric Clapton, Early Jeff Beck, Comes Alive era Peter Frampton to name just a few. The Les Paul guitar is the face of rock and roll.

Les Paul passed this week at the age of 94. He is being remembered for his music, especially his work with his wife Mary Ford. He is being remembered for his technical innovations that have altered how music is made. It will be, however, his namesake  guitar for which Les Paul will achieve immortality.

More importantly, Les Paul was a true musician, working to the end and  man who lived a full life worth living. May the same be said of all of us.

Fluffernutter Buddy Holly, Buddy Holly Story, Dave Grohl, Eric Clapton, Foo Fighters, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Jon Gosselin, Josh Homme, Kate Gosselin, Led Zeppelin, Les Paul, Mary Ford, Nirvana, Paul McCartney, Peter Frampton, Queens of a Stone Age, Ramble On, Stephanie Santoro, Them Crooked Vultures

sounds more like a patch honest politicians would wear on their Armani jacket. It is, instead, a rule for an MP sending Parliamentary flyers to someone else’s riding.  It’s wrong, and it should end.

When a bureaucrat designs a "ten percenter" patch.

John Mraz goes over the top,  calling it corruption. It’s not, but it is, as he notes, “the diversion of public resources to politicized ends.” I would not call it corruption more because it’s above board, and of such a small scale. Mraz, a former Liberal campaign manager, also throws a blame grenade at the Conservatives, both here and in the US. Note, for example, fringe Republican Obama birthers are the only ones who are nuts, ignoring Democrats who thought GW Bush was a) the dumbest man ever to learn to knot his own tie b) the criminal mastermind behind 911. In other words Mr. Mraz’s biases get in the way of his thesis.

His thesis, however, is spot on. Ten percenters are wrong. Parliamentarians are using the rule that allows them to send informational material to ridings other than their own, up to a total of ten percent of the constituents in their riding. I have complained before about this policy, but still receive quarterlies from Jack Layton. These things are not informational, they are propaganda. Paper wasted bashing the other party, taking biased surveys, that you can send back at parliamentary expense (i.e. taxpayer expense).

To be sure, I receive the same nonsense from my MP, Conservative Gary Goodyear, but he’s at least my MP. Their is a legitimate argument to be made that an MP needs to communicate with constituents, and needs to offer constituents a forum to let their MP know how they feel on issues. If I find the communiques so offensive, I can always vote for someone else. I can’t, however, choose to vote against Jack Layton MP. So why am I receiving his mailers? And why, far more significantly, am I receiving his mailers at parliamentary expense?

Conservatives and Liberals are not innocent in this, and Gary Goodyear has been the subject of a formal complaint to the speaker on this very subject.

They are all doing it. And they are all wrong. On this, I agree with Mr. Mraz. It’s time to stop the practice of ten percenters.

Politicians acting badly, Silly Politicians 911 truthers, Barack Obama, Canadian Parliament, Conservative Party, Democrats, Gary Goodyear, GW Bush, Jack Layton, John Mraz, Liberal Party, National Post, NDP, Obama Birthers, one percenters, Parliament, Republicans, ten percenters