De Republica

1. Margaret Atwood Speaking at Davos World Economic Forum

http://bit.ly/cefpSQ

2. Primers on foreign aid. The Sachs and Easterly books are good places to start-an intellectual cage match.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/readinglists/what-to-read-on-foreign-aid

3. Notes from The Field: MasterCard Foundation head’s Blog posts

http://www.themastercardfoundation.org/notes_from_the_field.htm

4. Davos rap up from The Economist

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15446839

5. This is still making me laugh. The funniest and smartest thing I read all week..

http://onion.com/dyjaGs

6. Naval gazing-empire style: “How America Can Rise Again” James Fallows

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/american-decline

Where to begin? The idea of this post has been ruminating for a while. It comes out of some discussions I have had with friends, memories I have, and plain old school Woodward and Bernstein style late nights of too much reading-minus the secret tapes and deep throat... he hmm.

I listened to a Podcast of a Vanda Felbab-Brown talk at the Brookings Institute about her book Shooting Up. Which really just confused the heck out of me. The intersection of politics, development, history, and culture with drugs or specifically narcotics and their production and consumption is in a word fascinating and has many surfaces. How people talk about drugs to us is equally fascinating, amusing and mostly useless. There is the old fashioned Tom Clancy-good-guy CIA analyst trying to save the western world from some poorly acted Columbian cartel boss-who usually has a big gut, 43 Hummers and a batting cage. There is the after school special style of analysis that takes aim at trying to explain why poor people do dumb things like growing poppies instead of coffee. There is also the rock star-fish-out-of water-photo-op style of talking about drugs. Usually this is some reformed Betty Ford alumni working off ten years of debt to their publicist by sweating it out in front of a documentary crew with lines like “I had no Idea” and “my dealer didn’t tell me that”. We live in a serious times for sure and it seems that the 80s fascination with drugs is almost romantic compared with the problems of today. Recession/depression, the environment, 2 wars, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, The Jonas Brothers…

The idea that drugs are a big deal, and maybe even one of the single greatest threats to modernity is seen as quaint, church league and so Nancy Reagan but drugs to me are fucking scary. I have a long history of hating them and I know in my mind how to talk about drugs but in the context of their greater influence on where we find ourselves in the world I am a neophyte. But from experience-they suck. I have tried pot and hash and have known the very few times I have that I hate them. I couldn’t fathom taking the next step up in terms of harder types. I would rather drink vinegar and listen to cats screw. I hate the loss of control, the paranoia, the weakness, and the sense of losing time. I have seen almost everything tried-from mushrooms to cocaine. I have witnessed a heroin coma and taken a friend to the hospital after she had not really eating anything of note for three weeks because of being strung out. That same friend’s heart stopped while in the ER and that was a moment that every 16-year old needs to be a part of. I have seen a friend take 3 hits of LSD before a concert and watch their fear and anxiety take over their unconscious mind. So much so that a simple pyro explosion made him jump so high that he landed on a bar and crushed his knee. I have walked with friends on a Trainspotting spiral just to throw my hands up in the air in abject acquiescence to the futility of battling with the demon and its food. When it comes to recreational drugs and my friends-I say nothing. I trust their decisions but don’t condone it. I have never surrounded myself since childhood with people that see drugs as an important part of their lives mainly because the drugs are a symptom of far greater diseases that would threaten my safety and sanity. But if ever asked, I’m honest- I think they are one of the most destructive forces created by human hands. Drugs prey upon social sickness and castrate the moral fortitude and credibility of entire socio-economic groups. They are a modern experiment in social Darwinism that has been allowed to continue. They are both the chicken and the egg.-the cause and affect of so much pure evil.  Need more? Here are some bullet points.

 -Their romanticisation in music culture is sad and dangerous. The list of dead stupid rock stars due to the combination of head issues, too much money, leaches and pimps in disguise as managers and friends is cliché and hopefully a happy casusalty of the new monetary and structural realities of the business. Art will still attract and require the damaged and disengaged for its propegation as the Brooks Brothers types make shitty music but what we don’t need is the tortuted artists getting a pass in posterity for his/her transgressions and the subsequent wink that it’s a part of the business and necessary for great creativity.

