In this new series, Live Tracks, I’d like to share with you some of my favourite live performances.
When I first heard of John K. Sampson it was as a member of the Canadian punk ensemble Propagandhi—a Winnipeg-based, liberal-minded, politically-charged group of young musicians looking to express their angst while making a difference in the world. To put it lightly. As a kid of, I guess, fourteen themes were largely lost on me but I loved the fast-paced, high-energy sound that the band managed and despite not really grasping what they were singing about a song that sounded like someone reading a textbook at an extremely rapid rate was nothing short of awesome.
Sampson ended up leaving Propagandhi, mellowing out, and putting together The Weakerthans— a Winnipeg-based, liberal-minded, poetically-poignant group of slightly older musicians looking to make good music and tell interesting stories. Occasionally, in concert, Sampson will revisit some of his old Propagandhi material and make it sound great. In this case, Sampson takes a high-tempo song and makes it sound awesome as a simple guitar and voice combination. In its stripped-down form, its the simplistic melody and the lyrics that really stand out. It’s Sampson’s overwhelming talent as a musician, I think, that really shows. Check it out, and enjoy.
OK, so I have a more than passing interest in the paranormal. So a new television show like Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files is going to, in the least, pique my interest for a few episodes. But can it hold it beyond that?
In my experience, paranormal TV runs the gamut from something very scientific and research-based like MonsterQuest (featuring actual tenured academics) to something more akin to a couple of guys running around in the dark without flashlights cursing and swearing to appear cool—like Extreme Paranormal. (For Extreme Paranormal, picture the Jackass franchise done with ghosts.) Somewhere in the middle, is a balanced show like Ghost Hunters, one of the original and most successful series in this genre. A show in which two plumbers and a rag-tag group of other investigators set out to use what they deem to be scientific tools to track and record ghosts. They’ve been doing it for a long time, seven years now, and they’re honest in their pursuit whether or not the “science” they use is altogether scientific.
Late yesterday afternoon word came out that Munir Sheikh, the head of Statistics Canada the body responsible for the national census, had canceled a town hall meeting, previously scheduled as an information session for StatsCan employees about the scrapped long-form census. The fact that the meeting was canceled at the last minute raised more than a few eyebrows, and we all waited to see what would happen next. Then, later into the night, the news came: Sheikh was resigning his position.
Shad is a Toronto-based, Kenyan-born rapper who I have become absolutely obsessed with. Why? Because he is absolutely dripping in talent, and positivity. His lyrics are insightful, intelligent, and awesome.
His latest single, which samples from the Lynn Anderson song Rose Garden, is nothing short of incredible and I applaud the raw wisdom that he seems unashamed of sharing in his music. And, he’s hilarious as evidenced by some of his earlier material (which you should also have a look at).
I love it, the debate surrounding the long form census. It’s exciting, it’s engaging, and if nothing else it’s great to see (and hear) that this kind of discussion can be had in this great country of ours. It can be, right?
If you’ve read my blog for more than a little bit then you know that I try my best to present a non-partisan view of things. Really, I try, but sometimes honesty can be mistaken for partisanship, I think, if you read me the wrong way. For example, I could say something like, “Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk,” and you could mistake that for a pot shot at our Prime Minister. But, truly, I’m not one for pot shots and when I say something like that I mean it as more of a fact than an opinion. The sentence following that one will be an opinion, but that’s more obvious. And why is this so important? Because I believe that a discussion about scrapping the mandatory long form census should be one that transcends politics altogether, let me tell you why.
Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk. I don’t necessarily agree with his style, but that’s why I didn’t vote for him. Still, while a lot of the time this kind of control factor can be nothing more than bothersome for policy makers and politicians it can be, at times, detrimental to our national health and identity. There are examples of this in the national housing strategy, our international agreements, and key pieces of criminal justice legislation. Harper has the final say and sometimes the only say, it seems. Discussion be damned, and for certain issues this simply does not fly; in my opinion the long form census is one of those issues.
This Guest Track is courtesy of A. Mantle, a sojourner, a scholar and a string band enthusiast. If you’d like to contribute to the Guest Track series, send an e-mail to guesttrack@thecorch.com.
One doesn’t always think to search for truth in a small wooden shack amidst the company of two shaggy white men and a black panting dog. Yet The Avett Brothers’ acoustic take on their song 10,000 Words proves that this isn’t a hopeless pursuit.
I first started listening to The Avett Brothers during my initial fascination with string bands last year. As an eMusic article explained to me, “A string band isn’t exactly cut-and-dried… generally speaking, it [refers to] groups whose foundations are in the old-time music of the ’20s and ’30s, before the early heyday of commercial country music and the subsequent rise of rock & roll.” In my experience, this usually means at least three things: acoustic instrumentation, vocal harmonization, and lots of twang.
And so we have the musical backdrop for the timeless wisdom of 10,000 Words:
Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different. We love to talk about things we don’t know about.
How often I feel the need to pontificate about how others choose to live their lives and to act as if I had a privileged perspective that they were not privy to. When I act this way, I know I play the fool and talk on things I don’t know about.
The Epistle of James, written nearly 2,000 years ago also dealt with similar concerns when the author reminded his recipients that they should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry (James 1:19b). Because The Avett Brothers remind me that in the age of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, musicians might still have something intelligent to say, 10,000 Words is one of my favourite tracks.
Rarely do I agree with the kind of people who comment on YouTube videos but in this case user slipismm has put it quite poignantly,
“[To] those 83 people that missed the like button… may God have mercy on your soul.”
He was referring, of course, to Regina Spektor’s music video for the song Us. And his sentiment is spot on.
There are so many things that make this song a favourite track that I don’t know where to begin. It’s infectious, to start. It’s frenzied pace, coupled with Spektor’s absolutely acrobatic vocals results in a down right stunning sound. She sings, “it’s contagious” and she’s right—and do you think she knows it?
I get the feeling that Spektor’s pop sensibilities are so finely attuned that she can manage to do nothing more than bang a bunch of keys and make it sound like a beautiful work of art. But that’s the beauty of a song like Us, I think. It’s really uncomplicated, perhaps even unmusical at times, but it sounds great and it works so well. It’s lyrics, a kind of end-of-the-world love theme, fit perfectly with the collapsing and expanding sound of the piano and her voice. I love it and anyone that doesn’t, I’m certain, must be already dead on the inside.
