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Flotsam and Jetsam

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What goes around…

January 21, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Way back when The Girl and I were still living in the UK and taking appropriate advantage of the cultural offerings that the capital had to offer, our thoughts would – every once in a while –  turn away from the high arts – the galleries, concert halls and the National Theatre and so forth – in the direction of a little light relief.

At such times we would go looking for some comedy!

On one such occasion we decided to eschew our favourite Irishman (what is it that makes pretty much every Irish comedian funny, even before they have truly gotten going? All it takes is an – “Ah, c’mon now…” – or a – “Jaysus, yer a feckin’ eejyut” – in the brogue and I am well on the way to cracking up) and went instead to see a certain Scottish funny man who was at the time highly visible on television.

It was an interesting evening. The Scot was disappointing. It wasn’t that he was unfunny, it was more that what had appeared on TV to be a rapier wit – firing off one-liners and acid put-downs on all sides – turned out to be wholly scripted, down to the last barbed repostes.

What did not disappoint – and not only because we had no expectations – was the warmup act – a Canadian comedian called Craig Campbell. His sharp-eyed observations on both Canadian and UK life and culture had us in stitches, practically slipping off our seats and into the isles.

I turns out that Mr Campbell is sufficient of an Anglophile that he has taken up permanent residence in the West Country and now tours regularly in the UK. I was surprised to discover that my brother had also become an enthusiast for the hairy Canadian’s humour and we subsequently all went together to see him on several further occasions before we left the UK.

A couple of weekends ago – on the eve of my birthday and after The Girl had retired for the night – I was searching our cable channel for a little late night viewing when I happened upon a recording from Nanaimo of a touring comedy show – compared by one Craig Campbell! Not having heard of the ‘Snowed In Comedy Tour’ at all I immediately went online to the InterWebNet. I discovered that, though the recording I had found was from last year’s tour, the 2017 version was not only already underway but was also coming very shortly to Victoria.

I had half a mind to quiz The Girl the next morning as to whether she was aware of the engagement (she being primarily in charge of our social calendar) but before I could so do she presented me with a birthday card containing… tickets for the show!

Isn’t she a darling?!

I can happily report that Craig and his fellow Canadian comedians were in fine fettle and a riotous evening of merriment was enjoyed all round.

If you get a chance – in Canada or in the UK – I do urge you to catch him!

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Seeing more

January 16, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

I want to see sunrises in the mountains. You never get to see such things enough in a lifetime. I want to see more.

Katarina Witt

Sunrises – sunsets – the afternoon sun reflected from snow-capped peaks. I can’t get enough… and that means more pictures!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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The fight in the dog

January 13, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Mark Twain

Following on from the reminiscences of my last post… and in an effort to demonstrate that these meanderings are not as purely random as they sometimes appear to be…

Back in the day I was (and still am in a somewhat desultory sense) a bass player. In common with many novice musicians I proudly acquired my first bass with no thoughts as to what to use for amplification. Later – once I had grown out of the usual home-made setup cobbled together from various bits of domestic electronica – I set about finding a bass rig that would give me the biggest bang for my bucks.

As detailed in my earlier disquisition concerning PA systems, received wisdom at the time was that an extravagantly sized loudspeaker cabinet was required to produce the desired bottom end, with the speakers themselves also being as large as possible. I ended up with an impressively chunky setup loaded with 18″ speakers.

The band in which I was playing at the time had found itself a semi-permanent rehearsal location in a ramshackle outbuilding that formed part of a nursery located in the middle of nowhere. Tucked away in the midst of a swathe of decaying greenhouses we could safely leave our equipment set up and ready to go, so that we could crack on with rehearsals with the minimum of fuss. Further – one of our number was the proud possessor of a van!

Once that band had succumbed to the habitual form of musical entropy I was obliged to downsize my bass rig. I was driving a Mini at the time (my first proper car) and the equipment had to be sized accordingly. Over the years since I have tinkered with various different setups, but when we packed all of our goods and chattels into a container to head for BC in the summer 2015 the box that I loaded was still a weighty lump.

