Timothy Cameron: Rants

Okay I admit it. I temporarily lost my mind and submitted an entry to CBC's Hockey Anthem Challenge contest. Not to worry though, I emailed them and had it removed after a few days. The song's entitled "The Age Of Nefarious", although I temporarily renamed it "The Wrath Of Grapes" for the contest, which appealed to fans of Don Cherry while the entry was posted.

It was interesting while my participation lasted, and I'd like to make some suggestions to CBC.

First, stop calling it an anthem. It's a theme song. Bit of a difference.

Second, get somebody to return that copy of "Happy Gilmour" to Blockbuster, you're ten years overdue on the rental, and the late fees are a waste of tax dollars.

Third, change the name of the contest to "Logan Aube's Fifteen Minutes of Fame Sideshow".

Logan Aube, if you haven't heard, is a twenty-something sound artist who entered a piece in CBC's contest, which, although cool in an abstract way, probably doesn't have a hope of winning, since it's made up of sound effects such as cats meowing, sheep bleating, babies crying and what may be a volley of machine gun fire. The only thing missing is an element that we in the music biz refer to as a "melody". You may remember melodies. They were those things that you hummed or whistled. Some of us still use them.

Anyway, I have nothing against Logan's entry, and as I say it's kinda cool in an abstract way. You can even dance to it, although that might best be attempted in a manner reminiscent of Shields and Yarnell. Even more interesting though, is the aftermath of Logan's piece being uploaded. Like many others who've entered the contest, Logan told some of his friends to go and vote for his entry. You can rate an entry on a scale of 1 to 5, and not surprisingly all of his friends seem to have voted 5 out of 5 for his ditty. Interestingly, Logan seems to have a few thousand "friends", which must be murder when it comes time to send out Valentines cards every year. He announced his entry on various web forums and in chat rooms, and started a grass roots mobilization of an army of "Loganites".

This is where the contest starts to morph into a fiasco. Not only are the Loganites voting 5 out of 5 for his entry, they're also voting 1 out of 5 for every other entry, and by their sheer numbers making it appear that there's only one song/soundscape even in the running. One can also leave comments on each entry, and the Loganites have risen to that challenge as well, lauding his contribution with (I hope) tongue-in-cheek praise, pontificating on and on about his entry being the greatest thing to ever happen to music. They've also left disparaging comments on the pages of other entries, some even going so far as to accuse the catchier tunes of being bad classic rock and suggesting that the baby boomers know nothing about experimental music. For those particular Loganites I have two words:

"Number nine....number nine....number nine...."

Anyway, the contest is out of control, and CBC have only themselves to blame. The previous theme, which was used from 1968 until this year was written by a certain Dolores Claman. Since the song was initially considered to be a jingle rather than a theme song, she was paid a one time fee of $800 for her efforts. Years later she finally began to receive performance royalties for each broadcast, and everything seemed fine until CBC began selling the song as a ringtone and apparently not paying her a royalty for each sale, contrary to normal business practice in the world that exists outside the walls of Our National Treasure. Needless to say, Dolores was unhappy at this development, and commenced legal action against CBC in 2004. The CBC responded this past June by offering to buy the song outright from Ms. Claman for the sum of $850,000. That may sound like a lot of moula, but when one considers the revenue the network could generate from the song, it's conceivable that they could make that money back in less than five years. By the way, the lowest paid players in the NHL make $450,000 per season, and more than 200 players in the league make upwards of a million bucks per season. Not surprisingly, Dolores turned down CBC's offer, countering with an asking price of $2 million, equivalent to the annual salaries of two mid-level hockey players you probably can't name.

The prize for the new theme is all of $100,000, which would appear to be chump change for CBC, and as an added bonus whoever wins will suddenly fall under the category of "self employed artist earning more than $30,000 a year" in the eyes of Revenue Canada. That means the winner (and I use the term loosely) will have to register for a GST number, and spend the rest of their lives submitting quarterly returns to the folks in Ottawa. It's like income tax times ten. Good luck Logan!

The previous theme now has a new home over at TSN, which is owned by CTV, and the folks at CTV apparently had no qualms about paying whatever price Dolores Claman was asking. Either that or she cut them a deal because she loves Corner Gas.

As for CBC, they'll probably continue to muddle through in their unique "Air Canada with video cameras" sort of way, and maybe even pay a team of consultants a quarter million to sort the contest out. Kinda makes your eyes well up with national pride, don't it?

Hey folks!

So I'm working on an instrumental rock album, with drums, bass, the whole she-bang.

I'll wait here for a moment while some of you do double takes at your computer monitor.

Ready? Okay, here's the story about this little project, and I'll try to be as brief as possible. In early 2006, my friend Bruce was playing in the house band with the Blue Man Group. He and a couple of other Blue Man peeps decided to form an instrumental band called Experiment In Terror, and they played a weekly house gig for a few months. Unlike a lot of instrumental bands, they weren't strictly surf and/or rockabilly, but rather a mish-mash of whatever they felt like playing, while still being predominantly guitar-driven. They were fantastic.

A few months later, during the summer of '06, I had my own house gig at Castro's as you may recall. You also might remember that I had some sort of lung/throat irritation that went on for most of the summer, making each gig an endurance test (for myself AND the audience!). I remember envying the guys in Experiment In Terror, since they could still do their gigs regardless of colds or allergies or a dose of SARS or whatever the hell I was fighting. By the way, a neti pot turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. Or rather, it was what the doctor would have ordered if the makers of neti pots were in the habit of treating doctors to golf vacations the way the pharmaceutical companies do, but that's another rant...

My aforementioned friend Bruce loaned me a bass in early 2007, since he didn't want to lug it with him to Florida, which is where the Blue Man organization was nice enough to relocate him when the Toronto version of Blue Man Group was boycotted to death by some petty political bullshit. That too is another rant. Anyway, I now had the ability to record bass parts.

