In Memoriam

It was a tough past week for high art, as the world lost both flamenco guitar superstar Paco De Lucia and one of the best filmmakers of all time, Alain Resnais.

De Lucia started touring and recording in the late 1960s, but it was in 1971 and 1972 that he truly started to break ground, innovating in playing style, adding new twists to classics (such as Mario Escudero's Ímpetu) and creating timeless songs himself (Entre Dos Aguas), fusing genres and cultural influences.

In 1979, he formed The Guitar Trio with John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell, which would remain as much a constant in his career as playing solo or with legends of other styles such as Al Di Meola,  Chick Corea and Eric Clapton. I saw The Guitar Trio with Di Meola replacing Coryell live at the end of the 1990s and was blown away.

He died of a heart attack at age 66.

Resnais was not only one of the best French directors, but in the world. His career spanned nine decades (keep in mind cinema was invented at the turn of the 20th century...), and his influential work started in 1955 with Nuit Et Brouillard (Night And Fog). With Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year At Marienbad (1961), he concluded what was perhaps the most efficient, effective, high-quality 5 years of filmmaking ever (think of early 1990s Quentin Tarantino for scope, with the budget of late 1990s Kevin Smith for budget and means).

But he didn't stop there. Providence (1977) clearly influenced David Lynch's finest works, My American Uncle (1980) was nominated for an Oscar other than Best Foreign Language, I Want To Go Home (1989) was a precursor to American Splendor, Smoking/No Smoking (1993) would have been anyone else's best film, and he kept making award-winning films until the end, highlighted by Same Old Song (1997), Not On The Lips (2003) which contributed to revitalizing musicals, Private Fears In Public Places (2006), and Wild Grass (2009).

I have yet to see You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012) and Life Of Riley (2013), who had just won an award at the Berlin Film Festival a few weeks ago. He died at age 91.

They Call It Progress

Cynics and religious figureheads claim we come from and will return to dust, when it settles, which is another way of saying ''who gives a shit about how you live your life, you'll end up dead anyway''.

And that belief, I guess, is what prompts economics giants like Monsanto and McDonald's to feed the world crap - oftentimes literally - because who gives a shit what you eat, as long as it doesn't kill you right away.

That's one part of the equation, the other being that it doesn't matter what you build, it will eventually crumble or erode, so we might as well destruct it ourselves first. Which brings me to this news story about greed a construction company destroying one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract rocks for a road-building project.

That's right: take a construction that has withstood the test of time - and the elements, and Conquistadors -  for over 2,300 years, and turn it into a fucking road, something that usually has trouble maintaining its integrity for 15 years. Awesome!

The human spirit knows no bounds!

Sure, the police are looking into it, seeing of they can't prosecute someone for what is the murder of a cultural landmark. But one man - it's always a man, isn't it? - spending 15 years in jail for finding a easy way to pocket millions of dollars won't bring the structure back. There's always that one asshole trying to fuck up what hundreds built to amaze thousands. That guy's organs and bones should be taken, one at a time, once per week, and given to people in need of transplants, until he is but a heart, a head and a stomach, kept alive by machines in a dungeon, serving a life sentence of watching the Mummy movies.

NY Is A No-Go

Apparently, things aren't what they were in the late 1990s when I made the move to NYC to further my own music career.

According to Patti Smith, they aren't even what they were in the late 1970s... she blames high rent prices and overall cost of living, and suggests trying Detroit or Poughkeepsie instead, perhaps sarcastically.

Anyway, in this day and age, with the internet and ''the music business'' being what they are, you can live (and record) in a shed in Montana and have pretty much the same odds of ''being discovered'' or ''making it'' as almost anyone in New York or Los Angeles whose parents haven't paved the way for them.

Which is for the best, really, because why would you want to jump in on/in someone else's scene when you can create your own, à la Portland, Gothenberg, or even what we did here in Montréal?

Video Of The (Last) Week: Tool

I've been listening to a lot of Tool lately. I'm not sure why, but their brand of slow doom rock made its way through the shuffle feature of my Ipod more often than not, and I didn't intend on skipping any songs.

