The Ghost of Tom Joad

I know it’s hard out there now, people living of soup crackers and ketchup packages.  I’ve been there too, day to day. Wondering if I wouldn’t put a knife to my throat cause I didn’t have gas in the tank or a hope for a place to sleep.

It’s hard for all the working folk out there that have been abandoned. I happen to work for one of those mega corps.  I don’t build bombers or death planes. But the guys that pay my rent do.

It’s hard for me, one that’s been in your shoes.  To just sit and do nothing, I give what I can. But that’s local.

For the rest of you please enjoy. Bruce and Tom.

Sunday Journal – June 19, 2011

Happy Father’s Day Everyone.

First things first, let me add my voice to the growing throng who are pissed off as all hell at what happened in Vancouver this week.  To my mind it was a perfect storm of emotion and alcohol fuelled mayhem that only needed a spark to explode.  I believe that at the heart of the Vancouver riot there was a core element that was not there to celebrate game 7.

Vancouver Riot

Who in their right mind shows up to a street party with a baseball bat or Molotov cocktail? This was not a riot based on the win or the loss of a hockey game in my opinion. This was a deliberate act by a core group of hateful people who were determined to twist the drunken emotion of a hopeful crowd into a violent orgy of hate.  Mission accomplished.  I hope you were stupid enough to get your picture taken by one of the hundreds of cameras present at the event.

Water Polo player caught red handed.

May you feel the hot breath of your new butch cellmate on the nape of your neck as he introduces you to life in jail! Bitch.

The Ghost of Osborne Street

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the man I used to call Jesus, years in fact.  When I first moved to Winnipeg in the early 1990′s he was already a fixture on the Osborne Village sidewalks.  He was always dressed for the cold it seemed, ratty old blue parka, beat up winter boots and a heavy beard.

He was always dirty of course, living on the margins of society for so long.  His hair was normally pretty wild and natty.  But for some strange reason I found him to be the most agreeable person on the street those days.  Most panhandlers back then were pretty aggressive.  They would get in your face demanding a smoke or some of the hard-earned change in your pocket.  All the while wearing ratty clothes but somehow the new sneakers gave them away.  They may have experimented with the lifestyle but they sure were not living it the way he did.

Living on the streets for a night or two I think most people could imagine, but this man lived day in and day out on and around Osborne Village for as long as anyone I spoke to could remember.  Rumours abounded that he had a family once, that he had a job, a nice house and a car.  All of those things that society uses to judge us a success or a failure.  Now he just survived.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…Finale

Looking at the playbill after Jeff Beck had left the stage I noticed that we only had two more headliners to go,  Metallica and U2.

With appropriate heavy metal bluster Metallica took the stage with ear-splitting prowess.  Originally the organizers of the event wanted Led Zeppelin to carry the hard rock part of the show and were pretty much turned down flat by the remaining members of the group.  Thus it came to be that metal’s chosen heirs came to New York representing  every thing that embodies teenage angst and rebellion.

Opening with For Whom the Bell Tolls, the heavy drumbeat thumping into my chest with some force. Then into One and Turn the Page, before bringing out New York Native Lou Reed.

By their own admission Metallica does not play well with others, and did not automatically grasp the “Jam” concept for the show.  However when they learned whom they were to be teamed up with it all made sense, claimed lead singer Lars Ulrich.  It was their job to become the backing band for their Rock and Roll Elders.

Lou Reed emerged onto the stage in a Deja Vu invoking cheer of “LOOOOO”, thinking back to the “BOOOO’s” that greeted Bruce Springsteen the night before.  He appeared totally at ease with Metallica and the crowd as he lead  off with Sweet Jane.  White Heat/White Light followed in a similar rocked up fashion.

Lou Reed leads Metallica

New York, New York… East Village and Alphabet City

Hey everyone!  Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, and a great break before the New Year.

Waking up to the greeting of a ringing phone was not the way I had wanted to start the morning after a marathon concert.  But our tab had to be paid, the sponsoring radio station 92.1 citi fm,  needed an interview for the morning show back home.   After Darlene gave a brief sleepy account of the night before, exclaiming that Bruce Springsteen was the highlight of the evening.  We got our tired bodies ready for another hurried day on the streets of New York.

As the day before, we shunned the hotel “Hot Breakfast” in favor of  bagel sandwiches from the corner shop.  Gaining familiarity with the streets we confidently picked our subway stop and headed south into Soho, bound for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex.  This stop on our trip almost got scratched due to time constraints but I am very glad that we managed to fit it in.  If you are a fan of New York based rock and roll do check it out before it closes early in the new year.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex