Entries by Philip Turner

Enjoying Amity Beach’s “Bonfire Etiquette,” Ontario Pop Band’s New Album

Bonfire EtiquetteGoing to a music festival with dozens of acts on the bill, and getting to hear and see personal favorites–maybe bands you’ve only heard on record, or bands you’re getting to see live for a second time–is a distinct pleasure, but another joy not to be overlooked is making serendipitous discoveries of new bands, new music you’d have never heard and enjoyed otherwise. In 2011, the first year I attended NXNE, that happened when I heard Winnipeg band Imaginary Cities for the first time, with dynamite lead singer Marti Sabit; in 2013, the same thing happened for me with Sudbury, Ontario group Almighty Rhombus, a brother band whose sound I found lots of fun; in 2012 one of my discoveries was Amity Beach, a band from Grand Bend, Ontario whose enthusiasm, energy, and hooky tunes I really enjoyed that June night. This was part of the post I wrote the next morning:

Last night’s musical performances were everything I had hoped they would be. Early in the evening, at 8 PM, I went to hear a set by a little-known band called Amity Beach. They were a young five-piece from Grand Bend, Ontario, 18-year olds who play their own songs and some great covers. Afterward, at the merch table I met the dad of the lead singer, who gave me their EP and told me of the band’s origins and how they’re writing and recording their own music. I enjoyed learning about their process. 

Amity BeachAmity Beach

I’ve enjoyed their EP, especially the opening track, “Jake’s Version of Paradise.” I didn’t like all the songs uniformly, but what was good on the disc was very likable. My first impression of them is affirmed now by their first full-length album. It’s called “Bonfire Etiquette” and it’s terrific. They’re definitely evolving as a band, with a fuller sound and a higher calibre set of compositions. I’m really enjoying the new batch of ten songs (nine original, one cover). I hear a bit of Arkells in their sound now, especially the punchy rhythm section that opens the first track “Sunday Nights to Infinity.” The feel and sound is all their own, though, with uptempo, slightly staccato arrangements. Their vocals, mostly by Geoff Baillie, are also getting better, with him singing his own lyrics about off-balance modern moments mixed with persistent striving. My faves are the opener; “Crown Victoria,” with a sort of car+relationship lyric (it’s not an ode to the automobile make & model that dominates the New York City yellow taxi fleet); “Born in the Daylight,” with female backing vocals, and “Comet Stop,” the album closer, with the rueful line, “All we have in common is we made the same mistakes.” The vocals and guitars guitars are stronger, with added accents from horns they play themselves, and bright keyboard sounds. Amity Beach may have a new hand or two on deck, as I think I see some unfamiliar faces on the photo that goes with their new album. At any rate, they’re continuing to grow, and very impressively here.

Band photoThis is a link to “Born in the Daylight” from their soundcloud.com page. I hope you like it, too. I recommend the whole album, which you can sample at their tumblr. Really gets better the more you listen to it.

Live Music this Week–The Deep Dark Woods, Mercury Lounge, Nov. 20

This should be a great live music show, Wednesday night Nov. 20 in NYC at the Mercury Lounge on E. Houston Street. Headliners The Deep Dark Woods from Saskatoon, Sasketchewan are a terrific group with a distinctive folk/roots sound, really good vocals, terrific playing–like that of their keyboard player, whose organ sound makes me feel nostalgic, though I’m not even sure for what–and memorable songs. Come join me if you can. Details at the Mercury Lounge website (the opening acts look good, too). Great music coming off the Canadian Prairies these days, as evidenced by a recent show I enjoyed during CMJ, when I heard the artists showcased by SaskMusic.

Thinking of Toronto Today, and Friends There

CN Tower

Though I live in NYC, I have a kind of sibling-city relationship with Toronto, to which I travel each June for the NXNE festival, and which I’m connected to via the CBC and Internet radio; musical acts I follow; authors I’ve published with; and book biz colleagues over a long time, many of whom are good friends. The escalating situation involving their prevaricating mayor, Rob Ford, has compelled fascination among locals and many outside of Canada for weeks and months, since Gawker and the Toronto Star both reported that Ford was seen by reporters on videotape, smoking from a crack pipe. Late last week, TO Police Chief Blair revealed that his service had recovered a digital file of the tape, which had been missing for months (Ford had denied it ever existed.) At last, things may be peaking today, with Ford’s belated admission earlier that he had indeed smoked crack, supposedly “in a drunken stupor.” Right now, at 4:15 Tuesday, Election Day in NYC, I’m still listening to CBC Radio One from the Toronto newsdesk, as Ford has said he’ll be making one more statement on this day. The on-air people are vamping, just trying to fill up the time while City Hall, or more particularly, Rob Ford, has everyone waiting.