It's the second time I feature them in this segment, but this time with perhaps my favourite song from them, Stinkfist, the first song off their amazing Aenema album, their second full-length, dedicated to the memory of comedian Bill Hicks (it was actually that album that got my 17-year old self to research Hicks to find out more about him).

This weekend's been pretty hectic (Dead Can Dance show, dinner party with friends, meeting with a friend who kind of just got out of jail, looking for work, watching House Season 8), but I still found the time to listen to this song a good half-dozen times.

August 14th, 2012

You don't want stories anymore, you want moods. You've heard all you'd had to hear, and you've read, well... next to nothing, but at least you've seen the movies. Movies with hot, brooding fake-alpha males, skinny chicks with long hair and cocaine problems, and plot holes bigger than the Milky Way.

They can't make new drugs fast enough, we have to rely on what we can find at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The foundations of our cities are crumbling, a reflection of our societies' systems, corrupt to the bone, slave to the high and mighty dollar, reliant on lies and the status quo.

You work yourself to exhaustion for a mere two days of rest during which you have to gather supplies to last another week and perhaps make time for an infinite percentage of your loved ones, between relaxation time, sleep, meals and Life.

Your life is as meaningless as that of a bug.

And yet here we are, interconnected, sharing our experiences, comparing. They gave us this web to distract us, but eventually we'll dig through the porn and news and recipes and pictures of cats and find what we were looking for.

It looks like it'll be sunny today. I think I'm going back to bed.

R.I.P. Greg Giraldo

What started as rumours became official, Wednesday night, as the death of comedian Greg Giraldo was announced, most likely from accidental prescription drug overdose.

First, as is now customary, TMZ announced it, then the rest of the media followed suit. I've had a busy week of barely sleeping and being out in the real world, so I wasn't online for most of the hours when the sun is shining, so I learned it from Jon Stewart's brief but heartfelt tribute at the end of his Daily Show.

Giraldo was a sure-shot: give him any slot (headliner, opener), any tribune (stand-up show, festival, TV show, roast) - and he will always get a laugh out of the audience. His comedic style was post-90s: sarcastic, witty, bound with almost as many cultural references as Dennis Miller but without the retarded politics forcing their way in the jokes and making them less funny.

To call him an insult comic would be right, I guess, but only describes maybe 20% of his comedic persona. The fact that he could retort in half a second's time to anyone else's comments in any setting using pop culture references if they were to be understood but without resorting to them for an audience for whom it would go unnoticed made him a good judge for such TV shows as Last Comic Standing.

Twice married, he leaves 3 children behind. He also used to be a lawyer - he graduated from Harvard Law. Which probably explains his natural ability for turn-on-a-dime comedy. He would have been 45 this December. He will be missed.

R.I.P. Green Room

On Sunday, The Green Room, part of the Mile End Cultural Centre in Montréal, caught fire because of en electrical problem, i.e. ''an electrical short of an extension cord'', according to my friend and venue manager, Dom Castelli.

It had taken me years to get to play there (mostly because of their high price to rent the venue), but it was one of the fine-sounding showrooms on St-Laurent.

Bummer.

About Bands Who Don't Come To Montréal

There is more and more (angry, disappointed) talk about many (most?) interesting music acts not making a Montréal stop in their tours of late.

More often than not, we're stuck with has-beens like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Journey, Styx, and Mötley Crüe - you know, crap.

But if it means that the Jägermeister Korn Tour will miss my town, they, hey, it can't be all bad.

How a reputable beverage will only associate itself with the shittiest bands is beyond me. Sponsoring this tour doesn't equate their drink with ''danger'', nor with ''influential''; it equates it with Bud Light, Kid Rock, Monster Trucks, NASCAR, and people marrying their cousins because that date-rape from three months ago resulted in unwanted pregnancy.

I wonder if I can replace Jäger with Sambuca in a Liquid Cocaine, 'cause this seems like reason enough to boycott a brand.