Times like these

It was a long weekend like this one, except that it was in the spring. I was heavily pregnant.   I lay across our bed, watching the televised footage of the memorial concert for Freddie Mercury being held at Wembley Stadium.

I didn't know it at the time, but elder daughter would be born five days later.

Today, I wondered if she could hear all those Queen tunes from the womb, because, three decades later, she was at Wembley with a cousin and a room-mate, sitting up in the gods, attending the Tribute Concert for Taylor Hawkins, the Foo Fighters drummer, who died suddenly last March.

And technology being what it is, I was alerted that the concert had begun, by an Instagram picture posted by the cousin and tagging elder daughter.  Sitting with my early morning coffee at Moka House, I soon discovered that I could stream the concert on my laptop via the MTV YouTube channel -- with the sound muted, of course.  My iPhone earbuds are incompatible with my Mac.  (Gee, thanks, Apple.) When I had to leave to set up Demeter's breakfast, I followed the line-up via blog updates, until I could hurry home mid-morning.

I'm not a true-blue fan of the Foo Fighters, but elder daughter has been enthusiastic about them for the past five years, and so I'm reasonably conversant with about half a dozen of their better-known songs and familiar with a lot of their biographical details, having been exposed to documentaries about them during each of elder daughter's visits.

The real thrill for me was watching this Wembley show, knowing elder daughter was there -- much like her visit to three Court One games at Wimbledon, when the summer began.  I know a little about the Foo Fighters and far far less about tennis, but I knew she was in the crowd and excited beyond belief to be there.

The show had a bit of everything.  Hawkins' connections were everywhere in the rock/pop scene. When I got home, I was confronted with the very early-Seventies-style of interminable guitar solo, supplied by the James Gang, reunited after decades for this concert only.  (Not a criticism, I rather like "Closet Queen" with its variations on Ravel's Bolero, and Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind".)  

While getting Demeter's breakfast, I had missed the legendary Chrissie Hynde (totally in control at 70) and the Pretenders, Liam Gallagher, and Niles Rodgers, to name a few.  I caught what I'd missed later, before the lawyers hauled the YouTube video down, as I knew they would.

There was a seam of bereavement running through the performances, as well.  Wolfgang Van Halen played songs by his late father Eddie;  AC/DC lost Malcolm Young some time ago. Rush has lost Neil Peart, and tonight were playing to a politely bewildered crowd of Brits born in the nineties and "naughties".  I'm not unsympathetic - Rush has bewildered me for years.  Taylor Hawkins was a fan, though.

And then there was Queen - what's left of them.  And elder daughter now saw them in the flesh, from her seat up below the rim of the Wembley. Dancing with vicarious glee in the living room, I shared the moment with her - via texts, of course, this being the 21st century.

After a long parade of well-known musicians playing some of Hawkins' favourite music, the Foo Fighters took over.

At this moment, it became crystal clear that, for all of the variety of songs and musicians preceding this moment, it was a Foo Fighters crowd, come for a Foo Fighters concert. The singing had, up until this moment, not been as loud and cohesive. The thousands in the stadium now knew every word. 

And then Paul McCartney showed up. 

I thought he might, since he's a close friend of Dave Grohl's, but I still leapt to my feet in shock, texting an expletive to my daughter at Wembley, while  swaying eight times zones away.

The Foo Fighters were backed by a series of notable drummers, including 12-year-old Nandi Bushell, and Taylor Hawkins' 16-year-old-son Shane, in a frenetic and emotional performance that stood out among a day of many such moments.

I know just enough about the Foo Fighters to guess that the concert, which had last nearly six hours, was drawing to a close, when Grohl, standing alone on the stage, with half a dozen empty drum kits behind him, accompanied himself on guitar, while the vast crowd sang along to the quintessential FF song "Everlong".

I felt rather jet-lagged afterwards.

Maybe it was the stimulation of so much music.

Maybe it was because a piece of my heart is residing in London.  She got home long after midnight.

With a hey and a ho

Part of my regular listening in my pre-children days included a couple of Baltimore Consort CDs: early music, sometimes featuring a singer with possibly the best name in classical music - Custer LaRue. Despite having the name of a rodeo trick-rider, she had the pure soprano of a boy chorister.

Life with children swept me down other musical avenues, until a Facebook notification last month alerted me to the startling news that the Baltimore Consort would be performing in Victoria. It seemed just the thing to chase away the blues of mid-January, so on a cold and rainy evening, the Resident Fan Boy and I strode up Quadra Street to the Alix Goolden Hall. We found a perch in the balcony above what used to be the sanctuary of the Metropolitan United Church before the Victoria Conservatory took it over a couple of decades ago. It gave us a good view of both the audience and the stage, and I spotted my art teacher in the front row.

