My musical tastes run the gamut: progressive and old-timey country, folk, Americana, lounge, progressive dance, klezmer, world beat, Celtic folk, Japanese pop, trip-hop, orchestral, urban pop, hip hop soul, rhythm and blues, acoustic, dirty bass south, avant-garde, europop, gospel, house music, dream pop, trance, ambient and downtempo, acid jazz, rock ballads, post-Britpop — and with all that, I’m only scratching the surface of the types, styles and genres of music I love which constitute the soundtrack of my life, the various genres of music which you’ll come to hear through this screen in the days, weeks, months and years to come.
Where I am a listener and an appreciator of music, with some background in piano and guitar — long forgotten, alas — my son Jude, a recording engineer and D.J. creates his own complex, layered, multi-dimensional music, electronica for wont of a better word. Jude records under the name Dj Nameless, as has been the case for well more than a decade now.
I love well-produced, textured music, and remixes, of which you’ll be hearing a great deal more in the time to come. Today, a remix by New York-based D.J. Branchez of Rihanna’s 2012 chart topper, Stay. When this song pops up on my iTunes playlist, through my bluetooth headphones, when I’m heading downtown to a movie, the bus crowded, rain pelting down on the bus, the wetness of the day permeating not just the clothing but the very souls of the people around me, the Branchez bootleg remix of Stay simply raises my mood — see if it does the same thing for you.
Megan, my great daughter, age 11 (in 1988), am just putting the picture up cuz I like it …
In the 1970s, when I was “co-ordinating” the Tillicum Food Co-operative — honestly, a big deal, a multi-million dollar grassroots endeavour that not only changed eating habits across Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, and beyond, but put power into the hands of activists and working people — as Tillicum’s produce, and some other, suppliers were located in the area just north of Powell Street, and east of Main, Cathy and I would frequently stop in for lunch at the then one and only existing sushi restaurant in Vancouver, The Japanese Deli, I think it was called, or perhaps some other name.
As time passed, as Cathy and I moved into the Interior for me to take a job as a teacher, and she as a Financial Aid worker with the Ministry of Human Resources, and as I moved on from my responsibilities with the Tillicum and Fed-Up Food Co-operatives — although Cathy and I re-invigorated the Shuswap / North Okanagan food co-operative movement in our years in the Interior — we got out of the habit of eating Japanese cuisine.
I recall in the early 1980s attending a garden party at the University of British Columbia, accompanied by my friends Scott Parker and the late Daryl Adams — with whom I worked on the Galindo Madrid Defense Committee, in concert with Gary Cristall and the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Latin America, and Svend Robinson — the food on offer at the sunny, mid-spring afternoon political event, fresh sushi, the first time in years I’d had sushi, although I had long ago mastered the use of chopsticks (which took me four arduous months — one cannot honestly call me the most co-ordinated person in the world, but once I get it, it’s got!).
A couple of summers later, in the summer of 1982, when Megan was a whole five years old, I asked her one summer’s day where she’d like to go for dinner, to which she replied, “Kibune Sushi — it’s my favourite.” So, off Jude, Megan and I went to Kibune Sushi on Yew Street, just up from Kitsilano Beach. Once we’d seated ourselves in the tatami room, after a couple of minutes, the waitperson came by with tea and to take our order. Being the adult present, I set about to order — but, really, what did I know about ordering sushi? Not much I can tell you.
After about 30 seconds of my fumbling around with the menu, Megan looked over at the waitperson and said, pointing in my direction, “He doesn’t know much about Japanese food,” and then turning to me, she said, “Dad, I’ll take over the ordering. You just sit back — we’ll be good.”
Megan, age 5, a ‘take charge’ kind of person, always …
At which point, Megan set about to order …
“Well, given that my dad doesn’t know much about Japanese food, I think we should start him off with chicken yakatori, because that’s really BBQ chicken, and I’m sure he’s familiar with that. An order of chicken yakatori, then. Next, a California roll will hit the spot, I think — I know my dad likes avocado, and my brother and I do, as well. So, an order of one California roll. I like the yam roll, and I think my dad wouldn’t find that too confrontational — so, we’ll have a yam roll, as well.
