The title says it all, really. Tonight we went down to the pool on the third floor, I put on a pair of goggles, and I swam. Six or seven times. I took a deep breath, kicked forward, and did a very enthusiastic freestyle stroke for about twenty feet on that breath, before either righting myself or pointing upwards with extreme urgency, the signal to Sarah to come get me.
I even managed to keep my eyes open behind the goggles, most times. Didn't manage to figure out how to take a breath, so there was a limit to how far I could go, and I tried front crawl once and got nowhere, but: I swam! I SWAM!!!
And I can't wait to do it again.
In other news:
ITEM! Susan from High Spirits came round this afternoon and we demonstrated our music collection and sang a bit. Fun! I burned a CD of modern musicals for her - the Falsettos crusade continues - she couldn't believe there's a song called 4 Jews In A Room Bitching. Well, it's unique...
ITEM! Sarah goes to New York tomorrow. How will I survive without her for over a week? Hookers! Er, I mean, fortunately we have pre-arranged various evening events to occupy my time: a tenor section rehearsal on Tuesday, High Spirits on Wednesday, possibly acquiring a couple of mirrors on Thursday, maybe a meal out on Friday, a pub crawl with James The God on Saturday, and recovering from a pub crawl with James The God on Sunday...
ITEM! We built our third bookcase tonight and unpacked a further six boxes of stuff. We're down to about twenty-five boxes now, but it's getting tough to figure out what to do with them as these are the densely-packed boxes of books and 'stuff which goes in sideboards' and suchlike, and currently we're all out of bookshelves and we have no (and want no) sideboard. If we get a desk then I can probably set up the computer, which will account for another three or four boxes, and the PlayStation is occupying another box but is useless without a television and another power adapter. So, we still look like we've only just moved in, but at least all our visitors are wowed by the place. Eavesdropping on conversations at work, I've established that we are indeed paying a lot for rent compared to most people, but most people live in the sticks, and we're two minutes from the Vancouver equivalent of Oxford Street, in a swanky building with a pool and hot tub. Worth it for the year, therefore.
ITEM! We're figuring out how to record music so it doesn't sound awful. With a piece of software called Reason we can record MIDI from Sarah's new keyboard pretty faithfully - this means we can then fix up individual notes, adjust their volume, add in extra notes, multi-track it, and make it sound like a grand piano or indeed like a Hammond organ should we wish... plus, we can add drum tracks and a bassline. The biggest problem is the single thing we have to record live with a microphone: our voices. We made initial recordings of our two new 'big' songs, All You Have To Say and When You Smile, and by the time I've processed them for volume and de-hissing, they sound very mechanical and the piano accompaniment is somewhat blurry, so we won't be posting them! (Burge got to hear them and agreed that they sound robotic with all that noise reduction; plus he misses the detail in the piano line!) On the other hand, a quick test revealed that recording a vocal line while listening to the piano playback should give us a much nicer sound. I'm getting really into EQs and frequency analysis. It's truly impressive (and a little scary) how you can alter the tone of a recording by adjusting the frequency curve. The upshot is that, although it's too late to do much now before Sarah goes away, we'll spend some time the weekend after next on this, and then we should have something for people to hear.
ITEM! After being introduced to meat souvlaki skewers at the post-choir drinking sessions at The Main, and then eating them so often at Kalypso round the corner on Robson, we experimented with buying frozen souvlaki and cooking it ourselves. Sarah quite likes chicken souvlaki; I'm considering this a definite win in terms of finding a new foodstuff which she can tolerate, let alone enjoy.
ITEM! God, how could I have forgotten this? Or rather, I'm not surprised I've suppressed the memory of this so quickly. And I was only ranting about it to Susan earlier this afternoon. What am I talking about, you ask? We went to see the fourth in the Black Box series of dance shows at the Shadbolt Centre on Saturday night. And, god, it was the worst thing ever. I'll have to try to not swear while I describe it. The first half was thirty minutes long and featured almost exactly one minute of actual dance. What we were presented with was a pretentious poem intoned over the speakers while people rippled three sheets of silk on the stage floor, followed by (and I wish I could say 'in swift succession') a woman coming in and lying under one of the sheets, rolling around under the sheet, standing up, looking around, deciding it wasn't for her and lying under the sheet again, gathering up the sheet, walking offstage, leaving the stage empty for ten minutes while an incomprehensible set of images flickered on the screen at the back, coming back on, glaring at us all, and then performing some very slow dance steps in imitation of a horse on the movie screen before banging her head against the floor several times (we sympathised) and then making some random movements for thirty seconds before the lights went down. I had been thinking "God, this is rubbish, I hope the interval is soon", but to my horror, the interval was now - that was the piece in its entirety. She got scattered applause from the audience, and I actually said out loud, "That was it?" which got me some looks from people all around. There was a fifteen-minute interval, which I suppose might have been necessary to reset the lighting and movie projector, but I'm pretty sure it was actually so that the woman, who was also dancing in the second piece, had plenty of time to go backstage and laugh hysterically for as long as she needed at how gullible her audience was to have paid money for this tripe. During the interval I had a good look around for someone from the Shadbolt with whom I could make a deal: "Look, give us our money back and I promise we won't tell anyone how dreadful it is." Sadly for their reputation, no-one was available to take me up on this offer, so here I am, telling you all about it. And so to the second half, which did actually feature some dance steps, but not really very many: there were several routines which recurred, with occasional amusing semi-serendipitious intersections with the spoken text, which dealt with these two dancers and how they knew one another and how their lives had coincided. But it wasn't really very good, nor very interesting. We feel that when we go to see a dance show we expect to see dancing, not listen to words. If it isn't necessarily a very intellectual show with great meaning to the dancing, at least let it be very energetic: dancing is the one art form where genius really is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. If you can't be bothered to sweat: the hell with you. So in conclusion: if you ever have the chance to see a show by Andrea Nann or Sarah Chase, don't bother. And now I will end the paragraph and you can breeeeeeeeeathe.
