My first band, The Groot Velours (1987-1990) released a 7 song cassette in 1989, In God's Basement. The song "(I Get So) Hysterical" was included on the compilation What's All The Fuzz About (What Wave) out of London, Ontario in 1989 and has since been digitized and archived by CHRW in London. The production wasn't the best and the final mix seems to be sped up a bit making my voice sound a bit chipmunkish and overall the sound is tinny. Having said that, the song was actually pretty good and the main riff was cool. The mp3 that's out there is corrupted and you can't download it properly. Since then it has been linked to a few sites, but without any info on the band and a slightly wrong title.
For the record, here are the proper credits:
(I Get So) Hysterical (Schilling-Smith-Willett)
The Groot Velours
Produced by the Groot Velours
Engineer: unknown
The Groot Velours line-up
Mark Schilling: vocals
Rick Smith: guitar
Rob Willett: bass
Craig Caron: drums (1988-1990)
Jeff Sheeler: drums (1987-1988)
I hope to remaster the Groot Velours recordings as well as the recordings of my next band Liber Null (1992-1995) and put out some sort of compilation to download.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
I, Hipster Doofus
I am currently listening to Scott Walker's The Drift. What do I think of it? Do I like it? I've read that it's difficult. It's his first album since 1995 and the album he released that year, Tilt, is apparently even more difficult. The Trouser Press describes it thus: "[Tilt is] almost unclassifiable. While it recalls Tim Buckley's Starsailor for the uncompromising boldness and a tendency toward dissonance and atonality, it's unique as an epic psychodrama. Tilt suggests an experimental-industrial opera with a pared-down, cut-up libretto; an unnerving cycle of fragmented, minimalist lieder. The contrast with Walker's more straightforward earlier work is staggering."
The Drift continues this approach, and again the Trouser Press warns us that the album "suggests an artist bent on exorcising all popular nuances from his work, stripping it of triviality, light, levity and easy pleasure."
Who, exactly, is Scott Walker? You may be familiar with the Walker Brothers. They had a hit in the mid-60s called "Make It Easy On Yourself." (You know it). They were a bit of a response to the Righteous Brothers and were made up of three Americans, none of them brothers or Walkers, who, having been rejected commercially in the US, moved to the UK. (Being in the middle of swinging London, and, away from the draft, was a bonus). The Walker Brothers had a few hits in Britain and in the late 60s Scott released some solo records, four titled Scott (numbered 1-4 on CD reissues to make things easier) and as a solo artist, Scott Walker became well-known (in the UK and Europe) for both his striking, deep baritone, his lush songwriting and his interpretations of Jacques Brel.
The Walker Brothers did some nostalgic, money-making reunions, and Scott continued to release dark pop records. He was also becoming a favourite of a new creed of rock snob, the Hipster Doofus. The descendents of Lester Bangs, Hipster Doofuses were mainly university educated men (often MAs, and almost always humanities majors) who not only took music very seriously, but glommed onto several specific iconoclasts, who tended to be obscure, but, and here's the important part, still connected to the mainstream somehow. The point is, you have not heard of Music God A, but you should have, since he wrote Song X for Band C, or produced songs for Singer T and so on. The musical snobbery is subtle: this is not necessarily inaccessible music, just misunderstood, or maybe the timing wasn't right, or they were fucked around by an unsympathetic record company. Here's some examples:
Lee Hazelwood, producer, singer, songwriter of odd country-tinged pop songs which he sings in a rough Texas drawl. Why you might know him: he wrote and produced "These Boots Are Made for Walking" for Nancy Sinatra.
Gene Clark, singer, songwriter, a pioneer of country-rock and recorded several records which are acclaimed but sold nothing. A self-destructive sort, he was supremely talented but his fear of touring and performing live and his crippling insecurities led to a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse and he pretty much pissed off everyone in the music business and burned every bridge along the way. Why you might know him: he was the original singer and main songwriter for the Byrds. He was the one standing in the middle with the tambourine, he wrote some great songs on the Byrds' first two albums, plus "Eight Miles High" which was on their third, but he left the group before that album was finished, mainly because of his fear of touring and flying, but also because his songs were routinely set aside in favour of Bob Dylan covers. He recorded several solo LPs and records with Dillard-Clark and an claimed late 80s comeback with Carla Olson of the Textones, So Rebellious a Lover, and basically created the template for alt.country (and even here he's overshadowed by Gram Parsons). Gene succumbed to his demons and liver disease a few months after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Byrds.
