Reconciliation

 When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its 94 Calls to Action in 2015, I immediately began pondering what my role should be in Reconciliation. At the time, I was just starting as a volunteer host at CJTR (discussed in a post earlier this year). It was immediately obvious that I had a platform I could use to amplify Indigenous voices and share some kick-ass music from some kick-ass people. So I declared then and there that I'd work hard to include an Indigenous performer in every playlist. I can't say I was successful, but I did try hard, I learned about a ton of great music and I think I managed to spotlight some great music. 

It's been nearly 4 years since The Cockpit came in for its final landing but the pipelines I'd built to find new music and expand my horizons are still there. I still hear about amazing stuff all the time - I just haven't had that big platform to share them on anymore. 

Last week, I had a great hit from one of those pipelines in the form of a cool article from CBC Indigenous about Indigenous punk music and the scene that's existed for decades. While the article (and accompanying podcast) is more tailored to groups from the United States, there is still a Canadian connection there. As I chased down all the new paths this article (and the Instagram account it discusses) opened up for me, the BC scene really seemed to blossom.

Of course, this isn't my first foray into Indigenous punk. I've been a fan of Dead Pioneers for a long time and there are a few bands from around Turtle Island that I've listened to, gone to shows and talked to. Always great people, and always have important things to say.

But punk music, rock music or in general the music I listen to isn't the only way I've connected with Indigenous people through music. I went to the Roughrider/Redblacks football game this weekend with Jonas. The game celebrated the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and I was really taken by how good the drum performance was before the game. The Wooden Face Singers filled Mosaic Stadium with a moving tribute to those who have passed on and I realized how much my appreciation for Indigenous drumming has grown. I'm getting good at telling the difference between a good group and one that needs some practice!

There was a time, early in my music career, when I really wanted to integrate drumming into a song (or many songs). I felt (as I often still do) that I didn't have a strong cultural background to identify with and wanted to find a place in the culture of the people who are native to Canada. I've grown a lot since that time and I understand that those desires amount to cultural appropriation - in a very real way. I wanted to use their culture to define mine. And that's not right. 

But there's part of me that still hasn't given up on the idea. I DO appreciate drumming, it's strong, emotional and connected to the land. It's closer to me and the life I live than any French or Swiss traditions that might actually make up my DNA. But I would approach it from a completely different angle. I hope someday that I make a strong connection with an Indigenous artist and they want me to contribute some of my culture while they contribute their own. In the spirit of reconciliation, I hope someday to make music TOGETHER instead of TAKING and make something great that everyone can enjoy.

But until then, have a good Truth and Reconciliation Day. I hope you find a way to walk along the path with people in your community. 

Chuck Berry - Rock God and Madman

 Leaning into developing and producing a solo musical project over the last few months has been a very satisfying use of my spare time. I'm realizing that I had built up a wall of misconceptions about myself during my musical journey and knocking down some of those misconceptions has shown me a vista of possibilities that I simply wasn't seeing before. 

As happens with so many creative projects, my inspiration and skill have hit a plateau over the last few weeks. I'm still picking up the guitar and playing my heart out but it really feels like I'm just using the same bag of tricks over and over again. In an effort to bring myself some new skills and inspiration, I signed up for my first-ever guitar lessons.

FIRST EVER?! Yeah. I've never taken lessons to play bass or guitar. I've learned plenty from friends and fellow bandmates, learned to play by ear very early and I've used countless books, followed by websites to learn new skills, theory and songs. But I've never like paid someone to show me how to hold my hands. I'm stubborn and cheap. 

In a fascinating alignment of the stars, one of my favourite YouTube guitarists, The Samurai Guitarist from Winnipeg, posted a really great video called "This sounds UNBELIEVABLY cool (seems IMPOSSIBLE)". In the video, he examines this weird triple bend thing as performed by western-style picker Jerry Donahue. Sammy G. breaks down why this little trick is so amazing then proceeds to break down the "riff" and show his struggle over the course of about a week as he practices the trick. His level of guitar nerdom over this little riff spoke to me. As someone who's worn off fingertips and split off all my fingernails trying to master Victor Wooten tricks I totally got it. And showing that week of struggle and effort illustrated what it takes to figure that stuff out. It's a lot but really - a week of practice is totally achievable for anyone that wants to play. 

