Archive | August, 2012

Rewind Button- Live at the Apollo, James Brown

29 Aug

What is it about this project that makes music I have always loathed sound good? I think it’s because instead of trying to find music to fit my mood (which is what I usually do) I am letting the music dictate my mood. Reading the history and background stories behind these albums makes it more interesting.

I can’t recall any James Brown songs which is why this was great.  Live at the Apollo was recorded live by James Brown and The Famous Flames at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and released in 1963. Brown had to pay for it himself because his label didn’t think it would do well and it was a major hit! Brown recorded several more albums live after this one.

Normally I hate live albums. I find the screams of fans annoying and distracting but this was FUN because James was engaging the audience, he was egging on his musicians to play something spontaneously, it was a fun album all around.

No one song stuck out to me in this album. I found they flowed together so well in some cases it was hard to tell where one song ended and another began.

My only regret with this project is that I have been listening to library CD’s or youtube albums and not purchasing the CD’s of these great artists. I may have to do a year end review and list the ones necessary for purchase and add them to my Christmas list!

What Other Bloggers Thought 

Be a River With Me

MusicQwest

About these ads

Hiking Saskatoon Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass

24 Aug

As you may have read in my summary blog about my Adventures in Crowsnest Pass you know that we did not get to hike to the Dakota Plane Crash Site like I wanted to. We spent an hour and 15 minutes driving around on off road terrain (my car rocked!) until we gave up and decided to try another hike.  We wanted something moderate but short as were quickly burning daylight so we settled on Saskatoon Mountain a 1.2km hike each way that was rated moderate.

When we pulled up and started on the trail head I was less than impressed. I was really looking forward to the plane crash site and was in a bad mood that we didn’t get to do that. I was furious when we started and saw what Saskatoon Mountain looked like.

Saskatoon Mountain. Where’s Waldo? Lol

The map said to follow the fence line up but we decided to follow the service road for a bit and swing around in order to make the hike a little longer. I’m glad we did because we came down by the fence line and it was so steep! So along the service road we started.

I was NOT happy by the start of our hike

The boys were so bored they decided to knock down a tree

After walking along the service for a road, we veered left through the growth and started ascending the “mountain.”

Up we go

Now, the whole time I was complaining about this hike. I kept calling it lame and stupid and kept saying I was going to go back to the car. I would plop my butt down every 10 minutes and sit and would say “I’m in no hurry to get to the top of this lame mountain.” I really was a major pest!

Sitting and sulking because this wasn’t the hike I wanted.

But when we got to the top, even I had to admit the view was still pretty.

The view of Crowsnest Mountain from the top

While taking pictures, my boyfriend Ryan got down on one knee.

Yup. He proposed!!!

Now THAT turned around my mood! For awhile anyway. On the way back down it was really steep and I just wanted to get to my phone in the car to call my family and friends. So I started complaining again about how lame the hike was. Ha ha ha!

Heading down

Cows in our way. Ryan was scared! I had to go first and shoo them out of the way!

Saskatoon Mountain will now always have good memories for me, and one hell of a funny proposal story.

The hikers!

Tags: , , , , , ,

Rewind Button- Innvervisions, Stevie Wonder

23 Aug

I was excited to listen to this weeks album because I have actually never listened to a Stevie Wonder song. Or if I did, it was on the radio and I had no idea it was him. This is his 16th album and significant because he was the first black artist to experiment with the ARP synthesizer which was being used by a lot of the artists at the time. He also played all or virtually all instruments on six of the album’s nine tracks, making most of Innervisions a representative one-man band.

When this album opened with the synthesizer and Too High  begins I am feeling good. My mum was a disco queen and so I have an unnatural love for the genre. This song was funky and upbeat and I really enjoyed it. He went into Visions which was a slow ballad but still had that 70s sound. Living for the City painted a vivid picture of this family and the arresting dialogue in the middle made for an interesting song. I find myself chair dancing to Jesus Children of America, the beat, tambourine and synthesizer get my toes tapping.  All is Fair in Love was a beautiful ballad with lyrics anyone who is fighting with their significant other can relate to and Wonder has such a strong and soulful voice in this one.

All in all, I really enjoyed a bit of 70s sound in this list and really like this album. I may be downloading a few songs from iTunes.

What Other Bloggers Thought

MusicQwest

Be a River With Me

Frank Slide in Frank, Alberta

22 Aug

I drove through Frank Slide on every trip from Seattle to Magrath and I always meant to stop and read the interpretive signage and find out what it was about but never did. This past weekend adventures in Crowsnest Pass was the perfect opportunity to stop and find out what this was about.