We own a Mac. Apple computers come with a recording program called Garageband, and it's waaaaay cool. The drum loops are incredibly realistic, in fact I've listened to major label bands on the radio a few times recently, and recognized some of the drum sounds as being the same as the ones Garageband provides. And recording directly into the computer means that I can work on guitar parts any time, day or night, since solid body electric guitars don't make much noise without some sort of amplification, in fact they're quiet enough that I can record a guitar part and the only really audible sound is coming through my headphones.

Also, I have at least 200 songs with no lyrics, and parenthood has severely restricted my lyric-writing opportunities. Not that I'm complaining, I'd much rather play with our toddler than wrack my noodle trying to come up with a rhyme for "antidisestablishmentarianism" or whatever.

Last autumn we moved to within a couple of blocks of Glenn Gould's childhood home. There's a historical plaque in front of the house that gives a brief recap of his career, including his refusal to perform live for the last couple of decades of his life, since he felt that the recording studio produced superior sonic results over the concert stage. Walking past that plaque three or four times a week to pick up groceries was the final kick in the arse that the universe served up.

Anyway, if you want to check out this new project, which has been christened That Satisfying Crunch, I've set up a MySpace page, complete with audio of the first five completed songs. It would be somewhere around here:

http://www.myspace.com/thatsatisfyingcrunch

And for those of you who still want your folkpunk fix, fear not, there's another album of that stuff slowly coming together too.

Slowly.

Last year I bailed out of MySpace. I was getting "friend" requests from people who were just MySpace whores, trying to collect as many "friends" as possible, and I didn't care for MySpace's connection to Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News empire (that right wing bastion of mock journalism that gives jobs to twits like Geraldo Rivera).

Plus it was always slow to load on our computer.

Ironically, having not learned my lesson, I then joined Facebook, and proceeded to get vampire bites and requests pestering me to take the "What Kind Of Salad Dressing Are You?" quiz. That wore thin even quicker than MySpace. A friend of ours (jewellery designer extraordinaire Susie Love) convinced me that maybe MySpace wasn't such a bad idea after all, since it was one more place for people to stumble across my folkpunkery, and she'd certainly been getting attention through her own MySpace page. So I took a deep breath and opened up shop on MySpace once again.

Fast forward to this past January when I received a "friend request" from a Montreal-based, folkpunk-ish singer-songwriter (enough hyphens for ya there?) by the name of Frank Makak. He plays both solo and with his band, The Makaks. Frank and his crew have become big fans of my musical noodlings, to the point that last week I got an email from Frank with some sort of mystery MP3 attached to it. I opened the file, the song started playing, and my jaw made a loud banging sound as it hit the floor. Turns out his band has recorded one of my songs, "Land Of Lukewarm". I was ecstatic, and more than slightly verklempt, so to speak. Anyway, Frank has given me permission to post their version of the song on my Noises page. It's loud and punky and it's right at the top of the page for the month of April, so feel free to help yourself:

http://www.folkpunk.com/music.html

And if you want to check out Frank's music as well, go to:

http://www.myspace.com/frankmakakmusic

And if you want to check out Susie Love's art and jewellery, drop by http://www.myspace.com/susielovesfun

When I returned to Toronto (the city of my birth) from the hinterlands of small town Ontario in 1990, I began what would be a four year run as a full time working musician. By 1994 however, the gigs were paying less and less, and had become a bit less plentiful, so to supplement my income I took a part time job at Cosmo Music out in the wilds of Scarberia. According to local legend, the name Cosmo is an abbreviation of COSt MOre, by the way. Anyway, they were assholes to work for, so I promptly quit one day, and realizing that I had to do something to top up the rent money, I flipped through the Help Wanted ads in the back of Now magazine. There was an add for a tele-fundraising company by the name of Goyeau Communications, looking for callers. I contacted them and set up an interview for the following week.

When I arrived at Goyeau's offices at Yonge and Gloucester (which is about as "downtown" as you can get in Toronto), I was greeted by the office manager, Daryl, and one of the supervisors, a tall wiry fella named John O'Keefe. They interviewed me, and offered me the job, which I accepted. On my first day there, I met my future wife, the lovely Camille, and over the next few months I soaked up the atmosphere that was created by a room full of would-be artists and liberal-thinking types that made up my gang of co-workers. It was during breaks between calls that I jotted down the lyrics for "She Dates Creeps", "American Dream" and a few other future Folkpunk gems. So you could say I have fond memories of working there.

The supervisors, including John, also put in shifts dialing would-be contributors to worthy causes such as Amnesty International, or Kids Help Phone. It was then that I realized that John O'Keefe was probably one of the funniest people I'd ever worked with. If he was speaking to somebody who was stonewalling, he'd keep hitting his phone's mute button during the conversation, so the person on the other end wouldn't hear him berating them for two seconds before John carried on with his sentence. It got the point that he could spout out a complete sentence, peppered with phrases worthy of Lewis Black on a good day, all the while clicking the mute button on and off like he was sending a telegram by Morse code. To anybody sitting near him, it was all we could do to not burst out into hysterical laughter while we ourselves were speaking to a potential donor. Also around this time a band called The Presidents of the United States had a hit on the radio entitled "Lump", and John and I would catch each other humming it at work. We had a running gag about how "you know, the kids today, they got their skateboards, and they got their Doc Martens, but they love their Lump."

Goyeau Communications folded in early 1996, and we all went our separate ways, but a lot of us would sort of keep in touch through other co-workers, or grab a quick pint if we ran in to each other somewhere. Camille and I hadn't seen John in at least a couple of years, but always meant to get in touch with him at some point.

Last weekend, John went out with some friends for a couple of drinks, not too far from where Goyeau had been located. As he was leaving the pub and walking up Yonge Street to catch the subway home (typical John, he was a supporter of things like public transit and bike lanes) he passed by a strip club, and was shot in the head by some useless little fuck from the suburbs who had just been tossed out of the strip club by the club's bouncer. The aforementioned useless little fuck decided that shooting the bouncer would be a good idea, but he missed and hit John instead. John died almost instantly, leaving his nine year old son to sort out just how fucked up this city and the rest of the world really are.

