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Why He Didn’t

Posted by :James Howden On : November 29, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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After hearing Sheldon Kennedy interviewed by Jim Rome a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to read his book, the finally I’m ready to tell about all this stuff publication of his memoir of his hockey career but especially of the years-long sexual abuse he endured from a trusted coach. One of the bitter ironies of Kennedy’s life is that only now, after a very successful junior career and a journeyman’s eight years in and around the NHL, is he rediscovering the love and joy in the game that he had known as a child.

Why I Didn’t Say Anything: The Sheldon Kennedy Story is very affecting reading, and answers most of the quiet wonderings I’d had about this episode, a tale which I mainly knew from sensational headlines and brief interviews. His voice comes through strongly but reasonably and without bitterness, though his co-writer and editors have allowed many grammar errors and typos to remain. (Kennedy tells of a healing encounter with residents of the Morley Reserve during his cross-Canada skate to heighten awareness of sexual abuse. The meeting was so emotional, he reports, that “everybody was balling” after it. What, a 3 on 3 hoops tourney broke out?) This is certainly not high literature, but the raw sincerity of Kennedy’s prose is a revelation and a challenge to anyone who cares about sport, about children, or about the personal and societal damage caused by sexual abuse. It’s a quick read and a useful one.

May I Quote You On That?

Posted by :James Howden On : November 28, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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He Said/She Said… Did you notice? It’s just down there. On your right.

I’m always looking for the right words. Some people look for the magic bullet – the easy lazy remedy, the simple common-sense answer. Some look for solace and conviction in chemical form, but for me it’s nearly always an incantation. If a problem can’t be solved with words, I’m often not interested in it. (Once upon a time, there was a jumpshot or a perfectly timed diving catch that would solve the problem. But what do I do now?)

I’ve collected quotes forever. Once upon a lucky break, I was suddenly being paid well to write with her Right Honourable Self, and she loved quotations, too. So I scavenged everywhere, tore from newspapers, scribbled in the margins of novels and other good reads, and I cheated: I went to Bartlett’s, to John Robert Columbo, to Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, to on-line sites like Empyrean. I love to find just the right words. Today, for instance, I laughed out loud in my doctor’s office, delighted at the righteousness of the following description. It’s not a very funny topic, actually. The environmentalist, unorthodox-Christian writer David James Duncan is speaking of reverence for nature and its critical importance, and calls to account those who welcome war and destruction because they think it hastens their own salvation: “The Armageddonist’s rejection of the world-as-gift is [mere human] projection: an obsession with the “End Days” is surrender not to God but to men with exaggerated reverence for their own fragmented understanding of holy writ.” Zing!

There be monsters in the quotable woods, though. I remember Mr. Hill’s comments on a high school essay that I had just larded with some of the best quotes ever. Problem: some of them I hadn’t fully understood, when removed from the context in which they were written, and “this is the evil of Bartlett’s”, quoth Mr. Hill. Who knew a treasure house of words could be evil? And then there was my recent discovery that one of my favourite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson – beginning “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…” and ending “This is to have succeeded” – is “almost certainly not his”, according to a scholarly website that I accidentally consulted. Yes, and “Desiderata” wasn’t found in Baltimore’s Old North Church in 1608, or when-and-wherever it was supposed to have been. Sigh. It was actually written by a guy called Max in the 1960s. (And, to my surprise upon re-reading it recently, I still like it. Good Max!)

All this to say that I have a wee quote box just down there to your right, underneath the “On Second Thought” section, and that YOU, careless reader, have probably never even bothered to look at!! (And a good thing, too, because I haven’t done a thing with the Will Rogers line that my tech guy put there as filler months ago. “Even if you’re on the right track,” it said, “you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Nice choice, Artie!) But now I’ll be putting up quotes every Monday (or so) in the “He Said/She Said…” section, and you’re invited. Heck, I’m going to start with the phony Emerson, ‘cause I like it, too. I wish I knew who actually wrote it. (Something similar, though not as good, was the winning entry of one Bessie Stanley in a 1905 newspaper contest, according to my trusty website on Transcendentalist philosophers. Bessie’s version is below.)

