We’ll all be dead soon enough, CBC or no CBC…..

You know, I really, really, really miss CBC Radio….I used to have CBC Radio on everywhere I listened to stuff….car, house and a few other places. Then, back a number of years ago, my favourite CBC guy, Peter Gzowski, died. And shortly after that, management at the national broadcaster seemed to pretty well gut the network. They announced that they were shifting CBC Radio’s focus to try to attract more young listeners. And they did. Almost overnight, most of the CBC programming that I loved was dumped overboard. The kind of serious, reflective radio I was used to vanished. The great Canadian music that I was used to vanished. They were replaced by a whole lot of fairly superficial kind of silly stuff and a whole lot of pretty bad music – still Canadian in most cases – but pretty bad.

Take today, for example. My wife and I were driving to Windsor, so we turned on CBC for the trip….Tom Power on Q was interviewing this young woman, who, I guess, is a current music sensation and she has a new album coming out this week. So, they played a few of her songs during the interview and Tom Power kept repeating what a great voice she has. Problem was you couldn’t really hear her voice because it was so wildly distorted you couldn’t begin to tell whether it was good, bad or indifferent. Also, my wife is a huge words person – she really likes to listen to lyrics and pick up on the meaning of a song. You couldn’t, under any circumstances, understand any of this girl’s lyrics – they were just part of the mix – totally lost in there somewhere. It was sort of funny because good, old Tom kept telling her what a great producer she was as well – in my world, if you can’t hear the lyrics, it’s lousy production.

My friend, Rick Fines, was nominated for a JUNO, and I’m not sure he got an interview on national radio – because musicians from my generation can’t get played much on CBC Radio any more. In fact, it almost seems like there’s some type of age cut-off date and if you’re older than, say 28, CBC’s just not interested in you. In my own world, I have been totally unable to elicit even a single word from this huge monolithic media giant despite being perhaps the hardest-working independent writer in Canada. I have submitted my podcast, Stories for the Soul, to them a couple of times for possible inclusion in their huge podcast section. They don’t even have the decency to get back to me to tell me my work stinks or sucks – which would be better than this wall of silence.

Back in the olden days, CBC Radio was a class act all the way. These days, it’s pretty much bush league. When you turn on the CBC morning program and you hear Sally Field or Barbra Streisand being interviewed, you know it’s more about celebrity culture than Canadian culture and it’s a damned shame. CBC Radio used to make me feel proud to be a Canadian. I liked hearing about some lady’s prize winning butter tarts in PEI, or how things were going with the harvest in Western Canada…I liked hearing about all the little things that make Canada somehow special. CBC has strayed far from that mission – to celebrate all things Canadian.

Certainly, for curiosity’s sake, I’d be pretty interested in how the great CBC-Radio experiment has worked out. I wonder what kind of overall listenership numbers they have…and I wonder if those numbers can be broken down demographically to see if young people are actually listening to the network. Because I’ll tell you straight up that I’m in contact with a certain number of younger folks in my daily travels and I never hear CBC mentioned – not a single time. However, CBC is often discussed by people of my generation and the talk always revolves around the same thing – what an enormous shame what’s happened to Canada’s national broadcaster. And the fact that most of us listen very little any more. There’s not much on it we can identify with. The music, for example, is a total non-starter for people of my generation….we like odd things in our music – like the occasional melody, the occasional undistorted vocal line, lyrics you can hear and understand. Structure is good too – some structure.

Anyway, I know I’m just whining on here and people have bigger fish to fry than worrying about CBC Radio. There was a time when I think my generation of Canadians would have marched in the streets to save our national broadcaster, but I’m sure that would happen today. And maybe it doesn’t matter – we’ll all be dead soon enough, CBC or no CBC.

Overmatched by a gigantic, humongous, ginormous socio-economic system……

You know, my grandson calls a piece of writing like this a “blog” – which, I guess, is what most people call it these days….when I was in the newspaper business, we called a piece of writing like this a “column”…..regardless what you call it, I have always taken the production of an opinion piece like this very seriously. I never underestimate the power of the written word to effect change. In some ways, I feel the old adage, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, is sort of true…..swords can change a situation very quickly for the short term, words are more likely to change things slowly, but the change is more likely to be long lasting…..

I have spent a lifetime trying to effect change through my writing. It’s what I do. When I rail on and on about the vast social injustices on Planet Earth, I often have people tell me I need to do more than just write about social injustice. Why not go somewhere in the Third World and help build a school or a hospital? I’ve been told to “put up or shut up!” But because of the type of person I am – which is mostly sort of like the cowardly lion in Wizard of Oz, I’m never going anywhere to build anything. I don’t travel and I don’t build stuff – I’m bad at both. But way back in the mists of time, I discovered that I have a bit of a knack for writing. I have an ability to take fairly complex ideas and issues and make them easier to understand for almost everybody. And the words just kind of flow out of me when I’m writing about something I feel passion for.

Which brings me back to the writing of this “blog” or “column” each week. I could really just write about social justice every week. Because I just keep looking around the planet and I think the only thing that really matters a hoot is creating some type of equity so that everyone who is born here has a chance for a decent and worthwhile life. You know, I’ve heard the phrase, “life’s not fair”, about 100,000 times over the course of my life. And I admit that it’s a basic truism that life is indeed not fair – for most of the human beings living here. It’s sort of more than fair for the really rich people and a few other folk, but it’s mostly not fair for nearly everyone else in one way or another.

And what I don’t get about this is that we could so easily fix it. We could, with the relative snap of a finger, make life just a whole lot fairer. If we took some of the wealth from the grotesquely wealthy – and there are a bunch of them these days – we could make some sort of headway in making life just a tiny bit more equitable. It’s not rocket science, people – it’s just simple old arithmetic…..we all learn it in public school. But of course the really big issue is that our entire socio-economic system is bloated and corrupt and evil. It over rewards a tiny number of people for their contributions to the system, while grossly under rewarding everyone else. It’s just not the way things should work. And that’s a certainty.

You know I’ve heard a bunch of people say lately that there are sort of degrees of something we call “truth”, and you know that’s a pile of crap. Truth is absolute and universal. We have sunk so low in our world that we feel that truth is somehow negotiable. Balderdash, my friends, balderdash….don’t believe a word of it. And world hunger and world poverty are not negotiable either….they are absolute and universal….they are real and they are terrible – and we could fix them. But for some unknown reason, we allow them to persist. Sooner or later, they will be fixed – but, at this point, it’s more likely to be by the sword instead of the pen.

Anyway, I could indeed write about social justice issues every week, but it gets frustrating after about 40 years of doing it and nobody seems to be listening and nobody seems to care much at all. If I make a post on Facebook about what I’m having for dinner, I’m likely to get lots of likes…..if I post about social justice issues, not so much. Most people don’t really even want to talk about it. Now before you get all riled up, please realize that I’m fully aware of the many, many people on our planet trying to do good work each and every day. But they are badly overmatched by a gigantic, humongous, ginormous socio-economic system that seems beyond their control…..

Systemic poverty is something we’re really not talking about…..

There has been a lot of talk recently about “systemic” issues that exist within our societies and are making life extremely difficult for whole lot of people in our world. Issues like racism and sexism appear rampant even in our so-called developed societies and are sort of forgotten in the developing world where there is struggle to even survive. And herein lies perhaps the greatest of the systemic issues we face on Planet Earth – and that would be something called “systemic poverty”…..because just as certainly as racism and sexism have become sort of woven into the fabric of our societies, the same can be said for poverty and that it is clearly a worldwide problem of significant magnitude.

Poverty on our planet is mostly an arbitrary thing. While some people in the developed world have some control over where they end up in life, most people in the developing world have few choices about their future outcome. Indeed, I remember well all the way back to high school, where I was constantly suggesting that it wasn’t a person’s fault or choice that they were born in a mud hut in some disadvantaged part of the world and had no real future in life. It’s true that some people seem to have the wherewithal to climb out of the muck no matter how much of it they’re confronted with, most people don’t have these special skills.

Even within our developed societies, there is a huge amount of “luck” at play in determining where you might end up in life. Likely the most important of these is the socio-economic strata you’re born into. Children of parents who are doing well in life have a really big advantage over kids whose parents are struggling. I heard an education professional on NPR one day suggest that having kids do something simple like homework disadvantages poorer children and kids whose home life is unstable. I couldn’t believe this at first because the education professional was saying there shouldn’t be homework for anyone and this would make the education system somehow fairer. I’ve always thought that homework is sort of a good thing for kids because it teaches them discipline and responsibility. But the lady in the interview argued that often kids in unstable home environments don’t even have a safe place to do their homework – so it often doesn’t get done – through no fault of the child’s…..