 - Wars are being fought and funded for the proliferation and profit of drugs. Fucking wars. Drugs are power, land and money all wrapped up in one. While the western lapdogs of reason were busy painting the sorry picture of why terrorism exists-religious fanaticsm, anti-Americanism, blah blah, The depth of understanding about the realities of how and why terrorist networks have been funded seems to be lost under a flag of irresponsible media coverage and spin.

 -Enviroenmental degradation and diversion of resources from the food supply (thirty years ago Afghanistan grew vines known for its raisons) and subsequent fortification of a poverty trap are a bunch of great reasons why drugs are insane. Just as you are hooked on the score, the grower is hooked on the cash and forced by the barrel of a gun to not even think about reserving that acre for food for his/her family.

 -Wasted millions on prevention, education, enforcement and rehabiliation not to mention healthcare expenses.

 -The holes and scars they leave on countless communities. The worst, by far worst are the Native reservation drug realities.

 So why do they exist? What are our failures that open ourselves up? I have smoked on and off for years and still drink a little. Do I have a moral authority to speak ill of narcotics, their uses and users because my choices are not illicit?

What this comes down to is the never ending debate about legalization and control. In the suppression of the illicit economy, interdiction is important but it's where the focus is that's the problem it seems. The big score. The photo op on the boat with bags and bags of (insert drug type here) is the goal and the burning of crops etc. are the great battle victories in the "war of drugs/terrorism". Getting back to what smart people like Felbab-Brown have to say, this approach has been deemed to be unsustainable. Its too scorched earth, literally- and undermines the support needed and "antagonizes" the population. It is also seen as western interventionism and rarely utilizes the local government as a method of support in convincing people to help with the cause. The alternative that is talked about is "licensing particular parts of the illegal economy of drugs". This has been used in other economies such as illegal commodities trading in parts of Africa. But interdiction should be refocusing on the "coercive..power of crime groups" not being "dominanlty focused on suppressing flows as ...thats a rather illusive goal". Drugs are a moving target and the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ails of the society that produces them and the society that consumes them.

Along with the battle there has been the control which has been an equal misspent effort. Prohibition of a commodity has failed repeatedly and has served to create an underground economy that grows its customer base and entrenches into formal aspects of society-from police curruption to methodone clinics. The money that is spent hand over fist on enforcement, education, health and rehabilitation needs to be drawn form the revenue source. The legalization of illicit drugs on the street coupled with a directed and progressive focus on issues of poverty and development in source countries is more of an answer than what we have now. 

At the individual level, it makes me cringe and bite my tongue when the same person who espouses anti-corporate rhetoric and lives their life in a decidedly world view - knowledgeable of the interconnectedness of political and social issues will light a joint. Sure there are debates on its medicinal aspects and no revolutions are started by potheads, but the idea of yelling at Pepsi for some untoward corporate agenda while ignoring the uncontrolled and violent repercussions of the trade in drugs is shear hypocrisy. As I get older my parental wagging-finger mentality may get the best of me when it comes to drugs and I may start to speak up more about them to friends and family. They don't exist in a vacuum and seem to be viewed the same way we view meat on the table, with an ignorant detachment toward the line of intended and unintended consequences that their travels to you created. They show up in a bag, the end result of an unregulated industry thats probably bigger than Apple, Microsoft, Shell, Coca-Cola, and Halliburton combined but with little testing, no safe-guards, no consumer protection, no taxes, and no regulation beside their out-right contraband. Seriously. Judges, counsellors, doctors, lawyers, academics and cops are saying that that is failing and I agree. The only place it seems that this is not talked about with any intelligence is in the arena of the political elite. What more do they honestly need?

