Crow-Cat: Producer of Hapless Weblogs, Extraordinaire

Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Listening Tto: Proud to be Canadian by the Arrogant Worms.

I first encountered the Worms at the Salmon Arm Roots & Blues Fest. I must say they're hilarious. Possibly my favourite thing about them is the amount of Canadian songs they do. (Proud to be Canadian, Canada is Really Big, Rocks & Trees, the War of 1812, Forgive Us, We're Canadian, The Toronto Song, The Last Saskatchewan Pirate, among others.) You don't get many real Canadian-centric songs around.

.... Otherwise, my head is blank. I can't think of a single thing to write. Beyond possibly more rantings on Great Big Sea. Maybe it's school: I'm heading back to real classes this morning, and it's sapping my head already.

Hey, I know, I'll relate the dream I had this morning. Not that I can really remember all of it. Waking dreams tend to be pretty foggy.

It was set on an island, somewhat resembling a hybrid between Pender Island and the area around Mattick's farm (very leafy and with a golf course nearby). There was a mini-van resembling a large white jelly bean, and ... I think I was walking around with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don't ask me where the hell he came from. I remember thinking "Christ, I'm on a friggin date with this guy, and I want it to end NOW!" because, on a whole, he was really boring.

There was a lot of bantering and wandering around (I think at one point we ended up somewhere that looked a bit like Coombs), then the damn dream, which was really getting tedious by that time, took a definite upswing.

Arnold was ditched, and somehow I ended up in a huge tour bus, rather like the Laidlaw Mr Hagen hired to take us all to Seattle for the plane to California. I mean, this thing was a monster tour bus. The inside was basically like a theatre, complete with a blue-lit stage on which were performing - wouldn't you know it? - the Arrogant Worms.

The bus was being driven by an insane little driver man whom I think must have been a dream rendition of my band teacher, Mr Emde. He kept pulling strange stunts and yelling at me when I tried to make him stop. He culminated in driving straight at a cliff (dry grass and crumbly dry soil like you'd get on the edge of some Garry oak meadows up here), ramming the bus right into this spindly little pine tree. I was thinking, "Oh my GODS, we're all gonna DIE! Argh argh argh," when, miraculously, the tree held. Psychopath Mr Emde promptly put the bus into reverse, drawing us precariously back onto solid ground.

Then we got back to the Arrogant Worms, who hadn't been the least bit perturbed by our multiple near-death experiences. I think I saw Darrell somewhere in the crowd.

Then, and I'm not sure how it happened, the scene suddenly changed. I was on a coastline of the island, in a marina. Great Big Sea were there, apparently to film some footage for some upcoming music video. To do this, they had to row across the bay (or the strait - not sure which it was) in a white rowboat. Somehow, I got in there with them, and got to enjoy the sea breeze and the cold spray and watching them do all the work.

On the other side, the rowboat having been abandoned, we all went into their trailer (do they even have a trailer?). Somewhere in there, I came across one of my own charcoal drawings, hanging on the wall. While I gawped at it, wondering what the hell one of my own works of art was doing hanging in this trailer, it started to move, jerkily, as if animated by an amateur.

... and about that time, the cat jumped off my bed, waking me up.

I dream like a friggin loony.

Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Listening to: Nothing. Listening to the B'ys right now gives me a strange urge to practice the guitar.

This one's going to be about Great Big Sea. Entirely about Great Big Sea. If you're not cool with that, leave right now. Oh, and don't forget to tell me your name, so I can shun and deride you for the rest of your miserable, stunted, and quite short, life.

I finally got to see my heroes in person. I took a two hour ferry ride from Pender, drove nearly five hundred kilometres through sweltering, dusty, ugly highway, and sat around for twelve hours in the friggin Interior sun, losing all my body fluids in the process. Yeah, okay, so my mom was the one who did the driving. I suffered, too.

The venue was the otherwise rather boring Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival. We got there half an hour before the gates opened officially, so we were able to put our blanket down not twenty feet from the stage. It could have been closer, of course, but a lot of inconsiderate jagoffs from the previous two days (it was a three day festival, and the B'ys were the last act) had already snapped up the closest spots.

I'll say this for the SABRF: it was small. If there's one thing I really fucking hate about singular concerts, it's the size of the crowd. I despise being choked into a sweaty, jostling, screaming mob smelling of beer and weed, made up mainly of people who like to bounce up and down in one spot and call it dancing. It means no one around me is really taking the trouble to appreciate the music, and they're stopping me from doing it as well, which makes me want to head for the nearest firearms store (and there were probably a few in Hicktown) and loot it. Oh, the 'fest had its share of leaping morons, but they were relegated to the side furthest from where I was sitting, so they didn't bother me much. The people on blankets had the best view, right in front of the stage. Hah, take that, jackasses.