(looking at me, Megan said) “Now, sooner or later, dad, you’re going to have to get used to eating sashimi. To complete our order, because all three of us are hungry, I’m going to place an order for an assorted sashimi platter,” which the waitperson dutifully wrote down.
So, that’s Megan: in control always, and I do mean always. Honestly, in the entirety of my life, I’ve never seen anything quite like it: Megan sets her mind to do something, and it’s done — almost like magic. Megan is stubborn, she knows her own mind, she knows what she wants, and she always gets her way — it’s simply unprecedented in my experience.
Oh, and did I say that Megan is a lovely, lovely person — tough, but wonderful, possessed of a social conscience, capable of much good, and one of the brightest, most able people I’ve ever met. And I’m not saying that because Megan is my daughter — she is simply a gift of our landscape.
Lord Nelson Elementary School, on Vancouver’s eastside, where I attended Grades 1 thru 3. The portable on the left is where I experienced a happy and rewarding Grade 2, in Mrs. Goloff’s class (I liked her, I thought there was a solid goodness about her and a genuine affection, as well as a deep respect, for students) from September 1957 thru June 1958.
In the summer of 1959, after I’d completed Grade 3 at Lord Nelson Elementary School in Vancouver (my memory of Grade 3 only slight), in August of ’59, my parents moved from Vancouver to Edmonton to be closer to family — on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family.
In Alberta at the time, the provincial government had adopted what they called an “Enterprise Programme,” a focused academic programme meant to engage students intellectually while providing them with the tools they would require to compete successfully at post-secondary university. While all other Canadian provinces had adopted a two stream programme, one academic (university bound), the other vocational (meant to prepare students to work in the trades), Alberta was having none of that — educational achievement at the highest possible level was Alberta’s goal, the curriculum requirements rigorous, demanding and challenging, and consistently above grade level. The Enterprise Programme was defined by competition and the striving to become the best possible student — failure was never an option, doing your best was expected and required, academically and socially. Future leaders were being trained in Alberta.
“The provincial government meant to produce the best and the brightest, informed by a progressive educational ideology that Alberta was the first Canadian province to adopt in the 1950s, an educational philosophy that was child-centred, subject-integrated, with an activity-based approach, known in Alberta as the Enterprise Programme, focused on content centered courses in History, Geography, and Civics integrated into a new course: Social Studies, which was taught across all grade levels, this new subject emphasizing the development of democratic, co-operative behaviour, and inquisitiveness through experiential learning.”
Lynn Speer Lemisko & Kurt W. Clausen, Connections, Contrarities and Convolutions: Curriculum and Pedagogic Reform in Alberta; Faculty of Education, SFU, March 1, 2017
In the summer of 1962, my parents made the decision to return to Vancouver — the reasons are unclear to me, but whatever the case, in the summer of 1962, living at 2136 Venables Street, I found myself enrolled at Templeton Secondary School, then the toughest school in Vancouver (that mantle would soon be claimed by VanTech — but in 1962, Templeton was the school where all the toughest “juvenile delinquents” were enrolled, although truth to tell, many of the tougher students found themselves behind lock and key at the Brannen Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility).
From Grades 7 through Grade 12, I attended Templeton Secondary. Based on my experience in Alberta, I was enrolled in the academic programme at Templeton, whereas every person I’d attended Grades 1 thru 3 with at Lord Nelson found themselves enrolled in the vocational stream. Odd, I thought to myself at the time. Another odd thing I found: from the spring of 1963 on, my grades never soared about a C-average — whereas in Alberta, I’d been a straight A student. Unlike most others enrolled in the academic programme, I was required to take vocational classes — and from Grade 8, I was enrolled in typing and secretarial classes, unlike any other student in the academic stream. Although a typing speed of 160wpm would serve me well later in life, I still found it odd, and just a bit concerning, that I was required to take three clerical classes each year through to graduation.
From Grade 8 on, I was also concerned that when I submitted an essay in Social Studies or one of my English classes, it either came back to me with a C, a D or a fail — with a comment from my teacher that someone other than me had written the essay, or I had either plagiarized or copied directly the work of someone else. By the time I reached Grade 12, where I had achieved an A- average in French, was taking the lead in the school plays, and editing the student newspaper, I was surprised and disappointed to receive a D in English, and a fail in History and Geography.
