What’s All This Then?! on iTunes

As it’s now a weekly show it’ll be a lot shorter: we’re going to try to keep it under 15 minutes. It’ll still include thoughtful interviews with interesting musicians, lots of great music, show listings, and occasional forays into epic intergalactic adventure.

The first show in the new format is available now. It addresses some of Guitar Drone’s deep philosophical concepts. Gigs to check out in the next couple days: Tonight’s Drumheller show @ the Tranzac and the AIMToronto Interface series this weekend with Gino Robair.

What’s All This Then?! No.15 – November 24 2009:

It also includes my new favourite quote (describing our first album):

“The resulting music reminds us of a Danish art installation at the Venice Biennale which consisted of a group of performance artists standing on top of a building, randomly picking up instruments to play for a few minutes before pausing to chuck rubber fish at passers by…”

You can read the rest of the article here.

NOTE: Regardless of what it says in that piece, I’ve never called our string section “mousy”.

And we’ve decided to donate a good percentage of the money from sales of this CD to the ACLU. Because they’re working on the right side of this issue.

I’ll be writing a bit about this record here in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, if you’re curious about how it sounds there are excerpts on our website.

And if you’re in Toronto, I’ve just set up a Facebook event for the concert.

It was a good show – crowded and noisy, but a lot of fun. Since I don’t play the piano very often these days I’m finding that I really enjoy it when I do. Kristin was – as always – a nuisance to rehearse with: always complaining that I don’t know the songs properly. But the problem is that it’s only fun for me to play when I don’t know the material perfectly well… it’s more of an adventure when you know that you’re going to be making a lot of stuff up as you go!

Here’s a few of my favourites from this show:

Only the Sun:

Driving Me Backwards (Brian Eno):

The Day the Planes All Stopped (Chris Warren):

The Stars of Reality TV:

Impostor (Karl Mohr):

Letter From London:

Congratulations on the great art show Celeste – and thanks for inviting us!

I live in an apartment a couple doors down from a very interesting (in every sense of the word) bar called Zemra Lounge. That place gets its ‘interesting’ character directly from its owner: a Croatian pirate. If he’s not actually a pirate, that’s only because the opportunity’s never come up for him. But he embodies all the finest character traits of a pirate (a storybook pirate a la Captain Blood, which is very different from currently-in-vogue Somali pirate type). Qualities:

Complete disregard for authoritarian morality (and any other type of morality); an enormous ego; a suave faux-aristocratic bearing, balanced by frequent episodes of alcoholic depression; …and, most importantly, incredible adaptability and resource in difficult situations. All he’s missing is a parrot and eye patch. But I’m pretty sure he has the requisite sabre and pistol stashed behind the bar.

And this is why, while businesses have been dropping like flies in saki along this street during the past year – which included both the ‘global economic crisis’ and the greatest streetcar track reconstruction fiasco ever attempted by mankind – the Zemra Lounge has thrived.

Our pirate transformed what was a hangout for the upper crust of the local Gino population into an event centre: Music! Magic Acts! Wine Tastings! Birthday Parties! Corporate Events! They all walk the plank at Zemra.

The man’s brilliant and cunning – I admire him. And he’s also a very nice guy. I run into him on the street all the time, typically finding him in furtive conversation with a shady-looking dude parked in a SUV in front of the bar. When he sees me he always breaks off the conversation to pass the time of day and ask how Madeline and Gus are doing, like Robert Frost:

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

This character sketch has gone on way too far. The point is: he’s started hosting events lately. And today it was a Green Party of Canada local meeting.

the Zemra Bar and Pirate Lair

***
2: THE PARTY
As I walked by Zemra Lounge last night a great crowd of hippies, dotted with shiny suits and pinkshirt businessmen, were milling in and around the place. And at each corner of the patio a dissolute-and-untoothed fellow (members of the fanatical paramilitary wing of the Party) – was stationed, handing out bright blue and green pamphlets.

At this point let me take a moment to make myself absolutely clear: not only do I appreciate the Green Party of Canada; not only am I personally committed to their fundamental platform (they hate cars, I hate cars. In fact, I absolutely equate owning a car to hiring a private army of mercenaries – I’ll have more to say about that in a future post); but also I’m in fact a Green Party member. Because hating cars is the only political policy I actually care about at all.

