New found diversion, type it out -

Blog

Type BIG.
Don’t have to strain the eyes.
Happens when age sets in.
Arm won’t be long enough to read fine print, up close.
Cheap glasses or a bigger font size?
Vanity.

Outside. Not inside.
Adventure playground.
Without a “crib” it becomes real.
Sometimes too real, dangerous –
Down low it’s about survival.
Extreme to those caught unawares
City centres are best.
So much trash
Bound to be treasure.
A different world
Rarely a choice
Very eccentric
Raw.
Brutal.
A stage…

I like concerts. A lot
Rock concerts, real ones.

The musician – not entertainer - who finds an appreciative audience has an audience, forever

I have seen several musicians.
Some, several times

Good Shows?

Guns ‘n Roses
Metallica
Motorhead (a last minute substitution – alice in chains cancelled)

On the stage barrier fence
squishy and loud.

The “ace of spades”, “Live”, up close and personal. Um, ok.

The black album – why do black album covers usually contain good records? – Never seen Metallica before. Yahhhhhhhh! Amazing musicians, jamming for 60000 rockers. Big hair, the snake pit and a black album - Let’s make some noise! Killed’em all!

A Brit pal used to say - “axel grease and sludge”, in reference to Axl and Slash. Welcome to the Jungle. Indeed Sir. They flipped a coin to close and were, as expected, late. A fractious group of musicians, near the end of the road…Use Your Illusion(s). Axl wanted to chat. No Illusions with that guy, sharp. Very sharp. They will play again. They’re all still alive at least,

“The The”, at the Commodore. Sold out three straight nights. Unusual. 1989. A virgin to their music and got a ticket at the door. Bought all their music within days. Hypnotic, brewing, thought provoking.

- For live music, The Fabulous Commodore Ballroom. Nothing like a commodore show, Nothing.

U2, Zooropa, at the coliseum. Right! Stand-up and take notice of this, “everything you know, is wrong”. The last really big thing! Saw many of their shows over the years – Joshua, Achtung Baby, Pop-Mart, Zooropa outdoor broadcast too, with the Sugarcubes. Saw Vertigo at Aloha Stadium, Hawaii, last night of the tour – how busy the mighty are these days.

- Pearl Jam played with them in Hawaii. Always have time for Pearl Jam.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Arc & Weld - Also, with Pearl Jam. A Canadian folk singer with a tenacious capacity to check it all out and does well. Saw Neil earlier, backed by Sonic Youth. They tried to be as sonic as Young…not quite.

The Sugarcubes – before Bjork found a goose to wear. The Commodore. Bought all their albums after that one, radical. The voice! "Life's Too Good"

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - like a living room with your smoking jacket on, sitting in a comfy leather chair. Peace from the stage was a sign and a response. A Surprise

David Bowie. Serious Moonlight - The first show of that tour, at BC Place Stadium. He had not played “live: on tour” in a long time. Vancouver said HELLO and Welcome! Ever felt a surge of group emotion? 72000 got warm n fuzzy inside the dome that night, chilling. Enjoyed that one, so did Bowie. – He came back to film the video in Vancouver. – Peter Gabriel and The Tubes, from row ww (only goes to row zz).

Funny thing about concerts in Vancouver – the atmosphere is one of, “we paid the cash, here we are now, entertain us” (thanks Kurt)…if a Vancouver audience is not entertained, you can feel it. When we get our money’s worth the band doesn’t want to go home and neither do we.

Elton John. Twice. More than twenty years apart. The last time was approached with a bit of trepidation – he has a lot of not great music. What the hell? Horrible music – walked away with the thought that we had come to his house, where he had played the piano and sang some songs. Part of our lives. Wish he had played all night.
- I think Paul McCartney would be kind of like that – he doesn’t come here much.

Roger Waters came by this summer. For my concert dollar, that was a Rock Show! TouchDown ! “…what god wants, god gets, god help us all…” a different take on the world, as it spins. Perceptive and not so subtle.

And then there is The Pat Metheny Group. Watched them set up for a show in Victoria in 1980. Played a lecture hall at the university. Even then he was an undercurrent. Stunned silence and enthusiastic appreciation in once concert…musicians at work!

frankly, typing is not as honest as pen to paper…one can edit a lot with a keyboard and LCD. Putting words on the net, see who responds, if at all…is it even read? sometimes what is written can be inconvenient, but it’s coming from somewhere…

morning. Crock

Let me wax philosophic.

I’m thinking, therefore I am, so I think I will anyway.

Politics.
Religion.
Used to mean power, either of them.
Another power was money. This still has followers.
War can be an inevitability of the struggle for power.
Power in today’s terms is oil.
Look at what the fight for oil and therefore power has created.
Security ! I don't feel secure.
More like harassed.
- Oil won’t run out for a long time yet.

