December 11, 2019
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Logo Mythology

The latest episode of The Agency Podcast is up, and it’s called Logo Mythology. We had a guest today – Hobie Post is a friend of the show who joined us to discuss various topics, from looking at art to a an alternative history of Santa (not for the kiddies). We hope you enjoy the show.

You can listen here or find us at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play or TuneIn.

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Please visit Candy Minx’s blog, The Gnostic World of Candy Minx: http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com/ and Eugene Knapik’s blog, 27th Street: http://27thstreet.me

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December 10, 2019
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Remembering songs about cars in the age of climate change

There was a time when songs about motorized transportation were a big thing – songs about cars, songs about trains, trucker songs, even songs about airplane flight. Now that climate change and our carbon footprint are top of mind, does that spell doom for the car song? Are we likely to hear songs about Teslas, hybrids, sub-compacts and so on? Maybe there will be a shift to songs about riding bicycles?

Some of the best pop songs are about cars or stuff we do in them. I’d like to celebrate those songs today. We’ll get to trains and planes in later posts. There are so many excellent choices, but it’s my blog so I get to pick. You can add your faves in the comments.

Let’s start off by taking a trip to Lamesa, Texas. Here’s the Pavarotti of the Plains, the late great Don Walser, singing Hot Rod Mercury.

I heard an interview with James Cotton once, many years ago, during which he said he co-wrote Rocket 88 with Ike Turner. That’s the first and only reference I’ve ever heard to his involvement with the penning of what might be the first Rock ‘n’ Roll song. I know he was in Memphis at the right time, and I know he played the hell out of the song. Here he is, from 1973 with a band that was on fire. Back when I was a teenage blues freak, I saw The James Cotton Band perform at the Ontario Place Forum. Remember that place, with the revolving stage? It must have been 1975, and Mr. Cotton and the boys were opening for Muddy Waters. Sadly, they’re both gone now.

From the same era, remember War and their fantastic tune, Low Rider? That’s sax player Charles Miller singing. Funky.

This next one is pure fun. It’s Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk performing Woody Guthrie’s The Car Song. I dare you to listen to this one through without smiling.

Wow, there are so many choices. I may have to do two or more posts just on this theme. For now, I’ll offer up just a couple more. We associate Chuck Berry with the 50s, but this is one of his 60s tunes, from 1964, No Particular Place to Go. “Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

Last one for today. Let’s go out with Junior Brown and his weird-ass double neck guitar contraption performing with the Beach Boys on their fantastic car tune, 409. That’s 4-speed, duel quad, positraction 409, buddy.

December 9, 2019
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Triplex

More new housing on Twenty Seventh Street, but this triplex is strictly for the birds.

We had a whirligig on this pole for quite a while – a fisherman who fishes more and more aggressively as the wind picks up. From time to time whirligigs which have been outdoors doing their job (making people smile), have to be renovated. The fisherman has been up for quite some time. He could use a little sprucing up, and a new fishing line too. I’ve tried everything from string to heavy fishing line to wire to plastic electrical fasteners to use as fishing line, but it seems that after a sustained few weeks of fishin’, the line eventually breaks. When that happens, Buddy continues to fish but his line is no longer attached to the fish. This reminds me of that old song, Lazy Bones – when ya go fishin’, I’ll bet you keep wishin’, the fish don’t bite at the line. If any readers have an idea for a better fishing line that can withstand constant use, I’m open for suggestions.

Out of some scrap wood, I banged together the wooden base that allows me to simply slide the housing unit onto the pole, and then lift the whole thing off for cleaning. Next season, after birds are finished nesting out there, I think I’m going to whitewash the whole thing to add a little protection from the elements. I’m also going to add some kind of decorative element to the base blocks on either side. Maybe a sheet metal cut out bird or something like that. Sheila suggested we add an additional house on the back side as well. That should be an easy enough project. I think I can build a box to attach to the back, which can come off to clean.

These birdhouses will provide protection from the elements over the winter as well as nesting opportunities in the spring. Based on our experience with similar houses in the back yard, I expect my friends the house sparrows will be around to inspect the new digs soon.

Yesterday, I also added a new larger squirrel-proof feeder out back , so I don’t have to fill them up quite as often. We start feeding the birds when the weather gets cold and keep it up until well into spring. The rest of the time, they have to fend for themselves. All the bird activity out back is in and around a big old apple tree behind the house. This is right by the door to my painting studio (which is a converted garage). Curiously enough, birds are featured in the current series of paintings.