So the remainder of this post isn’t a condemnation of the Green Party. I like the Green Party. It’s a critique of this particular pamphlet, and a general sigh of disappointment that the Green Party would adopt such tactics.

Anyway, I like the Green Party. So when the nearest toothless shock trooper surged up at me waving his pamphlets I smiled sympathetically and thanked him for the pamphlet. But I was disturbed when he mumbled:

“dontgivethemanymoremoneyfor Nuclear. SendSmithermanthisPostard (pointing at pamphlet) becausehe’ll… Raise… Your… Taxes.”

Huh? This was a really bizarre statement.

Because one of the things I’ve always liked about the Green Party is their forthright willingness to promote policies that would inevitably raise people’s taxes: Because it costs money to invest in progressive infrastructure and they think it’s worth it in the long term. And, being a member of the Artists’ Union (Local 69: Self-Employed People Who Lie About Their Income To Avoid Paying Taxes While Scamming The Government For Grants), I consider this policy to be directly in line with my financial interests.

So I was confused. And troubled in my soul: if the Green Party has started using that sort of language, they must be up to no good. So I went home and read the pamphlet.

And it was just as I’d feared: not only was this pamphlet an incomprehensible series of inarticulate statements; not only does it painstakingly avoid making a clear point; not only is it an insult to intelligence and reason (all pamphlets from all Canadian political parties are like this)… it was also COMPLETELY FULL OF LIES!!!

It’s sad to see the Green Party sinking to the level of Canada’s other major political parties, whose candidates go door-to-door before each election attempting to bribe their constituents with wheelbarrows full of steaming fertilizer for their gardens.

***

3: THE PROPAGANDA

This is supposed to be a comparative chart of what different Sources of Energy cost. Notice that it’s titled “The cost of power per kilowatt hour”. Let’s look at the four “rates” of power listed here:

i. efficiency and conservation costs 3¢ per kilowatt hour. Think about that for a second… does it make sense? No – it does not! Conservation and efficiency are not sources of energy! You cannot buy kilowatts of efficiency! And conservation is, by definition, an approach that co-exists with actual sources of energy and modifies their usage and cost. So this number means absolutely nothing. It’s made up.

ii. combined heat and power costs 6¢ per kilowatt hour. Is “combined heat and power” a source of power? No, it is not. “Combined heat and power” describes the rationale behind electricity: to provide heat and power appliances. It does not cost 6¢ per hour – it costs whatever the market rate happens to be. This statistic is also made up. It also means nothing.

iii. renewable power (wind and water) costs 9-13¢ per kilowatt hour. This figure may be legitimate… oh, wait… it’s actually just a set up for:

iv. New Nuclear (21¢ per kilowatt hour). Twice the price of renewable power! But notice the word ‘New’ in front of ‘Nuclear’… this cost includes the price of BUILDING A BRAND NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. Fair enough, if the ‘Renewable Power’ includes the cost of building new wind and water power-generation facilities. But notice the absence of the word ‘New’ from the front of ‘Renewable Power’. A-ha.

What they’re comparing here is the cost of getting power from a pre-existing wind turbine to your house with the cost of BUILDING A BRAND NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANT + the cost of getting power from it to your place. They’re not comparing the cost of pre-existing nuclear vs. pre-existing green power. And they’re not comparing the cost of new nuclear facilities vs. new green facilities.

So this chart is all about the manipulation of mostly made-up numbers to create the illusion of a price comparison.

That chart was the most awful bit of the pamphlet. But here’s something else that seems, at first glance, to make sense; but if you’re fooled the first time read it again and you’ll be struck by its Escher Stairway-to-Infinity quality:

Way to go Green Party of Canada! You’re ready to play in the big leagues now!

Text:

drawing distinctions
between gradations of pain
is not an easy task.
[oh no]
it’s not an easy task.

- John Yoo

This is definitely my favourite lyric from the whole set (and, coincidently, the shortest). It’s such a striking juxtaposition with the cold, technical belligerence of the rest.

Of course it’s lifted from a section in which Mr.Yoo is attempting to establish pseudoscientific divisions between “acceptable” and “severe” levels of suffering. In this case he’s talking about sleep deprivation and how many days it can “legally” go on for.

