October 23, 2009
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Around the World by Button Accordion: part 5

The Bandoneon is the tango instrument. Here’s a video featuring an interview with bandoneon master and composer Astor Piazzola. In this next video, you get a good sense of the instrument, complete with wheezing as air is gulped and expelled. artistesPhotoBandoIt reminds me of the chemnitzer concertina, known as the polka box. Both are geared for dance music. Here’s one more – elegant and beautiful, isn’t it? The bandoneon, like the chemnitzer concertina, is a german design. Still, we associate it mostly with Argentinian music. The instrument actually was first played in Argentina in 1870. I’ve never seen one in the flesh, just in pictures and videos. It is said to be notoriously tricky to play.

October 23, 2009
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This should be interesting

It was announced the other day that Toronto Mayor Miller is writing a book, to be published by Cormorant Books. He plans to tell stories of ordinary Torontonians he encountered during his term as Mayor. The book is to be called Witness to a City: David Miller’s Toronto. Proceed from book sales will go to a foundation he set up in his mother’s name. Although this is being referred to as Miller’s book, he has a co-author, Douglas Arrowsmith and the book will feature photographs by Jeff Davidson.

Although I don’t think Miller has been a great Mayor, I think this could be a very interesting book. The mayor of a major city has an opportunity to see the town much differently than you or I do. I’d like to read stories about Torontonians, but I’d really prefer to read a memoir that talked to Torontonians about the politics of the city, about trying to achieve a vision, about having to make compromises, about facing no-win problems, about pitching ideas, about working with a disfunctional council.

October 23, 2009
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Understatement

Toronto Mayor David Miller stated the obvious, quoted in the National Post yesterday, “I think it would be very good if a number of councillors perhaps recognize that it’s time for somebody else and run,” he told reporters yesterday. ”I think it would be good for some new blood to be on council.”

It is very difficult to unseat an incumbent on Toronto City Council. Part of the problem is that so few people participate in the election. Often, people who do vote, vote for the only name they recognize – the one that’s been around for a long time. The result is that we have quite a number of do-nothing councillors running our city. I’ve read numerous reports over the past few years about the childish behaviour and low level of professionalism on City Council.

What is going to change the situation? The best thing that could happen would be much greater participation in next year’s election. I’ll be urging people to get to know who is running in their ward and for mayor and to get out and make choices when election day comes around.

During his current term, our mayor has lost a significant amount of popularity. The municipal workers strike didn’t help him. Is it enough to get people to take an interest next time we go to the polls? Maybe Miller’s wish will come true and some of the do-nothing councillors will bow out next time around – but I wouldn’t bet on it.

October 22, 2009
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Adventure Girl

Memphis at Hockley Valley

Memphis at Hockley Valley

Memphis has a new backpack. It arrived by post today. Why would you want your dog to wear a backpack, you ask? Well, she’s a working dog, and it’s time to give her a job. She wore it for the first time today. It has a pair of water bottles and a fold-up water bowl and room for some dog treats too. She was shy about wearing it, but tolerant , so I think she’ll get used to it.

The photo here is at the ski hill at Hockley Valley, right near where my sister and brother-in-law live. What a beautiful part of Ontario!

October 22, 2009
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Woodstove

Those of you who read Mister Anchovy’s a while back may recall that I wrote about Tuffy and I deciding to get a woodstove. This was back last fall. It turned out that the outfit we were going to buy it from were hopeless at actually selling us one. It required somebody coming out to assess how we would set up the chimney and they just couldn’t get their act together. We used the opportunity to rethink what we wanted. We explored the stove world much more thoroughly and even looked at some of the swanky sleek Euro-designs out there.

Meanwhile, we had our chimney rebuilt – the exposed part above the roof – because the brickwork was in very rough shape.  I asked the chimney guy to have a look at the big room we were thinking about for the woodstove and offer some advice. He immediately saw what I failed to realize, that the existing chimney that serviced the old fireplace that is now covered over in the living room, shares a wall with the room we were going to use for the woodstove.  It turns out that we can access this chimney and simply rebuild the liner (well, not us…the chimney guy) and install the woodstove safely for a fraction of the cost.

We finally decided on a stove after looking at pretty much everything available in small woodstoves, and settled on a Jotul cast iron stove in ivory enamel.

