the pod bay door

:: The first time I saw Jessica Owen (then known as Jessica Schoenberg) play was at a folk club in Edmonton in 1992. I was very impressed. At the time, I was playing guitar in a local band, and we decided to call Jessica to ask if she would open for us at an upcoming gig. She agreed, and we met sometime later at my office at the U of Alberta. Some months later, I was playing and jamming with her whenever I could, and eventually became her guitarist during the mid-90s (although to be honest, I chose to play with her as well – playing with her was too much fun to pass up!) In February 1994, we spent two cold nights at a recording studio in a house in St Albert, laying down 9 of 10 tracks for her first album, Sounds Like A Plan! In April of that year, we played to a full house at The Next Act to celebrate the release of the album, which was available on cassette only.

I was and remain very proud of the work we did on her first record. I realized afterwards that I had strong arranging skills that hadn’t been utilized before, to that degree, anyway. So why am I telling you this? Jessica has a new web site, redesigned from scratch, and within you will find Jessica’s Story, which includes mention of the album.

That’s not all. I’ve had requests over the years from people who wanted to listen to my guitar playing online, and to date I’ve uploaded no tunes that featured me performing. Jessica has solved a bit of that for me by uploading three of the ten tunes from Sounds Like a Plan! One of those tunes is Heartbeat, which remains for me one of her most powerful and dynamic tunes ever, and one that I play from time to time when I play one of my acoustic guitars. (NOTE: You will need Windows Media Player to listen to the .mp3 files.)

If you want to hear my guitar. backing up one of the best singer/songwriters around, go to Jess’s site and listen. When you’re done, be good to yourself and support an incredible independent artist by buying her latest album, Ever So Slightly Rearranged. My (very objective) review might help you decide!

:: Megatunes, perhaps the best independent record store in Calgary, has opened up a store in Edmonton, on Whyte Avenue, in the old Greenwoods Bookshoppe space. (Their website leaves a lot to be desired, however.) Anyway, it is a primo location, and Edmonton was long overdue for such a store. I was in the store last Saturday when it opened, and noticed that local musician Jen Kraatz was working there.

Jen told me about her new album, Ashes, which I bought and have played a number of times now on the car stereo. It’s a great little record, with a tight, clean production, and it really showcases Jen’s writing and singing styles. The highlight of the album is Square, a song with a driving, repeating four note riff (B-C, G-F#, over low A and E strings) that I can’t get out of my head. However, what makes the song is the haunting melody Jen sings over top of this rhythm. I can’t say enough about this tune. I’ve already spent some time with my guitar, playing along with a few tunes on this record, most notably Square.

The songs on the album are rife with subtle musical spaces, a few notes here and there from various instruments, which adds to the pleasure of listening to it.
If you’re looking for high quality product by a talented Edmonton musician, pick up Ashes, by Jen Kraatz. Information on purchasing a copy of Ashes is available on Jen’s website.

:: I discovered this afternoon, by serendipity more than anything else I suppose, that I had the wrong binaries loaded for NetPBM. Er, duh. Like, how would I know? Anyway, I uploaded them to my server, and Gallery started working on my site. I’ve loaded a handful of photos so far, and will continue to work on tweaking things in the next few days.

:: I’m feeling slightly better than yesterday. Bones and muscles not aching as much. It was very cool in town here today, and is 1^oC at the moment. Apparently snow has been falling heavily in other parts of Alberta. Still, I’ll take this over what Hurricane Isabel is about to give the eastern seaboard.

:: Some time back, during an NYC trip, I was introduced to Rainsong guitars. They haven’t been available in Alberta, but a rep for the company was scheduled to come through Edmonton this week and visit Avenue Guitars, far and away the best guitar shop in Edmonton, and the only one I frequent. I’m looking forward to playing one again soon.

:: I took another baby step tonight, preparing for the move to another host. Yesterday I successfully loaded Moveable Type 2.64 onto the new server. Today, with a dose of patience, I was able to initialize the system so that I can reach the MT prompt on the new host. Patience was important: I encountered two errors while working, and was pleased that I was able to determine their source, and correct them. One was a typo (I had typed DBI:mysql instead of DBI::mysql – damn extra colon!), and the other was an incorrect URL I had loaded into the mt.cfg file. Whatever. Details, details.

This is too much detail, but forgive me the indulgence: this blog, the one you are reading, is running on as a Berkeley db (whatever that means). The new one will run as a MySQL db (whatever that means – Geoff, he knows what that means; so does Kenton.)

What’s next is that I have to create a weblog on the new site, and then try to import the entries from here to there. As well, I want to import my templates. I hope I can do it without much grinding and gnashing of teeth.

:: Perhaps the best nutrition site I’ve ever seen is this one: NutritionData. It features a db of 7,154 foods, and “generates nutrition facts labels and provides simplified nutritional analyses for all foods and recipes.” The only drawback: no foods found only in Canada are in the db (such as Vector or Optimum cereal).

:: This article on “geezer rock” is more annoying than anything else. It’s been interesting watching rock music age, from its beginnings in the 1950s, to present day. The musicians who create and play pop, rock and folk rock music, seem to be the only ones who get slagged because they get older. Musicians working in classical, bluegrass, country, blues, soul, rhythm and blues, opera, klezmer, whatever, are never bashed around because they get on in years. But in rock, journalists like to lambaste them, as Jim Derogatis does here, almost just for the exercise itself.

Derogatis’ thesis: that “the best rock ‘n’ roll is immediate, urgent and vital–it is music that celebrates living in the moment“, is a good one, but it doesn’t necessarily need to apply across the board. I mean, do the Artists That Matter need to rebel 24/7? I’m biased towards Steely Dan, but damn it if their new album doesn’t haul ass, and sound better than most of the shyte being fobbed on music fans by artists and acts half their age. Derogatis offers five geezer lists, from Geezers who still matter, to Geezers who never mattered and are now less relevant and more offensive than ever. In the end it’s all subjective. Who’s to say the music being made now by (some of the) artists who’ve been active in these genres for 25-40 years can or cannot stand on its own merit?

Check out these responses from the Hoffman forum, many with which I agree. My favorite comment: “Terrible article. I wish I could have written something so shallow and negative when I was 15 and get paid for it. Might as well tell us that Jazz is for dead people. Go fling yourself in front of a schoolbus.”

:: I returned from Calgary this morning, having attended bits of two days of the Blues and Roots Festival. Los Lobos, Richard Thompson and Solomon Burke were the acts I caught, all exceptional performances. Los Lobos rocks with the best, and began their set by inviting fans down from the stands in Burns Stadium (a baseball diamond) and onto the grass, right up to the stage. It made sense. They played with energy and conviction, and with smiles on their faces – they had fun. They closed with a great version of Mas Y Mas, and encored with a blistering take on Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl, a song which they may have now co-opted as their own. Thompson’s songs are powerful, and he weaves magic on his guitar. He performed one of his signature pieces, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, leaving me almost breathless as he played a solo that featured twists, turns and surprises not heard on the recording. Burke, the King of Rock ‘n’ Soul, surrounds himself with a great band, and is in true love with the audience – he hands out red roses to dozens of women while he sings, and each show ends as a big on-stage love-in. I learned from his harpist, Julia Cunningham, that their previous gig, in Beirut last Tuesday, was a great success. However, they were 35 hours in transit, arriving in Calgary on Friday quite exhausted, and without their luggage or instruments! Nonetheless, they played a great show for the last stop on their current tour.
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:: I’m in Calgary, to attend two days of the Blues and Roots Festival, and visit a few old friends. Have a nice weekend.