Baltimore Consort (founded in 1980) consists of six musicians. Four of them switched instruments seamlessly during the concert. On of them - Larry Lipkis - played both string and wind instruments, including a crumhorn, which looks like a small shofar in reverse. The two "specialists" (i.e. sticking to one instrument) were the lutist Ronn McFarlane, and the soprano Danielle Svonavec.

I don't know what has become of the fabled Custer LaRue (well, actually, she appears to be doing just fine), but Danielle Svonavec, who looks all of 25, sang expressively and even, at times, mischievously.

It turns out she's the mother of three teenaged girls, is the Dean of Girls and the music teacher at a middle school, a cantor at her local Basilica, on top of being a busy soloist with various ensembles and choruses. Oh yes -- she also lives on a farm.

The concert had a Shakespearean theme, grouped in blocks around nine of his plays. Highlights for me: a French dance piece called Les Buffons "The Clowns", by Jean d'Estrée, from a 1559 dance melody book. Larry Lipkis picked up a recorder, and stole behind Mindy Rosenfeld, whose flyaway hair and clothes, along with her kicking heels, reminded me a bit of a Jules Feiffer cartoon.

They did a sort of peek-a-boo, while trilling away in complex runs.

In the second half, a section devoted to Hamlet with John Dowland's "Tarleton's Riserrectione". This was a lute solo by Ronn McFarlane, an elegant gentleman in black, who could pass for the Ghost of Hamlet's father with his silver beard, and is, among many other things, a Grammy nominee. It was one of those moments when I hardly dared move, enchanted beyond words.

This was so worth the walk in the wind and the rain (with a hey-ho).

We picked up their latest CD, of course.

My way out

Younger daughter flatly refused to go with us to a Sinatra-themed Victoria Symphony Pops concert.

Well, she's a Taurus, like myself, so we knew she wouldn't be budged. 

This was a pity, because I've never been much of a Sinatra fan myself.  Oh, I know he's a legend, and yes, yes, I recognize his talent and influence.  However, his appeal has always escaped me.

And I loathe "My Way".

We'd bought season tickets weeks ago, so the Resident Fan Boy and I set off in the pleasant semi-sunny autumn afternoon, squeezing in amongst throngs of white heads, as special buses dropped off seniors for the matinee.

The singer featured was a fella named Tony DeSare, one of those guys with terrifyingly impressive CVs -  he's worked with Postmodern Jukebox, and performed on A Prairie Home Companion, so he certainly had my attention.

And he was good. He's an accomplished crooner, of course, but also a mean jazz pianist, trading riffs with the three-piece band he's brought, all backed by the Victoria Symphony.  He composes his own music, playing a pleasant ballad that Paul McCartney himself complimented.  When he boogied through a Sinatra arrangement of a Ray Charles song, I could see a third chair violinist practically dancing as she bowed her instrument.  (It was one of those damned "numbers announced from the stage", so I don't know which song - not one I recognized, so likely not that famous.)

And then he ended the first half with "My Way".  No escape.  We were front row centre.

When we attended a Michael Feinstein concert with the National Arts Centre Orchestra a few years ago, he flatly refused to sing "My Way".  In Ottawa.  Paul Anka's birthplace.  I was so grateful.

Faced with the prospect of listening to "Strangers in the Night" and "It Was a Very Good Year", we fled.  The Resident Fan Boy had a book to pick up at Munro's, and we stopped at Murchie's, where he treated me to something called Frenzy Cake, something like Black Forest, only with raaaaspberries.  Yup, just what I need - a new confection.  Gawd, it was good.

Waiting for the bus, I told the Resident Fan Boy that "My Way" is the top song choice for funerals.  The Resident Fan Boy was aghast, being the son of an Anglican clergyman, and accustomed to hymns at such services.  I also told me that "Time to Say Goodbye", surely one of the most manipulative dirges written, is high up the list.

He asked me what I'd like played at my funeral.

"Well, given how much The Wizard of Oz has meant to our daughters," I replied, "'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' would work."

We both bent over double in hilarity:  "She's gone where the goblins go, below, below, below!" we warbled, ignoring the stares of our fellow waiters, who were, no doubt, praying we wouldn't board their bus.

Flower children

I was an ESL (English as a Second Language - they call it something else now) teacher in my young adulthood, before second daughter arrived, and I discovered my ESL training would come in handy, even if I couldn't figure out what her first language was.

During one of the sessions in which I was an instructor, there was a 1960s theme dance. Instead of my usual bun - pinned up primly for my students, who were only a few years' my junior, yet thought I was as old as the hills (I didn't disabuse them of this notion) - I wore my hair down and donned one of those floaty, Indian-made frocks that usually sway on racks in front of the funkier shops.