ITEM! To end on an uplifting note (I don't like ranting, it means the world is not good enough, and that's bad) - Sarah's choral piece The Blackbird Of Derrycairn is being rehearsed for performance by My Lady's Chamber, the twelve-voice ensemble organised by James The God. It's an excellent piece of music which she's only ever heard performed by me, when I learned all four parts and overdubbed them for a CD I made for her Christmas present in 2004. She's recently been in touch with the rightsholder of the original poem which she set to music, which is why she's finally been able to give it to a group to perform, and they seem to be enjoying it. I'm very pleased for her and hopefully sometime we'll have a recording for people to hear.
ITEM! Bedtime! Bye for now.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Photo TARDIS, April 2007 (or: "If a picture ever paints a thousand words, I'll run a mile")
Random photography from the past month. Try to keep up!
First, random rabbit-driven advertisement:
The road up to Squamish:
Just south of Squamish is Shannon Falls. Which looks like this. Quite something:
At Squamish is a railway museum. They have a dozen or so restored carriages from the age of steam, including this Post Office coach in which very hard-working people sorted the mail while the train was on the move, using a filing system that looked like this. Remember they're travelling at seventy miles an hour on rickety wooden tracks while doing this job.
And here are the mailbags ready to receive the sorted mail:
Bunny inna train:
Now this is a snowplough!
Panda the traindriver!
They also had a restored 'executive's carriage'. This is literally a mobile office where a railroad executive would conduct business on the move. It was like a hotel suite on wheels. The woodwork was exquisite. Curvy corridors. Private servant with his own room. Private chef and kitchen. Private bedroom. How the other half lived...
Onwards to Squamish:
And here we are. You might remember in the blog for that weekend I mentioned how bizarre it is to be in a place which looks exactly like a typical American main-street town except that it's completely surrounded by mountains. Well, hell, take a look:
And then we drove home. The southbound lane is closer to the precipice so the sea view on the return trip is better. Feast your eyes on this:
Did you know the sun actually produces lens flare even without a camera involved? Check out this massive corona. That's what it looked like to our naked eyes:
A brief pause to show you this. Can't remember if I posted this at the time (April 4th, according to the camera):
And now we'll take you to the outside of Vancouver Art Gallery.
Some 'art cars' are parked outside. What's an 'art car', you ask? Thank you, that's my cue:
No photography inside the art gallery, of course. To compensate for your loss, how about I show you some photos of unlikely Canadian pharmaceutical products?
I remain terrified of scary mannequins. Sears (the big Boots), take a bow:
Another panda-sponsored restaurant, can't be bad:
No matter how you try to hide it in massive tarpaulins, everyone's still gonna know it's a skyscraper:
Spotted on the way home from the cinema where we watched the Oscar-nominated shorts. Clearly the posterboard design was potentially too complex for the focus group of somewhat-drunk pedestrians, so they stamped BEER across it to make absolutely sure you'd know you were standing outside a liquor store:
This is Susan, she's in the choir. She moonlights as a tenor and therefore counts as a goddess. This was taken at the mad dance on Granville Island in middling-late April when I danced for about six hours straight and then walked home several miles in the rain with only a meatball sub for company. Great night!
We went for a walk around North Vancouver and found a nice little floating pier. It was a sunny day and we were very happy. This is us: Gil and Sarah Jaysmith. If you're reading this in England: we wish you were here.
First, random rabbit-driven advertisement:
The road up to Squamish:
Just south of Squamish is Shannon Falls. Which looks like this. Quite something:
At Squamish is a railway museum. They have a dozen or so restored carriages from the age of steam, including this Post Office coach in which very hard-working people sorted the mail while the train was on the move, using a filing system that looked like this. Remember they're travelling at seventy miles an hour on rickety wooden tracks while doing this job.
And here are the mailbags ready to receive the sorted mail:
Bunny inna train:
Now this is a snowplough!
Panda the traindriver!
They also had a restored 'executive's carriage'. This is literally a mobile office where a railroad executive would conduct business on the move. It was like a hotel suite on wheels. The woodwork was exquisite. Curvy corridors. Private servant with his own room. Private chef and kitchen. Private bedroom. How the other half lived...
Onwards to Squamish:
And here we are. You might remember in the blog for that weekend I mentioned how bizarre it is to be in a place which looks exactly like a typical American main-street town except that it's completely surrounded by mountains. Well, hell, take a look:
And then we drove home. The southbound lane is closer to the precipice so the sea view on the return trip is better. Feast your eyes on this:
Did you know the sun actually produces lens flare even without a camera involved? Check out this massive corona. That's what it looked like to our naked eyes:
A brief pause to show you this. Can't remember if I posted this at the time (April 4th, according to the camera):
And now we'll take you to the outside of Vancouver Art Gallery.
Some 'art cars' are parked outside. What's an 'art car', you ask? Thank you, that's my cue:
No photography inside the art gallery, of course. To compensate for your loss, how about I show you some photos of unlikely Canadian pharmaceutical products?
