Short Reviews

The next show is on August 6, 2011, in Welland, ON at Illuminaqua Festival. This is presented by Supernova. You'll be amazed at the band! We'll be playing songs from "Deathstyle Celebration", new songs, and maybe even something by Björk. thismaddesire.com for more info.

INTERVIEW WITH MACKENZIE KRISTJON (moi): themansphere.blogspot.com/2011/06/men-we-admire-mackenzie-kristjon.html

Thoughts and prayers to everyone in Norway.

IGGY POP :: I'm a Conservative from Soldier (1980)

How many times did she have to repeat that lie to herself in order to imagine it to be true?

Those of you that know me know that I wouldn't exactly be described as a huge fan of Britney Spears. Nonetheless, in my dream I attended one of her concerts last night... or almost did. I had purchased tickets through the venue office earlier in the day and the date seemed wrong on the ticket. I was assured that it was no issue.

I left and then arrived with 4-5 other friends who all proceeded into the show -prepared to be wowed, I'm sure. I had purchased the tickets for this woman who is, let's say, a bigger fan of Britney than I am and in some sort of puppy love with me. Of course, the date on the ticket issue turned out to be serious and we were denied access. My puppy love date was furious. I drove her home and promised to take her back to see Britney at the next possible opportunity.. which was the next day and the date for which the tickets I had purchased had really been. Wow... I was not looking forward to either taking this angry puppy dog love girl AT ALL.

I can't stand people that whine and complain about things. You know the ones... they think they are at the centre of the universe and masquerade as caring wonderful people. People who are always "offended". (A larger question might be why I didn't just tell this chick to flake off.. And the short answer is I said I'd take her and I feel obligated to make my statements come true. No matter how ridiculous the situation.)

Of course, in my anger about not being allowed into this concert and being completely denied by the very woman who had sold me these wrong tickets, I had thrown the tickets on the ground in disgust -so I no longer had them.

I spent the rest of the dream driving through snow, arguing with the ticket agency and so on and so forth and eventually received tickets (after a few phone calls to the bank and causing every woman in this office to fall madly in lust with me) and woke up just as Britney was about to hit the stage. Puppy love girl was still cantankerous.

My question for you dream analysts is WTF? Where did this come from? WHY WHY WHY?

from January 18, 1996

and so at what point does a song become great? At what point does it transcend itself to become a work of art? The reason these questions are being posed is a result of the upcoming birthday (#2) on jan. 29 of “perfect ring”. At some point, and this was a gradual process, that song became a defining work of mine. It was with such trepidation that I brought that song to the bloodflowers’ attention. “oh, another song,” I thought. “they will hate learning it.” And not being sure the arrangement or form of the song. Should the first verse be repeated twice at the beginning and the final chorus twice at the end? At some point, an ending emerged and the song takes over the creator. The performer becomes a slave to the song. You try to beat a song into submission but just when you think you have it, there is an uprising from within the song itself such that the performer is usurped by a powerful preserce that the song becomes. There is an element of power from no knowable source inherent in great works be they paintings or movies or statues or songs or dances. Something in the expression of thepiece makes the performer a tool in the creation of… light? It is almost like the performer is a lightbulb and when performing lesser works, she still seems like a lightbulb and people recognize her for being a lightbulb. However, when the right piece is performed, when the electricity is just so, that performer becomes a conduit for breathtaking beauty and light. “I can see clearly now,” the audience would gasp.

What is that magical quality?

 

(NOTE: even at such an early time, my fascination with great art was evident. Without any schooling, I had already found dominant metaphors of illumination and divinity..)

REVIEW OF Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

(Toronto: House of Anansi, 2011. 263 pp.)

First-time novelist Stephen Kelman has achieved something like a modern-day Catcher in the Rye with the much-hyped Pigeon English. Both a coming-of-age novel and something of a murder mystery, it provides insight into the world of gangs and violent crime and their impact on young people. It is no secret why twelve publishing companies participated in a bidding war to acquire this novel.

Written from the perspective of Harrison Opoku, an 11-year-old Ghanian immigrant who lives in a London housing project, Pigeon English draws on the real-life killing of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor, a Nigerian schoolboy who died in the UK. At the beginning of the novel, a boy has been knifed to death and Harrison and his friend become amateur sleuths in a world of urban decay and violence.