I was standing with a fellow-teacher, when two Québecois students (not, thankfully, mine) approached.

"You look good," remarked one. "But then, it's your epoch, no?"

For the record, the sixties were not my era.

Last Sunday, we decided to support my Friend Who Sings and Gardens by attending a concert being given by her community choir.  This too was a Sixties theme, featuring lots of favourites from the late sixties and early seventies.

Most of the choir members had chosen to wear flower-power clothes.  The Resident Fan Boy joked that they had raided the backs of their closets - they looked pretty authentic - but, oh, it really hit me as I gazed at them, that these clothes celebrating the cult of youth make older people look ancient.

We've seen the choir several times; the members are on the mature side, but, dressed in evening wear, it's not the first thing you think of.  The tie-dyes, colourful prints, and scarves wrapped around their foreheads merely emphasized the years that have rocked and rolled away.

After intermission, they returned, dressed in circus garb, which, oddly, was more flattering.

This performance was in aid of a kids' choir programme set up some twenty years ago in the elementary schools.  Before that, most schools had their own glee clubs, run by teachers, and there was class time set aside for singing, even if a school pageant wasn't planned.  I know, from following both daughters through the school system, that this is no longer the case. You only get arts education if someone funds it.

So, in contrast to the aging hippies in the risers, several dozen children in gauzy white tops and dresses, looking to be mostly in the six-to-seven-year-old range, were guided on to the stage.  It really looked like herding kittens.

Once all the kids -- from the four elementary schools where the programme is run - had been shoe-horned into place, they sang three songs, and there was something to watch wherever you looked.

Three girls clutched hands, looking for all the world like a high school clique in bud. While many of the ankle-biters zoned in and out of concentration, one girl focussed on the director determinedly, singing as if the world depended on it.  Another had a similar focus, but on the audience on one side.  She stepped away from the others, angled her body to that section of the auditorium, and sang loudly and expressively.

It was a helluvan act to follow.  No wonder the grown-ups dressed up.

Flushed with triumph

The Resident Fan Boy and I had tickets for a "Festive Baroque Christmas Concert" at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

St Andrews is one of two St Andrews in downtown Victoria; the other is a Roman Catholic cathedral. Having lived in Victoria for several years - not counting those seventeen hellish years in Hades - I naturally assumed I'd been there at some point; I've passed it several times.

As soon as the RFB entered through one of the red inner doors leading to the sanctuary itself, I realized I'd never been there before. It's a lovely church but quite claustrophobic, and not just because the place was jammed for the concert. Each door leads to one aisle, or one balcony only, and consequently, it's really difficult to maneuver around the place, or get a clear idea of where the unoccupied pews are - if you're there for a jammed Christmas concert, that is.

You get up to the balconies by ascending one of four winding staircases. After trying three doors and finding the section of balcony behind each door appeared to be crammed, we made our way to the very front where we sat three rows up and overlooking the performance space from behind.

This was fine for hearing the musicians, although I couldn't really hear the soprano from behind. It turned out the ensemble was being led by violinist Jeanne Lamon, who, from 1981 to 2014, was the artistic director of Tafelmusik. Another featured guest musician Kris Kwapis, who is from Seattle, and plays her baroque trumpet all over the place. The baroque trumpet is a very long instrument that made her look like a plum pudding sort of Renaissance angel.

Scanning my programme in the dark balcony, I recognized a lot of the names of the fifteen musicians in the Victoria Baroque ensemble because a few of them play in the Victoria Symphony and a few of them bear the surnames of prominent musical families in the city.

At intermission, the lady next to me picked up my programme, stuffed it in her bag and departed with her companion. I was bemused, but reasoned I needed a leg stretch anyway, and decided to try the door behind us. It led to yet another red winding staircase and I descended into a long line of ladies waiting for the tiny washroom. "Good luck," one of them grinned.

My need was not yet desperate, so I wove in and out of doors, and aisles until I found a stack of programmes. Finding my way down the opposite side of the sanctuary, I tried another door, which led to another winding staircase. This one was also red, but very dark. At the top, another door, rather brown and ancient, which I thought might lead back across the church to my balcony. Instead I found a dark sort of seminar room, or kitchen -- I didn't want to linger to find out -- but there was also a cubicle with a toilet.

I was quick, because the cubicle didn't lock, and it was kind of creepy. I had one nasty moment, when I thought the big brown door through which I'd come might not open again, but it did, and I fled.

