More from Paul's Hall

Back in May, CBC Radio's Maritime Magazine aired my radio documentary Tobias Beale -- Taking Music Education Beyond School Walls. (You can listen to it here, or tune in to CBC again for a rebroadcast on August 30.)

One of the people featured in the doc was Emma Paul, a young (then 13, now 14), singer doing Summertime in rehearsal.

Emma's still going strong. Here she is sitting in with the Mitchell-Staples Quartet at Paul's (no relation) Hall.

Tobias Beale and Paul's Hall on CBC's Maritime Magazine

My half-hour radio documentary on Tobias Beale is now online here.

Tobias is a music teacher who lives near Halifax. And he tells great, great stories.

In some ways, it's been a rough year for Tobias. He's spent 15 years devoted to teaching music, and he finds himself doing it in an environment where it really doesn't seem to be a priority.

After spending 8 years teaching band at his local junior high, Tobias found himself out of a job. Today, he's a half-time band resource teacher who travels from school to school. It's crazy and fun, but not the same. He's also bought an old church hall, and is using it to revitalize a locally focused music culture, and to provide a performance space for teens.

Bonus feature: I've posted the raw audio of the first interview I did with Tobias, when I started working on this documentary several months ago. We were chatting upstairs at Paul's Hall, while three local teen bands prepared for a show downstairs.

The file runs about 25 minutes. Click to listen, or right-click to download and listen later.

The interview covers all kinds of fascinating stuff I couldn't work into the final show. I especially like Tobias's answer when I ask him why kids need performance spaces when they all have MySpace and Facebook pages to promote their music. That comes about three quarters of the way through.

Enjoy, and please share your comments by clicking the "comments" link below.

First the Royal Philharmonic, now this

A Japanese ensemble playing Smoke on the Water, with traditional instruments.

Baby please don't go

AC/DC's very first TV appearance. I love the contrast between Bon's schoolgirl tunic and the tattoos.

C'est une question de feeling

For some reason, public figures in Halifax are flagellating the media and citizens for the cancellation of the Céline Dion concert originally scheduled for August 23.

I am truly baffled.

Here is the story. The city was negotiating to bring a major act to the Halifax Common. On the eve of a major announcement, the Céline people jumped the gun and posted an August 23 Halifax date online. So they announced the concert prior to its official announcement.

Haligonians were not, ahem, unanimous in rushing to greet Céline. A couple of days later, René Angelil, Céline's husband and manager, said they were pulling out of the Halifax date. He elaborated in a phone call, saying, ""There’s no business decision, it’s a question of feeling." Apparently people said nasty things about his wife on phone-in shows and Web forums (can you imagine?) So he cancelled.

As a result, people in Halifax have been beating themselves up for being bush league.

Are they nuts? We are talking about one of the top-selling female artists of all time (how that happened is beyond me) and she -- or rather, her husband, because he says Céline has not seen any of the criticism, since it is his job to protect her from it -- can't take barbs from radio phone-in shows and Web forums? Oh, and from a columnist from the Halifax Daily News, who spent most of his column welcoming the show, but made the dreadful mistake of being critical in his opening paragraph.

Instead of chastising us for making it difficult to bring future acts to Halifax, the city ought to be talking lawsuit against Angelil.

All of this has had one positive effect. David Rodehniser, the columnist who scared the pants off Angelil, has produced a hilarious column today.

Hooray! Ozzy Osbourne is apparently coming to Halifax next January. This will be the best concert in the city's history - equalled only by all the previous concerts in Halifax's history, which were all equally amazing in their own unique and artistically diverse ways.

Just in case Sharon Osbourne is clipping newspapers from around the globe to see what people are writing about Ozzy, I want the record to show that I fully, 110 per cent, endorse this concert. It should definitely go ahead and local fans will certainly buy out every seat.

The Halifax Metro Centre is the perfect venue for Ozzy to play, although if he changes his mind and wants to rock the Halifax Common, there is no doubt that his fans would stand outside in a raging snowstorm to see him perform. He could call it the Blizzard of Ozz, like his quadruple-platinum 1980 album, which yielded such classics as the blistering Crazy Train and the heartfelt ballad Goodbye to Romance.

Read the rest of it here.

