Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Barenaked Ladies

I remember first becoming aware of Barenaked Ladies when CBC Radio began playing If I Had $1,000,000 and Be My Yoko Ono and interviewing the band before the album Gordon was released. I was struck by their humour (Canadian spelling intentional) and their musical skill was evident.

I bought Gordon as soon as it was available, and it's still one of my favorite albums (by any group or artist). It was very popular in Canada, especially with my circle of friends. I've seen them live twice, and enjoyed their improvisation and sense of humor—they seemed to really enjoy performing, playing music and each other's company.

The Wikipedia article on them is very interesting reading. Don't miss the first two paragraphs under "Indie Origins". I searched YouTube and found this short excerpt of their Speaker's Corner performance of Be My Yoko Ono. (See the last paragraph under "Indie Origins".)

I admire the group for the unabashed Canadian references in their music, even after their success in the U.S. They seem proud of their origins, but are not humorlessly patriotic. Growing up in Canada I was always aware of Canadian artists, and it irked me when (it seemed to me) they forced American references into their music as if they were ashamed of where they were from. (I should collect examples of this. I don't think it would be hard to find several.) Now, of course, I realize this wasn't out of shame but was probably a desperate attempt to increase their chances of commercial success south of the 49th.

My father mentioned during my parents' recent visit that the band had broken up. Actually (at least according to Wikipedia), Steven Page has left the group. I'm sorry to hear that—the band of course won't be the same without him—but I wish him and the remaining BNL members good luck in their continued careers. I'll follow them all with anticipation of more good music.

A couple more of my favorite songs of theirs:

• You Will Be Waiting
• Call And Answer

I also recommend their childrens' album Snack Time. I'm always happy to listen to that with the kids. The song The Canadian Snacktime Trilogy i) Snacktime is a lovely tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. And Crazy ABC's is hilarious.

Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Leonard Cohen

The choice for my second RCCotW blog post was easy. Leonard Cohen is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Canadian or not.

I was introduced to Leonard Cohen fairly early, but I guess I wasn't ready for him. A grade 7 a teacher whose name I can't recall (and who I didn't appreciate at the time) split us into groups and had us do a presentation comparing two artists. I wasn't assertive enough at the time to choose two artists I liked (and at 12, if I was aware of the creators of the music, books, movies and TV I enjoyed, I'm sure I didn't think of them as artists), so my partner (who I also don't recall) and I asked (or more likely whined) that we couldn't think of anyone. The teacher suggested two artists that I would enjoy comparing now, but back then I had never heard of: Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood. I'm sure our analysis didn't go very deep—we may not have done much more than describe their biographies and that in addition to them both being Canadian, that they are both poets. I think I recall showing an 8 mm movie about each (that the teacher found).

Unfortunately I missed that opportunity to discover the music of Leonard Cohen. I'm sure I heard it occasionally on CBC Radio, but neither of my parents listened to him so I didn't hear his music around the house.

I finally didn't come to enjoy his music until I heard an interview on CBC with Jennifer Warnes, who was promoting her album Famous Blue Raincoat, which is "a tribute to Leonard Cohen, with whom Warnes had toured as a backup singer in the 1970s." (That must have been late 1986 or early 1987.) I bought the CD (one of the first I bought as I began to replace my vinyl collection) and it became one of my favorites. As so often happens, I over-listened to it until I was tired of it, and I haven't listened to it much since then. (It would be interesting to come back to it and see if I enjoy it.)

I remember raving about it online, and someone else responded that I should really listen to Leonard Cohen himself. Later I remember enjoying the song "Everybody Knows" in the movie Pump Up the Volume (in 1990). But it wasn't until 1993 (or maybe late 1992) that I bought my first Leonard Cohen album The Future. Wikipedia tells me it is one of his most popular, so I guess that makes sense.

Not long after that I bought The Best of Leonard Cohen (and noticed how much his voice has changed since he was young) and later More Best of Leonard Cohen. A couple years ago I bought the soundtrack to the Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man movie, which I haven't seen.

I recommend all of these albums, but I recommend you start with The Best of Leonard Cohen or maybe The Essential Leonard Cohen.

The songs I've marked 5 stars in iTunes are:
Famous Blue Raincoat
Take This Waltz
Hallelujah

And these two tributes from Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man:
Antony's If It Be Your Will
Rufus Wainwright's Chelsea Hotel No. 2

What did I leave out?