When I found my way back to the RFB, I told him of my explorations, and the bathroom no one else seems to have discovered.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"I'm not telling you! It's mine!" I said, and we settled to enjoy the rest of the concert.

One of the pieces was the first half of this concerto by Francesco Manfredini. It's called "Pastorale per il santissimo natale", but is also known as "Christmas Concerto", and was published in 1718. The group in the video is smaller than the ensemble we heard, but the swaying dancing motions of the violins is familiar.

The long and winding road not taken

I seemed to spend rather a lot of my last three months in Ottawa gazing down from the top of a double-decker on the long stretch of Bank Street heading south: passing the middle school where elder daughter was shunned for several painful, bewildering months. As a result, I refused to send younger daughter there. I usually averted my eyes.

Beyond is the Land of Might Have Been, which is generally Bank Street below the Queensway. One of the houses we were looking at in the early spring of 2000 was a townhouse not far from where the Lansdowne Complex of rather sterile stores and restaurants has grown and mutated beside the stadium in the intervening years.

Imagine how that would have been.

Our girls would have been Glebe girls attending Mutchmor Public and Glebe Colligiate. Our daily lives would have been shaped by the sluggish bus trips up the clogged artery of Bank Street. We would have crossed the bridge over the Rideau to go to the library, which leads to another Might Have Been in Ottawa South.

We looked at a house here too, but a decade ago, we were also looking at an independent school in the neighbourhood. Younger daughter eventually chose a school in far-flung Nepean, and, sitting high above Bank Street in the bus, I thought wistfully of coffee shops where I could have comfortably waited, along bus routes that would have taken us home without a transfer, along a road not taken.

The road I was taking was often out to the South Keys Cineplex to see a series of four marvelous lectures entitled Deconstructing the Beatles, covering the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sergeant Pepper, and the White Album.

In a time of upheaval, it was some comfort to have a Beatlefest. It engendered a sensation of a cycle being completed.

Or maybe a continual spiral.

Our last concert at Chamberfest, for example, was the same as my first Chamberfest concert: "Sergeant Pepper Reimagined", which we first saw in November 2013 with the Time Out Orchestra (whose director arranged the music). Four years ago, the singers were a kind of Canadian super-group: Steven Page (formerly of the Barenaked Ladies), John Mann (Spirit of the West), Andy Maize (Skydiggers), and Craig Northey (The Odds), who has grown considerably more silver since then.

John Mann is descending into early Altzheimer's, so Wesley Stace, who sometimes performs under the name "John Wesley Harding", was taking over for him, complete with a pink suit and dry British humour. When elder daughter first told me about the approaching concert, she was taken aback at how excited I was. "Hitler's Tears" is a longtime favourite of mine.

The audience was markedly different from the one in 2013, when it had been an eclectic group, ranging from young kids to those in their seventies. This final evening of Chamberfest, the audience was largely composed of over-50s, mostly subscribers and season ticket holders.

In fact I was amused to look on as a longtime subscriber, seated directly ahead of me, started scanning her programme, puzzled by the reprise of "Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band" (We're sorry, but it's time to go.). Clearly, she was wondering why the concert was apparently ending so soon, evidently not aware that the epic "A Day in the Life" was to follow, along with several encores, which included "Oh, Darling" (from the White Album - during which Steven Page turned aside his microphone to demonstrate how he could fill Dominion Chalmers United Church with sheer vocal power), "Here Comes the Sun"(from Abbey Road), "Penny Lane", and of course, "All You Need is Love",the song that was recorded directly after Sgt. Pepper.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw elder daughter - so relieved that Chamberfest was winding down - standing at the back of the balcony with her co-workers, soulfully waving their lit phones in time to the music.

Oh. And I got the Deconstructing the Beatles series for Christmas. It may not be all I need, but I'll get by.

Levels of entertainment

There's always so much more to a concert than the music -- especially at Chamberfest.

A few nights ago, the Chamberfest Chamber Orchestra, eighteen top-notch musicians led by Julian Rachlin, a violinist who, I gather, is a big deal - I'm not that knowledgable about violin virtuosi - contrasted Vivaldi's Four Seasons with twentieth century composer Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

I'm fond enough of Vivaldi and the Piazzolla piece had its moments - again, I don't have a great ear for violin music - but what was going on in the audience and on stage provided plenty of entertainment.

We had the usual drama with the generous donor who has a reserved seat right in front of us. This time, a lady sitting with a party of four, when confronted with the donor claiming her seat, handed the laminated reserved card, on which she had been sitting partially, to the volunteer who had come to help, with an air of largesse and mild puzzlement, as if she didn't understand what "reserved" meant, or was under the impression that the seat had been reserved for her. (She and her party had probably paid top price to seat in the front row of the balcony.) The Resident Fan Boy calls this "Ottawa entitlement". Gawd, I'll be glad to leave this city...

