JOURNAL[Pages : 6 5 4 3 2 1]

Wednesday, April 2

My wife, Melissa, drove me into Toronto's Pearson Intl. Airport from our new (old) home in Hamilton. In the back of our beat up 2000 GM Safari is my beloved Gretsch White Falcon guitar, which I will need for my gig in Calgary.

It is the weekend of the Juno awards and I have accepted a solo gig to help cover the cost of getting to the Juno Cup hockey game, which is truly what excites me about the upcoming weekend. Also in the back of our van sits my massive, 100-pound bag of goal tending equipment. While not so beloved as the Falcon, the pads & sticks are responsible for the butterflies I am carrying in my guts. See, I only play hockey once or twice a year and yet will have the ridiculous honor of sharing the bench (and the ice) with some of my childhood heroes, both from my own community of Canadian musicians but also a gathering of elite NHL alumni... for whom I am charged with protecting the net-a task I have not really embraced since I played for the North Winnipeg Suns when I was 11.

While this day began leisurely enough (a 3pm departure is so civilized and rare in my world) just as I step onto the gangplank of the shiny Boeing 767, the tranquility of my nervous daydreams of hockey heroism is rudely interrupted by the vibrations in my breast pocket. My blackberry needs attention: maybe a bottle or a diaper change. A flurry of email activity pours into my hand.

It turns out that upon my arrival in Calgary, instead of having diner with my cousins Julia & Sylvia, I will now be rushing to the Jubilee Auditorium to open a concert for my Punk-rocker-turned-Country-star buddy Corb Lund. It appears the scheduled opener got hung up at the boarder. While a high profile gig is always good news, the thought of performing solo in front of 3000 people is a bit daunting... especially when they are die hard fans of someone like Corby, who's legions are loyal to an almost Tragically Hip-like degree, making the task of warming them up all the more delicate.

Upon landing in Calgary, I dump my stuff into a taxi & head to the theatre where I'm told I have 5 minutes to set up my gear & do a brief sound check before the doors will open. I am the world's fastest sound check (they are often overblown & unnecessary affairs) and thus am ready to play in no time. "Check, check... one two tisk tisk" and a few "clangs" on my trusty White Falcon and I'm satisfied. Just enough time for a warm can of Molson Canadian before it's curtain time...


Thursday, April 3

Last night's gig turned out to be easier than expected. Corb's fans are good folk. Since they are stuck in their seats and can't really chit chat in the theatre setting, I was able to gently lure them in with a minimal dose of smart-assed banter and a few of my little country rock songs... a delicate balancing act that can fail at the first murmurs of "we want Corb!!", which thankfully never overtook my set.

After the show we all climbed onto the tour bus for the 3 hour journey to Corb's adopted hometown of Edmonton, where it turns out my band will be flying in so we can play the massive Rexall center with the full firepower of The White Falcon (yes... I named my band after my beloved Gretsch guitar). After a few beers, I finally manage to fall asleep somewhere between Calgary & Red Deer. I have a decade old history with insomnia that rock-n-roll tour buses only exacerbate. For some people, the bus rocks them to sleep much like a fetus in the womb. For me, a 45-foot long torpedo full of musicians is still just a 45-foot long torpedo full of musicians. The very minute the driver even touches the brake, I brace myself in my coffin-like bunk for the crunch of twisting steel and exploding glass that would signal an abrupt end to the night's travels - if not our very lives... I know, that is a macabre way of looking at things but think about it: we sleep on the freeway - at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. Does beat the hell out of driving in a van though... I will say that.

The Edmonton show is a big deal. Corb is a star in these parts and his fans have been waiting to see their hero in the house Gretzky built for a very long time. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking, "holy shit... the bass player of the seminal punk rock band the Smalls is headlining the Rexall center as a country singer!". My fear, upon glancing out at the endless expanse of cowboy hats & big belt buckles, is that the good 'ol boys from rural Alberta might not care much for this rock and roll city boy from out east (I can only wave my Winnipeg banner for so long before people point out that I haven?t lived there in 15 years).