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.”  Not bad!

R.W. Emerson (or maybe not)

Posted by :James Howden On : November 27, 2006
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Category: He Said/She Said

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Attributed, perhaps wrongly, to R.W. Emerson. A similar quotation was written in 1905 by a Bessie Stanley, and the development of the above quote (and its attribution to Emerson) is a mystery to me. But I love it anyway.

Sporting Equality

Posted by :James Howden On : November 27, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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It’s not so easy to follow women’s soccer, but I’m inclined to try. The plucky Canuck women, about whom I wrote last Thursday, came achingly close to beating the mighty Americans – two-time World Cup champs, second-ranked team in the world – in the finals of the Gold Cup yesterday in California.

Both teams are headed for the 2007 World Cup, but this was another chance for the Canadian girls to break the domineering spell of Big Sister to the south. We’ve only ever beaten the Yanks three times in women’s play, compared to a long sheet of losses. Just a month or so ago, the States won 1-0 in the final of a Korean tournament, and yesterday was a 2-1 result decided by a penalty late in overtime. Canadian coach Even Pellerud had already been booted from the match in regulation time when Kristine Lilly hit the American winner in the final minute before going to penalty kicks.

The red and white are getting closer. “We produced more pressure than ever before,” Pellerud said. “They needed 120 minutes to beat us on a doubtful (penalty). I am very proud of what [we] did. It was fantastic.” With both teams advancing anyway, Canada obviously has more at stake in a game like this. Every time they play the Americans, it’s like a World Cup final, whereas the motivation of the dominators can’t be quite so great. Still, a revamped American team has managed to lengthen its record international undefeated streak to 32 games.

In women’s hockey, a similar dynamic is present but inverted, with Canada as Queens of the ice castle and a very good American squad ever ready to knock them off it. One big difference: nobody else in the world can really compete with the U.S. and Canada. Part of the greatness of the soccer rivalry is that it takes place in the context of world play which, though not yet as widely competitive as men’s football, still has at least five teams (maybe half a dozen, if you include the red ‘n’ white) that can realistically compete for a World Cup.

The greatest opportunities for sporting girls and women exist in North America, but the trend is spreading. (But how long will it be before African women’s sides can compete as their male counterparts are beginning to in world soccer? There are so many obstacles specific to women, and so much to be done in so many places before girls playing becomes possible, let alone a priority. But soccer is the game for the poor.) European sides are very strong, with the Germans and the Norwegians having won a Cup, the East Asian countries are rapidly improving, and the women’s soccer world can hear the South American women coming on. (But will they ever be as dominant as they are in beauty contests? Pardon me for noticing, but a Chilean woman just won the Miss Earth contest — beauty and environmental consciousness, apparently — and the Latinas rock the tiara world these days. Okay, back to the game.)

The growth of gender equality when it comes to giving girls “a sporting chance” is one of the good things the world has going for it. Kudos to the Canadians for helping to lead the way.

Speaking of Maple-Flavoured Sport…

Posted by :James Howden On : November 23, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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While we’re on the subject of Canadian sporting stars, how about our remarkable Women of the Foot? They just knocked off Jamaica, emphatically, yesterday in the Gold Cup competition, which got them through to the next World Cup of soccer, something the Canucksky men haven’t managed in twenty years (and only once ever, I think). These girls are good.

This will be their fourth straight World Cup appearance, having missed only the inaugural women’s event in 1991. In 1995, they managed a tie with Nigeria in pool play and were blasted 7-0 by the eventual champion, Norway, who had narrowly lost in the Cup final to the USA in ’91. The following year, Canadian soccer did a bold thing, hiring away the architect of Norwegian soccer dominance, Even Pellerud, to lead our national team program. Results were similar in 1999 – another pasting by Norway, another round-robin draw (with Japan) – but the cavalry was coming. When Canada hosted the inaugural Women’s Junior World Championships in 2002, they shocked most observers by taking the silver, and budding superstar Christine Sinclair was the leading goal-getter and MVP of the tournament.

