Wow. What a week (and a half). I feel so incredibly guilty about being late with this – it’s like calling in sick to work to go race go-karts with yr buddies, or something. Except that I don’t have a job to call in sick to, and I have never set ass in a go-kart.
What’s more fun than go-karting could possibly be? Well, for me it is hanging out and playing shows with my good pal from Ottawa, Chris Page. He flew out last Thursday with his roadie/tambourine player/left-winger Johnny and we had a great weekend, gigging here in Calgary, Lethbridge and Edmonton, with another great friend, Mark Davis.
I always learn a valuable life lesson from Page every time I hang out with him (we average a couple visits a year – not enough, in my book), and this past weekend’s words of wisdom were these: When the whiskey shows up, the tambourine disappears.
An inside joke? Yes. But think about that sentence for a while – it’s like some ancient Chinese proverb or something. The more I think about it, the more profound it is. Seriously.
Anyway, we aren’t 18 anymore, and although we tried our best to keep the energy levels up (no time for sleep when you are rocking w/ the Ottawa contingent, lemme tellya), we crashed and burned hard on Sunday – my day for recording covers, which Page was gonna help me out with on this installment. We wound up going to the Blackfoot diner for dinner and then watching Tom Petty and Talking Heads live DVDs, which was pretty awesome, and hitting the sack around 10 PM so we could be up for me to get him to his flight at 6 AM Monday.
Work and life got in the way, and now it is Wednesday, and I had to get back on track with this thing, so this morning I sat down to record the tune Chris and I had planned to do. All I could think about, however, was what a great time we had, and what a great time I have every time I see him. I know I’ve said this before, but I can’t tell you how lucky I am to have friends like him. Where would I be? I dunno, but it would be an awful place, comparatively. Funny – he sings “No-one thinks to save your back/ Or leave the window open just a crack until the hurt becomes fresh air”, which is not true, ‘cuz I know he does.
Sooo… I decided to do one of his songs, instead. I heard him do it 3 or 4 times over the weekend, and it has been running through my brain when I’ve woken up since Friday. It is a great song, from a great album, by the greatest dude. Buy it. You’ll thank me.
For those of you who have driven the #2 highway from the south heading into Calgary (I think it’s around High River), you have probably seen the “More Alberta, Less Ottawa” billboard, put up by these guys. Now, I am not an apologist for our government (they are idiots, most of ’em, no matter what party they belong to) but it could be a lot worse. Not to mention that some of the worst offenders in our nation’s capital are from our (my) own backyard. Like this guy. Or this schmuck. Or this arrogant bonehead (nice Hitler ‘do, BTW).
Anyhoo… (ooofff. Now I’m mad, all of the sudden) all I know is this – if we had more people like, oh, I dunno – every single person I’ve ever met from Ottawa move here, it would be a much, much, MUCH better place. More Ottawa! Same amount of Alberta…
Chris Page’s “Hello Danger Bay”
(Click on the Play button beside the song title to launch the music player
or right-click on the link to download it to your computer.)
