Yeah, well March came in like a lamb here in Grande Prairie, Alberta. Specifically, the roast mutton sitting at the bottom of the freezer.
These are a few things that have made me perk up this winter...
John Harvey, noted poet, former wrassler & lead singer of the hardly-lamented Hated Uncles, sent me an enormous pile of recordings to plow through. Apparently, Harv is a believer in the "everything onto the hard drive" theory of music appreciation. Ergo, the cleanse out.
We're talkin' everything from latter day Hawkwind/Hawklords to Torch of the Mystics by the Sun City Girls (still one of my fave raves 20 some years later), to, um, a really comprehensive John Denver set. In the coming weeks, we'll plow through them. Highlights of the last group of mailings include that Sun Ra singles comp, John Cale Sun Blindness sets, and an early Miroslav Vitous thing (pre-ECM).
Harv is still blogging away in Haida Gwai (hey, that rhymes. I'm a poet/named Mowat), waiting for his big chance to escape the Queen Charlotte Islands; start a wrasslin/organic food commune in Nelson, B.C.. That last statement may not be totally accurate, but let's see him deny it...
Future issues of G-Mole will have at least 2 quickie type reviews from these boxes..
As some of you know, I moved to Grande Prairie to live with a grand lady named Shirley. However, I see some of you are still single. To help you cope, why not read Sofi Paparmarko's excellent blog, Sexy Typewriter *1
I met Sofi through - what else- my endless endeavours to plug Simply Saucer. At the time, she was one of the Three Wise Women of Toronto (her, Liz Worth, and Sara Saljoughi)doing the Rawk writhing thing. In recent years, her musings about relationships have earned her notice from the Globe & Mail, and a column spot on the Canoe site.
ST pulls no punches in dealing with the perils of modern dating & specifically, the pratfalls of the on-line scene. (Full disclosure: on-line meetings CAN work, that's how Shirley & I met. We were the only 40-plus people on the now-defunct site who could spell) Sofi's own experiences reads like a series of love train wrecks, and when she gets GUEST columnists on the blower, the horror escalates. You can't help but look, Ethel! And she's not afraid to take the piss out of TV-hyped dating sites & boorish people The former link should be made mandatory reading...Four stars. Roll over Ann Landers, tell Josey Vogels the news!
Finally an appeal: Help the MU in your neighbourhood. In the U.S., that would be WFMU-FM. American readers can go here to help...
In the parallel universe known as Canada, that would be CFMU-FM. Both of these stations provide the kind of programming you just can't get from commercial radio. And that includes Satellite stations. Don't be a dink, click on the link on the banner that sits atop the blog.
Well, gotta run. there's vacuuming to do and a humungous pile of CDs to take in...
*1 Note to young readers: a typewriter is what old geezers like us used to communicate with before the computer era.
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