Happy 2010 Canada-you have no government. We are the kids who woke up at a friend’s house on New Years day to come home to find our parents took the keys, sold the house and are halfway to Tijuana. What did we do to deserve this we are asking ourselves in this proroguing time? Nothing. Well, exactly nothing. It’s that we have done nothing, seen nothing, asked for nothing, that well… we get a government of nothing. We are in the land of nowhere politics: a great society without a captain, a ship or even a fucking map. Analogies aside, we’re in trouble here.  The discontent that followed Ad-scam has manifested itself into a long, disaffected, and disinterested malaise typified by a series of ineffectual sideshow parliaments. While America has been revolutionizing it’s political discourse-both for good and evil and electing a dynamic leader we have been listing. Not even naval-gazing. That would mean a quiet time of introspection. No-we haven’t got a fucking clue who we are, where to go or how to get there. After the worst decade for the Western world since the 70s for failures in democracy, statecraft, the environment, civil rights and the demise of the dream of the Great Society we have let a government shut the door on our political assembly.  Prime Minister Harper has crafted a government that is exclusionary (see media control), secretive, and almost fictional. What has he done, minority constraints aside? He has protected his self-image and his power by avoiding anything that resembles a working executive and government. His reign has solely been predicated on self-preservation and methinks he has finally found the proverbial line and crossed it. And don’t hit me with the argument that this has been done before by both sides-yes it has and it was bullshit then as it is now but this is the cherry on top of a cake made of horse dung. A move that in the context of the Harper “government” cannot be excused.

I have been lost in the world of revolutionary America. Reading the stories of U.S. Independence and the architects of its inception. It was impossibly hard to live let alone create what these men and women created 250 years ago. Then I close the book and look at the TV to find that we are living in a time of absolute antipathy toward politics. They’re all “crooks”-“salesmen, cheats and liars” if you please. As much as we have the unalienable right to freedom, we also have the unassailable responsibility as democratic citizens to at a minimum give a shit. The tendency lately has been to play the great useless game of blame. It’s our “parliamentary system”, “party politics”,  “no Trudeaus or Mulroneys”, we need “proportional representation”, “republicanism”. All valid, but all theoretics are about as helpful as a fart in a windstorm if our civil society continues down the road of ‘who cares’.  Two examples of why we should care and where the buck stops politically in terms of responsibility -squarely at the federal governments doorstep.

1. Since 2002 138 Soldiers have died in the line of duty in Afghanistan. I’m not debating here why we are there (I have before if you care ) But that is 138 people’s families I’d love for the local Tim Horton’s “fuck this country’s politics” blowhards to have a sit-down with.  Our involvement in this war needs to be directed by a unified government with a clear mandate. This is not a place for half measures, murky debates and statements or worse-the game of hot potato that has been the MO of the Harper government.

2. Copenhagen was just great. Thanks Mr. Prentice for at least showing up. I haven’t heard a thing from David Suzuki on Facebook since. I think he has been so pissed he went into his back forty in Vancouver and punched a tree.  The environment, as much as the bumper sticker on your local lefty’s car says act local-is not something the Mayor of Cornwall can fix by himself. Your local Church Women’s League, Mosque or high school Global Issues club is not going to be where this gets fixed. It will take the weight of the biggest consumer in the country-the same monolith that is responsible for the future of the environment to take action. This crosses, borders, religion, gender, class, time zones, histories, cultures, markets, languages,-it is the great multidisciplinary clusterfuck of responsibility. If there was ever a rallying point for a national conversation and meaningful national strategy led by the federal government –this is it. The federal government is in charge of “the big stuff”-the things that move the national idea of Canada forward. What has happened in our factionalized, regionalized little state of ours is that we have downloaded responsibility for all the really important big stuff to the point that most people in Ottawa are looking around and asking, “what do we do again?” Health and education are a provincial “responsibility”. All the cache without the cash. The Feds have given away the uniting work of the country to a level of government that has neither the time, money, staff nor resources to manage and implement. There are no great national projects. The environment is the one thing that could create a unity and sense of national purpose but-well…Copenhagen.

