Everyday Boy

Sing Your Heart Out

Sing Your Heart Out by The Trews:

Everybody Knows

Everybody Knows by Elizabeth & The Catapult
Form Paste Magazine:

Turning & Turning

I have been listening to Joni Mitchell's album Shine ever since we saw her ballet The Fiddle & the Drum. Here is a glimpse of the ballet. The song is Slouching Toward Bethlehem, based on a W. B. Yeats' poem The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity....

1920

Keep Calm & Carry On

I ordered Tammy the new Stereophonics's CD/DVD from the U.K., Keep Calm And Carry On, and got tickets to their concert in Vancouver during the Olympics in February.  They are one of Tammy's favorite bands (she thinks Kelly Jones, the lead singer is cute, but I refuse to put a picture of him up here), and we caught them in concert at the Commodore Ballroom one year.  I like some of their older songs, and like their latest album.

2009 In Concert

For all you music lovers... I decided to make another mix CD to look back over the year, this time through the lens of music I heard live in 2009.  I'm going to send this out to a few folks (hopefully in the next little while) so If you're interested in receiving one of these, send me your address and I'll mail you one (and I would be happy to swap for a music compilation of your own).

When we're ready to sing, we step up to the microphones,
and it sounds something like this...

- Offspring (1)

 

I'm not a huge Chantal Kreviazuk fan, but her song Ordinary People (2) is growing on me.  It reminds me of folks striving to live the ordinary life, extraordinarily well.  According to Tammy, who has seen her in concert before, the one we saw this past Fall at the River Rock Casino was disappointing, mostly due to poor sound, but also because she found the band she was playing with took away from her strong vocals and piano.

We also got to see another of Tammy's favorite musicians, Sarah McLachlan, play a small set in a concert series at the beginning of the year as part of a 2010 Olympic countdown event.  I like Song For A Winter's Night (3) because it makes you want to curl up beside a fire on a cold winter's night.  I was not here for much of the winter blast of snow and cold that swept through Canada last winter, but I caught enough to be thankful that I missed most of it.

We attended the Vancouver International Jazz Festival last summer, where we heard Micheal Kaeshammer perform a mean piano, on songs like I Wish I Knew (4).  The double bill featured a young performer with a big voice, Nikki Yanofsky, who belted out songs like With A Little Help From My Friends (5).  The other performance we caught at the jazz festival was Portland’s Pink Martini, who took us around the globe and back again with songs like Hey Eugene! (6).  I like their international flair for music.

 

We were excited that our friend Sara Ciantar (www.saraciantar.com) came out with a new CD in 2009 called Lines For Keeping.  I got to see her a few times over the course of the year: at Wise Hall for her CD release party, at The Wired Monk on 4th Street in Vancouver and at The Backstage Lounge on Granville Island, before she went on tour around the world.  We like her song Wreck Beach (7).  And as a bonus, when I went to see her at the Wired Monk, I got to hear Hannah Georgas for the first time, and enjoyed her song The National (8) so much that I picked up one of her CD's on the spot there.

One of the best, if not the best concert we saw was Ani DiFranco's performance at the Centre For Performing Arts.  She indulged a few of her fans shouting out songs to be sung, and gave a nice rendition of The Garden of Simple (9).

With all the hoopla over H1N1 in 2009 I thought I should include Kid Koala's Flu Song (10) on this mix CD.  I stumbled upon his music at the Calgary International Folk Festival of all places, where they seem to be promoting more and more hip hop roots music to it's line-up.  His songs are very playful and so was his performance.

I’m usually not a big club person, or listener of such songs as Everlasting (Dub Version) (11), but my friend Chris convinced me to go down to Seattle with some friends for a quick day trip and to see Miss Nine perform at the Sea Sound Lounge.  We had a great day touring around a bit and Miss Nine gave a great show at a nice intimate venue.