Having payed for its conveyance to Canada I was not best pleased to discover that there was no way of easily converting it to operate on 110V! The manufacturer had gone out of business and no parts or circuit diagrams were available.

I am – as always – the luckiest of chaps, however, and she who is possessed of all wisdom agreed to help me purchase a new amplifier as my birthday present.

Well – you will be unsurprised to hear that technology has undergone its usual magical transformation in the thirty years since I last went shopping for such and it is now possible to purchase a tiny, tiny wee box that can miraculously produce more bottom end grunt than any rig I have ever owned. This thing is minute, it weighs next to nothing but is built like a tank and there can be no doubt that this little mutt could easily take on the big dogs… and probably win!

For those who demand technical details this is a Traynor (solid Canadian brand not found much outside these shores) small block SB110. The amp provides 100W and the cabinet is rear ported and loaded with a single 10″ speaker and a tweeter.

This thing is seriously loud for such a small unit and has no shortage of room-rattling bottom end.

How is that even possible?

 

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The dog in the fight

January 10, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Mark Twain

Way back in the mid-1970s when I was in my early twenties and playing in the sort of wildly optimistic band that so many of us did back in the day – only one thing was certain… none of us had any money! One of the effects on the musician, of course, was that we had to make do with whatever cheap and cheerful equipment we could cobble together.

It is a sad truism concerning the arc of the musician’s career that, at the point that he (or she) is young and just learning to play, he (or she) must do so on some hideous old nail of an instrument that makes everything a hundred times more difficult than it need be. Of course, should he (or she) eventually become established as a musical legend, able rip out licks and riffs even whilst comatose – then the manufacturers of the most precious, the most beautiful, the most infinitely playable of musical contrivances dispense them like candy – utterly free of charge – to those who no longer have any need of such largesse… in the pursuit of ‘celebrity’ endorsement!

‘Tain’t fair!

But where was I? Oh, yes…

So – when it came to trying to cobble together a PA (Public Address) system such that – if nothing else – our delicate (some might say fey – this was the 70s!) vocals might be heard, we were obliged to beg, borrow or steal what we might. The bottom end was a different matter. Bass bins were expensive, hard to come by and people didn’t just give them away. We had to build our own!

Image from Wikimedia CommonsI carried out extensive research at my local library (for the InterWebNet had not at that point been invented) into the acoustic design required to reproduce low frequency signals at a reasonable volume. It turned out that we would need to build bass ‘horns’ of which – because of the length required to deliver frequencies low enough – the horn parts themselves would need to be ‘folded’ if the enclosures were to be confined to manageable proportions. My calculations (and it must be said that maths was never my strong suit) suggested that the unfolded length of the horn would need to be some where between fifteen and twenty feet! The resultant boxes were enormous and weighed a (metaphorical) ton each.

Image by Rudolph Schuba from Wikimedia CommonsNow – if you have been to a large concert anytime recently you will have observed that the PA system simply comprises a number of curved columns of small(ish) units suspended from the ceiling. This interestingly fragile looking contraption is called a Line Array. Not only are these modern systems really rather elegant, but the sound produced is any number of light years advanced from the distorted offerings of yesteryear. There is simply no comparison with the systems in use at the first gigs that I attended back in the early 70s, for which either side of the stage would be girt with huge stacks of bass and other cabinets (I went to one gig at which the support act had their own massive PA stacked in front of the main act’s system. There was a very long intermission!).

The point is – when it comes to gear (and technology) – everything has changed.

But why am I telling you all this? Just a tease, of course, for the next post!

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Twelfth Night

January 6, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”

T.S. Elliott – ‘The Journey of the Magi’

‘Tis Epiphany… The feast that celebrates the day on which the Magi supposedly reached Bethlehem and by some accounts – through their offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh – kicked off the whole business of gift giving at Christmas. Who now would wait until twelfth night for that particular pleasure?