Showtime

Once again, I may have been hasty in my assessment of this crowd. They are a pretty diverse bunch. Both the urban artsy folk and died in the wool Alberta cow hands seem well represented. We turn up our guitars and see how much Crazy Horse they will tolerate from the White Falcon. After 45 minutes and no real casualties, we salute the people of northern Alberta and head deep into the annals of Oiler headquarters, satisfied that we?d honored both the tradition of excellence in that building, and that of the band who were about to grace the same stage.


Friday, April 4

Last night's post gig after party was classic one. Is the Canadian punk-rock/dirty hippy house party strictly a prairie thing? Just when I think they are extinct (or I have outgrown them) I find myself in Winnipeg at Christmastime, (or Edmonton on tour), and as if the same 20 people have been sitting in the same smoky kitchen listening to Neil Young for the last 15 years - there we are - at that classic house party.

This morning, after brunch at Edmonton's Cafe Mozaic, I get a lift back to Calgary from by buddy Gravy, the drummer from electro disco trash outfit Shout Out Out Out Out. We are both playing in this eveninges Juno Cup charity hockey game. Strangely, I am the veteran here, having played the event 3 times in a row and I wonder out loud if this means my jersey will be between Paul Coffeees and Lanny MacDonaldes again... These are special bragging rights, since I have long ago tired of dropping rock luminaries' names around my friends-- most of whom are musicians who couldn't care less.

Once at the arena, I head almost straight to the dressing room, skipping most of the pre-game fanfare. It will take me almost an hour to get into my goalie pads and a few weeks back Jim Cuddy made a point of berating me for my tardiness at another event. Since my only stated objective is to keep Blue Rodeo's taller front man off the score board, I figure I should at least attempt to show that I mean business by being on the ice on-time... It's in the Irish side of my blood to be 5 minutes late for everything.

The dressing room culture is something to behold. This is one of those fly-on-the-wall moments that I could retire off if only I could bottle it. Paul Coffee, Mark Napier, Geoff Courtnall, Lanny MacDonald, Doug Gilmore, Bob Probert, Brad Delgarno... all exchanging pre game (and most importantly: post career) barbs & jabs about the flaws in one another's pending game. Surprisingly, the banter never disintegrates into toilet humor, as it would clearly have done were this a rock n roll dressing room. Could it be that the NHL alumni are more civilized than their rock star counterparts? For my part, I am collecting anatomical data to one day use as a conversation piece: "I've seen Paul Coffee naked" goes a long way to liven up dinner conversation with the inlaws.

The game itself was a blur. It may be because my hair was dangling in my eyes the whole time but regardless of my excuses, Jim Cuddy did eventually sneak one little garbage goal past me. That I stuffed him good a few minutes earlier is the story I plan to recycle when the weekend fades into my selective memory, because it was a truly dramatic save. One that will endure in my mind with the majesty & grace of the Ken Dryden poster I had on my wall as a child in Winnipeg.


Thursday, April 10, 2008

Finally, this Delta Airlines regional jet bumbles it's way out to runway 6 of New York's Kennedy airport.

Every time I see my friend Greg, I get blind drunk. He's a reformed ballet (turned contemporary) dancer who has lived in New York for over 15 years, a former member of Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak dance troupe as well a graduate of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. I'll let you in on a little secret; the dancers I know (I grew up with them... sisters, cousins and best friends all studied at the RWB) can out drink any rock star I've ever met. I don't know what it is about their lifestyle or the stress of their work, but these cats can drink. Anyway, when I'm around these guys, nothing says "reminisce" like a gallon of Makers Mark.

Since my show was only 20 minutes long last night (a showcase for my new PR firm), I was free by 730 in the evening. Greg dragged me back to Brooklyn to meet some of his friends at his local watering hole, where we sat drinking Bourbon until around midnight when we all fell into cabs back to our respective caves for the night. You'd be surprised how far it is from Park Slope in Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan when you have to cover one eye to keep from passing out from the spins...

