Nice

You know, when I started the blog, there was very little banjo presence on the internet. Now we have gold like this.

This Blog Is Defunct

Long long defunct.
Please join me here instead.

Multiple Sidosis

The quintessential one-man-band movie has a scary title and a slow start. It's now in the US Library of Congress along with another favourite, A Woman Under the Influence.

Is there anything better than this?

Can't seem to recall how to make the link elegant.

New Title, New Cover

New publisher.

And

Not quite what I set out to get, but here's my new piccolo banjo, built in 1895, in Philadelphia by S.S. Stewart. It's little, but not a toy. Chris Coole told me these things can have trouble tuning, but so far this one's a dream.

Oh yeah.

And then there's this. That's me in the middle. With the make-up.

Resilience

This cat appeared on our doorstep early last spring, having spent many days apparently traveling from somewhere near Parkside and Howard Park, where (we've heard) he spent the last two winters. He was like an apparition. Scared the shit out of us. Emaciated, wide-eyed, emanating terror. He had crumpled ears and no tail, was mostly blind, could barely walk, and was terrified of people, running slowly away every time you approached to feed him. Still, he accepted the food, though sometimes diverted by blades of grass or small bumps in the ground. And his slow moving ways spared him from the cars that have been speeding down Grenadier Road all summer (impatiently diverted away from the construction on the Dundas Bridge. ) Stronger cats in the neighbourhood would sit by him as he slept in the sun. On rainy days he would sleep on a bag of topsoil underneath Wesley and Arif's front porch.

We gave him food. The nice-garden lady across the street fed him too, as did the raccoon-cat lady a few houses west. His favourite feeder however seemed to be the old Polish lady down the street, who would sit with him when he ate. He wasn't as wary of her as he was of the rest of us. But as the weather got colder she came out less and less. After the first snow she wept to see him, cold and damp and creaky. Every morning that we didn't see him, Kat thought he was dead.

Last week, on the final sunny day before the big cold and the snow, four of us managed to scoop him up from the street, afraid that he would die of frostbite if left outside this winter. We missed getting him on our first attempt, due in part to our reluctance. And then he gave us a run for our money, cantering first toward the porches across the street and then straight down Grenadier. We brought the traffic to a halt as he veered towards a laneway and then barreled head first into a low wall. That didn't stop him though and he very nearly succeeded in eluding us. When Kevin finally got the blanket around him he fought with all his strength, but we eventually got him into a catbox.

He spent the night in an office in Luanne's nearby apartment, panting out his trauma but then coming out eventually, making the most out of a bad situation by eating the food that had been left for him and then sleeping on the heated blanket.

A vet's examination has revealed that at some time in the past he walked away from an encounter with an automobile that broke both his back legs and shattered all his teeth, lost him the iris in his right eye and the sight in both.

(I'm thinking somewhere there's a canary-yellow Hummer with a sizable dent in the grill. The driver was probably okay though. You need a rugged vehicle like that to guard against the feral creatures of this city, maliciously hurling their bodies into your path. Oh, and to supplement your use of a vacuum pump in the treatment of erectile disfunction.)

Some time before that (probably not after) he contracted a mild form of feline herpes. Sometime after, he lost most of both his ears to frostbite. The bobtail however turned out to be what he was born with. He's five years old. We just found out that the nice-garden lady calls him Ciao. The old man who fed him over at Howard Park for two winters called him Garfield. Don't know what the Polish lady calls him. She doesn't speak English. Kat calls him Bubba. Luanne and Kevin call him Bubba now too. It looks like Bubba's going to stick.

I've never saluted the resilience of a creature before. But this cat appeared on our doorstep the same week that Kat's mum was diagnosed with a serious illness. Eight months later it appears that, despite serious odds, both Bubba and Lida are going to be okay.

I've got my eye on a new banjo

All the therapies I've been taking for my back have drawn me to a single conclusion. The root of all my troubles is the long neck banjo.

This one is a Vega, from the 20's. It's regular size and lightweight. My friend tells me though that I shouldn't want a banjo from the twenties. He compares it to buying golf clubs from the 20's. Who'd want golf clubs from the 20's? Now I'm confused.

A Few More

Courtesy of Coach House's Coffee Room. Tanya Chapman, Jonathan Garfinkel, Michelle Girouard, Carl Wilson, Eliza-Jane Scott.

More photos

Quill and Quire posted some images of the banjoree. My sister's in there, among the writer-types.

Including the manjo, which I've grown fond of, finally.

banjoree!

gascan banjo

Banjo On Your Knees

Zoilus plays

GORGASM sings in Spanish.
All photos by Victoria Wallace.

I probably should have advertised this on this site. But I do have the impression that most of the surfers who come here are from everywhere in the world except Toronto.
Me, Ann Marie MacDonald, Carl Wilson, Gorgasm (left and right).
More photos here, here and here.

When does a harp sound like a banjo

When it's Joanna Newsom playing, that's when.

Although Owen Pallett plucks a violin to replicate her sound...

Yes, yes, ys.

New Coat Cover

Banjonistas! I have returned from the city of Calgary with a new Coat cover! This play about a dead man in a coat has been improved by the fact that it now pays tribute to the mystical city of Prague.

Cash Gospel

I know Johnny Cash never liked the banjo, and when he recorded God's A Gonna Cut You Down, it was closer to Moby's version than to Odetta's, but I'd hang out with him anyway. I'd put away the banjo and groove with the rest of the movie stars.

Let's Do That Again

I have the bad habit of burying the links I want you to hit among a whole load of whimsical ones. Take the last post for instance. This guy's site was what I really wanted you to see. Old Man Luedecke.

He's doing that rare thing: making a bit of a splash with a solo clawhammer banjo.

He's been featured on two recent podcasts from CBC Radio Three. #59, and the most recent, #90, the East Coast Music Awards 2007. I'd like to permalink these, but I don't know how to circumvent the main site to get to it. CBC Radio 3 is defeating me.

(btw the thing about my incessant linking is mostly just that I like the green colour that words become when I turn them into links.)

More Than Ever

image from here.

From the MySpace Universe:

Hi! I'm a gigantic fan of yours and I was wondering if you knew where I might find some karaoke tracks of any of your songs?

Karaoke is still the new folk.

(In case you're wondering, I got to that page via this page. You can wander around forever in there. I even have friends in there...)

Milkypop

Buy a button for a dollar.

Such Wit!

...most jubilant disc since Born in the U.S.A. and more fun than a tribute to Pete Seeger has any right to be. Jonathan Ringen

A popular singer pays his respects, and the Rolling Stone critic takes the opportunity to take a shot at the octogenarian who's getting the tribute. Is that classy or what?

I think what.

Runner's Thyroid

This really belongs here. But I don't put images there.