I feel like hearing some boogie-woogie piano. Here at 27th Street, we like all kinds of folk music.
Here’s an old clip featuring Jane Vasey with Peter Appleyard and Downchild at Albert’s Hall in Toronto
Champion Jack Dupree
Meade Lux Lewis
I often have some sort of camera with me but not this evening as I took the dogs out for a walk. This failure may have caused the event I’m about to describe. We had crossed the field at the filtration plant, walked down the hill and through the narrow stand of trees and turned south. The clouds opened up to the west, up the hill and the sun reached down and grabbed hold of the tree at the base of the hill, turning the yellow leaves into strangely illuminated fluttering bits of fire. I looked south and watched yellow-green streamers reaching down to the lake. To the east, a rainbow appeared and then another, a perfect double rainbow across the sky.
At that second I thought anything might happen… But no, I was not saved. I did not land in OZ. I did not meet the ghost of Dave van Ronk. As suddenly as it began the event ended leaving only a drab fall evening in front of us.
Memphis nudged my pocket, signalling me not so subtly that a treat was in order.
Today while I was at work, one of the cats puked on my keyboard. Now the t and the c and the b don’t work. Maybe they’ll come back later if we’re lucky. Fortunately we have an iPad and that was safely tucked away, safe from the fluids of our pets.
UPDATE: Wednesday morning. Now one of the keys gets stuck, creating an interesting percussive beat. However, a gentle pat on the keyboard stops that. The keys that didn’t work yesterday still don’t work, and as a bonus, the e now doesn’t work either.
I was thinking about my first exposure to button accordion and I realized it must have been as a kid of 10 or 12 watching the late Harry Hibbs and his TV show At the Caribou. I checked out the YouTube machine to see if there was any footage of Mr. Hibbs from those days, and sure enough, there’s a whole show! This is from 1972.
At the Caribou was an Ontario television show – I think it was out of CHCH in Hamilton, and it was aimed directly at Newfoundlanders who found themselves working in Ontario.
For people of my generation growing up in Toronto, this is a real blast from the past.
Off to the movies again. This time we watched End of Watch. I guess you’d call it an action thriller with obsessive use of handheld cameras. What can I say about this film?
It’s well done, very well done, but I left the theatre with my senses dulled by the excessive violence.
We were thinking of a day drawing and painting in the landscape today, but it was a littly chilly for that, so we settled on taking the dogs to the South Etobicoke Creek dog park. This off-leash area was closed for quite a long time and reopened in late summer. I understand the reason for the closure was so the city could run some storm sewers down through there. This is the first time we’ve been back since it reopened.
As a result of the work done in the park, the first section of it is not as interesting as it used to be, but beyond that, it remains a really nice naturalized gem in the city with opportunities for the dogs to check out some forest and the creek as well.
Even the dogs enjoyed some Thanksgiving dinner, with some turkey and gravy and potatoes and an apple and some peas added to their kibble.
My question: how can two huge Newfoundland dogs manage to sift through such a variety of food…..and leave the peas?
In case my non-Canadian readers are not aware, this is Thanksgiving up here in Canada. It’s a time we usually gather with Tuffy P’s family each year, often at Tuffy’s dad’s cottage. I usually make up a Thanksgiving feast, which we enjoy in a beautiful setting, surrounded by forests turning reds and yellows.
This year, Tuffy P’s dad is in the hospital,very ill, and in no condition to go anywhere for Thanksgiving. We decided to bring Thanksgiving up to him. I made up a turkey dinner with all the fixings and we packed it up in plastic containers and reheated everything in a hospital microwave. We had a great afternoon.
Tuffy P took this shot of me and her dad George enjoying some turkey dinner. I will say he summoned up quite an appetite for the occasion!
This afternoon we trundled out to our local cinema to see The Master, the new Paul Thomas Anderson film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a shell-shocked, hard-drinking WWII veteran lost after the war, who wanders onto a yacht captained by a charismatic cult leader played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film tells the story of the The Cause, as the organization is called, and we can’t help but be reminded of Scientology, but its focus is more on the two key figures in the film. The Master attempts to use his “methods” to help Freddie, but Freddie is not so easy to help. Is the Master a “genuine mystic” as one character suggests or a fraud, as his son tells Freddie, saying Hoffman’s character makes it up as he goes along.
The performances by Phoenix and Hoffman elevate this film. These guys do a fantastic job playing complex and enigmatic characters in a film that provides a glimpse at a cult-like organization in a way that avoids any definitive resolution. It adds up to a top-rate film.
My button accordion student Elliot is learning the Finnish Waltz. He was doing a pretty good job on it but I thought he needed to put a little more swing into it so we went to the YouTube to check out how others played this tune and stumbled upon Myllie Barron. I’m really glad we did!
Here he is playing The Red River Jig.
I loved that one!
And one more….The Happy Boy Schottische.
27th Street 