I digress in the details here. This is the time to put the gloves on. You know all those times when an election was imminent and you said to yourself, I'm going to volunteer, knock on some doors, make some calls, read the platforms-enter the fray? Well this is the eve of that time again that I think is our last kick at the can before we really descend into a suicidal depression.  It is the time to find out who your local MP is, find out about the party structure in your riding and be prepared to be active.  This has been my little “burning down the barn” rant. But what we need is a country of builders. We have been asked before by politicians, “what kind of country do we want?”. Some of those politicians have been good, and we have given them resounding shoulder shrugs and they have moved on to better higher paying jobs. Some of those politicians have been bad and our shoulder shrugs have enabled and entrenched power hungry ineffective “salesmen, cheats and liars”. They have quietly been holding back the tide of democratic action by stifling the media, stoking the slow flameless burn of voter apathy all the while dreaming of how to really disassemble the government and sell it to the highest bidders-usually their friends and ex-business partners who I’m sure will set a aside a piece for their elected friends upon retirement.

L.

It’s 1984. I’m in the basement of Paul Lacroix’s house. I can remember it vividly. He had a jukebox. I thought it was the coolest. You didn’t have to put money in. You just selected the 45 you wanted to hear and boom. Rock n’ roll came pouring out in a big bass infused volume. The house shook and we danced.  Bryan Adams “Cuts Like a Knife”, Madonna’s  “Holiday” and MJ’s “Billie Jean” were the trifecta of pop. You knew every word. The first time I heard “Born in the USA” was in this basement. The B-side was “My Hometown”. I had no idea what the singer was saying. I had no context of what by this point was already one of the most important artists of a generation. It was rock n’ roll; girls liked it and well…so did I.

The next memory I have of Bruce is personal. One of the first albums I bought was Tunnel of Love on cassette. Along with The Lonesome Jubilee, The Joshua Tree, Graceland, Appetite for Destruction, Electric, and Nothing Like the Sun, 1987 was the best year of music of the 80s. That year was my awakening. Tunnel of Love gave me the first glimmer of what its like to be an adult-the complexity of human emotion and what can and will go wrong in life. One Step Up and Two Steps Back. That’s life going bad. His marriage was failing and he was doing all he knew how to do. Bruce has often said that he is in a life long conversation with his audience. This record is when I joined the conversation. 

How does one know greatness? How do we express the best of our intentions and shine a light on all that makes us human? When we try and fail so openly in plain sight of our friends and family in the tests of life whom do we look to for solace and inspiration? The George Harrison song “Here Comes the Sun” has been lately talked about as one of the greatest songs of the 20^th century. I can remember sitting in a coffee shop one morning in high school. I was lonely, sad, and depressed. I felt the true weight of teen pain, anger and guilt. The intricacies and steps one has to take to feel like they have nothing left to gain in life and so it is reasonable to stop living I have never felt after hearing “Here Comes the Sun”. That is the infinite power and wisdom of music. 

I have turned to Springsteen for the past decade. For our parents their leaders were of the political, meta-religious and social elite. They spoke of truth and power and more often than not paid for it with their lives. Rock stars are bandied about as influential people for boomers but for me-my MLK and Kennedy is Bruce. Art is power and influence as well as a dialogue about our being. I have come to the point in my life where the lyrics of songs by the great poets of my musical life experience are ringing true. They are not abstract expressions or phrases to move the song ahead. The ideas in a record like Tunnel of Love are real to me. He warned me but I still made the mistakes. Melloncamp’s song “Cherry Bomb” says- “17 has turned 35, I’m surprised that we’re still living”. I never thought I would be 35 when I was 17. It’s not just a physical age it’s a time and place filled with a head full of memories, joys and regrets. “If we’ve done any wrong. I hope that we’re forgiven”

Two other Bruce moments in my life. First is The Rising. No other musician has done more to help us talk through 9/11 and the discord of the American idea more than Bruce has in the last 10 years. He has been relentless in trying to win back the country of “truth and light”. America is his religion. His purpose. “My City of Ruins”, “Lonesome Day” and “The Rising” are fire and brimstone, preacher inspired theology of what went wrong and how to consol a nation. His pulpit was a telecaster and the album his Good Book and the E-Street Band his Church.  He asked us to confess our sins, ask for forgiveness and help one another.

For my last Bruce moment I give thanks to my friend and true passionate music lover Jeff McAloon.  He introduced me to The Seeger Sessions. I will always remember Jeffy playing with earnest “O’ Mary Don’t You Weep”.  I got the record the next day. It’s American history. It’s a translation of songs that speak to the core of pain, drought, misery, slavery, poverty, the bond of union and love. The small stories that make a great nation. It’s the soundtrack to my US history obsession. Bruce’s catalogue is about making linkages and reminding us of history. He works within an oral tradition that got its start as a way of moving the story of a people, time and place forward. Songs carry memory and ideas. They existed before books as our literature, and our press. The masters create new stories about us.

