Given that one of the best albums I heard this year was Rodriguez’s Cold Fact, a reissue of a 1970 record, I guess it’s fair to say 2008 was not the strongest musical year. Still, I’ve managed to come up with a top ten list (and seven honourable mentions):
• Stay Positive
The Hold Steady
Not as consistently brilliant as Boys and Girls in America, but the presence of “Constructive Summer,” “Sequestered in Memphis” and “Lord, I’m Discouraged” (as well as “One for the Cutters,” “Magazines,” “Joke About Jamaica” and “Slapped Actress”) made it a lot of fun to listen to this summer. And I listened to it a lot. Still do.
• April
Sun Kil Moon
Mark Kozelek served up a wonderful, moody album. My wife thought it was too depressing, but I couldn’t get enough of it.
• For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
Impressive debut from a guy who spent four months in a Wisconsin cabin writing and recording this lovely album.
• Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes
Another fine first album, this time from a Seattle band.
• Dig, Lazurus, Dig
Nick Cave
The old master still rocks.
• Dear Science
TV on the Radio
I have to admit the charms of this Brooklyn band eluded me until I heard this album.
• The Stand Ins
Okkervil River
Not quite as good as The Stage Names, but a fine follow-up.
• Carried to Dust
Calexico
Another excellent offering from one of my favourite bands.
• Everything that Happens Will Happen Today
David Byrne and Brian Eno
Apparently the two giants, who reunited for this project, are calling it
“folk-electronic-gospel.” Whatever it is, it’s a delight.
• Volume One
She & Him
A bit of a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.
Among the other CDs I also enjoyed listening to this year were Bonnie Prince Billy’s Lie Down in the Light, Ra Ra Riot’s The Rhumb Line, Aimee Mann’s @#%&*! Smilers, Cat Power’s Jukebox, Death Cab for Cutie’s Narrow Stairs, Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight and Elvis Costello’s Momofuku.
What did you dig this year?
The Winnipeg Free Press includes DRIVE: A Road Trip through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile in its list of the best books of 2008.
Thomas Friedman rightly frets that falling gas prices are re-igniting interest in SUVs and damping demand for hybrids. He also calls for a carbon or gas tax, citing geopolitical and environmental reasons: “It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit — and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars — and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars.”
Paul Wells responds with his customary wit (describing the cap-and-trade schemes favoured by the Obama and Harper regimes as “massively interventionist, cumbersome, harrowingly difficult to design, prone to loopholes and investor confusion, destined to take forever to implement — in a word, French“) and asks: “If you believe climate change is real and catastrophic; that human agency can inflect its course; that Canada has something to contribute to the search for a solution; and that dawdling is no longer permissible — then what better idea do you have?”
All the pundits are convinced that a Canadian carbon tax is forever dead because the voters rejected the idea so forcefully in October. But, of course, the voters were really rejecting the hopeless Liberal leader Stephane Dion. True, there was no enthusiasm for his “Green Shift,” but Dion showed he couldn’t sell beer at a toga party. A more talented politician might have more luck. And I am old enough to remember when Pierre Trudeau ran against wage and price controls — mocked the idea on the campaign trail, in fact — and then introduced them after he was relected. Not that I think Stephen Harper will introduce a carbon tax, but I wouldn’t bet against the resurrection of this sensible policy if the Liberals ever return to power.
Tobias Wolff is one of my favourite writers and I’m loving Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories. I just reread “Two Boys and a Girl” — originally from The Night in Question, perhaps Wolff’s best collection — and was struck by this line:
“The nights were warm and clear and Gilbert put the top down and poked along in the right lane. He used to wonder, with some impatience, why Rafe drove so slowly. Now he knew. To command the wheel if an open car with a girl on the seat beside you was to be established in a condition that only a fool would hasten to end.”
Andrew Coyne isn’t buying the idea that 582,000 jobs will be lost in Canada if the American automakers are allowed to go into backruptcy, as a report from the Ontario Manufacturing Council suggests. He writes that the study is based on two “utterly absurd” assumptions:
“One, that all three of the Detroit-based auto manufacturers shut down all of their operations, not just in Canada, but worldwide (the study models ‘the impact of the Detroit Three automakers ceasing operations globally.’)”
and
“Two, that none of the other manufacturers increase production to take up the slack (’foreign vehicle manufacturers in Canada are assumed to maintain production.’)”
