WWW of Spin Turlock #10: Life in Grande Prairie, Part Deux

Some notes on this mockumentary: since it was filmed, The York Hotel has been put up for sale, and the City of Grande Prairie has put in a bid for the old place.


Simply Saucer/Crawlin Kingsnake guitarist and occasional sound guy for HECFI Stephen Foster correctly identified Duke's (where Shirley & I saw Shane Chisholm - see G-Mole #9) as the venue where the Killjoys played in 1998. Every touring Hamilton musician apparently has a story about Grande Prairie...

I should also point out that we live many blocks away from the 2-blocks max urban core of GP, whew!

WWW of Spin Turlock #9: Stuff I like...

Editorial dsiclaimer: G-Mole does not endorse using Bud Lite as a mixer, or "straight up", for that matter

These things, in the words of the hardly-lamented Chester, "make my life /a little bit brighter"

Greydyn Gatti hosts the 1919RadioZone program, which was (is?) originally broadcast at an ungodly hour on CKLN-FM in Toranna, ON. Hep time travellers can opt for the downloadable podcast version, now in its lucky 7th edition. There's lots of groovy six-tease garage, pop, and psych sides to be found here, but the hosts have the innate good sense to mix it up with 70s disco, kraut, noise & punk/early hardcore sides. His sometime-sidekick Toranna artist, Chrystal Snowden contributes materially to this show. (We shared oxygen once, but have never actually met, per se). Recommended.

Most of you knew I hosted a golden-age C&W radio show before I permanently put the accent on the "w" & relocated myself here. If you miss that kinda action, why don't you point your browser here...Janice has the goods. Really.

Another blog I religiously follow - and so should you - is the Hound Blog. Put together by long-time WFMU-FM host and Kicks magazine contributor, James Marshall, it will teach you important things about music, life, and how to cuss.

There's not a whole lot of live music to be heard in GP...not in the above-radar range venues anyway.. but when there is, Shirley & I try and show up. We enjoyed, for example, Shane Chisholm's recent show at Duke's

Shane plays a doghouse bass fashioned out of a 1970 vintage gas tank (shades of Washboard Hank, with whom Shane worked with!)and tours the C&W cover circuit, but manages to work his own material in. Judging by Hitchhiking Buddha, his latest release, it's pretty engaging. Not just another pretty hat, Buddha goes nationwide in Canada through Fontana North on March 23, 2010..

Lately, I've been stoked on what they used to call "red eyes": i.e. beer topped off with Clamato. It helps make budget beers last longer and go down smoother.

And how are YOU? bf.mowat@gmail.com

WWW of Spin Turlock #8: "This is only a test..."

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WWW of Spin Turlock #7: Laissez-faire le Bon Temps Roulet..

In light of Scott Brown's recent election to the U.S. Senate, here's a couple of reminders to our American readers why you can't laissez-faire no mo'.

1) You can't use over-mortgaged properties as equity
&

2) You can't expect Wall Street to police itself

Well, that's my political commentary for the day. Cosmo poster boy beats out Camelot. That's show biz, er, U.S politics, for ya. I just hope the saucy pic boosts G-Mole's daytime female readership. In the words of Cadillac Bill: "Ratings"

And speaking of show-biz & popular music, here's a good encapsulation of What Went Fown in the Aughts. You didn't miss much, apparently. Thanks to Robert "Robot" Hull for this one.

If you haven't already seen it, here's a 1988 vintage interview with Dave "Rave" Desroches, the former singer/guitarist for the Shakers & Teenage Head . Originally printed in the analogue pages of FFanzeen, I had forgotten ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbout this piece, which 20+ years later, makes a good companion piece to Liz Worth's Treat Me Like Dirt book.

More recently, FFanzeen editor Robert Barry Francos has been musing on life in his newly-adopted home of Saskatoon

And speaking of New York State of Minds, two last things:

1)NY Doll David Johansen appears on the "New York Outer Boroughs" (originally aired September 7, 2009) episode of Anthony Bourdain\s: No Reservations TV program, extolling the virtues of a Staten Island Tiki Bar.

1) I saw the Sam Mendes film Away We Go. It was funny in spots: a 30-something couple, expecting there first child, travel over North America to find a "home". En route, they meet "people with peculiar tastes" in Madison, Arizona,Miami and Montreal.
The latter city's adventure features a pole dancing sequence involving The Velvet Underground's "Oh Sweet Nothing" , one of my all-time fave music pieces on the planet.

The ending is kinda pat: hey, I wish I could come "home" to a ready-to-occupy mansion. One thing I noticed, though : put a beard & glasses on John Krasinski & he looks a LOT like former Tell The Divers bass guy, D Croz. I think that's about it...

Picture; John Krasinski, cleverly disguised as D Croz

WWW of Spin Turlock #6: "Too Many Cooks.."

Those glam n' giddy overachievers, The Kewpies are at it again! This time, they offer up a tribute to Frances Hannah Kerr & Teenage Head
with their version of Picture My Face, featuring the vocal stylin's of Fox Fiesta! Can a full length LP from the lads be far behind?

Some people I have found on the tube and on the net:


Anthony Bourdain provides a welcome contrast to the sometimes hoop n' pony aspects of the Food Network. Plus, he's had cool peeps like Nick Tosches on his show, although you could see Nicky visibly wince when the topic of Sinatra came up.

Speaking of food giants, why doesn't Peter Zaremba have his own show? That cunning sommelier's Busybuddy blog is a winsome blend of rock n' grub tour diary.

I am really happy that ex-Bonzo Dog Band, Monty Python & oh, ok, Rutle guy Neil Innes is touring again. I've said this before, but the young Innes is a perfect doppelganger for CFMU-FM Program Director James Tennant

Look,see for your yourselves! Both of 'em do the facial stubble thing...

