vintage

Last night was the much-anticipated performance by legendary David Byrne at Toronto’s Massey Hall, and let me tell you, all that anticipation was worth it. Byrne — sans opening act — rocked the house for a good two hours, including encores (three of them!), and the set featured a whole lot of classic Talking Heads material as well as new tunes from the record with Brian Eno (Everything That Happens Will Happen Today).

Notably, the large cast of performers included three dancers and three backup vocalists (the latter often doubling as dancers as well). The dancers were a pretty awesome addition, I have to say — even Byrne was choreographed into their routines much of the time, and what looked like a casual step back ended up being one part of a perfectly executed setup. Most of the choreographed tunes were old Talking Heads favourites, which included “Once in a Lifetime”, “Take Me to the River” and “Burning Down the House”. Byrne himself was relaxed and having a great time, smiling a lot and cracking jokes about the American election (“Why don’t you all drive to Buffalo and cast some ballots? They’ll never know!” — to which an audience member hollered “Drive to Ohio!”).

The new tunes translated really well to stage; the set opened with “Strange Overtones,” a nice solid way to start off the night. Also featured were “My Big Nurse”, “I Feel My Stuff” (particularly great), and, at the end of the night, “Everything That Happens”. The band was tight, the vocalists excellent, the dancing sublime, and Byrne himself was an absolute treat. I’m a Massey employee, but I was still getting my groove on a little during “Life During Wartime”. This ain’t no disco!!

David Byrne is clearly doing all this stuff because he loves it, and although not having Brian Eno on the tour was disappointing (though not at all surprising, since he never tours anyway), Byrne and company more than made up for Eno’s absence. It was an excellent show — well worth the excitement.

The record is also really good; it sounds more like a new wave album than My Life in The Bush of Ghosts did, but it certainly does a great job bridging the gap between Talking Heads and the aforementioned collaboration album. It’s out digitally right now (iTunes, Amazon, emusic, etc) and will be, as Byrne put it, “manifesting itself in the physical world” fairly soon. Expect a review when I have had more than three days to digest it!

In quick news, Stephen Harper unveils the new Cabinet to create the “right team for these times”; one cheeky commenter on the CBC website wonders “Two weeks ago, everything was fine and dandy; Harper said that due to his foresight the Canadian economy was fine and would resist recession. Now we have the right team for these times. If the times didn’t change, then did we have the wrong team before?”

Last night was also Barack Obama’s 30-minute televised infomercial, which is making waves all over the place today. Check it out. More on both of those topics coming soon.

I just want to say thanks to those of you who have been reading and linking to my previous post. It has created a huge spike in blog traffic, and is already the top post on this blog by a huge margin. I appreciate all the support — maybe political writing is my calling! Please keep debating in the comments, it is always great to hear what other citizens really think of the way politics are going in this country.

In music: for those of you who are unaware, Canadian favourite Final Fantasy has released two new EPs (Spectrum, 14th Century and Plays to Please). Check out the review at Pitchfork. The records feature Beirut, Alex Lukashevsky and Andrew Bird; Pallett’s upcoming LP Heartland, due for a 2009 release, will include contributions by Mantler and $100.

I’m not sure if this is news to anyone else, but Panic At The Disco seem to have recently gotten rid of the annoying exclamation point in their name. However, the annoying music is unfortunately still with us.

In Canada, Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail and Dick Pound of VANOC have created quite a stir. Pound caused a great deal of controversy by referring to the Canada of 400 years ago as “a nation of savages,” which understandably enraged most of the First Nations communities in the country. Wente then ran a Globe column supporting Pound’s claim and saying that the aboriginal people of Canada were uncivilized. Pound has since apologized for his comment and issued a statement that said the ethics commission “found no intent of racism,” but most still aren’t convinced, and there are many calling for the dismissal of both.

And in American politics … well, I think I’ll let the headlines speak for themselves.

First, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) was convicted today on corruption charges. This is a huge blow to the GOP, and particularly to the Alaska Republicans. Between this and Sarah Palin’s increasing drop in the polls, Alaska is getting hit pretty hard. So far, Stevens has made no indication of dropping out of the race to be re-elected to Senate, but in a curious turn of events, he may not be able to vote for himself.