I knew this morning was going to hurt. What I didn't expect was that the cab would breakdown between Williamsburg & JFK, then flight would be postponed by 3 hours & then I would actually miss my rescheduled flight... Why to they say departure is 530 but the gate closes at 5...? I know--I know, (I?ve been flying twice a week for over 15 years) but these are the things you forget when you're battling a Herculean hangover


Monday, April 14

I'm sitting backstage at the empire theater in Belleville Ontario, having just played our set. Blue Rodeo, the headliner, have begun theirs the same way they have for the majority of the tour. Hearing these songs every night is a constant reminder of the need to communicate simple truths in the songs I write. Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon; these people very seldom complicate their work with overwrought intellectualism or obscure darkness. To be topical, challenging, political, subversive... these things are not mutually exclusive of simplicity and are virtuous qualities in some people's work (mine, sometimes. I hope) but still, dour self-absorption seems to be the purview of the young writers who take them/ourselves too seriously.

My father in-law came to a show recently. He happens to be a big Blue Rodeo fan as well as a big lover of music in general. During the show, there is a pretty moving moment when Greg Keelor sings "it hasn't hit me yet" and manages to incite the entire crowd to sing along. Not a revolutionary move, for sure, but one I've never managed to pull off. You have to have a) a song that everyone knows all the words to and b) a melody & story that people feel jubilant enough about to actually WANT to scream at the top of their lungs. Remember the last time you walked into a bar and the singer said "all right folks, we're gonna get you to sing along...".? If you are anything like me, you either run for the washroom or bury your face into a pint glass to hide from the embarrassment of the all mighty "sing along".

After the show, my father in law engages us in the obligatory Why-don't you-do-what-they-do conversation that follows most high profile opening sets we do: "you really should have one of those songs where everyone sings along". Melissa, my wife, rolls her eyes slightly but I, not having the 28 years of experience with her beloved dad, take the bait & try to explain that unless you are playing for hundreds of YOUR fans (as opposed to warming up someone else's) you will never create the kind of vibe we all just shared. He's not buying it. As an eternal optimist, he's convinced that if the song is simple enough, with a catchy melody & a good beat (cue his head bouncing to an imaginary beat) people will squawk along with ease & unbridled confidence. And while I could (and sometimes do) have endless reasons why he's oversimplifying things, I also know that deep down, at the end of the day, he's not wrong.



Nashville. Jan 24.

I just finished giving Melissa a guitar lesson. This gives me more excitement than it does her I think, although she’s pretty studious. After having taught bored school kids (& a select few disciplined & curious ones) for years in Vancouver, I always deeply appreciate a keen student. She’s learning the Nashville system, which is a system of numbers relating to chords in a given key. Sounds esoteric, but it’s quite simple. Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. That’s 7 intervals, right ( 8, you say?--Do, & do…the same…duh.). Give each one a number, starting with one & ending with 7 (ok, 8 if you insist). Note that each interval has a corresponding chord & that those 7 chords make up the basic choices within a key. Try this, if you are still a bit confused. The Cure have a song called Boys Don’t Cry. I don’t really know what key the song is on the record but for the sake of facility, play it in the key of G. play G (1), A minor (2), B minor (3), C (4), and then go backwards down those chords—quickly. Sound familiar? That song is Do Re Mi Fa (1,2,3,4), in that order. The 2 & 3 chords ( A & B) are minor, as would be the 6 chord, should the song have employed it. This is how western music goes. That’s why it sounds familiar to us as opposed to eastern music, which uses a more elaborate system.

The point is that if you can learn to identify a chord not so much as a B minor, but rather as the “3” chord in the key of G, you learn pretty fast that there are a fairly limited range of possibilities within a particular key. (note to geeks: yes there are infinite potential variations & rules to break, that should keep even the most adventurous player/writer occupied for an entire career, so don’t let my over-simplification dissuade you from feeling challenged).This system makes recognizing chord patterns really easy & also allows you to transpose quickly from one key to the next if, say, the song you want to play is too high for your deep voiced singer & you need to drop it down a few.