I remain terrified of scary mannequins. Sears (the big Boots), take a bow:
Another panda-sponsored restaurant, can't be bad:
No matter how you try to hide it in massive tarpaulins, everyone's still gonna know it's a skyscraper:
Spotted on the way home from the cinema where we watched the Oscar-nominated shorts. Clearly the posterboard design was potentially too complex for the focus group of somewhat-drunk pedestrians, so they stamped BEER across it to make absolutely sure you'd know you were standing outside a liquor store:
This is Susan, she's in the choir. She moonlights as a tenor and therefore counts as a goddess. This was taken at the mad dance on Granville Island in middling-late April when I danced for about six hours straight and then walked home several miles in the rain with only a meatball sub for company. Great night!
We went for a walk around North Vancouver and found a nice little floating pier. It was a sunny day and we were very happy. This is us: Gil and Sarah Jaysmith. If you're reading this in England: we wish you were here.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Hurts So Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-d
The paper here ran a story about a man who had abducted a total of 77 sheep and lived with them in his house. "I couldn't help it," he told police, as he was charged with 40 counts of animal cruelty. Note: 40 counts. Not 77. So, what, 37 of the sheep refused to press charges?
I Want To Be A Noisy Panda
Saturday May 12: the day High Spirits found out how loud I can sing!
We left the apartment at 9:15am and got back home at about 1:30am on Sunday morning. Kim (an alto from the High Spirits and Afternoon Delights choirs, who has been very kindly lifting us to the pub and then homewards on Wednesday nights) collected us and took us to Ieva's house, where Marvin Regier was giving a singing masterclass. There were about fourteen singers in total, and we each got 15 minutes of his attention while everyone else listened carefully. The guy knows his stuff. I was interested because although I'm pretty confident with what I do, I don't necessarily know how to solve technical problems while singing; I rely on what works in front of an audience, and I try a song over and over until I hit upon its particular recipe. This is all very well when it works, of course, but I don't really have much of a technical toolkit, just a whole bunch of past cases where I've gotten it right or mostly right. I figured this is what 'exercises' are for, to give you a toolbox of singing techniques redux; can't sing this note right, or reach that note? Try this exercise, achieve the result out of context, then put it into context. So, that was what I eventually got to ask him, and indeed that was the answer... and using such subtle tricks, I managed to sing the end of Grand Hotel's epic song Love Can't Happen, which has hitherto eluded me. So I was happy. I was particularly happy because Marvin said some nice things about my voice and also took away a DVD and programme for A New Brain. Sarah was also very happy because she, asking him for tips on maintaining her tone while singing higher, got a bundle of tips and a big compliment. External validation: very useful, because despite our cocky appearance - well, my cocky appearance and Sarah's occasional lapse into self-confidence - we are ever so shy and uncertain! This is why performing regularly is so good for you; it's the one true measurement of whether you rock. Theory and practice, whatever; get out there and sing!
Which leads me to the High Spirits performance party which started at 6pm and ran for seven hours. The performance party is, depending on who you are, dear reader, either (1) an enthusiastic musical free-for-all in which members of the choir get to perform songs of their choice in front of a warm and appreciative audience, or (2) Not Quite A Posse Party, But Nice Try. Kim sang Giants In The Sky but other than that there was nothing from musicals. Nothing! Dearie me. We fixed that pretty sharpish. We sang our own All You Have To Say and I Want To Be A Panda in our first slot, then All The Wasted Time and Big News in the second. Sarah played piano for a three-part instrumental piece by Tara, and accompanied Kim's song and a couple of others. Then, once the scheduled entertainment was over, we stole up to the piano and did a bunch more stuff, including Bring Him Home, The Song That Goes Like This, and some other songs from musicals - which people didn't know! Oh, the shame. Try singing One Day More in Littlehampton without instantly attracting twenty people who equally instantly pick out parts for themselves. We may have to poison everyone's mind with musicals. And we didn't even do Four Jews In A Room Bitching. Maybe next time. In short, we had a ball and Kim awarded us the Rookie Of The Party award. Boom! This is what it means to Hit Vancouver!
Good party in general though. One in the morning is not a humiliatingly early time to stop drinking. I was on Southern Comfort for the night. Man, did I have a headache this morning! But well worth it. And now we have to write some more songs...
Today (Sunday May 13th) was less than action-packed, except for a horribly early start: Sarah had been roped into playing piano for an hour at an arts exhibition down on Denman... you can imagine how happy she was about that... and I sat there dutifully turning pages. We were interrupted near the end by a guy who thought we would know where he could buy guitar tablature with fingering positions, which immediately put a big smile on my face as I recalled the French & Saunders sketch featuring the guitarists... "And now with the book?" Very tiring day as a result. We ate out - must be about the eighth time we've had skewers at Kalypso's - and otherwise stayed in.
We still haven't gotten around to downloading photos. Still, reading is good for you. It's not all about the visuals, you know. Much love to all, and tune in next time.