An interval just passed during the writing of this post, as 30 minutes ago Ford came out and gave a statement that was entirely a recapitulation of all his recent evasions and self-pitying refusals to step down. He says he is not stepping down, or even temporarily stepping aside from his office. Please note, the photo above shows the view toward downtown Toronto that I had from my hotel room the last time I stayed there, at the Alexandra Hotel on Ryerson Avenue, a quiet street located between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street on the east and west, and Queen Street and Dundas Street on the north and south. Nice view, huh? That’s CN Tower in the distance on the left.

“I Can Assure People, Hopefully, It Won’t Happen Again”–Rob Ford’s Mentality Compared w/that of US Pols


Despite Canada’s deserved reputation for having a generally more sane public life than that I observe in the political culture of the U.S., the calibre of crazy on display by Toronto mayor Rob Ford rivals anything I’ve observed among American pols. This was especially evident during the weekly radio show yesterday with the mayor and his brother Doug, a City Councillor. Of course, the particular ideological flavor of their mania in distinct from that on display in the States (for instance, there’s no religious rhetoric in their routine), but like many here Ford exudes a faux populism that’s heavy on claims of martyrdom and chastisement by detractors and an unfair media. Again, like many here, Ford and his brother operate in a bubble of their own making, pandering to callers who agree with them, attacking straw figures they set up–ones they can easily knock down–and spewing outrage about supposed flaws in the city, like when a caller claimed he’d observed laggard city workers not working hard at their jobs.
One thing that the Ford situation has in common with dynamics here in the US is that Ford’s followers, or as they’re dubbed in Canadian media, “Ford Nation,” exert a powerful rationalization reflex that’s coupled with an unreasoning belief in their man that’s utterly resistant to plain facts and logic. They do backflips to explain away just about anything that critics point to as evidence of the mayor’s unfitness for office. One example is that last May Rob Ford asserted that no video of him smoking from a crack pipe existed, yet after Police Chief Blair revealed last week that law enforcement had recovered the tape, his fans said, in effect, “How can we even be sure what was in the pipe?” They neatly overlook the fact the mayor had said no tape existed.

Now, those same followers are willing to accept Ford’s vague apologies, even when accompanied by one of the weakest defenses ever uttered by a pol trying to squirm out of an embarrassing incident, spoken near the end of yesterday’s radio program: “I can assure people, hopefully, it won’t happen again.”

In future posts on this blog, I will examine other pols, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who’s borrowed many of the same policies and communications techniques that were used by George W. Bush and his administration, including the muzzling of scientists.

Rob Ford Crack Tape Re-surfaces in Police Hands

A crazy day in Toronto politics, as Police Chief Bill Blair stunned the city by announcing that his investigators have evidently located the notorious, and much sought-after, video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking from a crack pipe. While it has still not been shown to the public, Chief Blair said it’s part of a larger investigation of Ford associate Sandro Lisi. Charges against Lisi now include extortion, though it’s unclear so far whom he was trying to extort. It could be Ford himself, though if that’s true I guess he and Lisi aren’t such good pals, after all. No doubt there will be more to come on this story in the hours, days, and weeks ahead.

#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s “The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie”

Lonely End of the Rink#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Very excited to begin reading my copy of the new book by my friend, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence, which just landed in my mailbox this afternoon. The book, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with the Canadian national sport, was officially launched last night with an event in Vancouver, BC. Grant loves to meet with booksellers and readers and is one of the hardest working authors I’ve ever observed. On his website you can find details on the extensive book tour he’s taking, with stops in many Canadian cities between now and December 12.Lonely End back cover

I loved Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of the many summers he’s spent in the wilds of coastal British Columbia, in the environs of a family cabin on the vividly named Desolation Sound. It went to #1 on the BC Bestseller List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, an award given by booksellers, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. I’m hoping for similar success for his new book, which I will begin reading this weekend.Adventures in SolitudeGrant at Radio 3 picnic
[cross-posted at my other blog The Great Gray Bridge]

NYC Launch of Daniel Canty’s Playful “Wigrum: An Inventory Novel” at Mellow Pages

Zine wallWednesday night at Brooklyn’s Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room francophone novelist from Quebec, Daniel Canty and his translator Oana Avasilichioaei, jointly read from his book, newly published in English, Wigrum, subtitled by publisher Talonbooks of Vancouver BC, An Inventory Novel. Canty and Avasilichioaei were joined by poets Brandon Downing and Michael Ruby.

