I’m not sure my mother has ever been interested in popular culture. I think she was a fan of Perry Como in the 1950s and 60s, but that’s about it for the extent of her fandom. She and I share few – maybe no? – popular culture references. I’m certain she doesn’t know her Paul from her John, George or Ringo; she’s more a Matthew, Mark, Luke and John kind of gal.
The last movie I remember her going to see, one of the handful of movies she went to see in a theatre in a my lifetime, was Chicago. She went with a church social group, and it was an interesting choice for them to have made. My mother was by far the oldest attendee. She had fun, as she always does, but said after that, “she now knew what Sodom and Gomorrah looked like.” Indeed.
You can imagine my surprise when I went to check on my mother after supper tonight. She was watching TV and I asked what was on. She replied, “I’m just catching up on all the Taylor Swift news.” I was beyond amused. Tay Tay hits Toronto tonight and my 102-year-old mother is here for it.
So, my trumpet and I made it to the Meet and Squeak on January 31. I only knew one person when I got there, another trumpeter I had played in a marching band with in the early 1980s. It was thrillingly scary to be sight reading again after 40 years, feeling the locked doors in my brain click open with every passing bar – that’s a crescendo, count four bars, mezzo piano, staccato. Breathe, take a breath, you’re running out of breath! Squeak!
I grinned through the entire evening, amazed to be once again surrounded by the blending of instruments, turning little dots on paper into coherent and lyrical sound, back in a place of comfort and belonging with all the band kids!
I wondered if I would be able to commit to the weekly rehearsals, but somehow my family and I made it work and I only missed a couple of nights due to having COVID-19 for the first time (and nursing my mother, also a first-timer, through it at the same time, which was interesting).
We are called the East Prince Community Band. It’s a lovely group of people, some extremely talented folks and others like me who are trying to find their way back through the music maze. Our conductor, Tristan Fox, is totally committed to the idea of life-long music making, encouraging and funny, everything you could want in a band leader.
We ended the first season this past Wednesday with a concert at the school where we had been rehearsing, Summerside Intermediate. We played seven songs including a Beatles medley, a snappy march, Bohemian Rhapsody and a zydeco number. It was so much fun, we sounded pretty good, and I’m looking forward to rehearsals starting again in the fall.
I’ve been practicing a half hour most days of the week and guess what I discovered? Practicing consistently improves your playing. Who knew? Oh right, all my music teachers. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% back to where I was when I last played in June 1984, but I’m not far off. My range is slowly increasing, and I can hit a clean high F most of the time. I can quickly play almost-flawless chromatic scales. My breath control is so much better, and my tone is getting cleaner.
I felt that my skills were strong enough that I volunteered to play The Last Post at a Legion funeral service today in Tyne Valley. I have vague memories of playing at outdoor Remembrance Day services, so I know I had done it before and hoped I could do it again. It was for an old family friend, a veteran and dedicated Legion member, our families woven together in a million different ways, and I wanted to honour his long life of service.
The first person I encountered when I entered the funeral home this afternoon was a man who moved to our area a few years ago. He looked quizzically at my instrument case and I told him I was going to be the bugler, and he said “Oh, I didn’t know you were a musician.” “Yes, I am,” was my immediate reply, which didn’t seem to surprise him, but certainly surprised me.
Am I a musician? Was I a musician these past 40 years, just one who didn’t play music? My rapid reentry into that identity feels natural, like I had never stopped playing. I started to read music and play piano when I was six, so I had learned another language that settled deep into my brain. I’ve always loved listening to music, singing along, dancing, but I had stopped playing, and now I had stopped stopped playing.
I made it through The Last Post, the minute of silence and Reveille without too many flubs. People were moved and appreciative of the live performance of that meaningful sequence. I was relieved to have that first behind me.
It’s the Eurovision final tomorrow, one of my favourite days of the year! I was #teamspain up until the last act of the second semi-final last night and now I’m also #teamnetherlands. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to pick a Eurovision winner, being incurably North American, but I love the energy of the performers, the cheesy jokes, and the slick television production. Here’s a look behind the well-oiled machine that has been built in Malmö over the past few weeks. What they pull off so seamlessly is nothing short of miraculous. Douze points!