 I have argued again and again sort of ad nauseum that we need to do something fairly drastic to fix the massive financial inequity on the planet. Right now, you have no hope of improving your lot in life unless you have some type of commodity that the capitalists of the world want. And even then, it’s no guarantee. You can have all the resources in the world – and I mean all – and you’ll still be in trouble if you haven’t got some type of stable political and social framework to organize and share your resources. Which is something that’s happening all over the place right now.

Of course, the entire premise on which our economic system on Planet Earth is built is one monster piece of bullshit. It is, of course, the premise that the world economy and the economies of every single country in the world will continue to grow each year. And, of course, this is a complete and total impossibility….because if we continue to grow and grow the economy and devour more and more of the earth’s resources and we do it faster and faster, we’ll just reach the edge more quickly. And I’m not sure that’s what we want to do. Because when the resources really start to run out and we reach the “edge”, there’s nowhere to go but down. And the descent maybe a fairly rapid one. And I sort of hope I’m not here to see it.

There are ways to fix the massive inequity on the planet and make life more tolerable for more, but we don’t have the political will. Most of us in the developed world seem happy with our lives as long as can muddle forward, scratch out some sort of living and play the lottery for fun. It’s kind of a sad thing, but it’s the truth of the matter that most of us really don’t give a damn….there are a number of “systemic” issues we are dealing with in our societies right now – but the biggest one is systemic poverty….if we could get a handle on that one, we might have some small chance of tackling the others.

And the Beatles just kept on evolving and evolving….

A few weeks ago in this space I mentioned a new musical friend I’d made a couple of summers ago at the Kingsville Folk Festival. I had the good fortune to become acquainted with Gurf Morlix, who calls Austin, Texas home but summers up on Georgian Bay and has since he was a tiny lad. I travelled up to Gurf’s summer place that same summer and we had a pretty good chance to chat about stuff, including music. And we hadn’t been chatting for very long before we agreed on something – there’s a lot of great music out there but the Beatles and Bob Dylan are somehow special and they both created remarkable catalogues of material…..Dylan has been doing it his whole career – the Beatles did it in about eight years.

I was not much of a Beatles’ fan back in the old days. In the early days, even though they were perhaps bigger than Christ, I paid them little attention. I liked some of their stuff, but wasn’t exactly blown away. Remember buying a Beatles’ 45 at Knipes’ TV and Radio back in that other time. It had Hello/Goodbye  on one side and I Am the Walrus on the other. Played it on our old Electrohome record player when I got it home and really didn’t care for it. Likely only listened to it a couple of times. Really didn’t get what all the excitement was about. Later in life, these would become a couple of my favourite Beatles’ tunes, but didn’t get it at first.

Sergeant Pepper, of course, caught my attention, as it did the attention of pretty well everyone who was into music back in those days. It’s sort of a brilliantly put together piece of work. And it was sort of impossible to ignore. As was the White Album….when it came out, it just sort of shook the rafters of the music world, so brilliant in its sheer diversity of genre, stretching across all kinds of musical types. Years later, I heard the late, great Gord Downie, front man of the iconic Canadian band, Tragically Hip, on an interview show on CBC radio. The host asked Gord what one album he’d take if he got stranded on a desert island….he replied immediately that he’d take the Beatles’ White Album. The host asked him why that album and he said he hadn’t really appreciated the Fab Four until he became a well-known rock celebrity himself and was doing a lot of recording. It was only then that he became aware of the genius of the Beatles and just how incredibly great they were.

I really loved the White Album for sure, but then sort of lost track of the band for the last couple of albums they released. Didn’t really discover Abbey Road until fairly recently. I bought a brand-new copy of it a while back and was totally dazzled listening to it on a big honkin’ stereo. It is a wildly good record with some truly great tunes. I’ve also bought new copies of a number of the other Beatles’ records in recent times and have really, really enjoyed rediscovering them now that I’m an old guy. They are just such a good band.

Remember when they did burst on the scene in the mid Sixties, and there were a whole lot of bands that were part of the so-called “British Invasion”…..the boys from Liverpool certainly became hugely popular fairly quickly, but I didn’t see them really standing out from most other bands in the early days and, actually, was more of a Rolling Stones’ fan back then. The Stones had a far more unique sound in those beginning days…they were really bluesy and gritty and, well, different. The Beatles sounded a lot like the Dave Clarke Five or Herman’s Hermits or a lot of other bands – at least that’s what I thought. But unlike nearly every other band of the era, the Beatles evolved and by the time even the “Help” album came out, you could just tell these guys were somehow different. And they just kept right on evolving throughout their relatively short time in the recording studio.

I’m like a monster Beatles’ fan these days. I’m still not into the minutia of their lives and career, but I really, really like listening to their music. I find it so innovative and somehow refreshing when I put one of their records on the turntable. I just think that while there is a lot of really good music out there and some really good bands, the Beatles are sort of in a class by themselves. In my opinion, it’s brilliant stuff. And It makes me feel just a little validated when that thinking lines up with that of a master musician like Gurf Morlix…..

How does it feel to be heading back to the caves?

One thing I truly mourn in our modern societies is the almost total lack of community organizations – at least compared to days gone by…..when I was growing up in Hanover, service clubs played an integral part of life…..Hanover’s Rotary Club sponsored a really big Cornfest for many years and there was a Kinsmen Carnival in town when I was a kid and the local swimming pool had been built by the Kinsmen, and even though I was just a young whip of a guy and didn’t really understand how service organizations worked, they were all around me. When I moved to Wallaceburg in 1985, there were about 70 non profit or charitable organizations in the community and, through bingo, they were responsible to pumping about $1 million in charitable cash back into town every year. It was staggering

Today, in Wallaceburg, those organizations are pretty well gone. There are a few still hanging on, but not many and they are literally hanging on. When I moved here, there were 40 guys in Kinsmen, another 40 in Jaycees, Rotary had about 30 well-heeled members, there was a Lions’ club that was very active, two Masonic temples, two IODE chapters, and on and on and on….pretty well everyone in town was connected in one way or another into this huge community network. And nearly all gone. Young people simply don’t get involved in community organizations the way past generations did. And the excuse the younger folks almost always give is that they don’t have the time – they’re lives are just too busy, what with working and raising children and all the responsibility that takes.

And that, of course, is total and absolute balderdash…..most people I knew back in the day, myself included, were enormously busy on a day-to-day basis….I worked usually over 60 hours a week and had lots of family duties to uphold, but still found time to get involved in a large number of community activities – some connected to my job as a newspaperman – but a lot just because they were things I sort of felt I should be involved in. The big difference between then and now are computer-related devices and the massive amount of time most people spend on them. I see reports all the time in the media that average daily usage of these things can be 2-3 hours a day and sometimes as high as 5-6 hours a day. That’s the most ludicrous thing possibly in the history of humanity. I was a newspaper reporter for much of my life and I lived and died by the phone and I didn’t spend nearly that much time attached to it. People have become bloody addicted to these “devices” and most of the stuff they use them for is inane and useless….dumb and dumber….

Stuff like social media was supposed to make us way more connected as we moved forward as a species. Instead, in many, many cases, it is fracturing and polarizing our societies in ways we could never have foreseen….it is driving us apart instead of bringing us together. I use social media to try to get my writing out to a wider audience and to try to network with other artists and to interact with friends from the old days, many of who are on Facebook – it’s a fun place to talk about bands from the old days and stuff like that. But I’ve learned, and it took me a while, that politics just doesn’t seem to fly on social media. It’s far too divisive and that’s something we really don’t need on this planet these days. As I’ve said countless time before in my writing, we badly need to start pulling together on this planet – trying to all row in the same direction to get the boat going where we’d like it to….

Anyway, the loss of our many and varied community organizations has been a rather large step backward for our societies. I can’t imagine there’s any way to get them going again at this point. The world has changed too much and today we live in the “land of many devices” and there’ll be no way to get away from that any time soon. Did you know the average IQ of the planet has been steadily declining since the advent of the internet? Why? you ask…..because people no longer have to retain knowledge – they can just “google” everything….also, people don’t read like they used to and “writing” skills are also in rapid decline….yup, the machines may be getting smarter, but, at the same time, we’re headed in the opposite direction….back to the caves…..