We left the apartment at 9:15am and got back home at about 1:30am on Sunday morning. Kim (an alto from the High Spirits and Afternoon Delights choirs, who has been very kindly lifting us to the pub and then homewards on Wednesday nights) collected us and took us to Ieva's house, where Marvin Regier was giving a singing masterclass. There were about fourteen singers in total, and we each got 15 minutes of his attention while everyone else listened carefully. The guy knows his stuff. I was interested because although I'm pretty confident with what I do, I don't necessarily know how to solve technical problems while singing; I rely on what works in front of an audience, and I try a song over and over until I hit upon its particular recipe. This is all very well when it works, of course, but I don't really have much of a technical toolkit, just a whole bunch of past cases where I've gotten it right or mostly right. I figured this is what 'exercises' are for, to give you a toolbox of singing techniques redux; can't sing this note right, or reach that note? Try this exercise, achieve the result out of context, then put it into context. So, that was what I eventually got to ask him, and indeed that was the answer... and using such subtle tricks, I managed to sing the end of Grand Hotel's epic song Love Can't Happen, which has hitherto eluded me. So I was happy. I was particularly happy because Marvin said some nice things about my voice and also took away a DVD and programme for A New Brain. Sarah was also very happy because she, asking him for tips on maintaining her tone while singing higher, got a bundle of tips and a big compliment. External validation: very useful, because despite our cocky appearance - well, my cocky appearance and Sarah's occasional lapse into self-confidence - we are ever so shy and uncertain! This is why performing regularly is so good for you; it's the one true measurement of whether you rock. Theory and practice, whatever; get out there and sing!
Which leads me to the High Spirits performance party which started at 6pm and ran for seven hours. The performance party is, depending on who you are, dear reader, either (1) an enthusiastic musical free-for-all in which members of the choir get to perform songs of their choice in front of a warm and appreciative audience, or (2) Not Quite A Posse Party, But Nice Try. Kim sang Giants In The Sky but other than that there was nothing from musicals. Nothing! Dearie me. We fixed that pretty sharpish. We sang our own All You Have To Say and I Want To Be A Panda in our first slot, then All The Wasted Time and Big News in the second. Sarah played piano for a three-part instrumental piece by Tara, and accompanied Kim's song and a couple of others. Then, once the scheduled entertainment was over, we stole up to the piano and did a bunch more stuff, including Bring Him Home, The Song That Goes Like This, and some other songs from musicals - which people didn't know! Oh, the shame. Try singing One Day More in Littlehampton without instantly attracting twenty people who equally instantly pick out parts for themselves. We may have to poison everyone's mind with musicals. And we didn't even do Four Jews In A Room Bitching. Maybe next time. In short, we had a ball and Kim awarded us the Rookie Of The Party award. Boom! This is what it means to Hit Vancouver!
Good party in general though. One in the morning is not a humiliatingly early time to stop drinking. I was on Southern Comfort for the night. Man, did I have a headache this morning! But well worth it. And now we have to write some more songs...
Today (Sunday May 13th) was less than action-packed, except for a horribly early start: Sarah had been roped into playing piano for an hour at an arts exhibition down on Denman... you can imagine how happy she was about that... and I sat there dutifully turning pages. We were interrupted near the end by a guy who thought we would know where he could buy guitar tablature with fingering positions, which immediately put a big smile on my face as I recalled the French & Saunders sketch featuring the guitarists... "And now with the book?" Very tiring day as a result. We ate out - must be about the eighth time we've had skewers at Kalypso's - and otherwise stayed in.
We still haven't gotten around to downloading photos. Still, reading is good for you. It's not all about the visuals, you know. Much love to all, and tune in next time.
Blog TARDIS: Oscarette (sometime in early April)
We caught the Oscar nominations for short movies, animated and otherwise, a couple of weeks ago. Forgot to mention it until now. Worth recapping.
Amongst the highlights of the animated programme: The Danish Poet, a very sweet telling of how the animator's parents met... No Time For Nuts, a skit featuring Scrat from Ice Age... A Gentleman's Duel, an amusing English-French steampunk-styled duel over a noblewoman's hand... Guide Dog, an amusingly sick tale of an over-eager guide dog who gets all his charges killed... Maestro, an impeccably-presented piece of CGI, with just one joke but perfectly delivered... and One Rat Short, a superbly-animated but utterly gutting tale of a street rat accidentally swept up into a science lab where other rats are being experimented upon. Sarah and I decided instantly to expunge that one from our memory, but it bears mentioning. It was very good. Just very sad. Like We3 come to life. Which reminds me, actually, there's a script for We3 and reports suggest it will make the best movie ever. Hurrah for Grant Morrison!
Amongst the highlights of the live-action shorts: Binta And The Great Idea, a complex story about life viewed from Africa which carried quite a lot of emotional punch and also looked great... The Saviour, a slightly disturbing story about a door-to-door missionary having an affair, notable for featuring Nicholas Hammond (TV's original Spider-Man) as a nutjob preacher... and the winner, West Bank Story, a sublime retelling of West Side Story Bollywood-style with Arabs and Jews opening neighbouring fast-food restaurants. Quite insane.
You can get both collections on DVD, I believe, so give it a shot. Much better than watching one long movie and finding you don't like it; if you don't like a short, just tap your foot for fifteen minutes and another one will be along.
We watched them at the VanCity Theatre. This is a very nice theatre. They aren't kidding about having luxurious seats. It's a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment, so very handy. Like living near the Duke Of York's again!
Amongst the highlights of the animated programme: The Danish Poet, a very sweet telling of how the animator's parents met... No Time For Nuts, a skit featuring Scrat from Ice Age... A Gentleman's Duel, an amusing English-French steampunk-styled duel over a noblewoman's hand... Guide Dog, an amusingly sick tale of an over-eager guide dog who gets all his charges killed... Maestro, an impeccably-presented piece of CGI, with just one joke but perfectly delivered... and One Rat Short, a superbly-animated but utterly gutting tale of a street rat accidentally swept up into a science lab where other rats are being experimented upon. Sarah and I decided instantly to expunge that one from our memory, but it bears mentioning. It was very good. Just very sad. Like We3 come to life. Which reminds me, actually, there's a script for We3 and reports suggest it will make the best movie ever. Hurrah for Grant Morrison!
