I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CAJUN RAMBLERS-“Venez à Louisiane” (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 you didn’t know, 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.

Cajun Ramblers’ music sounds like it should–a cajun flare in a bouncy two-step (as the lyrics even say).  There’s even a verse in French.  This song seems so un-Canadian but that’s because Peter Jellard, an English musician, was busking in Paris and heard a recording of the Balfa Brothers, leading to a life long infatuation with Cajun music.  After a six-week trip to Louisiana he founded the Cajun Ramblers who performed a mix of Cajun and Zydeco around Toronto.  He was also in Swamperella

[READ: July 12, 2019] “Something True”

This is the story of a woman returning home.  She has been in Seattle visiting her daughter Wendy.  It had been fun but exhausting, sightseeing everywhere.  She was not looking froward to what she had to return to.

She had had a health scare.  The doctor assured her that she was fine–nothing to worry about–but she was shaken.  The doctor could sense that she was very upset so he invited her for a drink.  And the he called her again the following week to go to an exhibition on Buddhist sculptures.

But she was a sixty year-old married woman, she couldn’t imagine going on a date.  Officially, it wasn’t a date but how could it not be?

After a few more outings she told her husband that she was in love with someone else.

He was upset but accepting.  He wanted to know what happened next.  She didn’t know.

The doctor suggested that they take a trip together.  Sex was implied but unspoken as they had not even really touched each other. So far, they’ve just talked and appreciated art and movies together.

She told her husband that she was going away with the doctor and he accepted it.

His quiet acceptance of the situation was mature and fully acknowledge her autonomy as an individual, and she despised him for it.

When she returned, he said she needed to make a decision.  He looked terrible–hadn’t slept, hadn’t shaved, hadn’t been eating.  She told him she was going to visit their daughter.  When she returned, she would have a decision.

She once loved her husband the way she now loved the doctor.  She knew she wouldn’t love the doctor this way forever so she shouldn’t base her decisions on infatuation.  Was this maturity or wisdom?

When she arrived home, she had made a decision.  As she looked at her husband, she felt he was like a stranger.  And he was something of a stranger lately.  But he also looked better than he had–leaner, fitter. She wondered if she could love this stranger again.

This was from the novel Turbulence which I’m, quite intrigued by because I felt hat this excerpt was a complete story in itself.  I’ll have to look for the novel.