Today's Weather

The coast is windy, says the news. At first it was a local story: record low barometric pressure, a "bomb cyclone" made up of hurricane force winds and rain. A couple hours later it led off the national news. Now it is an international story with reports of an "atmospheric river" so powerful that it has turned San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge from a work of transportation infrastructure into the world's largest wind chime.

How many MFA students will be out there today capturing its sounds for future projects -- from those eager to catalogue its tones (the minimalist) to those (expressionists) who need only a three-to-five second clip to abstract into something even further removed from its source? 

Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987)

Iris Green describes her daughter Jacqueline du Pré (b.1945) as having a childhood "like any other [middle-class Anglo-Celtic] English child," until the age of four, when she heard a cello on the radio and fell for its sound. As is often the case, music lessons are imposed on children; but not on Jacqueline du Pré, who, despite her prodigious talent, remained like any other middle-class Anglo-Celtic English child -- except when playing the cello.

Jacqueline du Pré in Portrait (BBC/Opus Arte/Allegro Films, 2004) is both a documentary of du Pré's short yet exuberant life (she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973, and passed away in 1987) and a document of two of her most notable performances: first with the New Philharmonia Orchestra -- Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor Op. 85 -- in 1967 (conducted by her prodigious and equally young husband, Daniel Barenboim); the second with Beethoven's Piano Trio No. 5 in D major Op. 70 No. 1 (The Ghost) in 1970 (with Barenboim on piano and Pinchas Zukerman on violin).

Watching du Pré and Barenboim together, at work and at play, is its own sweet music. Yes, Barenboim comes off as a man with some aggressively conservative ideas about gender relations, but he is quick to acknowledge du Pré's powers as an artist and a human being, and he appears to articulate these powers in a way that pleases her. As for du Pré, who has a good three inches on her short, barrel-chested husband, it occurred to me that in considering someone to share your life and music with, what could be a better fit than with someone shaped like the very instrument you fell for all those years ago?

A First Verse from The Lost Songs of Christmas

It was felt that it is time to find some lost songs of Christmas. And so, between Xmas and NewYear's, I sat down to write one, invent its discovery -- a page of chords and lyrics typed up on an old typewriter (which I have access to), on some yellowed acidic paper (which I have access to), tucked inside an old Look magazine (which I have in my possession). "Look!" I would say, opening the magazine to where the song lay nestled in the manger of its pages. "The last line of the first verse is right out of [Alexandro Jodorowsky's] The Holy Mountain!" And you might nod, take it further, suggest that "it could have been written by [cast member Kris] Kristofferson." And from there we would talk about (Dennis) Hopper's The Last Movie (1971), the influence Jodorowsky had on him (the editing of Easy Rider, 1969), and drugs, of course, how we used to take them, and how they used to take us on such excellent adventures, long before that adjective became associated with that (plural) noun.

Sugar Mountain (1965)

From Joni Mitchell's introduction to her song "The Circle Game" on the album You Can Close Your Eyes:  

"In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock'n'roll band ... he had just newly turned 21 [20, actually], and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favourite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you're over 21 [19] you couldn't get back in there anymore. So he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it's one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn't play in this club anymore. 'Cause he was over the hill ... so he wrote this song that was called "Oh to live on sugar mountain" which was a lament for his lost youth ... and I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It's called "The Circle Game".

"The longer it lasted the more notes I found."

Karlheinz Stockhausen speaking on his composition Mantra (1973).

Reunions

When Tom whispered to me in August that Slow (1985-1987) would be performing at the mid-November opening of the new Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, my eyes widened -- "Cool!" -- but I assumed it would be a surprise one-off.

Then there I was, at the Vorizo Cafe on Hornby Island in early November, looking for something non-electronic to read with my borscht, when I saw a copy of the Georgia Straight -- with Slow on the cover. And then last week, Taras Grescoe's email on behalf of the Globe and Mail asking what I remember of the band, but also of Vancouver.

As it turns out, this past month has seen a number of articles on Slow, who have officially reunited. Not only is the band writing songs and preparing a tour, its members are speaking clearly and critically about how Vancouver has -- and hasn't -- changed in the intervening years, that what is bearing bad apples today was but a neoliberal seedling in the early-1980s.

Below is a 1990 unplugged performance by the last reunited band to get my attention, the Cowsills (Barry, John, Paul and Susan), with John "Hal" Mackie on drums.



Here is what the Cowsills looked like lip-synching to the same song 21 years earlier (and yes, I am sure that is partly why the late Billy parted ways with the band to do his own beautiful thing):

Looking At a Baby (1966)

A song by the Vancouver band The Collectors.