By the 2003 World Cup, Canada was a force. They lost to eventual champion Germany in pool play, but notched two convincing wins over Argentina and Japan to qualify for the quarter-finals, where they stunned China 1-0 on a goal by Canada’s most decorated international player, Charmaine Hooper. (129 caps. 68 goals. Stalwart career.) They lost to Sweden in a tight 2-1 semifinal, and finished fourth in the tournament after a 3-1 loss to the two-time champion Americans in the bronze medal match. Youth was served, as young stars Kara Lang and Sinclair provided the last two goals.

Let’s pause for this quick résumé on Ms. Sinclair, whose accomplishments are rather astounding. She’s 23. She’s within striking distance of Hooper’s international goals record for a Canadian, as she already has 53. In the NCAA, doubtless the best developmental level in the world, Sinclair was national Freshman of the Year, a three-time Conference Player of the Year, a two-time NCAA Player of the Year and star of two national championship teams at Portland, and in 2005 was only the third soccer player to be named NCAA Women’s Athlete of the Year. She’s special, and she’s not alone.

One of the few dark spots on this radiant success for women’s soccer in Canada is the controversy that may have ended Hooper’s national team career. In recent months, Mr. Pellerud’s expectations and Ms. Hooper’s sense of fairness have collided, and it appears that a younger team led by Sinclair is more than ready to move on. The next World Cup is in China in 2007, and Canada remains in the running to host the 2011 tournament. We largely ignore their male counterparts, but Canadian women are bringing a real northern lustre to the world’s game.

Justin Morneau’s Mighty Bat

Posted by :James Howden On : November 22, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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I pay enough attention to baseball that I knew about the kind of season that Justin Morneau was having. I am, after all, the owner of a fairly sane Canadian patriotism and was once the custodian of a fairly sweet portside swing (and warning track power). So I’d heard that Our Man Justin was in the mix, but even The Globe and Mail’s excellent Jeff Blair wasn’t picking him to win.

When ‘Big Papi’ David Ortiz came back with another superbly (absurdly) clutch-hitting season, I figured that maybe the a DH doesn’t deserve to win MVP argument might have run its course. And even more compelling, the isn’t it about time Derek Jeter won an MVP blast carried a lot of weight with me. It seemed sure that, with the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Twinkies in the running, it wasn’t going to be the kid from hockey country (who plays his baseball in the State of Hockey, Minnesota) that the sportswriters selected.

But it was, and I’m mostly happy. Canucks have had Larry Walker winning the National League MVP award in ’97, Jason Bay as NL Rookie of the Year in ’04, the ridiculous Steve Nash topping the NBA voting for the last TWO seasons, and any number of Howes, Lafleurs, Lemieux and Gretzkys (and Joe Thornton last year) who have won the NHL’s Hart Trophy. (Lest we forget: Howe won it six times. Gretzky won NINE.) And now, Justin Morneau has become the first Canadian to win honours as the American League’s top player. Particularly because of how loyal he has been to our national baseball team, that engaging humility, and because his salary is about 5 percent of Jeter’s, it’s hard not to like Morneau’s selection.

Unless you appreciate the defensive side of the game: apparently, not only do chicks dig the long ball but sportswriters do as well. Though he plays for the Evil Empire, there’s a lot to admire about Derek Jeter, and I liked the idea of a magnificent all-around player – and someone with his leadership and class – getting recognized individually. Shoot, a mashing first baseman is next door to a DH, and the National League choice was also a long-ball, bushel-basket-glove sort of guy, Ryan Howard. Whatever happened to “strength down the centre”? When was the last time a shortstop was MVP? (I’m thinking Cal Ripken.) Or a catcher? (Johnny Bench?) Or even a centre fielder? (Hmm. Surely we don’t have to invoke Willie Mays?)* Not that I’m complaining. Congrats to Mr. Morneau. New Westminster, B.C. is the capital of Jock Canada today.

