My first encounter with Gordon Lightfoot’s classic song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was actually reading the lyrics published as a poem in a high-school English reader. (I had a similar experience with Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”, though I think I’d probably heard that one on the radio, my dad being an aficionado of the ’60s station KY58.)
So for Throwback Thursday, please, enjoy this tale of human woe and the sinking of a massive freighter in a storm on (spoiler alert!) Lake Superior.
Finally, last night, I watched Bad Times at the El Royale. Back when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was an Evans movie for sure, but it ended up playing at the multiplex down the street instead, for all of two weeks. I managed to miss it. Now I regret not seeing it on the big screen.
El Royale takes place at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, on the border between Nevada and California. The border literally bisects the hotel. Rooms on the California side are $1 more per night.
The movie opens with a priest, a singer, and a vacuum-cleaner salesman trying to check in, one lovely afternoon in 1969, but the clerk is nowhere to be found. Once they do track him down, a fourth guest appears, and she’s got some baggage. Well, they all have baggage, but the fourth woman appears to have kidnapped someone.
Of course, this is a noir-ish thriller, and no one—not even the venue—is who they seem to be.
I quite enjoyed El Royale. It felt a lot like a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it was written and directed by Drew Goddard. Goddard managed to take all the good things about a QT movie—colours, music, sudden violent twists—and discard the endless soliloquies. It really makes for a tight, nasty thriller, and it’s just the thing I was looking for.
If you like violence, secrets, thunderstorms, ’60s music, and violence, it might be just what you’re looking for too.
One of my all-time favourite Christmas carols is “Ça Bergers”. (Most of my favourite carols are French, since I came up in a French immersion school. It makes it hard to find them, living as I do in a predominantly English part of Manitoba. Oh well.)
Every year I look it up on YouTube. The first year, there was one version, not a great one. It sounded like it’d been recorded in a high-school gym onto cassette, and probably was.
This year: There are plenty of choices. Here are a couple for you. (Well, for me.)
For those that didn’t care for yesterday’s Giger delights, I offer this.
When I was a kid, we had this song (along with the other two Snoopy vs. the Red Baron tunes, and a bunch of Royal Guardsmen songs on the B-side) on an LP with a pink cardboard sleeve. I must have come pretty close to wearing the record out over the years.
I actually still have the record (thanks, Mom!) but a) I don’t have a record player and b) it’s pretty badly warped now, so the last time I tried to listen to it, it sped up and slowed down to a degree comparable to the songs they play on Lip Sync Battle.
Fun fact: As a kid I assumed the sound effect on the line “The Baron then offered / A holiday toast” was a toaster popping out toast. Now I know it’s a champagne cork. Ah, youth.
When I went to see Les Claypool when he played Winnipeg, I was pretty thrilled when he opened with this little ditty. It’s long been a favourite of mine. I hope you enjoy it too.
Faith No More put out a new album earlier this year, their first release in 18 years. Because I’m old, I bought the CD. Here’s a live version of the first track, “Sol Invictus” (which is also the title of the album). It’s a quiet meditation on the loss of faith.
I believe in something, I think — for some reason that line really gets me.
Also, for those looking for something a bit louder and more aggressive, well, the new album has you covered, too.
- 1 -
De bon matin j’ai rencontré le train
De trois grands rois qui allaient en voyage
De bon matin j’ai rencontré le train
De trois grands rois dessus le grand chemin.
Venaient d’abord les gardes du corps
Des gens armés avec trente petits pages
Venaient d’abord les gardes du corps
Des gens armés dessus leur justaucorps
- 2 -
Puis sur un char doré de toutes parts
On voit trois rois modestes comme d’anges
Puis sur un char doré de toutes parts
Trois rois debout parmi les étendards.
L’étoile luit et les rois conduit
Par longs chemins devant une pauvre étable
L’étoile luit et les rois conduit
Par longs chemins devant l’humble réduit.
- 3 -
Au Fils de Dieu qui naquit en ce lieu
Ils viennent tous présenter leurs hommages
Au Fils de Dieu qui naquit en ce lieu
Ils viennent tous présenter leurs doux voeux.
De beaux présents: or, myrrhe et encens
Ils vont offrir au Maître tant admirable
De beaux présents: or, myrrhe et encens
Ils vont offrir au bienheureux Enfant.
On the way home from Christmas celebrations, we* were listening to CBC. They played a French Christmas concert, featuring “Le marche des rois” (above), as well as my favourite carol in either language, “Ça bergers, assemblons-nous”.
Hope everyone had a merry Christmas.
* Well, one of us was listening, and one of us was sleeping.
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