He has made mistakes. The past ten years have seen the most praise lauded on him as well as the most criticism. His Greatest Hits was released exclusive and his last record was mediocre at best. He has made deals with the devil that I hope he regrets. His credibility is enormous but not infinite. It was a difficult and interesting thing to watch him last night. The Kennedy Center Honors was a television moment of life full circle -all these artists that I have grown up listening to paying tribute to our one great storyteller. He is of an age that relevance is usually derived from work done years and years previous. For me, his most relevant work was in the last ten years. He stepped out of his leather jacket and persona and took risks with the politicization of his message and demanded a better future for his country. He is a classic rocker who could have stopped in the 70s and still would be honoured. But he has walked and talked us through 4 decades and that is why he will always be honoured. Dylan and Guthrie gave him the inspiration and he has lived a life full of purpose and meaning.  Last year I had the chance to finally see him play. Alex got me a ticket and we saw him at Copps. I’m eternally grateful for being friends with Al for many reasons-near the top of the list is being with a fearless friend who had no intention of us sitting in the shitty nose bleeds that we had. We got some food, and I sat down and he took off. Fifteen minutes passed by and he called me on my cell and said, come down here by the stage. I got us better seats. Meaning, we sat in the seats that are set aside for local friends family and bullshit important people that half the time don’t show up. We we’re side stage behind the monitor desk 15 feet away from Little Stevie. My only true religious experience in my life so far was that concert. Almost three hours of intoxication, catharsis, joy, sadness and elevation. It’s not about being a fan and seeing a performance. It’s about being human and living through the greatness of music. No matter what your musical center is, the idea of Bruce Springsteen you cannot ignore.

So 2010 has kind of snuck up on us. Bob Lefsetz was one of the first trusted media guys to bring up the topic of the best music of the decade. The iPod has been on fire in my house the last couple of weeks with a HUGE playlist of tunes from my favourite records of the last 10 years. The list at the bottom is not a declaration of quality and success. It is a list of albums that defined music, culture, politics for me in the last ten years.

We will all do a lot of reflecting in the coming weeks especially once the Christmas shopping is done. This decade has made the 90s look like what they were: a time of relative peace and success. Music was reflective of that. Rock n roll was all but dead. Soul and folk were stale. Genres like Emo, and Americana were mostly unknown The last decade has seen the equivalent of 50 years of change in comparison. Quite literally the last 50 years of music have been taken apart. It's actually been revolutionary. Technology truly took control. Politics and war re-lit our rock n' roll fire but it took a female country act to lead the charge against a bad war.

How we consume music has changed entirely. It is more ubiquitous, accessible and powerful at the same time as being powerless and obscure. Music is now like wallpaper. It's there in the background-a choice, a definition of personality, a statement of aesthetics- but not so much about our beliefs, our gender, race, nationality or politics as it was for the post-war generations. The Iraq war and 911 created many reactions and ripples across culture and society and did wake up the creative inertness of the 90s but nowhere near the cultural revolution of the 60s and Vietnam. Technology is now our music. Technology is our statement of beliefs. Our tool, our voice our comfort. We are inward looking not a commune. We are escaping from freedom through a tyranny of rational choices of how we should "get connected". We are better able to communicate with much less to say. We are more and more accessible to each other but know less about our communities, environment, politicians and apparently respected sports stars. We have been living with fear for the better part of our lives. Fear, of war, fear of disease, fear of the environment and now added to all of this the fear that we really don't know if our modern democratic capitalist experiment is all it was cracked up to be by the fathers of its inception last century.

The great promise of generational ascension, where the children live better than the parents and the aspirations of dreams are within reach for all has been questioned. We are hiding behind computers and mobile phone screens, iPods and Playstations to escape a reality that is apparently beyond our comprehension and control. This passage of time for me has been a reluctant nod to the wisdom of age. An envy and respect of a generation that preceded the modern rise of the techno-economy. Where planes were flown by humans, our politicians were smart, wars were fought for freedom, there was an ignorance of the future and the hubris of knowing everything was enforced.