Bob Dylan quote of the week

We sat in an empty theater and we kissed,
I asked ya please to cross me off-a your list.
My head tells me it's time to make a change
But my heart is telling me I love ya but you're strange.
("Abandoned Love")

Yes, you could just consider it maudlin. But somehow it's still evocative. Is the theatre empty because they snuck in? Have they stayed late after the show? And the head and heart in opposition to each other -- now there's an old theme. But here instead of the sense of a tortuous relationship, we just learn that she's "strange." What might come off sounding like an insult turns instead into something truly endearing.

No less lame

Celine Dion has cancelled her Halifax date. If the city had cancelled, I might consider us slightly less lame.

Random 10

So this dude Sloth, who claims his generally pretty damn fine blog has only six readers or so (putting me in very exclusive company), has ripped off an idea from The Onion AV Club in order to try to launch his own meme thingy.

It's a damn fine idea. Shuffle the music on your music player, and write something about the first 10 songs that come up.

Here's my list.

1) The Grey Seal's Lament for its Pup/Miss Ann Moir's Birthday/The Duke of Gordon's Birthday/London Lasses/West Mabou (Buddy MacMaster)
This is a track from master Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster's album Cape Breton Tradition. The album is in the collection because my 8-year-old adores Buddy MacMaster. We even arranged the dates of a holiday in Cape Breton this summer around the date that Buddy would be playing the community ceilidh in Judique. I used to skip over Buddy's tracks when they came up in the shuffle queue, but now I listen. He is a true gentleman, an incredible musician, and listening to these tunes is a nice, quiet break from some of the more raucous stuff I have.

2) Twistin' the Night Away (Sam Cooke)
I like Sam Cooke in very small doses. Usually I wind up skipping the few tracks I have when shuffle spits them out. This one is particularly gentle. Nostalgia for an era I don't remember?

3) We Shall Overcome (Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band)
Title track from Springsteen's Seeger Sessions CD. When I first got this, I listened to the album over and over and over again. I have never been a huge Springsteen fan, but the sheer joy of the playing captivated me. This is probably my least favourite track. A little too over-earnest perhaps?

4) Right Now (Jerry's Kids)
Jerry's Kids were an incredible 1980s hardcore band from Boston, who shared some members with the also incredible Gang Green. "Right Now" ("I want it, right now / I need it, right now" -- nobody said you were getting lyrical complexity) is from their album Kill Kill Kill. I have always loved the combination of the name Jerry's Kids with the title Kill Kill Kill.

5) Just Got Lucky (JoBoxers)
I am not sure what this is doing here. I can't even claim nostalgia, because I don't remember the song from the 1980s, and if I did, I wouldn't have liked it. It was on the 40-Year-Old Virgin soundtrack, and I did rip a few songs for fun/nostalgia purposes. This one must have gotten scooped up as well. I have a bit more tolerance for Motowny peppiness from (mostly) white boys than I used to. But still, this is pretty awful.


6) War Pigs (Ozzy Osbourne)
From the Ozzman Cometh box set. I have probably heard War Pigs enough to last a lifetime at this point. This version does have some historical interest though, since it's an earlier version (with different lyrics) than the one that ended up on Paranoid.

7) Think About You (Guns N' Roses)
Axl Rose may be a buffoon and Guns N' Roses may have degenerated completely, and this may be one of the weakest tracks on the album, but damn, Appetite for Destruction still ranks right up there. It was one of the few albums that I knew I had to own the second I saw the cover. I actually saw Guns n' Roses open for, of all bands, The Cult, at the Verdun auditorium in Montreal. I was with my friend Billy Neale (aka William Scott Neale) and neither of us had ever heard of the opening band. I was blown away. So was Billy, but at a certain point he got tired of the band because hey, he'd come to see The Cult. Axl's ego was already starting to get out of control, and he was just in the opening act.

8) The Lengths (The Black Keys)
From Rubber Factory. Great album from this drum-and guitar blues duo. This is one of the quieter, more contemplative, least distorted tracks. On the same album, The Black Keys do perhaps one of the simplest versions of Stackalee ever. It's called "Stack Shot Billy" and the lyrics strip the legend down almost as close as you can get to the bare essentials.

9) Going, Going, Gone (Stars)
This band are Montreal indie darlings, but, you know, I cannot stand them, and I can't find anything in this potentially migraine-inducing song to like.