Amongst the highlights of the live-action shorts: Binta And The Great Idea, a complex story about life viewed from Africa which carried quite a lot of emotional punch and also looked great... The Saviour, a slightly disturbing story about a door-to-door missionary having an affair, notable for featuring Nicholas Hammond (TV's original Spider-Man) as a nutjob preacher... and the winner, West Bank Story, a sublime retelling of West Side Story Bollywood-style with Arabs and Jews opening neighbouring fast-food restaurants. Quite insane.
You can get both collections on DVD, I believe, so give it a shot. Much better than watching one long movie and finding you don't like it; if you don't like a short, just tap your foot for fifteen minutes and another one will be along.
We watched them at the VanCity Theatre. This is a very nice theatre. They aren't kidding about having luxurious seats. It's a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment, so very handy. Like living near the Duke Of York's again!
Friday, May 11, 2007
Like a drumming spider...
I sense the Blog TARDIS may cartwheel into view next time. My grip on sequential time is a bit blurred. While I can focus on yesterday and today, though:
The evening of Wednesday May 9th: we went down to 16th Street to see Bill Bruford hosting a drumming clinic. Bruford drummed with King Crimson and Yes, took over the drums for Genesis on tour, and has run his own band, Bill Bruford's Earthworks. His technique is remarkable; his drums are flat, he has the snare, hi-hat and bass drum pretty much lined up in front of him with his toms alternating down to each side, and he's completely centred; he looks almost like a spider, moving just his wrists and ankles, rotating his entire upper body at the waist rather than bend anywhere else. Always upright. It looks remarkable. Sarah, never one for anguished musical self-expression in herself or others, admired his zen-like economy of movement. For $8 apiece, a very entertaining two hours. Then we casually sauntered down to the pub to meet the rest of High Spirits who'd been busily rehearsing while we were skiving, and I scandalised Kim with comments about goats.
Thursday May 10th: Sarah's next concert with Afternoon Delights. She felt much happier about this one than last Thursday's, which saw a somewhat fraught evening of bunny repair work to remind her that she was not in fact rubbish at all aspects of music. Then she hung out with Kim a bit, it seems. No doubt much female discussion of my genius was to be heard. Sarah is declining to issue me with full details. Actually she claims they talked about other things a lot of the time but I refuse to believe it.
In the evening... erm... well. Fans of Gil's Strongly-Held Opinions may be aware that I have very little time for old musicals. Because they suck. Whether this is a question of not dating well, or because they were intrinsically bad even then - who cares? It's 2007. They suck. Almost every musical written before, I dunno, call it 1978, is rubbish. Sure, pick out your favourite musical from 1977 or earlier, and tell me how wonderful it is. You're wrong. It's rubbish. Old-school big-production-value Broadway musicals, salt of the earth, yadda yadda yadda. They're all rubbish. The songs are rubbish. The dancing girls are pointless. The spectacle, the jazz hands, the ninety-second songs with hardly anything interesting in the music and with utterly generic lyrics, all these things are just elements of why these shows suck giant dusty Martian rocks.
And here in the Vancouver Public Library to demonstrate the verity of my claim, presenting a retrospective on the careers of lyric-writing partners Betty Comden and Adolph Green, I give you the APPLAUSE! Musicals Society, with seven of their singers showcasing twenty-odd songs from the team's fourteen musicals.
OK, look, they wrote On The Town. I'll give 'em that. Bernstein music, good story (but adapted from a play, I note) and OK songs, and it had Dan Dailey in the movie and that's always going to be alright by me since he looked like Daddy. But that's it. That's all they did that was any good. For the following fifty-something years they somehow made a career out of a perma-downward slope of movies and musicals which just weren't any good. The singers were significantly underrehearsed, and the accompanist was pretty grim, but out of twenty songs from a supposedly successful team I'd expect to hear a better hit ratio than two good, three OK, five listenable and ten awful. The presenter tried to make light of the fact that their shows often flopped (which is not of itself proof that they were talentless hacks) and that shows which featured their book but not their song lyrics often did well (which I'm afraid is stronger evidence). But towards the end it was just shameful. These people were, frankly, losers. They even worked on the movie of Singin' In The Rain and contributed just one song... Moses Supposes. Wonderful. Thank you. Now go get some talent and write something good.
The presentation was nominally part of this society's "Musicals 101" series of related lectures, but it was also a massive attempted plug for Do Re Mi, their forthcoming show with lyrics by, you guessed it, Comden and Green. Now we did appreciate their semi-staged The Mystery Of Edwin Drood a few weeks ago. In fact, did I write about that? Perhaps I should do that in a moment. But look, there's a reason why a lot of stuff almost dies out and is kept alive only through the diligent efforts of a few hardworking volunteers. It's because it's old, irrelevant crap, and only the volunteers like it, and it should be allowed to die out to make room for the new stuff, which is the crap-to-be for the next generation but which right now is what we ought to be listening to. Those who remember the past this intensely, and particularly those who excavate it with such dedication - and half of the singers in APPLAUSE! weren't old enough to have seen a Comden and Green show themselves - well, they're doomed to repeat it, and they'll sit there convinced that this is the way it should be, and that all this modern new-fangled tuneless claptrap is just a fad, probably something to do with homosexuality, and it will pass soon, and then once more we can rejoice in the presence of good old-fashioned red-blooded shows with lots of dancing girls and songs about love, moon, June, spoon, croon. NO! It makes me nauseous. Let the past die out, let the future reign, and for god's sake let no-one ever be forced to sing crap songs from crap 1940s and 1950s musicals ever again. Argh!