Two skinheads were arrested today in an alleged attempt to assassinate Barack Obama. The men were planning to kill 88 civilians and 14 African-Americans, with Obama being their last casualty. This is pretty scary business — nobody’s even been elected yet.

And finally, on a lighter note: the New Mexico Sun Times is a bi-weekly newspaper, with the next issue (October 26th through November 8th) hitting newsstands a week before the election. The editors decided to take a different path than most, and the latest Sun Times headline boldly proclaims Barack Obama the winner of the United States presidential election. Claiming the honour of being the first to report the results, the Sun Times still encourages everyone to go out and vote on November 4.

It’s been a fun week!

(a slightly modified and probably improved version of something sent to the man himself, which you can also do if you are so inclined.

I also just noticed that my election post was entitled “straight talk,” which was supposed to be a Sarah Palin reference — but in an amusing coincidence, it is also the English title of Dion’s book about Canadian unity. Excellent.)

Mr Dion:

I want to apologise for this country.

I’m nineteen years old, and a completely starry-eyed idealist. I’ve been awaiting my turn to vote in a federal election for years, and allowed myself the slight ridiculous hope that the country might decide to kick Stephen Harper out to the curb. You know better than most, of course, that that didn’t happen. It was a real defeat, I think – not just for your party, or Mr Layton’s or Ms May’s either. It was a defeat for most Canadians, the ones who didn’t vote blue. There were a few of us, or perhaps more than a few, who were hoping we’d hear someone shouting “Prime Minister Dion” at the end of the night; instead, I turned off the TV before all the polls had finished reporting.

I’m not a card-carrying Liberal. I’m actually not a card-carrying anything. I’m a student, an artist, a supporter of equal rights and freedoms. I’m the kind of voter everyone probably wants – the one who reschedules plans in order to go to the all candidates’ debate, the one who reads every party’s pamphlets and platforms in an effort to really determine where her one vote should go. I have a hopelessly idealistic view of politics, and I have a hard time getting my head around attack ads, mudslinging and generally childish behaviour. I do understand that politics isn’t a party, and people don’t just sit around and offer each other tea and cake and work out compromises; sometimes, though, I think a tea-and-cake approach might be what this country needs.

Forgive me if I’m jumping to conclusions, but I think you might be a tea-and-cake sort of prime minister if you got the chance, and I mean this in a good way. You’re a nice guy, Mr Dion – a really nice guy. Headlines these days say things like “Dion bows out with grace”. No one uses the word grace to describe Mr Harper, and with good reason. The Conservative campaign was dirty and unfair, and they portrayed you badly; that CTV interview fiasco was absolutely awful. I think a lot of people felt bad for you by the end, even if they weren’t Liberal supporters. Of course, no leader wants people to feel bad for them – you wanted people to rally behind your cause and get the Conservatives out of office. It didn’t work, but we’re left with an image of the real Stéphane Dion: gracious, honourable, and absolutely unwilling to stoop to Mr Harper’s level.

I’m not saying the Liberal campaign was perfect, nor that it was terrible; my point here isn’t to criticise or offer advice on what’s past. What I am saying, though, is that you and yours ran a cleaner and fairer campaign than the current ruling party, and I respect all of you for that. Perhaps I am too childish in my expectations, but sometimes I wonder how Mr Harper’s advertisers can sleep at night. In my eyes, you had conviction; you thought about it and said “the Green Shift is what I want for Canada; the carbon tax is going to make their lives better”. Then you tried your very best to sell it. You didn’t back down, even when it meant your party suffered serious destruction at the hands of the Conservatives and the left-wing voter split. Of course, looking back on that might yield the wisdom that it wasn’t the best strategy, but the point is: you did what you believed. This is the sort of politics I believe in, stand behind, and wish there was more of. In other words, even though I don’t live in your riding, I felt like I was represented in some way by your actions.

I’m sorry it had to end this way, with you accepting your fate and watching the Liberal party get out their knives. I genuinely hoped you might be prime minister for a while, even if just to affirm that yes, nice guys make it. I’ve never had the honour of meeting you, but I think that if I did, you would pay attention to what I had to say and remember it later in Parliament. I appreciate that kind of thing, and I’m sure the constituents of St-Laurent-Cartierville who voted for you these past six elections do too.

