It was fifty years ago today that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, heartbreakingly short of the relative harbor of Whitefish Bay. I’m not sure the disaster would be so much a part of my consciousness, or most other people not directly affected by it, but for Gordon Lightfoot. The above-linked CBC article states as much:
“As much as we like to think we do a great job of keeping the memory alive, we really can’t hold a candle to Gordon Lightfoot,” Lynn said. “If it wasn’t for him, it would be a fraction of the people now who know about this story and this ship.”
I know some people who can’t stand the song (“too long” is the most frequent complaint, something I will simply never comprehend) but when you see how many great covers of the song exist, you know there was something special and lasting about it. I’ve listened to the Rheostatics cover more times than I could count, but one of my all-time favourites is when the Dandy Warhols do their heavy electric cover. The 7″ edit is my favourite version, but just listen to this live rendition at The Phoenix in Toronto to get a sense of the cultural importance of the song — until the big distortion crunch comes, you can hear the crowd singing along.
A version I’d never heard until tonight, though, is this live rendition by the Punch Brothers recorded just a few years ago. It’s quickly joined my short list of favourite versions.
We just spent a long weekend in Ottawa. It got built around a single concert, but we ended up packing in a wonderful few days.
Friday
What a beautiful drive. There was no traffic to speak of getting out of Toronto, and we had smooth sailing – not to mention some beautiful fall colors – the whole way. Google Maps suggested we take a different route into the city, so we got to drive up the Colonel By and explore a little on the way to meet Lindsay’s brother Patrick.
After a slight detour, we parked and met him at Black Squirrel Books. I left with one book (a novel by Kevin Patterson, whose book The Water In Between was important to me when I read it 25 years ago) while Lindsay left with…well, many. I had a cortado, too, which was served in the right glassware, but fell prey to the same pitfall that most coffee shops do: they made it too hot.
We left there and drove to our hotel, The Metcalfe. A new boutique hotel downtown, I’d never stayed there…except, once I stepped in, I realized I had stayed there. Sixteen years ago, when it was the Indigo. Anyway, it’s much nicer now.
We needed food, so we turned on our heels and went straight to Raphaël, which Patrick picked. We had no reservation but they plopped us at the bar. It was really delicious too:
Amuse bouche of some kind of fish consommé with ají limo tiger’s milk
Tamalito De Pato: Sous Vide Duck Thigh, Mote Corn Tamal, Salsa Criolla, Ají Drizzle
Anticuchos: Ají Panca Flank Steak Skewers, Mini Potatoes,
Brussels Sprouts, Chimichurri, Rocoto Sauce
Dessert: petit fours of some kind of tiny cookie and Peruvian flan
It was all excellent. Nice Ontario-forward wine list too.
Afterward Lindsay and Patrick went to a concert at the NAC; I fell into a protest march up Elgin for a while before wandering back to the hotel and catching the end of the Jays game.
Saturday
Boy, did we have a lazy morning. The room was too big and comfy not to. Eventually I went out for coffee, but found that the local Morning Owl is closed on Saturdays, so I got coffees from the lobby cafe instead, and regretted it almost immediately.
Eventually we walked down Elgin to The Manx for brunch. I had fond memories of it when I used to visit in the…mid-to-late-90s, I guess? It hasn’t changed much, which I loved. I had the banana bread French toast; Lindsay had the eggs benny. We both had a Caesar and a beer.