Perhaps it's no coincidence then that he also had an advertisement for his new Samurai Guitar Dojo in the video. At $7.50 a month - it's a steal of a way to build some new skills. I was sold. Plus who doesn't want to be trained by a samurai? I'm already sharpening my shuriken for week 4.

The first set of lessons focuses on how to solo using blues double stops. As Sammy G. notes, this kind of soloing is probably best heard played by Chuck Berry or by Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones. While I've been doing ok learning the technique of it all, I was feeling like my improvisation was falling a bit flat so I went out on a search for some Chuck Berry songs to inspire me. I could have gone with the 'Stones but I don't like Mick Jagger and now that Charlie Watts has died, there's no one good left in the band. 

So Chuck Berry it is.

While I don't think I'd ever describe myself as a super-fan of Chuck Berry, I've always loved his music and I mourned his passing in 2017 alongside the rest of the rock-and-roll world. 

By the time I was born in 1981, Chuck's best work was long behind him and he was firmly entrenched in the nostalgia circuit. But as a kid who came of age in the 80's and 90's, Chuck Berry was very much there. From Back to the Future to the Beethoven movies, not to mention the rest of his amazing catalogue on constant rotation on one of my favourite radio stations, CHAB in Moose Jaw, Chuck Berry's music was always on the radar. 

But I'd never really done a deep dive into Chuck and hadn't taken the time to relax and watch him play live. He's a madman (which if you read his bio... yeah). My favourite performance was from very deep into that "nostalgia circuit" and was a performance he put on at the BBC studios in 1972 backed by Rocking Horse. The very first song in the set is "Roll Over Beethoven". It starts off normal enough, he approaches the mic, starts the song and just seems like a pretty relaxed guy doing a spot-on performance of one of his biggest hits. But then the solo hits and my GOD you can see him crack. Like his sanity drains out. Have a gander:

That stare he gives the piano player is kinda chilling. 

Of course, Chuck always had the best solos. They're not complicated, and as I'm working through these lessons, I'm seeing that they really are just a few simple elements. But he PERFORMED. There's a very old clip from 1958 in Belgium where he performs "Johnny B Goode" during his prime. He plays the notes with his fingers but he performs the solo with his legs and feet. Crazy.

So has my soloing improved? No. Not really. But I did learn that I just need to be ok with the fact that I've only been given the first couple of tools and that there's more to come. I mean I'm only soloing on the A chord so far. In a couple days, I get to see what I can do with the E and the D! So there's plenty of room to improve! 

But I've a fresh appreciation for Chuck Berry and I realize more clearly than ever how everyone who's come since, all of us who have done anything that's an offshoot of pure rock n' roll are just copying Chuck. There's a little Chuck in everything we do. 

*** I'm fully aware of Chuck Berry's problematic history of sexual assault and violence. I acknowledge that many people may have been hurt. I also acknowledge that as a black man in the 1950's, the world was looking for a way to knock him down a few pegs. Like so many cultural icons who we would later learn were kinda shitty in their everyday life, I struggle to come to terms with both sides of this coin. I will say that unlike many of the people we've seen "cancelled" over the last decade, Chuck Berry did time in prison and served his debt to society. It doesn't forgive anything and we must all look at this through both lenses. I will appreciate and understand his contributions to culture, but I will not celebrate his abuse. 

Reflecting on history during an unusual anniversary

They say one of the hallmarks of being a Millennial is that this particular generation has lived through repeated "world-changing" events. Since I was born in 1981, I sit right on the cusp of Generation X and Millenials - I like to say that my cultural tastes are Gen X but my bank account is solidly Millenial. No matter which generation you wrap me in, I've seen supertall skyscrapers fall, stock markets crash, journalists beheaded, lived through a pandemic and as we speak - watched the beginning of the fall of Western democracy. 

Last Wednesday marked the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks - the first of those paradigm-shifting events that I would witness in my adult years. Twenty-three years ago I showed up for work in my first week of training at the Sears Call Centre in Regina Saskatchewan. As I walked through the office on the 4th floor that morning I overheard people around the office talking about airplanes hitting the World Trade Center, and another plane hitting the Pentagon and thinking to myself, "What movie did they see last night?" My innocence only lasted maybe another minute before I reached the training room and learned what had really happened. 