* Okay, how did I do? (And how ’bout you?) Shortstops. Yikes. There’ve been three since Ripken: Barry Larkin (1995 NL), Miguel Tejada (2002 AL) and Alex Rodriguez (2003 AL), though the last two were picked mainly on big home run numbers. Catchers. Bench in 1970 and 1972 (NL), but I’d forgotten Thurman Munson (1976 AL). Centre fielders? There have been a few since Mays. Robin Yount (who also won as a shortstop, and is therefore the greatest all-around player in history) got it in 1989 (AL), and was preceded by Fred Lynn (1975 AL) and Willie McGee (1985 NL) and followed by Ken Griffey Jr. (1997 AL), whom I thought would win several. Many other outfielders have won, but few of them were better than average defensively and some were highlight reels of ineptitude. George Bell comes to mind. (And if I don’t shut up soon, somebody will mention that Wonderful Stevie Nash ain’t exactly a defensive stopper, either!)

ODY: Week 13. 91/365. LOTSA Time…

Posted by :James Howden On : November 21, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Multi-tasking is spectacularly over-rated. Have you ever talked to someone who was answering e-mail or Black-buried while (allegedly) listening? Can you (should you) multi-task while making love, meditating, reading or doing any of the most important things? Have you noticed how badly people (not you, of course) drive while they eat or plan or do their nails or change their clothes? Heck, I can’t even have an intelligent conversation with any of my passengers without forgetting where I’m taking them. I’m trying to learn to do dishes while I talk on the kitchen phone, but anything much beyond that is just doing several things poorly. 

Still, I’m learning to multi-task my way through the drudgery of practice and half-baked melody-making. (WHY? Because I’m on the road to Mid-Life Guitar Glory, that’s why! The story started back here, if you’re interested.) To avoid leaving practice until the end of a brain-dead day, and to build my endurance of endless repetition, I’m learning (slowly) to combine it with other things. Eldest son, the Itinerant Artist, renewed his nagging this past weekend. “Pick some song you like, and figure out something to play along with it. PLAY! It could be a guitar lead, or any lead. It could be some little bass riff that you can hit an octave higher on the acoustic. Doesn’t matter. Find a backing band!” Well, IA, I do like that “backing band” idea. James Howden and the Chicago Horns.  James Howden and the Radiohead Orchestra. James Howden and Steve Earle: The Revolution Starts Now. (Well, pretty soon, anyway.)

This past week, my backing bands were radio broadcasts: from ethicist Margaret Somerville giving the Massey Lectures, to the Ottawa Senators trying to remember how to win. Hockey play-by-play is a rhythm I’ve heard so many times that it goes down easy, without taking too many brain cells hostage. And I convinced myself not to worry about catching every nuance of Somerville’s The Ethical Imagination because I’m planning to read the book anyway. Still, I felt the stunned silence in her live audience in hearing some of the medical dilemmas that she threw at them. Cyborgs and chimeras and clones, oh my! What is a human being? Is that different than humans doing? But I was serene. Damn the ethical torpedos; I just played, and heard what I could. I couldn’t summarize the talk, and I didn’t learn anything new on the strings, but I did get some routine rehearsal done.

KW, the Guitar Guru, was in good form this week. For part of our lesson, he was out of the left-arm cast he’s been wearing since he severed tendons in his hand doing home renovations. (I’ll bet he was multi-tasking at the time.) He wears a removeable cast, and is beginning the slow business of learning to use his hand again. For a professional player and all-round GG like Kurt, it must be agonizing to be unable to play. (“It’s only, oh, 35 years since I’ve been away from the guitar for this long.”) And it’ll be a long road back to playing like he’s used to; gosh, he’ll have to start from tender-fingered scratch and rebuild his calluses, not to mention those knuckle-busting stretches and changes. Ouch. We’re roughly of an age, though, and I like his chances of getting his guitar chops back FAR more than mine of ever making a decent crossover dribble again! (Be careful with crossover dribbles — the ankles you break may be your own!) Still, those guitars and those dedicated hours are things he has loved and lived by, and it must be driving him nuts to be without them. (Beware of linoleum cutters.)