We walked back along the canal on a perfect fall day, and relaxed in the room for a bit before walking back down Elgin for an early dinner with Patrick & Maeve at TOWN. It was fantastic:
Apps
house focaccia w/ whipped brown butter
butterbean, date and apple salad w/ arugula, toasted walnuts, dried cranberries, herbed goat feta, Greek yogurt dressing, wheatberry
glass of Rosehall Run Chardonnay for me, and a cocktail for Lindsay
Mains
Dan: cumin-honey glazed and grilled pork chop w/ confit carrot and roasted pepper purée, polenta batonettes, shishito peppers, chai pickled peach, charred corn salsa
Lindsay: house-made cavatelli w/ saffron, corn and miso cacio e pepe, cornbread pangrattato, pickled jalapeños, pecorino, chives, ½ tare glazed duck breast
two glasses of Saumur Cabernet Franc
Dessert
tiramisu
glasses of Frankovic Luna Blanca for Patrick and I
Then, the reason we were in Ottawa: to see a symphony playing music from Stardew Valley, aka Lindsay’s favourite game. I’ve heard her playing the game enough that I recognized some of the music, but wasn’t as in on the jokes as everyone else. But she loved it, and that’s what matters.
Sunday
Up quite a bit earlier, as we were meeting CBGB for brunch. I pre-gamed with cappuccinos from Ministry Of Coffee. Side note: early Sunday morning in downtown Ottawa is an unexpected mix of dead quiet and aggressively weird.
When they texted that they were en route we drove out to Hintonburg and met them at a Bridgehead nearby. After chatting and catching up we walked to Chesterfields. Lindsay had a jerk chicken benny; I had a classic breakfast. Mostly we were just there to catch up with friends, who I miss so much. After brunch we went for a group stroll, then said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel.
We weren’t there long, though – we had stacked some plans. We walked to Majors Hill Park to meet Patrick and Maeve again, on what had turned into a very sunny and warm late-October day. We had plans to spend it inside though, at the National Gallery of Canada. We NAGged it up for a few hours.
After that we spilled down Sussex to the market and found a table at Beyond The Pale. P+M ate lunch; we snacked on duck drummies and beers and many bottles of water. After sitting and laughing for quite a while we parted ways; Lindsay and I walked back to the hotel, stopping along the way at Little Victories for some fuel to get through the evening.
A teeny rest in the hotel room later and we were ready for our dinner at Arlo, which ended up being fantastic.
Starters:
Tomatoes + rosamarina w/ fresh coriander, capers
Scallop tartare w/ black garlic, kohlrabi, cilantro, mushroom vinegar
Dan drank: Crémant de Loire (Les Athletes du Vin “Gardien des Bulles” NV) and Garganega (La Biancara “Masieri Bianco” ’23)
Lindsay drank: House Martini (gin, apple eau de vie, dry vermouth, manzanilla sherry) and a Gruner Veltliner that isn’t on their online menu so I can’t remember what it was
Main:
Porcini Crusted Ribeye For Two w/ frites, marrow, chimichurri-stuffed portobello, arugula
a bottle of Sangiovese (Pacina Donesco Toscana Rosso 2020)
Dessert:
Lemon Posset
A glass of not-quite-Tokaji Hungarian Furmint for me
The steak was cooked perfectly, tip to tail. The scallop tartare might have been one of the best things I ate all year. The wines were all delicious. The vibe was loud at first, but pretty great. In a weekend full of outstanding meals, this might have taken the prize.
Clearly we used up a lot of our driving luck on Friday. After packing and scarfing down some room service breakfast we drove back to Toronto, and the rain started almost immediately. Several times it escalated to the point where we could barely see the car in front of us, which made for some pretty tense driving. Luckily it cleared up around Gananoque, and we had clear weather all the way into Toronto. We arrived home to find a very happy cat.
All in all: pretty awesome weekend. Perfect weather. Time spent with family and old friends. Incredible food. Memorable experiences. Good birthday trip all around!
Over the past week I’ve done some fun stuff. The kind of stuff that reminds me why I like, or liked, Toronto.
Friday
Lindsay, Kirsten, and I finally tried Tiflisi, a Georgian restaurant in the Beach which made Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list the past two years. We had:
Assorted phkali (vegetable spreads with walnut sauce) + shoti-puri (traditional Georgian bread)
Lamb khinkali (traditional Georgian soup dumplings w/ lamb)
Kebab platter (w/ chicken, pork, lamb)
Bottles of Rkatsiteli and Saperavi wine, both aged in Qvevri
It was goddamned delicious. Even the vegetable spreads were seriously good, but the dumplings…holy crap.
