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Just came back from the Cenotaph in East York

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I just walked in the door from the remembrance day celebrations at the East York Civic Centre. It was a beautiful ceremony that I’m sure touched everyone’s heart! There was at least 2000 people in attendance, really nice to see that kind of respect!

East York Cenotaph

East York Cenotaph

It started off by a parade of all our military forces. In attendance were War Veterans (Air, Army and Navy), legion members, Fire, Ambulance and the Police just to name a few!

We sang O Canada, followed up by some opening remarks. Then came the Last Post. For someone to say that this song is VERY POWERFUL is not saying enough.

Then came the Lament speech, followed by the Hymn:O Valiant Hearts. Then our local Toronto councilor Janet Davis said a few words. Right in the middle of her speech, 4 yellow coloured Harvard very ancient looking airplanes flew over the cenotaph, nice touch boys! If your into airplanes or your Canadian then you’ve seen these things before! I would loved to have seen a Lancaster there, it’s my second favorite Canadian airplane, my favorite in the Avro Arrow. I don’t know why the damn Diefenbaker Government literally, I mean literally dismantled the life and pride of a county! That is why I’ll NEVER VOTE CONSERVATIVE in my life!!!

Now comes the reading of In Flanders Fields. It was written by a Canadian called Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918) from Guelph Ontario. He was a medic in a field hospital who took a break from sowing up some young solders fresh from a battle and then he penned this beautiful Poem.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It was read perfectly by Rehanna Ali from D.A. Morrison Middle School. Now it was time for the laying of the wreaths, it was moving to say the least. After this, a song was played by some kids on acoustic guitars with an electric soloing throughout it, nice soloing to boot! The Reverend Alex Bissett recited the Litany for World Peace prayer as well the hymn: O God, Our Help in Ages Past was said.

We then sang God Save the Queen! I haven’t sang that one in many years, so it was great to walk down memory lane with so many fellow Canadians of different strips! They then did the Colour Party Retires and Parade Dismissal. Wow, what an event to experience!

Let us hope and pray that we do not have to put any more names down on another Cenotaph.
May they all rest in peace.




Playing Guitar with CounterPoint

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So on Thursday Oct. 30 I was jamming with Counterpoint!

This is the band that was playing in the 2008 Nuance Art Rock festival. This experience was one that I will remember for years to come.

The guys in CounterPoint are looking for a guitar player that will help round out their unique sound. As you’ve read in some of my other posts on this blog and on my Guitar Licks and Tips site, I have been very excited about how these guys approach song writing and how they play, because they achieve that BIG FAT sound that I LOVE.

The guys from CounterPoint

They asked me if I wanted to jam/try out for the guitar player role for these masters of progressive rock, when I saw them that fateful night at the show. I hummed and hawed about this for months it seemed (really it was only a couple of weeks). Then finally one night I said to my wife, what the heck and just threw my hat into the ring! That night I had a lot of trouble sleeping. In the back of my mind I was saying to myself Am I really ready for this?

We then set a date to get together. It was delayed a few times because of this, that and the other thing, but finally we got together.

When we sat down in the rehearsal hall, Rising Star Studios, I was finally relaxed. You couldn’t find a nicer bunch of guys. We sat and talked for a while, they even brought a couple of beers to make the jam more relaxing, nice touch.

I just stuck to my coffee because I had the songs that I went through at home in my old brain box running in overdrive and I didn’t want to mess anything up! As a rule I don’t like to drink when I play guitar, unless it’s at a campfire or just goofing around here and there. While jamming with guys of this caliber, you need to have your head screwed on correctly! As it turned out, these were just your regular kinda guys and I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

Keep on Jammin’

How to play the pipe organ

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Rick Wakeman shows off his church pipe organ skills at Lincoln Cathedral.

Ever since I was a young boy and went to St. Basil’s church to attend mass there, I loved hearing the pipe organ that they had. The longest pipe is over 70 feet long and when you stood beside it and the organist pulled out all the stops, the sound that emulated from it was overpowering to say the least! This is where the origins of the phrase “Pulling out all the stops” comes from!

I don’t write too many posts on classical music, but I do want to show you another section of my love for this mostly forgotten form of music.

