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Archive for the ‘The Globe and Mail’ Category

The Canadians: Photographs from The Globe and Mail Archives [introduction by Douglas Coupland] (2016)

Posted in Canadian Content, Death, Douglas Coupland, Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians, Motorcycles, Paul Anka, Photo Essays, Photography, Politicians, Racism, Set at School, Sexism, The Crew-Cuts, The Globe and Mail, Work on November 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FOUR LADS-“The Bus Stop Song (A Paper of Pins)” (1956).

Given the content of this book, I thought it might be fun to pick a song that was popular in Canada in, say 1956.

I was pretty fascinated to learn from the Canadian Music Blog:

National charts did not begin in Canada until the launch of RPM Magazine in 1964. Below, from Oh Canada What a Feeling A Musical Odyssey by Martin Melhuish are lists of popular songs in Canada through the 1950s. We have also included big hits by Canadian artists that made the year-end charts of U.S. Billboard Magazine with their year-end positions on the chart.

Some popular artists back then were

Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians: Enjoy Yourself, The Third Man Theme, Dearie, Our Little Ranch House, All My Love, Harbour Lights, Tennessee Waltz. (all 1950) If, Because of You (1951) Crazy Heart, Blue Tango, Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart, Half as Much (1952) Hernando’s Hideaway (1954)

The Four Lads: Moments to Remember (#17) (1955) My Little Angel, A House with Love In It, The Bus Stop Song (A Paper of Pins) (1956) Who Needs You, I Just Don’t Know, Put a Light in the Window (1957) There’s Only One of You, Enchanted Island, The Mocking Bird (1958)

The Crew-Cuts: Earth Angel, Ko Ko Mo, Don’t Be Angry, Chop Chop Boom, A Story Untold, Gum Drop, Angels in the Sky (1955) Mostly Martha, Seven Days (1956)

Paul Anka Diana (#24) (1957) You Are My Destiny, Crazy Love, Let the Bells Keep Ringing, The Teen Commandments (1958) Lonely Boy (#5) Put Your Head On My Shoulder (#12) My Heart Sings, I Miss You So, It’s Time to Cry (1959)

My dad was really into big band music of this ilk and he had records from Guy Lombardo and The Four Lads.  To me the switch from that kind of sound to the style of Paul Anka in 1957/1958 seems like a pretty big shift.  I feel like my dad didn’t like the kind of crooner-y music that Paul Anka sang.  It’s interesting that The Four Lads never rose above a chart position of 52 after 1958.

I chose this particular song because I know  The Four Tops a little.  But mostly because this song is very perplexing.  I had no idea what a “paper of pins” could be.  Turns out the lyrics are a traditional English children’s song.  A “paper of pins” is a sheet of paper with different size pins for sewing.  Why on earth would you give them as a sign of your love?

In the original, the song is a call and response, with the second verse being the rejection of the first verse.

I’ll give to you a paper of pins
And that’s the way our love begins
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me

[The original verse two is :
I don’t want your paper of pins,
If that’s the way that love begins,
For I won’t marry,
Marry, marry, marry
I won’t marry you.]

[The original next verse is not a feathery bed but:
I’ll give to you a silver spoon,
Feed the baby in the afternoon]

I’ll give to you a feathery bed
With downy pillows for your head
If you will marry me, me, me
If you will marry me

After a few more verses, the Four Lads end:

But you don’t want my paper of pins
And you don’t want my feathery bed
You want my house and money instead
That is plain to see

Well, here they are take everything
My house, my money, my wedding ring
And in the bargain I’ll throw in me
If you will marry me

But in the original ends like this

If you give me the keys of the chest,
And all the money that you possess,
Then I will marry,
Marry, marry, marry,
I will marry you.

Ah ha ha, now I see,
You love my money but you don’t love me,
So I won’t marry,
Marry, marry, marry,
I won’t marry you.

So The Four Lads made this song kind of sweet, but also kind of pathetic.  Weird choices.

And why in the world is it called The Bus Stop Song?

[READ: November 17, 2019] The Canadians

This is a book of 79 photos taken from The Globe and Mail archives.  The are not art, they are not beautiful.  They are documentation.  Documentation of a specific time and place–Canada in the late 1950s and early 60s.

These are pictures of regular folks working, doing chores, meeting politicians.  There’s no posing, there’s no “beauty.”  It’s just grim reality.  I grabbed this book because Douglas Coupland wrote the introduction (I’m not sure who wrote the copy for the pictures–each picture has one line of information about it).  The collection was edited by Roger Hargreaves, Jill Offenbeck and Stefanie Petrilli.

I love Coupland’s take on these picture because he looks at things from such a different vantage point than I’m used to.  Like the way he opens the book.  He says that the Canada depicted here pretty much didn’t exist anymore by the time he was born.  He describes Canada then as “a country in which, it would seem, people were born, became teenagers, and then magically at the age of 21, turned into chain-smoking fifty year-olds with undiagnosed cancers.”