I dragged Tammy, sick and all, to see Broken Social Scene at the beginning of the year.  Tegan & Sara opened for them, and Tammy liked them so much that we saw them again this past week headlining their own concert.  They have some catchy songs like I Bet It Stung (12) and their banter between songs is wonderful.

It was the first time I heard Broken Social Scene in concert.  Tammy napped while I enjoyed songs like Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day) (13).  One of their members, Charles Spearin, gave the crowd a glimpse of The Happiness Project – where he used interviews about happiness with his neighbors, like Anna (14), to create songs.

We got to see The New Pornographers for the second year in a row, without Neko Case this time around.  The first performance was perhaps better, but I still enjoy hearing their songs like Adventures In Solitude (14).  They opened for Death Cab For Cutie who we saw in concert for the first time.  Tammy thinks their sound starts sounding the same after a while, but I quite enjoyed their concert.  Mellow songs like I Will Follow You Into The Dark (15) were the exception that night, not the rule.

 

The Calgary International Folk Festival was full of great music with family and friends: We saw stalwart folkie Sara Harmer perform songs like Open Window (Wedding Song) (16) on the main stage.  We saw newer musicians like Chad VanGaelan, warm up the crowds with Willow Tree (17).  We danced to international bands like Bellowhead who played rousing songs like Trip To Bucharest / The Flight Of The Folk Mutants Parts 1&2 (18).  We sat back, enjoying delicious food, while Iron & Wine serenaded us with songs like Naked As We Come (19).  And we also sang along to The Decemberists, Son’s & Daughters – a rather fitting song for a folk festival, and were blown away by their performances from their new album Hazards of Love, which has very rock opera-like tunes likeThe Wanting Comes In Waves (20) (Reprise).

I wasn't able to go to New York this past year, and felt deprived of seeing musicals.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of Les Miserables in Vancouver.  I always like the song Do You Hear The People Sing (21), and so was happy to finally see this musical for the first time.

Here's wishing you all a year filled with good music and good company to enjoy it with.

The Story of Pink Martini

A few years ago I was introduced to the music of Pink Martini by my sister and brother-in-law, and this past weekend got a chance to see them live in concert for the first time at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, where they were accompanied by a fifty piece orchestra.

I serendipitously found their first and third albums at a used record store on Commercial Drive, and am looking forward to their new album in the Fall, which they recorded with a full orechestra.

Sara Ciantar

Our friend Sara Ciantar, who has graced us with her lovely musical presence at a few house concerts, is having a CD release extravaganza tonight (her 2nd CD entitled Lines For Keeping) with web launch, music video screening, tour kick-off and general all round fun:

Wednesday, April 29th 8pm (doors at 7:30) -10ish
Wise Hall 1882 Adanac Street, Vancouver
Admission $10 at the door.
James Lamb is opening with special guests.
Sara will be joined on stage by James Lamb, Rich St. Onge, Ben Brown, Christopher Ciantar, Karly Warkentin and some surprise guests as well.

I would encourage you to go see her in concert as she makes her way across Canada.  Check out her new website, and buy one of her CDs.

Song, Snow, Soup

Darlin' the snow is falling
Falling like forgiveness from the sky

Over The Rhine, Darlin' (Christmas Is Coming)
From Snow Angels

This album came late in the mail this past Christmas, so I pulled it back out with all the snow that has fallen in Vancouver today. Feeling a bit of a cold coming on, I was making chicken soup, with a bit of a twist (my housemate Karen has been trying to teach me to deviate from recipes) - some beets that turned it a nice shade of red. Yes, yet another Jamie recipe... and yes, the port is a nice touch:

Serves 6
1 3 1/2 lb free-range organic chicken
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 sticks of celery, roughly chopped
1 slice of smoked bacon
2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
sea salt
optional: a splash of sherry or port

Put your chicken, carrot, celery and bacon in a large saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer slowly for an hour and a quarter, skimming the white residue off the top every now and again. Add your rosemary sprigs for the last 10 minutes, then remove the chicken from the pan. It should be perfectly cooked, and will be great for salads or sandwiches or for tearing into slivers to put into the soup. Season the soup with salt and ladle it through a sieve into a bowl, trying not to disrupt the soup too much, keeping it reasonably clear. The finished thing should be a kinda clear consomme. (156)

Jamie Oliver, Jamie's Dinners

Reminders In Life & Death

What Sarah Said

...