Earth, Terra, this place we live on.
Has been around, for some time.
Some time.
An absurd, but true, metaphor –
Imagine the age of Earth as a 2x4 piece of wood one foot long.
Human existence on Earth can be characterized by a coat of paint stroked across one end of the piece of wood.
Some time…
We have weather records, for some places, in continuity for a period of about 100 years.
‘the local nightly news.’
In relation to the place we live on…meaningless.

Magnetic and carbon dating show that the north and south poles move on planet earth.
Magnetic drift.
North has been south.
Recent news says the magnetic north pole has drifted in our lifetime and continues to.
Albeit slowly.
Some time...
This environment changes.
For Clarity - the place is located in a black void with lots of other chemical bodies in the night sky…it spins 360 in 24 hours and circles a flaming nucleus in 365 days…it is very old.
It changes - storms, fire, earthquakes,
Who are we to try and control it ?
- we are a product of it.

Control it ?
Not really the issue.
Our survival on it, as it changes, requires some advanced attention.
Are we paying attention ?
…Carbon credits are not going to be of any help whatsoever.
– not in my lifetime, not in yours.
None.
Somebody is going to make a lot of money on carbon credits.
A carbon fee on your house, car, flights, lawn mower, donations.
Money for carbon credits…
Pay our way out of a changing environment.
- nevermind ensuring clean water, food, air, sp 300 sunscreen.
High Oil prices.
Pay more to burn it.
Somebody is going to make a lot of money on carbon credits.
Are we paying attention ?

An Obscurity.
The recycling revolution ?
We recycle some materials that can be.
Not all, just the easy stuff, in the name of going green.
Many fees now, on things that can be recycled.
- tho not necessarily are.
Re-using resources that we once had a lot of.
-We've cut it all down, sifted it all out and thrown in it the trash.
Are we running out ?
It’s more expensive to buy and use recycled materials than an original.

Diversions in Reality.

Do you want me to talk about medicated animals, genetically altered and stuff ?

If our changing environment does not kill us all -
Due to our perceived disruption…and our failure to run an intelligent race.
A synthetically created disease will – we won't be able to make a pill to survive it.

just driving around, philosophically.

Zoom – Narf.

Good Morning.
Crock

sunday after work. a good day.

Sitting down, listening to the music. Old music. Stuff from high school. A time that is so far behind now, it is absurd to have to get up to change the channel – there is a remote button, somewhere?. A time when musicians played musical instruments. Korg’s were coming and those had to be played too. A 3 piece band inevitably had at least one member that could play keyboard, sometimes, while playing another instrument. Musicians. Imagineers with the freedom a musical instrument played well can give. No video required.

Speaking of old music and the word video…I saw the inauguration of MTV, USA at the Sherwood hotel in Victoria - Live!. Terry tablecloth, red, popcorn, big screen projection televisions and 99 cent beer - – here comes MTV. Shortly thereafter, Jackson did Thriller. A short film. Video killed the radio star was an underestimation. The radio star had to have video or face obscurity. Some of the original and talented musicians held out, but eventually capitulated to the now public requirement of video tape vignettes, set to a records first single released. Selling out ? It was so easy and somewhat lucrative to do in the land of image and plastic and royalties and production royalties and broadcasting rights. How deep did you want to dig the well…

Before MTV the chance of seeing a lot of good music on stage, on television, was rare in deed. There were specials, they also were very few, talk show gigs were relatively lame. Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and the Midnight Special were on their last hurrah, SNL tried to pickup the slack. The best on television, which I didn’t watch, was Austin City Limits. PBS Television – at the end of my television viewing years, CNN was beginning, Miami Vice was just ending and the Simpsons were a short vignette during the Tracy Ullman show on what is now FOX –

The only other way to see music being performed was to go and see the musician as they passed through town in concert. Travel for a good rock show was required, unless you lived in a concert zone. That is what drew me to live in this city, more than any other reason. Could, really, have gone anywhere, headed toward Whistler, to no avail. Never even considered Toronto. This was where it would all happen for me. All these years later, it’s still a place I like to be in, yet now, so does everyone else. The land of green and blue and snow and film a paradise away from the chaos, yet not out of the loop. Jewelry is enjoyed with affluence. Affluence rages in the city that in the world is a rare jewel. It’s getting very expensive to live here - Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The thing is, once people get a look at Vancouver either live in person or in pictures their ability to deny how perfect it looks from almost any angle is lost. The ocean is a part of it, as is the mighty river. The mountains hem it all in. Lotusland they called this. Over the mountains and under the cloud cover, lay rainy Vancouver. Almost a perpetrated myth – it rains all the time there. It was a good ploy, until our happy political leader welcomed the world to our town…Everybody who showed up – twenty two million, thereabouts, went through the gates. It was a city of just over one million at the time. EXPO 86 put the 2 previous worlds fairs, which had occurred in the USA, to complete shame with its unabashed success. And did they take pictures. It wasn’t until the next summer, things (real estate prices in particular) started to become chaotic in Vancouver…that KAOS has never stopped.