Check out the guy in the background who has the envious task of working the multiple stops on the organ. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very nervous about trying to help the God Father of Progressive Rock adjust his sound, while he is playing just inches away from you!

Keep on Jammin’

Don Kirshners Rock concert

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Don Kirshners’ Rock concert brought us the best that Rock & Roll had to offer. It was the best and most viewed music show on television during my youth … and we thank you for it Don, wherever you are these days. This music variety show premiered on September 29, 1973 and sadly ended on January 1, 1981.

I can vividly remember staying home and watching this show countless nights, seeing musical giants strutting the stage! My mind would wander, imagining myself performing with these greats. I thought about how in the hell, what did these guys do to make the guitar sound like that? Did they sell their souls to the devil for unearthly musical powers?

At the time, Don Kirshners Rock concert was a land that I wanted to go to and be part of some how, some way. I now realize that this show helped me to become hooked on guitar playing.

The shows that really were embedded in my mind were Black Sabbath, Frank MarinoPoco, Brownsville Station , Kool and the Gang (as a young guitar player, these guys were out of sight man!), and John Klemmer (I distinctly remember this being my first exposure to jazz guitar playing).

Here is just a PARTIAL list of the musical who’s who of Rock, that played on the show, as well as helped forge my R & R experience for years to come!

Bad Company, Badfinger, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Black Sabbath, Brownsville Station, Joan Baez, Pat Benatar, Black Oak Arkansas, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Blue Öyster Cult, David Bowie, The Byrds, Harry Chapin, Cheap Trick, Jim Croce, Devo (one of my favorites!), The Doobie Brothers, Eagles
Earth, Wind & Fire, Edgar Winter Group, Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, Foghat, Golden Earring, The Guess Who, The Hollies, James Gang (the guy who lived down the street played in this band, Domenic Triano), Billy Joel, Johnny Winter, Kansas, B.B. King, Kiss, Mahogany Rush, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Frank Marino, Don McLean, Ted Nugent, New York Dolls, Billy Preston, Prince & The Revolution, Ramones (the ultimate wedding band, imagine the version of the bird dance!), Lou Rawls
The Rolling Stones, Todd Rundgren, Rush (my home town band from Toronto), Santana, Seals and Crofts, Sly & the Family Stone, The Stampeders, (love these guys!), Steely Dan, Steve Miller Band, UFO, Uriah Heep, War, Weather Report, and T.Rex. Holly shit batman, what a partial list that was!

I ask people at work if they remember anything about this show and most of the time I get these blank stares looking back at me. Is it just me, or was this show one of the greatest shows to watch as a kid?

God bless Don Kirshner, where ever you are!

Keep on Jammin’ Don

Gatemouth has got the real blues

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I came across the tragic tale of the late great Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown today and just had to share it with you all.

a musician’s musician who blended genres into what he called “American music, Texas style.”

It starts out with the great blues man and his life and times.

Frank Zappa was influenced heavily by this great guitarist, it’s one of those from the file of “I did not know that” . Then came Katrina that wiped out his beloved home in Slidell, La., on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain a suburb of New Orleans, and also took his beloved 1977 black Cadillac.

He then moves back to Orange county,his home state of Texas, awaiting for his New Orleans to right itself. Unfortunately while there he dies just 2 weeks later of lung cancer. He was later buried in an all-black cemetery located on the west side of the Sabine River called Hollywood Community Cemetery, but the story doesn’t end there.

Hurricane Rita moves into the picture at this point in his story. She now forces his casket, like many others, from the ground. The whereabouts of his remains are unsure.

Canada’s Streetheart

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I never knew this, but the band Streetheart was Canadian band! Hum, something else for us to be proud of!

These guys were the first big rock concert that I saw at Ivor Wynne Stadium (originally Civic Stadium) in Hamilton! This was when Under my thumb was huge back when I was younger!

The band had so many hits over the years that they just seemed to be one of those bands that stood the test of time.

They weren’t always in your face, but were there politely sitting in the background, waiting for their turn.

Songs that stick out in my mind were Action, Hollywood, Here comes the night and Snow White.

Anyone else heard of these guys? I’m not sure if they were just big in Canada, but remained mainly obscure in the rest of the world.