WELCOME TO NASHVILLE!! This system of learning chord changes is intrinsically Nashvillian. All the cats use it. True, it’s a bit clinical & might, if only temporarily, take some of the mystery out of the creation, but the same could be said for Nashville as a music town. Yes, the blues guys use it in Chicago; the jazz cats in NYC & New Orleans do; as do the session guys in LA & the western swing cats in Texas. It’s pretty universal. The difference with Nashville is that it’s not a language for an exclusive bunch, as it might be in jazz, but rather the lexicon for the common songwriter. There’s no way that Bob Dylan got to New York knowing 300 Woody Guthrie songs if he didn’t know that C,F & G were 1, 4 & 5. I know, he’s not from Nashville, but brilliance notwithstanding—he’s a common songwriter, & the system is very useful for us (sorry…them).

An unrelated tale: I was sitting in an internet cafÈ this afternoon, doing the daily communication thing which, for us, doubles as exercise (it’s a two mile walk), when I opened an email from our pal & erstwhile homey, Kathleen Edwards. She made some joke about Nashville & it’s reputation for being all about the music BUSINESS. She ruminated as to our surroundings: “Are you guys sitting in a cafÈ with people writing bad country ‘hits’ on their laptops while some kid wails her best new country song at an open mic?”. The painful thing is that, yes, indeed that was precisely where we sat at that very moment. Every other day we are in there & there are couples talking quietly about whether today’s country hits are 2 minutes & 30 seconds or 3 minutes & 10 seconds long. They are usually a guy in his forties (musician/songwriter/producer)& a woman in her late 20’s (prospective artist/American idol reject/budding star) with too much makeup & way too many accessories for a Tuesday afternoon. The person at the mic singing might likely pepper her songs—or at least her banter—with coy, hip sounding references to Jesus, & jokes about those who might NOT yet have invited Him into their lives. Ghasp.

You’ve got to understand how foreign the setting is to someone from the uppity northern liberal outpost known as TORONTO (forget Winnipeg or Vancouver…way off the charts), where music bellowing from small clubs on Queen street is either uber-hip (see: Broken Social Scene, Feist, Metric…Ron Sexmith even) or in most cases, someone deeply influenced by the uber-hip. No one ever mentions religion unless it’s in a disparaging or ironic context, & no one ever discusses the length of their single--at least not within earshot of other artists (how gauche).

Up north, music is the domain of lefty pseudo-intellectuals. Or maybe even just the casual socialists. Or their closeted sympathizers. Or hippies. Or welfare bums. But NEVER conservative Bush and/or Jesus fearin’ suburbanites. Consider this: Nashville must be the only city in North America where blacks make up 40 % of the population & 0% of the music community (that’s not entirely true: I’ve seen two black musicians since moving here. Solomon Burke one night & a brother bass player another night. Both killin’ musicians). That’s gotta tell you something; not sure what, but something.

Ok… so my objective in the next few months is to unearth the other side of the tracks down here. You know it exists. Lambchop is down here. My Morning Jacket? Am I right about that? Maybe Louisville. Gillian Welsh, David Rawlings?? C’mon…

But to do so, I need to go out 4 days a week & see music. Mike Grimes from Grimey’s & the Basement is going to help out by being my musical cartographer. He knows everyone & loves all styles of music (no Indie-Only type). The dude has passionate taste & smarts about music & Nashville in particular. He’s going to go through the weekly with me & circle the gigs I need to attend.

This may all seem like a bit of a social studies project but truly, my immediate goal is to find friends, musical compatriots & whatever else I can discover about this new place that will make me feel like anything but a transplanted Canadian. I don’t need the adventure of foreign discovery just now. Not at this point. I’ve moved cities 3 times already in my life & spent over 15 years on the road. What I need now is familiarity & comfort. I need friends. I need common ground, both musically & personally. Nashville is the city I’ve been led to believe I may have the hardest time finding some of those things but I am determined to overcome that bias.

