Category Archives: Music

Music Sundays | Regret | Blue Nile

May 26, 2019fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, Stories of a Life, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

In the early 1970s, I attended Simon Fraser University. Early on in my student career, I met the head of Medical Services at SFU, Dr. Ed Lipinski, one of the most impressive men I’ve ever met. He asked if we might meet from time to time, that given my various political involvements of the day, he said he found me “fascinating”, and would like to get to know me better.
Now, as it happens, Dr. Lipinski was a psychiatrist, a dedicated and gifted therapist, for a long period of time the head of the World Psychiatric Association, and someone that every person of influence, in administration and among the student body at SFU, saw on a regular basis.
Ed made things happen.
For me, that meant bursaries and scholarships, and paving the way for whatever I needed. In addition, as a journalist / editor at the student newspaper, The Peak, Ed Lipinski ensured that I had access to senior administration officials, who almost inevitably became “unnamed sources” for a series of provocative articles I wrote over the years.
Had Ed not died in a car accident along the Algarve in Portugal in 1981, my life would have been much different. Ed was 100% on my side, he had influence with the Courts, and in the political, banking, and corporate worlds — apart from being a first-rate psychiatrist, Dr. Ed Lipinski, British Columbia’s first forensic psychiatrist knew how to connect influential people to get things done. Dr. Lipinski was, then, our province’s trusted figure.
In 1972, as was occurring more frequently, Cathy and I were experiencing one of several episodes of turbulence in our marriage — I was giving serious thought to leaving her, calling it quits. Here’s what Ed said to me …

“Raymond, imagine that you’re 63 years of age, it’s 3 a.m. on a chilly winter’s morning, and you’re lying in bed all on your own. You’ve been on your own for awhile now. No marriage. No relationships with women who you love. No one to share your life with, just you taking responsibility for yourself. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be alone as I approach the latter third of my life, or do I want to share my life with a woman I love?’ Raymond, should you leave Cathy, is that a decision that you will regret? Do you honestly want to face the prospect of lying their at 3 a.m. alone, with no one to turn to, and no one with whom you can share your life?”

The impact at the time of Ed asking me those questions was to return home to Cathy, and make a renewed effort to preserve our marriage.
Now, of course, I am just shy of 69 years of age, and alone. But not lonely.
Would I prefer to be in a relationship with a woman I love? Yes, I would — and you only have to know me to know that for me, hope reigns eternal. I am an optimist about love, as I am about my political involvement, and almost every aspect of my life. When I reflect on my life now, I believe I am, overall, satisfied with my life.
Still & all, when I’m lying in bed at 3 a.m., I think back to that conversation with Ed Lipinski in 1972, and reflect on the fact that I am alone.
In respect of the matter of regret, up until 1997 I was, every moment of the day, as I had been for years, filled with regret and, as it happens, self-loathing. There was so much that I regretted about my life, things I wished I had done differently. Fortunately, I had another gifted therapist, Max, in my life who was able to present to me a logically consistent argument as to why I should look forward and not back, that the decisions I had taken in the past that I had come to regret were things I could do nothing about.
What I could do was each and every day work towards becoming a better, more sensitive and thoughtful, more whole and more generous person.

Glaswegian Paul Buchanan, lead singer and founder of the Scottish trio, Blue Nile.

Still and all, I do reflect from time to time on the regrets of my life, and the better decisions I might have made. As such, the music of Glaswegian Paul Buchanan and his two band mates in the 90s Scottish trio, The Blue Nile, speaks to me in the early hours of the morning, and when I am feeling in a melancholic mood, the song Regret speaks to the deepest part of my soul.

Music Sundays | Early ’60s | Phil Spector | The Wall of Sound

May 19, 2019A & E, Music, Pop CultureRaymond Tomlin

Growing up in the ’60s, in the era of Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound, The Beachboys, The Beatles — and all the groups who were a part of The British Invasion — was to feel vibrant and alive, hopeful for a better world for all, within a revolutionary era of societal change that spanned the globe.
Music served to awaken a younger generation to the possibility of change, to define an era for themselves, and be moved to work collectively for the betterment of society. And as anarchist Emma Goldman was wont to say, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” There was no music better to dance to than the music of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.

An excerpt from Danny Tedesco’s very fine 2008 documentary, The Wrecking Crew, in which Cher, American record producer and recording engineer, Bones Howe, bassist Carol Kaye, drummers Hal Blaine, and more, exclaim about Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound.

To attain the Wall of Sound, Spector’s arrangements called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling or tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer tone.
For example, Spector would often duplicate a part played by an acoustic piano with an electric piano and a harpsichord. Mixed well enough, the three instruments would then be indistinguishable to the listener.
Additionally, Spector incorporated an array of orchestral instruments (strings, woodwind, brass and percussion) not previously associated with youth-oriented pop music. Reverb from an echo chamber was highlighted for additional texture, which he characterized as “a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids”. The intricacies of the technique were unprecedented in the field of sound production for popular music

Imagine being 12 years old, turning on the radio and hearing Darlene Love and The Crystals, The Ronettes, Smoky Robinson and The Miracles, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, The Zombies, The Righteous Brothers, The Kinks, The Beach Boys, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Mary Wells, The Drifters, Chris Montez, Dionne Warwick, Martha and the Vandellas, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, and more, so much more — in the early ’60s, the hits really did ‘keep on comin‘, Vancouver’s CKLG part of the musical revolution.
Today on VanRamblings, a musical tribute to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, which in an era of one track studios embodied a revolutionary approach to the recording of music, setting a standard that prevails to this day, in the complex arrangements of your very favourite progressive bands and artists.