The volunteer asked repeatedly if the party would like to take special seats in the second row, for their comfort. The gentleman in the party switched seats with the "gently puzzled" lady and shook hands with the donor -- perhaps guessing the reason for the reserved seat.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of excitement below. The virtuoso snapped a string in mid-passion, and barely breaking stride, commandeered the concert-master's instrument, while she relieved the second violin of hers. Second violinist scurried backstage to re-string, and the instruments went back up the food-chain in the next movement.

The first violinists included a towering gent with flowing ginger locks named Edwin Huizinga who mugged at his fellow musicians and plucked his violin, not lasciviously but slyly, during the second movement of Vivaldi "Winter" concerto. I can't provide you with a visual, but here's the movement in question:

Elder daughter tells me that Huizinga is a character (really?) who prefers couch-surfing to home ownership. I gather from his Facebook profile that he's rarely in one place for long.

For comparison purposes, here's the "Winter" portion of Astor Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buones Aires - without the mugging, as it's a different chamber group.

Personally, I only really like the final minute -- which is rather Pachelbel-ish. As I've said, I'm not much of a violin-fancier.

PMJ/OMG

I don't know if I can even begin to describe my excitement when I decided to check the line-up for the Victoria Jazz Fest a few days before departing for the annual retreat to visit Demeter and escape the hazy summer heat of Hades.

I expected to find the usual array of undoubtedly talented musicians of which I'd never heard. That's fine -- I'm open to being educated. Instead I found a listing for the Postmodern Jukebox, one of my favourite means for coming up with a blog-post when I have no time.

Hands shaking, I checked their website, because they usually have two or three travelling troupes on tour somewhere in the world. There was a promotional video showing them heading off in a tractor trailer "to Canada" -- presumably they think there's nothing but farms up here -- and I thought I could spot Sarah Niemietz and Casey Abrams among the throng.

I frantically booked tickets. I couldn't believe that PMJ was coming to Canada - I think they'd been to Montreal on one of their so-called "North American" tours - and that they would be performing at a venue that was actually accessible to me. Younger daughter, who has been exposed to PMJ through my Facebook shares, was pretty excited too.

At the appointed time, the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I made our way through a beautiful post-solstice evening, walking the few blocks from Demeter's condo to the Royal Theatre. That was an additional treat for me; I haven't been to a performance at the Royal in about twenty years. Between our absence and extensive renovations to the theatre (first opened in 1913), there simply hasn't been the opportunity.

We were up in the gods, three rows from the top of the upper balcony, but I'd brought bird binoculars, and gazed rapturously at the distant performers

I haven't posted many of Sarah Niemietz's performances on this blog, which is odd, because I love her style and watch her PMJ videos repeatedly. She can take a song I like and take it to a different level.


The live performance had the extra thrill of hearing Casey Abrams sing backup for her on this one.

Niemietz, who, I've just discovered, is the same age as elder daughter, can also take a song I could live without and turn it into something fine.

Last summer I was able to identify this Justin Bieber ditty for my 12-year-old niece - because I'd heard the Postmodern Jukebox version.

I've posted more than one Casey Abrams PMJ video.  He's a force of nature. This song, originally recorded by Haddaway, features Maiyah Sykes on backing vocals (she's the lady in the Louboutins).  She blew away the crowd in Victoria with her solos.



After the show, we escaped down the back staircase and burst out into the night, still in twilight.  Victoria is several longitudes north of Ottawa, enough for sunsets past nine thirty in late June.  We were jet-lagged, but unexhausted.

"Have a nice life."

Some years ago, I ran into my ex-boyfriend.  We'd been having a friendly chat, so I was startled when, as he walked off, he said, "Have a nice life."  I realized I would never see him again.

On Saturday evening, I joined eleven million other Canadians - that's roughly a third of the country, folks - in watching a dying man's final concert. As massively morbid as that sounds, there were many moments of joy, of poignancy and even awkwardness.

 Of course, that was a Tragically Hip concert at the best of times.

This wasn't the best of times. Gordon Downie, the Hip's lead singer, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer not long ago. This follows hard on the heels of the farewell concert for John Mann, the lead singer of The Spirit of the West, who is heading down the long road of early onset Alzheimer's. The Hip are huge in Canada, so they too decided to embark on a 15-concert farewell tour, starting in Victoria on July 22nd, passing through Hades on August 18th, and finishing in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario on Saturday night.

Demand for tickets was so high that the CBC actually put aside three hours of prime Olympic Games broadcast time - on the last full day of competition, if you please - and broadcast the concert via television, radio and the Internet.

