Five Song Friday: The Air Up Here

This Week: Funny Mouth Instruments, Hobo Wizards and Open Heart Surgery

Jul 01, 2022

Greetings from not-so-sunny Newfoundland, Canada!

I don’t want to give the wrong impression, there has been plenty of sunshine here. Just not right now because it’s the middle of the night.

Canada is very much like the United States in that respect, with the majority of sunlight occuring during the day.

And when I say “not-so-sunny,” I also don’t mean to say that the people here are gloomy and sour, because that’s not true either.

They are mostly lovely.

Except for the two ladies working the counter at that one out-the-way gas station (you know who you are).

I went to pay for the gas because the pump had no credit card reader. So I go inside and I say, “Hello, I’d like to fill ‘er up on Pump 5 please” (all folksy and friendly just like that).

And the bigger one, she just looks at me and snaps her chewing gum and says, “Well GO AHEAD AND DO IT THEN.”

And the smaller one starts giggling and they look at each other and I just say, “Oh, okay.”

How was I supposed to know that you pump first and THEN pay?

That kind of fuel dispensing honor system bullshit would never fly in the States. If we had a place that was pump now, pay later? That place would be known as the place where you can get FREE gas. We have to pay FIRST in America because we are terrible.

Anyway, none of that is relevant right now. The weather has been nice and the people are fine.

But the big problem has been getting cell service and an internet connection. It’s not like you can just roll into a Starbucks parking lot and surf the web. They don’t even HAVE Starbucks here!

They have Tim Hortons, which falls exactly between Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. Better than one, not as good as the other. But that’s just my opinion (which also happens to be right).

The internet in Canada is different too.

From what I understand, the Canadian internet uses a massive network of inter-provincial pipelines that once delivered maple syrup from Labrador to Yukon. But sometime in the 2000’s they cleaned out all the syrup and retro-fitted it with fiber-optic cables.

Apparently the leftover syrup can sometimes gum up the data speeds.

Things get mucked up and the internet stops working completely. The government blames it on the violent turf wars between moose and caribou and people who aren’t from here just accept it as a thing that happens.

And when their maple syrup internet goes down, things get CRAZY.

It’s chaos because people have to stop each other on the street to find out what’s happening with Pete Davidson RIGHT NOW. They have to ask each other what Bette Midler and Chris Pratt think about the latest VERY TERRIBLE THING. The world seems pointless without new memes.

Citizens are forced to rely on television, books and radio until the glitches are repaired. It sounds charming but it’s torture. What if you’re dying to know what role brought Cameron Diaz out of retirement? You can’t look that up inside a library!

So the internet has been spotty, which has made it hard to do things like Google facts about musicians so I can say silly things about them and their songs that I genuinely like.

Also, I’m on vacation and I’m supposed to be getting back to nature. My mind has been wrapped up in identifying flowers, looking for fossils and deciding whether to share the picture of me by the waterfall with, or without, the bucket hat.

I’m not on my computer all day discovering new music and exploring those delightful dark alleys of Spotify, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. I’m out of my comfort zone.

I’m walking on trails and looking at big rocks and inhaling deeply, hoping that all this untainted wilderness air will fill me with mystic energy and ancient insight.

The only new jams I’ve been listening to are the crunch of gravel underfoot, the songs of birds and the rustling leaves of the windswept trees. Oh, and also the hard wheezing of an old black pug who just wants to lay in the grass and not move until sometime next week.

There’s been a lot of sitting in silence. Listening to everything and nothing. I recommend it. It’s a good way to spend your days.

I spend most of my nights like my pioneer forefathers: buying overpriced bundles of firewood from the camp store and realizing that I’ve bought too much but damnit, I PAID for it, so I’m staying out here in the smoke and the cold until every last lick and log is burnt to dust.

Tonight we are in a place that has fairly reliable wi-fi, so I have a small window in which to spew my nonsense.

As it turns out, THIS is that nonsense. At least for this week. So here it is.

I meant to keep it short, but as always, it’s run a bit long.

I’ll wrap it up for now and leave you with a parting thought from one of Canada’s most popular singer-songwriters of all time…

“You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell, that doesn’t make you a taco.”

You can say that again, Justin Bieber.

But once was probably enough.

Thanks for reading!

Have a lovely weekend.

Sincerely,

DJ Crankypete

Five Song Friday 020

“The Mistake” - Framix

Framix is French, which explains a lot about this song. I’m all aboard for his whimsical electronic dub mashup gumbo. He had me at the Jew’s harp in the beginning, that sound is always the sign of a good time ahead.

And fun fact, if the name of that instrument makes you uncomfortable for some reason, there are plenty of others to choose from. According to Wikipedia, that distinctive sound maker is also known as a jaw harp, vargan, mouth harp, gewgaw, guimbard, khomus, Ozark harp, Berimbau de boca or murchunga.

“Pauline” - Eleni Mandell

American singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell has drawn comparisons to PJ Harvey and Tom Waits. Or rather, her music has been compared to the music of Harvey and Waits. Personally, she does not draw comparisons to Harvey or Waits, who is a 72-year-old hipster hobo legend who sounds like Cookie Monster mumbling Beat Poet nursery rhymes.

Mandell does not wear hats and have facial hair and act in independent films and episodes of The Simpsons.

Please do not confuse her with Tom Waits. But feel free to compare and contrast her with the powerful song stylings of Polly Jean Harvey who can also growl and howl and serenade you about good love, bad love and all the other kinds of love in between.

But please keep in mind that they are two separate people.

”Why Not Tonight ” - Ivy Green

It’s not exactly clear what the lead singer of this legendary Dutch punk band is talking about but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s got something to do with S-E-X.

”Johny Says Stay Cool” - Babe Rainbow

I hate these guys. I hate them because they are Australian and they play mellow psychedelic rock that sounds like it’s from the 1960s. I hate their blonde hair and their surf culture and the fact that their songs are so effortlessly cool and chill it sounds like they aren’t even trying.

I hate that they decided to go ahead and start a band like this and not even once asked if I’d like to drop everything, leave my country and abandon my family to be a small pet of what they are doing.

I would have said no of course, but it would have felt nice to have been asked.

”I Love You So Bad” - Ezra Furman

This is a great song. I could go on and say some things about this, that and the other things. But why bother?

It’s late and by now, the wolves have probably torn apart those nice camping chairs my wife bought me for Father’s Day. It’s too dark and scary to check now, but I’ll take a look in the morning. It sounded bad out there (what I could hear over my headphones).

This song will feel familiar to anyone who is human and has a heart and has had that heart pulled still beating from their chest by another person who could only shrug and say “Whoops.”

Listen on Spotify

Listen on YouTube Music

That’s all for now.