There were, of course, a few people who bugged me. There always are. About eight folks situated around us were smoking, and how they all managed to do it upwind of me is a mystery, pure and simple. I couldn't help feeling rather smug while I was choking and glaring at them. Here in Victoria, it'd never have been acceptable to fill your hapless neighbours' lungs with your poisonous emissions while they can't do anything to get away from you. We're a bunch of conservative little tightwads over here on the coast. We really are.

The boys came onstage after Alberta Adams ("The Queen of Blues in Detroit"), at nine p.m. They pranced on to flashing lights and the fiddle part from Donkey Riding. Right then, I must admit, the sight of them was so holy wonderful (I think I was a tad drunk, what with the dehydration and mild sunstroke) that even I abandoned my usual method of silent appreciation and screamed as orgasmically as the rest of the crowd. I did my best from there on in to soak them up as much as possible, but I think I was a bit too busy making a spectacle of myself. I'm sure I outscreamed every other person in the audience as least twice. I kept doing this weird ululation that would rise up a split second before everyone else joined in, and I think it rather freaked Alan out. Maybe he though there was a female coyote in the crowd.

If you're bored of my blather already, I'll summarise the concert before I really go into detail, just with one happy sentence.

They're even more amazing live.

Really. Séan has a crewcut now and I harbour a terrible suspicion that Alan has bleached his hair (I don't know whether he did or not, but it looked that way in the lights), but they were amazing. Their voices are still ringing in my head, and the performance was four days ago.

I'm afraid they didn't entirely live up to their reputation for total spontaneity, however. There was a certain amount of joke cracking ("Oh the night that Paddy Murphy died was the night I'll never forget. All of the girls in Salmon Arm got loaded drunk [bad girls] and they ain't got sober yet ..." "And this handsome guy in the - can I say Hawaiian shirt?" [Séan shakes his head furiously] "Okay, this handsome guy in the Gull Island shirt is Séan McCann ..."), but most of the dialogue was actually pretty much the same as that recorded on the Road Rage album. I know that sounds weird, but it really was. Some of it was changed slightly ("This song, as always, is dedicated to all girls who have bedroom windows ... Especially to all the girls in Salmon Arm who have bedroom windows and no objections to folk singers who play the guitar."), but most was the same. I don't know if they just say the same things with every concert, or if they were shamelessly plugging Road Rage. The music more than made up for it, though, as did seeing them exercising their wit in person.

I learned things about them, too. I observed them, going beyond noting the fact that Darrell looks awesome in that tight black shirt he wears so often, that Séan has good taste in gaudy clothes, and that Alan is the only person I've ever seen who can wear a pumpkin orange t-shirt on stage without looking like a complete jackass. Uh, of course I noted those things, too. But I noticed other things, as well.

Darrell is really a background performer. Oh, he did his share of leaping around and getting down and funky on that bass of his, but I think it was really more to show willing than because he felt inclined to do it. I received the distinct impression that he feels mildly uncomfortable in front of legions of screaming fans; an odd thing for a member of such a popular band. He hardly cracked a smile (does he still have those bunny teeth, I wonder?), and I don't think he even once spoke aloud over the mic. I wonder if he's better in a small, intimate gathering?

He wears a gold ring on his left hand. I don't know whether it's a wedding ring or not, so I shan't speculate (I'm a pathological liar, did you know that?). He's also getting a bit plump, but it doesn't look bad on him. He's nicely padded, 's all.

Bob, my god, that man can concentrate! He spent the entire performance staring out over our heads, clearly not giving a damn about us, with a poker face that could beat Darrell's hands down. Given that he went from fiddle to accordion to tin whistle and back again over the span of about fifteen minutes, I don't blame him one bit.

Oh yeah, and he's short. I mean, he's really short. He's probably about my height (just a skosh shy of 5'6), maybe a little less. His height, therefore, makes his amazing bass voice even more shocking.

Alan apparently lives for the performance. It's clear he loves each and every one of us like a friend, at least until he gets all hungover and exhausted, but I really wouldn't want to see him then. He was the one who did the most talking, for sure. I love his accent.