Ever hear an upbeat song you’ve known for a long time, but then really listen carefully to the lyrics, and find yourself thinking wait, what? Well, you just heard a sad banger.
I recently discovered (or, rather, Siri kept suggesting I might like) the band Foster The People, who had a hit a decade or so ago called Pumped Up Kicks. I loved it right away and listened to it a lot without really taking in the lyrics. It has an interesting, catchy musical structure, and it’s about gun violence from the point of view of a teenager who wants to shoot everyone. You better run, better run, outrun my gun. Oh.
Here are a few more sad bangers from my collection (I’ll keep adding to the list as I discover more, or actually listen to the lyrics of songs I already know!`):
Luka – Suzanne Vega
Leader of the Pack – The Shangri-Las,
Mississippi Goddamn – Nina Simone
Alone Again (Naturally) – Esther Phillips (the original was decidedly not a banger)
Semi-Charmed Life – Third Eye Blind
That version of Alone Again (Naturally) could also be on a list of “songs that contain flubs” because Esther sings “eighty sixty-five years old” instead of just “sixty-five years old” in the last verse and they left it in. I imagine it being the last song of the recording session, the people in the control room asking for another take and Esther saying “That’s good enough, I am not singing that dumb song again!” and heading out the door. Didn’t matter: she’s amazing, it’s a lovely cover and the flub is charming and I love hearing it every time.
The only other flub I can think of off the top of my head of is Ella Fitzgerald forgetting the lyrics to Mack The Knife. She won a Grammy for that oopsie and had to sing the improvised lyrics for the rest of her career, a perfect reminder to not be too hard on yourself when you make a mistake.
The title of this notice in the January issue of The Buzz, PEI’s arts and culture magazine, caught my eye:
Meet and squeak? Yes, please!
I played the trumpet in concert and jazz bands throughout junior high and high school, as well as a marching band for a few summers, and the pinnacle of my six-year career was playing for a couple of seasons with the PEI Symphony. I completely stopped playing trumpet when I went to university, and though I continued to play the guitar and a bit of piano, my music making has waned in the past few years.
My silver Stradivarius Bach trumpet sat mostly untouched in our basement for four decades until this past summer, when I saw it on a shelf and wondered if I could still play it. I gave it a good cleaning and oiling, pulled out some music, and it turned out I could still play, and with some regular practice, my range, tone and endurance improved.
Practicing on my own is fine, but the real fun is playing with others; I wasn’t sure that would be possible where I live, so the idea of a new community band is exciting. My caregiving duties make committing to joining a band 45 kilometres from my house probably impractical, but I’m determined to at least make that inaugural meeting just to have the chance to squeak along with other former band nerds.
I’m a couple of weeks late marking the 50th wedding anniversary of Tom Connors and Lena Welsh, and not even sure now how that milestone came into my mind. Tom was a singer/songwriter known as Stompin’ Tom. He was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and adopted by a couple who lived in Skinner’s Pond, PEI, where there is now an interpretive centre to showcase his musical talents and life. Tom died in 2013, but Lena is still alive, as far as I know.
He wrote and sang, in the classic country and western style, about working people and places he visited while criss-crossing Canada numerous times. Every Prince Edward Islander who attended elementary school in the 1970s and 80s probably sang in choir and can still remember every word to the song of his that is most connected with PEI: “Bud the Spud”.
Why do I remember when he got married? Because we watched it on television in school. I was in second grade, and we sat on the floor, gathered around what was probably a black and white television, on Friday, November 2 to watch Tom and Lena get married on the CBC Television program Elwood Glover’s Luncheon Date. I don’t remember Glover, and only have dim memories of watching the wedding, but I knew it was a Big Deal because television was still viewed as slightly unedifying in 1973, Sesame Street be damned, and wasn’t used in our primary education, with only a few exceptions.
