Last week, some friends and I went to see the Classic Albums Live group do David Bowie’s ChangesOne album. That album selection is a bit of a cheat, since it’s a compilation album with many of Bowie’s early hits. But it certainly made for an entertaining first half.
Singer Joseph Salsbury seemed like a very cool guy, and did a great job on the Bowie vocals.
The second half was various other Bowie tunes, and ended with a highlight for Gen X types, of “Let’s Dance” followed by “Modern Love”. But they started that half with a cut from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: the very haunting “Five Years”.
Pushing through the market square So many mothers sighing (sighing) News had just come over We had five years left to cry in (cry in) News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying (dying) Cried so much his face was wet Then I knew he was not lying (lying)
…
We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes Five years, what a surprise We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that’s all we’ve got
Here’s the whole song
Five years from now: Is that all we got?
One the many newsletter-type things I subscribe to is by an author of the definite opinion that we are in the early stages of collapse, who expects that things will completely have to gone to shit in about five years. Given the climate crisis, species depletion, pandemic risks, misinformation effects, economic threats, food insecurity, and global political instability, it doesn’t seem an utterly crazy notion. And this is a US-based publication, so they’re also living under that administration.
The one that’s threatening us.
I can’t totally buy in. I’m just not there yet. So I have not gone whole hog on things like learning to grow my own food, making my own medicine, and reinforcing my house with bullet-proof glass and sandbags. Still, I have picked up some useful tips. You might find them useful, too! For example…
That’s Dwayne, with a D, and not Wayne, the former hockey great we’re no longer so fond of these days. On February 22, we went to see Dwayne Gretzky in concert at Centre in the Square.
It was not based on much in-depth knowledge about this band. I knew they did covers. I had heard a couple of these covers, probably on CBC Radio, and I’d thought they were good. They were supposed to perform with the KW Symphony as part of their (the symphony’s) ultimately doomed 2023–24 season. I’d been left a bit curious about them ever since.
The show was a party.
It was really well attended, and many of the attendees were pretty well lubricated. Jean and I were sober as judges, but were still infected with the mood. Stand or sit? was the question, as it often is at these “soft seat” venues. Sitting was initially winning out… But not for that long! Soon there was a lot of standing… And dancing… And singing along.
The show was a party.
The Dwayne Gretzky band is… large. I think I counted 16 people? Because they cover lots of instruments—horns and strings and stuff, along with the expected guitars, bass, drums, keyboards—and lots of vocal styles. And these vocal stylings are great, some fantastic voices on display. And great instrumentation as well.
This video gives a pretty decent overview of what the band is like
The covers were largely from my era—1980s, with a side of 1970s and 1990s. So, though I’d never seen this band in concert before, I still knew all the songs. This is the key to the fun, if you’re in the right demographic (as most of the audience appeared to be).
You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon cover): The crowd was definitely starting to rise here
We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) (Tina Turner cover): Though we sat back down for this
Rosanna (Toto cover)
Baba O’Riley (The Who cover)
Walking on Broken Glass (Annie Lennox cover): During intermission, had to Google who did this originally. Still recognized it, though.
Maybe I’m Amazed (Paul McCartney cover)
How Will I Know (Whitney Houston cover): They brought out yet another singer, a guest, to handle these Whitney / Abba / Celine tunes
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) (ABBA cover)
Drive (The Cars cover): A new one in their large repertoire, they said
Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen cover): We were, we were dancing in the dark.
Intermission!
1999 (Prince cover)
Let’s Go Crazy (Prince cover): At some point, they mentioned how much livelier this crowd was then their previous night’s (so suck it, Peterborough, I guess)
9 to 5 (Dolly Parton cover)
Crazy (Patsy Cline cover): A vocal virtuosity
I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor cover)
Higher Love (Steve Winwood cover)
It’s All Coming Back to Me Now (Céline Dion cover)
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) (The Proclaimers cover): So much dancing and clapping!
Bang the Drum All Day (Todd Rundgren cover): A youngster joined for this on-stage, very cute
Piece of My Heart (Janis Joplin cover): This singer, man! The rasp! Fantastic.
Bobcaygeon (The Tragically Hip cover): Ah, my heart! So good.
Radio Ga Ga ((Queen cover)): Yes, we did the arms.
Under Pressure (Queen & David Bowie cover)
Encore!
Come and Get Your Love (Redbone cover)
With a Little Help From My Friends (Joe Cocker cover)
So basically, if you need a lift, if you want a high, quick as the speed of light, a Dwayne Gretzky concert might be the ticket. Especially if you’re GenX-y.
My sister, a regular Guardian reader, was the first to alert me that there was to be a London (England)-based musical built around Live Aid, the big benefit concert for famine relief that took place on July 13, 1985. I wasn’t about to fly over there to see it, and I knew full well that not every play on a London stage finds it way to a North American one.