Extracting this one line and taking it at face-value suggests the hidden possibility of a deep regret and troubled conscience behind the authorship of the torture memos. Of course it’s hard to believe in that possibility as intentional or, looking at in its actual context, genuinely meaningful.

To the contrary, I think it’s more likely that a degree of dignity and sympathy is inevitably built into written language. Regardless of the unlikely context, zooming into the microscopic details of communication brings out these essential qualities.

So I was glad to notice this fragment and include it in the suite. I find it hopeful to see that, with all the ways human beings contrive to fool themselves and manipulate others, the way we’ve constructed our means of communication interferes with completely dishonest abstractions.

the problem was my preconcert
discussion a block away;
demonstrating the difficulty of being here
with small stones on heads and tables
for the pleasure of the disenfranchised.

the problem with the guitar
with songs about jesus and boo-hoo
is that it’s also difficult to be there
but there aren’t enough stones or heads
around to properly express your feelings.

You surge up out of bed at 9:00 this morning when one of your basset hounds decides it’s about time to start giving you CPR. You’re bleary-eyed but less hungover than you deserve to be. The animals have to do their essentials in the park so you stumble about for five minutes trying to assemble pants, shirt, and shoes. Ok: you’re ready to go!

The hounds are plunging back in forth, seething with walkjoy and barely-restrained urine. And you’re standing at the top of the stairs putting their leashes on. You look down the stairs and, through the glazed glass of the door notice a stack of blue and grey shapes: your recycle boxes! Of course! Last night was Friday: Recycle Night!

You vaguely recall lurching out to curb last night, wearing nothing but your sexy zebra-print bathrobe; hideously drunk; barely conscious, to put out the four recycle boxes (including the one illegal recycle box which is just a big plastic tub that happens to be a shade of blue similar to the standard recycle-box colour).

Your Good Neighbor, Graham, must’ve been up early and stacked them up outside for you (like he does every Saturday morning). You notice, with satisfaction, that the Recycle Dudes were duped by your non-regulation box, and you’re proud that your booze-addled brain had the capacity to slip that box into the middle of the row of regulation boxes so the Dudes wouldn’t notice the ugly duckling until it was too late.

You reach down and click the leash onto Augustus Fink-Nottle’s collar and —

— there’s a sudden thud of a closing door from the street and – NO!!! – you look through the glass door to see that half of your recycle boxes have disappeared! They’ve been stolen from right under your nose! Your precious recycle boxes that it’s taken years to assemble: each one lovingly found abandoned on the street or stolen from your neighbors the day before moving house — two of them have vanished!!

But then, as your eyes are transfixed on the pitiful survivors of this massacre: there’s second thud – a fuzzy humanoid figure appears in the doorway – lifts the remaining recycle boxes (including the precious non-regulation box) – and vanishes with thud no.3! And you horror of the situation washes over you:

Holy shit! That was the lady who’s opening the store beneath our apartment! She’s just stolen all my recycle boxes! WTF?!?!

What do you do?

A) Drop the leash, bolt down the stairs, and confront her while she likely has the incriminating recycle boxes in hand. (turn to page 76)

B) Take a moment to grab one of the bizarre ornamental daggers from Pakistan that your grandfather who worked for the U.N. gave you, then run down the stairs and confront her. By then she might have had time to stash the evidence, but at least you’ll have some means of defense against the potentially-violent madness of someone who’d steal recycle boxes from in front of your door in broad daylight. (turn to page 149)

C) Call the cops. This person is clearly psychopathic and, even armed with an ornamental Pakistani dagger, there’s no certain safety in confronting a dangerous lunatic. The police are trained to deal with this sort of situation. (turn to page 14)

D) Overwhelmed by the confusion and potential ramifications of this outrage (losing all the recycle boxes + living above a store run by a nutter), you decide to avoid dealing with it for the moment. Instead you take the dogs out for a walk and use that time to think your options over. (keep reading…)

***

You click the leash onto Madeline Basset’s (hound no.2′s) collar and head downstairs. You normally walk east to the end of the block before circling around to the park; this time you go west, passing by the front window of the box-thief’s store so you can look in and see if the recycle boxes are still in view. They’re not. But there’s the store lady, a 50-something-year-old soccer mom, staring out from the doorway of the back room of the shop.

The storage room: where she’s likely stockpiled row upon row of recycle boxes stolen from everyone in the neighborhood who wakes up later than 9:00 on Saturday mornings.