Here are the basic facts you need to know:

  • April 30, 1903 4:10 am, the town of Frank is awoken by a thunderous sound, the mountain was collapsing
  • Of Frank’s 600 resident, 90 were killed
  • Surprisingly, all but three midnight mine workers survived. They had to dig themselves out.
  • One train worker had to run a mile and a half over the rock in the dark to flag down an oncoming passenger train

Ben among the rubble

Ben and I went to the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre to learn more about this disaster. Now, if you want to get your $10 worth from the centre, see the film last. It is an amazing film with re-enactment, photos and testimonies from residents. It is an interesting film and very educational. The problem is, most of the displays repeat the information told in the movie. Even the interactive testimonies are sound clips straight from the movie. So we made it through half the centre before we were bored and ready to leave. That is kind of a bummer.

Natives called this “the mountain that moves” and never camped under it.

But a visit to the Frank Slide Centre is a must. It’s fun, interactive, has a kids section and is an interesting piece of history. Just see the movie last!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Bellevue Underground Mine Tour in Bellevue, Alberta

22 Aug

In Seattle, Bellevue is the city across Lake Washington from Seattle that has the fancy mall and where the richer type live. In Alberta, Bellevue is a hamlet left over the mining days and here you can go on the Bellevue Underground Mine Tour.  Everyone needs to do this tour! It is only $12 for an hour tour and it is such a unique and educational experience.

When they first get you geared up they ask if you want a poncho. Even if you’re dressed fairly warm, get one! It is freezing in those mines.

Rocking our animal ponchos

What’s amazing is how extensive this underground work is. We were shown a map of all the underground tunnels and if you lined them all up you would have over 200km if tunnel! The tour itself is only the first 300m which is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest.

We had a great tour guide Zoey who was fun and encouraged us to ask questions.  I asked her if there were ghosts in the mine and she said that paranormal experts have been there and say that the ghost of the mine all line up at the entrance and people walk through them. They like that there stories are being told so they aren’t the haunting kind.

After I asked that question this photo on a beam startled a lady on the tour.

Ghosts! Or another tour group.

I saw three of these old phones so I guess there was one every 100 metres

Into the mine we go!

It was really funny when Zoey said our next stop was “the room” and when we stopped she had us look to our right and this is what we saw:

Not going to lie, I screamed. Ha ha ha! And Ben saw them and jumped back in fright too. It was pretty funny. We learned that these “rooms” would run up from the tunnel for hundreds of metres and guys would break off the coal and gravity would bring it down to where the carts were.

Ben and I doing our best mining poses. I am doing blue steel.

Coming back out of the mine

Zoey got us some souvenir coal

Really, I learned so much about mining and it’s not interesting if I tell you the stories in this blog you really have to go and experience it for yourself. The tours are only in the summer and cheap so make sure you go an experience this adventure!!

We loved our tour and we love our coal!

Tags: , , ,

Adventures in Crowsnest Pass

21 Aug

Wow! What a weekend it was! My little brother and I really wanted some quality time together (he is spending the summer in Waterton before going back to Seattle) so we scheduled this camping trip over a month ago to make sure that we got some quality time in together! And we did have several adventures. He wanted to get out of Waterton, my typical place of choice so we decided to hit up Crowsnest Pass instead.

My first off impression is that the Crowsnest Pass is that it’s not the place for me. It’s crowded, the mountains aren’t nearly as dramatic as Waterton, and the trail heads are not marked (more on that later).

CAMPING

We camped at Chinook Lake just 6km north of Highway 3. It is very clearly marked and easy to find. This was my first time camping in a crowded camp ground EVER! I always camped in remote camp grounds or back country. I did not liek the experience at all! I was kept up until 3am the first night by the drunk d-bags two camping spots over from us and then awoken at 7am by the screaming kids right next to us. I was not a happy camper.

Tent # 1

Tent #2

We intended to buy wood from the camp site but when we arrived they weren’t home. It was 8pm on a Friday night, prime camp site hours. I left a note and it wasn’t  until 10 pm that the host came by with some wood for us to purchase. In the meantime we were starving and so picked up dead wood around the site (which we weren’t supposed to) to get a fire started to cook on.

Searching for wood

When we tried to go down to Chinook Lake, it was so crowded we couldn’t find any parking. By the end of the trip I was pretty annoyed with the whole camp ground experience. From now on, I am sticking to back country.