The GG was sharp this week. Hearing evidence of the one thing I’ve learned to do fairly well – some finger-picking sequences – he went into Radio Voice. “According to a British study, finger-picking guitar players have a 40% lower chance of dying from a heart attack…” Ah. Those famous Studies and what they Show. He didn’t go on too long, though, because there isn’t much time left. (He’s been loading us with content for the last couple of weeks.) I was pissed by my utter inability to make a chord change while pick-strumming a waltz beat (accompanying “On Top of Old Smokey”) or a dreary polka (behind “Skip to My Lou”.) And how many times has the GG had to listen to this lumbering collection of missed notes and half-breed chords? It’s goofiness that gets him (and us) through. While we plucked and strummed, he sang the lead in various voices and accents and alternative lyrics.  Any antidote to boredom (his, after 25 years of teaching) and frustration (ours, after nine weeks of inch-worm progress).

For the last two sessions, the GG has been showing signs of an archetypal teacher sentiment that I know by heart: how the hell am I going to get through everything I planned to cover? This is accompanied, unfailingly, by the ethical question: was the (slightly) slowed progress worth the laughs, the stories and the peeks inside this new world? It was for me; I was fascinated, always, to hear musician stories: the GG’s own, but also those about Ted Reed’s Syncopation for the Modern Drummer (“it’s the BIBLE of percussion”); of Jaco Pastorius’s brilliant bass-playing and coke-addled end; of the Bulgarian Ivo Papasov, “the world’s greatest clarinet player”, and a reminder of the astonishing Bulgarian National Women’s Choir; and, this week, an urgent polemic on “the real inventors of rock ‘n’ roll [Louis Jordan and Mickey Baker], not Chuck Berry, the big goof”. I’m hungry to better know this world, and I don’t mind a story or three, especially when my fingers are all tangled up in blue anyway.

And this knocks me out: in the midst of eight rookies flailing away in a small room at a barely recognizable something-or-other, Kurt the GG reached over and gave a quick twist to the tuning peg for my low E string. He arched an eyebrow, I played the string, he nodded.

     “Holy cats! What an ear, Herr Walther!”
“Well,” he replied, “I only have one hand, so I guess I’d better be able to hear!”
“So, keep the knives away from your ears, then, Vincent!”

We’re all getting to know each other a little better, though I know only Glenn by name. We all laugh more and louder now, and feel more free to commiserate with each other and to admire the quiet woman in the back row who is playing all of us right off the island. A little ease was welcome, because I felt like adding Guitar Throw to the Olympic field event roster. Arggh. I hadn’t gotten ahead far enough to look at the new material, so I felt Dumb AND Dumber. I couldn’t even follow the very minimal (but rather hurried) instruction. I thought for sure that I’d be sent immediately to what was called, in my antiquated grade school days, the Opportunity Class.

I’m daunted by the material we’ve been given in this Beginner’s Guitar class, although the GG constantly reassures us (“Okay, there are relative degrees of success there!” he’ll smile after an utterly bungled sequence. “You are floating in a sea of calm,” he intoned this week when we muttered anxiously after a quick set of instructions. And then, as usual, he’d laugh. “That’s a sea of calm, not a sea of qualms.”) I found out this week that Beginner’s Guitar, Session Two (“Faster and Furiouser!”) will resume at the Ottawa Folklore Centre after we have a month off to digest Kurt the First. I think I’ll continue. “There will be more songs and cool stuff,” KW the GG assures us.

So I mostly feel good about my work on the most boring of exercises. I do, that is, until I do the math: last night, playing to the ebb and flow of another hockey game on the radio (Go, Sens, Go!), was my NINETY-SECOND STRAIGHT DAY of doing things to my guitar. (Stay, Gordon, Stay!) Working hard on chord changes, I am, but also working on the over-numerous but slightly-less-boring songs that use ‘em. Ah. Method to the GG’s madness. One night, though tired, I played for nearly an hour ‘cause I got seriously into “Skip to My Lou” and “Old Smokey”, yes, in four different keys! And I belatedly got to page 39 of the GG’s guitar manual, and realized that it won’t be all that mysterious once I spend an hour or so on it.

