Sigh

She’s come hither

Come to stay

Until the Time

She’s gone again

Darling hush

Grasps the land

Fresh, crisp

Pure, clean

Sparkling white

Stardust dream

Rhapsody

Blows my mind

When you call

My name

❄

Clap for the Wolfman

The Wolfman in George Lucas‘ American Graffiti

❤❤❤❤❤ the Wolfman Jack. That’s the fact. ❤ the Jack. They don’t make ’em like that anymore, ghouls and ‘goyles. Allan Freed, Dick Clark, neither. Nor fictional jocks Doctor Johnny Fever and Venus, baby, Flytrap. I ❤ these cats and old school radio like nobody’s business. They have been a HUGE and obvious influence on my life and this blog.

Spent the bulk of my youth watching The Wolfman host The Midnight Special. All THE best acts performed. For nine years beginning in 1972 everyone who was anyone from Carol Burnett to T-Rex was there. No kidding. Just plain everyone. AC/DC. Aerosmith. Earl Scruggs. George Carlin. The Cars! Uh, yeah. Blondie. Steve Martin. Cheap Trick. Heart! Uh, crazy, baby! Just crazy. Jimmie Walker. Ike and Tina. Everyone. Just everyone.

When The Wolfman played your record or had you appear on The ‘Special you had made it. If you hadn’t already arrived, you were presently. He had that much sway. Uh, yeah. He was almost singlehandedly responsible for the soundtracks of our youth. Radio and record industries were entirely different creatures than they are today. Almost everyone on the continent was listening to the same tunes, part of a musical collective consciousness and from coast to coast groovy cats like the Jack, Freed and Dick were in drivers seat.

The world wouldn’t be what it is today without the likes our beloved Wolfman. It just wouldn’t.

Hats off, dude. Hats off… and thanks a bunch.

So…? *shrug*

Hey? Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

The Guess.

The Guess Who?

Natch, baby. Natch. Ha-ha ha. Clap for The Wolfman.

Tonite is a Wonderful Time

An all Time and Space favourite fall song of the season here at WDIZ!

April Wine. Stand Back. Tonite is a Wonderful Time…

Red and yellow, seasons changin’ gear, oh yeah… Dig it.

Heart of Gold

“Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.”

~ Austin O’Malley

🍂

The Autumnal Equinox is fast upon us. A most excellent occasion. A dreamy Time of harvest and moons and amber waves of grain… of some great tunes…

I call myself a “wheat-head” I Love the stuff so. I mean, it is some kind of gilded beautiful, hey? I can’t adequately impress upon you how spectacular I think fields of wheat and the prairie are. I just can’t. Words won’t suffice, baby.

It’s symbolic of such a great deal of what I feel is intrinsically important to existence: heart, art, the prairie, farmers (the backbone of society, for food is life), literal and figurative seeds, the myths of Demeter and Ceres… the Autumnal Equinox…

It signals a Time for winding down, giving thanks, preparing for Halloween and the big sleep of winter.

Not much makes me feel more autumn, more Canadian, more prairie, more “wheat-head” than this man and this tune. This is a very sweet, intimate performance by a very, very young Neil appearing on the BBC.

From Harvest, the best selling album of 1972 in the United States (Who knew?!), here’s Heart of Gold…

Harvest, Robert Zünd 1860

Joni Mitchell

“Joni, you have more class than Richard Nixon, Mick Jagger, and Gomer Pyle combined!”

~ Audience member, recorded on Miles of Aisles

❤❤❤

I received a Versatility Award courtesy of F-stop Fun? Kinda got me thinking. The anniversary of Woodstock got me thinking, too. The song Woodstock got me thinking, yet again, this Time about it’s author, Joni Mitchell…

I grew up on the same Saskatchewan prairie — with the exception of three years in Lotus Land from kindergarten to grade 3, been in and around the Green since I was 14. She’s always been there. All my life. I am unaware of a Universe in exclusion of her, her Music. She’s perennial. Omnipresent. A lot of who I am — who Saskatchewan is/was — is because of her. A lot of who we all of are is because of her even if it isn’t always obvious.

