I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DANKO JONES-Never Too Loud (2008).

Danko Jones is a hard and fast rock band, with a one track mind and a straightforward sound.  They deal in excessive cliches (album titles include: Sleep is the Enemy, We Sweat Blood, Never Too Loud, etc) and play mostly short songs.  And despite all that apparent negativity, I enjoy them beyond reason.

Their first full length was a compilation of their early EPs, and it was full of outrageously short songs about big dumb sex (a bunch of the tracks were under two minutes).  Danko’s voice sounds a but like Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, to give a frame of reference.

Never Too Loud, despite the name, actually changes their style a little bit.  He throws in a ballad (!), and he’s got one song “Take Me Home” which reminds me an awful lot of Kid Rock.   And songs like “King of Magazines” and “Forest for the Trees” similarly slow the pace down (Forest for the Trees is even 6 minutes long!).  But despite all that, Danko still rocks hard.

And yes, I admit that lyrically the disc isn’t ground breaking (“Still in High School” tends to sum up a lot of the themes here), but I don’t care.  Sometimes it’s fun to just rock out.  And Danko rocks with the best of them.

[READ: October 14, 2009] City of Glass

Douglas Coupland is from Vancouver.  And this book (and the revised edition) is like a love letter to the city (although he describes it as a personalized guide book).

When he first published this in 2000, Coupland had been experimenting with things other than novels, but this was the first book he released that was primarily photography (not his own, mind you).  He mixes photos of Vancouver landmarks as well as stock photos to illustrate the varied and multicultural life of Vancouver.

He also includes alphabetically titled texts in which he writes about a paragraph or two or three about the topic.  Most of these are personal insights into the city.  It’s not a work of fiction or even a collection of essays.  It’s more like love notes about this city.

Topics include: Backlot North (how B.C. comes after only Hollywood and New York as a primary filming location); Cantonese (the influx of Asians to Vancouver is astonishing); Greenpeace (founded there); See-Throughs (it’s not named the city of glass for nothing); Whales (there’s a special connection with the beluga–which I got to see when I was there) and of course, Grow-Ops (Vancouver has some of the strongest pot on the continent).

I’ve had the fortune of going to Vancouver and staying with a friend for a few days.  Getting the insider treatment of this cool city was certainly wonderful. I went to a number of interesting places, all right around the time that this book first came out.  I don’t really remember the details of my trip anymore, so I’m not sure if I went to many of the places specifically mentioned (except for Grouse Mountain of course), but I like to think I got to see a lot of the excitement.

Gushing about a city you went to on vacation is kind of silly, but I feel that Coupland’s excitement is infectious.  This quote more or less says it all: He writes that he spent his “twenties scouring the globe thinking there had to be a better city out there, until it dawned on [him] that Vancouver is the best one going.”  This book may not convince you of that, but it may get a few extra people to visit.

The revised edition doesn’t really change all that much.  A few new categories are added (The Big One, The Storm, Top 100 Surnames, North Shore Mountain Biking).  But then a few categories are removed from the first book too (and a few are in the new book but in different locations or with different titles).  The pictures all look a little brighter and cleaner, which is nice.  The biggest change comes in a few of the pieces (many are left untouched) in which he either updates an issue or changes its focus somewhat.

I was a little disappointed that not every section was updated.  Not because every section should be updated, but for instance, there’s one (Wildlife) in which he said (in 2000), “Last summer a black bear cub ambled down my driveway….”  It’s the same in the 2009 book.  Surely he could have just changed that to “A few years ago,” right?

So, if you’ve got the first edition, I’m not sure that it’s worth getting the revised edition   The pictures are better, sure, but I’m not sure that’s enough to justify the purchase.  If you don’t have either, I’d suggest getting the new one (although you can get a used first version at Amazon for about $3).

Either way, if you like Coupland (the writing is fairly short, but it is full of Coupland’s wit) or if you like Vancouver, this book is definitely a keeper.

The revised edition was also useful because it clued me in to the fact that Coupland has made some films (I knew about the series JPod, but did not know he had made a documentary (Souvenir of Canada) and a feature film (Everything’s Gone Green).  So thanks for that.  Now if only I can find them down here.