Scott Walker, singer, songwriter. Walker made lush pop records and later some really strange minimalist, experimental records. Why you might know him: the Walker Brothers and "Make It Easy On Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore."
Others to google: Joe Meek, the Free Design, Alex Chilton.
Not counted: The Velvet Underground, because they never had a hit and you've heard of them. Hipster Doofuses love VU of course, but it provides no Hip Cred to name-drop VU or Lou Reed, John Cale or Nico. (You may mention that Moe Tucker played drums for Half Japanese or made some cool solo records or Sterling Morrison played guitar for Luna on "Friendly Advice" and "Great Jones Street" on Bewitched. Bonus points for mentioning that Doug Yule had a band in the 70s called American Flyer and that he was the only official member of VU not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and that Nico was never a member of the Velvet Underground, hence The Velvet Underground and Nico).
What about Syd Barrett or Roky Erickson? I haven't decided. What about outsider music like the Shaggs or Jandek? Different category. Another category still covers Love.
* * *
I've just finished listening to Scott Walker's The Drift. What do I think of it? Do I like it? It is difficult. I'll need to listen to it a few more times. I do like his early solo stuff. And here I begin to ponder my own Hipster Doofus status. Why do I like the oddball music icons? Is it about Cred? Long before I listened to much of this music, I was a fanatic about 60s music (I still am) and that included the Byrds. I was aware of Gene Clark as a songwriter and had heard that he released some solo records that never sold much. Scott Walker, the Free Design and a few others came to me through reputation, mostly reading about them. Did I then force myself to like this music? Play the first Scott album for someone. What did they think? Sounds like adult contemporary, right? What about the Free Design? "Kites Are Fun"? It's kind of like the Association ("Cherish", "Never My Love", "Windy"). Now, are they cool? So why is the Free Design cool? What about the Hipster Doofus deification of Burt Bacharach? Isn't that what grown-ups listened to in the 60s when their kids were listening to the Stones and Hendrix?
The Drift continues this approach, and again the Trouser Press warns us that the album "suggests an artist bent on exorcising all popular nuances from his work, stripping it of triviality, light, levity and easy pleasure."
Who, exactly, is Scott Walker? You may be familiar with the Walker Brothers. They had a hit in the mid-60s called "Make It Easy On Yourself." (You know it). They were a bit of a response to the Righteous Brothers and were made up of three Americans, none of them brothers or Walkers, who, having been rejected commercially in the US, moved to the UK. (Being in the middle of swinging London, and, away from the draft, was a bonus). The Walker Brothers had a few hits in Britain and in the late 60s Scott released some solo records, four titled Scott (numbered 1-4 on CD reissues to make things easier) and as a solo artist, Scott Walker became well-known (in the UK and Europe) for both his striking, deep baritone, his lush songwriting and his interpretations of Jacques Brel.
The Walker Brothers did some nostalgic, money-making reunions, and Scott continued to release dark pop records. He was also becoming a favourite of a new creed of rock snob, the Hipster Doofus. The descendents of Lester Bangs, Hipster Doofuses were mainly university educated men (often MAs, and almost always humanities majors) who not only took music very seriously, but glommed onto several specific iconoclasts, who tended to be obscure, but, and here's the important part, still connected to the mainstream somehow. The point is, you have not heard of Music God A, but you should have, since he wrote Song X for Band C, or produced songs for Singer T and so on. The musical snobbery is subtle: this is not necessarily inaccessible music, just misunderstood, or maybe the timing wasn't right, or they were fucked around by an unsympathetic record company. Here's some examples:
Lee Hazelwood, producer, singer, songwriter of odd country-tinged pop songs which he sings in a rough Texas drawl. Why you might know him: he wrote and produced "These Boots Are Made for Walking" for Nancy Sinatra.