Not that I don’t already have a kinship musically; I always have. My friends out west joke endlessly about my need to make music that is (snicker, snicker) “steeped in the tradition” (country, blues & all things Americana), which really means “why don’t you listen to Steely Dan & Toto like all us real musicians”. Gag. But fair enough, I do wrestle endlessly with the dichotomy inherent in my music: I love the blues. I love country. I love the early 70’s & the American songwriters from that era (Waits, Newman, Nelson, Wonder, Simon, Jones, Cale, Parsons) but I also relate pretty huge to the experimental sounds that have bubbled up from the underground since then. What happens if you fuse the irreverence of the Pixies with the sober familiarity of a classic Randy Newman arrangement? Is it possible, or is it like wearing a Stetson with vintage Nikes?

Another issue facing Canadian roots music wannabe’s is the whole language/accent thingy. Listen carefully. Unless you were raised in the south, or you are Mick Jagger, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS SINGING WITH A SOUTHERN ACCENT. This poses a great challenge to us northern cowboys. We love that authentic drawl that makes words like ‘daddy’ & ‘aint’ & ‘southern’ sound so hot, but we know we’re massive posers when we use it. So we skirt around the issue cloaked in some Neil Young/the Band inspired alt-country territory, in hopes that someone will holler from the northern roof tops that we are authentically entitled to carry that torch. THOSE IS OUR PEEPS!!

So here’s me, in all my New Kid In Town garb, sneering at the lowly simple southern folk, trying to figure out how to be as much like him as possible, without getting busted by the integrity police. It’s not easy being green. By green, I mean frog. By frog I mean French--as in French-Canadian. Yet another layer of the onion—true—but here’s where I may have a trump card… not sure. See, I’m French Canadian from the east coast. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be precise, which makes me Acadian. Which makes me Cajun {read your damn history}. As far as I can tell, the Louisiana bayou is even further south than all these Tennessee crackers. So as long as I talk fast with gumbo on my breath, I can talk like Roscoe P. Coltrane fer all y’all can give a dang.

There, now that that’s settled, I can go to bed, knowing that tomorrow when I accidentally slip into my drawl at the grocery store, & my wife laughs at how pretentious I am, I can remind her of my peoples’ 300 year history with the Mississippi delta. Then I can go home with my bag of grits & write me all the “just like all y’all” music my little heart desires.



blogvember

I'm back. I have a few days of chill time in Ontario before heading back out into the vast expanse of interstates, truck stops, white-knuckled steering wheels, economy class middle seats, suspicious immigration officers & motel 6's. Until then I will sleep 10 to 14 hours each night. I will stand in the shower every two days for 45 minutes, where I will brush my teeth, shave my face, wash my feet, armpits, neck, & boy bits. Then I will stand there swaying slowly from side to side so the water can hit my left shoulder, then the right, then right in the middle at the top of my spine. That hot water on my 4th vertebra is like finger nails on a dogs ass. Pure bliss.

During the evenings, I may sit down, as I am now, & attempt to write. This little piece of drivel you are reading is known as a procrastination tactic brought on by writers block.

Ironic, no? My decoy from washing the ashtrays is to scrub the toilet.

A songwriter is a unique brand of masochist. I am staring down the barrel of a new record. I know to some of you who are just now discovering my music, it may seem strange for me to concern myself with that task while I am still mostly on the road to promote Broken (& other pathetic yet decidedly mild tales of woe). But truth be told, that record is a couple years old now; at least the songs were written a couple/few years ago. They're all about my ex girlfriend & I've moved so far beyond that period of self pity that I've even gone & got married. Hee hoo, she's purdy.

