Cultureguru’s Weblog

OK, this was cool.

My current favorite band (at least in subcategory: Best years are not decades behind them), Arcade Fire, has this interactive video on their website for the great song, “We Used to Wait”.

You enter the street address of one of your childhood homes and images from that place get integrated into the video. I was skeptical that the fairly obscure Timmins street where my parents live would be included, but about four characters in, it came up as an option.

The multi-window resulting video was really neat, especially on the big monitor I have at home.

Requires the Google Chrome browser.

Then you can try out your the address of your choice at http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Another thing I like is having Good Seats when I go to any kind of live performance. It’s to the point where I will avoid going completely if I Good Seats aren’t available—or are outrageously priced. Because I’ve tried, and I just know that being too far from the stage really does diminish my enjoyment.

Hence it was that we ended up at a performance of Norman last night.

Norman was playing locally as part of the Magnetic North theatre festival. I had never heard of this festival before, but apparently it’s been running for a number of years now. Every other year it goes to a new Canadian city; otherwise, it’s put on in Ottawa. This year is Kitchener-Waterloo’s turn.

When I heard about it, it sounded like something interesting and that I wanted to support. I was especially excited that Rick Mercer was doing a show as part of the festival. But when I finally remembered to try to get tickets for Rick’s show, the seats just weren’t that Good. Row M, kind of off to the side. It was dimming my enthusiasm.

So I looked through the program for what else might work, and Norman sounded interesting:

Most of us grew up with the work of Norman McLaren. Between slick Saturday morning cartoons or on clunky classroom projectors, McLaren’s mesmerizing work slid unexpectedly into the lives of generations of Canadians.

In the internationally acclaimed Norman, ground-breaking projection technology allows a performer to physically interact with the cinematic universe of award-winning Canadian film pioneer Norman McLaren. Join us as they delve into the vaults of Canada’s National Film Board to combine technology, animation and theatre in an unforgettable visual experience.

Seats were not actually being assigned for this, which made me think they weren’t expecting a big crowd. Smaller crowds always greatly enhance your chance of Good Seats. So I got tickets for that.

The performance was at 7:00. We arrived around 6:35 to find the Centre in the Square looking eerily empty, with maybe 10 other people there at that point? So yeah, no problem getting Good Seats!

As the performance approached, fortunately, more people showed. The crowd was still one of the smallest I’ve seen at the Centre, but at least had swelled to filled all the best seats in the house (though all the bad ones were empty).

I wasn’t terribly clear on what we were about to see, Jean even less so—he had no idea who Norman McLaren was, and had been telling people he was going to something called Daniel that night. After a short announcement, which concluded with the reminder to turn off your cell phones, the lights dimmed, all went quiet, and…

Someone’s cell phone started ringing. Couldn’t believe it!

That is, until I realized that this was part of the show. The single performer, dancer Peter Trosztmer, talked on the phone on his way to the stage, then addressed us about his obsession with Norman McLaren.

The 90 minutes that followed are really hard to describe, but were completely riveting. Peter would talk about McLaren, show parts of his films, but also interact with them in dance movements. He would dance between the intersecting lines. He would bat away the assembling and dissembling balls. He pulled away Norman’s chair in the well-known Chairy Tale, then interacted with his own. He became one of the dancers in the beautiful Pas de Deux.

I don’t know how they did it all, but it was absolutely brilliant.

Intersected with these film/dance pieces were documentary bits, in which holographic images of various people who worked with McLaren spoke about him. Also shown were some interviews with McLaren himself. It all gave me a much deeper appreciation of McLaren’s genius, particularly his skill at making music visual. It makes me want to go watch a bunch of his movies—which, fortunately, the NFB makes easy to do. (And isn’t it fabulous that staid old Canada funds a film board where an eccentric genius can spend a lifetime producing abstract short films?)

Much as I was taken with the whole thing, I wasn’t sure how Jean would react, but I needn’t have worried. Though he opined that it could perhaps have been a tad shorter, overall, he was in awe. He loved it.

So thanks to all you people who quickly snapped up the Good Mercer Seats, thus leading me to one of most intriguing live performances I’ve ever seen.

(Waterloo Region Record review of Norman)

I can’t say I was never a big Elvis fan.

Back in Grade 3, my teacher was a nun. (Separate school system, natch.) Over lunch, she’d play music. Some French stuff (it was also a French school). Some religious stuff. And an Elvis album.

Now, Elvis (I’ve since learned) has done a lot of gospel, but that’s not what she played. She played his rock’n'roll stuff. I didn’t find it odd at the time, but thinking back on it now, it does seem a bit odd. But says something about his mass appeal.

Anyway, of all the music she played, this was the only bit I really cottoned to. I liked me some Elvis. I started bugging my parents to get me one of his albums. Eventually they did—one of the greatest hits things, I guess. I would play it, studiously looking over the cover art, the song list.

But not that long after, I moved on to my next musical love, the Bay City Rollers. (Eight-year-olds are so flighty.) And I never really got back to Elvis. I did and do appreciate that he’s a very influential figure in music history. I watched Jonathan Rhys in the really good Elvis miniseries, and thought that was a very poignant story. But I don’t really listen to him much, and can’t really call myself a fan.

So I had no particular expectations walking into the latest Electric Thursdays concert, Elvis: The Way It Was. But the few I had were immediately shattered when the band walked out to join the KW Symphony. Hey, where’s Peter Brennan? Where’s the Jean’s'Classics band?

Turns out that this was to be the first-ever Electric Thursdays concert to not be scored by Brennan. Instead, conductor Daniel Warren took the honours. In fact, the whole thing was his idea.

The part of “Elvis” was played Stephen Kabakos. In look and sound, he was a reasonable facsimile of “The King.” But he didn’t pretend to be Elvis, instead referring to himself as Stephen, just playing tribute to his favorite singer.

The show was structured according various famous Elvis appearances. The Hawaii concert. The movies. The Ed Sullivan Show. Vegas. The comeback show in ’68 (hey, I remember that one from the Jonathan Rhys movie!). This required a certain number of costume changes, and you could definitely feel the energy drop when Kabakos wasn’t on stage. But it was fun to get kind of a “tour” of his career highlights.

The sound mix was a bit dodgy at first—we couldn’t hear the backup singers at all, and could just barely hear “Elvis”, but fortunately that was quickly resolved. I can’t really comment on the quality of the orchestration, as it really felt like it was taking a backseat to the whole Elvis show most of the time. But certainly the arrangement of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” stood out as particularly beautiful and effective.

Kabakos was in good voice, and was charismatic and funny. “Know why Elvis walked the way he did? To get the hair bounce just right,” he said, demonstrating a “normal” walk with no bounce, and the Elvis swagger, with bounce.

“Why do I always end up sitting in front of a guy?” He asked, during the “sit down at the edge of the stage and sing right into the audience” portion of “Love Me Tender”.

“The men are always dragged kicking and screaming to an Elvis show. The women are like, ‘We’re going to be late’! But guys… The suits are available for rent. Totally worth it.”

To an audience shout that he “take it off” when he commented that the leather outfit was very warm, “You have no idea how long it took to put it on!”

All in all, a fun night out, and a worthy tribute.