Everything changed. We all knew it then and looking back on it 23 years later, we can certainly see it now. This morning I watched a YouTube video called "a deep dive into the impact of 9/11 on pop culture" that highlights the struggles and changes we all saw then. I remember the discussion of humour and "how soon" being an ongoing conversation after but it also reminded me of the censorship and whitewashing that happened afterwards. Movies that had been made years before the events that may have even incidentally featured the WTC had the buildings removed. It's as though the terrorists didn't just destroy the buildings in New York, they somehow erased them from history. 

But while we all swore to "never forget", like all things, in time the memory of the events of that day faded and for many of us who weren't in New York that day - life went on. Even if it had changed. 

But it all came back for me earlier this year when I was led to National Geographic's phenomenal documentary on that day, "9/11: One Day in America". It features interviews with people who were in the building, around the building and in New York that day. It leans heavily on the film shot by Jules Naudet on the day, a film I had seen before but never understood had been taken by one person and followed a single fire chief from the very start of the event when the plane hits the first tower until after it had fallen. 

Somehow, 23 years later, this documentary was almost more horrific than the initial events. At least it re-surfaced the trauma of that day and taught me some of the horrors experienced by the people involved in a way I'd never heard of. Stories of people encountering still-alive passengers from the planes (albeit barely), the shocking experiences of people who watched the plane hit from inside the building and the horrific bravery of the firefighters and police officers who started climbing the steps, fully aware they'd never walk back down them. 

It makes me realize that those of us outside of New York (and indeed Washington) had been insulated from the day. We had the truth censored, usually out of respect for the victims, but maybe also so we could continue on. We all know about the jumpers and we've seen photos and videos of them falling - I've never seen them land and never want to. But in the documentary, you can hear them land - and that's horrible enough. And sometimes we didn't learn because we really didn't know - some of these stories have taken years to surface. 

And maybe I just chose to see it through a lens. Being thousands of miles away, in a different country with different experiences, maybe I chose to only see the parts that served me. Like many, I watched those events and my first question was, "What did the U.S. do to cause someone to respond like this?" Nothing that happened that way was just but it's also clear that people don't perform suicide attacks on office workers if they're being treated well. I don't buy into conspiracy theories about Bush doing 9/11 - but I also don't buy the narrative that the U.S. is an immaculate house on a hill - an argument that's much easier to make in 2024 than it was in 2001. 

But we all have a lens. One of the repeated statements from eyewitnesses and victims of that day is about how gorgeous a day it was. Clear blue skies - no cloud in sight. But that's not my memory of the day. I watched the attacks and the buildings collapse on an old TV with bunny ears picking up the broadcast of a local station. The reception was terrible and the images were mostly in black and white which caused the sky to look grey and depressing. Even after 23 years of seeing full-colour photos of the day, my mind still remembers a cloudy morning. 

I've never been to New York, but that city has constantly touched my life. Television, music, movies and world history have all happened in the Big Apple and been broadcast to the world. Twenty-three years after this attack, we still see the effects - both negative and positive - throughout our culture. I often wonder if the terrorists knew just how far-reaching their attack would be both geographically, socially and through time. I suppose it doesn't matter what they intended, it happened it is for us to react, respond and remember. 

"He never goes anywhere"

I've been trying to write a song over the last few weeks about how I never travel. It's got some good musical elements but lyrically, there's not a lot there to work with yet. The downside of discussing not doing something is that there's no experience to talk about. But this weekend I took a trip to Toronto and brought my notebook should any inspiration come up. 

We arrived in Toronto on Saturday morning and were immediately picked up by my sister Michelle who whisked us off to Burlington to watch my niece, Adelle, do some cheerleading before zipping off to Niagara Falls. Why was Michelle so committed to taking me to the falls? Well, I've never been so that's something but it came out while we were there that Mom instructed her to take me because, "He never goes anywhere." 

Touche. 

But it's true. I rarely go far, most of the time it's just camping. Or if I do go somewhere it's for work. I mean - I flew to Winnipeg to see Tool last year and saw Queens of the Stoneage in Saskatoon. That's something, right? 