It was my first time at Mellow Pages, and I found it a very genial place for presentations and literary appreciation. Located in the same loft building on Bogart Street in Bushwick that houses the art gallery Studio 10, very near the Morgan Street ‘L” train subway stop, Mellow Pages is a big square-ish room with a stamped-tin ceiling high overhead, wide windows of the sort with wire mesh threaded through the glass, and two walnut-paneled walls festooned with chapbooks, zines, monographs, and printed material of all kinds. Along the walls, bookcases and shelving combos were arranged, with books on vertical and horizontal axes. The chapbooks and zines, being so thin and hard to shelve, were hung, and in some places fastened to hangers on the walls.

Jacob, co-proprietor of Mellow Pages, kicked things off by describing how the library and reading room works–people can pay to be a member; as well, if you donate 10 books to the library’s inventory, you’re a member. Their tumblr includes this statement: “Mellow Pages is an independently-run library & reading room located in Brooklyn, NY focusing on providing limited-print fiction and poetry to the neighborhoods of Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. With a collection of over 1,200 titles and zines, come check out the space and have a coffee, crack into a new one.”

After Jacob finished his set-up, before the readings, Brandon Downing asked me to say something about Talonbooks, and I obliged, mentioning the Vancouver location, their extensive list of contemporary Canadian playwrights; They Called Me Number One, a memoir of surviving the punitive residential school system by Chief of the Soda Creek First Nation band Bev Sellars, #1 bestseller in British Columbia; and translated fiction, with such examples as Wigrum.

Brandon was then the first reader, presenting several multi-part poems from his current collection, coincidentally titled Mellow Actions (Fence Books, 2013). He said that unlike the truly mellow vibe of the library and reading room where we sat, he’d chosen his title a bit sardonically. In fact, several of Downing’s poems expressed honest anger, always a tonic to hear read aloud, with anger so often suppressed in polite company. He was followed by Michael Ruby, who in a nod to the evening’s Pacific Northwest motif, read three longish poems inspired by Seattle’s hometown rock heroes, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, from his American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013).

Then Daniel and Oana moved to the front of the room and, trading off, they read alternating sections from Wigrum. I’ve been dipping in to the book all week in advance of the reading and have found it to be an ingenious creative enterprise. The novel is ostensibly the census of an idiosyncratic collection of objects, owned at one time by the elusive figure, Sebastian Wigrum. The printed book itself is beautifully presented with crisp typography and clean design on bright white paper. Precise drawings, each one well printed, depict each of the 149 objects in Wigrum’s mysterious collection. This imaginary world has also produced a novel with marginal notes and an index. Here’s a list of five of the objects catalogued and described herein:

  1. 1) a feather from the wings of Icarus;
  2. 2) Holden Caulfield’s “ear-flap hat”;
  3. 3) a handkerchief that William Faulkner had asked be tucked in his funeral suit, though it never was;
  4. 4) a set o keys called the “Come and Gone Keys”; and
  5. 5) a special egg that P.T. Barnum held in his museum of marvels. As the book reads on page 74, Barnum once had occasion to show it to Benjamin Franklin,: “On tiptoe, [Barnum] led the philosopher to his desk, extracted this egg from a drawer stuffed with banknotes, telling him the daughter of Cristobal Colon slumbered forever within, and that if he brought the egg close to his ear he would hear an endless refrain of all Native American nouns of animals and plants. Barnum dropped the egg while handing it to Franklin, spattering his forick coat. He apologized, profusely, but Franklin obviously thought the business was putting him on again. He makes no mention of the incident in his Autobiography.”  

Their reading was very well received, with everyone enjoying Wigrum‘s humor and philosophical play. Book sales and informal conversation followed. I took a few photographs during the readings and was pleased to see, blinking through the window behind the readers, the lights of the Chrysler Building. Barely a half-hour subway ride from Midtown Manhattan, this view typifies how easy it is to visit Mellow Pages. I’m sure I’ll be coming back for a return visit soon. Click here to see those pictures:

Upcoming NYC Launch of Daniel Canty’s “Wigrum: An Inventory Novel,” a Typographical Treat

WigrumHey Canadians and other NYC friends-I’m going to be at Mellow Pages Library in Brooklyn tonight as local rep for Talonbooks of Vancouver, BC. Details:

Talonbooks invites you to the launch of Wigrum
a novel by Daniel Canty
translated by Oana Avasilichioaei
with illustrations by Estela López Solís
and graphic and editorial design by Daniel Canty and Feed

with guest readers Michael Ruby
American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Press, 2013)
and Brandon Downing
Mellow Actions (Fence Books, 2012)

Brooklyn
October 23, 2013
Doors open at 8:00 PM
Mellow Pages Library
56 Bogart Street
mellowpageslibrary.tumblr.com