When Mel Lastman was mayor of this dump, he used to prattle on that Toronto is a "world class city", although how a world class city ended up with a dope like Lastman for a mayor is beyond me. Maybe he meant "THIRD world class city". In order to live anywhere decent in this rat's nest you now have to fork over about $400,000, just for the privilege of having idiots shoot your friends while your friends are minding their own business. The air quality gets worse by the minute, the condos downtown which started to sprout up uncontrolled while Lastman was mayor (I believe one of his sons is a condo developer, handily enough) have increased the population density to the point that gridlock and over-crowded public transit is the norm, and in spite of all of it there are still a few bozos who think Toronto is a wonderful place to be. Well, maybe back when John O'Keefe and Goyeau Communications were around, but not anymore.

So that, boys and girls, is why I cancelled my upcoming gig at Bread And Circus. I didn't really have it in me to stand in front of a microphone and be an entertaining performing flea for yourselves and a bunch of drunks from Kensington Market. Not now, and probably not anytime soon. Sorry.

What a fucked up world.

...AND PLAY A GIG!!

That's right folks, for the first time in over a year I will once again venture out into the wilderness of clubland and abuse my Telecaster and vocal chords for your enjoyment. Here's the pertinent info:

TIMOTHY CAMERON (still me, after all these years)
SATURDAY JANUARY 19th
at BREAD AND CIRCUS
193 Baldwin Avenue, Toronto
show starts at 8pm (so don't show up at 10pm and wonder where I am...)
appearing with Ottawa-based singer-songwriter John Allaire, and soon-to-be local legend Kim Jarrett, cover will be approximately $7.04, including GST...

http://www.breadandcircus.ca/
http://www.johnallaire.com/
http://www.kimjarrett.com/

Over the past few months I've had a number of folks ask me when I'm playing next, so I'm working on the assumption that enough of you want to see me play live that you may actually leave the comfort of your sofa (or chesterfield if you prefer) to venture down to Kensington Market in a couple of weeks. Hell, I'M going out that night, and I'll be dragging a guitar and knapsack full of harmonicas and cables with me, so don't complain.

I decided to make an exception to my rule of pretty much avoiding playing in bars at this time for two reasons: firstly, John Allaire is great. Secondly, the name of the venue is Bread and Circus, which is close enough to "Bread And Circuses" from my last CD that it seemed like something resembling fate. I also realized that 2007 was my first full calendar year without a gig since about 1982! I figured one night out wouldn't hurt.

In other news, I've redesigned the website, and put the guestbook back up under the heading "Your Turn". Feel free to say something.
Anyway, thanks for reading, hope to see you on the 19th. Unlike some other acts, I won't be pestering you with emails every couple of days about the gig. You're all big boys and girls now, it's up to you to figure out how a pen and calendar work. Besides, I'll be too busy re-learning my lyrics.

All of them.

Geez, I'm a wordy bastard, aren't I?

See ya when I see ya,
Timothy

An Open Letter To Meteorologists:

Hello. You're not fooling us, you know. We're onto your game. Like that nonsense about "long range forecasts", which we all know is a marketing ploy to get us to tune into whatever newscast you work for. Listen, I have a relative who for years worked as a commercial airline pilot. If anybody needs to know what the weather will be like for the next week, you'd better believe it's the guy who has to fly a few tons of jet airliner through the stuff. And yet after years of watching Five Day Forecasts on the evening news, he's come to the conclusion that your (shall we say) "gift of prophecy" is really only good for the next twelve hours, and beyond that you're (shall we say) "being creative".

And another thing. What is with this whole game of Blame The Weatherman on the news? You know what I mean, that sort of would-be humourous exchange that happens between you and the anchorman whenever there's bad weather on the horizon which usually goes something like:

Anchorman: "Well, Jim, it looks like we're not going to have a very nice weekend, what do you have to say for yourself?"
Weatherman: (forced chuckle) "Ha ha Steve, yes well what can I say, I do what I can, but sometimes the weather doesn't come along exactly the way I'd ordered it. Ha ha." (forced chuckle again).

When in fact the exchange SHOULD unfold something like:

Anchorman: "Well, Jim, it looks like we're not going to have a very nice weekend, what do you have to say for yourself?"
Weatherman: "Look you bubble-headed prat, once you learn how to pronounce the word Zimbabwe properly, then you'll have earned the right to get cute and flippant during the newscast, but until then go piss up a tree and by the way your fly is open, you vacuous twit."

Now THAT'S a newscast I'd watch...

And now, possibly in preparation for the kinds of books I'll be reading to our son when he's a bit older, I'd like to present a rant in the style of those old "Dick And Jane" books from eons ago:

Consumers in North America have been buying Chinese-made toys and other crap for decades, because it's cheap.

Oil has traditionally always been bought/sold/traded in US Dollars.

China bought oil from Iran, and paid for it in Euros.

The American government doesn't want oil to be bought/sold/traded in Euros.

The American government began conducting safety tests on Chinese made toys recently, and guess what? The toys aren't safe all of a sudden.

China is about to host the biggest circus of all, The Olympics.

Most places that host the Olympics lose money on the deal.

The North American media has also recently informed us that a lot of the food in China is bad.

People who go to the Olympics want to eat occasionally, but not if the food is bad.

People may not go to China to see the Olympics if the food is bad.

China may lose lots of money on the Olympics if people don't go there because the food is bad.

China may lose lots of money if the American and Canadian governments stop the importing of Chinese-made toys and other crap because they aren't safe all of a sudden.

China shouldn't have bought oil from Iran with Euros.

Bad China, bad.