It’s a fact – depressed people are better consumers…..

You know, I started a bit of a “discussion” on Facebook a week or so ago about the media. I suggested that the media (and I’m including TV, movies, games, social media – the entire media) have us deliberately swimming in a sea of negativity because depressed people shop more. And I’ll tell you that’s a truism – depressed people do shop more – and they also eat more – and, generally, they’re just better consumers than happy or content people. And you didn’t read that here first – it’s well documented. And that’s really the fundamental role of the modern media – it’s got very little to do with keeping you informed or entertained – it’s all about getting you to consume more, to drive our capitalist economy until it’s white hot, and the rich people are squeezing as much cash as possible out of us. That’s the way it works.

I know I’m always harking back to the olden days when the world somehow seemed a different place. These days, there is a vast quantity of hopelessness on the planet. Suicide and mental health issues are sort of running rampant through our societies, especially among young people who should be filled with nothing but hope. The way we were back in those same olden days I’m always talking about. I mean there was a lot of negativity happening back in the decade of love – assassinations, war, race riots, the nuclear threat – lots of negative stuff. But, somehow, most folks back in that other time felt we were moving forward to a better world situation – and the young people especially thought that.

And a major difference between now and back then was the role the media played in our lives. There was a lot of media that just made you feel better…lots of TV shows and movies that were just simply fun and games – no serious messages, no dark foreboding in the plot line….TV shows like the Beverly Hill Billies and Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres….I’m sure there are plenty of folks who can find something evil or nefarious about this type of programming, but I always remember it as sort of good, clean fun and something the whole family could do together. Remembering when there was actually family programming on TV and it was an important part of most families’ social time together.

In the world of music, there was certainly darker material, but I also remember a really huge amount of just plain, old feel-good music. Tunes like Good Morning Starshine, the Age of Aquarius, Here Comes the Sun…..lots and lots of examples of music that just seemed to brighten your soul and lift your spirits. Granted, I’m not that familiar with a lot of new music, but the stuff I do listen to is not generally what I’d call “feel-good” music. A lot of the new music that young people listen to seems somehow aggressive and sort of hostile….at least that’s been my experience….however limited.

The news media is, of course, almost an entirely negative entity these days. It herds us along using mostly emotions like fear and anger to keep us moving in the right direction…too much of the media these days is controlled by far too few people and that is an enormous problem. Even on a local scale, as community newspapers have died, government accountability has pretty much been abandoned. The less effective the media is at holding government and “the Establishment” to account, the more both of these giant monoliths take advantage and rape and pillage the ordinary populace and stack the whole socio-economic system against the common people – something that’s been going on pretty well unchecked since the beginning of recorded history, but is now happening at a frenzied pace as the poor get poorer and rich get grotesquely rich. The less diverse media ownership is, the less effective the media is. It’s a no-brainer.

I mean I just sort of can’t understand why we don’t seem to be getting smarter as we’re supposed to be evolving. I mean I think we’re losing our little toes and there is other physical evolution, but intellectually we seem to be sliding steadily backward. Sure we can build great and sophisticated computers and cell phones and we’ve invented this great internet thing, but, generally, a lot of stuff – some of it pretty important – is ending up in the dumpster – stuff like morality and respect and trust and decency and tolerance….overall, our societies have the morals of an alley cat….that’s what my Dad would have said.

Anyway, I guess it is what it is -and it’s a bit of a mess. It’s always been a bit of a mess but things seem to be getting a trifle more serious these days. And that’s because it’s getting fairly crowded on this old planet. And we’re seeing a whole lot more of each other. And that’s for sure…..

When a company is a publisher and when it’s not……

Ya know, I’ve seen the Mighty Zuckerberg testify before the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions about a number of things. Most often, it’s about the vast amount of misinformation, untruths and just plain lies that end up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et.al. Mr. Zuckerberg always makes the same argument in his defence. He says – and I paraphrase – “We are a tech company, not a publishing company”…..holy crap and shitstorm….that is so wrong and is, indeed, the biggest lie that these “tech” companies spread around. They are all so totally “publishing” companies – and the biggest in the history of the world – and it is so obvious they are publishing companies, that I’m wondering about the general level of intelligence of anyone who accepts the Facebook owner’s balderdash….

I spent nearly 40 years in the community newspaper business, mostly as an editor or publisher. I have a pretty good idea what constitutes a “publisher” and what doesn’t. And I’ll tell you something you should likely already know – as the editor or publisher of a community newspaper, I was totally and absolutely responsible for anything and everything we “published”. If we printed untruths and lies and didn’t check our facts thoroughly and relentlessly, we would have been sued out of business by right thinking citizens – and we would have deserved it for sure. Everything that’s submitted to these giant “tech” companies as posts is published if the platform allows it to be posted publicly. It’s sort of that simple. It’s not rocket science….

When I was a newspaper editor, I received and published many, many Letters to the Editor over the years. And they all – each and every one – had to have a real and actual signature attached to them….In the early days of Fax machines, even a faxed signature wouldn’t hold up in a libel suit or any court of law. The person who submitted the letter had to actually “sign” it. It was the law….once I published it, myself and everyone else who worked at the paper and helped to publish it, were responsible for its content. Why in the world doesn’t the same thing apply to these “tech” companies where every post they publish is really just a “Letter to the Editor” that allows the writer to express his or her opinion and shares it? Explain to me how that isn’t the case?

And the other thing is the “harvesting” of our personal data….how in the world do these big “tech” companies get away with this while our governments sit idly by and allow us to be raped and pillaged at an astonishing level? I know, I know….when I clicked the button to agree to their terms and conditions, I gave them permission…another really big monster pile of excrement. How did clicking a button on a computer screen become a legal way of agreeing to something…Christ, anybody could have clicked on my behalf. In my world, you should need an actual signature (by a human) before you can start raping and pillaging that human’s personal data. It’s just the way it should be. Of course, younger generations of folks won’t be able to actually sign anything – because they’ve stopped teaching cursive writing in our educational system. That was likely a smart thing to do, eh?

Ya know, I picked up an odd piece of information over the past week and don’t remember where – but likely on Facebook so it’s likely a lie….a group of linguists have apparently figured out the average IQ of humanity at a couple of different points in time. I don’t know how you do this, but apparently there are ways. Anyway, back in the early ‘90’s, the average IQ of humanity was about 100….which ain’t really great, but you know. However, by the year 2019, it had seemingly slipped into the low 90’s….which is sort of alarming. The main reason humanity’s IQ has slipped – according to the linguists – is that we don’t have to retain knowledge any more. Instead of remembering stuff like older generations, most people now just “google” it and then forget it. Also people use really crappy language these days when they write e-mails and tweets and Facebook posts….generally, the whole planet is in the process of dumbing itself down….and apparently the language skills go first.

Anyway, there are things that could be done to rein in these tech giants who have f##ked up our planet so badly. I’m a writer and there are certainly many advantages for me as a writer by using some of the new technology….however, there’s got to be some control exercised. It can’t just be like the wild west out there. And it’s not censorship. It has to do with decency, morality and respect. But you should have already known that….eh?

Let’s hope we can put the “middle-class” of music back to work……

Put on a little Gurf Morlix as I’m writing this blog/column….and I am reminded of all the tremendous singer/songwriter/musician-type people I’ve had the huge pleasure to meet over these past many years. Of course, I met Gurf at the Kingsville Folk Festival a couple of summers ago where he was performing and I was fortunate enough to be Writer in Residence. I fell instantly in love with his totally and absolutely honest, sincere and straightforward approach to his tunes. It’s something I’ve always tried to do with my writing.

Most of the musical acquaintances I’ve made over the years have been through either my years as a musician or promoting shows for the Wallaceburg Arts Council….which has been a really big privilege over the years. Still remember when I first approached the Arts Council about doing a show. It started when I wanted to meet some musicians in the Wallaceburg area and possibly get a band together. I ran an ad in the old Wallaceburg News asking for “old washed-up rock ‘n’ roll musicians interested in starting a blues band”. I got enough of a response that a blues band did ensue and in the end we were looking for somewhere to play and I wondered if the Arts Council would sponsor a blues night at the theatre in town.

They did and the rest is sort of history. That first blues night was hugely successful and gave me the courage to try something else and it sort of grew from there – one show led to the next show until, finally, I got brave enough to try a series. Called the series the “Glass Onion Folk Club” and it ran for quite a while for sure, featuring shows mostly at the Jeanne Gordon Theatre and here at 201 Margaret Avenue….brought many, many Canadian musical luminaries to Wallaceburg over the years….a sort of who’s who there for a while. Ended up settling in to mostly blues because it paid the best over the years. And I ran all of my shows without benefit of any arts grant. If I didn’t think I could make a show pay for itself, I wouldn’t book it.

