the blog quebecois

As you can see above I bought myself a new guitar, a for-real Fender Stratocaster (albeit one on the lower end of the price scale -- but it's still cheaper than a Ferrari). It's a beautiful instrument all the same, with a maple neck and a Tobacco Sunburst body. It sounds terrific too even with my clumsy strumming. Alas, there will be no more singing. My vocal cords were damaged -- probably permanently -- in an operation about a year ago. So now I speak (and sing) in a hoarse whisper.

That by itself isn't an insuperable flaw. Think of Tom Waits; or in more of a rock context, Rod Stewart or Joe Cocker. But there are other problems. I can't hold a note with any sureness -- my voice wobbles and cracks unpredictably. It's sort of like going through puberty again, without the side effect of developing uncontrollable boners in math class. Ah, youth!

But tho' the gods have conspired to turn me mute, sing, sing I shall, no matter who objects (though I will probably obey a court injunction forbidding it).

I recently found some more tapes, along with the notebook I made at the time. Thus I can be more certain of the dates, instrumentation, etc. Not that they would concern you, but they can be useful for jogging my memory. What I won't be doing is an extensive commentary on them, or printing the lyrics. It just takes too much time.

I looked around for a more robust host (the one I was using, HotLinkFiles had a bad habit of "losing" files) and I found a few free sites that look good. The one I'm starting with is 4shared. Not only does it work (or appear to), it lets you embed a nifty audio player with "psychedelic" visual effects. With luck, it'll trigger one of those acid flashbacks I've been waiting for.

This is one of the earliest songs I wrote, way back in the early 70s. It was recorded in the spring of 1976. At that time I would have been in Mali, West Africa, where I lived for two years. (My dad was an accountant with CN, on loan to CIDA.) I didn't have much in the way of equipment beyond a guitar and a mono cassette recorder.

The song, "Classic Touches," is doubly clever, for it refers to both the elegiac and timeless quality of my love (to whom, exactly, I forget. Doubtless some chick, somewhere) and also the fact that -- wait for it -- I was learning to play the guitar using a book on . . . classical guitar. (If this has inspired you to take up the Segovian quest, a word of friendly advice: Try to not learn on a steel-string guitar, especially one with a lousy (high) action. Unless you want pressure blisters on all your fingers.)

Warning: Teenage boy poetry; which, unless your name is John Keats or Percy Bysshe Shelley, tends toward the awful.

Note: The volume level on the original is very low. You may need headphones to hear it properly.

Guys:

Girls:

And it's a good thing we don't, because several of these are deserving of the death penalty.

Via The Presurfer

Well, except for this important reminder of safety on the archery range. You can never be too careful.

Oh hell, I'll bite.

Via The Presurfer

One of my typical songs. First I write the opening verse and chorus. It's pretty good, so I write a second verse. It's a bit weaker, but defensible. Then for the sake of "completing" the song, I write the third verse, which is complete garbage, fully intending to fix it some day. Well, guess what? It's 30+ years later and I still haven't fixed it. I'm beginning to think it'll never happen.

Just so you don't have to strain your ears picking them out, here's the verse: I'd like to see you trapped in a cloud-chamber/Then you'd see that randomness is all a part of nature/And when you woke up/You wouldn't feel so much the stranger

To which the only rejoinder is "Huh?" Even I can't tell you what I was thinking when I wrote that (or more likely, picked words at random out of a dictionary). In later years I would just repeat one of the successful verses until I could figure out what I was meaning to say. That might be the lazy way out; it does, however, prevent you from coming across as a complete lunatic.

002 02a03 love song

Warning: Music.

Via urlesque

(For D.C.T., Killed at Fricourt, March 1916)

Once an earlier David took
Smooth pebbles from the brook:
Out between the lines he went
To that one-sided tournament,
A shepherd boy who stood out fine
And young to fight a Philistine
Clad all in brazen mail. He swears
That he's killed lions, he's killed bears,
And those that scorn the God of Zion
Shall perish so like bear or lion.
But the historian of that fight
Had not the heart to tell it right.
Striding within javelin range
Goliath marvels at this strange
Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength.
David's clear eye measures the length;
With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee,
Poises a moment thoughtfully,
And hurls with a long vengeful swing.

The pebble, humming from the sling
Like a wild bee, flies a sure line
For the forehead of the Philistine,
Then... but there comes a brazen clink,
And quicker than a man can think
Goliath's shield parries each cast,
Clang! clang! and clang! was David's last.
Scorn blazes in the Giant's eye
Towering unhurt six cubits high.
Says foolish David, "Damn your shield,
And damn my sling, but I'll not yield."
He takes his staff of Mature oak,
A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke
The skull of many a wolf and fox
Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks.
Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh
Can scatter chariots like blown chaff
To rout: but David, calm and brave,
Holds his ground, for God will save.
Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh!
Shame for Beauty's overthrow!
(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.)
One cruel backhand sabre cut -
"I'm hit, I'm killed," young David cries,
Throws blindly forward, chokes... and dies.
And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim,
Goliath straddles over him.

Robert Graves