Side note: never ask me what I think of Oliver! unless you want your ears damaged at a molecular level.
News of almost complete immateriality: we've found cheap tasty bread. Sarah is picky about bread; I'm more picky about it being brown, and preferably seedy. I don't know what the story is with farm products here. Groceries are surprisingly expensive in general, but bread - 65p for a no-label loaf is the cheapest we've found in regular shops, and you can get bread that costs three pounds a loaf. Three quid! For sixteen slices of bread! Milk is also somewhat more expensive... even comparing it to Cravendale, which was pretty much all we drank for the last few years in England. "2% milk", i.e. semi-skimmed, is easily 50% more expensive than in England. It all points to British farmers being able to keep prices down thanks to subsidies. Although, my understanding was that in America the subsidies are almost worse, or at least that farmers had powerful lobbyists to help them out. Maybe that doesn't work up here. Eh. I don't care enough to research it - even the thought of opening another browser window to Google for "farm subsidies Canada" almost physically revolts me with its implicit and unendurable endorsement of intellectual inquisitiveness - but, well, food is expensive. Tump.
Tonight we tripped off to London Drug to get sleeping tablets for Sarah. Let's hope SleepMD does the job. Nano-diffusers (TM) are on the job, apparently. Will she sleep tonight? The drama continues! Could have been worse, though. The product on the next shelf was called Zim's Crack Cream - new extra creamy formula, it proudly proclaimed. And we have pictures if you don't believe me, once we can be bothered to wire up the phone.
This kinda worked, didn't it? Perhaps I can convince myself not to accidentally abandon you all for another fortnight like last time... goodnight for now, though.
The evening of Wednesday May 9th: we went down to 16th Street to see Bill Bruford hosting a drumming clinic. Bruford drummed with King Crimson and Yes, took over the drums for Genesis on tour, and has run his own band, Bill Bruford's Earthworks. His technique is remarkable; his drums are flat, he has the snare, hi-hat and bass drum pretty much lined up in front of him with his toms alternating down to each side, and he's completely centred; he looks almost like a spider, moving just his wrists and ankles, rotating his entire upper body at the waist rather than bend anywhere else. Always upright. It looks remarkable. Sarah, never one for anguished musical self-expression in herself or others, admired his zen-like economy of movement. For $8 apiece, a very entertaining two hours. Then we casually sauntered down to the pub to meet the rest of High Spirits who'd been busily rehearsing while we were skiving, and I scandalised Kim with comments about goats.
Thursday May 10th: Sarah's next concert with Afternoon Delights. She felt much happier about this one than last Thursday's, which saw a somewhat fraught evening of bunny repair work to remind her that she was not in fact rubbish at all aspects of music. Then she hung out with Kim a bit, it seems. No doubt much female discussion of my genius was to be heard. Sarah is declining to issue me with full details. Actually she claims they talked about other things a lot of the time but I refuse to believe it.
In the evening... erm... well. Fans of Gil's Strongly-Held Opinions may be aware that I have very little time for old musicals. Because they suck. Whether this is a question of not dating well, or because they were intrinsically bad even then - who cares? It's 2007. They suck. Almost every musical written before, I dunno, call it 1978, is rubbish. Sure, pick out your favourite musical from 1977 or earlier, and tell me how wonderful it is. You're wrong. It's rubbish. Old-school big-production-value Broadway musicals, salt of the earth, yadda yadda yadda. They're all rubbish. The songs are rubbish. The dancing girls are pointless. The spectacle, the jazz hands, the ninety-second songs with hardly anything interesting in the music and with utterly generic lyrics, all these things are just elements of why these shows suck giant dusty Martian rocks.
And here in the Vancouver Public Library to demonstrate the verity of my claim, presenting a retrospective on the careers of lyric-writing partners Betty Comden and Adolph Green, I give you the APPLAUSE! Musicals Society, with seven of their singers showcasing twenty-odd songs from the team's fourteen musicals.
OK, look, they wrote On The Town. I'll give 'em that. Bernstein music, good story (but adapted from a play, I note) and OK songs, and it had Dan Dailey in the movie and that's always going to be alright by me since he looked like Daddy. But that's it. That's all they did that was any good. For the following fifty-something years they somehow made a career out of a perma-downward slope of movies and musicals which just weren't any good. The singers were significantly underrehearsed, and the accompanist was pretty grim, but out of twenty songs from a supposedly successful team I'd expect to hear a better hit ratio than two good, three OK, five listenable and ten awful. The presenter tried to make light of the fact that their shows often flopped (which is not of itself proof that they were talentless hacks) and that shows which featured their book but not their song lyrics often did well (which I'm afraid is stronger evidence). But towards the end it was just shameful. These people were, frankly, losers. They even worked on the movie of Singin' In The Rain and contributed just one song... Moses Supposes. Wonderful. Thank you. Now go get some talent and write something good.