So while the Guardian article was interesting, it was downright exciting when Mirvish announced that they would bringing Just One for Day (the Live Aid musical) to a Toronto stage for its North American premiere, as part of its 2024–25 season. (Though, side note, at first I thought that it was playing just for one day, which made me think, my God! No way I’ll manage to get tickets for that single performance! Til I read the finer print and realized that it was a 10-week or so run. Phew.)
My sisters indicated that they would be interested in going also, with husbands in tow (some feeling more enthusiasm than others). Then it was a matter of waiting through the season subscription-only time til we could buy tickets. Then waiting for show day itself: February 8, 2025. This was about a week after opening night, which was quite the star-studded affair:
I had no idea how they were going to build a story around this one-day concert.
The setup was as follows: a mother is seeing her activist daughter off to university, and wonders if she’d like to take a copy of her Live Aid Concert Book. Daughter wonders how this ancient history could be of any use to her today. Mother tries to explain its impact at the time. She is assisted by Bob Geldof, cofounder of Live Aid, who says that to understand it, you have to go back to the beginning.
Jump to… The Boomtown Rats (Bob’s band). Then an influential BBC TV report about a terrible famine in Ethiopia. Then the idea of a charity single. Then an American charity single. And a visit to Ethiopia, during which it becomes clear… it’s not enough. There’s a meeting with Harvey Goldsmith. Then a countdown clock to organizing a worldwide benefit concert in an incredibly short amount of time.
We see the events from Bob’s perspective (and Midge Ure’s, and John Kennedy’s—the Band Aid Charity Trust lawyer, not the US President), but also from the mother’s, who is trying to sell as many singles as she can, and hoping to get concert tickets. All while crushing on a record store coworker. And also from the daughter’s, who is there to interrogate (for example, the problematic lyrics of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, and the specter of “white saviorism”). And from an aid worker in Ethopia. Also, from Margaret Thatcher…
And all the way through, the music of that time is woven through in amazing, reimagined ways, presented by an incredible, diverse young group of performers with fantastic voices. So though almost all songs included in the musical are ones that were performed at the concert, for the bulk of the musical, they’re used in a different context. The Cars “Drive” while watching the Ethiopian news reports. “Radio Gaga” while trying to get “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” on radio playlists. “My Generation” to address what this all might mean today. And so on.
They do, in the last quarter or so, touch on the famous moments of concert day, like Status Quo opening, Geldof taking in the day during an “I Don’t Like Mondays” pause, the “give us your fucking money” line that wasn’t, Madonna getting into the groove, Queen giving one of the best live performances of all time, and McCartney’s mic cutting out during the “Let It Be” finale.
Live Aid’s my thing, man. So I’m not exactly unbiased. But I did think it was one of the best musicals I’ve ever seen. In fact, our whole group gave it a big thumb’s up—even the skeptical brother-in-law!
CTV report on opening night
It was good at reminding you now, just as we sometimes needed then, that apocalyptically horrible things were happening amidst all the pop music fun. And yet, a lot of scenes were quite funny as well! The actor playing Bob Geldof, Craige Els, was pitch perfect. George Ure, as Midge Ure, was also very good—and apparently not Midge’s son. The staging of sometimes using actual photos from the time was effective in its lack of overuse. The music… I’ve already mentioned the quality, but it doesn’t hurt that I also knew all the songs!
And through the mother / daughter character, the story is brought through to today. Bob (and Midge Ure and others) got the talent together, but it wouldn’t have worked if individual young people hadn’t bought the songs and tickets and talked their friends into doing the same. Big charity music benefit concerts won’t cut it now. But the idea of a big mass of people agreeing that they can no longer support a great humanitarian injustice, that they feel driven to come together to do something about it… Well, we all have to hope that’s still relevant!
Ten percent of ticket sales for Just for One Day: The Live Aid Musical go to support The Band Aid Charitable Trust.
Two days before we were supposed to head north, Jean’s work car was struck by a flying tire on the 401, a major Ontario highway. This was both unlucky and lucky.
Unlucky: Getting struck by a flying tire
Lucky: Sustaining no personal injuries
Unlucky: Having to wait hours for a tow because of the location of the incident
Lucky: Was not a car we own, so ultimately not our expense nor responsibility
Handing off this responsibility did consume much of Jean’s next day after he was finally towed back home… Getting the police report in, getting the car towed the car elsewhere, etc.
But, we were able to leave as planned in our car the day after that. Automobile was chosen as the method of transportation this year because Air Canada’s fares have basically doubled, so even the “lower fare” period of early December wasn’t all that low.
