On the evening of Wednesday, June 15th, there were a few dribbles of rain coming down as I made my way east along College Street. I turned right on Huron for the first time in three years of riding to fat Albert’s at the Steelworkers Hall. In all that time I’d thought that Cecil was a one-way street going west, so I’d always approached it from its east end at Beverley. I hadn’t noticed until I was on my way home the week before that Cecil becomes a two-way street a block west of Beverley. So all that time I’d been taking the wrong way around.
Michael Harrington
was at Fat Albert’s when I arrived. He was waiting for his friend and
collaborator, John Reid. I chatted with him for a while and he quoted for me a
saying that he came up with about the underestimation of tasks. I asked him to
repeat it as I wrote it down, but he asked me not to put it on the internet.
People are so
worried about something they’ve created being stolen. In all my years online
I’ve only experienced that once, when I noticed that someone had started an
open stage in Portland and called it “The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy”, which was
the name that I gave to my weekly event. It is very unlikely that someone would
have come up with such a name by coincidence, so it must have been stolen. I
even called the bar where it was being held once a month and asked them to tell
the person they couldn’t use the name. Anyway, it didn’t seem to last, since
the year 2000 is the only time that listings for the event appeared.
I noted that at
19:20 there were still not very many people in the room and only ten performers
on the list, as the coffee maker made the mournful sound of a windstorm from
its place on the floor beside the outlet. Mary was looking for a volunteer to
go and buy Styrofoam cups for the coffee when blonde woman who was there for
the first time told her that she had some at home that she could donate and
that she lived nearby.
To the right of the
stage, in the corner, was a bench with a wooden seat and a wrought iron frame
that I’d never seen there before. I was willing to accept the possibility that
it had always been there and I just hadn’t noticed it, but that was doubtful.
Later I was
vindicated when Mary noticed it too. There was a sign on the backrest with
several labour slogans in list form, and Mary read them out loud.
“Stand up and fight
back”
“Power of the
people”
“One day longer,
one day stronger”
“Kill a worker, go
to jail”
“Solidarity
forever”
Glen Gary, who was
listening to Mary while setting up the sound, declared, “Sounds like
Communism!”
Mary responded,
“Well, I don’t know about that!”
“It’s okay” Glen
assured her, “I’m a Communist!” Then he added, “Actually, Marx is making a bit
of a comeback right now, as his prediction about capitalism putting wealth into
the hands of the few is more true now than ever!”
I suggested that
it’s a good thing that Marx is making a comeback, since he must be getting
pretty old and so if his books are generating more income now he’ll be able to
put away something for his retirement.
I said that the
middle class is an invention of the rich in order to serve as a buffer zone to
stop the poor from burning down their mansions. Glen agreed that there is some
truth to that.
Glen asked for
someone to lend him a guitar with a pick-up. Someone did so. I told him I think
pick-ups make guitars sound like crap. He agreed that pick-ups used to be
shitty, but they’re better now.
The open stage
started just a few minutes late with about thirteen people in the room. The
first performer was Charles Winder.
Charles’s first
flamenco piece had quite a lot of string bending, which was a nice effect. His
first one was shorter than usual.
The second
composition had even more note bending and more complexity than the first, but
it was fairly long. Glen tried to get his attention by showing him the clock on
his phone. When that didn’t work he switched the spotlight off and back on, but
I don’t think that Charles noticed. The song ended soon after that anyway.
After Charles was
Dawn, who sang in her mousy voice a very slow version of Jim Weatherly’s
“Neither One of Us Wants to Say Goodbye” – “ … Every time I find the nerve to
say I’m leaving, those old memories just get in the way … There can be no way
this can have a happy ending so we just go on hurting and pretending …”
Dawn’s second song
was a cover of Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” – “Across the
evening sky, all the birds are leaving. But how can they know it’s time for
them to go? Before the winter fire I will still be dreaming. I do not count the
time, for who knows where the time goes … Sad deserted shore, all your fickle
friends are leaving … but I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving …”
Next was Brian
Rosen, with a couple of sea songs.