Keep on Jammin’

Paradise Skies Max Webster

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This was, in my mind, Canada’s greatest Rock and Roll band of all time!

I think they had more in the tank then they let on.

This is a really weird video from a show called UK Gold. This was when the band was touring support of the Million Vacations album. So, for all you Max fans out there, Enjoy!

Keep on Jammin’ Max and the Maxa Machine!

Seven Ages of Rock

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The BBC has produced one more gem of the documentary! This informative Rock and Roll documentary titled the Seven Ages of Rock was great to watch right from start to finish.

It was my wife’s birthday this past weekend and while at home eating her favorite Greek take-out food, we came across this amazing show that i just happened to tape earlier on in the week. The segment we took in was the We are the Champions section. It talked about, and with, some of the Arena Rock bands and how they achieved mastering this part of our R & R experience. The BBC brought us through it’s evolution of this period and how it shaped us morally and politically and it didn’t disappoint.

We both love all the bands of that era and the way they explored the sequence of it. Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Police, U2, Dire Straights, Kiss and to a lesser extent Springsteen. I realize I’ll take some heat for my comment about Springsteen from some of my readers, but that is for another future post.

This one hour doc was even making our puppy Midnight sit up and take notice (we’ll take any help to settle her down where we can get it!) It had all of the standard nostalgic rock doc footage, but it also brought us behind the scenes of the bands inner workings of their business dealings. The best and most insightful in this regard was from The Police’s Stewart Copeland.

The hats off best musical guitar lesson was from Mark Knopfler. He just casually picks up his trusty axe and shows us how he plays Money for Nothing from the 1985 album Brothers in Arms. That was just plain and simply amazing!

I’ve tried for years to figure out this song in many different ways, but I was never quite satisfied with my own end results. So when he picked up his Les Paul, and started showing us exactly how he plays this tune practically note for note, I almost died! So did my wife because we have a PVR (or TVo to my US readers) that allows me to go back and forth to pick apart any section of the video that is recorded with ease.

Having and using this piece of technology, is what helps in driving my wife up the wall and down the other side. The other is when I re-play the song for ever, because I am so annul in reproducing ANY song on guitar. If you have the ability to tape this part of the program and you honestly want to play this tune properly, them tape it! You WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!

OR, just check this out!

The only bands that where noticeable absent in the segment was Pink Floyd and The Who. Thank God they were in the first two programs. Otherwise, we both give this one 2 thumbs up! And, if the situation presented itself, I’d get the DVD for my collection … and I can be quite tight with my money!

Keep on Jammin’

How long should an election take

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This past Sunday, the Prime Minister of Canada, dissolved the government, thus opening the door for an October 14th Federal Election. From start to finish, the process will take 37 days.

This, I promise, will be a short (just like me) general post!

My wife in I live in the Danforth area of Toronto, which happens to be in Jack Layton’s NDP ridings. The biggest musical supporters are the Barenaked Ladies, which I find outlandishly entertaining! I’ve never seen them live before, but I hope to ends this little streak soon.

So my question here is, why does it take America about 2 years to do it? To us Canadians, it seems like the US elections has been dragging on for years now. This isn’t a regular length of time, is it? Why is it taking so long?

Keep on Jammin’

So how was your summer of 2008

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Ours was uneventful, but we all had a ball just hanging out together! It rained like it’s never had before, but we hung in there.

IMG_4908 copy Our area rec’d the most rainfall ever and we’re expecting an early winter, at least we’re not receiving any of that nasty hurricane weather like our neighbors to the south, hang in there gang!. We don’t mind the fall at all, but this last winter we had record snow fall. It could have been worst!

We went swimming in Lake Ontario multiple times, went walking through some neat streams in our immediate area and had a beer on a really nice, high end patio with midnight at Woofstock 2008!

It was our first summer with Midnight, since she was a puppy when we first got her, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world! The pictures that midnight will remind both of us of the fun we had during those cold winter months. IMG_4893

So let’s sit back, enjoy and savor these last warm summer evenings in the lawn chairs and have a light refreshing beverage (that’s code for wobbly pop) like we are with midnight, as we speak! No, she has her own seat at the backyard table, it wasn’t mine.

What did you guys do over the summer?

Until we drink again!

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