20100704 - Vancouver to Dauphin, Dauphin to Vancouver

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A seven o’clock flight means a six o’clock airport arrival - means a five o’clock leave - means a four o’clock wake-up in White Rock. I always check and double check the numbers for fear of messing up - despite the fact I never have - and I always write the times down on a postit note, from the bottom up, and leave it stuck to my monitor before I go to bed. Then I double check it in the morning after I’ve dutifully arisen, robot-like, to my alarm. Debbie can lay-in a bit while I do my last minute packing. This morning I retrieved my Canada Day clothes from the dryer, folded them and added them to a suitcase that already contains enough clothes for a week. Re-packing for just one show would take a lot longer than just leaving them all in there, so I just zip up the bulging bag and bang it down the stairs behind me.

We allow an hour for the airport run, but it never takes more than 40 minutes. Except for those very few times when my blood began to run cold and I frantically texted ahead about the highway standstills we found ourselves in the midst of. Even those runs probably took no more than an hour, but I just don’t like rushing to catch a flight.

I slept on the plane from Vancouver to Calgary. I read comics on my iPad during the two hour Calgary lay-over. I slept again on the flight from Calgary to Regina. It’s 3:09 PST now and we’re in our rented Buick SUV passing through Yorkton, Saskatchewan. There are conflicting opinions about how long this drive to Dauphin, Manitoba will take. Opinions range from three hours to five. Most likely it will be some increment in between. Like I said to Debbie in the text I sent from the Yorkton Tim Horton’s … there’s only one way to find out.

We play the Dauphin CountryFest tonight at midnight. Tomorrow we repeat this travel itinerary in reverse. In the meantime, the weather report calls for “Thunderstorms” for this evening. So the summer tour has begun in earnest!

Dauphin in the Distance:

We are all in great spirits after our massively successful and love-filled Canada Day show in Parksville BC two days ago and primed and ready for the adventures that no doubt await us.

Connor McGuire’s ‘Song a Week’ Project – Week 12

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Twelve long weeks ago my son Connor McGuire began an online experiment to see if he could write and record a new song every week. As an additional challenge, as if the song writing wasn’t enough, he also documented the process on video and posted the combined results on YouTube. There were some hairy weeks along the way. One week in particular (number five, one of my favourites), he totally scrapped the song he’d worked on for six days and wrote an entirely new one on the deadline day. In other weekly episodes, it’s obvious from his appearance that he hasn’t slept - or that the stress of coming up with something good is taking it’s toll. Often though, there’s the unmistakeable hint of pride of accomplishment, and maybe a bit of wonder at how such a good song managed to materialize so quickly under less than ideal circumstances.

Connor knocked the Song-a-Week Project on the head this past week with episode twelve - a complex and emotional song called “Symphony”. You can hear the relief in his voice as he brings the series to a close, but if you’ve been watching from the beginning, you can also see an accomplished songwriter at the top of his game - who has now documented his ability to confidently pull the magic out of his hat week after challenging week, for three months.

Connor McGuire’s ‘Song a Week’ Project – Week 11

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For his second from last week of the the 12-week Song a Week Project, Connor puts on his Pack Mentality hat and reveals his musical alter-ego. Week 11 is a full-out dance track featuring the kind of beats he will be performing next Saturday at the Waterstone Lounge in White Rock with The Forn and The Joy of Cooking (and at a show in Vancouver *this* weekend that I can't find a link to!). No lyrics, just a pounding dance groove with great hooks. Connor told his Grandma that she probably wouldn't like it.

I Bet There Are Now Thousands of "First iPad Post"s

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That's why I didn't call this one that. My birthday present has arrived a few days early. Thank you Debbie. Typing on it is so far no more difficult than on a regular keyboard. I'm not a touch typist but I can usually go pretty fast with my advanced hunt and peck method. I don't notice an appreciable difference. The iPad also has the advantage of Apple's predictive spell checking and of generating an automatic period when you hit the space bar twice. Cool. Next I'll try using Dragon Dictation to dictate a post ...