Sorry I'm a bit late posting out a communique this month, we've spent the last two weeks moving. Incredibly, two adults and a baby managed to accumulate enough stuff to fill a cube van once, a pickup truck six times, a station wagon twice, a mini-van once, and a Mazda Protege four times. There were so many boxes here in the new place, that for a few days I wasn't sure what the floor looked like. Turns out it's parquet.

Sweet.

Anyway, as you may know, those of us residing in the province of Ontario (known to the rest of the nation as the province of Those Bastards), are currently in the throes of a provincial election campaign. So far, the incumbent Liberal Party and their leader, Dalton McGuinty are maintaining a comfy lead. In fact, the campaign has basically been a case of "As-long-as-Dalton-doesn't-get-caught-having-sex-with-a-platypus-on-a-park-bench-while-sticking-a-carrot-up-his-nose-he's-fine". As a result, the other parties seem a bit desperate to try to shoot him down. One of the NDP's attack ads reminds us that during Dalton's time in office, hydro rates have increased an average of 40% or something like that. That may be true, although if memory serves me correctly, Ontario's hydro was privatized by the Conservatives under the remnants of Mike Harris and his cronies, just before the election that finally sent them packing four years ago. The NDP are also quick to remind us that they're concerned about the environment. I guess that's why their lawn signs appear to be massive chunks of non-recyclable corrugated plastic this time around.

As for John Tory, he used to run Rogers. You remember them, they're that company that never shows up to connect your cable when they say they will, and you've taken the day off work because you can't wait to catch the Pet Network's next episode of America's Next Top Mongrel (with Tyra Barks).

'Nuff said.

I suspect I'll vote Green again.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have some boxes to unpack.

Lots of them.

Way too many...

Since this weekend marks the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana closing her account at Gucci, so to speak, I thought the following Toggles anecdote from the Folkpunk archives might be somewhat timely. The Toggles, as you may recall, was a '60s British Invasion tribute band featuring Rob Kay on guitar, Jim Clark on drums, and yours truly on bass. We first got together in '96, and by the summer of '97, we'd built up enough of a following that we were playing just about every weekend somewhere in the Toronto area. One of our regular haunts was a pub called Feathers. We'd always go over really well there, since a large portion of their clientele were originally from the UK, and were exactly the right age to remember the stuff that we played. It was probably our favourite venue on our circuit, since the audience would sing along with even our more obscure numbers.

On Saturday, August 30, 1997 we started another evening at Feathers in fine form and everything was going swimmingly, although halfway through our first set I noticed that one by one the televisions in the bar were all switching over to CNN. We couldn't really see any of the screens from where we were playing, so I didn't know what would inspire the bar to switch over from the Bulgarian badminton playoffs, or whatever had been on the tube beforehand. We finished off the set and began our usual between-set circulation through the bar to say hi to friends and loved ones who'd come out to see us. That was when I glanced up at one of the TVs and saw the caption across the bottom of the screen that read "Princess Diana Injured". Now keep in mind that Diana was apt to make headlines every time she caught a cold, and this was, after all, CNN, the same network that dubbed the O.J. Simpson trial the "Trial Of The Century" (memo to Ted Turner: can you say "Nuremburg"?), so my reaction was more than a bit cynical. Since the volume was turned down on all the TVs while the bar blasted the house stereo, none of us could hear what the talking heads on the screens were saying. I snidely commented that Diana had probably sprained her ankle while skiing or something, and CNN was having a slow news day.

After recharging our pint glasses, we headed back to the "stage" (i.e. the corner of the room next to the dart boards) and launched into the second set, blissfully unaware that our night was about to turn into the

Weirdest

Gig

Ever.

While we were in the midst of our second set, the caption along the bottom of the TV screens was updated to "Princess Diana Seriously Injured", and the entire bar suddenly got very quiet. Or more specifically, very quiet except for the three guys in the corner cranking out "What's New Pussycat" at full volume, oblivious to what was going on, since, as I said, we couldn't really see any of the televisions from where we were plugged in. About half of the folks in the audience began finishing their drinks and slowly filing out of the pub, no doubt to head home and phone their families back in England. Keep in mind that a majority of the regulars at Feathers probably owned tea sets commemorating Charles' and Diana's wedding, so this was turning into something heavy to say the least. We got through the second set, and once again mingled with our peeps during the break. About five minutes before we were planning to start our third and final set, the caption on the bottom of the TV screens was changed to "Princess Diana Dead". The bar staff finally turned off the stereo and cranked up the volume on the televisions, the atmosphere in the bar fell to about three notches below "Miserable" on the Happy Meter, and three Toggles looked at each other as if to say "Oh crap, now what do we do?".

After a quick consultation with the bar manager it was decided that we'd try to lift the spirits of the troops by launching into our peppy, poppy, happy-go-lucky repertoire and finish off the night. We took to the "stage", tuned up, plugged in and began the first song on the set list, a Beatles number entitled "One After 909", which included such lines as "my baby says she's DRIVING on the one after 909", and "come on baby don't be cold as ice". All in all, a somewhat unfortunate choice of lyrics considering the content of the breaking news. During Rob's guitar solo, I looked out into what was left of the crowd, and realized that our plan to cheer everybody up had mostly failed, and in some cases even earned us a dirty look here and there (the nerve of us colonials, acting happy in the face of tragedy...). Most of the audience were watching television instead of the band, and about half of them had tears streaming down their cheeks by this point. Yup, they were actually crying. That pretty much did it for us. We half-heartedly played a couple more songs (we skipped "Drive My Car", in case you were wondering) and then bailed on the whole idea, unplugged our gear and sat down to finish off our pints.

A few minutes later, as I was standing at the bar waiting to get paid for our hard day's night's work (this was back when bars in Toronto actually paid bands, a radical concept by today's standards...) one of the regulars, a Scottish fellow named Al, was standing next to me, glued to CNN. By this point the media were starting to point the finger at the paparazzi as the cause of the car crash that killed Diana, and Al shook his fist at the TV and cursed "Those God-damned pavarotti", in his thick Glaswegian accent.

