Difficult Music

I’d say last weekend was pretty amusing. On Friday the belter and I went to the Pearls launch at Douglas College. The vibe was a little different this year because they moved it up to the fourth floor art gallery, where we had our portfolio show last April. I guess the highlight, aside from Calvin Wharton’s fine emceeing style, was when our man Adam Honsinger received the Maurice Hodgson Memorial Award for Creative Writing. He’d kept it a secret, the cad, so it was an excellent surprise.

Saturday, with the high-rollin’ belter down south, I went to Kevin’s birthday party in PoCo with Smash, Mai and Christian Scum (who I hadn’t seen in way too long). Wow, did they ever lay on a spread. We ate ourselves silly and had a nice relaxing time. I’ll confess I have two major regrets—that I didn’t go back for seconds and that I didn’t stay long enough for cake…I’m sure there must have been cake.

A quick blast across the Lower Mainland and we arrived in time for the second half of the Carl Fatman show, which was taping in the art gallery/party room at Super Robertson’s building. We caught most of the Motorcycle Man’s set, which consisted of the usual stream of babble interrupted by one-man heavy metal songlets. My best moment came when he spotted me during his audience poll of favourite metal bands. I got to say “Celtic Frost!” from the back of a crowded room, which was very satisfying. Judging by their reactions, some people thought I was joking.

My tasks for Sunday were to write a review of the stellar OSI album and to monitor the belter’s whereabouts in case she needed a lift in from Maple Ridge. When everything appeared to be sorted out, I took off up the street to visit Neptoon Records’ new location. Their racks of $2 LPs contained a few gems (well, gems to me), so I picked up some things. I also got the first Hatfield and the North LP, which made the Neptoon guy pretty excited because, as he told me, their keyboardist was Dave Stewart (not Annie Lennox’s partner) who played on Bruford’s One of a Kind, which also featured Allan Holdsworth, who played with Bruford on the first UK album, who became a trio with Terry Bozzio on drums after Bruford and Holdsworth left to make One of a Kind, which was going to be the second UK album… Heh-heh. I walked home in a good mood.