Sunday
In the morning, we went for a walk / wee hike in Crothers Woods. We probably missed the height of the fall colors the previous weekend, but it was still pretty nice. At the entrance to the park we started chatting with another erstwhile hiker (and her beautiful black lab Grayson) and just began walking together. We had a nice little stroll, enjoyed the weather, and Grayson found a tennis ball that we used to play catch.
Wednesday
Early in the workday I received word that I had somehow lucked into an invite to the Bruce Springsteen concert at the Scotiabank Centre that night. I’m probably not the biggest Bruce fan but I know his live shows are legendary, so I went.
Long Walk Home (introduced as a fighting prayer for his country)
Land of Hope and Dreams
Lonesome Day
Candy’s Room
Adam Raised a Cain
Hungry Heart
Better Days
Letter to You
The Promised Land
Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
Reason to Believe
Darkness on the Edge of Town
The E Street Shuffle
Nightshift (Commodores cover)
Last Man Standing (acoustic)
Backstreets
Because the Night (Patti Smith Group cover)
She’s the One
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
Badlands
Thunder Road
Encore 1:
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Encore 2:
I’ll See You in My Dreams (solo acoustic)
Thoughts:
(I only really knew 10 of the 29 songs he played last night, and 3 of those 10 were covers…including “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town“, bizarrely enough, when a fan handed him a Santa hat)
My favourite song of the night was a hard-chugging blues version of “Reason to Believe”, the only song he played from Nebraska. Close seconds were “Adam Raised A Cain” and the Patti Smith cover.
The man is 75 and he played at high energy for three hours. Three fucking hours.
The E-Street Band is huge (I counted 16 members, including Bruce) but so tight. Nils Lofgren and Little Steven are icons, but seeing Max Weinberg power through that 3-hour set without so much as a few seconds’ break was incredible. And there’s some magic to a band whose core has been playing together for fifty years.
Most of the fans there were older than I was, and knew every word to every song, but I could see people in their twenties around me singing along too.
They were late going on — 8:45 instead of 7:30 — so the show wrapped up at 11:45. I left, tired but pretty blown away.
Back in the before-times when Lindsay was recovering from her shattered ankle, I used to play her the Chicago song “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day”…well, every day, during her long road to recovering from surgery and walking again. I’d hear the song a hundred times growing up, but only then did I notice something I’d missed as a kid…and now I can’t hear the song without noticing it.
The drumming at the end of the song is terrible.
I’ll jump right to where it gets bad, at the 2:40 mark where the song shifts into the fast-paced chug:
It’s a mess. Clumsy fills, flubbed strokes, missed timing. Part of me cringes every time I hear it now.
And it’s not like Danny Seraphine (pretty sure he was the drummer in Chicago back then) didn’t know what he was doing — he was an accomplished drummer. Like, here you can see him play the same song perfectly well:
Also, please note in that live version the snare drum does NOT sound like someone has wrapped it in a duvet for the song’s first half. Like, Russ Kunkel thinks that snare drum sounds too muted. (Sorry, drummer joke.)
I don’t get it. It’s like someone heard a version with no Peter Cetera mess-ups, but the worst possible drum track, and just said…yup, sounds good, press it. Like, how could this became the primary artefact of the song? It even kept surviving the multiple remasters that were released over the years. What, someone couldn’t have gotten back in there and touched some shit up?
I was pretty psyched to see an announcement from Jack White about a month ago saying he was going to reissue Big Sugar‘s classic album Five Hundred Pounds, or 500 Pounds as it was labelled in the US.
