Rosa 'Dr. Huey' - 15 May 2024

Rosemary was a strong willed person who would go back to our old Kerrisdale house to retrieve some of the plants we had left behind when we moved to Kitsilano. I did not have the heart or the stamina to return to a house that represented a rosy past (over 100 old roses, in fact). Even today I try to avoid driving on 41^st Avenue so as not to see the Athlone Street sign. This is more so now since Rosemary like our old garden is gone. A similar situation is followed by Joan Didion. I read in her The Year of Magical Thinking that she avoids going to the neighbourhood where she and her husband John Gregory Dunn.

One day a year before she died she brought a rose shrub and told me, “Alex, I found it in our back lane.” A few months later it bloomed. It was multipetalled (not quite that of an English Rose) and it had a yellow centre with yellow stamens. We had never had such a rose. I thought about it and came to this conclusion:

Rosa 'Dr. Huey' is a variety that was bred by Captain George C. Thomas in 1914 and introduced in 1920 by Bobbink and Atkins. It's a Hybrid Wichurana.

That rose was used a lot as a root stock for “better” roses that were grafted to it. Whatever rose we had had in that back lane had died and Dr. Huey simply did its thing. This rose grows all over the United States for the same reason. It is aggressive.

And yet is lovely and very fragrant. It is in a pot in my garden so it is not going to take over or bring my house down!

I started blooming yesterday and I smiled but was saddened at the same time. It survived. Why did not my Rosemary survive?

But the will to live of Dr. Huey, its beauty, its grace is all Rosemary.

Alice Munro circa 1981 - North Vancouver

 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024

"A short story is a novel in minuscule." Jerome Charyn

Today I called my Newyorican novelist friend Jerome Charyn and asked him to define a short story in one sentence. He did.

It was around 1977 that I started my career as a magazine photographer with Vancouver Magazine. I did not know much about technique or lighting. By 1981 when I was assigned to go to North Vancouver to photograph a writer called Alice Munro I had no idea who she was and the quality of my photography had not evolved.

When I arrived at her house my impression was that her house looked Gothic, almost scary. I made then my decision to photograph Munro outside her house. I took 14 shots. The first one here was severely underexposed and in the second one I completely ignored the fact that the sunlight was harsh on her face.

There was one pleasant incident. I had driven my Fiat X-19 to her house. When she looked at it she said, “What a cute car you have there. Could you take me for a spin in it?” I did.

In 2013 when she won her Nobel Prize in Literature I was in Buenos Aires. Somehow the New York Times was able to contact me and I they inquired for the use the photo seen in my blog. They asked me if I could send them a higher resolution scan. I informed them the negative was in Vancouver and that I was in Buenos Aires. They lifted my picture from my blog and I was paid handsomely.

In my career as a photographer I have managed to photograph two other Nobel Prize winners. One, in literature was Mario Vargas Llosa and the other, a Nobel Peace Prize was of Argentine author Enrique Pérez Esquivel. 

Nobel Prize In Literature - 2010

Adolfo Perez Esquivel - Nobel Peace Prize - 1980

Marc Destrubé playing Bach's - Chaconne, Partita No. 2 BWV 1004 - November 25, 2023

I first met violinist Marc Destrubé around 1990 when he was the artistic director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

I am going to dare to put him into the same category of Joey Shithhead’s  D.0.A. (they started in 1978) and all the incarnations of Art Bergmann (he started in 1978).

Why? Because these 3 men never rest on their laurels and they have the talent to always surprise you with something new.

While Destrubé may have more than two violins, he does have a very good baroque violin (with gut strings and no chin rest) and a very good modern violin (with a chin rest and metal strings). As the leader of the Smithsonian Axelrod Quartet based in Washington DC he and his musical partners play on a beautifully decorated Stradivarius quartet of instruments.

In Vancouver he has at least two musical groups. One is the Microcosmos Quartet and the other one named after Robert Louis Stevenson’s donkey La Modestine.

And if that were not enough he used to be with the Orchestra of the 18th Century in Holland and is one of the founding members of the now 20 year-old Vancouver Turning Point Ensemble that is celebrating its anniversary on the 18th this month. He left the orchestra in Holland when

With all that (and probably more) Destrubé has the capacity to surprise. I can now boast that because of his Microcosmos Quartet I heard all of Bártok’s and Britten quartets twice. So what’s new?

In his inimitable words there is this:

 Dear Microcosmos friends,

We are busy rehearsing for another round of intimate concerts in small spaces, which will include American composer Ned Rorem’s Fourth Quartet (1994), made up of ten short movements, each one inspired by a Picasso painting, and Béla Bártok’s First Quartet (1909), reflecting his unrequited love for the violinist Steffi Geyer.

Wine will be served, we will introduce the music.

