Hard News: Bowie for the BDO?
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I've worked in a deep freeze. -20C. Very cold. But still not as cold as Canada.
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Ooo fuck Dyan - you emphatically win!
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But points to George for his new location tag..
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ae, a rua
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(How I know about temperatures in Canada:
*I had an uncle who lived in Alberta for 35 years of his working life.
He explained about car-engine heaters. He took me to Lake Louise in dead winter.
*I began to understand meateaters(I knew about fat-relishers.) And people deeply in love with fur. This, when after rollicking through the marvellous Vancouver Museum, I went on to a lit gathering in Montana and met an Inuit whaleboat captain (yeah, we'd both written books...) And heard about- fod- 'frozen winters' - and ' frozen springs.' And realised just how extraordinarily brave & perverse were those Polynesians who ventured (probably) into Antarctic climes - & why we never went back again...) -
Ooo fuck Dyan - you emphatically win!
Heh, well to be honest I grew up on the west coast which is the "banana belt" of Canada. The temperatures are pretty mild. But can rain for 40 days, 50 days at a time during the winter. It's awful.
I had an uncle who lived in Alberta for 35 years of his working life.
My Mum grew up in New Sarepta, a tiny village in Saskatchewan - it's much colder on the prairies than the coast - and she said if you breathed in the air at the wrong time, with your nose and mouth uncovered you could hurt yourself as you would get ice crystals in your lungs. She also said you couldn't make a snowman or a snowball as the snow was too cold, and it was like very dry sand.
This is a pretty famous (if rather bad) Canadian poem.
Robert W. Service's war poems were rather good, though.
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"The Later Collected Robert Service" was the first book my uncle sent me from Canada!(You bet I still have it.) Hey, they're ballads and they're OK!
And one of my Big O neighbours - since escaped to parts even further south- had this as his party piece! I kid you not!
Actually, I'll onsend this post to Mike Y - he'll love it! -
O,I could chant parts along with him-
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I think Canadian or Siberian winter stories win the discussion. Although I think I should get an honourable mention for walking 4KM through London at 3AM during the February 2009 snowstorms with an airline hostess and a banker, as well as our luggage because public transport doesn't run during inclement weather.
The story would be more impressive if we hadn't had the good luck of flagging the one taxi not spoken for in London somwhere around Pall Mall. Walking half way home rather than all the way doesn't really cut it sadly
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"The Later Collected Robert Service" was the first book my uncle sent me from Canada!(You bet I still have it.) Hey, they're ballads and they're OK!
And one of my Big O neighbours - since escaped to parts even further south- had this as his party piece! I kid you not!
Actually, I'll onsend this post to Mike Y - he'll love it!Robert W. Service loomed large in my childhood - my Granddad, like him, had been a Scottish immigrant who fell in love with Canada, then served - in late middle age and with a Canadian Regiment - at the front in WWI. My Grandad loved Service's war poems.
After the war Robert W. worked in a bank in Victoria, BC - and that building became government offices, where my Dad (a civil engineer) had a lovely old corner office which he always hoped might have been the very one Robert W. had.
Country Joe McDonald set several of Robert W. Service's war poems to music in 1969 or thereabouts - I spent years and years trying to find the record (I'd had it as a kid and lost it somewhere) and in the end I just wrote to Country Joe and he sent me a copy, bless his generous heart.
You'll note the line "the marmites are a-soaring" - they were huge round shells, named after the French cassolet pots, which they resembled. A while back everyone here was wondering where the word "Marmite" came from - welll, when you make cassolet you dredge the meat in flour, salt and pepper then cook it in oil until it's tarry and dark - there's the base for the fragrant gravy - that's where the name - and the idea - of Marmite comes from.
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As others have commented Bowies health has been the cause of his un-official retirement.
People do bounce back from heart attacks.
His occured during the A Reality Tour about four of five months after he left New Zealand. The remaining legs of the tour was cancelled
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Excellent post Dyan, thank you!
By all accounts C J MacDonald is a great guy. And being compared to Castro by Bill O'Reilly has to be a ringing endorsement.
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dyan -my Nana hailed from Orkney and so asshet/marmite/collops et al were part of our language - tho' - neat*and*horrible to learn about the shells...
Canada is blessed with true balladeers (may I suggest that Gordon Lightfoot & Leonard Cohen truly are?) Oz has them - 'Banjo" Patterson
and John Williams. Aside from the very occaisional work in ANZ - "By The Dry Cardrona' is the only one that comes to mind- we dont-But hey - I've been moved to go get the last book by Robert Service my uncle sent me - "Songs of the High North", a 2nd impression (1970)-
ballads! Ballads! And bloody good ballads-(and it contains "Athabaska Dick" and - one of my favourites, up there with the best tell-taling- "While The Bannock Bakes.".Thanks dyan - havent been down those ways for quite a while...
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interesting comments from Bowie looking back at himself.
He does look very thin in some parts ......
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Stuff has broken this morning's BDO embargo, and says no Bowie.
Muse to headline, Mars Volta, Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal, Lilly Allen ...
So I was right about most of the others.
Muse don't work for me ...
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Whoops. The promoters scooped themselves: "The line-up was released on the Big Day Out's website, ahead of an official announcement at 8am."
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BDO website NOW password-protected ...
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Here;'s the "leaked" lineup from yesterday, which very similar to the official one, but with Bowie, Placebo, Massive Attack.
Interesting comment from Aussie BDO spokesperson yesterday:
"That's not the official line-up," said event spokesperson Patti Revson. "We'll be releasing the official line-up tomorrow.
"It is good to see that talk is talk is being generated already particularly with David Bowie I mean, wouldn't we all love it if Bowie did come."
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But do we have a confirmed date yet for Auckland BDO?
(self-interest as camping holiday may coincide)
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But do we have a confirmed date yet for Auckland BDO?
January 15.
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"It is good to see that talk is talk is being generated already particularly with David Bowie I mean, wouldn't we all love it if Bowie did come."
Translation:
We've been plugging that Bowie story like mad on all the boardz, and it's working! -
Muse don't work for me ...
Hum... the only thing of theirs I've heard is the tune used in the Watchmen trailers, and even then I thought "I really hope Philip Glass sues". :)
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Lest we forget...
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