Update: I remembered a very good interview of Leonard Cohen with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Recommended Canadian Content of the Week: Blue Rodeo

Several weeks ago I took Gabe to San Francisco to participate with his t-ball team in a "Little League Day" at AT&T Park. Claire had the great idea of Gabe and I driving up Saturday and staying at a hotel so we could get to AT&T Park early Sunday morning for the Q&A with Giants coaches and players. (And then return in the early afternoon to sit in the bleachers with his team for the game.) It was a weekend of firsts for Gabe: riding in a "subway" (the Muni Metro), riding on a cable car, going to the top of a skyscaper, walking through Chinatown, going across the Golden Gate Bridge. Hopefully some of it made some lasting memories.

Driving home after the game Sunday, Gabe fell asleep (and slept all the way home—he was exhausted after a couple long, busy days). I didn't want to listen to my usual podcasts and risk waking him up (as I did on the way up Saturday), so I set my 5-star music playlist to shuffle. I enjoyed listening to a subset of my favorite music, something I don't make time to do very often.

I was struck by how much of it is Canadian. So I came up with an idea for a series of blog posts, each describing a favorite Canadian band or artist. My idea was to do this weekly, but since it has taken me weeks to finish writing up this first post, don't expect them that often. I'll do what I can.

Several of the tracks that played during my drive were by Blue Rodeo, and I've since noticed that there are more songs by them in my 5-star music playlist (13) than any other group or artist. (Runners-up are The Beatles and Louis Armstrong with 9, and R.E.M. with 8.)

I remember first noticing Blue Rodeo when Much Music took a liking to them after they released their first album Outskirts over 20 years ago. Their album with the most songs I've rated 5-stars (5) is Five Days in July, but I've over-listened to that album and need to leave it alone for a few years before I can enjoy it again.

If you buy only one song of theirs, I (currently) recommend Bulletproof from Palace of Gold. But I also recommend...

From Tremolo:

• Falling Down Blue
  
• Dragging On

From The Days In Between:

• Cinema Song
• Sad Nights

(I'm a sucker for ballads.)

Just two PyCon outings

I left the hotel only twice in between arriving the evening of March 12th and leaving the evening of the 20th.

March 13th (Thursday) was tutorial day at PyCon--I was quite exhausted after three excellent and intense tutorials from 9:00 AM to 9:30 PM. The conference itself was Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sessions started at 9:00 AM and lasted until at least 6:30 PM. The lightning talks on Friday and Saturday had no fixed end time. And then I attended Open Space sessions late into the evenings.

The sprint tutorial on Sunday lasted until about 7:30 PM, and then I worked late preparing for the sprint. (I'm glad I got a jump on things--I found some work to do that kept me busy for the entire sprint, and beyond. I'll eventually write more on that in my Python blog.)



That's me in the Django sprint room (third from the right in my beige fleece vest). (It was nice of other people at PyCon to take so many photos and put them on Flickr tagged with "pycon2008". I didn't even bother taking my camera out of my room.)

Monday I worked hard at the sprint, and tummy.com brought in pizza (the only Chicago deep-dish pizza I had the entire time), which made it easy to work late.



Tuesday I finally left the hotel for the first time, and joined a gang of Django sprinters for dinner a few stops away on the "blue line".



That's me on the far right.



And that's me on the left.

Then Wednesday I decided to join a smaller group of Django sprinters on an outing to see Adrian Holovaty play with Alfonso Ponticelli and Swing Gitan at the Green Mill. He's a big fan of Gypsy jazz (which is how Django got its name) and an excellent guitar player. I'm glad I didn't succumb to my introverted tendencies and stay in the sprint room, hacking away. The music was excellent, and the Green Mill was a great place to see and hear it.



While The Green Mill looked like a dive bar from the outside, on the inside it's rather ornate (in a prohibition-era way) and reeks of history. I sat next to a friendly guy who had done his research and (in between sets) told me the story of Joe E. Lewis.

I don't regret not seeing more of Chicago, since I enjoyed every minute I spent at the conference. I certainly got as much out of it as possible. But perhaps next year (PyCon will be in Chicago again next year) I'll give myself a few more breaks and see some of the city.

Elvis Costello podcast: The First 10 Years

If you're an Elvis Costello fan then you'll enjoy his "The First 10 Years" podcast. It's available on iTunes, or through elviscostello.com.

Go see "Once"

It's been quite a while since I've seen a (IMHO) great movie. I've seen quite a few good ones, and a reasonable number of very good ones over the last couple years. (I don't get the opportunity to go very often, so I'm pretty careful to only see ones with good reviews from critics I trust.) But a great movie only seems to come along every two or three years at best.

Once is a great movie. It made me feel deeply as only a great movie can do. The music is spectacular. (The first thing I did when I got back to my computer was order the soundtrack.)

If you can go see it, then don't miss it.