The presentation was nominally part of this society's "Musicals 101" series of related lectures, but it was also a massive attempted plug for Do Re Mi, their forthcoming show with lyrics by, you guessed it, Comden and Green. Now we did appreciate their semi-staged The Mystery Of Edwin Drood a few weeks ago. In fact, did I write about that? Perhaps I should do that in a moment. But look, there's a reason why a lot of stuff almost dies out and is kept alive only through the diligent efforts of a few hardworking volunteers. It's because it's old, irrelevant crap, and only the volunteers like it, and it should be allowed to die out to make room for the new stuff, which is the crap-to-be for the next generation but which right now is what we ought to be listening to. Those who remember the past this intensely, and particularly those who excavate it with such dedication - and half of the singers in APPLAUSE! weren't old enough to have seen a Comden and Green show themselves - well, they're doomed to repeat it, and they'll sit there convinced that this is the way it should be, and that all this modern new-fangled tuneless claptrap is just a fad, probably something to do with homosexuality, and it will pass soon, and then once more we can rejoice in the presence of good old-fashioned red-blooded shows with lots of dancing girls and songs about love, moon, June, spoon, croon. NO! It makes me nauseous. Let the past die out, let the future reign, and for god's sake let no-one ever be forced to sing crap songs from crap 1940s and 1950s musicals ever again. Argh!
Side note: never ask me what I think of Oliver! unless you want your ears damaged at a molecular level.
News of almost complete immateriality: we've found cheap tasty bread. Sarah is picky about bread; I'm more picky about it being brown, and preferably seedy. I don't know what the story is with farm products here. Groceries are surprisingly expensive in general, but bread - 65p for a no-label loaf is the cheapest we've found in regular shops, and you can get bread that costs three pounds a loaf. Three quid! For sixteen slices of bread! Milk is also somewhat more expensive... even comparing it to Cravendale, which was pretty much all we drank for the last few years in England. "2% milk", i.e. semi-skimmed, is easily 50% more expensive than in England. It all points to British farmers being able to keep prices down thanks to subsidies. Although, my understanding was that in America the subsidies are almost worse, or at least that farmers had powerful lobbyists to help them out. Maybe that doesn't work up here. Eh. I don't care enough to research it - even the thought of opening another browser window to Google for "farm subsidies Canada" almost physically revolts me with its implicit and unendurable endorsement of intellectual inquisitiveness - but, well, food is expensive. Tump.
Tonight we tripped off to London Drug to get sleeping tablets for Sarah. Let's hope SleepMD does the job. Nano-diffusers (TM) are on the job, apparently. Will she sleep tonight? The drama continues! Could have been worse, though. The product on the next shelf was called Zim's Crack Cream - new extra creamy formula, it proudly proclaimed. And we have pictures if you don't believe me, once we can be bothered to wire up the phone.
This kinda worked, didn't it? Perhaps I can convince myself not to accidentally abandon you all for another fortnight like last time... goodnight for now, though.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
"HER husband wrote 'dum de dum de dum dum'..."
It's been a busy time at High-Rise Casa Jaysmith, and thus is accounted for the fact that I completely forgot to blog last week. This week I didn't forget so much as deliberately not do it because I was shattered.
The short version is that this weekend we rented a car and spent Saturday shopping, mostly at Ikea, and then Sunday driving up the coastal road to Squamish. Squamish is a weird, weird place... a small town on a waterside plain, completely surrounded by mountains. If I thought life in Vancouver was like moving to Halo (or Ringworld, for you oldies, or an Orbital for us Banks fans) then Squamish is like life inside a Dyson Sphere. It must mess with people's heads, being born there. But we survived our daytrip. Sarah is very happy after spending 24 hours with a car. I must admit we did get a nicer view of whatever we were driving towards than we'd have had on a bus.
We now have, courtesy of Ikea, three sets of shelving units, which are my next building project. As usual their delivery options were incredibly inconvenient (even more inconvenient than Bosco's Inconvenience Store). I still don't see why you have to select the items you want (bulky as these may be) and take them to the checkout before you can ask for home delivery - which they can only schedule within the immediately following 48 hours because they don't have much room to store the items you've picked out. Why can't you hand over a pick list at the checkout and have them pick out the items the day before you want the stuff delivered? Imagine if Ikea Delivery was actually helpful, in other words.
The other big reason we're exhausted is because we've been being creative. Ever so creative! Sarah was offered a solo spot in the Afternoon Delights concert coming up next Thursday. And Ieva (the conductor) suggested that, on account of Sarah being a composer - she knew this because I talk Sarah up to everyone at every opportunity - she should sing one of her own compositions. Sarah squeaked at the prospect but cautiously suggested to me that we should write a new song very quickly, suitable for singing in an old people's home... so nothing about "dancing in the shadow of death" or "we've had a great life but it's nearly over", for example. So last Thursday night we knocked around some ideas for a while. I have a tendency to try to figure out "high concepts" for songs, whereas Sarah thinks of titles - mostly because all my suggestions for titles are disgusting! So eventually we ended up with When You Smile as a title, and we proceeded from there.
