Entries by Philip Turner

#FridayReads, Feb 7–Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s Novel “All the Broken Things”

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Monday Feb 10 Update: Wow, I loved All the Broken Things, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s exquisite novel. Such a rich story of an orphaned boy, his sister, and the carny world of bears and barkers that both assaults them and supports them. They weather all that is arrayed against them. I give this extraordinary novel my highest personal recommendation.
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All the Broken Things #FridayReads, Feb 7–Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s novel All the Broken Things. This is an amazing and compelling novel set in Toronto in the early 1980s, about a Vietnamese immigrant family of three, former boat people–mother Rose, teenage son Bo, 4-year old daughter Orange Blossom, known as Orange, who was born with profound birth defects owing to Rose’s exposure to the Agent Orange that the US used to defoliate the countryside during the war. The killing chemical was manufactured in Ontario, a factual point that Kuitenbrouwer makes in an Author’s Note. I’ve found the writing in this so good, the sheer sentence-making and storytelling, that though I had read terrific reviews of the novel, prompting me to to order a copy, when it arrived I was expecting to only glance at the opening page and then put it aside until a moment when I thought I would have more time for it. Suffice to say, I didn’t put it aside at all, and now a day later, I’m on page 134. The book is commanding my attention, drawing me in, like the wrestling bear does Bo, the teenage boy of the tale, who willingly folds himself into the animal’s embrace.

Bo is the is fulcrum of the tale. He, far better than Rose, is able to handle Orange and comfort her. But he’s having a very hard time in middle school, picked on by a kid who yells ethnic slurs at him and wants to fight. Bo obliges this kid, and acquits himself well in their after-school battles. One of these scrums is observed by a carnival promoter who thinks Bo may be able to help out in his sideshow that features a bear, Loralei, who is trained to wrestle people. The Author’s Note also make the point that bear wrestling was at one time legal in Ontario, even common on the carny circuit. Just as Bo has an uncommonly intuitive way with his sister, he also has a gift with bears. Kuitenbrouwer’s descriptions of the tactile and empathic relationship between boy and bear could be outlandish, but instead are wholly believable. This is the book’s first paragraph:

“1984, BEAR
Look at the bear licking Bo’s toes up through the metal slats on the back porch. Bo is fourteen years old, and the bear not a year. The bear is named Bear. When the boy spreads his toes as wide as he can, Bear’s mottled tongue nudges in between them and this tickles. Bear craves the vanilla soft ice cream that drips down Bo’s cone and onto his feet. Bo imagines it must be glorious for Bear to huddle under the porch–her favourite spot–and lap and lick up the sweet cold treat. He imagines himself tucked in down there pretending to be a bear, and then how wonderful it might be, after a day alone, to have someone drip vanilla ice cream right into this mouth.” 

From Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business to Ellen Hunnicutt’s Suite for Calliope: A Novel of Music and the Circus, a book I edited and published, to W.C. Fields’ 1939 film “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” I have long had an affinity for carny stories, and All the Broken Things belongs in that good company. I want to know what happens next for Bo and his fragile family, and will be spending much of the next few days finding out. Writer Jonathan Bennet has also discovered the charms of this book, in a great appreciation here. 
[Cross-posted on my blog The Great Gray Bridge]
All the Broken Things

Turnip King and PS I Love You–a Fun Live Show at Pianos

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Turnip KIngI had a fun time at the PS I Love You show last night, and also enjoyed hearing Turnip King, a young band from Sea Cliff, Long Island, a 4-piece whose picture I’ll post here with shots from PS I Love You’s set. Guitarist Paul Saulnier later tweeted that he’d been feeling ill, but I didn’t notice during the fun set he played with his drummer bandmate Benjamin Nelson.

I asked the four members of Turnip King how they got their name–thinking that maybe it was an artifact from some LI farming magnate. They told me the phrase was part of an inscription on a historic plaque in their hometown. I like this–an homage to one’s local roots, while also carrying a novel edge. I bet there are interesting stories behind the naming of many bands–after all, it’s part of rock folklore that Jerry Garcia opened an unabridged dictionary and stabbed a finger at the first phrase his eye landed on: Grateful Dead. “Buffalo Springfield” probably derived from the name of a manufacturer of earth-moving equipment. I hope to hear more of Turnip King. This is a link to their bandcamp page with five of their songs. They told me they often play live shows in Brooklyn.

