It’s been a while since I’ve made a Music Monday post, but as Winnipeg enters another lockdown, I couldn’t help but get this old favourite stuck in my head. Stay safe, friends!
“ninety days of sweat and dirt feels like one night when you’ve got nothing left
till there’s nothing left to do but die
buckshot is my bread and I’ll drink whiskey instead of water cause I can’t stand to be sober in this place
your hands on my face every step of the way tryin’ to peel away the pain”
While I’m getting used to the current new normal and wondering what the next changes might be to life and routine, I’m taking a blast to the past and one of the early fixations of my industrial clubbing era. Stay safe out there, friends.
Burning from the inside
Working on the ground
Iceolate the problem
Don’t let life bring you down
Seeing through the eyes of evil
Confusion takes a hold
Ignorance the sign of times
The lessons to be learned
So I stumbled across this fascinating article about how Prince’s Super Bowl halftime show came to be, and I could not stop reading, and could not stop rewatching it when I was done reading.
Pure. Fucking. Magic.
Here’s a perfect tune to rip your guts out.
Couldn’t pay my respects to a dead man
Your life was much more to me
And I chased away with sticks and stones
But that rage kept following me
Another band I’ve stumbled across after listening to the radio a little bit more. I don’t know what the hell is going on in Kingston that results in music I like, but here we are. The Glorious Sons join The Tragically Hip and The Headstones on my Kingston, Ontario playlist.
Her daddy had some money that he could lend us
So she took me to Paris
To try and make me a renaissance man
We were young bloods, searching for something
Spent youth on the dream of love
We were too close to see it coming
Now I’m running from the things that we were dreaming of
The band’s name might be a little on the nose, but I found a fantastic new (to me) group for my Graveyard Mind sequel writing soundtrack!
Wherever you go, just follow
In the shadow of your stay.
Where you’re looking like a vulture
Watching every move.
One of my favourite bands will be returning to Winnipeg neatly (mostly) coinciding with the day the marks me having spent another year rolling around the sun.
I have tons of memories wrapped up in this group, from being in the mosh pit when they opened for Soundgarden and losing a hat and a shoe (found the shoe, my LSU Tigers hat was gone for good), sharing a smoke with Jimbo when he randomly stepped off the tour bus right when I was on my way to buy tickets from the West End Cultural Centre, to the time the band sang Happy Birthday to my at the time current, now-ex girlfriend (despite many drinks that night, I remember the song to this day: “Happy Birthday, [NAME REDACTED], fuck you, [NAME REDACTED], FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT BEER.”)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen them live, and while I’m probably too old to have a proper psychobilly freakout, I can’t wait to see the man with the big red guitar!
I look up to the heaven’s
For a ray of hope to shine
And there it is in neon,
Liquor beer and wine
I’ve been listening to a lot of Steve Earle again. Steve Earle usually gets me thinking of my Thunder Road series as there’s a lot of Earle songs on my writing playlist. Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing a couple of new Thunder Road short stories, or because Kevin Madison has done a couple new pieces of Thunder Road art, but Ted’s been knocking at my creative door again lately. If I ever write another Thunder Road novel starring Ted Callan, dollars to doughnuts, this is my Chapter One title.
I’m the ramblin’ kind
No matter where I roll everybody stands aside
Lets me rumble down the road aint got a lot of friends
But I’m acquainted with the wind and we’re travelin’ along
Write on!
Edmonton writer S.G. Wong was in town for a reading and workshop with ChiSeries and I had a blast taking her on a haunted tour of Winnipeg’s downtown. She knows I’m not just making up Winnipeg’s haunted nature either, because a street person came up to us before I started my spiel about the old Masonic Temple and spontaneously declared, “That place is haunted.”
Hopefully none of those spectres follow you home.
Ha-ha-hauntedThe throat is deep and the mouth is wide
Saw some things on the other side
Made me promise to never tell
But you know me, I can’t help myself
Had a great but full weekend. Between chatting with writing friends I’ve made across the country online, I played Dungeons & Dragons with my old high school gaming group (we’re still friends, going on thirty years now), and then had some drinks at a whiskey lounge with folks from my university days (still friends going on twenty-five). Three very distinct eras in my life all converging over three days, and all the while getting to share that time with my love.
Regardless of minor setbacks and frustrations, it’s times like this that remind me I’m a lucky dude.
I see my red head, messed bed, tear shed, queen bee
My squeeze
The stage it smells, tells, hell’s bells, miss-spells
Knocks me on my knees
It didn’t hurt, flirt, blood squirt, stuffed shirt
Hang me on a tree
After I count down, three rounds, in hell I’ll be in good company
Write on.
Chadwick Ginther 