Our working method seems to be that we discuss what we want to say and how we want it to be said, and then I work out a verse and chorus, for which Sarah duly composes a lovely melody and some chords. We then figure out either another verse or the bridge, sort out the overall song layout, and tighten it up. So that's what happened. Over the course of Thursday evening, in five hours of very hard work, we ended up with everything except a melody for the bridge. (And Sarah was a bit uncertain about the melody for the end of the chorus, but she couldn't sleep so she got up at 4am and sorted it out.) Bizarrely, when I went to get supper from the kitchen at 12:30am, an entirely different song called Velvet popped into my head - an entire verse, chorus and tune - so we got a bonus for the evening. Presumably once you start songwriting you just can't stop. Needless to say my song is, if not disgusting, certainly somewhat raunchy. Justine, you'll have to cover your ears ;)
On Saturday Sarah was able to demonstrate When You Smile to Ieva and the rest of the High Spirits tenors when she came to collect me after the tenor section rehearsal. It seemed to go down well and she'll be performing it on Thursday. However, that's not the end of it! On Monday we got another request from Ieva, this time for a song of Sarah's which Ieva could sing at a friend's wedding. Now the obvious, if perhaps too 'special' and quirky, wedding song of Sarah's is the one she wrote for our wedding, and Ieva loves that, but we thought it would be interesting to try to write the definitive 'wedding' song, just as I think we wrote the definitive 'friendship and love' song in the form of I'll Rescue You. So last night we hammered out, with again a lot of hard work, the chorus, chorus melody, and three verses for a song called All You Have To Say. Today Sarah sorted out the verse melody, and tonight we've sorted out the bridge lyrics and melody. And I think we've achieved our goal. You'll have to decide. We'll try to put up recordings of all these songs on a secret Posse page later this week, assuming Squeaky Bunny sorts her voice out or I can sing it in a suitable range.
This then is why no blog posts, and this now is making up for it. Any questions?
NB I don't know what happened to the photos from two posts ago. Dan pointed it out. I'll sort it next chance I get.
The short version is that this weekend we rented a car and spent Saturday shopping, mostly at Ikea, and then Sunday driving up the coastal road to Squamish. Squamish is a weird, weird place... a small town on a waterside plain, completely surrounded by mountains. If I thought life in Vancouver was like moving to Halo (or Ringworld, for you oldies, or an Orbital for us Banks fans) then Squamish is like life inside a Dyson Sphere. It must mess with people's heads, being born there. But we survived our daytrip. Sarah is very happy after spending 24 hours with a car. I must admit we did get a nicer view of whatever we were driving towards than we'd have had on a bus.
We now have, courtesy of Ikea, three sets of shelving units, which are my next building project. As usual their delivery options were incredibly inconvenient (even more inconvenient than Bosco's Inconvenience Store). I still don't see why you have to select the items you want (bulky as these may be) and take them to the checkout before you can ask for home delivery - which they can only schedule within the immediately following 48 hours because they don't have much room to store the items you've picked out. Why can't you hand over a pick list at the checkout and have them pick out the items the day before you want the stuff delivered? Imagine if Ikea Delivery was actually helpful, in other words.
The other big reason we're exhausted is because we've been being creative. Ever so creative! Sarah was offered a solo spot in the Afternoon Delights concert coming up next Thursday. And Ieva (the conductor) suggested that, on account of Sarah being a composer - she knew this because I talk Sarah up to everyone at every opportunity - she should sing one of her own compositions. Sarah squeaked at the prospect but cautiously suggested to me that we should write a new song very quickly, suitable for singing in an old people's home... so nothing about "dancing in the shadow of death" or "we've had a great life but it's nearly over", for example. So last Thursday night we knocked around some ideas for a while. I have a tendency to try to figure out "high concepts" for songs, whereas Sarah thinks of titles - mostly because all my suggestions for titles are disgusting! So eventually we ended up with When You Smile as a title, and we proceeded from there.
Our working method seems to be that we discuss what we want to say and how we want it to be said, and then I work out a verse and chorus, for which Sarah duly composes a lovely melody and some chords. We then figure out either another verse or the bridge, sort out the overall song layout, and tighten it up. So that's what happened. Over the course of Thursday evening, in five hours of very hard work, we ended up with everything except a melody for the bridge. (And Sarah was a bit uncertain about the melody for the end of the chorus, but she couldn't sleep so she got up at 4am and sorted it out.) Bizarrely, when I went to get supper from the kitchen at 12:30am, an entirely different song called Velvet popped into my head - an entire verse, chorus and tune - so we got a bonus for the evening. Presumably once you start songwriting you just can't stop. Needless to say my song is, if not disgusting, certainly somewhat raunchy. Justine, you'll have to cover your ears ;)
On Saturday Sarah was able to demonstrate When You Smile to Ieva and the rest of the High Spirits tenors when she came to collect me after the tenor section rehearsal. It seemed to go down well and she'll be performing it on Thursday. However, that's not the end of it! On Monday we got another request from Ieva, this time for a song of Sarah's which Ieva could sing at a friend's wedding. Now the obvious, if perhaps too 'special' and quirky, wedding song of Sarah's is the one she wrote for our wedding, and Ieva loves that, but we thought it would be interesting to try to write the definitive 'wedding' song, just as I think we wrote the definitive 'friendship and love' song in the form of I'll Rescue You. So last night we hammered out, with again a lot of hard work, the chorus, chorus melody, and three verses for a song called All You Have To Say. Today Sarah sorted out the verse melody, and tonight we've sorted out the bridge lyrics and melody. And I think we've achieved our goal. You'll have to decide. We'll try to put up recordings of all these songs on a secret Posse page later this week, assuming Squeaky Bunny sorts her voice out or I can sing it in a suitable range.
This then is why no blog posts, and this now is making up for it. Any questions?
NB I don't know what happened to the photos from two posts ago. Dan pointed it out. I'll sort it next chance I get.
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