I recall one spring afternoon in 1968, the teacher having turned down the lights, with soft music playing in the background, the teacher asking the students in my Grade 12 English class to write a stream of consciousness essay, which I was only too happy to do. When I submitted the essay to the teacher, she took a glance at the essay and tore it up, saying to me, “You didn’t write this. You either copied it from someone else or had the essay prepared in advance (note. there had been no notice of a stream of consciousness essay taking place in class that day). You receive a fail for the essay. I’m disgusted with you.”
A dozen years later, I was the Assistant Director of Teacher Training, PDP 401-402 at Simon Fraser University (a position I held while working on my Master’s degree). The English teacher referred to above had taken a seconded position as a PDP Faculty Associate — in essence I was her boss. When we first connected, in September, at the outset of the 1980 academic school year, almost the first words out of her mouth were, “I had a student with your name at Templeton Secondary. How odd that you should both have the same name,” at which point I informed her that the Raymond Tomlin she had taught, and the person standing in front of her was one and the same person. She looked aghast, stammering, “But how?”
I told her I had a 3.8 grade point average and two undergraduate degrees, and was currently enrolled in a Master’s programme at the university, letting her in on what I am about to write and record for posterity now …
In June of 1968, when I was about to graduate, as was the case with all of the other graduating students, I met with Ken Waites, the patrician, white-haired Principal at Templeton Secondary School, in his office with the door closed, and this is what he said to me …
“Well, Raymond, even though you’re a couple of courses short of graduation, given your failing grades in History and Geography, I am nonetheless going to graduate you anyway — because any kind of academic future is clearly not in the cards for you. I want to tell you something that we’ve kept from you for the past five years: for each of those years, you were recorded as having the lowest IQ of any student enrolled in the Vancouver school district, not just at Templeton, but city wide. Your teachers and I had often wondered, given your low IQ, how it is that you locomoted yourself from point A to point B. Someone with as low an IQ as you shouldn’t even be able to speak — but here you are.
You’ve probably wondered to yourself, why you were required to take three clerical courses each of the past five years. The answer is easy: you spell well, and it was clear early on that you had an aptitude for secretarial work, your typing speed and accuracy superior. Your guidance counsellor and I determined a long time ago that the best course in life for you would be to enter the clerical field, to be a secretary — because, clearly, you are possessed of no academic skill whatsoever, although you seem to have done well in French.
I have had these meetings with all graduating students, providing what I believe to be sound advice on how each student should proceed with his life following graduation. In your case, your best — and I would say, your only — hope is as a secretary. Thank you for meeting with me this afternoon, Raymond. All the best in your future.”
In 1970, my new wife insisted I enroll at Simon Fraser University, where students with an inferior academic record were being accepted, in order to build the student body. In my first semester at SFU, I achieved 3 C’s and two B’s. In my second semester, 3 B’s and 2 A’s — and every semester after that, straight A’s (not that I ever cared about grades, as did many of my fellow students — I was just hungry for knowledge, and curious about the world, eager to learn as much as I could, at one point early on not leaving SFU’s Burnaby campus over an 18-month period). I loved to read, I loved to write, I loved to learn, I was curious about everything — being at Simon Fraser University and hanging out with and being challenged by the best and the brightest was like a dream come true for me.
My curiosity about life, about all aspects of our existence on Earth remains to this day — I want to read all of the papers of record every day (and I do!), to engage with nation builders and city builders, to work with persons of conscience, to work towards better, fairer, more just. And I am afforded that opportunity each and every day, surrounded (outside of my plangent housing co-op life) by strong-willed persons of conscience who mean to build a better and more just world. As such, my life is near filled with joy!
As the year draws to a close, the thoughts of music lovers everywhere is the anticipation of the discovery of new music made extant through the publication of the various year-end lists by respected music critics of the best new, under-the-radar music releases of the previous 11 months.