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die.

...

Death Cab For Cutie, from the album Plans
Words & Music: Gibbard/Harmer

This is an album I have been listening to a lot lately... I have been reminded of life and death and everything in between this holiday. Newborns and pregnancies, sickness and deaths. Henri Nouwen reminds me:

Life is precious.  Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird.  To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support.  Life and death are connected by vulnerability.  The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives.  (January 3rd)

Waiting For Trumpets

Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves. The necessary condition for the fulfillment of Advent is the renunciation of the presumptuos attitudes and alluring dreams in which and by means of which we always build ourselves imaginary worlds. In this way we force reality to take us to itself by force - by force, in much pain and suffering...

The horror of these times would be unendurable unless we kept being cheered and set upright again by the promises that are spoken. The angels of annunciation, speaking their message of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope. These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfillment that come out into the open, the angels of Advent. Quiet, inconspicuous, they come into rooms and before hearts as they did then. Quietly they bring God's questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God, for whom nothing is impossible.

- Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest condemned as a traitor for his opposition to Hitler, written inn a Nazi prison shortly before he was hanged in 1945.

I have been slowly reading through a book of small essays, that began a week before Advent and continue on into the New Year, called Watch For The Light: Readings For Advent and Christmas, published by those fine folks at Mary Knoll. These excerpts have made me pause this last month to ponder not only all that is not well in our world, but to consider how the angels of annunciation may be speaking to us in quiet rooms and empty hearts in times of confusion, despair or crisis.

My thoughts are with a friend and former housemate, Alison, who is in Kenya right now, forty minutes from downtown Nairobi, in what little I've heard from her, a strange, tense and fearful time there.  Please keep her and Kenya in your prayers.  She asked me at the beginning of December for my thoughts on waiting, so I thought I would write a bit of a response here:

Waiting has been a large piece of the spiritual puzzle for me for a long time now. I have been reminded, mostly by Henri Nouwen's writings, that waiting is done with patience, with expectation and with hope - but is not passive... rather, our spiritual waiting is an active paying attention to the here and now, to the seeds in ground, or perhaps the soil, or perhaps even that preparation which comes before the soil - and living the present moment to the full.  There may be suffering and questions, but hope does not diminish, because of the promise we carry that God has come and will come again, that God is at work and with us even when nothing good seems to be happening and we feel alone.

So, as this year begins, I am hopeful, because although the world around us rings with violence and unrest, we can hold onto the hope and promise of another reality and truth, which is being woven into our everyday lives if we work and allow it to work out in the world around us.

An album I picked up this past month is Over The Rhine's Trumpet Child, and I enjoyed reading the liner notes and lyrics, especially as to the question of what that trumpet sound will be like when all is put right again:

...a theme that recurred in a lot of the old hymns was the idea that the world would be reborn with the sound of a trumpet, and we've all heard those great American trumpet (and horn) players - Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz - and we've been wondering about the sound of that trumpet in the old hymns, Is it real, Is it a metaphor, What, exactly, is on God's iPod?

- Linford Detweiler, June 2007 from the liner notes of Over The Rhine's album The Trumpet Child

The Trumpet Child
Words & Music: Detweiler

The trumpet child will blow his horn
Will blast the sky till it's reborn
With Gabriel's power and Satchmo's grace
He will surprise the human race

The trumpet he will use to blow
Is being fashioned out of fire
The mouthpiece is a glowing coal
The bell a burst of wild desire

The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He'll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

The rich forget about their gold
The meek and mild are strangely bold
A lion lies beside a lamb
And licks a murderer's outstretched hand

The trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed