This past weekend was almost entirely family-related, and since it's Erika's family, not mine -- I don't really have any family out here! -- I'm not going to be posting much about that. But there were three notable events, personal Al-centric high points that bear repeating:
up the stairs to Wyrd Wealth
1. On the way to visit Erika's great uncle up island, we popped in at Wyrd Wealth in Nanaimo, where I planned to just say hi to Jeremy (and maybe get a signed Earthball album?), but ended up instead meeting his collaborator Izzy, of Earthball, Crotch, and apparently the newest lineup of Shearing Pinx (and maybe other projects?) as well as co-owner of the store, who it turns out knew me and (somewhat to my surprise and relief) seemed genuinely pleased to meet me.
Y'see, I have always felt sheepish about my cup-chucking article (which got me roundly condemned by one person I knew and caused, perhaps, some trouble for its key subject, Jeremy, who -- sorry, Buzzo -- was the real injured party that night, by me), but whattaya know, Izzy actually appreciated it (if she had any mixed or negative feelings she did not voice'm) and seemed excited to meet me (!). Even though my wife had stayed in the car, she gave her a... what do you call it? The note she wrote to identify it is wrapped with a rubber band around the object, which is in Erika's car on the island as I type this, back in Burnaby: "a rock" sounds too boring, "a crystal" sounds too new-agey, "a gem" sounds too valuable and "a mineral" sounds dietary. It was none of those, but resembled a flintstone or something volcanic; it was naturally formed and quite beautiful. They have other ones in the shop, too! I will add an identifying note at the bottom of this post when I figure it out.*
Earthball at the jazzfest
2. Having left Nanaimo, still en route to see Erika's great uncle, Erika, a friend of hers, and I stopped in the Filberg festival, where I shot video of Claire Coupland (official site here), who inspired some very intent listening from a rather packed audience and has already gotten 93 views in the day or so since I posted the clip). She must have found it and shared it, or else is way more famous than I realized! (She sounded great -- not really my thing, as they say, but her guitar rang out beautifully in the woods; she got a really good tone out of it, and I liked her last song, "Find Your Way Home," the best, about the thoughts of a parent wishing well for their estranged, wayward child).
The real draw for me, however, was Thrasher/ Saddleback -- that is, Willie Thrasher and his partner, Linda Saddleback; those of you who have followed the Native North America series will know Willie's name. I was disappointed by how few people stuck around for Willie, but delighted to hear his powerful strumming and hear "Odeyak" again, which I didn't much expect I'd get to do. I haven't tracked down the CD it's on, though it is up on this very useful website (what is this? Who is this Citizen Freak? I love this site, though note -- I am taking the spelling off Willie's setlist). My clip was of "Eskimo Named Johnny" and "Wolves Don't Play by the Rules," but if I'd had the storage space I would have shot it all...
Even more surprising than my getting to see Willie again, he actually recognized me -- probably not so much from our Straight conversation, which was done over the phone (when I had a very different voice, for that matter) but from one of Kevin James Howes' events here in Vancouver (Willie directed me that day, maybe ten years ago, at this link of one of his early rock bands, the Chordells, whose name seems to appear in a few different spellings out there, too! Willie is on drums on that clip, from back in 1969, makin' rock and roll before he embraced his own cultural heritage. Also in terms of Thrasher news, he's been inducted into the Studio Bell Museum, Linda tells me). I figured I'd just be one more face in the audience, but almost as soon as he sat down, Willie looked out at the front row and pointed directly at me, his face lighting up, and later said something on mike about seeing people he knew in the audience -- which I presume meant me. It made me want to become a Thrasher groupie or something and pop up at more of his gigs, but he mostly plays on Vancouver Island lately, I think, so... it's a bit challenging.
My wife!
Oh, and I did catch one other act, a guy named Tall Mark, who was very funny, quite eccentric, and made me think of the times that Rowan Lipkovitz of the Creaking Planks has told stories about his band being asked to play kid's birthday parties; Tall Mark seemed like someone Rowan Lipkovitz might call to play HIS kid's birthday party. I mean, he had a song with a chorus about a party named for Benedict Cumberbatch, which he dubbed the "Benedict Cumber-bash," which name he got us all singing along with as he played... guitar? Uke? Mini-piano? I forget what he was playing at that point. It was pleasingly absurd and impossible to not enjoy; I'm sure any children in earshot got a great kick out of his song about strategically shitting your pants to get out of work (I wish Erika had been around for that but she was exploring the grounds with Laurie).