The point is I need to tell some new stories. Really talented writers can make shit up & it's compelling enough to warrant being endured. I'm not one of them. I have this hang up about truth. 90% of the stories I tell have been culled from autobiographical realities. I color some things to protect the evil; I change a few names to protect the weak, but really, these things have all come to pass. As it stands now, I'm quite at peace with my personal life (not that it's any of your business) so I face the task of having to either invent malaise to chronicle for you, or tell someone else's story, or tell you how I really feel about the touring life ( a} I know--cry me a fucking river; b} it serves me well to propagate the illusion that I love sitting alone in motel rooms 20 days a month, c} who wants to hear songs about the work of being a musician? How much deeper up my ass can I stuff my head??).

Now the other thing is the language-backbeat dichotomy. We sensitive pseudo-intellectual types have it especially bad. Our jobs are inherently laden with hypocrisy. Check it out: I need to come up with some clever ways of telling what is probably a boring derivative story and fuse it with some sort of catchy vibe that will hit you in the back of the head & make all you groovy white people bite your bottom lips & walk like Egyptians. Do rappers have this issue? No. Exactly. We folk-rockers (ew) bring it on ourselves. Somehow we feel that if we can't enlighten you while we get you laid, we are selling out. That's not your problem, no, but you do like it. C'mon, when Beck lays out all the cool words with the cool beats you want to take him home & feed him to your mom for being so far superior to everybody else (except for that scientology gig'weird). The paradox is that we try so hard to make music that sounds like we just want to party, but we also want you to think we're smart?and that we aren't really trying.

Ok, so where am I? Do I go get me a real drug problem to make everything so fucked up that all I have to do is Xerox my journal & you'll be awestruck by my genius (apparently if you fuck up badly enough, your crap art becomes way more tolerable)? I guess the real solution is to get Nick Cave on your bad self & actually work at it 5, 6 hours every day like a real job. The inspiration vs perspiration equation is, in my case tilted towards the latter, yet I keep hoping that by being miserable enough, often enough, the divine will intervene & bless me with all the beautiful metaphors & turns of phrase that you or I could stomach. Comparisons to Bob, Tom, Nick, Randy & Lyle will add up like hangovers. This will all happen simply because I DESERVE IT. I work hard. I get to all my gigs. I'm nice to people--faithful to my wife; good to my daughter, accountable to my mother--all the good things. Therefore, surely all my dedication & goodness will reward me with talent & it's fruits. Perspiration be damned. I'll be talented instead.

Now that I've talked myself out of the need to actually stare at a blank page (blank Apple G4 screen, blank Harmony Stella guitar neck), I might as well have another glass of Merlot, & head back downstairs to join the girls in episode WHATEVER of Americas Top Talent-Free Anorexic Hussies.

Peace



Getting Schooled in LA.

I was in Los Angeles for 2 days to shoot a video last weekend. I arrived on Friday afternoon & my host, a friend from high school & video director Luke Hutton, was out doing errands in preparations for our day in the desert. Since I somehow managed to sleep the entire flight from Toronto, I was in no mood to heed his recommendation that I “put my feet up & take it easy” (which is directors speak for: don’t go out & get hammered with your LA friends the night before we shoot), yet I sat in their little apartment in Silver Lake & read the LA times, hoping it would satiate my desire for stimulation. Iraq this, Joe Liebermann that, housing bubble about to burst, etc. blah blah blah… all very interesting fodder for a lazy LA afternoon but as I settled into the Letters To The Editor section (the best column in any decent paper, I figure) I heard what sounded like a demonstration or a small riot; crowds cheering, or screaming & a voice over a loudspeaker, narrating the important bits. Maybe there’s a film being shot nearby, I thought…but as the hour passed I realized that what I was hearing was an athletic event of some kind. I pressed my face to the screen of the dining room window to see if I could glean any more clues from the strange ruckus I was hearing.