Original Toronto Star caption: Happiest moment of my life, says Stompin’ Tom Connors as he weds Lena Welsh, 26, Magdalen Islands barmaid, on Elwood Glover’s TV show, Luncheon Date, today. Here, Glover, left, congratulates bride and groom after an estimated 2 million viewers tuned in on the formal, 12-minute ceremony. The 36-year-old folk singer is from Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I. Wedding was a first for TV in Canada. (From Toronto Public Library Digital Archive. Copyright Toronto Star, photographer Frank Lennon.)
When you are seven years old, experiencing things for the first time is commonplace, so I had no idea that famous people didn’t get married on television all the time. The only other non-royal person who had their wedding televised, that I can think of, was Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, but I was only three when that occurred, we wouldn’t have received the US station it was broadcast on, and Tiny Tim terrified me, so I would have avoided it: if you want me to give up state secrets, just play him singing “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” and I’ll tell you everything.
Stompin’ Tom possibly wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Islanders LOVED him to bits. When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited PEI in the summer of 1973 to mark the 100th anniversary of our province joining Canada, a concert was held in Charlottetown to mark the auspicious occasion. Family friends were visiting us from Toronto, and one of our guests was a woman who had recently moved to Canada and had grown up in a unionist household in Northern Ireland. She loved the Queen, and was thrilled we would be able to watch the concert live on television.
I don’t remember watching this show, but the family lore is that the broadcast began with the usual pomp that accompanies the arrival of a royal. The audience, in all their Charlottetown finery, politely applauded to welcome the royal couple. There were speeches, and I would bet Anne of Green Gables made an appearance. Our Irish friend watched with great interest.
And then Stompin’ Tom took to the stage with his guitar, undoubtably in his trademark black outfit and cowboy hat. Don’t know what he sang, but it would have been something twangy and foot stompin’. The crowd, who had given the royal couple a suitably dignified and muted welcome, erupted into hoots and hollers and thunderous applause for this tall skinny fellow who looked like a bad guy from a Hollywood western. Our friend couldn’t understand how he could get a bigger reaction from the audience than the queen did, and my mother said she watched the rest of the broadcast with a slightly bristly reserve.
I met Tom once backstage at the famed Toronto music venue, Massey Hall. The Stompin’ part of his stage name came from his habit of stomping his left foot so hard he would make a hole in the stage, to the displeasure of venue owners, so he started using a small piece of plywood to stomp upon, holding it up at the end of the performance to let the particles he dislodged with his heel drift to the stage.
At some point he started auctioning off the boards for charity. In September 1999, he decided the Daily Bread Food Bank would get the money from the board auction at his Massey Hall concert and although I wasn’t the PR person for our organization, I was the token PE Islander on the staff (an exotic creature!) and given the opportunity to attend the show and accept the donation.
It was fantastic to finally see Tom live and even more wonderful to be in an audience of true fans, many of whom were also originally from Atlantic Canada. We sang along, and cried with him as he became overcome with emotion while singing “Confederation Bridge” and couldn’t continue the song: “And it’s calling, calling me over, the blue water’s rolling and soon I’ll be strolling out there. Down by the ocean, where the Island devotion to friendship is found everywhere.”
Illegal and very poor quality flash photography by me (a former theatre usher and stage manager who knew better), Massey Hall, Toronto, September 18, 1999. I swear that’s Tom.
The board auction was held during the show, and the winner was able to meet Tom after the show to get his board signed, and I was present to arrange to get the money, a very generous $5,000. I first met Lena, who was lovely when I told her I was from PEI (she’d likely met everyone from PEI by that point), an elegant, quiet lady. Then Tom came into the green room, bigger than life, holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in another, greeting each person one by one.
When it was my turn to speak to Tom, I thanked him for supporting DBFB and then told him my father often spoke of the night sometime in the 1960s at our local community festival when the organizers heard that Tom was in the audience. My father, acting as emcee for the evening, asked Tom up on stage to sing a few songs, which he agreed to do. The roof nearly came off the rink with the audience response, and as he headed out into the night, they gave him a big feed of cooked lobsters. He slapped me on the back and said he remembered that night, though I wonder if he really did.