My musical go-to guy over the years was a gentleman by the name of Rick Fines and I brought his trio to town a whole bunch of times and sold the show out most of those times. And when I describe Rick as a “gentleman”, I mean it in the truest sense of the word. He is, indeed, the consummate gentleman. And I must say that in all my years of promoting shows, I’ve not met any performer who wasn’t just totally professional at all times. They have been a wonderful group of people to deal with to a person.

One thing running all these shows taught me as well is that there is a tremendous amount of “luck” involved in whether an artist of any sort “makes it” or not. I have told people many times that I have had musicians in my living room that can play better than most of the big music stars, writes great songs and is just the whole package. But instead of playing at Massey Hall or the Hummingbird Centre for big bucks, they are playing in my living room for a few hundred dollars and scraping to get by. My friend, Rick Fines, recently called this group of hard-working talented musicians as the “middle class” in the music industry. And these are indeed the folks I am most worried about during the pandemic. And while I thought my show promotion days were sort of behind me, I am now thinking that perhaps I should be considering running one more series – just to make sure there are places for the “middle class” to play when this dreadful disease is finally defeated. Anyway, just a thought. Not sure I have the nerve for it any longer.

I’m really hoping that when we do finally get the pandemic under control people will be glad to get back out and get going again. There is some fear that people may have gotten comfortable sitting home watching Netflix and they may decide to keep doing that. I know for my generation of folks getting out to big, crowded events may be gradually starting to come to an end. And it’s been mostly my generation that has been the main source of audience for both folk and blues festivals over the last 40-50 years – we have grown old attending these types of events. But that age is ending.

Still, I’m really hoping for a big music comeback….let’s all get out there and support our “middle class” of musicians and remember they’re all first-class talents and worthy of our support. If I do decide to run one more series, I guess I’ll be checking to see what Mr. Fines and the boys are up to….for sure.

Striving to create a kinder, gentler world should be the goal…..

I know I rail on about what life was like back in the old days and some folks might get a little tired of it. But, you know, I really do wish there was some way to convey to today’s young people – or younger people – what things seemed to be like back in, say 1969, and where some of us thought the world was headed. Some of us really believed that a kinder and gentler world would somehow be shaped by a generation of young people who talked about stuff like peace, love and harmony. Certainly didn’t turn out that way. In fact, the potential problems on Planet Earth that were identified by folks sometimes called “hippies” not only weren’t fixed by that generation, but have gotten mostly worse – what were potential problems back in 1969 are now our reality in 2021.

But one thing I think the generation of so-called hippies did do was raise some pretty great kids. There’s a joke going around these days. It goes like this….”Kids today are ‘way too soft. Why I died once when I was five and my Mom told me to walk it off.” And it’s a really common topic of conversation among folks my age that today’s kids are indeed “too soft”….and I’ve been guilty of accusing them of the same thing countless times. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s better that they’re “too soft”. Maybe the younger generation will indeed be able to create the so far mythical kinder and gentler world that the hippies were after. Maybe the younger folks are headed in totally the right direction and it’s somehow up to the rest of the world to get with the program.

Something we used to call “the Establishment” certainly ate the hippie movement – or however it could be described – for breakfast. As mentioned earlier, most of the problems that were identified back in the 1960’s – like the environment and over population and climate change – have mostly gotten catastrophically worse since that period in history. The Establishment may have seemed to have won the “war”, but they seem to have had no long range plan for the safety and security of the planet or its inhabitants. In fact, the plan seems to be to rape and gouge and loot and pillage as much as possible for as long as possible before the whole damned thing comes crashing down. And I’m thinking the rich folks, or those who make up the Establishment, must have some secret plan to save themselves when everything does come crashing down. Surely, they’re not both rich and dumb.

The really curious thing about the place we find ourselves in as we struggle away with the problems on the planet is that most ordinary folk – like you and me – seem to understand that there are serious problems on the planet and it is fairly common to talk about how government, our leadership, seems totally and absolutely unresponsive and out of touch. Everybody can see the grotesqueness of the ultrawealthy on the planet. It’s everywhere in the media, while at the same time so are the images of starving children and people living in misery. If there happens to be a god and a heaven and hell, we should all be headed downward because we’re allowing these huge, monstrous injustices to happen on our watch. What in the world are we thinking?

I found out this past week that I am afflicted by something being called “existential depression” and its major symptom is worrying obsessively about the condition of society and the world and humankind and feeling hopelessness at my inability to change things for the better. Or to make this the kinder and gentler place I had hoped for when I was a young man trying to be a hippie – or at least to follow some of the ideals they espoused and seemed to believe in.

Anyway, I continue to believe and have hope in our young people and feel they may be the generation that can change our wildly dysfunctional world for the better. Maybe, just maybe, the hippie generation will have the last laugh on the thing we called “the Establishment”. Maybe they have borne future generations who will simply not buy into all the bullshit and mass corruption. And maybe the fact the kids seem “too soft” is because they just don’t buy into the ultracompetitive, frenzied, dog-eat-dog world of their parents. That’s what I’m hoping. But it’s too bad their music sucks. LOL.

Musings on the Demise of the High School dance….

Even though I’ve rarely ever danced in my life, going to dances was a really big part of my young life. A bunch of us were just discussing the dances of old on Facebook and we have very fond memories of those social engagements. You never really hear a word about dances these days and I think they’ve mostly died out. And I know for a fact that there are no more high school dances for sure….got talking to a teacher about this recently and I guess there’s too much drinking and fighting and there’s a big liability issue. Also, this person told me, most teachers don’t really want to spend an evening trying to police a bunch of young people intent on partying. In fact, if you wanted to hold a school dance these days, I guess you’ve actually got to hire a couple of off-duty police officers at fairly huge expense to “police” the thing.

And it really must be the liability thing because there was considerable drinking and fighting at dances in the old days too. In fact, on some nights, you thought you’d gone to a fight and you were hoping a dance might break out at some point. And I don’t know, but that people didn’t seem to worry too much about it….there wasn’t much drinking and fighting in the actual dance and most of that activity took place outside…but the kids just kind of sorted it out by themselves and the teachers, or whoever was supervising, seemed to be able to manage.

I can well remember one of my early bands, Strange Brew, and we put on a few of our own dances. We’d rent a hall in one of the smaller villages around Hanover, maybe Neustadt or Ayton, and we’d hold a dance….we’d put in a stock of pop and potato chips, tack up a few posters and we were in business. But we always had to talk our parents, or some other adults, into chaperoning the event because you just had to do that in those days. And I know for a fact there was lots of drinking and a bit of fighting at all these types of things. But somehow we handled it….

Dances were just a really big part of high school….we had some of the best bands in Canada come through Hanover High back in the old days….Guess Who, Lighthouse, Mashmakan, Crowbar, McKenna/Mendleson Mainline……great bands….and I must admit that sometime in the late 1960’s most of these “dances” were replaced with more concert-type events where there wasn’t much dancing, but everybody sat on the floor and watched the band. And there may have been a few recreational substances floating around over the course of the night.

Anyway, the demise of dances has been, I think, a great loss for the younger generations. In fact, these days I’m not sure where boys and girls or people in general “hook-up” or sort of learn to socialize. And I must admit that, for me, dances were a pretty huge source of stress. I had huge difficulty asking girls to dance, always figuring that it put them in a somewhat difficult spot and knowing it put me there for sure. But I was probably overly sensitive to this type of thing, because I am to most things in life. I found a lot of stuff pretty stressful when I was a teen, but it sort of made me who I am – and I’m good with that.

I know lots of people still dance at bars and places like that, but there’s really nowhere for young people. And this brings me back to a familiar theme – which is that kids today have pretty well nothing to do but hook themselves up to their devices and disappear from Planet Earth. And that’s kind of a sad reality for sure. I’ve always been a bit of a social misfit and have always sort of not fit into the normal scheme of things, so growing up was pretty tough sledding for me most of the time. But I’m glad I went through all of it because, quite frankly, life is pretty tough sledding most of the time….and that’s a thought that should get no argument – from any sane person….

Is it fashion - or is it the devolution of the species?

