Octopus Of Destiny

“I’m gonna blow this pop stand.” “What? You’re an octopus. This is an aquarium.” “I’m escaping.” “How? What?’ “Down the drainpipe.” “And then what? Miles of park, miles of dry...

Book excerpt two

Vancouver got its shot of rhythm and blues from Calgary.“The Calgary Shades — Tommy Melton, Tommy Chong, Bernie Sneed, Wes Henderson and Floyd Sneed,” Bill Reiter,  instantly rattles off their names. Reiter, who ran a record shop in Chinatown and...

David Bowie

David Bowie was coming out of the wilderness when he died. He’d been stricken with cancer but had kept it secret from the public, which meant his death at 69 years old  seemed sudden and thus that much more of a shock. How perfectly David Bowie. Hadn’t he...

Mothball

I like to think that Andrew Meissner just showed up at my basement door one night. The truth is more prosaic than that but not much more. Andrew was living in an apartment up the block from me. A nice,  well-kept building next door to the Greek restaurant,...

Close Quarters

As is usual, I don’t remember how I came to drum for Close Quarters or  exactly how the end came. The person who probably knows best is Alan Twigg. He did some writing for the Georgia Straight around the same time as me, from Spring 1974 to Fall 1978, so Twigg...

Let There Be Drums

Sandy Nelson said Let There Be Drums. He was a drummer with one foot who managed to release a bunch of instrumental albums with his drums to the fore. If he could overcome a handicap, I can write about mine. Actually, I’ve never heard a Sandy Nelson record,...