For a moment I pictured a herd of bearded opera singers chasing Diana around Paris. And then my mind sort of went one step further and I pictured the opera singers wearing Shriners' hats and riding mini bikes (hey, if you're going to visit Abstract Land you might as well get your money's worth). And suddenly the surreal nature of the whole evening hit me, and I got a momentary case of the giggles. I put up a monumental struggle to avoid laughing out loud in the midst of the mourners, but the whole thing was just beyond bizarre, and I spent the next moments back at our table with head bowed in faux sadness and my pint glass strategically placed in front of my mouth to camouflage my dopey grin. I gave Rob and Jim their share of the lucre, and we packed up and left.

And now the epilogue:

When we attempted to land another gig at Feathers, we were told that the bar hadn't made much money on our August 30th gig, and they'd call us when they had an opening.

Which of course they never did.

Greetings.

First, a quick bit of music news: "She Dates Creeps" was downloaded 201 times in July. That's up from 122 in June. I have no idea why so many people have suddenly latched onto the song, but there's no way you'll hear me complaining about it. I've also gone through most of the initial run of the second CD, "...every cloud has a sulphur lining...". In fact I think this calls for a celebration. So to mark this festive occasion (and the third anniversary of its release), all seven songs from "...every cloud..." can now be downloaded for free on the "Noises" page.

You're welcome.

So a few months ago I started getting calls from some fax machine. At first I didn't think too much about it, and would simply hang up as soon as the offending machine started squealing in my ear. After a couple of weeks though, the calls increased to one or two a day. That was bad enough, but the part that REALLY pissed me off was how, after hanging up and waiting half a minute or so, the fax machine would still be there, trying to send crap through to somebody (me) who can't remember the last time he (I) even owned a bloody fax machine. So I guess if I suddenly needed to call 911, I'd have to patiently wait until the jerk-off trying to sell me a half price vacation was finished tying up the phone line.

I started hitting *69 after each call, and discovered that the calls were originating from not one, but FOUR different numbers. I contacted Bell Canada about it, and the good news is that they were very nice and promised me that the calls would stop within three days. The bad news is that that was over a month ago, and the calls are still happening. I've called Bell a couple more times, and each time they've been very polite. And very useless. And they probably wonder why so many people are giving up their land lines and just using their cell phones.

Twits.

In the larger picture though, you really have to wonder about the type of business that would even still send junk faxes in the year 2007. I mean, faxes were the way to go ten years ago maybe, but anybody who tries to promote their business by junk fax now is a bit of a joke. Maybe they only just stopped sending out flocks of messenger pigeons last year or something.

Anyway, there's your rant for the month. Enjoy the rest of August. Remember your sunscreen. Don't eat too much before riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the CNE. Joe Strummer would have turned 55 on the 21st.

Etcetera...

I'm amazed to report that She Dates Creeps was downloaded 122 times in June! In fact, various songs from both of my CDs totalled 602 downloads last month. That's without me playing gigs or promoting the CDs or anything. Apparently I've gone viral or something...

Wow, am I ever glad I'm not stuck on some major label where I'd be ignored.

Speaking of which (warning: rant ahead), a friend of mine recently did a set at Reverb for one of the umpteen "new music nights" that happen around Toronto. This particular shindig was a bit different though, in that there were three "judges" making notes on each performer, and then discussing their observations with the performer after that performer's mini-set. One of the judges was from an indie thrash metal label, and the other two were A&R weasels from major labels. I know EMI was one of the majors represented, but I forget the other, not that it matters, they're all pretty much interchangeable. Anyway, since my friend's style is a unique sort of fusion of pop, jazz and world music, the guy from the thrash metal label wasn't able to offer anything in the way of career advancement. He did say he really liked her music though, and was just generally really encouraging. His demeanour was in sharp contrast to the major label lunkheads however, who suggested that my friend should show more skin, and should watch a lot of MTV so she can pattern herself more along the lines of the pop tartlets whose videos make MTV the culturally enriching experience that it is.

And the major labels wonder why they're in trouble. Talk about having your head up your ass...

I think many would agree that the majors have worked tirelessly to bring about their own inevitable demise, and that their policy throughout the 1990s of conning the public into repeatedly paying upwards of twenty smackers for CDs that only held two decent songs each has a lot to do with their current predicament. But that's only part of the picture.

Music in a digital form is sort of like Frankenstein's monster, and the major labels have unwittingly cast themselves in the role of Dr. Frankenstein. In a twist on the original story though, this time the monster was in need of foster parents, and we were the suckers who got stuck with that particular gig. Think about it, the "monster" was born around 1982 (when CDs first hit the market), we started the adoption process in the late 80s (when we were conned into believing that we should replace every one of our vinyl LPs with its CD equivalent) and by the time the monster turned 18 in 2000, it was old enough to leave home and go out into the big world and wreak havoc on its creators (Napster).

In hindsight, a lot of audiophiles now feel that vinyl LPs actually sounded really good, much less bright and brittle sounding than CDs, and one can't help but think that if we'd been allowed to stay with our tried and true analog musical formats, the majors might not be in the trouble they're in.

Looks good on them, eh? Perhaps the term "A&R" stands for "Artless & Repetitive".

Okay, I'll stop there. Thanks for tuning in!

Howdy there peeps,

In light of Ottawa's recent funding cuts here at the Ministry Of Folkpunkery (Harper, you bastard...), there will be no rant this month. Unless of course I come up with something before I finish typing this.

There is, however, a new audio snippet from the archives for your amusement, an old Hippycrits chestnut entitled Honey What Is The Deal?, which can be heard and/or sampled and/or ripped (ever notice how new technology always comes with new verbs?...) at the following location:

http://www.folkpunk.com/music.html

The song was originally composed as a bit of a "throw away" back in 1989 or so. I was still living in Owen Sound (and before we go through all this again, no, I'm not originally from Owen Sound, my folks moved there when I was 16), and a friend's mom asked me to write the theme song for a show she hosted on the local community cable access TV station. She was one of the local health department officials, and the show was basically serving as a reminder to all the young people of Owen Sound to use condoms. The show was a radical concept in small town Ontario in the 1980s, and I'm sure that the three or four young people (out of the thousands that lived in Owen Sound) who actually watched the station took her advice, although it's perhaps doubtful that the types who watched a lot of community access TV were, shall we say, "getting any".