Bonzo dog doodah band - urban spaceman
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WWW of Spin Turlock #5: "All of My Friends Were There"

I received my copy of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk In Toronto & Beyond 1977 - 1981 right before Christmas (thanks Ralph!).
Liz Worth, the author of this surprisingly hefty tome - it clocks in at 373 pages - had been working on this for a couple of years now, talking to the handfull of people who made up the scene back then; most of whom I know and many of whom I count as friends.

Worth accurately captures their voices and juxtaposes them in a way that lets YOU be the judge of What Really went Down. In fact, her own voice rarely appears in the book: there's a brief intro, a list of characters, and the clips start rolling.
And that's dandy for those people who were involved, and fine for the fans of the form. I could see, say, people like John Armstrong or Lindsay Hutton eating this stuff up. They'd have an indoors field day with this, (especially true in Hutton's case: as Scotland is not equipped to deal with Canadian type winters. I digress...).If you own say, 5 - 6 singles from this time and place, it puts a face to the sound.

And if you're a resident of Hamilton, Ontario you might be sussed by the presence of of Teenage Head, Simply Saucer, & The Forgotten Rebels, the former two acts cast as important predecessors to the scene. My presemce in the book is minimal: by the time I became an active participant (80 -81), that scene was winding down. I heard about all this stuff while attending a rural high school, mainly through Peter Goddard's columns on the Toronto Star, but Queen Street in Kincardine is a looong way from Queen street Toronto.

Which leads me to the next point: I'm not sure how this would work for people who weren't involved. A couple of pages of historical context from the author, a discography and a time line might have helped.

I guess you could just read it for the anecdotes sake. There are lots of great stories, even if some of them are not substantiated. Steve Leckie's alledged demands for Kentucky Fried Chicken during a last-ditch attempt to get him the Big Recording Deal comes to mind, as does any story involving Crazy Harry.

Finally, I 've always wondered why people used to think I was in the Diodes. Thanks to the full-colour black & white photos in the book, I understand now....whew!

Photo: Paul Robinson, cleverly disguised as the author, kneeling with the Diodes

WWW of Spin Turlock #4: Santa Blog

The truth can be told now.
I was Santa Claus.
For six days, consisting of five hour shifts, I was a department store Santa Claus. I had the red suit with white trim, the theatrical faux beard and belly, the works.
I got the gig through the local temp work agency. I was to be the back-up for the regular guy, an elderly man, suffering from a seasonal bout of bronchial pneumonia.

During the job interview, we went through all the basics: the legal pitfalls of the position, the importance of a good entrance and exit, and the diaphragm mechanics involved in invoking a hearty “ho, ho, ho”.
My work consisted of posing for photos @ $20 CDN a pop with infants, toddlers, children, teens and fully growed-up adults. Generally, I would arrive 30 minutes prior to the shift start to don the jolly apparel, and get said gear visually inspected. And you needed to get said gear inspected, because once you had the beard on, you could see s!@t below said faux-facial hair. Once engaged, it was the photographers’ job to adjust my costume on a PRN (i.e. as needed) basis.
Generally, the clients would come in two waves. The first was the noon to 2 p.m. rush, consisting of moms with their infants and toddlers, and teens and grown-ups on the their lunch. The second wave would consist of mainly of parents with older, school-age kids.

Here’s how it broke down:

1) Infants : three weeks to ten months. This was easy. You prop the kid up, the photographer distracts it with sleigh bells or “peek-a-boo” manoeuvres and snap, bang, boom , you’re done. For the record, I did not get vomited, urinated or defecated on.

2) Toddlers: 10 months to 2.5 years. It gets trickier at this point. Generally kids get either separation or stranger – or both – anxiety. If there were no other siblings present, generally we suggest one of the parents pose sitting on the arm of the chair with the child on their lap. This worked about 60% of the time, but we still had our share of screamers. And, if you have one screamer in front, you’re pretty much assured of setting off a chain reaction with any other toddlers in the line-up. A sanguine disposition is required for
this job.

3) Children 2.5 – 8 years generally believe in Santa and more than happy to lay on him their hopes, dreams, artistic endeavours and generally lengthy wish lists. Girls still like Barbie dolls and boys still like Hot Wheels cars, but DSI, Xbox, and Lego sets are popular this year. The latter item is, by the way, considerably more hi-tech than what we were used to. At this age, though, the photographers have to coax smiles and attentiveness, but that’s not my concern.

4) Teens/Adults: At a certain point in one’s life, Santa moves from being a physical reality to a conceptual concept. It is at this point things get complicated. For reasons which are not immediately apparent to me, packs of young teenage girls (12 -15) seemed to think it was cute to get a photo done w/Santa. Not so much with the males: although we did get one Gangsta Santa pose done.

5) Fully Grown Adults The very odd occasion. And I do mean odd:e.g. the weed-scented dude who, when asked what HE wanted for Christmas, replied:

‘I told my ex-wife I wanted a Bangkok whore’ (promounced hoo-er)

Low point: being asked if Santa was “white”.
Sad point: being asked to help make a child’s mommy better.

Quotable Quotes & Their Rebuttals:

“Wouldn’t you like it better if was I naughty?”
“Um, I’d get trouble with Mrs. Claus for that”
“Santa, can I get a Ferrari?”
“Well, I couldn’t fit THAT on the sleigh , now...”
"Santa, I don't think you're real!"
"You have a computer? Google my name and Virginia in quotes"

Had a quiet Christmas with Shirley . We have enough leftovers to last several weeks, and we probably don't have to eat for the next few days.

Next issue: "All Of My Friends Were There" - A review of Liz Worth's new book, "Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Toronto & Beyond Punk Rock"