Huh, detoured. Narf

Crock

Hello and Good Morning !

It is time to change the boozy posting with all the nightmarish spelling and obscurities.

What am I thinking today - I am tired. It has been 21 days straight, some of them very long, since I had a whole day off - this means no telephone calls, email to read, things like that - not complaining but at least aware.

Electronics - ipods, mp3s, dvd, camera phones - people are being clubbed from behind for their ipods, they do not hear it coming - too bad, so sad, be aware or get hurt - frank, bold and suck it up ! I had an original Walkman cassette player. It was huge, you had to carry around many cassettes and what not. It did the job, but if you were attacked, at least you had a reasonably large enough piece of plastic, containing 4 AA batteries, that you could use for defensive purposes...like the big old Motorola phones, same thing, heavy enough for defensive tactics...

the rest of the electronic world ? Mainly visual. Puts me to sleep. I see people from all walks of life taking pictures these days. Kids are constantly passing around something showing off their photo taking skills. Tourists take thousands of images while on tour - the new home movie - want to see the pictures I took ? I guess it beats whatever is on television...I thought Paris was a City.

Reality television - I do not own a box. Next summer will be 20 years without it

Music these days - heard a comment from Red Robinson, one of the original Rock and Roll DJ's in Vancouver, talking about the big concerts that used to come to town, where the populace had gone nuts over somebody. His take on today is that back then - 20-50 years - radio and such was very homogenous. Everybody usually heard a lot of the same thing, resulting in huge bands with huge popular draw. Now, there is anything and everything you could possibly want...think, type out the desire and it pops us for you in full stereo sound. The possiblity of a consensus, U2 or the like has disappeared forever...one ponders the possibility of a "Mule". (science fiction reference - Asimov, Foundation.) And while I am at it - the nonesense that the homogenous is throwing up these days is schlock...got a nice ass, pretty face and will be in rehab after the first glare of the camera...no talent at all. Produced, by a formula, hairstylist, choreographer and such so that all involved can make some spectacular cash. Again, the horror.

We Want Talent !

I have been watching the reality of the city I live in grow-up faster than a teenager where it outlives its allowance and the money requirements exceed the ability to pay. People living on the streets and the "workers" required to attend those with too much cash cannot afford to live even close to where they have to work. A star in the making, but at what price success ?

Ok, rambled on, talk again later.

Narf. Crock

The horror. remember marlon brandow? apocolypse mow. it is a woinder if you, seeing as people remember so litttle of whar passes them by, this is a blog and i have finally decided that is what it shoul be... heere we go, people, i care less for them and I am of a mind. freedom is supposeed to rein. weclcome to the jungle, we got fun and games. axl rose was never a fool. television is a misnomer. confused yet ? I am not sure that speeel check is in order, however, I am writing as it occurs to me. I will stop when it i s rememberered, but the keyboard is something that everyone has to deal with. do you use spellcheck ? I do very rearky but I knoe I should use it more often,m it would make my rambliings more understoode,...my typing skills are relatively better randomly than most,...;you gp and tyupe what is spewing out...go forward, mopve ahead, its not too late, to whip ity, whip it good,....devo....wow. I have arrived home after a fine evening of dirnk, laughs and intirgue, more people than I am used too. Some I know a lot, some I do not at all and the cards I take home are those that were hosts - really the onlyones that mattered...I got tossed from Richards - paid 7 bucks to get in,5.50 for a molson and was told I ould smoke in the baqck. one pufff, one sip and the bouncer takes the smoke, takes the beer and tosses me out the back door without a witness. the horror.

Controlled fun. reallly the horror.

you see it all the time when corporate money is involved. the outlandish behaviour of the few and the control of ther fewer. we will makr a scene, but we will not makr noise. scary thought, but realisticve that the few who perform at these events will care to admit... go crazy, its paid for yahoo....

the options and absurditites that have been available during the years is x s s siv...I have no peer that can count me out. the cash spent for the least pleasure its disgusting. I have come away with tone of cash, nothing being close to "rich" but the adventures that can be had due to the company you can keep is imeasureable. there are no limits to the fantasy that in all honestly, is wasted. Cash to entertain.... If you are lucky enough to be invited along for the party and able to turn it on...Rock Show, ?TouchDown. - you will see this term in the ramblings as a sign of " yeah, thanks, far OUT" If you are invited to the ride and it is no fun at all....Marlon has to day "the horror". What was that all about ?

you know, I am thinking that this is what a blog is alll about, just type and see what comes out. edit nothing. Trouble. I will tell you now that I will continue typing this ot, whenever and where ever and wil not try to edit what I type. but Those Of You Who READ this from the beginnning will understand that what may happen here is actual and directly freedom of speach - as was guaranteed somewhere, within the country from which I am Writing -

We have a beginning now, = "NARF". "What are we going to do tonight Brain?" "Samething we do evernight Pinky, try and take over the World"...


Good Morning !