He observes that few people smiled and those that did had teeth riddled with nicotine stains.  This is by and large true.  The photos with politicians seem to have the biggest smiles although the young members of Chelecos and Lancers Motorcycle Club certainly mug for the camera. (more…)

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Dave Bidini–Midnight Light: A Personal Journey to the North (2018)

Posted in Athanaskan, Books about writers, Calle 13, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Corb Lund, Culture Shock, Dan Mangan, Dave Bidini, Délı̨nę, Northwest Territories, Dené, Dog Sleds, Domestic Violence, Drinking, First Nations, Folk on the Rocks Festival, Friendship, Funny (ha ha), Homelessness, Humiliation, iLe, Non-fiction, NPR/PRI/PBS, Politicians, Prison, Puerto Rico, Regrets, Relationships, Religion, Research, Revenge, Rheostatics, Rush, Sahtú, Science, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Sports, Supernatural, Superstitions, Tanya Tagaq, Terra Lightfoot, The Globe and Mail, The Sun, The Telegram, The Yellowknifer, Tiny Desk Concert, Toronto Star, Travel, Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Violence, West End Phoenix, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories on August 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: iLe-Tiny Desk Concert #874 (August 3, 2019).

It’s not very often that you hear a song that is all percussion.  But the first song of this set is only percussion and (Spanish) vocals.

iLe is a singer in the Puerto Rican band Calle 13.  Her most recent solo album Almadura:

is filled with metaphors and allegories about the political, social and economic conditions in Puerto Rico.

When vocalist Ileana Cabra Joglar and her band visited the Tiny Desk, they’d just arrived from the front lines of the historic demonstrations taking place in Puerto Rico. Two days earlier, they were part of a crowd of tens of thousands who were on the streets calling for the resignation of embattled Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. (Rosselló recently stepped down, effective August 2.)

Right from the start, it was clear what was on iLe’s mind in her song “Curandera” — “I am a healer / I don’t need candles to illuminate / I bring purifying water to cleanse / Removing pains so they never return” — as congas and percussion shook the room with an Afro-Caribbean beat.

This is the song in which all of the band members play percussion–primarily congas although Ismael Cancel is on the drum kit.  While everyone plays congas, it is Jeren Guzmán who is the most accomplished and who plays the fast conga “solo.”

In the chorus of the slow-burning “Contra Todo,” iLe sings about channeling inner strengths and frustrations to win battles and remake the world. Her lyrics are rich with history, capturing the spirit of the streets of San Juan even as she stood, eyes closed, behind the Tiny Desk. Her entire performance is a startling reflection of this moment in Puerto Rican history.

“Contra Todo” has a rich deep five string bass from Jonathan Gonzalez and two trombones (Joey Oyola and Nicolás Márquez). Two guitars (Bayoán Ríos and Adalberto Rosario) add a kind of percussive strumming and a quiet song-ending riff.  Jeren Guzmán plays the congas with mallets, something I’ve never seen before.

By the time iLe and her band launched into “Sin Masticar,” they’d already captured the full power of protest, as their musical arrangements raged with the intensity of a crowd joined by a shared cause and pulse.

“Sin Masticar” has a super catchy chorus, perhaps the best way to get people involved in a protest.

[READ: August 2019] Midnight Light

Two years ago Dave Bidini co-founded The West End Phoenix, a newspaper that is for people in Toronto’s West End.  It’s print, it’s old school, and it’s pretty awesome.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to the West End, but I find the writing and the content to be interesting and really enjoyable.

It’s no surprise that Bidini has worked in journalism and loved and hated it.

I’ve always loved newspaper: the smell of the ink and the rough of the newsprint weighted in my hands, their broadsheets flapping like Viking sails.  When I was a kid, our family read them all–the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Sun, and before that The Telegram–at the kitchen table with each person drawing out whatever they needed: comics, sports, business, entertainment (and yet never Wheels, the Star’s automotive supplement).

He started writing before he picked up a guitar.  When he was 11 he submitted a poem about a hockey player to The Sun‘s “Young Sun” section.  It was accepted and he won a T-shirt.

In 1991, he was asked to write a regular column for a Star satellite weekly called Metropolis.  The day his first piece was to be in print he waited at the nearest newsbox for the delivery man.

But he had no stamina and fewer ideas and he was eventually let go.  Which led to writing books.  But he still wanted to write for the paper and then he remembered: Hey, Yellowknife had a newspaper.

This book is about journalism.  But it’s also about the Canadian North.  And while the journalism stuff is interesting–and the way it ties to the North is interesting too, it’s the outsider’s perspective of this region of the world (that most people don’t even think about) which is just amazing to read about–the people, the landscape, the conditions.  It’s fascinating. (more…)

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