So, this week, I thought I’d write about something I know very little about – which some people in my life think I do most of the time…..anyway, thought I’d get into a little discussion of modern Western pop culture….which, admittedly, I am almost totally ignorant of. I am, however, totally and absolutely fascinated by it and sort of in “awe” of it. Sometimes, I’m flipping through the TV channels, and I hit a show like “Entertainment Tonight”, or “Inside Edition” or some other piece of mindless drivel, and I end up leaving the TV there and I watch a bit of the spectacle unfold.

Well, I sort of loathe awards shows, so do my best to avoid them, but I usually have the morning news running in the morning – without the sound. So, this morning I got a full run-down on the Oscars, which was certainly as much about the fashion and pizazz as the acting. I should say, as well, that I’m not generally against awarding excellence in pretty well any walk of life. I think people who do great work should be recognized for it – but, and it’s a bit BUT – things have really gotten totally out of control and are way overdone and overblown and a bunch more “over” words.

I really, really don’t understand all the attention paid to the fashion and general glitziness of the whole affair. In fact, I feel this whole obsession with decorating ourselves in sort of unbelievable and dazzling ways to be pretty primitive behaviour and I sort of thought we might at some point evolve or “grow” out of it. I thought way back in the 1960’s, we had put to death the concept that what you looked like was in any way important in life. Instead, it seems to be getting worse and worse….fashion, jewellery, makeup ….please explain to me the point of this type of behaviour and how it improves the human condition in the least.

I also feel we’re sort of rubbing the noses of poor people everywhere in it by carrying on like this in public. Back in the really old days, most poor people around the world really didn’t understand that they were poor. Most of them just lived their lives the way folks around them had always lived their lives, and there was really no thought about being poor….and that was mainly because they didn’t really know what they were missing. These days we blast out constant images of how wealthy and opulent life is for a bunch of people in this part of the world. And, of course, the result is that they want a piece of the action. And who could blame them? Who indeed?

Those of us who have most of the stuff on the planet are, of course, extremely bad at sharing. We are kind of like spoiled kids who won’t let the other kids play with our toys. So, poor people all over the world are simply starting to come to get it. You can see it all around the world….people trying to escape places like Africa and South America where life is particularly tough. And they will go to any length to try to get a “better” life for themselves or their kids. That is evidenced by the way they will send their children alone into great danger to try to save them. These people love their kids so much they’d rather see them die than continue to live in abject poverty and misery….imagine yourself in that position….What would you do?

So, the next time you’re sitting watching the Academy Awards or whatever awards show, you should be thinking of the message it sends to see our “pop” culture celebrities strut their stuff in such an insensitive and grotesque manner. We have to figure out some way to recognize the accomplishments of our fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth without getting all stupid about things….because that’s what’s happening these days…..I used to be fairly optimistic about humanity’s future, but not so much these days….we should be getting wiser and somehow smarter as we “evolve”, but that doesn’t seem to be happening….could it be we’re witnessing the “devolution of the species”……?

A little politics and philosophy and mention of the unwashed masses…..

You know, I started this blog sort of under duress….when I was launching my website to try to gain more exposure for my writing, my grandson, Mitchell – the video wizard – thought I should include a “blog”. Now, for the record, I have written likely thousands of blogs over the years – they used to be called “columns” and I’ve written simply a really large number of them. So, I’m sort of tired of it. But Mitchell thought it should be included, that it was sort of a natural, so I agreed. But, in the very first one, I decreed that I would desperately try to stay away from politics – which is just a really, really divisive thing in our society right now.

However, that’s perhaps even more of a reason to discuss it here in “Notes From a Basement”….it shouldn’t be tearing our societies apart – we should be discussing ways to weave our societies more closely together….we so terribly badly need some type of brand new political party….and I hesitate to even call it that….we really, really need a “party” that works for the people and is totally and completely controlled by the people and carries out the wishes of the people. Somebody better get something going….before we all shuffle off the edge of the abyss and into the oblivion of the hereafter – if there is such a thing.

This new “party”, first of all, needs to sort out the whole question of who supports society in some sort of real way. The way things are right now, the middle class is holding the whole damned thing up….since the end of the second great war to end all wars, the tax structures in most Western societies have gone ridiculously askew. Taxes on the wealthy and on large corporations have been slashed and burned and cut to stupidly low levels, while taxes on the middle class have gone resolutely and steadfastly in the opposite direction. If you don’t believe me….”google it”….

Whether it’s been so-called “liberal” or “conservative” governments – either side of the fence – taxes have been adjusted in the same direction – up for those of us on the bottom and down for the folks at the top – google it for chrissakes….so we sure as hell need someone – or something – else running the government and our lives. Because the folks who’ve been doing it for the last 70-80 years are screwing us real good….And I tell my conservative friends all the time that they are all the same…liberal…conservative….right…left…middle….we need a whole new model for governance and that needs to start with a whole new tax structure.

You know, back in the 1930’s, the world was mired in a deep and dark economic depression…it was indeed called “the Great Depression” and it almost destroyed our societies and way of life….Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) is credited with saving the American economy by introducing something called “the New Deal”, and what he basically did was put America back to work. He levied huge taxes on the richest people in American society and he used the very large amount of money that generated to start really big make-work projects all over the United States. Put simply, he taxed the rich…..even though he was a rich guy, himself, he knew it had to be done.

FDR got death threats and hate mail for the rest of his life for the actions he took in 1935 to bring some fairness to society. But in the election campaign of 1936, massive crowds of ordinary people showed up everywhere he went and they carried signs that thanked him for literally saving their lives. He won the ’36 election with a monstrous landslide and was president until he died in 1944 – maybe the most popular president in American history….just sayin’….if any politician goes after the rich folks, they’ll be very popular with the “unwashed masses” – and there are a lot more of the unwashed masses than there are rich folks – and they can all vote….darned, eh?

So, let’s get some type of new “party” or movement happening….I obviously can’t do it or I’ve have done it by now….I’m an old guy….but here’s a chance for young people to save the planet from us old codgers….totally re-make the world as a kinder, gentler place….that’s what you need to strive to do….Successive previous generations have done everything in their power to destroy and lay waste to greatest miracle perhaps in the history of being…..someone or something must lead us out of the wilderness and back to Eden….and I’m not even a believer….not in the least….

Well, there’s a little politics and philosophy for you….be well and stay safe, my friends…all life is precious….even unto the tiniest bit of it….

Joni was right – Sex Sells Everything – Sex Kills…..

You know, I wrote a poem back a number of years ago called, “I Don’t Understand Why Women Wear Make-up”, and I was being totally honest and truthful when I wrote the piece….because I have never understood the human penchant for decorating our bodies and sort of jazzin’ ourselves up. I think back in the mists of time, sort of at the beginning of everything, perhaps jazzing yourself up might help you get a better mate or something like that…..important stuff back when everybody was living in caves and fightin’ saber tooth tigers for dinner.

But something that shouldn’t be important in the least as we stumble through the 21st century. Life on the planet really shouldn’t have anything to do with image. But, the way we’re living, it’s got everything to do with image….I’ve read or heard a thousand times how hard it is to be a young woman in our society because of the monster pressure over image and body size and shape….all this kind of thing should be gone from our world. If we want any type of equality on the planet, we have to get beyond image and appearance….

What’s that I just wrote? We’ve got to get beyond image and appearance in our societies….wow….that actually includes stuff like skin colour doesn’t it? We need to totally and absolutely learn to respect each other’s differences – but, if we’re going to survive as a species, we need to totally and absolutely pull together like a collective. It may indeed be all well and good for us to live our personal lives as individuals and to be “different”, but, somehow, we also need to be the same. We all have to work together to solve the ginormous geopolitical and socioeconomic issues we are facing. Issues like climate change and poverty and hunger can’t be solved by people working alone, or even in small groups….it’s gonna take all of us.

I mean, there’s no doubt that there’s been huge oppression of all types of folks on the planet over the years. In fact, if you’re a student of history, or even if you’ve read and studied a lot of history, you know that pretty well every group and subgroup of humans has had the shit kicked out of them at one point or another….I, for example, am a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant….the common WASP…..my life has been one of privilege – I understand that…..but 1,000-2,000 years ago, my ancestors in the British Isles were raped and pillaged and murdered and butchered at an astonishing rate….my ancestors may not have felt totally privileged.