Wikipedia offers this snippet regarding the last night of Christmas:

“A belief has arisen in modern times, in some English-speaking countries, that it is unlucky to leave Christmas decorations hanging after Twelfth Night, a tradition originally attached to the festival of Candlemas (2 February), which celebrates the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.”

Given that most folk these days like to get Christmas kicked off good and early – and who can blame them given the general dreariness of December in many parts of the northern hemisphere – it would be a wonder if the trimmings and decorations could ever last long enough to get through the whole of January – though should they so do it would certainly brighten up that month as well.

We here are strictly ‘trad’. It is January 6th – down come the ‘deccies’ – out goes the tree – hoovered up are the many needles that have dropped and been ground into the carpet! Everything is packed away into the Christmas Cupboard (see attached illustration!) ready for next year.

Now all that remains is to find somewhere to dispose of an extremely fragile Christmas tree. There are a number of local organisations that offer tree chipping services over the next few days for a charitable donation, or I could simply impose myself (once again!) on our dear friends in Saanichton, whose landscape design and garden maintenance business naturally possesses its own chipper.

In either case the trick is to get the tree to its destination without it shedding its entire remaining compliment of needles all over the Lexus!

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When in Rome

December 18, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidI purchased the apartment in the small village in the south of Buckinghamshire (in the UK) that the Kickass Canada Girl and I were to have such trouble selling before we moved to Canada last summer – back in the first year of the new millennium.

When I took possession in the November of that year I knew that the place needed a fair amount of renovation before I would be able move in but as I was, by great good fortune, at that point housed by the school at which I then worked, I was able to engage a builder and to give him free reign over the apartment in the run-up to Christmas.

As I mentioned in the very early days of this blog, the Georgian manor of which my apartment was but a portion occupied a prominent position in the centre of one of those arcadian English villages (four hundred inhabitants (or thereabouts), sixteenth century church, one pub (of varying quality), a cricket club (likewise!), a huddle of ‘artisans’ dwellings and farm buildings) which are, of course, all as pretty as a picture postcard!

Most days, after leaving work, I drove the short distance to my new residence to check on the (apparently inevitably) glacial progress of the building works. It would be dark by the time I wound my way down the hill into the village so I was accustomed to not really being able to make out that much of the surroundings. Given the sleepy, bucolic nature of the place, therefore, you might imagine my surprise – nay, total shock! – on entering the village on one such dark evening to come face to face with a single small terraced cottage – just across from the pub – that had been adorned with sufficient Christmas illumination that it must surely have distracted pilots on their run-in to Heathrow airport.

Lest you think my reaction excessive you should remember that in the main the Brits don’t go in for American-style public displays of decoration for the outsides of their residences (the which they tend to find a little on the… er, garish side) preferring instead the traditional Christmas tree, tinsel and paper-chains on the inside.

Canadians are (as in most things) somewhat more restrained than their neighbours to the south, but do have something of a liking for illuminated inflatable figures of such size that they must needs be deflated should the weather forecast prophesy wind speeds in excess of the balmy. This year – ignoring my habitually raised eyebrow – the Girl persuaded me that – as we are both now Canadians (if only in the honorary sense on my part) – we should make a little more effort to join in. As you can see from the image that heads this post we didn’t exactly go overboard… but this seems to me to be a suitably mid-Atlantic compromise.

Those who find my attitude to such things snobbish will be delighted to hear that back in 2000 I rapidly received my comeuppance. Having grumbled to all and sundry about the unsuitability of such a vivid display for a sleepy rural village I discovered – on my next visit to the pub – that the owners of the cottage had lost a young son to a cancer and subsequently each year decorated the frontage as part of a fund-raiser for an appropriate children’s cancer charity.

That shut me up!

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A good gulp…

October 7, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime – it’s not very scientific, but it helps.”