I'm not even a "Hip-head", but you can't live in Canada and be unaware of their music.  I first heard them through Much Music, of course, back in the late eighties when they played driving rock and mostly appealed to adolescent and post-adolescent boys.  As Downie himself commented between songs Saturday night, the "girls" finally started following the Hip in the mid-nineties and, indeed, the first Hip song I recall even liking was the wistful and regretful "Ahead by a Century".  This is also the one song the Resident Fan Boy recognizes -- and he thought it was by some English group because of the cricket reference.

With illusions of some day
Casting a golden light
No dress rehearsal
This is our life.

The Tragically Hip have been described, maybe several times too often, as the quintessential Canadian band, especially over the past few weeks as CBC Radio has been playing hours of Hip music and Hip-related interviews.  Rush fans might contest the "most Canadian band" thing, but frankly, the appeal of Rush has always eluded me.  Geddy Lee, Rush's lead singer, said on yet another CBC Hip-related interview that most people might argue that Bobcaygeon is the most Canadian song (it isn't - that's so Ontario), but he thought that "Fifty Mission Cap" was.  An odd choice, considering that Canadians never had a fifty mission cap, to the best of my knowledge.  When the song opened the concert, the RFB and I looked at each other in bemusement.  Like most of Gordon Downie's songs, the lyrics are a bit obscure and you have to look them up on some web site like A Museum After Dark to know what the hell he's going on about.

You won't be surprised to learn that I disagree with Geddy Lee.  I think the most Canadian song ever is indeed a Hip Song:
Like "Fifty Mission Cap", "Fireworks" also references hockey, in this case, the hockey moment that every Canadian above the age of thirty-five remembers - Paul Henderson's goal at the 1972 Summit Series. However, it also features a girl who doesn't "give a f*&% about hockey" (sister!), and mentions the dreaded Canadian Fitness Programme that made P.E. a hell on earth for kids attending school between 1970 and 1990.

So, I, the non-Hip-head, remained entranced in my chair throughout three sets and three encores, with the growing realization that these songs were being performed for the last time.

Among other things, Downie sang about a cholera epidemic, Hugh MacLennan, the mysterious disappearance of a member of the Group of Seven, the sinking of the Bismarck, and the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of David Milgaard.  He even cornered the Prime Minister of Canada about Attawapiskat and the continuing crisis with the First Nations.

Each song sounded like a finale, but I looked at the Resident Fan Boy and shook my head.  "He hasn't sung 'Locked in the Trunk of a Car' or 'Ahead by a Century' yet."

Finally, Rob Barker started an unfamiliar acoustic solo with a familiar rhythm that segued into the unmistakeable opening chords.

Here's how it sounded in Edmonton, about three weeks before that.

However, Kingston is the hometown of the Hip and with this song, as with all songs that last evening, the crowd sang along, and as the instruments took over, Downie had a last communion with the crowd, who eagerly and almost desperately reached out to him. The sound quality in the video below, taken near the stage in Kingston, is not as clear as the CBC broadcast, but this gives you some indication of the atmosphere, and why so many people across Canada were crying.


Not long before this, Gordon Downie told the audience to "have a nice life".

When a Canadian says that, you know it's goodbye for good.

Irrevocable

It's irrevocably January.  I rummaged in the early morning darkness of our study, and caught myself trying to make out the outline of the Christmas tree which isn't there.  Not much later, I stood at the bedroom window and watched the city worker dragging the corpses of our neighbour's tree and our own -- still beautifully shaped and bushy -- to the waiting truck where he pushed a lever and they were sucked out of sight.

Early yesterday morning, I was still in bed when the Resident Fan Boy shuffled in from the bathroom and informed me that David Bowie had died.  Like millions of others, I didn't believe it.  Bowie had been all over the internet; he'd just had a birthday and an album released.  As the news was confirmed, I thought: Well, he'd know how to keep his illness private.  (Evidently, by telling people on a need-to-know basis.  And few people needed to know.)

The day was spent like many others spent it:  elder daughter got a Bowie playlist off Spotify and, being a millennial, downloaded Labyrinth to watch on her laptop in her bedroom.  I resorted to YouTube, because I don't actually own any Bowie albums; I liked his music, but not enough to purchase it.  I was therefore astonished at how sad I felt. I suppose it really hit me yesterday how ubiquitous Bowie was:  his music was everywhere, his influence was pervasive.  If you look at any rundown of his long career -- and those were all over the news -- you see a long stretch of collaborations that put him into close contact with most of the successful rock musicians of the past forty years.