Rural Alberta Advantage, Keeping Live Music Fans Warm on a Cold Night

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Paul BanwattFun live music show last night with Toronto trio Rural Alberta Advantage in front of a boisterously appreciative full house at the Mercury Lounge on the lower east side of Manhattan. Early on, one of the band members mentioned from the stage that they had last played in NYC about four years ago, and how glad they were to back. Despite that, or even because of it, they sold out an early and a late show last night. I was at the latter set, my first time hearing them, after some years enjoying their music on CBC Radio 3. When I arrived near the end of the opening set by the duo Glasslands, I was glad to see the venue quite crowded already. In this club, with a music room whose walls are clad all in brick and no acoustic buffers installed anywhere, the sound can be brittle and harsh if the room isn’t full of people. On a wintry night with everybody in sweaters and heavy coats, the crowd was the buffer, and the sound was great.

The three members of RAA array themselves across the stage in a level rank–that is, the drummer, Paul, isn’t set up toward the back of the stage, but to the side of his bandmates. The frontman, Nils–a fair, sort of gingery fellow, in a light blue denim shirt and blue jeans, your basic Canadian tuxedo, shown in the tweet I shared from the floor–belts out lyrics in a distinctive vocal and singing style, with lots of shouts and murmurs, more of the former than the latter, all very expressive. He accompanies himself with percussive and propulsive guitar strumming, on an acoustic. He actually broke a string last night, and apparently having no second guitar with him on stage, asked if anyone in the audience could re-string his instrument for him. A confident and competent dude called out from the audience and walked on stage to help out, while Nils moved stepped over to his keyboard for a song. The guitar good samaritan took care of business and finished his task before the next song ended. This little episode made me think of how Neil Young always lauds his longtime guitar tech Larry Cragg, To one side of Nils was raven-haired Amy, on keys, xylophone and backing vocals. Among the musical sounds from her instrumentation, I could tell that she was providing a steady bass thump–since the band doesn’t have a bassist–and she did it really well). Drummer Paul was a fierce warrior on his stool, seated, not behind but to the side of his kit, so that you could really watch him play. It was nice to see a drummer freed from the back row. It’s apt, because he was a big contributor to the band’s sound last night. He happened to be in darkness most of the time, so the only photo of him I got of him happened when he was moving around on stage for a bit. Take my word for it: he’s a seriously great drummer, with a punchy tone to his skins that had the sonic character of an instrument, not beats alone.

RAA has a pleasantly raw, not heavily amplified, sound, reminiscent to me of other Canadian groups I love like Elliott Brood, “death country” trio that features guitar, banjo, and drums; the multi-instrumental duo Sunparlour Players; Cuff the Duke, a 4-piece whose guitar-driven sound ranges from pastoral to edgy and serrated; and ski-bumming, stoke-folk 5-piece Shred Kelly.

Rural Alberta Advantage played for about 75 minutes last night, before coming back for a few encores, capped off by the band’s stroll down from the stage in to the audience, where they stepped up on to a bench against a wall, and led the happy crowd in an acapella finale. Nils announced that following the show they would be hanging out in the bar’s front room for a while and would be eager to meet and say hi. I stuck around and enjoyed introducing myself to and speaking with Paul Banwatt, Amy Cole, and Nils Edenloff. I told them about my blogs and said I looked forward to sharing a report on their show, along with the photos I took during their spirited performance.

Such a fun night of live music. I hope to hear the band again sometime and plan on picking up one or both of their albums down the road. I didn’t buy either last night–being currently without a CD player attached to my Mac–but would love to have their CDs from Paperbag Records, a terrific label that also handles Elliott Brood and Cuff the Duke. Shout-out to Amanda Dameron Pitts of Cobra Camanda who helped me get in to to this sold-out show.
Cross-posted at The Great Gray Bridge.