The Niagara Falls are very cool but only for about 30 minutes. I'm glad it was tacked on to another trip because I would have felt bad going all that way to be delighted for just a little while. We also had a grand time at a winery where my newfound teetotalling made me a punching bag for the winery staff. But the cheese guy loved me. 

Visit my Instagram post about this day.

Sunday was concert day. We spent much of the day zipping around downtown Toronto, pretending to grab the CN tower, navigating TO's horror of a transit system and visiting with the rays at Ripley's Aquarium. 

The show was amazing featuring three bands I hold on a pedestal; Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips and Weezer.

Dinosaur Jr. was one of the bands I was most excited to see and strangely, the one I've listened to the longest. The song "Out There" was featured on the Wayne's World soundtrack, my first CD, and while many would find it to be discordant and maybe a bit weak vocally, I was in love then and I was in love again on Saturday. My biggest complaint is that they only played 25 minutes. Don't drag a band that far just to make them play a short set. I'm going to try and see them again someday. 

After the pandemic and the difficulties that hit the live music industry, I had convinced myself I'd never see the Flaming Lips live. They are a special band to me, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is one of my favourite albums and "Do You Realize" was the song Rhonda and I chose for our first dance at the wedding. The Flaming Lips were beautiful live, the harmonies were even more layered and gorgeous than the albums. I spent much of the performance weeping and wishing for better seats. 

The set for Weezer wasn't that new. We'd seen them in Saskatoon in 2017 (Saskatoon, South Africa according to the typo on the concert t-shirt I bought). The set this time covered the same ground. The difference was the very theatrical production. It took the whole show to another level. There's nothing more fun than watching awkward nerd musicians trying to act. Plus any chance to hear the Blue Album live is a good one. I hope to repeat this trip in a couple years when Pinkerton hits its 30th anniversary. 

Thanks to a very late departure from Pearson, we also had much of Sunday to run amok in the '6. We spent the day on and around Queen St, checking out the pretentious shops, visiting the endless Graffiti Alley and Rhonda even managed to get a pole dance class in during the afternoon. A wonderful hour I spent watching squirrels in Trinity Belwoods Park. 

Overall - a massive success of a trip. We packed a lot of good times into those three days, I've only really scratched the surface between this post and the Instagram posts about the trip. It's hard to wrap up the chaos, the new sights and everything that happened. I can say for sure that this old hayseed had a great time in the Golden Horseshoe. And this old hayseed is glad to be back somewhere familiar where he can run with some of the inspiration derived from the weekend. 

I do want to highlight how amazing it was to share the weekend with Rhonda. It was a "birthday, Christmas, anniversary and promotion" gift and while I wish we didn't need a reason, I'd take one good trip with her over a dozen presents any time. Our adventures are rare but they're epic and the memories of this trip won't soon fade. 

Football - a lament

I should feel better about this past weekend. Not only did I get to attend two live football games, one included my current favourite team - the Regina Peewee Vikings, and the other was the Labour Day Classic with my usual favourite - the Saskatchewan Roughriders. 

I always say that a close football game is a good game. And indeed for both games, that was the case. Either team had the win up until the last moments of the game. But I would have preferred some wins. 

For the Vikings, they suffered their first defeat (and first points scored against them) this weekend. With a 22-16 finish, it wasn't that bad and the players need to experience a team that was hard to beat. On the positive side, Jonas finally got a few hits and pushes during the game and is really taking to football.

We found out late on Saturday that we'd also come into some free tickets to the Labour Day game. I don't remember the last time I went, but it was back when Bombers fans were a fun group to pick on. This time, they just seemed annoying. Most of it really was in good fun but when a particularly drunk mongoloid of a fan started picking on me in the 3rd quarter - well I lowered my shoulder and got to firing back. I don't think he really liked me reminding him to wash his hands when he was done in the bathroom. Probably doesn't know how soap works. 

No matter how much their fans smelled like rotten onions, the Bombers came to play football and held on to win the game 33-30. Another close match I wish we'd won. But the Riders are struggling through this second third of the season and need to figure out how they'll fix things to finish off the 2024 run. 

It was a jam-packed weekend with lots of socializing and events. I'm happy I survived but it's the first time in a while I've been happy to be back at work so I can catch a break. And next weekend is going to be even busier. More on that in next week's post (hint: it will be my first Pilot's World on location in ages and in a completely new place the blog hasn't visited before).