I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PLANTS & ANIMALS–Live at Massey Hall (December 1, 2016).

This is the start of the fourth season of Live at Massey Hall.

I didn’t really know any of the six artists, but they have recently begun adding new bands about whom I am pretty excited.

Of course, as with many of these shows, it’s the bands I don’t know which blow me away.

I didn’t know Plants and Animals, but I loved their set.

Drummer Matthew Woodley says that he and Warren Spicer (guitars and vocals) met in Halifax and had a series of bands until they moved to Montreal and met Nick Basque (guitars, keyboards).  They started as an instrumental band and then Warren started to craft words and now we’re a normal singing, dancing and playing band.

“We Were One” opens with feedback and some cool mechanical sounds that come from one of their guitars.

Warren sings kind of quietly and plays acoustic guitar.  Mid way through, the song shifts gears with some big guitar sounds from Nick with a great little autocratic guitar run and riff before a big chord ends it all.

“All of the Time” is a cool moody piece with loud pianos from Nick, rumbling guitars and backing vocals from bassist Josh Toal.

During the break, one of them says, “we like an element of danger… if I go to a show and everything is under control it’s still fun if you like the music, but as an experience if you forget about the music,  the feeling it’s just going to play out…   they’ll get two encores and we’ll go home….  But we’d rather feel, “Oh, but this is cool whats going to happen?” The first band they toured with was Wolf Parade and they had a “wow, anything can happen, they might just stop.”  That’s the kind of show we want to pursue–something that feels a little bit dangerous.

“Flowers” opens with some cool falsetto vocals and then a moody middle section.

“So Many Nights” opens with synths and a cool bass line.  It sounds a bit like Air (French band) with some lengthy guitar solos from the acoustic guitar which sounds very cool.  The slows down and slows further and then builds and build and builds and builds further to a noisy crescendo with them chanting “your feet are heavy, carry on.”

“A L’oree Des Bois” opens with pretty, intertwining guitars while Nick talks about making records in his Québécois accent.

Before the final song they bring out a tiny boy (Aaron Spicer) who sings a quiet song in French–to rapturous applause.

“No Worries Gonna Find Us”  Is a great humping song that repeats the title and “no worries gonna be the boss of my mind.”

They say “you guys are gonna get your faces ripped off by Half Moon Run.”  But it was Plants and Animals that really impressed me so far.

[READ: July 8, 2018]  “Active Shooter”

I always like when David Sedaris talks about visiting with his sister(s).

Sedaris and his sister Lisa were driving “in her toy-size car” to her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

She is bemoaning a woman at Starbucks with a tiny monkey on a leash (in a pink dress).  She wanted to yell at woman, “What do you plan on doing with that thing once you lose interest in it?”

I love that this piece is about guns, but he is willing to throw in a bit about pet owners.

Like a lot of pet owner, I know, Lisa is certain that no one can take care of an animal as well as she can.

But as she was saying of  the woman “It’s a monkey, of course she’s going to lose interest in it” they drove past a firing range called ProShots.

The following afternoon they arrived at their 3 o’clock appointment.  There’s some fun fish-out-of-water business with the Sedaris’ in a strip-mall firing range.  She has never fired a gun before either.  He marvels at purses which a woman could hide a dainty pistol in.  And that

One company makes boxer/brief with a holster in the back, which they call Compression Concealment Shorts but which I would call gunderpants.

They enjoyed “shopping” having no idea how much a gun goes for: “it was like pricing penguins or milking equipment.”

The range owner meets them and is the kind of guy you might want as a neighbor “I shoveled your drive while you were asleep….I just wanted the exercise.”

The owner goes through some basic safety measures (the same ones that the Boy Scouts learn, I was pleased to see:

1. Assume every gun is loaded.

He tells them that no gun can go off if you drop it.

“Absolutely not…almost never.  So go on David, pick up your Glock.”

2. Never point your weapon at another person, unless you intend to kill or wound him

The safety session went over long but losing 5 minutes of range time was fine for them.  Lisa proved to be a natural   Her first bullet hit the target and missed the bullseye of his heart by an inch at most.  Her second shot as even closer.

After praising Lisa the owner turned to David: Mike, now you give it a try. He has been insulted by many things in life.  But the “Pansies Converted Daily” sticker was nothing compared to him being called Mike.

When the session was over the instructor said “we’re a very gun friendly state.”

David tells the instructor about an incident in the U.K. where a man was arrested for shooting someone in self-defense.  The instructor is appalled.  Late David writes:

Where I live now, in the U.K., it’s hard to get a rifle and next to impossible to secure a handgun.  Yet somehow, against all odds, British people feel free.  Is it that they don’t know what they;re missing.  Or is the freedom they feel the freedom of not being shot to death in a classroom or a shopping mall or a move theater

The subtitle for this piece is “a trip to the firing range in a time of gun violence.”  He says just after the class, Sandy Hook happened.  And two months later Pro Shots sent a Valentine’s card

Now with the human piece of shit in the White House, they talk about school shootings and the NRA’s suggestion that teachers be armed.  Lisa asked where he read this and asked if he’d ever heard of The Onion.  She said she read a story there that schools, in order to save money “were going to eliminate the past tense.”  She was furious and called her husband saying it was the last straw–it seemed plausible to her because of all the budget cuts.

Her husband asked how you say money by eliminating the past tense.

David muses, “It’s probably for the best that someone so gullible is no longer in front of a classroom.” But really, why would anyone have thought that anyone would even consider taking this seriously.

That proves to be the refrain of the trump family, for certain.