Gene Clark, singer, songwriter, a pioneer of country-rock and recorded several records which are acclaimed but sold nothing. A self-destructive sort, he was supremely talented but his fear of touring and performing live and his crippling insecurities led to a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse and he pretty much pissed off everyone in the music business and burned every bridge along the way. Why you might know him: he was the original singer and main songwriter for the Byrds. He was the one standing in the middle with the tambourine, he wrote some great songs on the Byrds' first two albums, plus "Eight Miles High" which was on their third, but he left the group before that album was finished, mainly because of his fear of touring and flying, but also because his songs were routinely set aside in favour of Bob Dylan covers. He recorded several solo LPs and records with Dillard-Clark and an claimed late 80s comeback with Carla Olson of the Textones, So Rebellious a Lover, and basically created the template for alt.country (and even here he's overshadowed by Gram Parsons). Gene succumbed to his demons and liver disease a few months after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Byrds.
Scott Walker, singer, songwriter. Walker made lush pop records and later some really strange minimalist, experimental records. Why you might know him: the Walker Brothers and "Make It Easy On Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore."
Others to google: Joe Meek, the Free Design, Alex Chilton.
Not counted: The Velvet Underground, because they never had a hit and you've heard of them. Hipster Doofuses love VU of course, but it provides no Hip Cred to name-drop VU or Lou Reed, John Cale or Nico. (You may mention that Moe Tucker played drums for Half Japanese or made some cool solo records or Sterling Morrison played guitar for Luna on "Friendly Advice" and "Great Jones Street" on Bewitched. Bonus points for mentioning that Doug Yule had a band in the 70s called American Flyer and that he was the only official member of VU not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and that Nico was never a member of the Velvet Underground, hence The Velvet Underground and Nico).
What about Syd Barrett or Roky Erickson? I haven't decided. What about outsider music like the Shaggs or Jandek? Different category. Another category still covers Love.
* * *
I've just finished listening to Scott Walker's The Drift. What do I think of it? Do I like it? It is difficult. I'll need to listen to it a few more times. I do like his early solo stuff. And here I begin to ponder my own Hipster Doofus status. Why do I like the oddball music icons? Is it about Cred? Long before I listened to much of this music, I was a fanatic about 60s music (I still am) and that included the Byrds. I was aware of Gene Clark as a songwriter and had heard that he released some solo records that never sold much. Scott Walker, the Free Design and a few others came to me through reputation, mostly reading about them. Did I then force myself to like this music? Play the first Scott album for someone. What did they think? Sounds like adult contemporary, right? What about the Free Design? "Kites Are Fun"? It's kind of like the Association ("Cherish", "Never My Love", "Windy"). Now, are they cool? So why is the Free Design cool? What about the Hipster Doofus deification of Burt Bacharach? Isn't that what grown-ups listened to in the 60s when their kids were listening to the Stones and Hendrix?
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Yay Jürgen Habermas!
My man makes it to No. 7 on the top 100 intellectuals list, 2 below the weasle Christopher Hutchins and beating the pants off world domination expert, neocon braintrust, Paul Wolfowitz, coming in at a pathetic No. 18 (which is of course much higher than me, who comes in at 0).
The question that comes to mind, I'm sure, to everyone out there: who's "bubbling under"? I want to know who made nos. 101-103. Any boy band wuss and tween heartthrob like Slavoj Zizek or Pope Benedict XVI can make the top 20 but it takes a special kind of intellectual to be so out of the mainstream that they can't make the main list. Who is the Velvet Underground of the intellegensia? Where's the next Love of deep thinking? Like Iggy once said, "Mario Vargas Llosa, your pretty face is going to hell."
My man makes it to No. 7 on the top 100 intellectuals list, 2 below the weasle Christopher Hutchins and beating the pants off world domination expert, neocon braintrust, Paul Wolfowitz, coming in at a pathetic No. 18 (which is of course much higher than me, who comes in at 0).
The question that comes to mind, I'm sure, to everyone out there: who's "bubbling under"? I want to know who made nos. 101-103. Any boy band wuss and tween heartthrob like Slavoj Zizek or Pope Benedict XVI can make the top 20 but it takes a special kind of intellectual to be so out of the mainstream that they can't make the main list. Who is the Velvet Underground of the intellegensia? Where's the next Love of deep thinking? Like Iggy once said, "Mario Vargas Llosa, your pretty face is going to hell."
