Marriage Is So Gay

I’ve always liked Dolly Parton, and I guess I would have thought that Dolly would be able to understand discrimination more than most. So was surprised to read the account of discrimination at Dollywood, the theme park bearing her name.

The story was “Gay couple asked to reverse shirt at Dollywood.” The woman wearing a T-Shirt that read “marriage is so gay” was made to turn it inside out before she was allowed admission “to avoid offending others.” I wasn’t there, but I’m offended that they would discriminate like this. Reading a little further, I almost choked when I read:

The park is open every day to everybody,” Owens said. “We try to provide an environment for families of all shapes and sizes to enjoy themselves.”

— Pete Owens, Dollywood spokesman

All families are welcome, it seems, unless it is a gay family. I am so tired of hearing about hate disguised as “community standards.”

People come in different shapes and sizes, and we have differing beliefs and sexual orientation, even within families. And you know what? There are gay people in my family, and I’m willing to bet that the same is true for every family, even yours.

Back in the early days, my marriage was having some serious trouble, and my husband and I didn’t know how to get through it ourselves. And although we needed urgent resolution, the wait time to get in to see a marriage counselor was a minimum of six months. If we had had to wait that long, there is an excellent chance that our marriage would have crashed and burned.

Then someone suggested we try the 519 – a gay community centre – in Toronto. Surprise, surprise, we were able to get in to see one of their couples counselors in a matter of weeks. It was actually pretty funny, some of the shocked looks we got as a straight couple going in for our sessions. The marriage counselor helped us to see our way through that bad patch, he helped save our marriage all those years ago.

Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re gay or straight; relationships are relationships. People are people. Families are families. The only thing offensive is hate.

Because hate poisons our communities.

So I think it’s high time we all got t-shirts that read:

 

Photo Credit: Dollywood Grist Mill Flickr photo released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) License by Mike Burton

Bob Tremblay’s Dobro

If you’ve never heard one of these cool instruments called a Dobro,
you’ll be in for a treat at
Bob Tremblay’s CD Release Party.

The Dobro is a type of resonator guitar first developed in the 1920s, and Bob Tremblay is an unquestioned master. He’s been making music in Canada and the United States since he was just a kid, ever since joining CKCO TV’s Silver Bar Ranch at the age of 14.

If you’re anywhere near the town of Maryhill, Ontario, (between Kitchener and Guelph) on Sunday, head on out to the CD Release Party which is sure to be a rollicking good time. There will be an open mic so bring your voices and instruments along. Undoubtedly some of the musicians who have played with Bob over the (mumblety-mumble) years of his career will step up to help him celebrate the release of this exceptional CD.

Sunday

February 20th, 2011
1-5 pm
Bob Tremblay‘s
♫ Dobro CD Release Party ♫

at Paul Weber’s Commercial Tavern
in Maryhill, Ontario
(519) 648-3644

Bob is comfortable playing anything from Bluegrass to Country Swing

Farewell Mike Slauenwhite

I remember Mike Slauenwhite and Victor Pasowisty playing the daylights out of Orange Blossom Special with their “duelling fiddles”. This would have been in the mid 1990’s, when they were both in CKNX The Barndance Band.

Here Victor and Mike are autographing the band’s publicity still for my son.

Mike performed well at his CD release party. It was a grand show, and he couldn’t have been happier.

I was sad to hear that Mike Slauenwhite passed away December 2nd. Not only was he an excellent Musician, he was always so full of life.

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postscript:

Mike’s visitation is being held at 2-4 and 7-9 at
Henry Walser Funeral Home 507 Frederick St., Kitchener, ON
Sunday December 5th 2010 2:00pm – 4:00pm
and
Sunday December 5th 2010 7:00pm – 9:00pm
For further information visit In Memory of Michael Slauenwhite

Remembering the Music

Mike Slauenwhite: San Antonio Rose from his CD Mixing it up.

Mike Slauenwhite CD Release Party

One of Canada’s best fiddlers over the past fifty years is the talented and versatile Mike Slauenwhite. Whether performing on the CBC TV Country Hoedown, The CKNX Barndance, The Ice Capades or the KW Symphony, Mike’s professionalism and great talent shines through.

The front cover art I designed was actually a composite of three different photographs of Mike, since the speed of his fiddling tends to leave one part or another out of focus. Just telling you that is bad enough, I’m certainly not going to show you how I did it.