I'm not embarrassed to say that this is my kind of fun!

Connor McGuire’s ‘Song a Week’ Project – Week 7

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Connor's seventh song is a radical departure. It blends his usual writing style with his Pack Mentality mash-up sensibilities. The song, propelled by a beat he played on a floor tom with a tambourine laid on the skin, soars like classic Peter Gabriel, but more likely references Bat for Lashes or Animal Collective. Once again Connor succeeds and surprises.



Derren Brown on Minor Celebrity

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This rang so true to me and made me laugh. Derren is talking about his admiration for Helena Bonham Carter and in particular their attendance at a VIP gathering after a Rufus Wainwright show. "Since then I have found myself alongside her many times, normally when in Rufus’ company, but never said hello. On each occasion I pass by imagining she wouldn’t know me from Adam: then, when I leave, I wonder if she might have done, and whether I had seemed rude. Such are the conflicts of C-rate celebrity."

Derren Brown's always excellent blog is here

Connor McGuire’s ‘Song a Week’ Project – Week 6

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Six weeks, six new songs! I can't say he makes it look easy - as you've seen, it hasn't been - but I can marvel at the fact that he continues to create a brand new, and amazingly good, new song every week! This week's song is a hard-rockin' full-band-style arrangement, leaving behind the acoustic vibe from weeks four and five.



Connor McGuire’s ‘Song a Week’ Project – Week 4

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Every week of Connor’s ‘Song a Week Project’ has had it’s challenges. Week four was no exception. His plan to simplify the process by eliminating a full band arrangement and writing on an acoustic guitar just created a higher expectation for the lyrics - which became a struggle. I'm proud to say that Connor won that battle, and that “Getting Over It” (or whatever the official title will be) is a truly beautiful, thoughtful and damned catchy song. I’ve been singing it all morning!

What Connor is doing with his ‘Song a Week Project’ is brutally difficult work. Making something from nothing - the delicate alchemy of songwriting - can be a gut-wrenching endeavour at the best of times, and doing it on a schedule like this is something I don’t think I could do. I watch his progress with a mixture of fear and loathing … and pride.

Connor McGuire's 'Song a Week' Project - Week 2

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It was touch-and-go, but Connor has managed to complete his second song in time for week two of his “Song a Week Project”. As a not-uninterested witness to the unfolding events that he chronicles on the making-of video, I can confirm for you that there was a significant amount of dramatic tension and excitement involved. This instalment features guitar by Jim Black,  visit to the best studio in Vancouver, Connor’s alter-ego “Pack Mentality” rocking the house and, of course, the finished recording of the song. Honestly though, the best (and funniest) ten-seconds opens the clip, with Connor attempting to remember the date.

PART ONE:

PART TWO:


Connor McGuire's 'Song a Week' Project - Week 1

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Connor decided a week ago that he would try to write a song a week. Then, in a moment of what I would characterize as foolhardy overconfidence, he added a video camera into the mix - recording the emotional peaks and valleys of his pressurized songwriting process.

As most parents probably would, I gritted my teeth, far more concerned about the outcome than he seemed to be. And, although he started out strong he had ground to a halt by the middle of the week.

In the hopes that I’ve built both your interest and suspense, Here's the first two vids. (SPOILER: The resulting song is amazing and more-so after you’ve watched him piece it together)

PART ONE:

PART TWO:

Trooper's 35th Anniversary

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Trooper's first album was released 35 years ago, on July 1st, Canada Day, 1975. 1975 is the year the Vietnam war finally ended, and Sony first introduced Betamax video tapes - the first home videocassette tape recording format.

Bill Gates & Paul Allen wrote the first computer language program for personal computers in ’75 (and then went on to form Microsoft) and the two Steves were hunkered down in a garage in Los Altos, California, working on their first computer - incorporating Apple Computers the following year.