Friday, August 05, 2005
Thursday, August 04, 2005
She Comes in Colours
There's a strong urge that builds within you the moment you step out of the final gallery in a blockbuster exhibition at a major museum and into that well-placed giftshop that blocks the exit, so well-placed that it's forehead-slappingly obvious that it's there, so first-year marketing, vulgar, insulting, and yet the urge surges within you to document this moment (which moment? seeing the show? entering the giftshop?), to get some sort of reminder that you were there, and you value that well-earned cynicism that allows you to read through the strategies of any advertising campaign no matter how lithe and dewy-eyed the models who gaze at you (yes, you) through the tv screen and into your world, yet you stand there gazing at Rothko nightlights and you check the price, like somehow, in some strange alternate universe you are going to take that wretchedly-produced post-Pop tchotchky and plug it into your wall so the soft glow of the cheap bulb can flicker near your baseboards and distract your cat for a while.
Remind yourself: what city are you in? Are you a tourist? Are you damp from the Maid of the Mist, standing in line behind Herb and Shirl from Topeka, with a small, soft, polarbear Mountie gripped in your hands? The main question you need to ask yourself is this: can you buy this in New York or London or Paris? If yes, and you're standing in the makeshift satellite giftshop at the TRANS-FORMATION AGO, put down the Frankenthaler keychain, ignore the Morris Louis coasters, and pick up the Jack Bush fridge magnet of Dazzle Red (1965) and feel good that you won't find this at MoMA or Tate Modern or the Pompidou.
The Shape of Colour at the Art Gallery of Ontario closes August 7 and it's a decent way to see some samples of a number of modern and latemodern treatments of colour. Worth seeing is a Robert Motherwell, a massive canvas of powder-blue and thin, jittery, black lines. Clifford Still's roughly painted work stands out as a particularly tactile piece, harsh, not pretty. Ellsworth Kelly's blue and white graphic work is cool and quiet while Barnett Newman and Guido Molinari represent two generations of explorations of large surfaces of colour, solid in every sense of the word, although the younger Molinari moves away from Newman's rigid formalism with a shimmering surface treatment, saturating rather than layering the surface. The intermediary generation are the oft-called second generation abstract expressionists, who awkwardly hold a position in the shadow of the minimalists while waiting for the colour field painters championed by Clement Greenberg (Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella) to mature. These second-wave abstract expressionists, represented here by Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, work with the raw canvas directly, staining the unprimed surface with pigment and oil and the subsequent years see the seepage of the linseed out from the colour and extending the shapes further. Louis and Frankenthaler tend to be rather minor figures, overshadowed by Noland and Stella in the 1960s, while the third generation abstract expressionists resolved the hesitancy of the second-gens, and learned to reconcile the shared language of the colour field artists and minimalists, famously pitted against each other by Greenberg and Michael Fried (think of it as something like the media-invented rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones). It's curious that one of the best examples of the third generation abstract expressionists, Brice Marden, is absent. Marden's extended body of work documents the genealogy of formalist painterly abstraction, from the Classical period of Pollock, Motherwell and Rothko through the half-step of the canvas stainers and finally into the endgame of the colour field painters and minimalism.
Like an afterthought, tucked away in a corner, is a sad little Sir Anthony Caro sculpture, red and deflated. This is what formalist painting did to sculpture. David Smith, Caro's immediate predecessor, created small works to be viewed on pedestals, to extend into the third dimension what the painters were doing on canvas. Of course, to Greenberg, the painters were making paintings that referred to their materiality, their existence as paintings, as paint on canvas, in the real world. That made the position of sculpture rather tenuous. It was a minor art in this particular world, and neither Smith nor Caro seemed to challenge this. Caro's innovation was to flatten the plane of the object. To view an Anthony Caro, one looked straight on, like a painting. It was a flat surface, as if not three dimensional. His more famous works were larger than Smith's and were usually placed on the floor but they were still within the grasp of the viewer as a flat object. Think of it as four views of lines and shapes on four flat picture planes. The Caro piece in The Shapes of Colour on the other hand, sits on the floor as if discarded, the only way to view it is to look down.
Sol LeWitt's monumental string-art installation is a wonder. Red and blue threads trace out large rectangular forms off the walls of one room, quivering. It's both overwhelming and delicate, Richard Serra as interpreted by a group of children.