We will be truly forced to live better in the next decade or the many doomsday clocks that are ticking well be past the hour of no return. It has been 11.55 for too long now and this decade has been about the ship of humanity listing. No course set just preparation, procrastination and preoccupation with everything and anything except the most important-our health, our education, our environment, our government. We will all wake up next year to find a very different planet. China is again the center of the world. We will all be Marco Polo in the future making our way along the ancient lines of human existence and we will look to the oldest civilization on Earth for guidance and hope. Copenhagen will be another line of city names dropped when talking about environmental failure. If our past is our future not enough people have died for the truth however inconvenient it is to soak in.   

Where does the song come in or where did we come in on the song this decade? What will I be listening too 20 or 30 years from now? Remembering the time that was and remembering where we realized how much the world around us- the one we created- changed while we didn't.

The Music

2000

A tie to start. Stephen Fearing is actually the 90s to me. I started listening to him in 1994 with his big first full length. He got me through university. He released a live recording in 2000 that spanned his three plus albums by that point. JD once told me he remembered it being played at HMV and he had no idea when it first came on that it was live until people started clapping. He is that good. He is a true folk singer. Political, personal and funny in the same verse. A story teller and poet. He will make you cry and get right to the point with little effort and much grace. I have seen him live many times and he is my favourite artist and will be the first person I force my kids to listen to.

U2 were dead to me. They lost me with Zooropa and made me vomit with Pop. I didn’t really get the big tours. I saw them tour Rattle and Hum. That was enough. They were my childhood, one of the big influences. With “All You Can’t Leave Behind” they came back to rock n roll when it was needed. When the veneer of the 90s was getting thin. I have never been so happy listening to a record than the first time I listened to this. The Edge guitar sound was back. The best rhythm section in rock were given the tools to do their work. And Bono was singing about stuff he really cared about again. A band with this much vision, creativity and power can fuck it up real good, but also soar beyond hope and expectation when you least expect it.

2001           

Gold was released September 25^th 2001. I remember the video for “New York, New York” where the last shot is of him staring at the Twin Towers from Brooklyn. This decade officially started on September 11^th. I woke up that day and will always associate the beautiful sunny weather of late summer with that day. I turned on the TV and the phone rang off its hook, the rest is our history. This record woke me up. It was new and old. It was raunchy and sweet. It was cool and vintage and made guitars sound like they used to. Although he is not the new Bruce as maybe the tongue and cheek cover alluded too, but this is his best work.

2002

Released in June 2002 it took until the end of 2004 before it was number 1 on Billboard. Everyone heard at least one song from this record in those 2 years. It was fun, funky, hook laden and brought back soul and jazz to mainstream pop. “Sunday Morning” is one of my favourite all time songs. Thank God for break-ups and lovesick music.

2003

Released in June 2003 it was recorded in Bearsville New York. Rock history is empty without that studio. This is my favourite record by one of my true favourite groups. I remember sitting on my chair in the living room of my apartment at the time and listened to the record front to back and didn’t move, didn’t stop or pause.

2004

June again. This was my first taste of Wilco. I came late but stayed forever. Patience and questioning. Longing, break-ups and something about spiders, smoke and Michigan? Guitar sounds on this record are epic. The breadth of arrangement is stunning. Theologians-they sure don’t know nothing, about my life, about my soul. Wishful thinking is sometimes all we have. A band looking inward, shocked at what they see, shocked at what others see in them.

2005 

I will admit, that I missed this record the first time around. I remember “I will Follow You into the Dark”, but didn’t put the face to the name. This record has come to live with me full tilt this year. It sounds next decade and beyond. These cats are some of the trail blazers. Taking the Emo spirit, maturing it like champagne to wine. The bitterness has soul, texture and flavour.

“ If I could open my eyes, and span the length of the Isle of Manhattan, I’d bring it to where you are, making a wake of the East River and Hudson, if I could open my mouth wide enough for a marching band to march out they would make your name sing, bend through alleys and bounce off all the buildings.”

