15q’s with GK

Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion is interviewed by The Gazette’s Jeff Heinrich. Here are a few of the 15 questions:

What are you proudest of?

When I was 19, I decided I wanted to be a professional writer and support myself by writing, and I’ve done that.

Any luck with women? What works?

I’ve been married three times and had some long-term girlfriends, and I feel lucky about that. Women like to be adored, and I do, I do, and they like to be spoken to gently and adoringly in words that seem fresh and new, not practised. A writer can manage this.

You tour a lot – about 100 days of the year – and in The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes you describe being “able to halfway get people to believe the stories of where I came from and what I did.” Tell me about that “halfway” and why it’s important to you.

It’s a test of one’s narrative skill, to describe the privations of childhood and the rigours of winter and push your stories over the far edge and still allow people to halfway believe you. It’s what they pay me for.

What’s your relationship to Canada and Canadians?

My father’s family is from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They arrived in 1775 and stuck it out until 1880, trying to raise crops on saltwater marshlands. My grandfather was a ship carpenter and went south to help out his brother-in-law in Minnesota who then croaked and that obligated Grandpa Keillor to stay in America. A good deed that went farther than he’d intended.

The magic of live radio!
You can catch a live ’screening’ of APHC at the cinema this Thursday night in Kirkland?!?!

A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor – Live in HD! screens Thursday at 8 p.m. at Le Colisée Kirkland, 3200 Jean-Yves St., off Hwy. 40 in Kirkland.

a few concerts…

There’re a lot of good concerts coming up in Montreal the next few weeks:

Jan 29th, Centre St. Ambroise. My friend Corey Gulkin is performing with Honeyman and Brothers Farr.

Feb. 4th, Segal Centre Studio. Elephant Stone, a hindi-rock band!

Feb 11th, Il Motore, the Sadies.

Feb 12th, L’Astral. Leif Vollebekk and Basia Bulat.

Feb. 18, Metropolis, Calexico and opening is Great Lake Swimmers as part of the Highlights Festival.

Feb. 20, Owen Pallett formerly Final Fantasy. Violonist. Theatre Outremont also part of the Highlights Festival.

Feb 27, Olympia, Wilco.

Mar. 12, Il Motore, Besnard Lakes, album launch.

Apr. 12, Gésu, Low Anthem.

“The knave abideth”

More Lebowski-related ricketiness!

An excerpt from Adam Bertocci’s Two Gentlemen of Lebowski - yes, that’s right, The Big L rewritten as Shakespeare:

DONALD
Wherefore thou playest not at ninepins on Saturday, Sir Walter?

WALTER
On our most holy Sabbath I am sworn
To keep tradition, form and ceremony.
The seventh and the last day rests the Jew;
I labour not, nor ride in chariot,
Nor handle gold, nor even play the cook,
And sure as Providence I do not roll.
Hath not a Jew rights? Hath not a Jew hands,
Organs, bowling-balls, Pomeranians?
If you schedule us, must you not do right?
If we step o’er the line, do we not mark it nought?
The Sabbath; I’ll roll not, God-a-mercy.

(Thanks boingboing!)

The Dude goes to college

Over the past 12 years or so since the film was first released, The Big Lebowski has bred a big cult following: festivals, drinking games and quotes galore. Now the Coen Bros’ oeuvre is being studied in the academic world – they always catch on sooner or later. There’ve been a few books written on the subject too. Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article on the subject:

In one essay Fred Ashe — he is an associate professor of English at Birmingham-Southern College — profitably compares the Dude to Rip van Winkle, for both his “friendly charisma” and what Washington Irving described as Rip’s “insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor.” Both men, Mr. Ashe notes, expose “the sickness of a straight society premised on the Puritan work ethic.”

In another, “On the White Russian,” Craig N. Owens — he teaches literature and writing at Drake University in Des Moines — divides the world into two factions: those who float the cream on their White Russians (“the floaters”) and those who mix it in (“the homogenizers”). He praises the Dude’s “middle way,” avoiding the hassle of “shaking and straining.”

Italian author Umberto Eco was quoted in the article:

Mr. Eco certainly seemed to presage the existence of “The Big Lebowski” when he wrote in his essay about “Casablanca” that a cult movie must be “ramshackle, rickety, unhinged in itself.” He explained: “Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.”

Glorious Ricketiness indeed!

Movie Posters of the Decade

There’re so many end of year/decade top 10 lists out there… Here’s one I enjoyed, from the auteurs.com: the top 10 movie posters of the decade. These are some of the honourable mentions (If you’re looking for a good obscure comedy see Motel – the top left poster. Man on Wire was riveting):

All Songs Considered Listeners Pick The Best Music Of 2009

Nice compilation of new music from the last 12 months on npr’s All Songs Considered. The list includes Wilco, Neko Case, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver and more. Check ‘em out!