10) I'm Your Gun (Alice Cooper)
Over-produced, with a cheesy 1980s synthy sound. But still, Alice.

What's your random 10?

Bob Dylan quote of the week

Don't wanna amuse nobody, don't wanna be amused.

(From "Do Right To Me Baby" on Infidels.)

I love this quote because we live in such a culture of amusement. To not want to be amused is almost incomprehensible. But Dylan is in prophet mode here. Amusement is a distraction from the serious business of saving souls.

Lame, lame lame

Halifax has been abuzz. A big concert is going to be announced for the Halifax Common next summer. A couple of years ago it was the Rolling Stones, and now various names were being tossed around: U2, the Eagles, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

You can see the trend here: big names, past their prime, but top-of-the-line in terms of of draw (and ticket prices).

So who are we getting? Well, early reports are indicating it will be... Celine Dion. Please. Can this town get any lamer?

John Fogerty: Revival

It was with some surprise that I found myself clicking the "Download All" button below the track list for John Fogerty's new album on eMusic.

Surprise, because I haven't paid any attention whatsoever to Fogerty's career for at least 20 years.

The second surprise came when I listened to it. Sure it has its nostalgic and hokey moments -- but so did CCR at their height. At the end of a couple of runs through the album, all I could think was damn, is it ever good to hear the guy who sang "Fortunate Song" still belting out lyrics like these with force:

You know you lied about the casualties
You know you lied about the WMD's
You know you lied about the detainees
All over this world

Stop talking about staying the course
You keep a-beating that old dead horse
You know you lied about how we went to war
I Can't Take It No More

...

I bet you never saw the old school yard
I bet you never saw the national guard
Your daddy wrote a check and there you are
Another fortunate son

Throughout the album Fogerty makes nods to the past, but you never get the feeling he is enslaved to it. Funny how a guy routinely labelled as playing oldies can produce music that sounds a lot fresher than a lot of that tiresome indie stuff that keeps droning on and on.

Bob Dylan quote of the day

So many weird and wonderful song lyrics. Let's enjoy some of them.

Today:

"He can ride down Niagara Falls in the barrels of your skull"
from "Man of Peace", Infidels

Real live CD shopping

After being given a gift card, I headed down to HMV for the first time in about a year. I've been buying my music digitally for a while, so it felt weird to walk into an actual store lined with CDs and DVDs -- especially since I always preferred the now-defunct Sam the Record Man to HMV anyway.

Surprises: First, that HMV seems to be moving away from their ridiculous policy of selling 2 for $25 or 2 for $30 instead of just sticking a reasonable price on each disc. Second, that the discount bin was full of great deals on good music, and not just tired crap that would be overpriced at 5 bucks (though there was a fair bit of Bryan Adams in there). Third, how it makes no sense whatsoever to buy some things in CD form when you compare to the price of buying online. I saw Rubber Factory by the Black Keys, which I can buy at eMusic for about $3, retailing at $22.99. Yeah, I'm going to buy that.

For $60, I walked out with CDs by Devil Driver, The Roots, Soundgarden, Black Label Society, Tom Petty and Velvet Revolver. Not bad.

Music in Second Life

My latest Gone Surfin' web column touches on the burgeoning Second Life music scene, and looks at the Mill Pond Folk Festival -- which provided a triple-threat concert experience. From the story:

Trevor Grigg, one of the performers, was very aware of playing in both worlds at once. From the stage he could look at the audience gathered in Gray's house. Meanwhile, he could also see a flat-screen monitor that showed the Second Life audience as it appeared from the point of view of his avatar.

“You were looking out into the room from the stage, and you could see the avatars of the people who were attending in Second Life,” Grigg says. “As a performer, one of the things that was superb about that setting was that it was so intimate and so relaxed. Physically, I was in my friend's basement, and the sound was wonderful. But it had that other side of it where you knew you were going out somewhere beyond this room....

“It was a virtual festival within Second Life, and it was an Internet broadcast, and it was a real live folk festival in a guy's house. It seemed to me to be the best of all worlds.”

The full story is here.

You'll find previous Gone Surfin' columns to your right. Just click on the links for the ones you want to read.

Sabbatum

Ever wondered what kind of music Tony Iommi might have been writing if he'd been around 700 years ago?