Forthcoming in March: Album of “Rediscovered” Neil Young Teasures

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Announced at the website of Third Man Records, on Exclaim.ca

Third Man Records unearths NEIL YOUNG’s A LETTER HOME

An unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever. — Homer Grosvenor

And Rolling Stone provides a brief Q&A with Neil himself in which he discusses his fondness for old microphones, his belief that “We’re entering a very good period for recorded sound” and calls the new album, due out in March, “one of the most low tech experiences I’ve ever had.”Neil Young Sonia Recchia:WireImage
Cross-posted at The Great Gray Bridge

PM Harper Spreading Schmaltz All Over Israel

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According to a report on tonight’s World at Six on CBC Radio One, Stephen Harper was at a banquet in Jerusalem tonight where he was feted by his obsequious Israeli hosts. He sang “Hey, Jude” off-key and told the hall that his mother–who isn’t Jewish, he added to a laugh–nonetheless would appreciate the honourary doctorate he was given in Israel this week. I found it all obnoxious–Harper all week has been saying only things that Israeli Likudniks want to hear, pandering to them.

I’ve seen US Jewish political pandering and I’ve rarely seen it done more unctuously than Harper is doing it on the overseas trip. It’s politically nauseating. I think he and his advisors see their way to winning the 2015 federal election as appealing to voter groups they’re appealing with the trip. Harper continues to go to school on the history of George W. Bush’s presidency, who earlier tried to merge votes of rural, conservative Christian voters with the more conservative, older Jewish voters. As a US observer of Canada, it all gives me very unpleasant flashbacks to the Bush era.

Early Targeting of Voters by Stephen Harper with His Israel Trip

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I detest how Canadian PM Harper often apes George W. Bush and the policies and communications style of the last US administration. This week Harper’s doing it on his trip to Israel, in regard to Middle East policy, with his scarily tight alliance with Netanyahu and the Likud government. He traveled with a 208-person delegation, probably paid for largely by Canadian taxpayers. I see in this an early targeting of voters for the upcoming Canadian federal election, to take place in 2015. I think Harper’s clearly planning to try and appeal to what he and his political team believes are Canadian versions of GW Bush voters. From what I’ve read about the Canadian electorate, I suspect these are rural voters, many of them in western Canada. They are non-urban, non-cosmopolitan, largely church-going voters. As to Jewish-Canadian voters, I don’t think that a wish to appeal is them is driving this primarily–Harper is a sincere and vehement pro-Israel politician. He will be glad to reap conservative Jewish voters, and use them as props, but I think this is planting seeds with his base.

New Music for the New Year

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Every year on Boxing Day the online music seller Zunior.com, which specializes in Canadian indie music, has a half-price sale that prompts me to splurge on lots of new tune-age. Album downloads, normally $8.88, become $4.44 for the day. Here’s a list of what I bought this past week.

  • Two albums by Newfoundland singer songwriter Amelia Curran, “Hunter, Hunter,” released in 2009, and “Spectators” from 2012. I love her voice, lyrics, and spare instrumentation, especially on “Hunter, Hunter,” which includes the memorable ballad, “Bye Bye Montreal.”
  • Danny Michel’s 2012 “Blackbirds Are Dancing Over Me,” which was recorded in Belize with the accompaniment of the Benque Players, aka the Garifuna Collective. As explained on his website, instrumentation on this album includes “Maya guitar,  turtle shells,  donkey jaw-bone and traditional Garifuna segunda and primero drums.” There’s a great Caribbean vibe to the whole album, heard for instance on the opening track, “What Colour Are You?”
  • The Gertrudes, a 10-piece outfit from Kingston, Ontario, are a kind of folk orchestra, or as I’ve recently seen it put, a “folkestra.” Their 2011 album “Till the Morning Shows Her Face to Me” opens with the great song “Derby Girl” and also includes the instantly likable “Summer Plans.”
  • The Japandroids’ are a rock duo whose “Celebration Rock” was one of the hit albums
  • Mo Kenney
  • The Guthries
  • The Wooden Sky
  • Justin Rutledge
  • Matt Mays
  • The Constantines Kensington Heights
  • Mohawk Lodge Damaged Goods