But back on point….anyway, it’s fine for people to get all jazzed up with jewellery and make-up and tattoos and piercings and trendy clothes and all that sort of thing. But it seems to sort of turn into a competition and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. We’ve managed to do away with or fundamentally change old-fashioned things like “Beauty Contests” because we realized they were so profoundly sexist….we’ve gotten rid of most “men’s clubs” and we’re working diligently away trying to bring more and more equity into our societies. But as long as fashion, makeup and image are such a huge part of our world, it’s very unlikely we’ll ever achieve much equity. Because everybody’s in this huge competition to see who’s looking the best….who’s the sexiest man or woman alive…..it’s really wrong-headed.

And, of course, the thing that’s totally surprised me about where we’ve ended up as a society is that I lived through the 1960’s – that decade of peace, love and violence….when quite a bunch of women in our society burned their bras, stopped shaving their body hair and also stopped jazzing themselves up…..because they wanted to be judged as people – humans - and not sex objects. Don’t really see hardly anyone living that type of lifestyle these days…..Women and, of course, men are all totally caught in the great contest to be the most gorgeous, or the most desireable, or the most something…..

Nope, I’ve been accused of being a communist on a number of occasions…..and in the area of image, I’m totally there. Image shouldn’t be something that sets us apart as human beings…..it’s all right, I suppose, to look good….but at what cost…..reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. story…..it’s a futuristic story about a society where if you’re deemed too beautiful, you’ve got to wear a bag over your head, and if you can run too fast, you have to carry around a weight – just to even things out – so we’re all “equal”……remember, it’s okay for you to be an individual in society, but you must also be part of the collective – like the Borg…..resistance is futile…..

Doing a little reading is good for the soul…….

Don’t know what turned me into such a reader, and, ultimately, a writer. And although I’ve not read much fiction over the last number of years, when I was younger, I was a totally voracious reader who devoured huge stacks of books in seemingly endless fashion. There were not a lot of books around our home when I was growing up. We had a few – like a 1912 edition of “Titanic” that might be worth something today if it’d survived – and my Dad, who only had Grade 8, tried taking a correspondence course the one time – he never finished it but we ended up with a few of the books from it kicking around – one called, “The Cruel Sea”, which I never did read.

Anyway, as soon as I able – which was likely after we moved into town when I was eight – I started frequenting the Hanover Public Library, and, indeed, I spent quite a large amount of time there as a youngster and checked out lots and lots of books, starting with stuff like the Hardy Boys and gradually working my way all the up into Hemingway and Steinbeck and the sort of big guys. I just sort of couldn’t get enough reading material when I was young. I just loved to read.

Remember that, for some reason, my friend, Glen, had a copy of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich hanging out in his room at the Queen’s, and I think I read it when I was about 14 and it really opened up my world and gave me a real insight into the world conflict that happened only a scant 20 years earlier. Remember when I was coming of age and reading books like Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye (which I must admit I don’t think really had a profound effect on me) and into the futuristic sci-f stuff like Brave New World, Farenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm……..

It’s funny, too, because Hanover had no book store when I was a young guy. In fact, it’s a true story that the only place in town where you could buy a book in the old days was the pool room…..that’s right, folks…skin magazines and great literature – side by side….I remember this vividly because of my experience with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Bought The Hobbit at the pool room and breezed through it, went back and bought the first two Lord of the Rings books. Devoured them – blown away – gobsmacked, as everyone keeps saying these days……Had to…..had to….had to have the third book…The Return of the King…..dashed back up to the pool room….Yikes…..no book….not in stock….Immediately hit the side of the road, thumb protruded, heading for Kitchener to acquire the book…..home again, home again fast as I can….

Had a true life altering experience near the end of my somewhat checkered high school career…….got involved in helping start a sort of underground newspaper at the school and my role as editor perhaps shaped most of the rest of my life. But, also, as part of the whole newspaper experience, I ended up in an independent reading course with a very progressive and  innovative teacher and that also changed me forever…..while the rest of my classmates were reading the stock stuff of high school, I was delving into Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe and Buckminster Fuller and all of the greatest contemporary writers of the age….while at the same time, continuing my journeys into the past with the Russian guys and the English women and Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson…..

I continued to read relentlessly through early adulthood, which I spent most of at university. Remember being at the University of Guelph for a summer semester when things are a little less hectic. I was up wandering around the Library in the English section one day early in the semester, and I spotted this huge row of Charles Dickens’ works. Why not, I thought……so, over the course of the summer, I read as much Dickens as the library had to offer…. Very, very enjoyable….

Then, sort of tragically, when I was in my early thirties, I pretty much stopped reading fiction. It coincided with my early beginnings as a creative writer. When I started to write my short stories, I decided that I needed to have my own “voice”…..that I did not want to “sound” or “read” like anybody else on the planet…..I have never studied creative writing or even taken any formal English courses beyond about Grade 11. In university, I took history and politics – not English….When I first started writing my short stories, I wasn’t even sure they were “legitimate” short stories….didn’t know if there were rules you were supposed to follow…..so I sort of made stuff up as I went along…..created my work in isolation, away from other writers. Obsessed with having my own “voice”……

Don’t know if young people today read like I once did….would be nice to think they somehow did, even with all the technology currently swamping them….I just think it opens up your world in so many ways……I hope people have really been reading during the pandemic….it’s good for the soul…..

On Vaccine for All….and making $10,500 per hour…..

So, I’ve always been sort of a political animal….interested in political stuff from a pretty early age and even worked on a couple of political campaigns while still in high school. That said, when I started this “blog”, I promised myself that I’d keep political stuff to a minimum. I just didn’t want folks on here bickering and fighting and bitchin’ about left and right and liberal and conservative and socialist and capitalist. Because most people’s attitudes and opinions on these things is well beyond entrenched these days and borders on the fanatical.

Anyway, spotted something on the snews the other morning – mentioned it on Facebook – that really caught my attention. Saw a discussion on the TV about whether the big pharma companies should lift their patents on the COVID vaccine, so that countries in the “developing” world (read poor) could make some of the stuff, because, apparently, but not surprisingly, countries in the “developed” world (read rich) are hogging it all. So this guy from Phizer (sp.) was on the television thingy explaining that the poor countries would likely screw up vaccine production and that big pharma has invested quite a bit of money to develop these vaccines – so it would make more sense for big pharma to build bigger manufacturing facilities so they can continue to make all the vaccine. What a pile of shit that is.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the COVID vaccine should be available and it should be free to every person on the planet…..in fact, this should have been a worldwide vaccination program in the first place….there should be no richer or poorer in this whole equation. Why is an 80-year-old life more precious in a rich than in a poor country? I don’t really care where the vaccine comes from – if it’s safe, it should be headed everywhere. And big pharma could be helping the countries in the developing world produce their own vaccines. It’s the way it should be.

You know, North America – and I don’t know where else in the world – is currently hauling itself out an enormous opioid epidemic. It has cost societies in the United States and Canada billions and billions of dollars. It has been proven in court that some big pharma companies knowingly and willingly and purposefully nurtured this epidemic into being. And I know there are many, many law suits currently happening that are making big pharma pay some of what they have cost us, but, really, isn’t the COVID pandemic really the perfect opportunity for this self same big pharma to help save the planet, and, in some senses, to be our knight in shining armour…..and, for once, not try to addict us to something or soak more cash out of us.

And, of course, the other big question everybody’s asking about the pandemic – besides when it might somehow end – is how are governments going to pay for all the “stimulus” money they’ve pumped into our societies to keep them afloat while the economy spins and whirls around during what seem like endless lockdowns. And the answer to this question is remarkably simple. Governments around the world need to lay some pretty heavy taxes on their really rich folks and their really rich corporations. It is a complete and total no-brainer that there are a bunch of people on this planet who have entirely too much money. Seems there’s a bit of a race underway to see who might be the first trillionaire on Spaceship Earth – and that’s pretty grotesque for sure.

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a relentless tax attack on middle and lower classes in Western society. Taxes on the rich and on large corporations have fallen steadily over the last 75-80 years, while increasing very steadily on everyone else. It gained considerable momentum when something called Reaganomics reared its ugly head back in the 1980’s and “trickle down economics” became a popular catch phrase. So that in today’s world, it’s okay for an American CEO to earn $10,500 per hour, while government won’t even allow the poor a minimum wage of $15 per hour. How goddamned grotesque is that?

North American societies in 2021 are totally and wildly dysfunctional. There is no fairness and you really can never use the word “equity” to describe anything about them. There was an old saying years ago….it went like this…”And the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer”…..this is an absolute truism in our world today. We could change it. It would cause a lot of societal dislocation, a lot of short term pain, and a whole lot of pissed off rich people. But it might save the planet. ‘Nough political stuff….