But I digress.

Anyway, a few friends heard the song and suggested I write new lyrics since they thought it was a pretty good tune, so I did just that. The original lyrics are probably long lost in the mists of time, which is just as well I'm sure. This version was recorded in early 1995, with the reinvented Hippycrits. This time it was Don Bull on bass (or "dBull" as he preferred to be credited), and Victor Laso on drums. The recording itself was a bit of an adventure, since this was originally just intended to be a quick, live-off-the-floor demo that we could use to get a few gigs. My then-girlfriend heard the rough mixes and immediately decided that now was her big chance to take a shot at being a record producer, something she'd never attempted before. And so a quick live-off-the-floor demo mushroomed out of control into the (supposed) next Sgt. Pepper. Every step of the project, from the zillions of overdubs, to the complete flop of a release party was stressful and/or disastrous, but it's funny in hindsight and it'll make for an entertaining chapter in my memoirs I'm sure. Anyway, hopefully you'll enjoy listening to it more than I enjoyed making it.

Until we type again...
Timothy

http://www.folkpunk.com
http://www.myspace.com/folkpunk

(yeah, I know, MySpace is just so last year, but what ya gonna do?)

Hello.

Well, Folkpunkateers, it's a new month and with it comes a new nugget from the Folkpunk archives.This month's musical selection is a live recording of my take on a classic from the Clash. Help yourself (it's at the top of the page):

http://www.folkpunk.com/music.html

Or if you prefer some visuals with your Folkpunk you can try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjMhbQ1Z7p8

I thought "career opportunities" was a fitting subject for this month's commentary as well. After much reflection, I've decided that I'm probably finished playing in bars and pubs. I couldn't care less about another gig in some mediocre little watering hole here in Hogtown, where half the beer in the fridge has gone skunky, and the music is battling with ESPN for everybody's attention. You guys deserve better, and frankly, so do I. Really, why should I bother cranking out She Dates Creeps for the millionth time to a bunch of alcoholics who aren't even there to listen to me anyway? For the applause? Screw that, my ego doesn't need to hear it that badly, and applause isn't paying the bills. Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning into a complete hermit or anything, I'll still do festivals, house concerts, private parties and whatever else pays the artist what they're worth, but bars for me now fall under "been there, done that". The scene is pretty much dead now compared to the early 1990s when I started this whole charade anyway, and for those of you who would argue that the local music scene is just as vibrant and important as it ever was, I have three words for you:

"Weekend At Bernie's"

You know, that movie from the late 80s in which two guys have to pretend their boss is still alive in order to enjoy a big weekend party he promised to have at his beach house, and they go so far as to dress his corpse up for the big bash so nobody will suspect anything? For me, the music scene in Toronto resembles Bernie. They're even starting to smell the same.

So in lieu of being a performing flea, I've decided to concentrate on the cyber/digital/virtual realm a bit more. Other art forms such as paintings, sculptures, books, poetry, movies and most TV shows are more what you might call "passive" art forms. They're created long before their audience experiences them, and music has had that potential since the advent of recording technology, but until the internet came along recorded music's only real outlet for public exposure was radio, which left the artists at the mercy of station programmers. Well, no more kiddies, technology has levelled the playing field, and I'd be goofy not to take advantage of it. I now get over a hundred visits to my website on a daily basis. Germany, England, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil and Japan seem particularly interested in what I'm up to, and I've been selling lots of MP3s in those exotic locales as a result. Even cooler than the downloads though, I recently received an email from a teacher in Germany who's conducting a course on American society and how it's viewed by the outside world, and she asked for permission to use my song American Dream as part of the course. So there ya go, my lyrics are now been used for scholarly purposes on another continent. Amazing.

By the way, according to my monthly website "traffic reports" Canada has yet to generate the most visitors to Folkpunk in any given month, and I've been getting those reports for almost two years now. It's a bit ironic, but typically Canadian I suppose.

So to sum up: internet good, bars bad. I can now begin working on Sgt. Folkpunk's Only Darts Club Man or whatever...

Hi there,

In an ongoing effort to provide you loyal Folkpunkateers with some previously unheard gems (or if not gems, then fairly attractive bits of granite and/or limestone at least...) from the Folkpunk archives, we have a new selection for the month of April. You may already be familiar with the version of Page Before Me that was released on Never Mind The Hyperbolics lo those many moons ago. This version however is how the song was originally conceived, as a sort of REM-meets-The Smithereens heavy-ish, power chord driven thing. I even had the right guitar (a Rickenbacker) and was running it through a Marshall Bluesbreaker combo, for those of you that are interested in that sort of trivia. Click on the Noises button above to find the prize in question.

Also along for the ride were Colin Bartlett on his Olympic white 70s Fender Precision bass, and Pat Allcock on some drums that were predominantly round in shape, and stuck over in the corner. Colin was a loyal bassist, and stuck with the whole Hippycrits project for longer than I had any right to expect. When we finally called it a day, he joined The Boss Grunions and they in turn went on to their own indie success. Fortunately, before we disbanded, Colin and I took the time to write Wish You Could See Yourself. Pat Allcock was one of a few zillion drummers that sat in with us, but he was busy with his own projects, and so became a "recording session only" temporary member of the Hippycrits. I sometimes feel like I spent more time in the early 90s looking for a drummer than I spent eating and sleeping. Anyway, Pat has also written a snoot-full of great power-poppish tunes, and he still surfaces for the occasional gig around town.