Where I come from (Winnipeg, Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto) there isn’t really a high school football tradition—or at least not as far as I was concerned. The high school I went to was private, in the sense that I had to pay for it. Blues gigs paid pretty well back in ’89, plus my mom paid for 1/2 my courses. I went there because it would enable me to graduate a year early & frankly, because the idea of immersing myself into a typical high school environment made me ill—yes, even then I was an elitist. It was a division of the University of Winnipeg and it served a large part of the ESL & adult continuing education sector of high school students… needless to say, there wasn’t much of a sports tradition, although my then-girlfriend Britt did play on the varsity volleyball team. But even where sports were a significant part of a school’s identity (Kelvin High School—the school I avoided but would otherwise likely have attended) I can’t imagine that more than a small handful of girlfriends/freshman hopefuls would ever attend the games. Am I wrong? I may be, but let me ride this delusion out. True, I was so busy being a Blues-man while desperately trying to accrue as many 55% credit marks so as to graduate from high school ASAP, that I might not have seen school spirit if it dragged chains through my bedroom, howling while I slept. But I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the scene unfolding two blocks away at the John Marshall football field that sunny Friday afternoon.

I walked down the street, with my cowboy hat, skinny jeans & the LA Weekly tucked under my arm. When I rounded the corner in front of John Marshall high school, I was stunned by the people in the bleachers: hundreds—maybe thousands of them. But there they were: entire families with little kids, punks, jocks, dweebs, geeks, nerds, sluts, skids, preps, teachers & security… all there to cheer on the football team. I paid my 3 bucks & sat down to watch the game but more importantly--to watch John Marshall spend its Friday afternoon.

While Marshall laid a sound thrashing to the team from Southgate High School, I took inventory: roughly 60% Latino, 30% Black, & 10% Asian. Virtually NO WHITE PEOPLE (except the security & cops…yup real LAPD--with guns). From what I’ve read, this means John Marshall is a public school, since in LA & many other parts of the US most white kids go to private schools & everyone else, with some exceptions, goes into the much-maligned public school system. So of course what I expected was the racial tension, apathy, violence & poverty that prompts so many Americans to keep their kids away from the public school system. I expected that if I were ever to bear witness to any gathering at a public school in Los Angeles, that it would be a brawl between rival gangs. I could not have been more wrong. In fact, what I witnessed—with the exception of one student being tackled by a security guard & 4 cops (“let go of me bitch!”)—was about as close to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or Pretty in Pink as I could imagine without going down to Blockbuster for a nostalgic refresher.

The marching band played top 40 tunes while the cheerleaders danced & waved at their friends (the chubby Latina on the end waved sheepishly to the three boys who called her name), & when they finished a routine, the fans would clap politely. Some of the boys behind me were discussing which of the girls looked more like Shakira. Kids ate hotdogs & teen aged girls talked on cell phones while their boyfriends watched the game. At 1/2 time, the home team players ran single file up the stairs to the school building, bumping fists with any fans that happened to be loitering by the gate. No one so much as glanced at me—the only white person not employed to be there—as I sat with my big Texan hat & pale Canadian arms, basking in the early September sunshine among all these people.

It made me realize how wrong we so often are; about so many things. Not to put a political or negative spin on this day—it was nothing but a pleasure—yet I could not help but take note of who these people all were & what was expected of them…& how beautifully they mocked our (or certainly MY) expectations of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more spirited, functional group of teenagers in my life. I know it shouldn’t be such a revelation—it’s a goddamned football game--but for a boy from Canada (where almost no-one ever goes to high school football games) to see this event transpire, particularly with all the bad press American public schools get, I was pretty taken aback. It was as though a production company was shooting a remake of FAME & these shiny-faced kids were all actors, not the real life kids from a public school in Silver Lake, getting along famously watching their football team destroy Southgate (36-0).

At the game’s end I collected my little pile of stuff which now included an ice cream wrapper & a bottle of LA county’s finest spring water—both sold to me by student vendors in the stands--made my way out to the street with the throngs of satisfied football fans, and walked the three blocks back to Luke Hutton’s apartment to prepare for the 14 hours we would spend under the scorching Mojave desert sun the next day, shooting a video for a song about hubris & having a “free” mind. Indeed.




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