It’s a long drive. We broke it up by stopping in to visit with Jean’s sister who lives in Sudbury, which was very nice. We also briefly saw one of Jean’s nieces, who is currently residing there while she plays for the local hockey team (and goes to school!).
Not Jean’s niece. She’s somewhat older than these girls. But we didn’t take a lot of photos on this trip. This photo is by Oleksandr P on Pexels.com
The roads were mostly good, though we did get some blowy, slightly slippery snow near the end. We made it to Dad’s all right. Dad has just turned 89 and is still living on his own. He had a nice dinner prepared for us.
We then had two full days there, during which we managed to pack in a good amount of visiting:
We went over to see Jean’s other sister, catching up on family news over tea.
Jean met up with his brothers and most of their wives at a local restaurant.
A visit with old friends was a bit uncertain, as she was navigating her father through the hospital system. But he was discharged to his nursing home in time for us to be able to meet, which was great.
My brother, his girlfriend, and my nephew came over for a birthday dinner (both my brother and father celebrate around this time), which was jolly good fun.
We also got out cross-country skiing for the first time in years. We have some photographic evidence of that!
The trails here are amazing. We did 5 km.The trees looked beautiful all along. Winter wonderland.No, it’s not named after me. But it is named after my parents, who have put in hours and hours of volunteer work here over the years.
The drive back went reasonably well also. Some slightly slick roads at the start, then a few somewhat intense flurries at the end, but we made it home without a bang.
Jean said that he felt as though he’d already had Christmas.
Gotta hand it to Instagram: They have quite the good, personalized advertising engine. I find most of the products they push on me somewhat interesting. I have gone on to buy from far more than any other social media site, I’m sure.
And generally I’ve liked the products just fine!
I can’t always ferret out how they go from the posts I look at on Instagram to they advertisements they sneak in between, but one recent link was pretty clear: Brian May / Rufus Taylor / Adam Lambert > Fever Presents Candlelight Concerts: The Music of Queen. At Maxwell’s, in Waterloo.
That took a bit of off-Instagram research. Basically, it’s a string quartet! (At least, this show was.) As for the candlelight, well, they do decorate the venue with a bunch of electric candles. And they perform music by popular artists such as Taylor Swift, Abba, and Queen—interspersed with a few classical pieces. And they do some outright classical concerts.
It all sounded interesting enough. Jean and I decided to go.
We hadn’t been to Maxwell’s since seeing Lowest of the Low there many moons ago. This time there were seats! Along with very strict rules about getting there on time, not getting up during the performance, and not using your phone to take pictures or video until the last song. And an expected show time of 1 hour.
But despite all that structure, it was a pretty relaxed fun, evening. They did introduce each song, and I really enjoyed the way they arranged them for the four stringed instruments. The interspersed classical pieces were things like excerpts from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. I won’t remember all the Queen songs included, but there was Don’t Stop Me, Fat Bottomed Girls, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody (natch), and this one:
Another One Bites the Dust (I recorded just the sound of the last song, since I find my videos never turn out that well. Sound isn’t terrible!)
The only problem with having events scheduled for sequential Saturdays was that it was getting in the way of movie night. By the third week, we solved our dilemma by watching a movie on Friday night.
Radical, huh?
Anyone but You was quite entertaining. Very funny in parts. As long as you’re good with the whole romantic comedy genre, I say go for it.
But, on to the events.
The will they or won’t they tour: Jann Arden & Rick Mercer
Chronologically, this was first up. Not only for our series of outings, but also for Jann Arden and Rick Mercer, who began their tour of the country in Kitchener. Jann Arden is a singer/songwriter (and also actor and novelist). Rick Mercer is a satirist, comedian, and author.
How the two met was something Rick explained during their live “Night of laughs and intimate conversation”. He was in Calgary filming a bit for his show, Rick Mercer Report. Only the bit was a flop—wasn’t going to air. They had to quickly come up with something else. One suggestion he got was to have Jann Arden give him a tour of Calgary. And he was like, “Jann Arden? Great singer, but I think she’s a depressive!”
“I’d almost forgotten what that was like”, Jean commented, as we exited the Registry Theatre after a Larry Larson’s Jazz Guys concert. And by that, he met a live musical performance of any kind.
We’d intended to attend many a live musical performance over these past and coming months, but then the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony suddenly and apparently irrevocably went bankrupt—a mere week before what would have been their first concert of the season. Our season’s tickets for various performances, from Bolero to Magic! to Back to the Future to Shostakovitch, suddenly longer worth nothing more than a tax receipt.
There are efforts underway to try to revive the local arts scene, but who knows. Government funding is tight all around. The Globe and Mail has been covering the problems that theatre companies have been experiencing right across the country (🎁 article link). Mirvish is doing fine, but others are not. I suppose the lack of audience return is due to combination of people having become increasingly accustomed to home entertainment; inflation lowering budgetary for spending on discretionary events; and some remaining concern about the health risks of crowded spaces.