Reflection of the trees in my coffee

ACTIVITIES

We did have a good time being tourists in Crowsnest Pass. Ryan wasn’t with us on the first day as he had to work so Ben and I were complete tourists and started off our day walking through Blairmore.

Ben hopped the fence to get this shot with a historic train on display in the town

We had breakfast as this amazing cafe! It is just like Luke’s Diner from Gimore Girls.

I ordered a fresh carrot juice and it was so tasty!

We headed to Crowsnest Lake to enjoy the view

We went on the Bellevue Mine Tour! A blog post about this awesome experience to come.

We hit the Interpretive Centre and learned all about Frank Slide. More info to come soon.

HIKING

I wanted to go on an epic hike with Ben, at least once. SO I researched local hikes and found one that goes to a World War !! plane crash site where the shell of the plane is still there. From that site you can hike 3km more up to the peak of the mountain it’s on.  I was so excited to take Ben and Ryan and I found a free hiking map at Stone’s Throw Cafe so I thought I knew the way.

We followed the map to the North Creek Road and stopped under a big sign that said North Creek Staging Area while we looked for a sign somewhere. I stopped a group of passing mountain bikers (one of whom happened to be an old aquaintence) and got directions to the trail head. He said that we had to go over the yellow York Creek Bridge, up a few switchbacks and we would see a sign. We passed the bridge, drove up the switch backs and saw two trails forking. First we tried the left but that lead to what looked like a quad trail then we turned around and tried the right and ended up on another quad trail.  We drove through puddles and over rocks and ruts and I was shocked at how awesome my car was doing.

This was the highlight of this morning. We drove around for over an hour before I gave up trying to find this trail or the trail head because there are several trails shooting off the main road and not one is marked and the map’s instructions were clear as mud. But I still enjoyed myself because my car Norman a small 2-wheel drive SUV was ROCKING on this off road terrain! I couldn’t believe it. I will never call Norman boring again! 

Just a little of the mud when we first started off-roading with Norman.

So after about an hour and 15 minutes I stressed right out and said forget it. We went to a gas station and looked at the trail map and tried to find something that was a nice hike but short because we were quickly burning daylight. We decided on Saskatoon Mountain a 1.2km hike each way that was rated moderate. More details on this hike to come.

I was not impressed when we started the trail. More info on this hike to come soon.

We ended our weekend with a swim in the Crowsnest River and headed back for home.

It was a good time, I enjoyed my time with my brother, but I will stick to Waterton from now on. It’s closer, there are less crowds, and most importantly trail heads are clearly marked!!!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rewind Button- The Complete Recordings, Robert Johnson

17 Aug

I accidentally got my weeks mixed up and was supposed to review this album last week and John Lennon this week. Oh well. This album was surprising to me because it is by far the oldest album we have listened to and far from Rock & Roll. This blues album was released in 1990 but is full of songs recorded between 1936-1939 by Robert Johnson.

When the album first opens you can hear the crackle of vinyl which instantly made me imagine I was sitting next to a record player somewhere listening to this album. But that is where the enjoyment of this album stopped.  I like variety and to me, each song sounded exactly the same. Only one song stuck out for me, Me & The Devil Blues and that’s because I know I have heard it somewhere before. Not the Eric Clapton cover, in a movie but I don’t remember which one.

I could possibly picture myself listening to this on a rainy day curled up with a book and cup of coffee and using this album as the background music at is very laid back and relaxing.  But overall, not my thing.

What Other Bloggers Thought

MusicQwest

Pimplomat

Be a River With Me

Winner of the Wenger by Eco Bottle Giveaway

16 Aug

Today is the day I choose a winner for my first blog giveaway. It was good odds since I only had three comments. The winner is:

Congrats Catherine! I hope you like your nice water bottle as much as I like mine. :)

Stairs with My Running Buddy

16 Aug

For years and years I fought the concept of a running buddy. Maybe it goes back to my cross country days when I was always so far behind my team mates. But every Monday for the past month or so, my friend Catherine and I have been going running in the coulees and doing stairs in our runs. Catherine is my friend who ran in the Moonlight Run with me when she was 7 months pregnant and is my go -to Waterton hiking buddy. Catherine is the perfect running buddy because we are at about the same fitness level and both like to push ourselves a little every run and I love it!

Yesterday we ran in Indian Battle Park and did the massive amounts of stairs to the gazebo. We also decided we are going to step up our runs from once a week to three times a week (schedules allowing). By next years Moonlight Run we are going to be lean, mean, running machines. I am so glad that I found the perfect running buddy!

The stairs we ran. Catherine’s feet and our third running partner, Franklin.