Hugh Gillis, the man who bought the board that night at Massey Hall, drove to PEI four years ago to donate it and two others he bought over the years to the Stompin’ Tom Centre. He apparently has no connection to PEI, even though he has a classic Island name, but just seems to be a wonderfully generous man.
The other reason I remember September 18, 1999 was that when I got home from the concert, there was a message on my telephone answering machine from a fellow I had met at a birthday party the week before, asking if I wanted to go out on a date some time. I did, and we did, and now we are married, like Lena and Tom.
Stompin’ Tom celebrates the $5,000 his Stompin’ Board Auction bought for Daily Bread Food Bank from bidder Hugh Gillis. Here Hugh (on left) and a friend enjoy a laugh with Tom. Taken backstage at the Stompin’ Tom Connors “Meet and Greet” after his show at Massey Hall in Toronto on September 18, 1999. (Photographer: Barry Roden – Credit: Library and Archives Canada)
If you need a break from whatever is pushing down on the top of your head and bending your back, and would like to feel as though you are bouncing along a little French road in an open-top sports car with a picnic hamper on the back, find a recording of Basia singing Waters of March and float away.
Haven’t heard all the Eurovision finalists who will be performing in Rotterdam tonight, but I’m rooting for Malta and Iceland. I enjoy many types of music, but I LOVE upbeat dance music, and both countries have fun entries.
I’ve been watching Eurovision since 2012, when I used a VPN to watch the BBC coverage led by Graham Norton. Don’t have the VPN anymore, so will either watch the YouTube stream or OMNI Television, who are the Canadian broadcasters this year. Neither of those options will have commentary, so might listen to Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2 at the same time to learn more about the performers and their songs.
I believe the last frontier of the online world that needs to be sorted out is the ability to watch terrestrial television stations live from anywhere in the world. I would gladly pay the BBC to be able to (legally) watch their stations live, without the cat and mouse games. By now this should be easy.
Steven recently posted The Mirror on SoundCloud, a song he wrote with his friend, Ted Dykstra, for their yet-to-be produced musical, Dorian, based on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
While the recording is a bit sketchy from a wobbly old cassette, the performers are straight up Canadian music royalty. Stratford Festival star Lucy Peacock is on lead vocals, Paul Hoffert from the band Lighthouse is on organ, Creighton Doane on drums and Kevin Breit on guitar. Steven’s not sure of backup vocals, but I would guess Melanie Doane and Damhnait Doyle are likely in there, maybe Terry Hatty, no doubt Ted, definitely not Steven.
Speaking of Ted, it’s 25 years since he and Richard Greenblatt premiered their play 2 Pianos, 4 Hands at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Mirvish Productions just released a podcast interview with Ted and Richard and their devoted stage manager, Beatrice Campbell, my pal and classmate from the National Theatre School of Canada. Stage managers are NEVER included in such things, so it’s lovely to see Bea tell her stories.
Steven and Ted are working on a new show based on the Greek myth of Dionysus (no, it’s not contractual that they only work on subjects starting with D!), so poor old Dorian must be feeling a bit left out, like a forgotten painting in an attic or something.
I was listening to KJazz 88.1, a jazz and blues station broadcasting from California State University Long Beach, a couple of weeks ago and heard a great upbeat version All I Do Is Dream Of You. At first I thought it was Blossom Dearie, but turns out it’s a fantastic young woman named Kat Edmonson. Originally from Texas, she calls her style of music vintage pop. I hear touches of her fellow Texan Nanci Griffith and a little Doris Day in her voice, but her sound is unique and difficult to categorize.
She covers lots of jazz classics and some pop songs too, including a gentle rendering of The Cardigan’s Lovefool. Edmonson’s also a solid songwriter, and her most recent single, If You’re Scared (Call On Me), was commissioned for the COVID-19 Song Project on NPR’s Morning Edition, and has been floating through my head most days, especially when we had a few scary moments this week. It seems like a song that has always existed, a beautifully crafted perfect thing.
Edmonson was half way through a tour last year that was cancelled when COVID-19 struck, so she has been streaming live concerts from her New York living room most Sunday evenings at 7:00 EDT. Pay what you will to join the party, and I’ll be there on YouTube.