The first was
“Flowers of Bermuda” by Stan Rogers – “ … He could smell the flowers of Bermuda
in the gale when he died on the North Rock shoal … But when the crew was all
assembled and the gig prepared for sea, twas seen there were but eighteen
places to be manned, nineteen mortal souls were we … The captain, drowned was
tangled in the mizzen chains, smiling bravely beneath the sea …”
Brian is obviously
a big fan of the Stan Rogers, as his second offering, “Barrett’s Privateers”,
was also authored by the late songwriter – “Oh the year was 1778, how I wish I
was in Sherbrooke now … the scummiest vessel I’d ever seen, god damn them all!
I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold, we’d fire no guns, shed no
tears. Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett’s privateers
… The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight … When a bloody great Yankee hove in
sight with our cracked four pounders we made to fight … but with one fat ball
the Yank stove us in … Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs and the Main
Trunk carried off both me legs …”
Then it was Glen
Hornblast’s turn. He said that it was good to hear “Barrett’s Privateers” and
added, “I had a summer job like that once.”
With Tom Hamilton
on violin, Glen sang one of his many love songs – “Cherie, you know I tried,
but you can’t outrun a heartache … Like footprints in the sand, nothing lasts
forever … Now dry your tears Cherie, our love had burned out long ago … Like
dewdrops on a rose, nothing lasts forever …”
Glen commented,
“Tom has kind of brightened up our lives to have him back again!”
Tom argued though,
“I’m the winner here!”
Glen’s second song
was a soft and much jazzier number than his usual, more folk oriented material
_ “ … Your wave crashes over me … and still you’re a mystery …”
I followed Glen.
When I stood up from my front row seat, and then turned around to play and
sing, I was surprised at how many more people had come in since we started.
I began with “Strip
Tease”, my English adaptation of the Serge Gainsbourg song of the same name – “
… If it’s for you I do this strip tease I think you really need to tell me if
you are, just between us, a bit voyeur, a little thug? But all of these are just chimeras from my
mouth to my lower areas, because no one, not even you, will get to touch the
parts they view …”
My second choice
was to sing my own “The Next State of Grace” – “ … I’m dug down so deep in the
trench of my heart I can’t seem to climb back out again, and my voice is so
distant it can hardly be heard by the women who pass in the rain. Oh when oh
when will I ever learn? I can’t drive a girl home with wheels that won’t turn.
I’m buried with pride when I try to save face. Guess I’ll sit here and wait for
the next state of grace …”
My set went over
pretty well this time and people actually listened to both of my songs.
Michael Harrington
was next. He mounted the stage with just a tambourine and said, “They call me
Tambourine Man. I don’t care what they call me as long as they get my name
right on the paycheque. Things are good!” Then Michael shook his tambourine for
about a minute and then he was done.
It was getting
close to being time for the feature performer, but they decided to let Bob
Allen play first. With the help of Tom on violin and Glen Gary on piano, Bob
sang Bob McDill’s “If Hollywood Don’t Need You” – “ … If you see Burt Reynolds,
won’t you shake his hand for me and tell him that I’ve seen all of his movies …
I hope you made the big time, I hope your dreams come true, but if Hollywood
don’t need you, honey, I still do …”
Bob’s second song
was Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me”.
Then the feature,
Harpin’ Norm Lucien took the stage and did a sound check.
He began with an
instrumental composition on the harmonica, which he dedicated to the victims of
the shooting in Orlando. He said that the original name for the piece was
“Quiver”, but he was changing it this time to “Never Again”. It was not your
conventional Blues harmonica playing. He was able to achieve some interesting
sounds using in and out breath and his vibrating hand.
Norm told us that
he’d been looking for Fat Albert’s for the last four years, even though he’s
only been playing for five. I think he was kidding though about how long he’s
been playing.
His first song was
called “All You See Is The Sparkle In Her Eyes” – “ … People on the beach shake
and bake … Miles and miles of clear blue skies, but all I see is the sparkle in
her eyes …” Norm invites the audience to sing along and even suggests that they
come up on stage to sing into the microphones. People do sing along, but no one
joins him on stage.