Coyne is right that most reporters have failed to consider the report with the requisite amount of skepticism.
A jury acquitted Stéphan Dufour of assisted suicide this morning. He had accused of helping his uncle, Chantal Maltais, kill himself.
According to this cbc.ca story: “Stéphan Dufour’s cousin, Yannick Dufour, said he was relieved, but called on the government to review assisted suicide. ‘The government needs to get its act together,’ he said in French. ‘Life doesn’t belong to anyone but ourselves.’”
The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert tackled the problem of what to do with the Detroit Three for the Dec. 8 issue of the magazine. “It would, of course, be foolish to allow the American economy to collapse in order to make a point. And it’s possible to conclude that the Big Three deserve on every front to fail and still decide to rescue them. But such a decision will itself be a form of temporizing, and will only pass the problems on to the next Administration. Real change—as opposed to the kind in slogans—is hard and, by definition, disruptive. If Obama has any intention of fulfilling his campaign promises, sooner or later he’s going to have to face up to that,” she concluded before the bailout plan came together.
I spoke to a restaurant full of Porsche drivers last night and I didn’t hear any support for the bailout — and quite a bit of anger toward it. They all seemed to want to see the American automakers fail and new, innovative companies rise from the ashes. But as Kolbert suggests, that type of bold change takes much more than optimistic slogans and before he leaves the White House, four or eight years from now, Obama will need to come up with something more daring than a car czar and pickups full of money. For now, though, the government is doing the politically obvious.
R.J. Gilmour over at Murmers of Desire reviews DRIVE and says: “Written in a style similar to that of Michael Pollan and Christopher Benfey (a style I am increasingly recognizing that I really enjoy), Falconer uses each item in his book as a place to digress into a complete history of that subject… It makes for fascinating reading and allows the reader to travel along with Falconer, beside him in his physical journey across the continent (he travels from Toronto to Los Angeles and back) and in his intellectual journey to understand how we see our cars.”
He concludes: “I found myself looking forward each night to being transported along with Falconer and referring to my handy-dandy bedside driving atlas of North America tracing his journeys and remembering my own travels along some of the same highways.”
I had a great time speaking at Furby House Books in Port Hope last night. The store held its third Men’s Night and thirty-eight guys showed up for the free beer and peanuts. They were a fun and engaging bunch and the lively Q&A session went on so long that store owner Bill Edwards finally had to give me the hook so the next speaker could have a chance at the podium.
If you’re ever in Port Hope be sure to drop in at Furby House, which really is a fabulous bookstore.
We may soon see the Zenn electric car on our streets. The province of Ontario announced it will finally abandon its resistance to low-speed electrics, as long as they meet certain safety requirements. Toronto-based Zenn has been selling its cars in the States for eight years, but the cars weren’t legal at home.
First Oregon. Then Washington. Now Montana? Could be, if a judge’s ruling that doctor-assisted suicide is legal in big sky country survives the inevitable appeal. According to an Associated Press story, Judge Dorothy McCarter decided, “The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity.” This is likely to go to the Supreme Court — and, with any luck, become an issue that gets debated on both side of the border.
As usual, Paul Wells has it right:
“I hope I have made it clear since the summer that I have come to believe Stephen Harper is turning into a really bad prime minister. He is incoherent, vicious and unserious. His fall update was idiocy on stilts, and when he sent his transport minister out two days later to disown the work of his finance minister, nobody in the country blinked because nobody in the country takes what this government does as a government seriously.
All the opposition had to do was come up with a better alternative. They have failed. This is a depressing moment in our nation’s politics.”
For the last eight years, despite a trio of unimpressive prime ministers, Canadians have smugly been thankful that George Bush wasn’t leading our country. Now, with Obama moving into the White House and no credible politician — let alone an inspiring one — anywhere near Ottawa, we can go back to wallowing in our inferiority complex.
