Meat & Potatoes #51

Aired Sunday October 9th.

This week's show was a (somewhat) logical progression from last week's show.  The music was a combination of bands and songs referenced by Michael Herr in his Vietnam War memoir, Dispatches, as well as some other Vietnam War related songs--so I went from the early sixties one week to the late sixties in the next.

I also read from Dispatches, which is a really incredible book.  I hope I was able to convey that on the radio (although it's possible no one was listening, what with it being Thanksgiving this weekend).

1. Wingy Manone--Stop the War (These Cats Are Killing Themselves)
2. Anita Carter--(Love's) Ring of Fire
3. Kenny Rogers--Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town
4. Tom Paxton--Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation
5. Johnny Cash--Ring of Fire
6. Los Bravos--Black is Black
7. Mothers of Invention--Trouble Comin' Every Day
8. The Clash--Sean Flynn
9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience--Purple Haze
10. Cream--Sunshine of Your Love
11. The Doors--Strange Days
12. The Beatles--Day Tripper
13. Tim Buckley--No Man Can Find the War
14. Bob Dylan--Visions of Johanna
15. Buffalo Springfield--For What It's Worth
16. Edwin Starr--War
17. Aretha Franklin--Satisfaction
18. Junior Walker & the All Stars--Shotgun
19. Archie Bell & the Drells--Tighten Up, part I
20. Otis Redding--(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay
21. Bobbie Gentry--Ode to Billie Joe
22. Glen Campbell--Galveston
23. Scott McKenzie--San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)
24. The Beatles--Magical Mystery Tour
25. The Animals--We Gotta Get Out of This Place
26. The Rolling Stones--Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadow?
27. Paul Revere & the Raiders--Hungry
28. Hair soundtrack--Aquarius
29. Hair soundtrack--Hair
30. Sam Roberts--An American Draft Dodger in Vietnam

Meat & Potatoes #50

Aired Sunday October 2nd.

This week's show was inspired by the 1980s dance movie, Shag.  Set in 1963, four girls head off for a weekend of fun in Myrtle Beach and get into all sorts of trouble with boys.  I hadn't seen this movie until recently; I saw Vogue's Dress the Part slideshow this past summer and was instantly enamoured (although in retrospect I disagree with their assessment of Pudge as a tomboy.  She's really not).  It's actually a pretty awful movie in a lot of ways, but the Pudge and Chip storyline makes it worth watching for me.  They're the dancers.

Their big dance at the end of the movie--with Pudge looking so happy and so in love it just kills me--is set to a Lloyd Price song by the name of "Stagger Lee", and when I was getting music together for a Shag-themed show, I discovered that there is a whole lot of history and folklore surrounding this song, and many other songs about Stagger Lee.  To begin with, there are two versions of the Lloyd Price song.  One version has Stagger Lee killing Billy over a gambling dispute; in the other version, Stagger Lee and Billy argue over a girl, then sort out their differences and become friends.  This non-murder version was recorded at the request of American Bandstand, who thought the murder version was not appropriate for their audience.  This is the version that plays in Shag, although it's the murder version that hit #1 on the Billboard Chart.

Lloyd Price's Stagger Lees are just two versions of the story out of about 400 different interpretations; the real-life murder of Billy Lyons at the hands of "Stag" Lee Shelton has inspired many artists in the 115 years since it occurred.  The Wikipedia page and associated links are pretty interesting--but certainly need to be taken with the usual grain of salt.

Having somewhat obsesssed over Shag and Stagger Lee for a week, I devoted this radio show to music either on the Shag soundtrack or from the same era (with maybe a dash of Dirty Dancing and a pinch of Joe Versus the Volcano), as well as to some of the different versions of the Stagger Lee legend (tracks #2, and #28 through #35 below).

