Saturday night in Vancouver

I am still writing on the Atlanta blog, though sadly it is almost three months since we left Georgia. It is fall here and I missed the long hot summer down south. Replaced here by a wonderful warm, mostly dry summer. I guess I will have to change the blog's title though I am going back to Georgia for a week this month so maybe we can keep it going for a while longer.

It is Saturday night and after enjoying the beautiful fall day, I man the kitchen while Gudrun is downstairs getting the girls ready for bed. I am clearing the table and washing dishes while I listen to CBC radio. The "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation". Like National Public Radio in the US. It has the same liberal bent, and is also hated by conservatives. A waste of taxpayers money they say. To me, tonight, a great find. I have lucked into Randy Bachman's "Vinyl Tap". Randy Bachman was a key member of both "Bachman Turner Overdrive" and earlier "The Guess Who", two of the biggest bands ever to come out of Canada. BTO may have literally been the biggest. "Bachman Turner Overweight" they were nicknamed. Bachman is a mormon and has never done drugs or drank. And if you can't drink or get high, you have to eat, right? The good thing about his clean lifestyle is that he actually remembers the 60s and 70s and is full of great stories from a life in rock and roll. Bachman now lives on Saltspring Island, a one-time hippie haven but now rife with yuppies and their SUVs, blackberries and Labradors. I like to go there once a year or so and watch these groups battle for control of the island. Of course, the yuppies are winning. They always do. They are much better planners and do a lot of goal-setting. Note to self: open Starbucks franchise in the village, force Saltspring Island Roasters out of business.

Bachman is a great guy and always has lots of stories that he tells between songs, while strumming his guitar. The show's intro has some of the "Takin' Care of Business" riff and solo.

Tonight's show's theme is "clap and snap"- songs with clapping or snapping. We've heard "Betty Davis Eyes" (recorded as a one-take live performance apparently), Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" (some argument that he is just hitting himself and therefore there is no actual clapping or snapping of any kind), Hall and Oates "Private Eyes", The Who, "My Generation" with it's complex off-beat clapping, Boyz to Men "In the still of the Night". There is lots of great background and little-known facts about the songs and artists and how the songs came to be. Now we are getting a lesson on the structure of the doo-wop beat, as illustrated by "Runaround Sue" by Dion. I have to stop to clap along. Randy encourages audience participation.