Of course, Tall Mark have more of a chance of playing a Rowan Lipkovitz party if he self accompanied with an accordion, except an accordion would draw inevitable Weird Al comparisons, which he probably gets enough of without it...! I have never seen Weird Al live but I suspect Tall Mark is taller.
3. Finally and most delightfully, the Ty Stranglehold Mama-swap took place. Which has a story behind it, which begins with how I met Ty: it was because Chris Walter mis-inscribed a book to me one night at the Cobalt, dedicating it "to Ty." I made him cross that out and write my name in Ty's place, so I could lord it over him later; Ty would remark to me after he and I actually met that the funny part of it was that he and I had very little in common physically, except both being "white and large." Which is true, but I think Chris was mostly just looking in the internal file cabinet where he keeps the names of people who had written about him (he wasn't just mistaking me for Geoff Barton or Stephen Hamm or so forth, though I've gotten both of those, too). I ended up chatting with Ty at a couple shows at the Cobalt; somewhere I might have Hoosegow coozie (however that is spelled?) that he gave me, maybe while the Subhumans were playing (we were both writing about them around the same period of time, as I recall; us Subhumans fans gotta stick together, and of course, I do mean the Vancouver Subhumans, not the British ones...
That all goes back to maybe 2006 or 2007, and I've since greatly enjoyed watching Ty front the Angry Snowmans, who I wrote about here; we became Facebook friends, and I followed with interest his posts about his bariatric surgery. He's still white (that doesn't change) and I guess technically a bit large, post-surgery, but a lot less large than he was or than I am these days (he credits the surgery with curing his diabetes, sleep apnea AND high blood pressure). It was was with GREAT INTEREST that I saw him post on Facebook that he had some 3XL punk shirts to get rid of, especially when I learned that one of them was Nomeansno Mama shirt. You see, I had a Mama of my own, but the shirt had always been a bit snug on me. I'm guessing I bought it on the same Nomeansno tour where the photos below were taken, when I flew out to Toronto to catch them three times, and Jandek and Tony Conrad, too). I think it was a mere XL, which was probably the largest size they had back then...
Photo by Jillo? T-Bone? Also 2006, Toronto.
Between 2006 and 2015 or so, I gained a fair bit of weight, maxing out around 380 lbs, which I think is bigger than Ty ever was -- it's certainly the biggest I've been -- but that was one of a few shirts I owned that I kept even when I stopped being able to squeeze into it, because Mama was the first Nomeansno album I ever owned, back when it was the only LP they had out (!) -- they're a rare example of a band I have followed pretty much from the outset of their career, in order. And though it is an outlier in the Nomeansno catalogue, I love it dearly. I had hoped when my surgical ordeals of 2021 brought my weight down to 290 LBs, that I'd be able to finally make that shirt work, but -- even though I'd lost enough weight that my wedding ring would spontaneously fly off my finger when I gesticulated -- but sadly, it was not to be. I asked Erika to snap a photo of the attempt. Sadly, I have gained back about 20lbs since this picture, but it was clear even then -- despite my being at the lowest weight in some years - that Mama was never going to fit me again. Anyone know the Archie Shepp tune "Mama Too Tight"...?
There's not much else to say -- I have a Mama again! And it fits perfectly, which I guess might disturb me a bit, considering how huge it looks compared to the shirt that almost fit me back in 2006, but whether or not it motivates me to lose weight over the next while, I'm delighted to be wearing it.
But there are four other photos I want to share, somewhat randomly. In the drive north from Filberg, we saw something haunting and meaningful along the roadside. It's not the actual Highway of Tears, but there were red dresses, both of a fabric kind and, I guess, wood, that someone had put up along the roads.
There was also this strikingly beautiful young buck hanging out in Laurie's garden in Victoria, when we stopped by to pick her up:
1 comment:
Of course you really have family out here.
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