1. Jakki O--Ooo-Aah
2. Lloyd Price--Stagger Lee (American Bandstand Version)
3. Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs--Stay
4. The Contours--Do You Love Me
5. Archie Bell & the Drells--Monkey Time
6. Del Vikings--Come Go With Me
7. Dionne Warwick--Walk On By
8. The Four Tops--It's the Same Old Song
9. Martha & the Vandellas--Dancing in the Streets
10. The Coasters--Young Blood
11. Tennessee Ernie Ford--Sixteen Tons
12. Herman's Hermits--(What a) Wonderful World
13. The Dominoes--Sixty Minute Man
14. Lloyd Price--Personality
15. Bob & Earl--Harlem Shuffle
16. The Freshmen--Go Granny Go
17. The Hollywood Argyles--Alley-Oop
18. The Heptones--Our Day Will Come
19. Elvis Presley--Blue Hawaii
20. The Animals--I'm in Love Again
21. General Johnson & the Chairmen of the Board--On the Beach
22. The Tams--What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)
23. The Sensations--Let Me In
24. Aretha Franklin--Baby I Love You
25. Brook Benton & Dinah Washington--Baby (You've Got What It Takes0
26. Jackie Wilson--Baby Workout
27. The Ronnettes--Be My Baby
28. Lloyd Price--Stagger Lee (murder version)
29. Mississippi John Hurt--Stackolee
30. Ma Rainey--Stack o' Lee Blues
31. Josh Ritter--Folk Bloodbath
32. The Clash--Wrong 'em Boyo
33. The Black Keys--Stack Shot Billy
34. The Grateful Dead--Stagger Lee
35. Beck--Devils Haircut
36. Barry White--Oooo-Aaah

Meat & Potatoes #43

Aired on Sunday August 14, 2011.

This week I unearthed two tracks I love to have but never listen to.  I was inspired by the questions about oral tradition and storytelling raised by the short documentary Cry Rock, in which the filmmaker wonders whether or not to record her grandmother's stories, and I played a few minutes from interviews given by my Granny and my grandfather in the early 1970s.  A few years ago, my dad had the old reel-to-reel tapes of the interviews digitized and gave my brothers and me each a copy.  I have never really managed to listen to the interviews: my grandfather died long before I was born, and Granny died in 2001, and it has just always seemed really painful to listen to these interviews.  They evoke such loss.

I am really proud of my family history.  My great-grandfather (who has come up on the radio before) was a speculating adventurer who amassed something of a fortune by first running, and then selling for a healthy profit, a tramway around the Whitehorse Rapids during the Gold Rush.  He later lost almost everything in a recession--except for a "vacation" property on one of the Gulf Islands.  When my dad was growing up, they grew almost all their own food.  Granny worked as a teacher, and my grandfather was (among other things, I think) a telephone lineman.  They knew almost everyone on the island and threw great square dancing parties.  The farm is now in its third iteration--retirement home for my parents--and while I never grew up there, it functions as a sort of ancestral home and is important to me emotionally.  I'd rather hear, however, my father's reports of how much rain has or hasn't fallen and how the Christmas trees are doing, and would rather listen to my mom talk about having to mow the lawn (there is a lot of it), than listen to these old interviews that could put me in closer touch with an era I would love to know more about.  Hearing Granny's voice is particularly painful.  Her voice is very distinctive--even forty years younger than when I knew her best, when she was frail and loopy, it sounds so familiar.  I think in some ways it is her voice that I remember best.

Seeing Cry Rock for the first at the film festival back in April (it won the Audience Favourite award) got me thinking about the interviews, and seeing the film again during Arts Fest a couple of weeks ago made me want to listen to them.  I'm a little jealous of Banchi Hanuse; I grew up thousands of kilometres away from both of my grandmothers (and in lots of ways I never really had a grandfather--my mother's father died when I was quite young, and I actually think my one memory of him may be just... made up by my grieving child's brain).  Learning stories from that generation first hand--hearing them so often as to create an oral tradition--wasn't possible.  I understand the decision Hanuse reaches in her film, and have great sympathy for First Nations struggling to preserve their cultures, but I'm glad someone recorded my grandparents while they had the chance.