The language used is a mixture of British and Ghanian slang written with just enough childhood naïveté to provide both humour and horror. At the same time as Harrison is trying to solve the murder, he is also being tested for recruitment into the local Dell Farm Crew gang. Meanwhile, he's still only eleven and busy wondering if the girl next to him in school likes him, thinking about superheroes, and trying to attract a certain pigeon to his balcony with flour. Some parts of the book are also told from the perspective of the pigeon.

The magic of the book comes directly from the sense of boyhood wonder as Harrison flails his way through this world as he considers if gangs can be for good and what makes a good detective and just why are girls so icky anyway. Poignant observations abound as when Harrison takes part in the mugging of an older gentleman from the local church. Upon realizing the identity of the target victim, he thinks, “That's when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else [at church]; it's because he's been waiting the longest for God to answer.” 

There are points at which the sense of character comes across as contrived and Harrison seems too comfortable with a language that is still supposed to be very new to him. Nevertheless, the sheer kaleidoscope of experiences refracted through this character's voice more than makes up for it. 

Acadie by Daniel Lanois
Aerosmith by Aerosmith
Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magic Ukelele by Amanda Palmer
All for Nothing/Nothing For All by the Replacements
Anytime at All by Banyan
Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses
Beauregard by Kate Rogers Band
Best of Joan Baez by Joan Baez
Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Build A Rocket Boys! by Elbow
Classic Southern Gospel by Various Artists
Collapse Into Now by R.E.M.
Comedy Is Not Pretty! by Steve Martin
Ecstasy by Lou Reed
The Fame by Lady Gaga
Feminist Sweepstakes by Le Tigre
Femme Fatale by Britney Spears
Frank's Wild Years by Tom Waits
The Gold Experience by Prince
Good God's Urge by Porno For Pyros
Homeland by Laurie Anderson
Hometowns by the Rural Alberta Advantage
Honey's Dead by Jesus & Mary Chain
Islandsklukkur by Various Artists
Lake Michigan Soda by Bob Wiseman
Live on I-5 by Soundgarden
Live at Copps Coliseum by Pearl Jam
Live to Win by Paul Stanley
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West
Neil Young Unplugged by Neil Young
Pop by U2
Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens
Song Yet To Be Sung by Perry Farrell
A Sphere in the Heart of Silence by John Frusciante
Surfer Rosa by the Pixies
Swanlights by Antony & The Johnsons
Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart
Uncool by Bumblefoot
Who You Are by Jessie J
Years of Refusal by Morrissey
69 Love Songs Vol. 1 by the Magnetic Fields

In the news department, I'm still in writing and deconstructing/reconstructing songs for my forthcoming eventual record.. And meanwhile everything else... All the humdrum daily life stuff.

This morning as I listened to Ron Sexsmith describe being a songwriter and explain that he does not have an iPod and was reading further on Bev Oda and researching better car designs that get energy straight away from oil and imagining new technologies to replace "phone lines" (cf. Libya and recent Egyptian... oh my..) - The world is too small and Life is Too Short.

It occurred to me a very funny thing: I would suppose these days that the vast majority of people are using iPods and not View Masters. The iPod users would think that songs start and end on time like a machine. I should be able to take your iPod and not accounting for any kind of wind-resistance or humidity expect that Song X will last Y seconds independent of anything.

But did you know:

Once upon a time back when the Smashing Pumpkins were more popular in Canada than anywhere else on the planet on a per-capita basis, we decided to take 2 Siamese Dream CDs and play them in different players in in the house. We timed precisely the beginning of that SilverFish song (not Fish but...). Imagine someone standing in the middle of the house yelling, "T-minus 5-4-3-2-1! GO!!"

An imaginary gun goes off.

A few false starts later, we were off to the races! SilverF-sharp is playing in 2 players simultaneously with a perfectly synchronized beginning. Total success!

And you could feel the power as the house electrified like when you have speakers running throughout your whole house all running from one source.

But at around the six-minute mark, you could start to feel the time sliding and by the end, as each CD became 2 beats off, you could feel your head SPIN. It was like a Siamese Scream! (If you have ever heard cats in heat, you know what I mean. It's like razorblades across your sense of hearing.)

CD players all play at slightly different speeds. As do record players. As do cassette players.

Never mind the sound-waves that come out of real speakers. I'll leave that for later...

This is all ONE planet. Remember that you are not locked in a little bubble only caring about pre-fab boxed foods that no one grows and no one knows where it comes from. There is no such as thing as magic. But somewhere over the rainbow, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

Dream-Love-Imagine-Peace

-Mac