Music Sundays | Allison Moorer | Transcending Tragedy

May 12, 2019A & E, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, Pop Culture, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Sisters & country musicians Shelby Lynne (l) & Allison Moorer share the pain of tragedy

When Allison Moorer was but a young strip of a girl, just turned 14 years of age and in Grade 9 at Theodore High School in Mobile, Alabama, and her older sister, Shelby Lynne, who was at age 17 preparing for the prom and her upcoming graduation, their estranged father, Vernon, an itinerant musician and English teacher at the girls’ school, turned up at their home.
Outside the house, he and the girls’ mother, Laura Lynn Smith — who had long had an intensely loving yet troubled relationship with Vernon — became involved in a heated squabble. Vernon wanted to return to the family home, a prospect Laura Lynn told him she was unwilling to consider.
Meanwhile, with their mother ordering the two girls to stay in the house, with Shelby and Allison now cowering inside their home just by the bay window looking out onto the front lawn, Vernon pulled out a gun and shot their mother dead, turning the gun on himself and taking his life, as well.
It’s the kind of horrifying loss that, as Moorer has said, some teenagers might not have survived. But Moorer and Lynne did more than survive. Both went on to successful careers in the music industry, becoming huge names and best-selling progressive artists most closely associated with the country music genre, each with their own, distinctive & stellar solo careers.

Allison Moorer, 46, is hardly the first artist to emerge from Nashville with songs defined by darkness and desperation; one recalls the brief lives of Hank Williams, addicted to painkillers & booze, dead at 29; and Patsy Cline (‘Oh Lord, I sing just like I hurt inside’) who at 30 died in a plane crash.
With the help of her grandparents and her sister, Allison Moorer completed high school, going on to attend college at the University of South Alabama, where she graduated with a B.A. in Communications in June of 1993.
Having grown up in a musical family, where she started singing harmony as early as age 3, throughout her time at university Moorer earned tuition and living expenses by working as a backup singer to various Nashville artists, along the way meeting and falling in love with a guy, Doyle “Butch” Primm, who became her collaborator, co-writer, co-producer, and husband.

In 1998, with Doyle producing, Allison Moorer recorded her début album, Alabama Song, which went on to become the best-selling progressive country album of the year, the first song released from the album, A Soft Place to Fall, chosen by writer / director / actor Robert Redford as feature song on the soundtrack of his Oscar-nominated film, The Horse Whisperer.
Subsequently, the best-selling A Soft Place to Fall went on to a receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, with Moorer singing her hit song on the Oscar telecast in March 1999, trying not think about the then one billion people who were tuned in to watch the Academy Awards.
Over the years, both Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne have found a place of significance in my music collection, for nigh on 20-plus years now.

Music Sundays | Gorgeous Dream Pop Canadian Music | Yeah!

May 5, 2019A & E, Canada, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Oshawa Ontario-based dream pop group, Dizzy, winner of the 2019 Juno award for Best Alternative Album, Baby Teeth. Dizzy was also up for the Best Alternative Group Juno.

Mid-week last week, I was listening to Gloria Macarenko’s afternoon CBC show, On the Coast (I will say, I much preferred Stephen Quinn in the afternoon, alas). Ms. Macarenko was speaking with frequent guest, Andrea Warner, who was in the studio to discuss a Canadian music group of some note, all but anonymous to the uninitiated (that’s you and me), but as presented by the erudite Ms. Warner, worthy of your time & consideration.
This past week, Ms. Warner wished to tell all of us how much she loved recent Juno award winners, Oshawa’s dream pop group Dizzy, who recently picked up the Alternative Album of the Year Juno award for their absolutely outstanding début album, Baby Teeth. Dizzy had been up for the Breakthrough Group of the Year Juno at the Halifax-based celebration, but lost to bülow, who VanRamblings also loves and has long been on our iTunes playlist. Quite honestly, the Breakthrough group award oughta have been a tie. Just below, you can hear music from bülow.

Not to confuse you, above is bülow, winners of Breakthrough Group of the Year at this year’s Juno awards ceremony. We’ll get back to writing about Dizzy in just a moment.

Since the release of Dizzy‘s début album, Baby Teeth in 2018, fans in rapture have fallen for Dizzy‘s distinctive vibe (the group has received a great deal of play on CBC Radio 2, as well as on CBC Music).
Dizzy‘s lush and low-key sonic landscape paired with evocative lyrics that run the gamut from confessional, specific and heartfelt to esoteric, universal and wry has captured the imagination of those who became aware of Dizzy‘s distinctive brand of music, and then became fans.
Vocalist / songwriter Katie Munshaw and Charlie Spencer started playing together in high school and were more of an acoustic folk-pop duo than anything fully resembling Dizzy. Over time, the two novice but ambitious musicians sought to stretch their musical chops, the two going on to form a larger, more diverse band that came to include the latter’s three siblings, all one year apart: Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer.
All the band members grew up in and around the ‘burbs of Oshawa, a city that backs onto Lake Ontario. In an interview with New Music Express last year, Alex told the interviewer that the environment in which he grew up “does have its beauty and its little moments of innocence — it’s very quiet and secluded, and that helps nurture our sound in some way.”

On Baby Teeth, it’s obvious how much creativity the band draws from their sleepy hometown. Bleachers and Pretty Thing are intricate compositions that place as much value on hushed moments as on memorable, prickly guitar parts and swooning choruses. Swim, however, bucks the trend with imaginative lines that see the band plead for some escapism: “You are the athlete / I am the astronaut, for thousands of miles I float / Still, you carry me home” | New Music Express, 2018.

So now I imagine, you want to hear what Dizzy sounds like. Here goes …