New York is a pattern and a place that has webbed its way into my soul and maybe all of ours in the last decade. I have been drawn to it more and more every year. It’s our Rome. It’s spirit and what it stands for was enough for us to go to war for, however misguided. We are everything and everywhere within its boundaries. It’s a city that is as big as you think. It never disappoints but can break your heart faster than it can beat.

2006

The kid can play. We have a guitar God for our time. He soaked up Stevie, Clapton, Beck, Hendrix and Page and shot it out in full pop colours. But he did it with cred. and a finger to his record company. He wanted to release it without Waiting for the World to Change. He hadn’t written it. It was done to him. And he was right. World is a sore thumb on this record. But the execs barked they needed more solid candy. He wrote World in a night and recorded it the next day. This record was about us maturing in the decade. Growing up and the mainstream catching on to what most folks felt. We are going the wrong way. Where is our heart? Where is our soul? When pop singers and country stars are calling out the president its time to right the ship. The wisdom that comes with age also brings a weight of responsibility that catches up to you. The longer we are on this planet the more gravity has its effects. The more it tries to bring us down, and the more we need to find love to get us through.

2007

Modernity is complicated. The pull of the urban lifestyle has grown on me. The city lights. The apartment life. The stores, the bars, the parks, the people. Cities are a where we get lost. They are contradictions and juxtaposition. Cities store memories for us. This record is Toronto for me. I will remember the subway, the street, the coffee shop, the parks that I listened to this album in forever. It is a soundtrack for thinking about love and life. It made me feel warm and cold. it made me forget and remember. Fake Empire is two songs in one where you feel like it has opened up another dimension where the same song at a different time in space is playing at the same time. It confuses you and lets you get lost. I will remember the fights, the long nights, the love and the fear of being alone this album gave me. 

2008

If Guns n' Roses, Bob Dylan, Frank Black and Bruce Springsteen somehow managed to not start a war while making a record this would be it. This record makes me want to play guitar. It will be the road for me. The miles the band has travelled are catalogued by this record. It is a full circle record. Folk becomes punk becomes classic rock. Murder and Mayhem writ large. It's a novel set to big music. It challenges you and makes you think about rock n roll differently. 

2009 

I'm cheating a little with this one. This was a 2008 release but it has hit me the hardest this year. They toured with Coldplay have a hugely successful album in the UK but are not widely known here outside of musos that I know. It's rare that music illicits such a visceral response for me nowadays. Mostly it catches up to me after I analyse it and let it soak in. But this record hit me where it hurt right away. "The Bones of You" made me cry while driving on the DVP late one night. It made it clear to me that I had to deal with stuff. Lyrics that zero in on a memory are a gift. We have a list of things that we don't want to regret that builds as we get older. They include relationships, career choices, how we treat our mind, body and soul, how we have engaged in the body politic or have ignored the realities of the world in which we live. When one lives to avoid regret we can leave a trail of bodies that are the result of unintended consequences. The hubris of thinking we know everything and can live the "perfect life" is dangerous. "The Fix" is always in. Fate is our master. You will dodge it, lose the tail it has on you and just when you think you are free of it you run in to your ex on a street corner, an old friend in a subway station, or find a photograph or a note you left yourself years ago saying "don't fuck it up". We live life in increments. Every 5 minutes in a conversation there is a break. It's unavoidable-the brain wants to stop and process what was said. Think about the next move. Every ten years we break. Stop and think about our next move. This record is a stop and think moment for me. I may be going down the right road or not, but it has reminded me that I have learned before that there are things within my domain of control and there are things I have to let happen. Choose the ones you trust based on your wisdom, leave the ones you can't to the divine. There will never be a perfect time in our life. The good and the bad are forever in ones midst. Great art comes from change, from movement, from fear, devotion, heartache and torment. The last 10 years will catch up to us. They have made us all older than we feel right now. It's like we have been running in circles trying to shake fate. Trying to think we are new and that history is irrelevant. But we are not moving at the speed of sound and are not somehow better at being human. We are ten years older and have only ourselves to look in the mirror and know what we have to show for it.