Jaws, The Towering Inferno and Young Frankenstein were box-office hits in 1975. Bruce Springsteen released his amazing third album, Born To Run, the film version of The Who's “Tommy” premiered in London and Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC.

As large stretches of time always do - it seems like an eternity ago - and it seems like just the other day.

SA4QE

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“Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillnesses blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the heart of the mystery in which we are never allowed to rest.” ~ Russell Hoban - Fremder

It’s Russell Hoban’s 85th birthday today and I celebrated it by writing this quote on a piece of yellow paper and taping it to the side of the large white rock that my city was named after. All around the world, pieces of yellow paper with quotes from his books were left in other public places - cafe tables, bookshops, park benches, telephone booths, train stations or anywhere the birthday celebrant deemed appropriate. The SA4QE (Slickman A4 Quotation Event) website lists 350 quotes that have been left, on his birthday, in big cities and small towns in 14 countries since 2002.  I am still the only Canadian representative listed on their site, but I know at least one other Canadian who leaves the yellow paper anonymously for the simple joy of having done so.

It was a beautiful morning in White Rock and a perfect day to celebrate the “moment under the moment” that Russell Hoban explores and illuminates in his wonderful books. He remains one of the most original writers of the twentieth century and one of my very favourites.

Happy Birthday, Russ!

The iPad

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I spent Wednesday morning glued to my computer screen, alternating between three live-blogs while simultaneously trying to make sense of a mostly unlistenable uStream feed beamed directly from the Yerbe Buena Centre in San Francisco, where Steve Jobs and his Apple compatriots were unveiling their new tablet computing device; the iPad. I'm a fan of both Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs. I've been to MacWorld three times. I haven't missed a Keynote or product announcement for years. I've owned Apple gear since 1996 when I bought my Quadra 650, and I've been the Mac tech, tutor and evangelist for friends and family since then.

I will buy at least one iPad. And I'll take a lot of pleasure from watching what David Pogue calls "a 1.5 lb sack of potential" fill-up with as-yet unimagined applications and fill-out with next year's (or next month's) software and hardware updates. Just like the iPhone did.

In the meantime, the internet and twitter-verse is aswarm with those whose expectations were not met. Apple's inability to fulfill all of the rumour-mill's rampant and often unrealistic predictions is seen by some as a fundamental failure of a company that should know better. And, dammit, should have done better.

A friend posted on Facebook that "It's really an oversized iTouch being heralded as new technology for the future!" and goes on to say that he's "had a fully functioning tablet for 3 years now!". The PC he's referring to isn't the iPad, or anything like it, and it wouldn't take long to confirm that, but his characterization is already dishearteningly familiar and confirms how rewarding it can be to pass judgment ... even when that judgment is sometimes based on a minimum of related information.

Bob Lefsetz, a pop culture commentator, wrote something yesterday so ill-informed that it made me laugh out loud when I read it:

"The iPad is almost like a computer without software". He said.

A computer without software is exactly what it is at the moment! A powerful, beautifully designed computer that you operate by moving your fingers over a screen. The iPhone had  no software to speak of when it was announced. As of Wednesday there are 140,000 apps in the App Store. But Bob, my friend on Facebook, and many others, are unimpressed.

I will continue to be excited, optimistic and hopeful about what I see as a whole new way to interact with the ever-growing digital data-stream and a new vessel into which we can pour our collective imagination. And I'll leave you with this:

“You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.” ~ Steve Jobs

If you do have some interest in the iPad and want to take a few minutes to learn about it, I recommend the article posted yesterday by British actor, writer, comedian, television presenter, film director and genius Stephen Fry who was at the Yerbe Buena presentation and held one in his hands. I also recommend David Pogue's "The Apple iPad, First Impressions" in the New York Times, and John Gruber's dependably incisive and clear-headed observations on his blog, Daring Fireball.