Wonder no more. Rondellus, an Estonian band, have recorded an album of Black Sabbath covers, all done in a medieval style, with Latin lyrics. The album's called Sabbatum.

Here's a sample of "Verres Militares" (aka "War Pigs").

Da Da Da

Music was sooo much better in the old days, doncha think? Intelligent lyrics, passionate performances. On-stage presence, man.

Brother Yusef is amazing

Last week, on my way back from a school visit in Lockeport, two hours away from home, I stopped in at a second-hand clothing store -- one of the Frenchy's chain.

Frenchy's uusually has a bin with a few CDs, generally people's 70s and 80s castoffs: Debbie Harry, Earth Wind and Fire, Pat Benatar, Foreigner, that sort of thing. Stuff that was bad then and is worse now.

I pulled one CD out of the pathetic little pile. It had no cover, but said it was "Fattback Blues" by Brother Yusef. The album was called The Crossroads Project. It was $1.25, I bought it.

In the car, I had been listening to Calexico live in Stockholm. I have tried to like Calexico, but I can't do it. I am going to throw out the CD. I put in Brother Yusef, not knowing what to expect.

All I can say is: wow. The guy does incredible acoustic blues, banging out a bass line with his thumb while doing the rest with his other fingers. Great lyrics, soul-felt music, awesome guitar playing.

Don't take my word for it. Click the Brother Yusef link and listen to "Good Mornin' Blues" -- available as a free download (it also plays when you first load the page, so watch out if you are at work and your speakers are turned up).

I am not sure what to think of the fact that Brother Yusef's steady gig is playing in Downtown Disneyland three times a week. On the one hand, it's sad, sad, sad. The guy's blues are so heartfelt, and here he is in a sterile museum of American culture. On the other hand, as Sara says, it's probably as good a day job as a musician can ask for. It probably pays well, and he gets to play.

That would be some cross-cultural family jam session.

From today's Globe and Mail:

As it turns out, Jack White is a fourth cousin to Natalie MacMaster, a third cousin once removed to Buddy MacMaster, Natalie's father and "the dean of Atlantic fiddlers," and a double fourth cousin to Ashley MacIsaac. According to Daniel MacIsaac, Jack White's grandmother (and Daniel MacIsaac's aunt), Florence MacIsaac, was born in Nova Scotia in 1896 and later married a man named Frank Gillis with whom she established a home in Sydney Mines to raise a family that eventually included two girls and four sons. Times were tough in Nova Scotia, however, and in 1924 the Gillises moved to Detroit. Three years later, Florence Gillis gave birth to a boy, Gorman, who 48 years later fathered Jack White.

The MacMaster connection, in the meantime, comes courtesy of Florence's grandfather, John MacIsaac, who had a sister named Sarah "who married into the MacMaster clan." And as for Ashley MacIsaac, he is descended from Hector MacIsaac, a brother of John.

Black Sabbath / Heaven and Hell

I love this story. It has so much that is Spinal Tap to it.

Black Sabbath are touring with Ronnie James Dio as their singer (back together after two previous bitter breakups -- and before going on tour with Ozzy as the singer this summer). But the band can't call itself Black Sabbath, so they're billed as Heaven and Hell.

But Dio's not sure who has ultimate control of the Sabbath name. "I have no idea," says the five-foot-four singer with the colossal voice. "That seems to have been a point of contention for a long time. Who owns the name? Is it Sharon? Is it Ozzy? Is it Tony Iommi (guitarist for both Black Sabbath and Heaven & Hell)? I would think if Tony owned the name, we would be calling ourselves Black Sabbath, so maybe he doesn't."

...

"When they proposed (the band name Heaven & Hell), my initial reaction was, and still is, 'Well they're gonna call us f---in' Black Sabbath anyway, aren't they? You can call as the Boys in the Shed if you want to. It doesn't matter to me."'

Dio, the story says, returned to Sabbath at their lowest point and helped to revitalize the band.

I'm not sure which was their lowest point -- there have been so many. For personal reasons, my nomination has to go to the Tony Martin era. I saw the band with him on vocals in Germany in the late 1980s. The crowd worshipped Tony the guitarist and threw things at Tony the singer.

Best FAQ?

Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society has a great "Did you know?" section on his band's site.

My favourite item:

Did you know...

The reason that Zakk does not like Fred Durst is not because of a personal feud, but just simply because Fred puts out shitty music?