There was a thriving hippie scene in Saskatchewan when I was kid. My uncles even had an ersatz hippie commune on a farm that they rented for $75 a month. Used to spend weekends and Christmases there. I think the Saskatchewan scene might have rivalled ‘Frisco, Haight-Ashbury but was smaller, bucolic, humbler, groovier? Maybe, even more sincere?

Big Yellow Taxi* was a favourite song from THE moment I heard it.

We lived with Nanny and Granddad when I was four in a town that was the birthplace of W.O. Mitchell and home to Tommy Douglas and ‘psychedelic’ Dr. Humphry Osmond. (Saskatchewan is WAY groovier than you might initially suspect.) I thought the ‘old man’ in the song was literally an old man like Granddad. Not the ‘old man’ of sixties slang: your boyfriend. I wondered why a man like Granddad would slam the screen door and take a taxi late at night? Where would he go? What would he do?

I Loved that she laughed at the end. That she mentioned birds, bees, apples and trees…

She has written more songs than you can imagine, she paints, she does everything and she does it all very well. A veritable renaissance woman. She is an icon, in a class — alone — by herself, head and shoulders above the rest.

The Versatility Award really belongs to her.

Joni, you are the cat’s pyjamas, the bee’s knees, baby. I ❤❤❤❤❤ you!

❤❤❤

“That’s the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I’d always hoped that she’d work with the band. But the main thing with Joni is that she’s able to look at something that’s happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It’s bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. ‘Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I’ve changed’ (Both Sides Now).”

~ No less than Jimmy Page in Rolling Stone magazine (March 13, 1975)

In early 1987 I had the opportunity to spend an evening with then-drummer of The Cult, Les Warner. Really nice guy. Les was listening to Joni, too, while touring the prairies? He completely dug her. She Sells Sanctuary. She does. Hey? Who knew?

She’s ubiquitous.

So, hey, here’s Both Sides Now and The Circle Game. (Whether you are 20, are a parent or on your last legs the C-game is for you. It’s SO sweet. Might even make you cry — in a good way.)

Vintage CBC from The Way It Is. I give you Joni, the Magical Prairies… circa 1968.

Dig her. DIG her. She is but lovely.

“She is of course well past the stage of having to prove herself artistically. She is in possession of one of the most extraordinary song catalogs of the past half-century. Her chords break harmonic rules, have no technical names and defy Western musical theory. Her voice is an instrument that has grown sublimely heavier and huskier over the decades… Once you get past the security gates, Ms. Mitchell’s house feels like a pocket of middle-class comfort in the midst of zillionaire Beverly Hills. In some ways life is still as it was in 1974, when she bought the house: She has no computer, no voice mail, no cellphone and no e-mail. At one point, when we tried to remember one of her lyrics, we scrolled through my iPod. She said it was the first time she had listened to one.”

~ The New York Times (February 4, 2007)

You’re So Square. Baby, I don’t care… 💋

❤❤❤

* Support your local Big Yellow Taxi Drivers! Don’t drink and drive, cats and kittens!

Just don’t do it!

Related Links:
Woodstock
The Song
The Dream

The Stand

❤❤❤

Jimmy gets three, because, well, he’s The Silver Surfer, dude. This is a groove I caught from him. The Stand by Canadian act Mother Mother… I hope you like it. They’re really cool… Jimmy is, too…

He’s Nothin’ But a Good Time. He’s really good at everything and possesses a sharp, uh, Poison wit. He’s kinda Magic, really… Karaoke, anyone? 😉 lol

A mutual fave of all Time and Space… You got it! Good Times, Bad Times! This one’s for the neighbours, baby! Yeah! Dig it!

Hey Hey, My My

Rock and Roll will never die. I don’t think I will, either. Phew…

Dig the kid strumming the giant pencil. He kills me…

Here Among the Cats

Just be chillin’… Here Among the Cats with Max for the time bein’… Dig it.

Say Hello

Hey, cats and kittens, just wanted to Say Hello. From the guys who brought you Oowatanite… ‘Everything will be alright…’

Let’s uncork a little ’79 April Wine from the cellar, shall we…?

This one had the best sound. There’s some fantastique B+W photography. It is but a coincidence that some are kinda hot, too. 😉 Shucks, baby, what can I say, hey…? Hello?