3 to 1 Groovy Green, part of a series of collaborations between artist Charles Long and the Franco-Anglo band Stereolab, is the stand-out among the contemporary works. A green pod rests on a coffee table with a couch. The surface of the pod is shiny plastic. Listeners can sit on the couch and listen through one of three headsets that plays a loop of a Stereolab song written for the piece. Stereolab makes music that evokes an era of space-age optimism, retro lounge rock sung in mostly French, with la-la-las straight from A Man and a Woman. The pod, the table and the couch would look good in Wallpaper. The tangle of cords from the headsets disturb the polish, the fabricated gleam of a world-weary take on latemodern progressive design, what Long calls "bachelor pad formalism."
Me, I'm looking forward to Catherine the Great: Arts for the Empire: Masterpieces from the State Hermitage Museum, Russia, opening October 1, 2005 at the AGO. Bestial relations with horses never looked so good.*
Remind yourself: what city are you in? Are you a tourist? Are you damp from the Maid of the Mist, standing in line behind Herb and Shirl from Topeka, with a small, soft, polarbear Mountie gripped in your hands? The main question you need to ask yourself is this: can you buy this in New York or London or Paris? If yes, and you're standing in the makeshift satellite giftshop at the TRANS-FORMATION AGO, put down the Frankenthaler keychain, ignore the Morris Louis coasters, and pick up the Jack Bush fridge magnet of Dazzle Red (1965) and feel good that you won't find this at MoMA or Tate Modern or the Pompidou.
The Shape of Colour at the Art Gallery of Ontario closes August 7 and it's a decent way to see some samples of a number of modern and latemodern treatments of colour. Worth seeing is a Robert Motherwell, a massive canvas of powder-blue and thin, jittery, black lines. Clifford Still's roughly painted work stands out as a particularly tactile piece, harsh, not pretty. Ellsworth Kelly's blue and white graphic work is cool and quiet while Barnett Newman and Guido Molinari represent two generations of explorations of large surfaces of colour, solid in every sense of the word, although the younger Molinari moves away from Newman's rigid formalism with a shimmering surface treatment, saturating rather than layering the surface. The intermediary generation are the oft-called second generation abstract expressionists, who awkwardly hold a position in the shadow of the minimalists while waiting for the colour field painters championed by Clement Greenberg (Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella) to mature. These second-wave abstract expressionists, represented here by Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, work with the raw canvas directly, staining the unprimed surface with pigment and oil and the subsequent years see the seepage of the linseed out from the colour and extending the shapes further. Louis and Frankenthaler tend to be rather minor figures, overshadowed by Noland and Stella in the 1960s, while the third generation abstract expressionists resolved the hesitancy of the second-gens, and learned to reconcile the shared language of the colour field artists and minimalists, famously pitted against each other by Greenberg and Michael Fried (think of it as something like the media-invented rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones). It's curious that one of the best examples of the third generation abstract expressionists, Brice Marden, is absent. Marden's extended body of work documents the genealogy of formalist painterly abstraction, from the Classical period of Pollock, Motherwell and Rothko through the half-step of the canvas stainers and finally into the endgame of the colour field painters and minimalism.
Like an afterthought, tucked away in a corner, is a sad little Sir Anthony Caro sculpture, red and deflated. This is what formalist painting did to sculpture. David Smith, Caro's immediate predecessor, created small works to be viewed on pedestals, to extend into the third dimension what the painters were doing on canvas. Of course, to Greenberg, the painters were making paintings that referred to their materiality, their existence as paintings, as paint on canvas, in the real world. That made the position of sculpture rather tenuous. It was a minor art in this particular world, and neither Smith nor Caro seemed to challenge this. Caro's innovation was to flatten the plane of the object. To view an Anthony Caro, one looked straight on, like a painting. It was a flat surface, as if not three dimensional. His more famous works were larger than Smith's and were usually placed on the floor but they were still within the grasp of the viewer as a flat object. Think of it as four views of lines and shapes on four flat picture planes. The Caro piece in The Shapes of Colour on the other hand, sits on the floor as if discarded, the only way to view it is to look down.
Sol LeWitt's monumental string-art installation is a wonder. Red and blue threads trace out large rectangular forms off the walls of one room, quivering. It's both overwhelming and delicate, Richard Serra as interpreted by a group of children.