So thanks: for showing Canada that there are still good men in the House of Commons, and for proving that not all politicians are dirty and underhanded. Maybe nice guys do finish last, but you made it pretty far. You might not be our Prime Minister, and pretty soon you won’t be the Liberal leader anymore either, but I have a lot of respect for you — that’s a victory in itself.

Hello, friends.

I’ve decided to make a bit of a change in how this blog runs — it’s going to expand its horizons a little. I started out just blogging about music and things surrounding music, but I’ve realised (and I’m sure you have too, particularly with the previous post about the election) that there are a lot of things I want to talk about. And by gosh, this is my blog, so I guess I can do that if I want.

So, without further ado, here we are in Vintage 2.0. Nothing else has changed. I just talk more. Hooray.

I am also toying with the idea of buying a domain name to house this thing, since the current one is probably a little too big and confusing to be effective. Hmm! Suggestions are welcome. I am thinking ruhee.ca would be kind of awesome.

Coming up: an open letter to Stéphane Dion, perhaps an album review or two, and the usual mishmash.

Allow me, if you will, to take a brief break from the usual subject matter to talk about politics. Canada has just had a general election and the results are, from my point of view, dismal.

For those of you who are unaware, Canada elects our prime minister indirectly. The country is divided into electoral districts, or ridings, based on population; the residents of the riding elect a representative, who is affiliated with a political party (note: there are independent candidates as well, but the majority of those running for office are party-based). Whichever political party has the most representatives forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes the prime minister.

There are 308 seats in Canadian Parliament; 155 are needed to form a majority government. If the ruling party has less than 155 seats, but has more than any one of the other parties, it is a minority government (this is incredibly confusing if you haven’t encountered it before, but the numbers following will help, I hope). This means it’s kind of unstable and could fall at any time due to a non-confidence vote, which essentially means that the electorate has lost faith in their government and an election will be called.

Our previous government was a minority, and our Conservative prime minister called an election (breaking his own fixed date law in the process, I might add) in the hopes that he would win a majority. Not so, my hero. Let’s check it out.

The data

Unofficial numbers of the 40th Parliament, as of just before midnight Eastern:

Conservative 143
Liberal 76
Bloc 49
NDP 38
Other 2

All right, let’s have a look at this. Here are the numbers of the 39th Parliament upon its election in 2006:

Conservative 124
Liberal 103
Bloc 51
NDP 29
Other (Independent) 1

The tally

Okay. So that means a net gain for Harper’s Conservatives of just under twenty seats. This is a pretty strong showing — especially considering that the Liberals lost nearly thirty seats, and many of those probably went blue. This is a colossal disappointment for Dion and company, and means there will definitely be some shakeups there fairly soon.

Layton and Duceppe, however, are doing pretty well; the New Democrats picked up nine seats, including a key spot in Québec, and the Bloc managed to hover around their previous numbers (they do have a majority over the Conservatives in their province). Unfortunately, the Greens yet again did not pick up a single seat despite party leader Elizabeth May’s bold predictions of up to eight elected MPs; indeed, even May lost her race against Central Nova incumbent Peter MacKay, Conservative.

The grumbling

The only other prime minister in Canadian history to win back-to-back minority governments was Lester B. Pearson, in 1963 and 1965. This is more of a point of interest than anything else. Pearson was also a Liberal.

Stephen Harper essentially wasted $300 million of Canadians’ money on this election, and he didn’t get what he wanted. In the latter days of the campaign, he was quoted as saying he would be happy with another minority — but he won’t be entirely happy about it. He called this election to win a majority, and he didn’t. Still, he gets to keep his job … which is more than some people can say.

Liberal leader Stéphane Dion is in for some major trials, which will likely cost him his job. The Liberals have posted one of the worst showings in history, losing almost thirty seats between elections. Dion was a long shot to win the leadership in the first place, and took far too long to prove himself an effective leader; he did excellently in the final weeks of the campaign, but by then it was too late. For the record, I really like Dion and I think he could be a terrific leader, but unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. The party will likely be expecting him to step down in the coming weeks to avoid a costly leadership convention, and candidates like Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff will step up to battle for his job.