Um, I think that's it. Fatherhood is treating me very well, thank you (Vaughan's eight weeks old now), and I'm still plotting my next collection of Folkpunkery to unleash on the masses. Sooner or later. One of these days. Any time now...

Okay, two quick pieces of news for you loyal Folkpunkateers:

First, for those of you wondering when my next public appearance will be, I'm currently appearing here in Toronto on a billboard near Yonge and Lakeshore. It's for something to do with CBC, although I forget what that is at the moment. But they paid me. Lots. Think of it as your tax dollars at work. I haven't actually seen the billboard yet but I've heard about it. I'm portraying a musician, which as it turns out is much more profitable than actually BEING a musician. Who knew?

Secondly, for those of you who prefer cocooning in front of your computer with actual visuals and sounds (because let's face it, the best way to enjoy live music is when it's being replayed on a screen...), you can now watch YouTube snippets from a gig I did back in April at Renaissance Cafe. Here are the urls for two songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-CS-gvLLmw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xgO1Tn6AI0

Enjoy! Oh, and for those of you who watch CTV's Instant Star (and really, who doesn't?) sometime in the near-ish future you'll be able to see me in a few scenes, once again making more money pretending to be in the music biz than than I make being in the music biz. I'm sensing a trend here...

So, uh, I guess that's it. Happy belated ChrismaHannaKwanzaDan, and Newy Ear. Oh, and one more thing. I think we should start calling this year "Twenty-O-Seven" instead of "Two Thousand And Seven", for two reasons. First, Twenty-O-Seven kinda sounds like a cop show from the 70s, and secondly because Prince never said he was gonna party like it was One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine.

So there.

What's that you say ? You'll have your usual ? Okay:

TIMOTHY CAMERON (ici)
CASTRO'S LOUNGE (2116 "E" Queen Street East, Toronto, which is pronounced "Trahna" so it rhymes with "piranha", but I digress...)
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 21st
9pm to 11pm, with possible time off for good behaviour.
NO COVER (but there's a tip jug which gets passed around and anybody who can't throw in at least a twoonie is really cheap, and doesn't deserve beer and live music.)

After twenty-three weeks, the Folkpunk Tuesday thing at Castro's will be winding up (or is it "winding down") next week, on November 28th. After that, I'll be retiring to the laboratory deep in the catacombs beneath stately Folkpunk Manor to begin work on my next secret project, which I hope to unleash on the unsuspecting masses sometime around February or March.

Or maybe April.

And when I say "laboratory deep in the catacombs beneath stately Folkpunk Manor", I mean the living room. I can't divulge the exact nature of the project, but it may or may not involve go-go dancers. Depends on the size constraints of the living room.

And the size constraints of the go-go dancers.

Anyway, I may surface here or there for the occasional bit of "folkpunking" in the meantime. Or I may just sit at home with my pregnant wife and watch our DVD of a fireplace. I'm not kidding, it's just a video of a fireplace that goes on and on indefinitely. I think we've managed to have it on for almost two hours and it's showed no sign of letting up. That's one hell of a log.

So after tonight you have one more chance to catch me in action as a "one-man Green Day" (as I was once described) in the Beaches, and then they turn the neighbourhood back into a retirement community for dogs, or whatever it is they're going for.

You've been warned.

Hey,

I didn't spam you last week, since I'm assuming you pretty much get the idea by now, but just in case:

TIMOTHY CAMERON (me already)
CASTRO'S LOUNGE (2116-E Queen Street East, Toronto)
TUESDAY (pick one)
9pm to 11pm
NO cover charge.

Okay, that business is out of the way, now for a rant. And this time I'm REALLY pissed.

The Harper government's new "Clean Air Act" isn't so much a case of "too little too late", but more a case of "fuck all, and possibly never". The idea that our government is doing us a big favour by endeavouring to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 is laughable. In a very few number of years, hindsight may indicate that we should have cut them by 100%, and done so by the year 2009. Environment Minister Rona Ambrose bragged about how former PM Brian Mulroney had given her kudos, and that must be good, since he's the one that environmentalists all agree was Canada's greenest prime minister, and he was a Tory as well, and golly isn't it great that we have a Tory government again to save us all, blah-blah-blah. Except Mulroney was the leader of the PROGRESSIVE Conservatives, and now we just have the Conservatives. Which brings up another point, if they're the Conservative party, what the hell are they conserving anyway? Certainly not the environment, apparently.

And in case you'd forgotten, yes, this is the same Conservative government that has given Stockwell Day the role of Minister of Public Safety, which entails being heavily involved with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (aka CSIS... aka James Bond for hosers...) among other things. And yes, this is the same Stockwell Day who literally believes that the earth was created 6,000 years ago.

So, since we're all fucked anyway, let's drink up. And maybe stop paying taxes or something.

Hey,

And again:

TIMOTHY CAMERON (ici)
at CASTRO'S LOUNGE
2116 "E" Queen Street East, Toronto
EVERY FREAKIN' TUESDAY (including this one coming up)
9pm to 11pm

So hockey season has started again. Oh joy. As you may have seen, the media were tripping all over themselves earlier in the week because Stephen Harper attended the Ottawa-Toronto game in Ottawa, and was seen cheering when the Maple Laughs scored a goal. Well, that's nice. I guess as long as the media are reporting on SOMETHING that's vaguely related to Parliament Hill, then we can all sit back and feel safe and secure in the knowledge that they're doing their job. Extra bonus points for tying hockey into the story, too. Honestly, it seems like the news outlets are playing a game whereby the object is to take a story, and see how many degrees of separation are between the story and the NHL.

"NEWS FLASH: President of Pakistan Rumoured To Be Closeted Habs Fan...film at 11:00..."