However, he's also etched into the memories of those of us who will never be famous.  I remember classmates dressing like him, I attended countless wedding receptions blaring "Modern Love", saw television shows based on his songs.  One of the first YouTube videos I sought out was "Suffragette City", a favourite dance tune at the "SUB Pub", in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria.

I've always been a bit of a rule-follower, so I felt a rebellious thrill in shouting out "AAaaaaaaw.....WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!" (The blond dancer is none other than Montreal's own Louise Lecavalier of LA LA LA Human Steps - Eduard Lock choreographed this particular 1990 tour.)

I looked up another one of my favourite Bowie songs. This is "Blue Jeans" from the comical short film "Jazzin' for Blue Jeans" - in which Bowie plays a loser called Vic trying to impress a pretty girl by taking her to see a drug-addled rock star named Screaming Lord Byron -- also played by Bowie.

The 20-minute film from which this is taken is mildly amusing, but it's fun to watch Bowie take pot-shots at himself.

However, I liked Bowie best in collaboration. After Freddy Mercury's death, an epic memorial concert was held for him at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, April 20th, 1992 - this was three days before elder daughter was born. Heavily pregnant, I watched tributes from Extreme and Lisa Stansfield - yes, I know.

The whole atmosphere of the concert changed when Bowie took over for his segment, which started with "Under Pressure", which he had written and recorded with Queen in 1981. This is Bowie's performance with Annie Lennox. It nearly blew me off the bed; I can't imagine what it was like to have been there.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the Wembley audience recreating Mercury's scat-singing perfectly.

Elder daughter, in utero, must have wondered what the noise was when I saw Ian Hunter taking the stage next. I'm a massive Mott the Hoople fan, even when not nearly nine months pregnant, and I understand that Joe Elliot and Phil Collen of Def Leppard are as well. You can see them singing back-up to "All the Young Dudes" (written by Bowie and Mott's greatest hit), and looking as if they were the ones who had died and gone to heaven. Playing guitar is Mick Ronson, a musician strongly associated with with both Bowie and Hunter. A little over a year later, he would be dead of liver cancer, which is what eventually killed Bowie himself.

If you've taken the opportunity to watch the whole video, you'll see that Bowie finished the set with another of my favourites, "Heroes". Looking back nearly 24 years, I wondered how his sudden kneeling to recite the Lord's Prayer would have been received by the largely atheistic London audience of today, even when delivered by the likes of Bowie.

Bowie sang of heaven in his final video "Lazarus", which is being described in the press and online as a "final gift to his fans". I don't know about that; it looks more like something Bowie was working through for himself, using his art as a palliative. I was far more spooked by the haunting ten minutes of "Blackstar", which starts with the remains of an astronaut who could be Major Tom of "Space Oddity" from 1970, and moves through images of shaking suffering interspersed with a sort of "Rites of Spring" dancing. At the 4:45 mark, the song shifts into a tune that is more identifiable as a Bowie song, and we see three scarecrows who resemble Jesus and the two thieves at Golgotha (which is supposed to mean "place of the skull").

Mesmerized and disturbed by the images, I was startled when it all faded away. Rather like Bowie himself.

It's a bleak way to begin the new year, but here in Hades, January is always bleak. Perhaps it is better to follow David Bowie's example. Hold on to what is yours, even if that something is pain and suffering - keep it private and precious, and share it only with those closest to you.

Then, make it as beautiful as you can and share it with the world.

There is freedom within

The Resident Fan Boy was betrayed by Environment Canada yet again.  He treats their web page like holy writ and is always in indignant disbelief when the actual weather differs from what was forecast.

This morning, we woke to the first blanket of white of the season - Environment Canada had promised scattered flurries - and we started the morning with a frantic scramble in the basement to locate one of younger daughter's boots.  It finally turned up under the canvas casing from elder daughter's old Girl Guide camp days.

For the first time, I bundled myself into my brand-new wine-coloured commuter coat, an early Christmas gift from Demeter.  I've been resisting its siren call for the past few weeks, but the time has come to admit that winter is at our doorstep, although the forecast is for warmer temperatures later this week.

As if we could trust the forecast.

This evening, shaking off the cold of the day, I sat by the cyber-hearth and found the following video, posted by one of my Facebook "likes".  It's Neil Finn, New Zealand-born and sometime member of the  Australian pop group Crowded House performing with the beautiful and spare back-up of a strings section on his "Solo with Strings" tour last summer.  This particular concert was in Auckland, New Zealand.

"Don't Dream It's Over" pulls me back to the summer of 1987 and my first teaching job.  When I hear it, I see the sun setting in mid-evening behind the trees and buildings at the University of Victoria.