He sat down for his
next song, though he said that he usually stands. He told us that the song was a
collaboration with Glen Hornblast. Glen sent him a title and some of the words.
The passed it back and forth and both of them wrote tunes for it. He went with
his own melody but he still considers it co-written by Glen Hornblast.
The song was
entitled “Anything For Love” – “There’s something following me …”
For Norm’s third
song he invited Tom Hamilton to the stage, saying he and Tom have played
together on many occasions.
The story behind
the song is that he was travelling in Lithuania, where he met the members of a
human rights group that wanted him to write a song for a program with the name,
“Children Deserve Better”. He said that if people go to
childrendeservebetter.org and give a donation of twenty dollars or more they
can download the song, “How Much Love” – “ … This aint no negotiation, this is
the heartbeat of creation …” Tom sang on the chorus and while he took a violin
solo, Norm walked over and played guitar beside him. While Norm played
harmonica the audience sang along on the chorus.
Norm’s last song
was, he said, a newer one, and I think he said that the title was “Reach The
Moon” – “Take the calm and it draws you in … We find love in the strangest
places … Dancing to this silent tune …” He got the audience to take part in a
call and response.
Harpin’ Norm Lucien
has a strong stage presence and an ability to draw an audience into his
performance. His songs are fairly standard modern folk songs with a slightly
sweet musical aftertaste, though I doubt if anyone was humming his tunes on the
way home. His lyrics, though sincere, have no new or clever turns of phrase to
catch the attention. Both ironically and coincidentally, it was his harmonica
instrumental at the very beginning that was the innovative highlight of
“harpin” Norm’s show.
As Norm was leaving
the stage and the open stage was about to restart, the blonde woman who’d
donated the Styrofoam cups to Fat Albert’s approached me to say she had to go
but wanted to compliment the lyrics for my second song. “Excellent!” she
declared, “Really enjoyed it!” People sure do like that one song of mine.
First up on the
second half of the open stage was Bridget.
From her first song
– “Whispering wind … dreaming dreams beside quiet streams … I feel the rush of
the river, I feel the voice of my deliverer … calling to me, come out and be
free, fall into me … “ Tom stood up and played along near the end.
When Bridget
finished her song, Glen Gary called out, “Bravo! Wow!”
She told us that
her next song was one that she never gets right.
From “You’re Beautiful” – “The silence is
the better part of the ocean swells in your heart …” Ruth Jenkins got up and
played along on the harmonica. “ … Wisdom calls out your name …”
After Bridget was John Stroud who sang
“The Ultimate Folk Song”, which was made up of pieces of several recognizable
songs. He didn’t say whether he put the songs together for this himself or
whether someone else did – “Busted flat in Baton Rouge, West Virginia, with a
dollar in my hand … I’m sleepy, take me home where the deer and the antelope
play …”
To introduce his second offering, John
told us that he’d recently seen the national Geographic photo of the universe,
with the Earth as a tiny speck, so it inspired him to learn Eric Idle and John
du Prez’s “Galaxy Song”, from the film, “Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life” –
“ … Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving, revolving
at 900 miles an hour. It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned, the
sun that is the source of all our power. Now the sun and you and me and all the
stars that we can see are travelling at a million miles a day in the outer
spiral arm at 40,000 miles an hour of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our
galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It’s a hundred thousand light
years side to side. It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick
but out by us it’s just three thousand light years wide. We’re thirty thousand
light years from galactic central point. We go round every two hundred million
years and our galaxy itself is one of millions and billions in this amazing and
expanding universe. The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all
of the directions it can whiz. As fast as it can go, the speed of light you
know, twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is. So
remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure how amazingly unlikely is
your birth and pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space because
there’s bugger all down here on Earth” and John added, “ … for instance,
Trump!”
It was announced that we were now down to
one song each because of time constraints.
Next was Isaac Bonk, and when Mary
introduced him she said, “I’ll mug him later for his shirt!” It was purple with
red neon sleeves.
Tom joined him on stage.