The next job was to install a fireproof floor area and a heat shield. The floor is stone tiles on cement board. The heat shield is the same material but floated an inch off the wall. We got that done last month.

Finally, yesterday, the chimney guy came in and cut through the masonry into the existing chimney. The stove gets installed today. We had some seasoned mixed hardwood delivered the other day. I’ll post some pictures later.

October 21, 2009
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The Three Suns

How often do you hear a guitar/organ/accordion combination? The example that springs to my mind is the late Zydeco great Clifton Chenier, who had an organ in his Red Hot Louisiana band at different times. In fact, I believe that Stanley Dural Jr. played organ for Chenier. That name may not be as familiar to you as his later stage moniker, Buckwheat Zydeco.

I stumbled across The Three Suns surfing around on You Tube. They feature Al & Marty Nevins on guitar & accordion and Artie Dunn on organ and were a popular act in the 40’s. Here’s the stylish Beyond the Blue Horizon.

October 19, 2009
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Plagiarism vs Folk Music

I read today that popular band Guns N’ Roses is being sued for a million bucks by a fellow who makes ambient electronica named Ulrich Schnauss. If I understand correctly, the claim is about unauthorized sampling. I suppose that’s a little bit different than using the same melody, but then sampling is kind of like collage for musicians – snip a piece here, glue a piece there. The business of lawsuits over plagiarism is pretty common. After all, there is a lot of dough involved in the popular music business.

Many people of my generation will remember the fuss when George Harrison was successfully sued for turning He’s so Fine by the Chiffons into My Sweet Lord. There are plenty of examples, many of which were settled out of court.

There was a time when reusing melodies wasn’t plagiarism. I use a short form for that: folk music. The idea with folk music is that we own the song together as a community and we can use it and reuse it and change it about all we like. Let’s look at an example. Wabash Cannonball vs Grand Coulee Dam. Anyone who listens to the two songs would agree they share a melody, but it doesn’t really matter. They just share a melody, that’s all. And when Woody sings: In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windy spray, men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave, nobody is thinking of that hobo train, the Wabash Cannonball, taking men of the traveling nation to a better place.

Here’s Woody’s son, Arlo, singing Grand Coulee Dam.
And here’s Boxcar Willie singing Wabash Cannonball

Melodies are borrowed and reused and we shouldn’t be surprised. Consider the structure of western music based around a 7 note diatonic scale – and most popular music using 2,3, maybe 4 chords – how many possibilities are there?

Lyrics are borrowed and reused too. There are stories that carry on through folk music with so many interpretations – Big stories that last. John Henry. Stackolee. Delia, Frankie and Johnnie

We see songs that change as they cross genres. They adapt.

So, can you own a song? What makes it yours? What does writing a song really mean? Tough questions. Today we have sampling, and in a way that highlights the issue, because with sampling you can take a chunk of a recording, not just a melody or a lyric or a song family and move it lock, stock and barrel to a different context. In a way context changes everything, even though you can identify the original recording in some samples.

Your thoughts?

October 19, 2009
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What happened?

Peter Falk as Columbo

Peter Falk as Columbo

Today I was having a conversation with a friend about it doesn’t matter what, when I made a reference to something bothering me, touching my forehead the way Peter Falk always did in Columbo. I quickly realized that the person I was speaking with had no idea about the 70s popular TV show. I asked someone else in the room. Columbo? I know what it is. I was forced to watch it when I was a little kid. OK, I’m not all that old, but for that one moment, I felt as if I were oh so deeply lodged in crusty old fart-hood.

I hadn’t thought of Columbo as being from my generation because back then, my parents as well as people younger than me, shared some of the same frame of reference. We sat in front of the tube and watched McCloud as a family. What happened? How many other pop culture references, which to me are so obvious, are all used up when I’m in the company of people ten or twenty years younger than me?

It sometimes scares me how much I can remember about bad television from my past. With Columbo, for instance, sometimes it only takes me seconds to know…oh…oh…I know, it’s the episode with Johnny Cash as guest bad guy. He plays a singer who commits a murder. Um, Mister Anchovy, who’s this Johnny Cash character? ARRRGGGGHHHH. I said to my friend, I guess if you don’t know Columbo, you don’t know McCloud either? Dennis Weaver? No? Rats.