Description 16 - Le Rocket

It's about a great hockey player, a guy who finds his voice and inspires millions to find theirs. We (yes, we) go to a movie that shows how much better the Quebecois are at telling and listening to their own stories, while the Anglos may be better at matching NHL team colours of paint.

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Warning: I have no pretentions that my French is any good.

Associated links:
"Rocket" Richard exhibition at the Museum of Civilisation
The Rocket/Maurice Richard @ IMDB
Playback Magazine on the English Canada release
Roy Dupuis @ IMDB
Roy Dupuis @ Canoe (Francais)
Official Montreal Canadiens site
Les Pierrafeu!

Already I know I screwed up because I pronounced it "pierrefeu" when it's "pierrafeu," which is a truncation of "pierre à feu" which pretty much means "Flintstones". Yet Fred and Wilma (Délima) do not have the last name Flintstone, but Caillou! What the-?

I could go on for days on that one, and thankfully, I won't.

Okay, back to The Rocket. I want to give some props to the actors you hear in the clips. Of course, you have Roy Dupuis as Maurice. The Anglo actor Stephen McHattie plays legendary Canadiens coach Dick Irvin (whose son became just as legendary for calling hockey games on Hockey Night In Canada). And a guy even more ubiquitous in Quebec than Dupuis while looking entirely different, Rémy Girard, played Maurice's barber to provide the voice of the people. Art-film snobs may remember Girard as the dying professor in one of the most globally successful Quebec films ever, The Barbarian Invasions (a sequel to another massive Quebec film, The Decline of the American Empire). He was also the coach in the more-than-massive series of Les Boys movies, which made more money in Quebec than any Hollywood film up against them. I don't think anyone in Quebec is allowed to make a movie without Girard in it. Also, I totally edited out Julie LeBreton as Maurice's wife Lucille because I already had too much. She does a very good job for having not much to do, a there's a nice love story in there. Just letting you know it's not entirely a Guy movie.

That night after the film, I went to the GTA Podcasters Meetup, which was pretty fun. Big thanks to Craig of the Tangents podcast for putting it together. Some great people there I already have links to over on the right. I think what really struck me was how great the video podcasters were. Not that they weren't supposed to be great...I just haven't gotten into video podcasts (mainly because I'm such an audio person and I have a hard time with .m4v) and didn't know much about the people making them. Last week I finally got into Jim Dupree: Enthusiast, which is hilarious, and met "the other guy," Tristan, at the meetup. I also met Kim and Patrick from Cooking Kitty Corner and Michael from Life's a Journey, and now from what I've seen, both podcasts are as funny and real and - dare I say - sweet as their creators.

Awwwww...

Video: TPOH @ the Indies

If you liked that last piece in Description 15, here's the video version, which I think has much better sound anyway (I could only get my iTunes to play the audio). As I don't have a snazzy video iPod, I have to take the word of our friend Peter, and the word of our favourite drummer and pub manager Dave Gilby, who converted it and was kind enough to send it along.

See why Bob Lefsetz said, "Moe Berg, in his cardigan that nobody would wear, and seemingly polyester tight-pegged pants, was alive with the spirit of rock and roll." Although I must disagree about the cardigan part.

Download here!
(and tell me if I've screwed this up, because I've never put a video in the feed before.)

Update, June 19, 2007: Bah. Let's just do this. Sorry, they edited out the cardigan and the F word.
Though really, Moe Berg is all about the cardigan and the F word.

Description 15 - The Pursuit of Happiness

A long time coming and a long time listening (almost an hour!), I explain what the deal is with me and Canada's greatest power-pop band, including some exclusive live recordings - not to mention tales of slinging drunk girls over roadies' shoulders, post-show dog-licking and pants that match someone's couch.

Here's where you go if you wanna ride the big wave and subscribe.
Here's where you go if you wanna open up the bomb bay and download directly.
(Don't know those references? Check here.)

Associated links:
Incompletely Conspicuous: The Pursuit of Happiness and the Press (yes, my site)
TPOH @ Maplemusic (buy CDs or downloads of the last two albums and Moe's solo album and book)
Buy Love Junk and When We Ruled from EMI
TPOH with The Management Trust (Jake Gold's agency)
Canadian Indies Hall of Fame
TPOH Loveslaves Yahoo Group
Actually, the first podcast about TPOH was on Zaldor's World.
jazz.fm91 (Brad's beautiful jazz station - go listen when you're done with the podcast!)
The Populars, the great opening band whose beers Kevin stole.
Off the Record on TSN

Seriously, I'm NEVER doing a show that long ever again. But I had to cram about 20 years worth of stuff in one show to get it all over with. Then when I mention one person or another later on, you can check back here and remember what I'm on about.