The melody for Isaac’s song was almost
identical to “House of the Rising Sun” – “Well Henry James is a banker … takes
great pride in every penny that he’s earned … Poor babies dying now and Henry
won’t even share … Greed and pride will send him to hell’s honest shore … His
tombstone decaying and the grass above him brown …”
Paul Nash followed Isaac with a song
called “The Collector” which he said was in a movie of the same name. I don’t
know if it was in the movie, but the song was written by Sonny Curtis and
inspired the a novel of the same name by John Fowles, about a serial kidnapper
– “I am a collector of beautiful things, I capture and keep them and pin down
their wings … She begs to be free, with no one to help her, she’ll learn to
care, depending on me …”
Then we had some poetry from Naomi, with
background music of violin and piano from Tom and Glen. She announced that she
would be performing with Bill Bissett soon at the AGO.
Her first poem was called “Paradigm”-
“Ventriloquist … paradigm … cast out starlight … excavate the rain … rancid
equilibrium … emulate the doves … tangled rhyme …”
From her second poem – “I knew you in a
dream … your soul mutates as I want to dispel … a distant star where soft
dandelion seeds fall … under the influence of a black hole … the anguish of
blue casts a permanent shadow … where we as one merged … tingle and sing … like
shadows whisper …”
When Paul Shakespeare was introduced,
Tom, joining him on stage began singing the line, “Shakespeare he’s in the
attic with his pointed shoes and his bells …” from Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of
Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”. Ruth also stepped up.
From Paul’s cover of “Magnolia Wind” by
Shawn Camp and Guy Clark, which he sang while emulating a US southern accent –
“I’d rather sleep in a box like a bum on the street than on a fine feather bed
without your cold feet … I’d rather not walk through the garden again if I can’t
catch your scent on a magnolia wind …”
Next came Joanne Crabtree, who sang with
a very strong voice the traditional gospel song “Take Me In Your Lifeboat” – “
… What of the inner with blood on his hands, far from redemption and far from
dry land …” She had an interestingly designed guitar with the hole in the
corner rather than the centre.
After Joanne was Carole Farcash and Paul
Nash, singing “All I Have to Do Is Dream” by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.
It was a surprise when Glen Gary came on
stage for his set without a guitar. He didn’t even sing this time, but rather
recited from memory “A Ballad of the Fleet” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Glen had
wanted Tom to play while he spoke the poem, but Mama D decided that she wanted
to join in on the piano, so Glen threw up his hands and declared, “Gotta go
with the flow!” Tom had to follow Mama’s lead as Glen said – “ … Lord Howard
past away with five ships of war that day, till he melted like a cloud in the
silent summer heaven … and they blessed him in their pain that they were not
left to Spain, to the thumbscrew and the stake for the glory of the lord … They
came aboard us and they fought us hand to hand, for a dozen times they came
with their pikes and musketeers and a dozen times we shook them off as a dog shakes
his ears when he leaps from the water to the land …” It was a very long poem
and so very impressive that Glen had committed it to memory.
Then it was Mama D’s set, but she was
introduced as “D.M, because that’s how she signed herself onto the list. From
her song – “ … The history book is a weapon, not a tool … Starry night in a
Central American town … In the paper there’s a captain killed in action … But
they were children …Victims in the holy land … only children …”
Following Mama D was Randy, who was wearing
a Chyna t-shirt. He always has to have
his tape recorder miked so he can sing along, karaoke style, with a song that
he’s chosen. Glen told him to make it quick. The recording he played was of
Kelly Clarkson singing “Piece By Piece”, which was written by her and Greg
Kurstin – “ … Piece by piece he collected me … He filled the holes that you
burned in me at six years old … I fell far from the tree …”
The final performer, with help from Tom
and Glen, was Ruth Jenkins, singing “In My Solitude” by Duke Ellington, Eddie
DeLange and Irving Mills – “ … You haunt me with dreadful ease …”
I rode past Mary as she walked towards Spadina
on Cecil Street. I asked, “Don’t you drive anymore?” She called back, “I
haven’t driven for years!” I think that I remember her having had a Volvo that
she’d named “Magda”.
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