See you next week…..

On separating the wheat from the chaffe……what’s good music today?

Boy, really getting beat up on Facebook about a post I made about Justin Bieber and his latest single….said you couldn’t understand his lyrics and his vocals were distorted to the point where they really didn’t even sound like a human voice….is that still singing? Anyway, one of my good buddies mentioned that my 70-year-old grandfather probably wouldn’t have liked Led Zepplin back in the day either…..ya know what? I don’t really like Led Zepplin either….but I guess I am almost 70-years-old.

Anyway, you’re right when you say I’m not fond of most new “mainstream” music. With that said, I like nearly all genres of music as they existed in the past. While I enjoy progressive rock like Genesis and Yes, I also really admire Hank Williams and the old country guys. I like and enjoy a really wide range of “music” and always have. My wife is constantly surprised by what I pull out of the old record collection from time to time. But the new “pop” music is sort of beyond me. So, I’ll admit I’m a dinosaur on this one.

I’m going to tell you something, though. This new music won’t last. Like most stuff in our modern world, it’s here today, gone tomorrow. The music that my generation grew up with is still being played by bands today – because it was music that could be covered by lots and lots of other musicians. Most of the new popular music released today sure doesn’t sound like it would be easy to play because so much of it is electronic and digitally altered. Almost anybody today can put out a record and call themselves a musician.

And it’s like that in nearly all of the arts these days. I call myself a writer, but almost anyone can think they are a writer today…..you’ve got grammar check and spell check and you can be constantly revising and moving stuff around hither and yon. Certainly, almost anything is accepted as visual art in the modern era. Almost anything can be called an artform these days….

I’m not saying there aren’t some really talented people out there, but, in a lot of cases, it can be sort of hard to tell…..going back to Justin Bieber….I’ve heard his music a bunch of times, usually on the TV or radio, and I just don’t get it. I’m not even really sure what his actual voice sounds like, so don’t really know if he can sing or not. I usually can’t figure out what he’s singing so I’m not sure what he’s like as a songwriter…..I’m used to folks like the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Harry Chapin and Paul Simon…..is that the kind of stuff the Beebs is producing…..so that even though it sounds different, and my old ears don’t really like it, it’s still great songwriting. Do the Beebs and Beyonce and Cardi B and Drake write great lyrics….I’m ignorant on that front for sure.

I don’t know, people. I started playing music when I was a wee, small lad and have been listening to music for almost as long – I think I know and can recognize good stuff when I hear it. And if a lot of new music – at least the stuff that gets most of the airplay – doesn’t sound all that great to me. And if it’s actually really good stuff, like the work of truly great artists, then the whole music thing has experienced a complete and total paradigm shift over the last couple of generations. I think music is sort of like truth. And, as I believe there is absolute truth in most cases, I also think there is something called “absolute music”. It can come in many forms and sound like a lot of different things – but it’s still good or bad.  

Our world is a fractured and broken place…….

Ya know, even though we’ve got lots of cool communications technology on the planet these days and it seems as though it should be getting easier and easier to build something I’ll call “community”, it is somewhat ironic that there is less and less of it all the time. Sure, there are communities of all sorts on the world wide web – everybody’s joining all sorts of stuff that’s floating around out there in cyberspace. But I’ll tell you – it’s a poor excuse for real community.

When I was a kid growing up in Hanover, and even when I got older and was out on my own, small towns were filled to overflowing with all sorts of community. When I was actually growing up, both sides of my extended family lived in Hanover and I saw aunts and uncles and cousins all the time just as I went about my daily travels in life. I think that type of upbringing, sort of in the bosom of a loving family, is really important. Goes a long way toward determining how you fare in life later on.

When I first moved to Wallaceburg 35 years ago, there were about 70 community organizations in town. There was Rotary and Kinsmen and Jaycees and Lions and two IODE Chapters and the list just went on and on….today, I think you’d be really lucky to find 10-12 community organizations in Wallaceburg. They’re pretty well all gone and gone with them are the many, many things they used to do to improve and better the town and to make it a great place to raise kids and enjoy life.

No, we got zillions of ways to keep in touch these days and we’ve got the great world wide cyberworld, but our societies are fractured and splintered beyond belief – not just politically, but in every way possible. Remember when there were just a few TV networks. Huge swaths of society watched basically the same stuff. So, the day after a Sunday night episode of Ed Sullivan, almost everybody was talking about it at work or school or wherever. Today, in a land totally crammed full of something called “streaming services”, almost nobody watches the same thing.

For example, I was not a fan of the “hit” show Breaking Bad. Watched part of a couple of episodes and generally felt it was morally depraved, but it was supposedly a really big hit of a show….somewhere along the line, I saw in the media that about 4 million viewers watched the final installment of it. That sounds like a lot of people until you realize that about 40 million people watched the final episode of MASH back in the olden days. TV and movieworld have been shattered into about 8 billion pieces, so that it’s almost impossible to get a really huge market share. The Disney streaming service, by the way, just reached 100 million subscribers, but I’m pretty sure not everybody’s watching everything and most people join to watch certain isolated shows….maybe Star Wars or Marvel or stuff like that. Also by the way, I heard a commentator last week say the average household should spend $130 on streaming services every month if they want to get enough stuff…..yikes!

The point I’m trying to make is that even though we are moving forward at light speed in certain areas of our lives, like technology, some of the most important things in our lives are being left by the wayside. I’ve heard a lot of media stories about our current generation of young people and how emotionally frail many of these folks are. And I really think that has a lot to do with the level of safeness and security these young people feel in their lives as they grow up. There are many single parent households these days and it is somewhat rare for kids to be surrounded by extended family as they come of age. Many, many people these days are fundamentally on their own as they pass through life. And life can be a scary place – for sure.

Somehow, the whole planet and everyone on it needs to start to pull in the same direction. And we need each other to do that. The way our societies are evolving, I wouldn’t be surprised if we all end up living and dying in tiny off-white cubicles without any human interaction – because that seems to be where we’re headed….and then if you mix in the odd pandemic just for good measure…..and here we are….alone again, naturally….. 

My Dad and I visit the Canadian National Exhibition…..

As kids, growing up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, most of us lived remarkably sheltered lives…..there were no trips to Disneyworld or Wonderland or wherever. Most people stayed close to home in those days. I got up to Ottawa a few times as a kid because my Uncle Alf and his family lived there – but other than that, we just didn’t get very much anywhere. I made my first couple of trips to Toronto when I was about 12. I went once as part of a championship 5-pin bowling team to compete in the Canadian championships….and I went another time to play with the Hanover Musical Society Senior Town Band at the Canadian National Exhibition in some big contest – and that trip is etched in my mind for sure.

Because I was pretty young – don’t remember any other kids – my Dad was allowed to come on the bus with the band. And it was quite the day. The band played great and we won a huge trophy that was pretty much as big as me. (Often wonder what happened to the many, many awards the musical society won over the years.) Harry Mann was the conductor of the town concert band in those days. He seemed incredibly old to me and rather stern and stiff most of the time. Lloyd Robertson of CTV news fame was the MC for the band competition, and he was likely in his twenties and just starting out and I remember thinking how short he seemed compared to when he was on TV.

Anyway, the band thing is only a small part of my remembrances of that day. I ate my first “real” corned beef sandwich that day at the Shopsy’s kiosk down by the midway. That sandwich was almost bigger than me, but I ate the whole damned thing and have spent most of the rest of my life on the look-out for great corned-beef sandwiches…..also, this was the first and last time I was ever on a roller coaster or pretty well any amusement ride – that story some other time. Went on some humongous merry-go-round that seemed to go enormously fast as well…..

My Dad really wanted to see the grandstand show at the big stadium because the headliners were Bob Hope and Victor Borges, who were hugely big stars back in those days. I have to admit that I don’t remember a darned thing about the show – except for the guy in the jet pack….yup….way back in the early ‘60’s, I saw some guy bomb all around Exhibition Stadium in a jet pack. It was dazzling and I remember the announcer telling us that before long everybody would be bombing around in jet packs….it was going to be the wave of the future. Like back in those days they kept telling us one of our biggest problems in the future would be how to spend all our leisure time because machines would be doin’ all the work….yea, right….how’s that working out for us.