And then I made people listen to it on the radio.  I also played some music:

1. Beach Boys--Kokomo
2. LCD Soundsystem--Dance Yrself Clean
3. Braids--Lemonade
4. CocoRosie--Lemonade
5. The Rolling Stones--Under My Thumb
6. Chester Knight--Love Me Strong (requested by Charlie, who walked in off the street)
7. Bruce Springsteen--I'm On Fire
8. The Band--Ophelia
9. Opening few minutes of the interview with my grandfather, Arthur
10. The Vern Williams Band--Oh Susanna
11. The Be Good Tanyas--The Littlest Birds
12. Hank Williams--Move It On Over
13. Opening few minutes of the interview with my Granny, Florence
14. Helen Humes--Song of the Wanderer
15. Bing Crosby--Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean
16. Ethel Merman--You're the Top
17. Okkervil River--A Stone
18. Neko Case--Lion's Jaws
19. Jenn Grant--Britt 'n Kip
20. Chic Gamine--Don't Think That I Can Stay
21. Elvis Perkins in Dearland--Shampoo
22. Patrick Watson--Big Bird in a Small Cage
23. Alex Ebert--A Million Years
24. Wil--Tell You Twice
25. Gowan--Midnight Desires

The family farm... as of a few years ago.

I looked for a more recent picture--the gardens have come a long way since this was taken--but for some reason whenever I'm on the Island I only take pictures of all the partying we do.  It must be the legacy of all that square dancing back in the day  (but I don't think my mom wants those hilarious photos from our Christmastime vodka tasting put on the internet).

"I'm living for the weekend/ Just like all good working people do"

Weekends are such a joy.  So much better than mere "days off", which so often fell mid-week.

Last night Ben and I went out to the Timber Timbre show at the Palace Grand.  "Local folk heroes" Three Cords and the Truth did a great job of kicking things off... but I have really mixed feelings about the Timber Timbre side of the deal.  I think the show just really needed a more relaxed atmosphere.  The stage lighting was very, very minimalist--just three red bulbs in industrial cages--which got hard to look at after a while, and rather dull for the entire duration of the show.  Add in the fact that the Palace Grand has appallingly uncomfortable chairs and that it was freezing cold...  The conditions were just not pleasant for relaxing into the rather trippy stylings of Timber Timbre, and getting lost in the repetitions.  I would have had way more fun if there had been a bar.  A bar that I could have walked too, and saved my tailbone.  And a bit of haze in the room.  Not that I wanted to smoke anything myself, but I do like buzz that comes from being in a "foggy" room.  All the physical discomforts were distracting, and overall I just feel like I could like Timber Timbre's music much more than I do, but I just... don't.

We went out to the Pit for drinks afterwards, and accidentally had a bigger night out than we had been intending.  We were joined by a few friends (Brendan and Jed, and a few others came and went) and somehow Ben invented (?) Butterscotch Guiness, and we did shots, and danced to the classic rock stylings of the Friday Night Pit Band.  I'm sad that Richard and the guys don't already know Fat Bottomed Girls, but he did say they are trying to learn it.  Ben and I rounded out the evening with late night Chinese food from the Sun.  I haven't "gone out" like that in ages, and it felt like the old days in Dawson when I was just a summer person and not all settled down with a real job and life.

Today has been equally pleasant--very social, in the best small town tradition.  Ran into coworkers while out at breakfast, and then later when reviewing gallery submissions in preparation for tomorrow's selection session, I ran into all sorts of people at KIAC and in the surrounding streets.

And I did a little shopping while out.  I finally got around to picking up a stylin' ODD Gallery t-shirt:

And when I saw this hanging basket of nicotina at the farmer's market, I decided that I was definitely too impatient to wait for my own seeds to sprout:

Those seeds may be getting their act together.  I hope that these little leaves are actually my cosmos and not just evidence of my poor weeding job:

More fun to come: a little volunteering tonight to bring in some cash for CFYT, and hopefully I'll make it to the screening of Santiago Giralt's film as well.  Then selections tomorrow afternoon and my radio show in the evening.  With time in between for some reading and sewing, of course.