I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PRETTY GREEN-“I’ll Follow the Rain” (Moose: The Compilation, 1991).

Back in the 1990s, it was common to buy a compilation or soundtrack or even a band’s album based on one song.  Only to then find that you didn’t really like anything else on it.

Maybe that single sounded like nothing else on the album.  Maybe the movie was almost entirely one genre, but they had that one song that you liked over the credits.  Or maybe the compilation was for something but a song you really wanted was on it, too.

With streaming music that need not happen anymore.  Except in this case.

I bought this compilation, used, recently exclusively for one song, Rheostatics’ “Woodstuck.”  It’s a goofy song and this is the only place you can get the studio version.  The actual compilation was not well documented, so I didn’t know what the other bands on it might sound like.  It turns out to be a compilation for Ontario based Moose Records which specialized in Rock, Folk, World & Country.  They put out another compilation in 1992 and that’s all I can find out about them.

This song was written and performed almost entirely by Ed Blocki, who I guess is Pretty Green (he has other people play violin and cello).

Blocki is (and maybe was) a producer.  This song sounds so much like a ton like a 1970s folk recording, which must be intentional.

It’s really slow and mellow.  I have to assume it was written as a reaction song to The Beatles’ “I’ll Follow the Sun,” there’s just too much similarity.

[READ: July 1, 2019] “The Space Between Trees”

The July/August issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue. This year’s issue had two short stories, a memoir, three poems and a fifteen year reflection about a novel as special features.

I really enjoyed this short story–the way it juxtaposed two very different jobs.  But the ending was really abrupt and unsatisfying.  There was so much going on that I hope it is an excerpt from a novel because as short story it falls flat.

Benjamin Hertwig is a poet.  This might explain why the language of the story is so good, and maybe also while it feel so elliptical.

This is also yet another story about people (specifically a young woman) planting trees in Canada for a summer job.  I have read at least four stories about this profession and it makes it seem like this is a very common thing that most young Canadian try (and quickly give up because it sucks) at least once in their life.

The conditions are terrible.  You stay in a crappy motel, the people you work with are dirty (and so are you).  But it’s a way to make a lot of money.  In this story she makes fifteen cents a tree and plants about 3,000 a day.

Michaela was the only woman in a crew of men. When she first joined she was terrible–planting the fewest trees of anyone.  But soon, after several people had dropped out, she got the rhythm of it.  And a week or so later she was planting as many if not more trees than anyone else.

Michaela was excellent at defying expectations.  Years earlier in basic training, her fellow soldiers felt threatened by her.  Her leaders assumed she would fail out but she ended up top third in her class.

There is a wonderful moment about her family–Mennonites who were teachers or farmers.  They were shocked that their daughter joined the Army: “as though they had planted potatoes in their garden in the spring and corn had sprouted up in the summer.”

She joined the Army in 2006 because of Captain Nicola Goddard–the first female Canadian solider to die in combat.

She spent time in Kandahar.  She knew some of the locals.  She was aware of the ones who died while she was there.

The deadly monotony of Kandahar is balanced against the monotony of tree planting–sometimes she would flash back to scenes she would never forget.

The ending of the story conflates the two experiences a little too much and little too quickly.  I loved where it was going and even how it got there, but the ending kind of gets lost which is a shame because the writing is wondeful.