3 to 1 Groovy Green, part of a series of collaborations between artist Charles Long and the Franco-Anglo band Stereolab, is the stand-out among the contemporary works. A green pod rests on a coffee table with a couch. The surface of the pod is shiny plastic. Listeners can sit on the couch and listen through one of three headsets that plays a loop of a Stereolab song written for the piece. Stereolab makes music that evokes an era of space-age optimism, retro lounge rock sung in mostly French, with la-la-las straight from A Man and a Woman. The pod, the table and the couch would look good in Wallpaper. The tangle of cords from the headsets disturb the polish, the fabricated gleam of a world-weary take on latemodern progressive design, what Long calls "bachelor pad formalism."
Me, I'm looking forward to Catherine the Great: Arts for the Empire: Masterpieces from the State Hermitage Museum, Russia, opening October 1, 2005 at the AGO. Bestial relations with horses never looked so good.*
I Am Curious, Mellow
Okay. This is the Montage meets the Left Banke, which of course is not exactly a major stylistic leap since Mike Brown, the pianist and main songwriter for the Left Banke wrote all the songs for and produced the only album that the Montage recorded. Specifically the Left Banke's Dark is the Bark although I was also thinking maybe My Friend Today but also Men Are Building Sand, which both the Left Banke and the Montage recorded (I guess Mike ran out of songs, but the Montage version is a bit more wee? twee? what would the British music press say?) but in the end this is all very Mike Brownesque.
It's from Sub Pop and I found it on Fingertips Music's This Week's Finds.
Holopaw
Curious
Okay. This is the Montage meets the Left Banke, which of course is not exactly a major stylistic leap since Mike Brown, the pianist and main songwriter for the Left Banke wrote all the songs for and produced the only album that the Montage recorded. Specifically the Left Banke's Dark is the Bark although I was also thinking maybe My Friend Today but also Men Are Building Sand, which both the Left Banke and the Montage recorded (I guess Mike ran out of songs, but the Montage version is a bit more wee? twee? what would the British music press say?) but in the end this is all very Mike Brownesque.
It's from Sub Pop and I found it on Fingertips Music's This Week's Finds.
Holopaw
Curious
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Ayler, Cops
In late July Boing Boing posted a link to a site offering advise on how to deal with the police, particularly in New York, when confronted to be searched. What are your rights when refusing to be searched? The post is archived here and the link to the site is here. It's a good read, pretty thorough, but it only applies to the US. It got me thinking about my own rights in Canada and a couple of things in particular struck me. In Canada we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but I'm certain that there are limits and differences in search and seizure procedures. The problem of course, is that Canadians are familiar with American laws through TV cop shows and there are assumptions that we have Miranda rights or something similar (obviously called something else). Plus, Canadians can be a compliant lot and when asked by a cop to open your bag, I'm guessing a (small?) majority of Canadians would comply without thinking.
I'm hoping I'm wrong, but the problem remains that there's not much info out there dealing with specifically Canadian laws. What are my rights? Can a cop enter my home without a warrant, or search my car, or ask me to open my backpack in the subway? The likelihood of terrorists hitting Toronto transit is small and the chair of the Toronto transit authority already stated that there would be no random bag checks in the near future. But I still don't know all my rights.
I emailed Cory Doctorow, the Boing Boinger who posted the link, and he forwarded my question to Michael Geist. Michael was nice enough to email me to let me know that he wasn't aware of any Canadian websites that had similar info but he would suggest it to a couple of organizations that may be in a position to produce something.
A long, long time ago, two friends and I were driving around my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. We were pulled over by three police cars, including a station wagon with a mean-looking drug-sniffing dog. They said there was a report of a suspicious car driving in the neighbourhood and pointed to my friend in the front passenger seat (I was driving) and said, "that's the one" to each other. They asked for ID from me and him and we produced it. It was only later that I thought about this. The cops had the authority to pull me over if my car answered a description. They had the authority to ask me for ID as the driver. But they had no right to ask my friend for his ID. Anyway, nothing happened, but it's made me wary of these sorts of things and it's about time I'm sure of my rights.
Albert Ayler
Ghosts: First Version
Ghosts (Live)
In late July Boing Boing posted a link to a site offering advise on how to deal with the police, particularly in New York, when confronted to be searched. What are your rights when refusing to be searched? The post is archived here and the link to the site is here. It's a good read, pretty thorough, but it only applies to the US. It got me thinking about my own rights in Canada and a couple of things in particular struck me. In Canada we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but I'm certain that there are limits and differences in search and seizure procedures. The problem of course, is that Canadians are familiar with American laws through TV cop shows and there are assumptions that we have Miranda rights or something similar (obviously called something else). Plus, Canadians can be a compliant lot and when asked by a cop to open your bag, I'm guessing a (small?) majority of Canadians would comply without thinking.