It’s one of my favourite albums of all time. It came out over 30 years ago, but I still listen to it regularly. My brother, my dad, and I all picked the song “Wild Ox Moan” when we independently made our 50-best-songs-of-all-time lists fifteen years ago. It was one of the best (and probably one of the two loudest) concerts I’ve ever seen.
It’s a nice feeling that so many more people will get to experience this album, and this band, now. Thanks Jack.
Some people have stories about opening for or partying with rock stars*. My handful of interactions with Canadian musicians I’ve admired have been significantly more boring. In chronological order:
In high school I attended a two-week music camp in Halifax called Summer Rock. In attendance were Joel Plaskett and the rest of Thrush Hermit. I didn’t meet them; they were just there. Also, one of Anne Murray’s kids was in the same music camp, which meant she was there for the final show.
At a …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead / Explosions In The Sky show in 2002 Danko Jones tried to push me out of the way so he could see the stage better. The man is very very short.
In the year I lived around Yonge & Bloor in Toronto I’d see Geddy Lee a lot, either walking around Rosedale or occasionally at the Varsity movie theatre. I think I exchanged pleasantries with him in the theatre one time.
I met Mark Holmes, formerly of Platinum Blonde (though I guess they’re still touring?) when he co-owned the Mod Club in Toronto.
At a beer & cheese tasting Lindsay and I sat at a table with Nils Edenloff from The Rural Alberta Advantage. It was the first time I worked up the courage to introduce myself and say what a big fan I was.
Because I was a subscriber and donor to the West End Phoenix I’ve traded circulation/delivery-related emails and texts with Dave Bidini who’s the editor-in-chief of the paper, but also a noted author and guitarist/vocalist in the Rheostatics.
Dallas Wehrle, bass player for The Constantines, ate dinner in our back yard along with his partner who’s our friend and former colleague.
* I do have a near-miss on this front though: my brother worked with a guy who knew Martin Bulloch from Mogwai, and they got me on the guest list when I saw them in…probably 2001 or so? I thought being on the guest list just meant we had free admission to the show; I didn’t know it also meant I could meet the band. Apparently after we left Marty was wandering around Lee’s Palace looking for us. Dumb Dan. Probably just as well; Mike and I were utterly deaf after that show.
Just taking a little break from vacation to pay homage to an album which came out twenty years ago today, and continues to be among my all-time favourites. Kill The Moonlight by Spoon has never left my regular rotation, and this song is in my hall of fame.
I was saddened to read a few weeks ago that Mark Lanegan had died. The Screaming Trees were a huge part of my cliched-but-true grunge-fueled musical awakening, and I’d happily (but a bit gloomily, if I’m honest) consumed the scattered bits of material he released over the past couple decades. Solo material (especially Whiskey For The Holy Ghost; “Borracho” is among my favourite songs of all time, alongside the Trees’ “Julie Paradise”), collaborations with the likes of Isobel Campbell and Duke Garwood, and so on. His voice affected me in a way few could.
Reading this article, I realized that I never actually listened to his influential 1990 solo album The Winding Sheet. Nor did I realize Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic played on it, including on a cover of Lead Belly‘s “In the Pines” (aka “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”) which Nirvana then recorded for their MTV Live album. So there’s a weekend project then. I’m glad I’ll get to discover something from him once again, even after so many years.
I don’t care at all for figure skating, but as of yesterday I have a favourite figure skater: the Russian athlete who skated to “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges, won the silver medal, and then seemingly quit.
Seventeen-year-old Russian figure skating prodigy Alexandra Trusova earned a silver medal after skating to the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing yesterday. She won the free skate with an impressive routine that saw her attempting five quadruple jumps, but ultimately came in second to her teammate Anna Shcherbakova, who scored better in the short program on Tuesday.
Trusova was not happy with silver, Reuters reports, breaking down in tears before the podium ceremony for the women’s single event. “Everyone has a gold medal, everyone, but not me. I hate skating. I hate it,” she was heard saying. “I hate this sport. I will never skate again. Never.”
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 