Alexander Fleming

Bah!

I seem to have acquired a mild but most annoying instance of the common cold.

I say again – Bah!

I write this not to elicit sympathy (though I will naturally not spurn such if offered!) for ’tis but a mild malady and will not last long. I really only mention it because this is the first cold that I have had since moving to Canada more than a year hence. Last winter came and went with not a hint of either a cough or a sniffle.

Such benefits clearly come in part from living in such a healthy environment but I have little doubt that this benediction also emanates from my retirement from a lengthy career in education. For as long as I can recall I have suffered two or three colds a year, one such usually being contracted a couple of weeks subsequent to the start of each term. There is an obvious boon in no longer being forced into extended proximity to a host of germ-laden youngsters!

In any case another consideration must now be borne in mind. The Girl’s new(ish) job brings her into regular and frequent contact with elderly folk. It is clearly imperative that she doesn’t catch anything that might be passed on, so if I do get an attack of the sniffles extra precautions must be taken.

Of course, should that mean taking the occasional additional ‘wee dram’ you would not hear me complaining!

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Adjusting the sails

September 20, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

William Arthur Ward

As posited in this entry in the ‘captain’s log’ of but a few tides back the good ship Dignity spent the past month berthed in a snug slip at Westport Marina – the which lies on the east coast of the peninsula but a little to the north of Sidney.

As was almost inevitably the case we did not get out on her as much as we would have liked (the weather broke, life got busy, etc, etc) and upon the brief voyages that we did essay we found at least one important job that needs to be done in short order (replacing the raw water pump. Boating people will know that this is not a good place to have a leak!).

That having been said much was learned and fun was had. The Kickass Canada Girl was introduced to the delights of Sidney Spit on a sunny day (as well as to the boat!) – my brother, our dear friend (and constant ‘bailer out’) from Saanichton and I supped ales at Port Browning on Pender Island (alcohol-free in my case – boo!) – and I discovered that I can conn my way into and out of a marina on my own, in addition to being able to take the boat out of the water single-handedly.

Pictures were – as you would expect – snapped and a selection are presented below for the reader’s delectation:

Time to get her name on that stern!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThis is the passage between North and South Pender islands…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…and this is Port Browning.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThese shots were taken at Sidney Spit.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidTime to head for home.

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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Something about a queen

September 17, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming, saying something about a queen.”

Neil Young – ‘After the Goldrush’

I had a hankering – just the other day – to listen again to Neil Young’s splendidly mysterious classic – ‘After the Goldrush‘. I don’t recall now what brought the song to mind… maybe I heard a snatch of it – or read something somewhere… It matters not.

What I did not want was to listen to Neil Young singing it! Nothing against the Canadian ‘national treasure’ of course – it is just that for this particular piece I have always had a different sound in mind – one which involves the female voice. This whimsy is probably the result of having loved the 1970s ‘a cappella’ rendition by Prelude – which is the version of the track that I heard first.

The recording of the Prelude version is – however – sadly showing its age somewhat these days, and I found myself scouring the InterWebNet for a more recent cover that might achieve a similar effect. As ever such a thing was eventually uncovered – in the (slightly) more up to date version (1999) by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt (and who would have ever thought that I would be be listening to that combination?!).

The exercise started me thinking. There are instances when only a specific genre of music will do. This particular mood – for example – clearly demanded the dulcet tones of the old-fashioned female torch singer in delivery of eloquent and poignant versions of classic tunes – perhaps with a slightly twist of mystery for good effect.

Time to put together a suitable compilation CD – I decided – commencing a further search. Herewith the list of tracks and versions with which I have come up thus far to satisfy this requirement (in no particular order):

  • Alfie (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – Vanessa Williams
  • Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb) – Cassandra Wilson
  • Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell) – Joni Mitchell (from the ‘jazz’ album ‘Both Sides Now’)
  • One (Harry Nilsson) – Aimee Mann (album version)
  • Cry Me a River (Arthur Hamilton) – Diana Krall
  • After the Gold Rush (Neil Young) – Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt
  • The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Robbie Robertson) – Joan Baez
  • Somewhere (Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim) – Barbra Streisand
  • The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress (Jimmy Webb)  – Judy Collins
  • This Woman’s Work (Kate Bush) – Kate Bush
  • Unchained Melody (Alex North, Hy Zaret) – Sarah McLachlan
  • That’s What Friends Are For (Burt Bacharach, Carol Bayer Sager) – Trijntje Oosterhuis (live with guitarist Leonardo Amuedo)
  • Nothing Has Been Proved (Chris Lowe, Neil Tennant) – Dusty Springfield

Should the gentle reader care to add any suggestions of his or her own before I commit this list to plastic such would be reviewed with great interest…

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Paying homage

September 1, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image by B0rder on Wikimedia CommonsOn Saturday last – for the second time in as many weeks – the Kickass Canada Girl and I found ourselves witness to a gathering of Canadians making an unanticipated act of homage to a musical icon…

Having bid a tearful farewell last week to ‘The Tragically Hip’, this latter occasion featured a fair sized gathering of Victorians over two nights at the Royal Theatre bidding an unlikely ‘hello‘ to Sixto Rodriguez.

Some readers may already be familiar with the frankly bizarre story of Mr. Rodriguez and they may thus choose to skip ahead, but for those – like me – who were previous oblivious to his existence, here is a brief outline.

Sixto – known professionally simply as ‘Rodriguez’ – is a singer/songwriter from Detroit who had a brief and scarcely noticed career in the late 60s/early 70s during which he released two albums – ‘Cold Fact‘ and ‘Coming from Reality‘ in 1970 and 1971 respectively – which were critically well received but sold barely a copy. On being as a result dropped by his record label Rodriguez – phlegmatically and with considerable good grace – retired from the business and returned to his former career in construction.

This might well have been the end of the story were it not that – by dint of a speculative re-release of his albums and through much word of mouth – Rodriguez subsequently became a considerable sensation in South Africa to the tune of some half a million records sold. This rise to the status of a musical icon would have represented a gratifying – if belated – acknowledgement of his talents, were it not that Rodriguez himself was entirely unaware of this turn of events and the South Africans had no idea who he was – having been provided with none of the necessary back-story. Indeed, the rumour rapidly spread that Rodriguez had at some point committed suicide – though even here the details of his supposed demise varied widely from the merely tragic to the quite grotesque.

Eventually – toward the turn of the millennium – a couple of South African fans determined to discover the truth concerning his fate and the man was eventually tracked down to his home in Detroit. On discovering that he was – after all – yet alive he was persuaded to visit South Africa to play a series of concerts, which he duly did in 1998. This again might have been the end of the tale but for a Swedish film director – Malik Bendjelloul – deciding that the story merited turning into a documentary film. The resulting production – ‘Searching for Sugarman’ – has won a plethora of awards, including – in 2013 – the ‘Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature’.

As a result of the subsequent interest Rodriguez – now in his mid seventies – has resurrected his musical career and gone back on the road, whilst at the same time trying to establish what exactly happened to the royalties from all of the albums that he did not know he had sold in South Africa. The two sell-out shows in Victoria – in a 1400 seat theatre – pay testament to the ongoing curiosity concerning his story.

If one were to be critical one might observe that the career in construction has clearly exacted a heavy physical toll on the man and his once remarkable voice is a shadow of what it was. It is also obvious that when Rodriguez stopped making records in the early 70s he simultaneously stopped writing, and though his oeuvre displays considerable poetic talent it is also brief in the extreme. Nice to hear cover versions of other people’s songs from that era, but perhaps not entirely worth the rapt adoration that the man received from the packed house on Saturday. I couldn’t help but speculate that it was the narrative that was being applauded rather than the performance itself.

A fascinating study in philosophical anthropology, nonetheless…

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