But for us, at least this year, it was just mainly that the Symphony disappeared. And we’ve had trouble finding appealing alternatives. It’s been some time since we’ve been out anywhere.
February has seemed virtually packed with arts activities, comparatively speaking.
Of 2023. Meaning, this year I spent most of my time listening to music I already own, rather than discovering new sounds on streaming services or radio. So not that much of it was music released in 2023.
Not sure how much this was cause vs. effect, but I also had trouble settling with any particular music streaming service this year.
Spotify: A service I’ve tried off and on over the years (whenever they offer me a discount, as I don’t like the ad version), but it was mostly off in 2023.
YouTube Music: I did subscribe to this earlier in the year. As a previous Google Play Music user, I’d built up a pretty good music data set in there. But YouTube Music has never been as good as Google Play Music was. On the July long weekend, I tried to find some sort of Canada Day playlist there, and pretty much came up empty. (Maybe because Google was at this point fighting with the federal government over streaming service regulations?) This led me to try out…
Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, and ?
Amazon Music Unlimited which offered me a three-month free trial. I found that they had quite a few fun Canada Day playlists! Of course, in general they had only a fuzzy idea of my music tastes, but it still a decent enough service for when I wanted to listen to something other than “my” music. Still, when this offer ran out, we decided to switch to…
Amazon Prime Music: Because it was included with Prime, which we already had. But I had not realized that with Prime, in most cases, you can only listen to albums or playlists in shuffle mode. And it won’t even show you in what order it’s shuffled songs into. While this was perfectly fine for Jean, it was overly limited for me. Sometimes I want to shuffle; sometimes I do not. Either way, I like to see what’s up next. Hence, I decided to take up another three-month offer to try…
Apple Music: It’s pretty nice. No ads, no limitations, clean interface, good queue, embedded lyrics. Will I pay for it when the free period is done? Tbd.
No Spotify Wrapped for me
I did not use that service enough. I did find it pretty amusing that most every other digital service of any kind that I used tried to offer something similar. My Kobo erReader: What a bookish year it’s been! My Washington Post Newsprint: What’s your reader type? My Starbucks year in review? I’m not even kidding! Look back at your Starbucks routine!
I mean…
YouTube Music had enough data to cobble something together for me. Apparently the song I listened to those most on that service last year was…
It was just a small listing in the What’s Happening Waterloo newsletter:
Agit-Pop! Musical Meditations on the Pre-Post-Apocalypse
Intriguing.
Reading further:
Superstar drag comedienne Pearle Harbour performs her doomsday cabaret. Laughs & tears through the headlines, and hits from David Bowie, to Britney Spears. A hilarious and heartbreaking cabaret for the end times. Agit-Pop! reimagines the hits of Bowie, Britney, Judy Garland, Tom Waits and more as you’ve never heard them before.
Sounded right up my alley, really. Drag. Doom. Pop.
Jean, ever the trooper, agreed to come along.
As we approached the door, I noticed that all the theatre staff were masked, which was refreshing. Then the man a bit ahead of us in line turned around to go back out, stating “I’ll just go get the mask in my car!” Huh. Then I noticed the “Please wear a mask for this performance” sign. Double huh! Hadn’t seen one of those in many a moon!
Policy was not strictly enforced, so some people remained unmasked. But, I’d say a good 90% to 95% went along with it. Peer pressure, eh. Can also be a force for good!
But. On with the show.
Though it’s not the easiest to describe, as I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Admittedly, I don’t go to a ton of drag shows regardless, but have seen a few, and I don’t think this was a typical one of those.
Pearle Harbour, accompanied by a single musician who can play multiple instruments, discusses the various challenges and problems facing our world. The need for Indigenous reconciliation. The climate crisis. The ongoing Covid epidemic. Anti-immigration sentiments.
And interspersed it with pop music, not as a distraction, but as a commentary.
5 years. That’s all we’ve got.
My loneliness is killing me.
There’s a land I dream of… Somewhere, over the rainbow
I think I just wasn’t made for these times…
But it was still drag. So it was not all po-faced. There was bawdiness, there were jokes, there was a whole lot of audience engagement and participation. A tragicomedienne, she is called, and that sounds about right.
Given all the interaction, Jean enjoyed the evening as much as I did. We did the wave—the Covid wave! We discussed the etymology of agit prop. We shared guilty pleasures. We stood en masse to do the duck and cover. To a background of Cold War era cartoons (some of which are quite something).
Bit late to tell you this now, but she also play Waterford and Fergus. Then she’s moving on to other provinces (and bigger cities—Montreal, Calgary).
This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.
Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…
The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news
Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.
What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.
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