Renee mentions Tim Mech saving her from a night of debauchery long ago. Tim was the guitar tech for TPOH for most of the time I was going to shows, and he continues working on some of the best crews in this country when he's not working on his own very cool nasty music with Tim Mech's Peep Show - with Ron Koop, who you'll recall from Description 05 at the Monteforte show. Oh, and singing lead with Brad in Monteforte is Tam Amabile, who you hear in this episode singing on the original "I'm An Adult Now". See the tangled web?

Other great people I've met because of the Pursuits include the ones I've met on the mailing list, as we used to call it back in tha day. After a show in '95, Kris suggested I check it out (likely in the hopes I'd find a new outlet other than writing them letters). I didn't have a computer back then, but a couple months later I lived in downtown Belleville a couple doors down from the Quinte Arts Council, who had an ad hoc internet cafe of one computer, so I went over there and took my first steps into the glorious cyberspace. Once I figured out the whole listerv thing, I was part of the Loveslaves mailing list (or listslaves), a global bunch of usually nice and perpetually frustrated people (considering Moe's typical subject matter, that was appropriate) - frustrated because information or promotion of or about the band was always hard to come by. Jaap who ran The Downward Node site and Tina who led the list at the time did their best, but the band was never great at marketing themselves (the initial video aside) and no one else around them was very good at marketing them either (although that was their damn job!). That's one reason why I started my site 4 years later, after Jaap had to quit because life took over and when the band had sort of unofficially finished. I had these articles and reviews that when put together, told an interesting and sometimes maddening story of some nice folks who made amazing music but got screwed around by circumstance, bullshit and the typically Canadian lack of ability to sell one's way out of a paper bag. That series of articles forms the backbone of the site. It's a cautionary tale for young bands (especially Canadian) coming up, although today, there are many more ways to work around the path that used to be the default.

Okay, that's talking about the site out of the way as well.

Description 14 - Michael Ignatieff's First Date

Why the hell would some globally-respected writer and egghead human rights specialist run for Canadian political office? Why the hell would I read one of his speeches in a podcast? Get the answers and some wicked-sexy Danko Jones to boot.

Here's what you click if you want to subscribe for unity among all the podcasts you want downloaded automatically.

Here's what you click for downloading directly, like someone who digs decentralization.

Associated links:
Official site of Michael Ignatieff, MP (with text of the speech, so you can read along!)
Canadian Press story on the speech via canada.com
The reason the anti-torture protesters were there.
Danko Jones!! (and on myspace)
Danko's fabulous radio show The Magical World of Rock (From RocketFM, Sweden)
And the Danko track was graciously provided by the lovely people at the Podsafe Music Network

As I write this, I'm listening to an archive stream of Danko's radio show last year where he's hanging with Jay Ferguson of Sloan, and it's amazing. Jay said when Danko first told him that he'd gotten a radio show where he could play what he wanted, Jay was a bit jealous of him. Jay's radio dreams finally came true: he and his cohort Chris Murphy host a big chunk of CBC Radio 3 on Sirius Satellite Radio and very late on the weekends on CBC Radio 2 online and on plain ol' radio.

I was listening to Daily Source Code last week, and usually Adam Curry starts with some podsafe song. Usually they're okay, sometimes actually very good, sometimes they sound about 15 years old - not that there's anything wrong with that. But this time the song was REALLY good. Ungodly wicked kick-ass. And then in the middle, the guy starts talking, and I think, this sounds like Danko Jones. And I'll be damned, that's just what it was. Adam Curry said their name, and I had some kind of That Thing You Do moment: "HOLY CRAP! I KNOW WHO THEY ARE! I KNOW PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEM! THEY'RE FROM HERE! AND THEY'RE ON THE FRICKIN' DSC! COOL!"

So it'll be interesting to see what good comes of Danko going the myspace/podsafe route. My indie band friends seem to have gotten onto the myspace thing, but aside from CBC Radio 3, they haven't yet gotten their heads around putting out podsafe tracks that podcasts can go nuts on. I've seen Sianspheric on the PMN, but that's about it, though maybe I'm missing something. But EVERYBODY indie knows Danko, so if the podsafe thing does them good, it could start something.

Btw, if you don't know much about Danko Jones, you'll not know that it's weird the song asks if you kiss on the first date. It's the only aspect of the song where they're holding back.

Oh yeah. Wasn't this episode actually about Michael Ignatieff's speech? Uh...well, yeah. But I talk about that in the show for 10 bloody minutes or something, so there's nothing left to put here.