I AM AN OLD DOG. THESE ARE NEW TRICKS.
(Repeat.)

Sheldon Kennedy

Posted by :James Howden On : November 16, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I admit up front: this is product placement. It’s really just an attempt to point you toward the “It’s All About Sports!” section of this site. (It’s just over there to your right.) I wrote about Sheldon Kennedy’s new book and a radio interview I heard this week. It’s one of those athletics-related topics that’s really not all about sports. Kennedy’s quite heroic in a way we can’t seem to get enough of. (And in this case, I approve.) And don’t worry: the word “puck” does not even appear in my article.

And hey, have I told you (recently) about the exciting series of my ruminations on music and the perils of mid-life learning? It’s to the right and down below, in the “On Second Thought” section. Be the first on your block to read about ODY! The story began in August…

Courage and Kennedy

Posted by :James Howden On : November 15, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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I listened to the smack-festive verbal sparring of The Jim Rome Show yesterday and a hockey chat broke out! (Rimshot.) More important, it was one of those serious and heart-building conversations that Rome loves to slide in among the banal star interviews, general jock-sniffing and one-up “takes”. Normally, a Rome interview with an athlete takes up 8 or 10 minutes of a 12-minute program segment, but with Sheldon Kennedy yesterday, he went on for four full segments, a commercial radio hour, and with good reason. (At his site, I think you can hear old shows. It started in hour two.)

Many Canadians, even non-hockey fans (Surprise! There are millions of ‘em…), know about Sheldon Kennedy. His book came out last spring in Canada, and maybe it’s just been published in the States. Certainly, the story is not so well-known there, but back in 1996, near the end of an eight-year NHL career, Kennedy was the public face of a prosecution of his former junior hockey coach, Graham James, for sexual abuse. Imagine: in the closed-mouth, macho world of pro sports, Kennedy openly said that he had been his coach’s sexual prey on hundreds of occasions. James was convicted, and went to jail for 18 months; unbelievably, he still coaches in Europe. (Working with young people? Don’t know. Shudder.) Kennedy shook the hockey world and became another Canadian hero in the mould of Terry Fox or Rick Hansen: the victim of a cruel fate who cannot be beaten down by it. He even rollerbladed across Canada to bring light to this dark subject, because “I always thought, when it was happening, that I was the only one, and I couldn’t do anything or tell anybody.”

Of course, the book was to be next, everybody wanted it, but Kennedy was a basket-case. Self-medication, despair and demons that would not go away nearly killed him, but he finally got straight and got ready. The book is called Why I Didn’t Say Anything: The Sheldon Kennedy Story. He spoke with Rome yesterday, not for the first time, and what a stirring thing it was. He’s a Canadian prairie farm boy, now 36 years old, who speaks as sincerely and feelingly as ever, but now more eloquently and with greater knowledge of the wider social fact of sexual abuse. It’s painful but ultimately inspiring to listen to him. His breaths are deep. The struggle he still endures, after all the interviews, to tell his story again is obvious. Beside the obvious poignancy of so much that he says, I was particularly moved by two things.

He’s a dad himself (he has a young daughter, I think), and one of his core activities in life is to beseech parents to “pay attention to your kids!” Spend time with them. Know who they know. Don’t turn them over to anybody else – hockey coach, drama teacher, Scout leader, anybody – without being sure of this person’s character, motivation, methods. I have four sons, and that’s a scary and challenging thing to hear from a voice like that.