I’d also like to address the problem of the Bloc Québécois. Here they are calling themselves a federal party, yet they only run candidates in one province, and their mandate only covers that province. I understand that there are separatists out there, but — if you’ll pardon me — in terms of being a national party, I think they can stuff it. If you’re running in a federal election, you cover the entire country. Case closed. It should be illegal to do what the Bloc is doing, and unfortunately, it is not. I don’t agree with their inclusion in the general election, and I think those candidates would be better served in the Liberal party.

That being said, Gilles Duceppe is totally awesome and should be our prime minister (provided he drops the Québec-first business).

On Québec being recognized as a separate nation, etc: I read an editorial the other day that said mothers with more than one kid might have a favourite, but if they put that in writing or even just say it, it’s total disaster. The same goes for putting one province’s interest above all the rest so blatantly. What about the aboriginal culture in the north, or the hodgepodge of influences in the Atlantic provinces? What about the Acadian and French heritage in New Brunswick (very similar to Québec’s)? The Québec thing implies that the other provinces are less important, and that’s the last kind of division we need.

In short, I hope at least one country does something right.

(These views are mine, I’m not trying to offend anyone, yes you are welcome to debate or challenge my views — or, heaven forbid, agree with me — and no, those tallies are not official numbers. And no, I don’t officially endorse Stéphane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, Barack Obama or anyone else I mentioned in a faintly positive light.)

I owe you a few recaps, I think!

On September 27th and 28th, Martin Tielli performed at Hugh’s Room in support of his upcoming record, scheduled to drop around Christmas. I checked out the second show, which turned out to be well worth the $20 advance ticket. Tielli played for probably about two and a half hours (with a “cigarette break” or two), and not once did the time drag or the set become boring. His backing band was stellar, featuring musicians such as Selina Martin and Monica Gunter, and a large handful of Rheostatics favourites found their way into the setlist between excellent new Martin tracks — I was particularly thrilled to hear “Saskatchewan”.

Lately I’ve been feeling like a lot of the acts I’m seeing are just doing the same thing over and over, you know, a cute little chord progression and a quirky-just-like-everyone-else’s voice and some whimsical lyrics. I get frustrated going to shows sometimes because I don’t feel like I’m seeing anything new. Refreshingly, though, Martin Tielli can never be described as “cookie-cutter”. Everything he does is different and interesting and unexpected, and I really appreciate it. Whether it’s writing songs prominently featuring coleslaw or continuing to make crazy noises on his Steinberger, Tielli is always a new experience, and I love it.

I also worked the Alanis Morissette concert this past week at Massey, and while I can’t put her on the list of artists I really love, there’s no denying that she has been incredibly successful (the RIAA lists her as the most successful female rock act of all time, and Jagged Little Pill is the top selling debut album ever — just to name a few). She certainly knows how to put on a show, too. There were lights and strobes and a New Age-y tapestry with her painted on it, and she danced and thrashed and ran around the stage as if her energy was totally boundless. I was pretty impressed. While there was probably an empty seat or two somewhere in the hall, it was virtually sold out and the audience was really into it.

Scottish songster Alexi Murdoch opened, charming and folky with just a guitar and a few effects. Some of the crowd was restless during his set, and by the end the volume of chatter had gotten considerably louder, but I really enjoyed his tunes. Perhaps something more energetic might have been more appropriate for an Alanis warm-up, but nevertheless, Murdoch did a fine job and there were at least a few people who enjoyed his work, judging by the “I love you Alexi!” shouts from the main floor.

In other news, Canada has a federal election on Tuesday. My prediction: another Stephen Harper minority. I’m terrified to even think of the prospect of a majority, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Stéphane Dion’s Liberals will have enough of a showing to turf Harper out. In other words … this election will more than likely end up being a complete waste of time, money, and useless attack ads. And an example of Harper breaking a law that he made to essentially avoid this exact situation. Politics is awesome.

And finally, a teacher from Alberta won the Hockey Night in Canada anthem challenge earlier today. Colin Oberst — no relation to Conor, I assume — of Beaumont won $100,000 and half the lifetime royalties for his composition “Canadian Gold,” which is the new Hockey Night in Canada theme song now that CBC no longer has the rights to Dolores Claman’s iconic and familiar one. 13-year-old (!) Robert Fraser Burke came in second with “Sticks To The Ice” — I hope we see more of him in the future.