I am working on the final bits and pieces for That Good Night, including going through the copy editing changes, choosing an author’s photo and picking an epigraph. I originally planned to quote from Warren Zevon’s My Ride’s Here, but securing the rights for song lyrics can be expensive and time-consuming. So I went with this:
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
— Alexander the Great
Eric Duhatschek has a good piece on the revival of the Chicago Blackhawks in this morning’s Globe and Mail. “It’s reminiscent of the old Chicago Stadium days,” he writes, “where the intimate, charming squalor and booming pipe organ created a mood for professional hockey unlike any other in the NHL. Once upon a time, playing in Chicago was a daunting proposition; the closed-in feeling of the old Stadium, which was slightly smaller than the standard 200-by-85-foot NHL rink dimension, and the sense that the crowd was right on top of the players, created an intimacy that was lost in the move to the United Center.”
That reminded me of this piece that I wrote after attending the closing of the Chicago Stadium in 1994:
Remember the Roar
If you ever find yourself in the midst of more than 18,000 Americans whipped into a nationalistic frenzy, you will never forget it. I learned this last April when I travelled to Chicago to watch a hockey game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Well, actually, the game was almost incidental. My friends and I really flew to the Windy City for the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Two events — one planned, one tragic — only served to heighten the emotions in the building that night. First, it was the last regular season game to be played at the 65-year-old stadium before it was destroyed in favour of an arena designed to maximize revenue. Second, Wayne Messmer, the man who sings the anthems at the Stadium, was fighting for his life in hospital after having been shot in the neck by a 15-year-old with a handgun only five days earlier.
To mark the closing of the Madhouse on Madison St., the Blackhawks lowered the banners of the four Hawk greats who have had their numbers retired. Glenn Hall was the first former star to be introduced. Best known for throwing up before games and playing 502 consecutive contests, Mr. Goalie ambled along the red carpet so slowly, at first I wondered if he was not well. Then I realized he just wanted to savour every second. When his banner reached the ice and was handed to him, he held it up and grinned so hard his face must have been in danger of exploding.
When Tony Esposito was introduced, the fans began to chant “To-ny, To-ny, To-ny.” Unlike Hall, Mr. Zero strode out briskly and seemed overwhelmed by it all. Stan Mikita, the great playmaker who spent 22 years in a Hawk uniform, played the ham, egging on the crowd, as it cheered reverentially. Once handed his banner, he threw it over his head.
The climax was, of course, Bobby Hull. The Golden Jet owned Chicago during his 15 years there, and the Hawks lost many fans when he defected to the upstart World Hockey Association in 1972. The crowd went wild as Hull race-walked his way down the carpet, threw his banner around him like a cape and then shook the hand of everyone in sight.
Stirring as this ceremony was, it was just a warm-up for the anthems. Announcer Pat Foley read a statement from Wayne Messmer and then introduced Wayne’s wife, Kathleen, who stood where her husband should have been beside an honour guard in the organ box. Foley went on to ask the crowd to “raise the roof” in honour of Messmer during the taped anthem. After “O Canada” — which more people in the Stadium sang than do at Maple Leaf Gardens — it was time for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
As a schoolboy, I was taught to stand at attention during a national anthem. (I believe people in Chicago learn this too, because the next day we sat in the bleachers at Wrigley Field and watched as people took caps off and held them to chests, turned and faced the American flag flapping above the scoreboard and proudly sang along with another tape of Messmer singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”) In Chicago Stadium, however, they do it differently. People sing, clap, cheer, whistle, light sparklers, punch balloons in the air and generally work themselves into ecstasy. It’s a tradition that began about a decade ago and then took on a life of its own during the Gulf War.
From the first note, the noise was deafening and the emotion overwhelming. But what astonished me was how it built. With each bar, the thunder defied logic by growing louder. Meanwhile, the eyes of the working class Chicago men who go to Blackhawk games — not to mention the odd Canadian visitor — grew more than a little misty.
After the game, we poured out of the old Stadium onto Madison St. and looked up to see the images of current Hawk stars being flashed on the wall of the new United Center. It looks impressive enough, but everyone leaving the Stadium, knew it could never be the same. The spaciousness alone will change the acoustics and lower the volume. The famous organ won’t make the trip because it would have cost a reported $1 million to move it. And, most importantly, it will take another 65 years before the new building can even approach the sense of place and tradition that permeates the old one.
Inevitably, I thought of the day when the closing ceremonies are held at Maple Leaf Gardens. Although I have been a fan of the Boston Bruins since before Bobby Orr — and no amount of knee injuries can ever change that — the Gardens is, to me, the home of hockey. It will be a sad, sad day when they lower the banners there. It just won’t be as loud as it was at Chicago Stadium.