I was also moved by a simpler thing. Sheldon Kennedy is now playing hockey again for fun with a Calgary Flames alumni team. It’s incredible, startling, to hear the wonder in his voice as he speaks of a long-blunted love for this game that he was so good at, but which was not always good to him. “I don’t know how I played in the NHL,” he says. (Talent, for one. Even in the midst of his junior hockey nightmare, he twice had 50-goal seasons, and scored over 40 one year between Detroit and its AHL farm team.) “I never felt this way about the game then. I wish I’d been able to play with the passion that I have now…” And for this brave man, that’s far from the greatest of his losses. It took him nearly ten years to heal enough to write this book. (With Rome, he thanked the work of AA and elsewhere, he has given great credit to Aboriginal friends, their sweat-lodges and their spiritual support.)

Rome was moved this day, and so were his listeners. It was the worst and the best of sport all in one radio hour. Wow. Wow. What a man is Sheldon Kennedy. (If only JR hadn’t had to follow this pathos with a bland football coach. When will Byron be able to play again? How did you feel about losing to the Texans? The show goes on, and must, I guess, but I got whiplash.)

ODY: Week 12. Listen.

Posted by :James Howden On : November 14, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…

(Every one of Garrison Keillor’s stories of a mythical Minnesota begin this way. Prairie Home Companion. Gotta love it.)

It’s also been a quiet week in Old-Dog-With-a-Guitar Land, Gary, but I keep on pluckin’. And I still have a ringing in my ears. It’s “Scuttle Buttin’” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, and that whole Carnegie Hall album. I do love the blues. But I keep thinking back to the rudeness of the crowd as an elderly John Hammond, one of the godfathers of great American music, tried to introduce the band and was almost shouted down. Perhaps even worse was the reaction of much of the crowd to SRV’s solo encore.

He quietly introduced “a song I wrote for my wife” and eased into a slow and introverted instrumental love song called “Lenny”. I have no idea how he made some of those sweetly bent chords come out of a Stratocaster, and I can’t fathom why so many in the audience appeared not to care. “Go, Stevie!” one guy roars, apparently thinking, along with many another buzzed-out moron, that all this delicate stuff was just to whet our appetite for some more headbanging histrionics. I’ve read that Vaughan put his finger to his lips more than once during this extended solo, but the shouting (Hey, listen, I’m a rock show star!) just kept on. That would’ve driven me nuts. It does, even in my living room. Another leather-lung tried to help – I guess – by screaming “Shut the f—k up!!” It didn’t work. I wonder how the performer felt. It’s the context, I suppose, that whole bar blues ethic. I admired Vaughan’s attempt to deliver some quiet and quirky virtuosity, rather than the beer-fuelled, ass-kicking kind. It’s weird when fans take their heroes prisoner. I wonder if it’s just coincidence that the brief, up-tempo closing ditty, a fast and funky answer to the sweetness of “Lenny”, was called “Rude Mood”. (Yeah, folks, I was just teasin’ y’all with that LOVE-stuff.)

There’s so much to The Blues. Feeling. Longing. Suffering. Of course, it arose (at least indirectly) out of the experience of slavery, and it’s still rooted in pain. It can always be dressed up around the edges with sweat, booze and sex, and that’s all some players can find in it. I’ll always go back to Roy Buchanan, though, because he finds all the emotion. (And, bitterly, a most tawdry and depressing end, but that’s another story.) “The Messiah Will Come Again.” “Roy’s Bluz.” Stunning things. I can dig the energy and drive in all kinds of blues players and songs, too, but I lose patience with the corruption. “Howden’s Blues”: I fantasize about a new music — and maybe even playing it a bit — that is tinged with or even driven by the blues, but which can speak of social justice, and not just another dysfunctional shack-up; that can appeal to mind, and not just the groin. Or hey, how about a just slightly raunchy hymn to racial harmony or loyal marital loving? You may say I’m a dreamer…

Well, of course I am. After all, I played my guitar every day again this week. That made for 84 straight, and it ain’t like I’m making a whole lotta music. I’m playing waltzy accompaniment to “On Top of Old Smokey” and a polka-esque pick-strum backing to the melody of “Skip to My Lou”. In four different keys, mind you!! And no matter how tired I am or how drab the prospect, I find that the practising still draws me in. Just gotta put myself in the driver’s seat, and Gordon and I go lurching off on our nearly musical way.