My daughters are fully clothed

I've always associated the BareNaked Ladies with my daughters. Wait. That sounds completely wrong. I mean I associate their music with my daughters.My earliest memories of the Barenaked Ladies is probably this video, one of those rare covers that actually outdoes the original. It was getting airplay the winter I was pregnant with elder daughter. I adore the video because I spent the first year of my marriage in Toronto and this is just so evocative of suburban Toronto in the depths of February. (BNL is [are?] from Scarborough, in the eastern reaches of the Greater Toronto area.)

The following summer, after elder daughter's arrival, I would steal time for myself in the evenings, leaving her with the Resident Fan Boy while I took a long stroll down to McCauley Point and Saxe Point Park. "If I had a Million Dollars" floated out of open windows along with the aroma of cooking dinners.

I had a rare escape from the infant younger daughter as well, this time with the Resident Fan Boy, the evening the girls' godparents baby-sat and we walked up the hill to the Royal Theatre to see BNL in concert. We had tickets in the gods and a group of about four or five students asked us if we minded if they stood up to dance. (Imagine! People asking ahead of time if you minded if they danced at a concert! BNL fans are a different breed.) We pointed out a flat platform directly behind us and they climbed up and had a fine time, while I, a few weeks' postpartum and chronically sleep-deprived, sat in comfort and had an equally fine time, singing along to "The Old Apartment".

Earlier this week, elder daughter wrote on my Facebook wall (which saved her the trouble of coming downstairs): "Did I turn down the Barenaked Ladies?" She'd evidently only just checked the calendar. I replied that we'd got the tickets in August, long before we knew when she'd be home for Christmas. Texts were despatched to the Resident Fan Boy downtown, and last night, with a full-blown winter storm warning bearing down on Hades, all four of us headed off to Southam Hall to hear the Barenaked Ladies play with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. The RFB, younger daughter, and I found ourselves in the front row, with elder daughter about four rows behind us.

It was particularly interesting seeing the current line-up of the Barenaked Ladies this particular evening because we had just seen Steven Page, who used to share lead vocals with Ed Robertson, three weeks before, performing Sergeant Pepper. "Page-less", the Barenaked Ladies are as funny and entertaining as ever, but a bit more low-key. In their heyday, Kevin Hearn, Jim Creeggan, and Tyler Stewart were more like back-up for the dynamic duo of Robertson and Page. Now, they seem a little more democratic. Robertson still does the lion-share of the lead vocals, but we got to hear Hearn and Creeggan too. (Creeggan did the orchestral arrangements for the NAC Orchestra.) We even got Tyler Stewart doing a diva-worthy rendition of "Felice Navidad".

As exciting as it was to be a matter of feet away from the Barenaked Ladies, there was little in the way of leg-room with my knees only a few inches from the edge of the stage. Try as I might, I soon found my left knee cramping and stiffening, no matter what position I attempted to take without disturbing my neighbours. After hearing the "Carol of the Bells" (which we used to sing in school before direct references to the Christmas story were discouraged), a mixture of Christmas songs and BNL hits (including the theme to The Big Bang Theory and the aforementioned "Lovers in a Dangerous Time"), and a lot of joshing between the Barenaked Ladies and members of the orchestra, I was in a gentle sort of agony, so switched seats with elder daughter at the intermission. She took her place next to younger daughter, and I found myself amid strangers who seemed mildly puzzled to have me there. It was considerably warmer even just four rows back, but I had a good view, and could watch my daughters enjoying the show. (And my knee was much relieved and told me so.)

The show finished with the big hits "One Week" and "Million Dollars" (of course), and, after a standing ovation, the great BNL tradition of burlesquing a dozen recent pop tunes such as Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble". I could see elder and younger daughter enjoying this immensely.

As we made our way out of the theatre, ushers handed us Lindt milk chocolate teddy bears. That meant when I heard the jingling caps of orchestra members collecting money for the food bank and the Snow Suit Fund - well, how churlish would it have been to have slipped away, clutching my golden-wrapped chocolate bear?

Outside, the storm had arrived and we saw a taxi pull along the snow bank near the crosswalk and ran for it through a thick curtain of snowflakes. A lady arrived with us, realized we weren't her companions, and retreated in some embarrassment. The cabbie drove us swiftly through increasingly unrecognizable streets. Bright, white, Christmassy. And we made it home safely, because any other outcome would be decidedly un-Christmassy.

They didn't sing this song last night, but it's kind of Christmassy with all those stars. This is a collaboration between Ed Robertson and Commander Chris Hadfield who, last spring, was still in orbit on the International Space Station. Support from the rest of the Barenaked Ladies (you can see drummer Tyler Stewart and bassist Jim Creeggan) and the Wexford Gleeks from Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in Toronto: