ed_rex

The trip's MacGuffin — the whole reason I booked a day off work, booked a car and a room at l'Université de Laval, and bought a pass to the Festival d'été de Québec was to see Neil Young. All else was going to be gravy on that ageless rocker's poutine.

So I'm sure you can imagine that moment when ...

... I was three quarters through Montréal, bombing along the Met at maybe 25 kilometres per hour (and two hours from Ottawa, should I have decided to turn around), when I realized I had forgotten my god damned festival pass on my desk back in at home in Ottawa.

I was running on about four hours' sleep, my stomach was already rumbling, and I was halfway to my destination. Sure, I could go back, but the whole point of leaving a day early was to not be a fucking zombie come show-time on Friday. (And, secondarily, to have some time to get to know Quebec City a little bit before-hand, as well as after.)

So, I slowly worked through my options, as I navigated a crumbling, 50-year old highway build for a city half the size of the one it now serves.

1. I could turn around and go back home to pick up the pass;



2. I could just write it off and spend more time exploring one of North America's most fantastic historical cities;



3. Or I could see if it was possible to get the damned thing shipped to me.

Needless to say, once it occurred to me, Option 3 seemed like the best plan by a country mile.

I waited until I was off the island and pulled off at an exit that promised a burger as well as time to use my phone. First thought: Purolator. Well, they could do it, all right. Pick up and deliver, all for the entirely reasonable fee of, er, $450. That's right, four hundred and fifty dollars.

Well, I love Neil and all, but not that much.

Thank fuck I remembered BPX — bus parcel express. I made a quick call and was told they could get me the package, bus station to bus station, for about 25 bucks.

I called Raven, my sweetie (and now wife, my god), and she was willing to make the walk from home to the bus station (granted, only about six blocks from our humble abode) after she got home from work, and despite the humid, 34C afternoon weather.

I know I'm tempting fate by typing this all ahead of time, but I think it's a pretty good bet I'll be sing my show tomorrow — and maybe some other music, Friday and Saturday.

So, after That Moment when I realized I'd fucked up, came That Moment, when I realized my sweetie could make it all better.

You might be wondering why I am here in Quebec City on my own (well, with my son, of course), and Raven is keeping the home fires burning.

The simple answer is, what I consider music, Raven often defines as "noise". She has no interest in seeing/hearing Neil Young work his distortion magic on Ol' Black.

And it occurred (and occurs) to me just how lucky I am.

It's not every partner who not only "allows", but encourages, their other half to run off to another city to paint that town the proverbial crimson.

I don't suppose it's all that rare, now I think of it, but I still feel lucky to have someone in my life who will encourage me to go out and engage in pleasures she not only isn't interested in, but which she doesn't even understand.

God bless you, my love.

New Year's Eve was delicious (if you're in Ottawa and like Indian food, the Golden India on McArthur is the best I've had in Ottawa. And they're not kidding about the dishes labelled extra hot) but otherwise quiet.

Some issues that need dealing with on the home front put a bit of a damper on our celebrations (and have taken up way too much of our time and energy), but we both can look back on 2012 as a pretty good year. And we're looking forward to the next being even better.

Happy new year, Gentle Readers. Though there is much wrong with this old world of ours — or rather, with what we are doing to it (and to each other) — there is a great deal of beauty and courage also.

All of which is to say, any summing up is going to have to wait (if I can get around to it at all). So I'll just leave you with a video. Remember when Neil Young was great? That's right, it was 2012.

This was supposed to have been my personal Month of the Horse, when I leveraged my attendance tonight at my first arena concert since I walked out on the Rolling Stones back in the 80s to (re?) establish my presence as an awesome, and awesomely consistent, blogger.

Tonight I will be off to Ottawa's big arena to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse (and also Patty Smith, who at one time I would have been more excited about, but who has not, to my mind, made a truly important record since the 1970s, merely good ones).

I was going to start off by offering the ultimate version of the time I walked out on the film, Rust Never Sleeps when the electric music started and demanded my money back because, well, What the fuck happened to the hippy with the acoustic guitar?

I was going to segue into my brief career as a street musician (busker to you hipsters), when I played lots of Neil's stuff, even though I thought the lyrics often inane, but because the chord progressions were easy (and also, somehow, the songs were good and because the songs were popular.

I was going to review Neil's recent memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, which is without a doubt the worst book I will ever recommend to any and everyone. Indisputably written without the help of a ghost-writer, Waging Heavy Peace is a spiralling self-portrait by an "old hippy" who just babbles away about the people he loves and the things that interest him — music, Nature, model trains, old cars, high fidelity digital audio and alternative energy systems. No intellectual, he is an artist of the classically intuitive kind, answering only to his muse.

I was going to review his two new records, Americana and the double-CD Psychedelic Pill. On first listen, Americana, which is Young and Crazy Horse reinterpreting old standards like "Clementine" and "Oh Susannah" (and also not-so-standards, like "God Save the Queen" and "Get a Job") is one of those things better in theory than in practice; truth is, most of those old folk songs aren't all that good and grunging them up doesn't make them so. Also on first listen, however, Psychedelic Pill is awesome if you want to hear a load of veteran musicians really get into their groove. But if songs that go as long as 27 minutes of guitar riffs being traded back and forth aren't your cup of tea, you might want to give it a miss.

I was even going to re-visit the scene of my introduction to my personal Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, Rust Never Sleeps and who knows what else.

But life and procrastination all conspired to get in the way, and now I have hours only before I venture out into the cold.

I leave this entry more for myself than for any of you. A reminder of what was meant to be, and possibly, a rack upon which I will remake the past through the future. Links may appear above where now there are none.

For now, I leave you with a taste of what I anticipate tonight.