Category: Music
Peter Gabriel’s “So” — change is coming down like red rain
The text below (with some new edits) was posted as a link on my Facebook profile a week shy of three months ago. I’d just returned from a nearly 3 month-long road trip through the western US, preceded by 2 months in Australia. The story it tells begins to describe the unusual relationship I have…
Neil Young: Don’t Cry No Tears Around Me
Please excuse me… I’ve been caught up in the mundane world the past few days and, so, not posting. Well, I’ve been writing — there are at least three blog posts in varying degrees of draft status… Eventually.
Courage is…: Joannie Rochette & Petra Majdič
The greatest achievement of this 2010 Winter Olympic games wasn’t Canada’s first Gold medal, or its last, or any other Gold or Silver medal awarded in the Olympics. The two most courageous performances in the Olympics netted Bronze. One was a battle as much with emotional trauma as with any other competitor. The other was…
The Philosopher Kings all dressed up for San Francisco, bringing their charms
It was the summer of 1995. I was back from extended travels through Australia and SE Asia, living in a Deep Cove cabin with the gentle high-tide waves lapping on the rocks just 20 feet below me while I busily built a website (a blog long before the name became popularised) from the travelogue and…
Sheryl Crow is strong enough to be my man…
Sheryl Crow, I don’t know, she’s got something going on, and has been one of my muses at critical moments. She writes and sings like a broken angel, with equal measures of strength and vulnerability, passion and fear, hope and futility. Some of her music is exquisitely beautiful — notably just about anything from the…
Hunters and Collectors of Olympic medals: run run run
Heading into Whistler Village to watch the Canada vs. US hockey game with a couple thousand friends. There are almost as many Americans in town as Canadians, so this should be fun. Time to get tribal, and I can’t think of a more tribal song. From a good little Aussie outfit.
Black and white, darkness without light: a spiritual journey begins on a Three Dog Night
The joyful melody and playful rhythm will be all too familiar to my mother, and the eldest of my sisters. I was about 12 when this song came into my life, the first 45 rpm record I recall owning. I spun the disc hundreds of times…maybe thousands…playing it again and again until I’m sure everyone…
A selection of music from the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
Sarah McLachlan, I’ve been told, has perfect pitch. Her performance at the opening ceremony was also pitch-perfect. She had me the very first time she flashed that smile of hers — bright as the sun, and open like a flower in full bloom. That may seem a superficial reason to for loving her as a…
Peter Gabriel & Ken Follet: Fear, the mother of violence
A while ago I was reading Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth. Set amidst the brutality of the English middle ages, it’s interesting to see how all Follet’s characters experience fear, and more interesting how they respond to it and how, oftentimes, they are controlled by it, particularly the most violent of them, and…