The man also has a smile as beautiful as his voice. During the very last song (The End of The World As We Know It), I shoved my way to the front (he got us all up and dancing for Ordinary Day, the fourth to last song or something). He was grinning at the entire front row, but I swear to god, he looked into my eyes for a second. His smile widened. It was beautiful, man, beautiful. Probably it was just because I was waving my arm around like a demented windmill, though. (I was carrying our folded chairs under the other one and couldn't use it.)

Séan is almost as avid a performer as Alan. Together they more than make up for Bob's diffidence and Darrell's - shall I call it shyness? His wit flowed long. ([Upon ending The Night Pat Murphy Died] "More songs of death and destruction to come later on in the show.")

I learned many interesting things from watching him about how the bodhran is played. I also learned that he quirks his eyebrows around a lot while he plays. I find that hilarious for some reason. Cute, Séan.

It just hit me at this moment that I really payed more attention to Bob and Darrell's behaviour than to Alan or Séan, though, to tell the truth, my eyes were really glued on the latter two for most of the show. Kind of strange. I could probably build up a huge philosophical debate with myself over the hows and whys of this, but I just don't care to. Right now, anyway. Could be that my neck hurts.

Uh, yeah.

Anyway, let's see if I can remember all the songs they played us. I know they started off with Donkey Riding, then I'm pretty sure they did either Billy Peddle (I think they went right into it, actually), or When I'm Up. The Night Pat Murphy Died was pretty close to the beginning, and Everything Shines and Going Up occupied about the same space in the set as they did on the Road Rage album. Consequence Free came just after or very close to those first songs, as did Boston and St John's and a new song which Alan swore had never been played before an audience before, called The Sea of No Cares. It had me in a gooey melting heap of mush, that is until they started with The Old Black Rum ("This is one of our only protest songs. See, as a folk band, we're supposed to do a lot of songs about drinking. But we don't, of course. And this song, as a matter of fact, protests against drinking ..."). Sometime after that (or it could have been before, my memories probably aren't all that accurate), they threw away their instruments and sang General Taylor. Their voices soared, particularly Séan's. He even changed some of the lyrics. ("Oh a glass of rum for every man [walk 'im a long, John carry him along] And a bloody big barrel for the Shanty-Man! [carry him to his buryin' ground]...") I think Lukey came either directly after General Taylor or at least very close to it, and we got to hear Darrell getting funky on his bass. Mari Mac was in there somewhere, as was I'm a Rover (I think the latter actually came before General Taylor. Whoops. Mind's going). There may have been one or two more, but I can't remember them. Then came Ordinary Day, and they ran off the stage. Then they ran back on and gave us Excursion Round the Bay (got to hear Darrell sing live at last), followed by ... er... well, I have a horrible feeling it might have been Lukey ... Ack. Whatever. Near the very end, Alan went into the last verse of Rant and Roar, and then It's The End of The World As We Know It, when I sneaked up to the front and received the blessing of his smile.

Woo, yeah.

I know now (after extensive research) that the guys no longer announce on stage if they're going to be signing things after the show. Apparently a scary mob scene put a stop to that practice. At the time I thought it was pretty pointless to go tracking them down when probably they just really wanted to get to bed, just to get them to sign a load of sketches that I took of them before and during the show. Rest assured that next time I won't be so polite.

On our way out, I ended up chatting with a few people. The middle-aged woman I spoke with while waiting for Mom to finish her last visit to the port-o-lets seemed sensible enough. Then I ran across a mob of people my own age who were yammering (like friggin gulls) things like, "Darrell's getting chubby!" and, "Ohmigod, Darrell and Bob are married!" and the classic line so associated with my age group: "Fuckfuck blah blah blah fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!" I could have dealt with it, if it weren't for some twit who suddenly burst out with, "Which one's the gay one?" and later on with, "I think Séan and Alan are married to each other, 'cuz, y'know, Darrell and Bob are already married to someone else, yuh huh huh huh."

So ... WHY THE HELL DO YOU CARE, MORON?

The more time I spend away from males my age, the more I find myself viewing them as an alien and above all very brainless species. I can only hope that worrying about a performer's sexual orientation is just another way of expressing their adolescent sexual insecurity, and the little shits'll grow out of it by the time they're thirty five.

As Lex would put it, "Christ up a tree ..."

You're making expressive vomiting sounds into your wastepaper basket, aren't you? So? This is a weblog, for goodness' sake. It's the one place in all the world outside of my head where I'm really allowed to blather on like a mindless idiot.

And the gods know I enjoy it.