Such was the case during the holiday season in 2000, when the then not-discredited Charlie Rose had on the then not-discredited longtime New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones on his show to discuss the best albums of 2000. Mr. Frere-Jones found himself able to talk about one artist and one artist alone: Kasey Chambers, a then 23-year-old woman raised in the southern Australian outback who, he insisted, had released the best album of the year, the best country album he’d heard in years. Mr. Frere-Jones could not help himself from extolling Ms. Chambers’ many virtues as a singer-songwriter, going on to insist that Mr. Rose, and his other guests around the table that evening — and everyone tuned into PBS’ The Charlie Rose Show first thing the next morning repair to their local record store to secure, or order, Kasey Chambers’ début album release, The Captain.
Enthusiasm exhibited by a usually taciturn critic is a rare commodity at the best of times — critics being a cynical lot, by nature — leaving the viewer of that evening’s episode of The Charlie Rose Show no option other than to purchase The Captain first thing the next day — which, of course, I did.
Kasey Chambers’ music is timeless, as is the case with every song on The Captain. If you’ve not heard The Captain prior to this, you can listen to each of the songs on the album through YouTube, after which I assure you, you’ll want to download the entire album, and make it a part of your music library, and the soundtrack of your life, going forward. Important, really.
Click or tap on this link to listen to & savour Kasey Chambers’ The Captain in its entirety
Kasey Chambers was born in Mount Gambier, the second most populated city in South Australia (urban population: 28,684) early on the Friday afternoon of June 4th, 1976, the younger sister of brother Nash, who was born in 1974. Kasey’s parents, Diane and Bill, were musicians, itinerant farmers and hunters, who wanted nothing to do with big city life.
Mount Gambier’s crystalline Blue Lake
As money was often tight, on the few occasions when the family came to town, given that all members of the family were fine, well-respected musicians, arrangements were made for the family to play a series of concerts, the monies earned enough to pay for supplies until the next time the Chambers family came to town. By 1986, when Kasey was only 10, the family had formed a band called the Dead Ringer Band, so-named because Nash and Kasey looked like younger versions of their parents.
From the outset, it was clear to anyone that heard Kasey Chambers that she was a preternatural talent, Kasey Jo Chambers providing vocals and writing songs for a series of albums released by her parents between 1987 and 1993. When interviewed by the press — word of Kasey’s talent spread quickly across Australia, almost from the outset — she often cited Emmylou Harris as one of her primary influences, recalling that Harris’ music was frequently played by her parents, ever since she was a child.
Kasey Chambers recorded her début solo album, The Captain in July and August of 1998, with her brother Nash producing, and her father Bill on guitar (her parents were in the throes of divorce, so mother Diane played no role in the recording of the album). Joining the family on the recording were American country musicians, Buddy Miller and Julie Miller, who added guitars and vocals to four tracks. The Captain was released in Australia in May 1999, and worldwide, in June 2000 by Asylum Records.
And, as is often said, the rest is transcendent & salutary musical history. Cry Like a Baby went on to win the country music Song of the Year award in 2000, The Captain winning the same award the following year. The next year, Kasey Chambers toured across the globe as the supporting and opening act for Lucinda Williams, who was touring to support her breakthrough, multi-award winning album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
At my insistence, my friend J.B. Shayne (not a fan of country music) and I attended the Lucinda Williams concert at The Vogue in late 2001 — a three-hour concert that blew the roof of the venue — J.B. commenting to me afterwards, “That was like attending a Doors concert. I don’t think I’ve ever heard better musicianship. Lucinda Williams and her band (two drummers / percussionists, two lead guitarists, a rhythm guitarist, a slide guitarist, an organist, and a pianist) are probably the finest band I’ve heard in years. It’s maybe the most stoned concert I’ve ever attended.” And so it was.
Kasey Chambers, of course, was the opening act — and proved to be everything and more that I’d promised J.B. Within minutes, she had the audience in the palm of her hand, clapping, cheering, shouting, and head over heels in love with this Aussie girl who just knocked their socks off, not only performing most of the songs off The Captain, but previewing songs from her new album, Barricades & Brickwalls, produced by her brother Nash, the song Not Pretty Enough going on to win CMA Song of the Year.