What I will do is show you the zoom portrait I made of Mike for the interior bio panel of the CD. This is the original 8″ x 10″ photograph of the Silver Bar Ranch Gang probably taken in the 1950’s.

Circa 1950's TV Broadcast, The Silver Bar Ranch Gang

Taking the thumbnail sized image of Mike out of the print I was able to blow it up large enough to make a nice 8″ x 10″ individual portrait of Mike. Should I mention that removing Bill Brady’s hand from Mike’s shoulder improved the individual portrait enormously?

Mike’s excellent CD “Mixing It Up” is being launched at a Southern Ontario CD Release Party at the Commercial Tavern in Maryhill Sunday April 11th, 2010 between 2-5pm. Mike will of course be performing many of his great fiddle tunes and I have no doubt that he will be joined by many other exceedingly talented entertainers. Hope to see you there.

Jack Kingston, The Canadian Playboy

The British Archive of Country Music has added Jack Kingston to their roster: JACK KINGSTON The Canadian Playboy CD D 296. One of the cool design features of B.A.C.M. CD releases is their graphic CD imprint which simulates a 45.

An earlier article I showed you a little bit about restoring screened images with one of the images I restored for this B.A.C.M. CD. As it turned out, they selected this image I restored for the cover of their CD release of Jack’s music.   (I’m not surprised because this is clearly a better portrait.)  Click on it to see the original.

It is great to see B.A.C.M.’s commitment to preserving and restoring this music that was originally recorded on 78’s. During the golden age of Canadian Country music, Jack Kingston was a very successful Canadian recording artist. A talent contest led to his launch as a CKNX Barndance Headliner, and he had a long and successful career appearing on CHML’s Mainstreet Jamboree radio show, appearances on television and many recordings.

Unfortunately, Jack Kingston is not very well known today. Although he was an important Canadian star, my guess is that Jack’s music remained locked behind copyright until fairly recently, yet the copyright holders never saw fit to release his music on CD. You’ll find very little about him on the Internet; most references to Jack Kingston refer to the other Jack Kingston, the politician of the same name. Unfortunately I fear that a lot of great music is lost because by the time the music comes into the public domain, nobody remembers the artist. Fortunately this deficiency has now been rectified by B.A.C.M. who have given Jack’s work a new lease on life.

But Jack Kingston was lucky to be Canadian recording artist since copyright terms run much longer in some other countries. The danger of very long copyright terms is that if no one is left alive who remembers the art or music, there is no one to keep the flame burning. By the time the work reaches the public domain there may be no one left alive who cares to publish it. That’s bad for society, bad for our culture, but most especially it’s bad for the artist. More than anything, most artists want their art to live on.

You can order the B.A.C.M. recording here. In the meantime, if you’ve never heard Jack Kingston’s music you might want to check out this nicely done music video I found on YouTube:

It’s good to that the work of this important contributor to Canadian Culture is not going to be lost forever anytime soon. Thanks B.A.C.M.

Siren Song: CIRA Contest

I have so many other things to do but somehow I keep getting drawn back to the CIRANEWS page on YouTube to see if there have been any more video entries for the Show us Your .CA contest.
[editing insert 2010-03-21T00:40:50+00:00… Seems CIRA elected to remove the contest entry page from their website. Resulting in broken links like this one. Funny, I would expect a domain name registry like CIRA to understand how the internet works… wouldn’t you? Better keep an eye on the rest of the CIRA links when the contest finishes, eh?]

To see the other entries you’ll need to go to the YouTube CIRANEWS page, and I spent a wee bit too much time watching them all yesterday. I understand all the entries are not yet online so I’ll have to check the rest of them out later…. its too nice to stay indoors.

(That’s just one more reason why *I* should win the laptop) 🙂

All of the other entries seem to be “from the heart”, and clearly all the participants have things to say. A lot of energy went into these films. Just as clearly some of the films show a great deal more effort than others. There are some “talking heads”, one camera set-ups, and long single takes. There are a few that are very funny. There is also some serious film-making talent evident, which is why I hesitate to assume that my film will win first place, as great as I believe it to be. And you can never really tell in a contest. Even with the technical difficulties I had, my film-savvy gives me confidence that my entry will make it to the finals, but first place will be seriously contested, that’s certain.