December 5, 2019
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Down in the Mine

There aren’t a lot of positive things to say about coal mining. It’s a rough life. It pollutes out streams and burning coal pollutes our air. Many years ago I stayed in a coal mining town in Pennsylvania for a few days, while looking for trout streams that weren’t destroyed by tailings. It was one of the bleakest places I’ve ever been to, a town built around a giant hole in the world.

Hard times do lead to some interesting art and music and literature though. Here are some songs related to coal mining.

Let’s start with Steve Earle performing The Mountain.

Merle Travis, performing Dark as a Dungeon.

I’d better include Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Sixteen Tons

Here’s an odd one – Lee Dorsey and Workin’ in a Coal Mine

From Cape Breton, Working Man by Men of the Deeps (wow, this one still kills me)

There are lots more, but I’m going to close this post with my favourite, Cigarette Trees by The Local Honeys. “You piss in my boots and you tell me it’s rain….”

Do you have a fave song about the extraction of natural resources? Stick them in the comments please.

December 5, 2019
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Ontario Birds – a few more collages

I’ve made a few more bird collages – there’s over 30 of these things now populating a sketchbook. I think of making them as a tool for playing with images, starting points, visual notes for a group of new paintings. I don’t think of them as completed images by any means, although I confess I’m enjoying some of them on their own.

I’m having quite a bit of fun with this approach. It is as if I’ve created a box of puzzle pieces of my own invention, all unified in that they come from photos I’ve snapped of birds and plants. I can mix and match, play with scale, reassemble the original experiences in a quick, stream of consciousness kind of way. Stick a piece of bird here or a branch or a chunk of landscape over there. I can try out lots of arrangements before I open up the glue stick and commit to any one.

When I say these are starting points, I mean that once I go into the studio with this sketchbook full of images, anything can happen. I don’t know what the paintings will look like or even if these images will in fact lead to new paintings (although I’d like to think they will). My next step will be to prepare some canvases of various sizes.

I like to work on paintings in groups, and I like to work on them more or less at once. That is to say, I’ll start work on one, then after a while, move onto another and another and another after that. Along the way I can take canvases out of the group for a while, and turn them to the wall, and add in new ones at different points. I can let the paintings feed off one another. An idea which might have been unsuccessful in one painting may stick in another, or alternatively, I might repeat motifs I like in different contexts from canvas to canvas. There is always something to work on.

After cutting and pasting, arranging and rearranging my imaginary birdscapes, I’m left with a box of scraps. Perhaps these will lead to something else again, something starker or more mysterious. These have less specific information or rather smaller bits of information, taken further out of context. Maybe there is something to find in there, or maybe sometimes a box of scraps is just a box of scraps.

December 4, 2019
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Guilty

Guilty, the latest episode of The Agency Podcast, is now available (iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Podbean and Tune-in). You can listen to it right here.

This week, both Candy and I watched the Scorsese epic, The Irishman. We often agree in our film discussions, but not this time. Can you guess who loved it and who was less impressed? You can have your $.02 by emailing us: theagency.podcast@gmail.com.

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in The Irishman

We also talked about the new Lulu Wang film, The Farewell, starring the fabulous Awkwafina plus one of Candy’s fave independent filmmakers – and there’s more in this jam-packed episode.

Awkwafina and a fabulous ensemble cast in The Farewell

If you think The Agency is the best thing since sliced bread and you want to support this effort financially, we’d appreciate it! – but don’t worry, The Agency will always be available free. Please visit our Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=24378373 .

December 2, 2019
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Mourning Dove

Today there was a single mourning dove hanging out in the apple tree. Where were its friends? Some days there are 3 or 4 in the tree or feeding on the ground.

When there is a single mourning dove around, it seems to be quite relaxed. I can go out and fill the feeders and it stays in the tree unbothered. But when there are a few of them around, the group tends to be nervous, and they all fly at once if I approach. When the mourning doves take flight, all the sparrows and everyone else around the feeders scatter too. None of them go far, though, as long as there is some quality easy to access food about.

December 2, 2019
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House Finches

We didn’t always have house finches visiting the feeders out back. For the first few years there were none. I remember one year we saw one. What’s that red bird? I had never seen one before. Now they are common visitors. This afternoon, there were half a dozen of them staging for their turn at the feeders.

December 2, 2019
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The Cardinal Gang

So far this winter, we have had so many birds at the backyard feeders. The feeders are in the big old apple tree just behind the house. The cats and I can watch them from the picture window above the garage. There are at least 3 pairs of cardinals visiting regularly. It could actually be more pairs than that, but I’ve seen 3 pairs at a once on several occasions.