Happy Year End and 2010!

‘The Weight’ – so what’s that song about anyway?

I was listening to The Staple Sisters’ (Soul Folk in Action) album today. There’s a great cover of The Weight by The Band, highly recommended. It’s a great song which I’m sure you know even if you don’t recognize the name. It’s the “take a load off, fanny, take a load for free…” song. I’ve often thought about the lyrics, trying to decipher some meaning, a story, a message. There are so many rich details and characters, most of which are invoked in a word or two, popping up and disappearing, onto the next bit.

I googled around and found this great site dedicated to the song, bordering on obsessive. Peter Viney has gone to great lengths, exploring the song from interviews, articles, rumours and his own imagination. Here are just a few quotes:

Robbie Robertson:
When I wrote ‘The Weight’, the first song for ‘Music From Big Pink’, it had a kind of American mythology I was reinventing using my connection to the universal language. The Nazareth in ‘The Weight’ was Nazareth, Pennsylvania. It was a little off-handed – ‘I pulled into Nazareth’. Well I don’t know if the Nazareth that Jesus came from is the kind of place you pull into, but I do know that you pull into Nazareth, Pennsylvania! I’m experimenting with North American mythology. I didn’t mean to take sacred, precious things and turn them into humour.

Robbie Robertson:
(Buñuel) did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood. People trying to be good in ‘Viridiana’ and ‘Nazarin’, people trying to do their thing. In ‘The Weight’ it’s the same thing. People like Buñuel would make films that had these religious connotations to them but it wasn’t necessarily a religious meaning. In Buñuel there were these people trying to be good and it’s impossible to be good. In ‘The Weight’ it was this very simple thing. Someone says, ‘Listen, would you do me this favour? When you get there will you say “hello” to somebody or will you give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You’re going to Nazareth, that’s where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favour when you’re there.’ This is what it’s all about. So the guy goes and one thing leads to another and it’s like ‘Holy Shit, what’s this turned into? I’ve only come here to say “hello” for somebody and I’ve got myself in this incredible predicament.’ It was very Buñuelish to me at the time.

So what is this “load” that Fanny is asked to take (off)? It alludes to several things, mainly drugs (kilo=load=coke) or a heavy conscience or burden. The article goes into the various possibilities of this well-known lyric as well as several other passages from the song. It includes some very interesting stories about the guys in The Band and some of their ‘associates’, touching on religion, sex, drugs and North American history. (There a few references to Canada – the members were all Canucks except for Levon Helm, who has a great album out, Electric Dirt)

pretty, pretty, pretty,

pretty good pictures.

From National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009

Click here for more.

Fantastic 2D/3D animation from Emilia Forstreuter.

more about “Emilia Forstreuter : Yonder“, posted with vodpod

Classic!

This is post #100!

more about “Classico!“, posted with vodpod

Indie/eed

What is indie music? Ten years ago or so, you might’ve asked ‘what is alternative music’? While the two categories are not synonymous in the music world, there certainly are similarities. These days it seems most people define indie music as a genre of music which defies genre (and is not produced by the four major labels – pretty common nowadays). Alternative was anything we couldn’t classify as something else, ie. rock, metal, pop. I found this piece on npr a couple weeks ago, thought it was an interesting discussion on the topic of indie music. They asked a bunch of music editors and people in the biz (not from the four major labels, of course, the people who manage all the other major minor record labels) for their thoughts on the question “What does ‘indie’ mean to you?” Here are some of the more colourful (visual pun intended) responses:

Dorothy Hong, photographer:
Garage band rock, guitars, white guys in skinny jeans, unshowered, and with crazy unkempt hair, SXSW.

Sam Coomes, musician, Quasi:
Nothing. In the very distant past it signified a non-corporate M.O.

Megan Holmes, photographer:
It used to mean community. Now its just a section at Target.

Carly Starr, international marketing and promotion, Sub Pop Records:
Nothing.

Andrew Leland, managing editor, The Believer:
Sloppy and intelligent electric guitar. Powerful, semi-occluded sex appeal.

These came from the comments section below the article:

• ken whitley (texace) wrote:

Indie may be India misspelled or it could be a pseudo for Indian. It makes me think of music like Asie Payton, R.L. Burnside and Chris Thomas King do – but, I’m old, what do I know, you know.

• Kheir Fakhreldin (Kheir) wrote:

Indie is the new major.

Feel free to add your own opinion in the comments section on this here blog.