If there was anything to be learned from the NHL strike that took place last year (or was it the year before?...I wasn't really paying attention...) it was the fact that the sport itself wasn't in danger as a result of the strike. It was still being played by people who play the game because they like it, not because their agent negotiated a seven figure deal. I actually heard some insinuations that hockey would never recover from the strike, which I thought was a hilarious notion. Imagine if McDonald's went out of business (no really, imagine it, it's a nice place to be for a moment). Would everybody start wringing their hands because the demise of the restaurant industry was upon us? Not likely. And that brings me to another thing I've realized recently:

The NHL is to hockey what McDonald's is to dining.

Think about it. They're both big corporate machines with obscenely large advertising and promotional budgets at their disposal. They both have CEOs and General Managers, and for all I know the NHL even has shareholders. I always bust a gut when I see grown men painting blue maple leaves (that's how it's spelled you know: "Leaves") on their faces. It's really no different than painting a Xerox or Microsoft logo on your forehead. Imagine all the television sets in sports bars being tuned to the stock exchange, and the commentator getting himself in a lather thusly: "Nike's up to $45...now $46...this could be it folks...another shift like the one we saw in the first period and it could be all over for Adidas this season...another wind up and...YES !! YES!!! NIKE HAS HIT $50!!! IT'S ALL OVER!!!". And then imagine complete traffic gridlock at Yonge and Bloor because a bunch of hosers are riding around in their pickup trucks, leaning out the windows screaming "Nike Rules! Adidas Is For Fools!" or whatever. They could even have the "swooshstika" tattooed on their butts, which (in the spirit of the festivities) they could display for all the world to see.

Only another nine months to go. Yippee.

Hey everybody,

Here's the weekly gig news which many of you have come to expect. You know the drill...

TUESDAY AUGUST 29th:
Timothy Cameron (with me portraying the role of me)
at Castro's Lounge, 2116 Queen Street East (still)
9pm to 11pm.
with special guest Michael Proudfoot.

Bruce Gary passed away yesterday at the age of 54. He was the drummer for The Knack. You know, "My Sharona"? That thundering, incessant, primal, tribal drum pattern that opened the song which pretty much sealed my fate as a musician.

When I was a kid, I sort of knew I wanted to be a musician, but at the time the airwaves were clogged with disco and shlocky 70s soft rock, most of which I despised. Thanks to the efforts of my aunt Eva and my best friend at the time, Chris Patchett, I'd been exposed to a steady stream of Beatles, Rolling Stones and all the great stuff that had happened during the Great Pop Music Renaissance of the mid 1960s. Disco might have been okay to dance to, but beyond that it couldn't touch the stuff that I was raised on.

I'd started battling an ancient acoustic that I'd begged my parents to buy me (for the princely sum of $25 if memory serves), and I'd begun writing songs that had more in common with my (supposedly) passe heroes than what was actually in style at the time. Musically I was an outsider. Most of my classmates thought my musical tastes were anywhere from quaint to laughable, but I didn't care. I knew what I liked.

And then one day in the fall of 1979, I heard it. That same driving, relentless, almost maddening drum pattern came roaring out of my radio, hit me square between the eyes and pinned me to the wall. It would have been one of the FM stations (either CHUM or Q107) that I was tuned into, because "My Sharona" was followed by three or four more songs from The Knack's debut album (FM radio used to do that sort of thing). It was like somebody turned on all the lights. Some hacks accused The Knack of being Beatle-ish almost to the point of being derivative, but for those of us who were sick and tired of twenty-something Baby Boomers telling us that we'd missed it all, this was our revenge. And when I picked up my copy of Get The Knack (which I still have), there they were on the back cover, decked out in white shirts, skinny ties, drainpipe trousers and Cuban-heeled boots, and a voice inside my head said, "this is it".

Twenty-seven years later the album still stands on the musicianship alone. The Knack were incredibly tight, and Bruce Gary's ability to walk a fine line between the manic attack of Keith Moon and the straight-ahead drive of Ringo Starr is nothing short of miraculous. For those of you who have a copy of Get The Knack, go play it right now and listen to the drums, you'll see what I mean. For those of you who don't have the album in your collection, haul yourself over to iTunes or wherever and prepare yourself for a lesson on How To Play Rock 101.

Thanks Bruce.

Hey ya,

I'll be at Castro's again this Tuesday for the eighth episode of Folkpunk Tuesdays, the details of which look remarkably like so:

TIMOTHY CAMERON (who?)
at CASTRO'S LOUNGE (2116 Queen Street East)
TUESDAY AUGUST 15
9pm-11pm
with guest AMER DIAB.

This has been one of those weeks that's been a whirlwind of gigs, rehearsals and recordings, so I don't really have anything to rant about, other than how little time I have because this week's been a whirlwind of gigs, rehearsals and recordings (see above).

Anyway, since Oliver Stone has thrown his hat into the
"now-we-can-start-making-money-from-September-11-since it's-been-five-years" ring, I thought I'd give you the lyrics to a new song of mine entitled Maybe I'm Crazy.
Enjoy. Or don't...

"Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe it's you who's naive,
Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe we've all been deceived.

"That Tuesday morning, no one could have guessed,
That all they stood for, would be put to the test,
But what was it they stood for all along?
Some stripes and stars on a piece of cloth,
And a patriotic song.

"Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe it's you who's naive,
Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe we've all been deceived.

"They had the protocols, for to deal with this,
And still the system failed, was it ignorant bliss?
The air defences nowhere to be found,
I read somewhere that fighter jets,
Don't do much on the ground.

"Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe it's you who's naive,
Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe we've all been deceived.

"Their self-anointed, leader of the world,
Trapped in a photo-op with little boys and girls,
And there he stayed as chaos reigned supreme,
Reminding those who still saw straight,
That nothing's as it seems.

"Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe it's you who's naive,
Maybe I'm crazy,
Or maybe we've all been deceived.

"A thousand years from now, what are they gonna say?
And will we ever know what went on that day?
And will it even matter in the end?
They got their outcome free and clear,
With handsome dividends."

Yeah, okay, I lean towards conspiracy theories sometimes, but somebody has to, otherwise we'd be even easier to fool.

Later,
Timothy