I need to find my Nike+ sensor so I can start recording how far we run and calories burned.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Rewind Button- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

14 Aug

If this year-long blogging project I started was good for nothing else, it was to educate me on the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Not being a Beatles fan I only knew that Yoko Ono is often blamed for breaking up the Beatles.  But when I read that this album was pretty much half an album that  she and John recorded together and named them the same and had almost the exact same cover art, I was intrigued. I thought it was sweet that their covers were exactly the same except in John’s Yoko is holding him and in Yoko’s John is holding her.

John’s album

Yoko’s album

So of course, I turn to Wikipedia for the Readers Digest version of Yoko and John.  Here is what I found out:

In May 1968, while his wife Cynthia was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they “made love at dawn.” When Lennon’s wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, “Oh, hi.” Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon’s divorce from Cynthia was granted.

Um… ouch!! Not a very nice way to leave your wife!!! And they posed naked for their Two Virgins album cover. I won’t post it here since I like to keep my blog ‘G’ and all.

So I keep reading and the crazy ride of this couple continued!

During Lennon’s last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace.

They invited media to their hotel bed from 9am- 9pm to talk about peace.

I would get bored laying in bed all day! Anyway, to continue this crazy ride;

Lennon changed his name on 22 April 1969, adding “Ono” as a middle name and used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on The Beatles’ last recorded album, Abbey Road.

In 1971,  Ono’s second husband, Anthony Cox, lost custody of their daughter Kyoko and in violation of the order, he took Kyoko and disappeared. Ono then launched a search for her daughter with the aid of the police and private investigators. Ono wrote a song about her daughter, “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow),” which appears on Lennon and Ono’s album Live Peace In Toronto 1969 and her album Fly. 

 The couple separated in 1973 but  reconciled in 1975. Their son, Sean, was born on Lennon’s 35th birthday, October 9, 1975. After Sean’s birth, the couple lived in relative seclusion at the Dakota in New York. 

On the afternoon of 8 December 1980, Annie Leibovitz went to the Lennons’ apartment at 2:00 pm to do a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine. Leibovitz promised Lennon that a photo with Ono would make the front cover of the magazine, even though she initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon by himself.Leibovitz: “Nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover”. Lennon insisted that both he and his wife be on the cover.

The Rolling Stone Cover

John Lennon was murdered that night. (OMG!) Mark David Chapman was  waiting as Ono walked ahead of Lennon and into the reception area. Within seconds, Chapman took aim directly at the center of Lennon’s back and fired five bullets at him  in rapid succession. Lennon, bleeding profusely from external wounds and also from his mouth, staggered up five steps to the security/reception area, saying, “I’m shot, I’m shot”. He then fell to the floor, scattering cassettes that he had been carrying. 

Lennon was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. Dr. Lynn remembers that Ono lay down and began hitting her head against the floor, but calmed down when a nurse gave Lennon’s wedding ring to her. She was led away in a state of shock.

Ono released a solo album, Season of Glass, in 1981. The cover of the album is a photograph of Lennon’s blood-spattered glasses. A 1997 re-release of the album included “Walking on Thin Ice”, the song the Lennons had mixed at the Record Plant less than an hour before he was murdered.

Wow!!! Can you imagine what taking all this in is like for someone who has never heard any of this? Mind you, this is all a quick overview, but to me this is one of the most compelling love stories I have ever heard. Suck it Romeo & Juliet! Or to be more modern, Bella & Edward! Everyone hates her for breaking up the Beatles, but John chose love over fame and stuck with his wife which I find so beautiful.

The story really does overshadow the album. But here are my thoughts anyway.

I though opening with the slow-paced and melancholy Mother was a poor choice. It wasn;t a great start for this album. A few songs such as Hold On and I found Out had lyrics about moving on and not needing others and it makes me wonder if those were directed at the other Beatles members. I did like Working Class Hero especially the verse that went “They’ve tortured and scared you for 20-odd years, Then they expect you to pick a career, When you can’t really function, you’re so full of fear.” I always think that I was taught more about picking a job and less about picking a fulfilling career that suited my personality and lifestyle. If they had taught me to think about the daily life of certain jobs (such as sitting on my butt indoors all day every day) I would have chosen a different career path.

All in all, this album gets a C- from me. It’s not bad but I wasn’t digging it either. But I do thank this album for getting me investigating the story behind these two that everyone knew about but me.

Read What Other Bloggers Thought

Be a River With Me

MusicQwest

Pimplomat

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 239 other followers