Thursday May 23, 7:30pm - House concert - Sharman King residence, Marpole

Friday May 24, 7:30pm - House concert, Broadway/Granville

Friday May 31, 7:30 - House concert - Alan Storey residence, Point Grey

 Saturday June 1, 7:00pm - Clubhouse concert, West Vancouver Marina, Eagle Harbour

To reserve seats please reply to this mail with the number of seats required and date/location. We will confirm by return email with location details.

 [email protected]

Remaining number of seats for each concert will be posted regularly at http://www.microcosmosquartet.com/upcoming.html

 Seats are $40 (or whatever you feel you can afford), payable at the door by cash/cheque, or by e-transfer to [email protected]

 We hope to see you at the concerts!

 Marc, for Microcosmos Quartet

www.microcosmosquartet.com

Joy Shithead - Commodore Ballroom - 11 May 2024

Paddy Duddy - drums - Joey Shithead - guitar - Mike Hodsall - bass 11 May 2024

A D.O.A Christmas

D.O.A. Fans 

The Consummate Gentleman Gets Married

My Granddaughter, Joey & Randy Rampage 

Dave Gregg's Guitar 

True to Himself 

Journalism D.O.A. 

A Man for All Ages

Yesterday, 11 May 2024, I witnessed a performance at the Commodore Ballroom of D.O.A., the first Vancouver punk band that emerged in 1978. Of the original band only Joey Shithead (Joe Keithley) remains. Blogs on previous versions of D.O.A. are the links above.

In was in the middle of the night, last night, that I came to understand that while D.0.A. had many incarnations, it is really a one man band.

I connected that thought with Plato’s concept of ideas or essences. D.0.A. has always been that one man band with associate performers who have always been stellar. That was the case last night. It is a one-man-band in which that bass and drums are essential to that D.0.A. sound.

Joey Shithead has a physical presence, a voice, an attitude (never quite angry) and if you look closely you will see in him a kindness and an integrity that is now obvious as Burnaby City Counsillor.

There is another paradox associated with this one-man-band. When I first heard D.0.A in 1979, they and Art Bergmann’s Young Canadians exposed me to a form of music that I had never suspected existed. It was loud, no-nonsense, with few guitar solos and they played the music with an almost hidden virtuosity but with a passion that was unmistakable. Listening to them was like going up the stairs from the stuffy NY subway to fresh air.

The paradox is that last night at the Commodore I was listening to music that seemed to me to be my first time. How could that be?

My world is full of first time experiences which I can relive through memory. This D.0.A., D.0.A, and all D.0.A. performances are first time experiences. I am sure that Plato would have a good explanation for this.

Because I am not working for any magazine, my photographs of the performance are examples of my experimental work with a slow shutter with my Fuji X-E1. With writer Les Wiseman, with whom I shared as a the photographer for his In One Ear column in Vancouver Magazine for at least 20 years, we soon came to understand that photographs taken at the pit of performers singing into microphones could never really be original or different. We bargained with the powers that be to get access to the back stage. In those years I would have taken studio lights and photographed the bands in their dressing rooms.  We had pull and credibility. We always had access.

When I showed up at the Commodore yesterday at 7pm I knew that there were other bands playing before D.O.A. and that Joey and boys would not be on until 10:40. There were 2 long lineups. One was for ticket holders the other for those buying. There was a short one for those on the guest list. I knew I was not in it as I had communicated to the Man in Orange, Chris Crud that I planned to pay my way in but I needed access to back stage. Below you will find a communication from Crud to me explaining how he became the Man in Orange. I have known him for years. He was a roadie for D.0.A. and now he is a most competent sound man and organizer of the little details that any band needs. Every once in a while I keep running into Crud at the Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The Orange Man is a man of disparate tastes.

Chris Crud - Soundman - 11 May 2021

When I finally got to the ticket window I was told:

1. Once in now you cannot leave.

2. You cannot come in with that camera.

On a lark I asked the pleasant young woman if I was on the guest list. I produced my Jorge A. Waterhouse-Hayward ID. She looked at it and asked me, “Are you Alex?” And so I was able to go home to my cats to then return at 10.

It was at that moment, knowing that I am 81, that I felt that sense of importance and of being useful thanks to Chris Crud and Joey Shithead.

The rest of the evening was a pleasant experience in which I did feel a tad of melancholy that Les Wiseman was not with me. All those years ago he educated me so that one day I might be able to go solo.

I tip my hat to him.

Those who might wonder about the title of this blog here is the explanation:

The Story of Orange..

I was on tour with Furnaceface in 92…. We had just played in Thunder Bay and had the next day off.

Friends of ours wanted to take us to a clothing store in the other part of the city…. Thunder Bay is actually two cites Port Arthur and Fort William… it was in Fort William side.

This big square building was like they had stopped the clock in the 50’s.. that same turquoise colour on the walls and these big bins with new clothes all for a buck each.

There was a lot of orange there. I just had this vision of doing complete orange. Took two years to get enough to pull it off. Dyed my hair orange and did two years of complete orange…. Finely had to open it back up to all colours again, but now still wear quite a bit….

There ya go the story of Orange.

C