I'm hoping I'm wrong, but the problem remains that there's not much info out there dealing with specifically Canadian laws. What are my rights? Can a cop enter my home without a warrant, or search my car, or ask me to open my backpack in the subway? The likelihood of terrorists hitting Toronto transit is small and the chair of the Toronto transit authority already stated that there would be no random bag checks in the near future. But I still don't know all my rights.
I emailed Cory Doctorow, the Boing Boinger who posted the link, and he forwarded my question to Michael Geist. Michael was nice enough to email me to let me know that he wasn't aware of any Canadian websites that had similar info but he would suggest it to a couple of organizations that may be in a position to produce something.
A long, long time ago, two friends and I were driving around my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. We were pulled over by three police cars, including a station wagon with a mean-looking drug-sniffing dog. They said there was a report of a suspicious car driving in the neighbourhood and pointed to my friend in the front passenger seat (I was driving) and said, "that's the one" to each other. They asked for ID from me and him and we produced it. It was only later that I thought about this. The cops had the authority to pull me over if my car answered a description. They had the authority to ask me for ID as the driver. But they had no right to ask my friend for his ID. Anyway, nothing happened, but it's made me wary of these sorts of things and it's about time I'm sure of my rights.
Albert Ayler
Ghosts: First Version
Ghosts (Live)
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
The Drells, Homer
This is courtesy Illegal Arts MP3s an excellent source for music and audio downloads, programmed more-or-less monthly by guest curators. The track is the classic late-60s R&B wonder Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells. (Simpsons reference: when Bart wants to get a job, Homer recounts his one-man band as a teen, and in the flashback tells the gathered crowd that he's Archie Bell "and I'm also the Drells and this is how we Tighten Up!" He plays the scratchy riff and is then attacked by an organ-grinder monkey).
Illegal Art's July programmer Decomposure sums up the song nicely:
This is courtesy Illegal Arts MP3s an excellent source for music and audio downloads, programmed more-or-less monthly by guest curators. The track is the classic late-60s R&B wonder Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells. (Simpsons reference: when Bart wants to get a job, Homer recounts his one-man band as a teen, and in the flashback tells the gathered crowd that he's Archie Bell "and I'm also the Drells and this is how we Tighten Up!" He plays the scratchy riff and is then attacked by an organ-grinder monkey).
Illegal Art's July programmer Decomposure sums up the song nicely:
i know there's some marginally talented rapper out there itching to deface this song with another stinking pile of insincere cliches, and this song is just too perfect to allow that. If you can crank this up, hear that beautiful bassline in the breakdown and not feel protective of this song, you have no soul.
The Church, Cows
I figured this was as good a way of starting this off as any, with a link to a free mp3 of a newish track by the Church. If you don't know the Church, they're a great, underrated band from Australia, most famous for Under the Milky Way, a late-80s hit (you know it). The track here, Till the Cows Come Home is a great little song, a bit atypical for them, mostly acoustic, somewhat goofy. The Church have never been aclaimed for their humour, though it's there if you want to find it. I saw them twice in Toronto, a city the Church hate, back in '88 and '90. (The band has expressed disdain for Toronto in a couple of interviews, citing the too-cool mentality that does permeate Toronto at times). During the first show in '88, the humour from the band was dry, and maybe a little black. Much sneering at the audience shouting out for Milky Way, asking someone in particular to leave and offering to pay him to leave.
I figured this was as good a way of starting this off as any, with a link to a free mp3 of a newish track by the Church. If you don't know the Church, they're a great, underrated band from Australia, most famous for Under the Milky Way, a late-80s hit (you know it). The track here, Till the Cows Come Home is a great little song, a bit atypical for them, mostly acoustic, somewhat goofy. The Church have never been aclaimed for their humour, though it's there if you want to find it. I saw them twice in Toronto, a city the Church hate, back in '88 and '90. (The band has expressed disdain for Toronto in a couple of interviews, citing the too-cool mentality that does permeate Toronto at times). During the first show in '88, the humour from the band was dry, and maybe a little black. Much sneering at the audience shouting out for Milky Way, asking someone in particular to leave and offering to pay him to leave.
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