Perhaps she’s planning on opening a recycle box store? Or maybe she’s holding the boxes hostage and tomorrow morning everyone will find a note made of pasted-together newspaper letters saying “if you ever want to see your recycle boxes again leave $3 in unmarked coins beneath the cushion of the stinky faux-leather armchair abandoned in the backalley by 4:00 this afternoon.”

You think you see the glint of defiance in her steely soccermom eyes as you pass by. This could get ugly. This probably will get ugly.

Having trudged around to the park thinking about how to deal with this situation, you arrive at the decision to:

A) Return to the store and confront her with Madeline and Gus, confident that she’ll be intimidated into relinquishing your recycle boxes when confronted by a hung-over artist wearing a women’s’ “Yoga Diva” t-shirt and a pair of undersized but fierce basset hounds. (turn to page 55)

B) Realizing that you look ridiculous and that these basset hounds are collectively less intimidating than a stuffed guinea pig, you go back upstairs to get the Pakistani dagger before attempting to confront the insane soccermom. (turn to page 124)

C) You realize that any possible outcome of confronting this thief would be far worse than the trouble of getting new recycle boxes. So you go back upstairs, make some coffee, and contrive a scheme to steal a couple boxes from the neighborhood immediately north of yours, which has their recycle day on Mondays. (turn to page 17)

D) You bring Madeline and Gus back upstairs, take a moment to gather your courage, and march back downstairs to knock on the store’s door. (keep reading…)

***

You were feeling not-so-hungover before. But, fermented by the awful confrontation awaiting you at the bottom of the stairs, nausea has gotten its second wind. You walk slowly, steadying yourself on the half-broken staircase railing. But then – by the same process of action-trumping-thought that propels people into skinnydipping in cold northern lakes – you’re on the street and knocking on that door.

And now the remorseless thief is in front of you: blank soccermom eyes; a haircut so neutral in form and colour as to be inevitably instantly forgetable; clothing and physique generic enough to render her completely impossible to pick out in a police lineup. All the finely-crafted accoutrements of a polished criminal.

She betrays no sign that she realizes why you’re knocking on her door, although she’s perfectly aware that you live in the apartment above and that she – just fifteen minutes ago! – stole four recycle boxes from in front of your door. She’s playing a hard bluff, counting on the possibility that you didn’t see her make off with the boxes.

You say:

A) “Don’t play innocent with me, bitch! I saw you steal those boxes. Now let’s have them.” (turn to page 200)

B) “Look: I know what you’re up to with the recycle boxes. Let’s make a deal. You give me a 30% cut on the ransom for the other boxes you’ve stolen and I won’t rat you out. Ok?” (turn to page 88)

C) “Um.. have you seen my recycle boxes? They were right here… um, in front of my door… about 15 minutes ago.” (keep reading…)

***

This is the moment of truth: will soccermom keep up the bluff? Admit to the theft? Turn violent and attack? Summon her gang of criminal henchmen from the back room?

Re-enforcing your words with a stare that clearly reads “and I know you fucking stole them”, you let her have it. Moments seem like minutes.

“Oh,” she says slowly, “those were your recycle boxes.” Hmm. An interesting strategy. So she’s playing dumb. Literally. Dumb. You reply:

A) “Of course they’re my recycle boxes you fucking idiot! They were in front of my fucking door!” (turn to page 46)

B) “No, they weren’t mine. The Recycling Box Fairy came in the night and left them there.” (turn to page 199)

C) “Um… yes, those were my recycle boxes.” (keep reading…)

***

Not a hint of embarrassment or awkwardness betrays her. The audacity of this criminal is stunning: there’s no crack in her polished persona.

Boldly reinforcing the ridiculous with the absurd, she manages to project the unlikely possibility that grabbing four stacked boxes from in front of someone else’s door and sequestering them out of sight in the back room of her store might conceivably be an innocent mistake! You’re not fooled. Stupid may be what Stupid does, but this degree of clueless moronity defies belief. It’s a put-on. Criminal artifice.

But she’s not done. I know it’s almost beyond comprehension – but she tops herself:

“I put them in the back. Do you want me to go get them?”