Well, the other thing my Dad wanted to do that day was tour the “food building”, and I’ve got to admit it was pretty spectacular back in those days…..you could basically “eat” your way through the whole place because there were hordes and hordes of free samples everywhere you looked….had my first taste of something called “pizza” that day – wouldn’t arrive in Hanover for several years yet. And the other thing which was pretty amazing was that they had full-life statues of Bob Hope and Victor Borges sculpted out of butter in this really big freezer cases. My Dad, who had been trained as a professional ice cream and butter maker, was totally and completely blown away and stood there admiring those giant butter creations for a good, long while for sure….

Yes, my Dad and I had a totally exciting and packed full day. In fact, at the last minute, my father, who was not any type of risk-taker, decided we should watch the big fireworks display at the grandstand before we caught the bus home. And it was a wonderful fireworks display – I remember that – I also remember my always reliable and dependable father pounding on the side of the big chartered bus as we ran after it while it was pulling out of the parking lot heading for Hanover…..

Totally different world then when a major journey was going to the next town over. Most of us  lived pretty sheltered lives and had no idea what the big, wide world looked like when we finally headed out into it. That caused a few challenges for sure, but most of us could handle them because we’d somehow been raised to be “tougher” back then. Anyway, wouldn’t trade the growing up years in Hanover for anything….really special times….

What alternative do kids have to their “devices”…..

Ya know, a lot of older folks, me included, give kids these days a lot of heat for spending too much time on their “devices”….and I know, I know….it’s the pandemic and there’s not much you can do right now – but this was considered a problem in our society long before COVID-19 came on the scene….but I really do wonder if we give our kids any real opportunity to do stuff that doesn’t involve their devices. Maybe we – as the adults who are running society – are not giving kids much to do where they get to spend time just being kids.

I’ll tell you what I mean….when my daughter was young, like around 5-6 years old, I wanted to teach her to ice skate. So, I checked with the local arena to see when I could take her and I found out there was exactly one slot for public skating – it was Sunday afternoons and it was a measly two hours. I took her and taught her to skate but it was wildly overcrowded and not much fun….I asked the local recreation director why there was only two hours of public skating a week….he told me that hockey and figure skating paid the bills….they got the ice time….I was absolutely staggered and wrote a number of columns in the local paper suggesting this was a problem but it never really went anywhere….it’s like that still….

When I was a young guy growing up in Hanover, there were four or five slots a week for public skating….it was where most kids in town went to hang out – and there were no parents…..there were absolutely no parents….and, man, those were fun times. And when the ice went out in the spring, there was roller skating four or five times a week through the spring and summer….and, again, pretty well every young person in town was there almost every available night because it was what you did – you hung out with your friends. And after skating, it was off down to Norm’s Restaurant for Coke and fries…no parents there either. No texting. No phones. Just kids….

You know, I can remember sitting around with my buddies when we were teenagers and complaining endlessly that there was nothing to do it town….gawd, it was boring growing up in Nowheresville – which was what we called the old hometown. But, in reality, there was a huge whack of stuff to do. There was indeed roller and ice skating, but there was also a bowling alley, a pool room, a theatre and a drive-in – and there were tons of dances, both at school and other venues, with great bands. There were a couple of restaurants in town that openly welcomed teenagers to come and “hang out” – or at least that’s the way it seemed. Both Norm’s and Paul’s Grill and Tea Room were filled with teenagers at various points in the week. We swam in the lakes and rivers, hung out at the railway tracks and most of the churches in town had youth groups that ran events. There was, for sure, lots of stuff to do.

I feel sorry for young people today where we have created a world where everything is organized for our children – whether it’s sports or arts or anything, we don’t give kids a chance to sort of improvise in life – we try to teach kids how to be creative and innovative when we don’t understand that just letting them find their own way is the best course. 

Back in the mythical Sixties, that decade of peace, love and violence, it was like our parents didn’t love us as much or something. I mean, they basically just sent us out into the world to sink or swim – most of the ones I knew anyway. When I was 18 and I announced I was going hitchhiking, my Dad didn’t try to talk me out of it….he gave me two bucks and said have a good time. I don’t remember him seeming worried in the least. And when I was on the road, there was no practical way to check in, so I sort of just disappeared for a while, then showed up back at their door a while later. Again, when I announced I was moving out of the house to live in a dilapidated, run-down farmhouse with a bunch of other musicians and we were going to be rock stars, he wished me luck….

Different world these days – that’s what everybody keeps telling me….had a friend ask me the other day why so many of today’s young people are having mental health issues. I think it’s because they’re not as mentally “tough” as previous generations because they’ve been coddled and pampered too much…..as much as parents these days worry about children’s self esteem, life really doesn’t give a shit about people’s self esteem….and it beats the beejeezus out of most folks. And if you’re not mentally tough, you crumple and fold….which is what’s happening a lot.

Maybe if we created the spaces for kids to be kids and to interact with other kids in a type of kid-world – the way we used to, it would be better for them….we have to create those spaces – that’s our job as adults and parents. Don’t blame kids for spending all their time on devices if there’s nothing else for them to do. And that’s the world we’ve created for our most precious resource.

Losing track of pop culture and sort of wishing for days of old……

You know, one of the oddest things about growing older is how you gradually seem to lose track of pop culture. When you’re a young person, you’re sort of in the middle of pop culture all the time…young people drive what is popular in our culture…or at least they do these days. And when you’re an older person, but have kids, your kids keep you involved in pop culture. You keep up with music and movies and stuff because your kids are into what’s current and you just kind of pick it up through osmosis….but when you’re finally old – as I seem to be these days – you really do lose touch in a major way. And that’s what’s happened to me.

In music is where I notice it the most….for much of my life, I was extremely musically aware…..of course, I knew all the popular music makers when I was young myself, but then went through the Cure, Nirvana and Pearl Jam music period with my son and Oasis and Smashing Pumpkins and that music period with my daughter….These days, though, I know who some of the pop music icons are – Beyonce, the Beebs, Justin Timberlake – but don’t know any of their music or anything about them. And, I know, I know, the folks I’ve mentioned don’t nearly encompass what’s popular today – but they’re the ones you hear about in pop culture news….or a whole bunch of other ones I’ve totally never heard of at all….

I’m not really into youtube…..I know lots of people who seem to spend much of their lives searching through youtube looking for new, worthwhile music. But I must admit, I’ve not spent five minutes doing that….for one thing, I don’t like watching video when I’m listening to music….I like to listen to music…and that leads me to the another reason I don’t use youtube to find new music. The sound quality on youtube video is gawdawful to say the least. I’m set up to run my computer through my giant stereo, but youtube stuff still sounds really crappy.

And then, of course, there is the whole computer thing. As much as I have lived most of the last 30 years dealing with computers, I sort of loathe the things. I love some of the stuff you can do on a computer like e-mailing my creative writing all over the place, or e-mailing music hither and yon…..I even have to admit, that while I’m not a fan of social media because of the chaos it’s caused in our societies, I do appreciate the chance to hook-up with old friends, promote my writing and share in decent, respectful discussion – when that happens.

But I think the overall effect computers have had on the world is largely negative.  It has sped most things in our world up to light speed, including our propensity to gorge ourselves on mountains of consumer junk, putting at risk our own survival and the survival perhaps even of the planet. I heard a guy on the radio the other day try to tell me that that internet is the greatest invention in the history of humanity….and I really can’t agree with that. The internet’s a good one to be sure, but it ain’t that good.

Anyway, so much for music - and I’m even more lost in other areas of pop culture. There’s such a glut of TV and movies these days, driven mostly by a virtual myriad of these new-fangled streaming services, that anyone with any acting ability on the planet is surely working and it is nigh unto impossible to keep track of that many “stars”…..when they mention Best Actor Nominees or something like that on the news, it’s not unusual for me to know absolutely none of them these days. Occasionally, one of the old folks who I know as actors still appears in the spotlight….but not too often, and when they do, they’re playing really old rickety people who can barely walk.

I sort of miss the olden days when there seemed to be some order to the pop culture world. There was only so much TV and everybody got the same stuff and could get everything that was out there. If you wanted to watch a movie, you went to a movie theatre because that was the only place you could see one. If you wanted to listen to music, there was the radio, or you bought a record, took it home and listened to it on a really great stereo with really great sound quality – so you had some idea what the artist or band you were listening to actually sounded like.

I think we’re facing a basic problem these days. There used to be a saying that went like this, “the cream always rises to the top”, and it meant that the legitimately good stuff would eventually break out into the public domain….these days, though, there’s so much crap in the system that the good stuff hasn’t got much of a chance to go anywhere……