I did have fun though. Playing around with animation is always interesting. And I managed to slip in my plug for fluid web pages. The web will be much cooler when every site is fluid.

There were some products and websites that I will check out later based on the promos, which I think is a large part of the point of the exercise. Although I would really like to win the laptop. That’d be good. 🙂 Of course some of the sites hold zero interest for me personally, regardless of the promo film. Its been a long time since I watched hockey for instance, so the hockey pool site isn’t someplace I’m likely to go. (Although it would probably be very interesting to my brother-in-law. But then he’s probably a charter member). But that’s how the web works. Lots of contrent, find what you need. Certainly, where there is a Canadian alternative I’d be inclined to select the Canadian site.

I will have to find a better video editing package though, because it is a serious handicap not being able to create HD films. I’ll have to check my other commercial software package.

And if I’m going to be making any more films I certainly need to discover how people close-caption web films. Because my soundtrack was entirely made up of the song “Ridin’ The Canadian Roadway”, as background music, strictly speaking it didn’t need captioning as it was a musical score rather than dialogue, but still, accessibility is an important issue so I want to learn it. Everyone who wants or needs to should be able to access online content.

And of course I want to be able to make my films available for universal viewing. so I have a lot to learn about that yet. That’s the key topic on my updated Lothlaurien Films page. [I’ve updated the main page and the films page to cover my CIRA contest entry.]

I do believe that I did a good job of answering the question:

Fingers crossed!

But it is an unseasonably gorgeous spring day, and the kids have informed me that we’re not done with snow this year, so I’d better get out there with my camera before the white stuff returns. There’s a lot of spring time wildlife to photograph in the wilds of Lothlaurien forest today. Later!

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You can watch my video here:

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Bohemian Rhapsody in Music Video

Some days there just seems to be a lot of synchronicity running through my life. It feels like I have been a Queen fan forever.

the Hayseed Dixie band

Today my friend Don shared the link to Hayseed Dixie‘s country music video parody/cover of the classic Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody” Redneck Rhapsody. Although I don’t think their video is anything to write home about, musically it is very well done. You haven’t heard Bohemian Rhapsody until you’ve heard some of their banjo riffs. Instead of being imitative Hayseed Dixie does a whole new Blue Grass interpretation of this classic Rock song. From my perspective, that is what a cover ought to strive to do.

Queen: The Original

Then, there is the real Queen video of Bohemian Rhapsody. Although state of the art when it was created (remember: this video predates MTV) even to me, a queen fan, it seems to drag somehow now.

But my favorite video of this song is undounbtedly the Muppet’s interpretation of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

Gonzo and Company - The Muppets version

Just the other day a friend remarked that he’d been discussing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a co-worker and they had agreed among themselves that although the song is musically excellent, the lyrics were meaningless.

For their eddification I want to share the following interpretation a young man I know did as a school project some years back:

Interpreting Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody, by Willem Jonkman

Bohemian Rhapsody

Lyrics by Freddie Mercury (1975) Bohemian Rhapsody’s main message is about what poverty stricken people have to do in order to survive.

“Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality”
The line between fantasy and reality line is fuzzed and the singer cannot tell which is which.

“A little high, little low”
Some days are better than others, like one day he could have enough to eat and others he might not have any food.

“Any way the wind blows”
is a metaphor for “anything that happens”

“Mama I just killed a man” emphasizes the main message

“Too late my time has come” means that it is time to make a big decision in life.

“Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth”
He alone can fix what he has done.

“Scaramouche, scaramouche will you do the fandango- ”
The powers that be making fun of him

“Bismillah!
          No-,
We will not let you go-
          Let him go”
The justice system and his family are fighting over him.

“Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,
For me,
For me”
He has a place reserved in hell.

“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh baby-
Can’t do this to me baby”
He insists that you cannot treat him like a doormat.

The music in the song changes for different moods, heavy guitar for defiant and and light piano for sad.

The social implications are about what poverty stricken people have to do to survive.

Willem Jonkman, 2005

But then, the Queen “Live” in Concert version is pretty much like what I remember from the one time I was privileged to see Queen perform live at Maple Leaf Gardens. What a great show. Of course my memories stretch back to my college days, when most of my classmates knews the words to a goodly number of Queen songs.

Queen certainly made a great deal of beautiful music, and whether you think it means anything or not, Bohemian Rhapsody is unquestionably an excellent piece of music. Thanks guys.