You reply:

A) “No, I really just came down here and knocked on your door to let you know that I saw you steal my recycle boxes and I wanted to congratulate you. Really good job. You can keep them.” (turn to page 120)

B) “Holy Christ Almighty You Are So Unbelievably Stupid!” (turn to page 124)

C) “AAAAAaaaaaauuuuuggggghhhh!!!!!” You draw the ornamental Pakistani dagger that you actually did conceal in your pants before coming downstairs and plunge it savagely into her neck. (turn to page 150)

D) “Um… yes, I’d like them back.” (keep reading…)

***

Criminal Soccermom disappears into the back room, presumably to retrieve your four boxes from her massive stash of stolen recycle boxes, and hauls them back to the front door. As she’s on her way, you give her a quick once-over glance for any bulges in her soccermomwear that might indicate a newly-concealed knife or revolver. You don’t notice anything suspicious.

“Ok,” she says (with false Good Samaritan pride), “here they are. Now I’ll know that those are your boxes next time.”

You take the boxes and say:

A) “Seriously: who’s did you think they were this time?” (turn to page 73)

B) “Sure. And when they go missing next time I’ll know where to look, you psycho.” (turn to page 210)

C) “Ok. Thanks. I really like what you’ve done with the store. It’s looking really nice. Bye!” (keep reading…)

***

The End.

(or… is it?)

PZ “Don Quixote” Myers and 300 atheist Sancho Panzas jousted with the Creation “Museum” in Kentucky this afternoon. The windmill seems to have taken a beating this time.

There are more pictures at Blag Hag’s Blog.

A couple months ago we had our annual drummer-juggling week, which is nowhere near as fun as it sounds. Over the lifetime of the Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra (three years now?) we’ve had three solid drummers and more fill-ins than I can remember. And each new drummer and I quickly fall into a unique and strangely-intense relationship. This doesn’t happen with the violin and cello players who’ve been in the band. With them, it’s always been a gradually-evolving relationship: professional awkwardness develops to mutual respect and, over the course of many months, slips into a comfortable friendship.

For example, Alex Cheung (our violinist of two years) and I have always liked working together but only became what I’d call “friends” through a year long series of chess-like maneuvers. Alex McMaster (Ms.Cello) and I are still, I think, just a bit shy and cautious with each other. I’m not saying this slow way of learning to enjoy the people who share my creative life is a bad thing – in fact I prefer it in a lot of ways.

But that’s never been an option with our drummers. I’m not sure if it’s something ingrained in the personality of people who become drummers; or if it’s ingrained in the subset of drummers interested in making the sort of music we make; or whether it has to do with my approach to working with drummers… but with each drummer it seems that our relationship is carved in stone by the second rehearsal.

And it’s always different: Rosie was a demon-cupid Mercury of sarcasm, wild creativity, and dissoluteness; Chris Patheiger was a Jupiter, a true gentleman. Very kind, slightly reserved, self-regulating his orbit around the project to exert a solid gravitational pull without committing to a stable trajectory. But our new drummer, David MacDougall, is from Neptune – by far my most troubling planet-archetype.

This discovery came as a shock to me. By nature (and by practice) I’m very pessimistic. I do my best to predict catastrophes as early as possible, and on the most preliminary evidence. So, from the moment that David contacted me out-of-the-blue with “I hear you’re looking for a drummer. I play drums.” I was trying to figure him out by my special (and absurd) process of psycho-statistical analysis.

You must recognize the obvious dilemma: this strange character was immediately and unabashedly enthusiastic about this music; very generous with committing himself to rehearsals; incredibly competent and in-demand as a musician, and yet borderline-diffident in rehearsal. He asks questions about texture and structure. By the second rehearsal it was obvious that he understood the functional language of this music better than anyone else in the band, often including myself.

He’s a balanced professional on stage: he plays hard but never overplays. I’ve yet to see him lose his cool when a performance brushes up against the definite possibility of falling completely apart. Off-stage he’s always been relaxed, with a detached ironical sense of humour, and displays a marked absence of self-indulgence combined with a philosophical sympathy for my own not-infrequent displays of that lousy trait.

So you must see now that bringing David into the band was a shattering concession:

Is it worth abandoning thirty-three years’ worth of hard-earned pessimism – and the insulation against disappointment that comes with it and has sustained me through the past three years – in order to work with a drummer who contributes so much to every aspect of the band’s existence while causing no problems at all?

It’s a catch-22; a paradox; a no-win scenario.