Difficult Music

I picked up the parentals at the airport last night. Their plane was full of Catholic youth returning from Popefest. God showed his approval with a thunderstorm that forced them to wait out on the tarmac in Toronto for two hours. Anyway, it’s nice to have Clive and Sally back. Soon as he got back from his walk this morning, Dad was on the phone to the municipality, asking them to pick up four old tires someone had dumped along Huxley Ave. (“Rob, how long have those tires been there?” “Can’t say I noticed them, Dad.”) He’s always “on,” that guy.

Breakfast soundtrack today was Gong, Angel’s Egg. I went straight for “Oily Way” midway through the album, which was a mistake. Now suffering from endless-loop-in-head effect. I should turn Super Robertson onto this album, if he hasn’t already been. I have to remember that he was a tree planter.

I’m going to eat my words at some point, but I’m enjoying the bus ride these days—thanks to the magic of reading. I’m tearing through books at a great rate. Thanks to Tweek for lending me a couple massive things when I was in Edmonton. I read Head-on and Repossessed by Julian Cope first (two books in one handy volume). I know nothing of the Teardrop Explodes’ music, but Jesus Christ, this was a hilarious book. I’d like to come back to it again and again here on Difficult Music, because I can’t really do it justice in one go. If you’re interested in the birth of (English) punk rock, the music industry, drugs, or toy collecting, I give it my highest recommendation.

I moved on to Dave Bidini’s Tropic of Hockey next. When I was a kid I was really only a true hockey fan for a few years. My fetish for stats got transferred to auto racing pretty quickly. But hockey’s never really left my life entirely. I’ll watch a few games during the regular season (more out of happenstance than by choice), follow the playoffs up to a point, play some street hockey. I even had a character-building foray into intramural floor hockey earlier this year. Dave approaches his book from the POV of a lapsed hockey fan, which I could relate to. He moves back and forth between travel writing and rants about the state of the NHL and Canadian hockey in general, never staying in one place for too long. I could identify with Bidini’s attempts to reconcile his love of the game with the fact that it’s a sport for assholes. I live with that kind of dissonance every minute of every day. So, yeah, I enjoyed the book. And I’ll never see Jim Cuddy in the same way again.

Tweek also lent me Have Not Been the Same: the CanRock Renaissance, a 750-page doorstop that I started last week. I was scared, but lo and behold, it’s killer. Lots of great stories within. The early chapters are going city by city, and I’m on the Montreal chapter right now. Sad story of wasted potential with the Nils. I remember them from the Decline of the English Murder days, when I tried to keep an eye on what was going on. I heard them a lot on BNW and liked what they were Husker Du’ing. I’m now a few pages away from the Voivod section, so my lunch break can’t come fast enough today.