Rockin' out

Superbeast

Posted on by Patrick

I dis­cov­ered on the track today that this song (“Super­beast”, by Rob Zom­bie) per­fect­ly match­es my run­ning* pace.

It’s extra fun­ny when you con­sid­er that, as I was leav­ing the house this morn­ing, my wife said, “Enjoy run­ning… for your life!”

 

* Fine, jog­ging pace.

 

Compare & contrast

Posted on by Patrick

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.)

The choral version

The death metal version

(with altered lyrics, natch)

Which do you prefer?

Compare & Contrast

Posted on by Patrick

Years and years ago we showed a film at the Evans called Hard Core Logo, a mock­u­men­tary about a punk band that reunit­ed for one last tour, and spent the bulk of the tour re-hash­ing all the rea­sons they’d called it quits in the first place. (Spoil­er: It does­n’t end real well.)

The sound­track was a “trib­ute album” to a non-exis­tent band (the epony­mous Hard Core Logo), and as such it con­tained some great com­pare & con­trast moments, where two bands with rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent sounds cov­ered the same song.

My favourite con­trast was the two ver­sions of “Son of a Bitch to the Core”:

Lugen Broth­ers

Head­stones

I love both ver­sions. If pushed to pick a win­ner, I’d prob­a­bly give the edge to the Lugen Broth­ers’ country/roots ver­sion — their ver­sion of the char­ac­ter seems more bad-ass than the hard-rockin’ woe-is-me one in the Head­stones’ ver­sion (I think the defin­ing moment is “If you take me on, you’re gonna lose” vs. “If you take me on, I’m gonna lose”).

Les Claypool @ Winnipeg

Posted on by Patrick

For about–let’s see, 2009–1990, car­ry the 1, uh–almost twen­ty years I’ve been a fan of Primus and of their mod­er­ate­ly mad, fre­net­ic, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly tal­ent­ed bassist/lead singer, Les Clay­pool. I’d always lament­ed the fact that any­time Primus or Les toured North Amer­i­ca, the clos­est they got was either Toron­to or Van­cou­ver, both of which were a lit­tle out of my price range.

So when I heard that Clay­pool was going to hit Win­nipeg on his new tour, my first ques­tion was, “Where do I get tick­ets?” (Answer: online.)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Les Clay­pool @ Win­nipeg” →

The last few days

Posted on by Patrick

On Thurs­day we went to the Corb Lund con­cert at the West­man, and it was fan­tas­tic. The open­ing acts were quirky and alt-coun­try, so they meshed well with Lund and his band. The head­lin­ers played a lot of my favourites, which made me hap­py. All in all, there was near enough not to mat­ter to three hours of live music. We sat 7th-row, stage right, which were fine seats.

Fri­day we got invit­ed out to a “black tie” mar­ti­ni par­ty at Lady of the Lake. I got gussied up in a suit, K put on her new Lit­tle Black Dress, and we ven­tured forth with X and X (no, I’m not kid­ding, I know two peo­ple whose ini­tials are X, and they were both in the back seat of my car on Fri­day night). Live music by Poor Boy Roger, a local blues/swing band, danc­ing, mar­ti­nis of all descrip­tions (includ­ing one with a choco­late-cov­ered espres­so bean at the bot­tom like a prize), and deli­cious appe­tiz­ers. It was a hoot.

Sat­ur­day we ran into The City so I could take part in the U of M’s week­end judo class. An hour of warmup left me sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly — I thought I was going to die dur­ing the hand­ball game — and then I was shown the first two sets of ju-no-kata, along with some help find­ing the kata’s nar­ra­tive, which helps. I also had one of the sen­seis drop a pearl of wis­dom in my ear that I’ve been turn­ing over in my mind ever since: “All throws in judo come from sumi-oto­shi or uki-otoshi.”

Sun­day: off to MacG for fam­i­ly fun times with T, A, and their new boy B. Hav­ing a cold, I felt it was unwise to hold the baby, so K end­ed up with my turn. Not that she com­plained one whit.

Tonight: Watched a cow-ork­er’s copy of The Fall, which was a fan­tas­tic movie, in all sens­es of the word. It was visu­al­ly stun­ning, well-shot, it cap­ti­vat­ed my atten­tion, and it pro­vid­ed an inter­est­ing look at the process of cre­at­ing a sto­ry. It was also a mov­ing dra­ma, and brim­ful of fine actors in fine roles.

And then, tonight as well, I sub­mit­ted two more sto­ries to mag­a­zines: “After the Mis­sile Rain”, a <1k “flash” piece, to Flash Fic­tion Online, and “Nei­ther Bang nor Whim­per”, 2700 words that I wrote in under 24 hours for a con­test, to Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine. Wish me luck!

And with that: good night.