Murray Lott's Blog

East of Montreal the St. Lawrence River, about twice the width of the lower Fraser, flows through a bucolic idyll of corn and potato farms, and little villages of brick bungalows, their church spires visible long before you reach the tiny towns.  Nice to drive through but it would drive you crazy, other than endless greenery there is little visible sign of life.  Reminds me of Talking Head’s “Nothing But Flowers”:  “Once there were parking lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis”.  Yawn.

It is greasy rain as I leave Montreal in my shiny Jeep Cherokee, Kathleen Edwards on the stereo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVtAblO50Fc

Nothing happens today, sorry.  I stop in Trois Rivieres and visit the lovely Catholic Church, a little taste of European cathedral splendour with its tall stained glass windows recounting the life of Christ and its now-silent organ with over 5,000 pipes, oh to hear “Tocatta and Fugue” at full volume!

From the air on my way to New Brunswick the next day I will see the strips of habitant farms stretching back from the river, just like they taught us in Canadian History Grade 9.  It’s late when I get to Quebec City, the warm lights are on in the little bistros and shops lining its hilly cobbled streets. It is a sort of tourist paradise, all of the picturesque colour of old Europe without the gypsys and graffiti.  From my 5th floor balcony I look over a scene from a tourist watercolour:  Boulangerie, pubs, bookstores and Haute Mode.  But it is late and I am forced to dine at Mike’s Italian, a surprisingly good lasagna laid out on a plate like a chinese fish, and for dessert a Pizzini, ice cream between wafers drizzled with chocolate sauce, even better than it sounds!  A double armagnac in a students’ pub across the street, and a fine night punctuated by the occasional rumble of trains far below, my favorite lullaby.

Smokey Robinson, as well as being the premier song writer of Motown, has that singular, honey sweet “high tenor voice”.  He, like Lionel Ritchie, is preaching to a house full of believers, but somehow he is more believable, more with us than putting on a show for us.  We sing “I guess you’ll say, what can make you feel this way” at the top of our voices, and he gets a left and right competition going for who can put more party into “I love it when were cruisn’ together”.  An honest, two-hour show, including some first class new material showcasing his 6 piece band and 3 back up singers.  A special moment comes when he is presented with “The Spirit of the Festival”,  the grand award, previously won by Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan.  He’s 70 years old and he still sounds and moves great. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwiwEdTZ-7c

It’s raining when I emerge, and the stages are wrapping up, so it is a short evening, and a short blog.  Off to Quebec City tomorrow, looking forward to a little change.

A late night and a lazy, muggy day eating at Chez Room Service, then off for some real jazz.  I get to a few jazz festivals, but I don’t get to much jazz, unless I stumble across it in an after-show bar.  But  Chano Dominguez is the real thing, a pianist who Wynton Maralis calls one of the 10 finest musicians in the world.  Music pours from his fingertips in torrents of arpeggios, trills and runs.  He calls his show “Flamenco View”, which is why I go, and although he plays from a wide repertoire - Miles Davis, tango, and the odd standard – the Spanish influence runs through it all.  He is accompanied by a studly avante garde flamenco dancer attired in black silk and botas who kicks up a storm, flutters his hands dramatically, slaps his butt like “giddy-up horsey” and puts his skinny tie in his mouth like a walrus with tusks.  Hard to describe, but wildly wonderful, flamenco on nitrous oxide, with a vocal accompaniment from a “Gypsy Kings”-style singer.  Listen as “El Puerto” builds and crescendos: 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUmqXZV6-3I&feature=related 

After I go to L’Astral, one of the many clubs around the main festival, it is a beautiful modern venue for 350, designed specifically for jazz and blues.  The show is Youn Sun Nah, a lithe, sweet Korean singer and her wonderful acoustic guitar accompanist Ulf Walkenius, who used to with Oscar Peterson and, incongruously, could be my brother. This is the best thing about big festivals, stumbling across amazing things.   Youn is going to be impossible to describe so listen to her cover Tom Waitt’s “Jockey Full of Bourbon”. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enq1f-4nT2A&feature=related

She closes singing Randy Neuman’s “I Still Love You” accompanying herself with a little music box with a long tape, winding it slower and faster and then, at the end, barely at all.

Lionel Ritchie is the showman, but for me Cassandra  Wilson is the show.

She may be the most understated star I’ve ever seen.  The band plays a couple of quiet grooves before she walks on and becomes nothing more than another instrument.   They share the stage, and are one, she is no more important than the guitar or the congas.  Here she is doing Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon”.  She doesn’t start singing until about 2:00, but on this one I recommend that you get another coffee or glass of wine and let her quiet elegance brush your soul.   The festival highlight for me so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsN-VnZwQg

Lionel Ritchie could hardly be more of a contrast.  The crowd is here to hear his hits from the Commodores and the 80′s, and they look it.   But they are ready to party, and he stokes the fire, vamping and strutting in a way that would embarrass Mick Jagger.  There are snippets of a lot of songs, and a lot of patter that sounds like it has worn grooves in the road, but the crowd jumps to its feet and claps when told, and boogies down.  Piker that I am I’d say he’s more appropriate for Vegas, but you be the judge.  He plays a full set and the crowd leaves smiling and humming.  Here he is on “All Night Long” and yes, that got even me going.  But the dancing says it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiLziusKW4s

It is going to be a long night of being bitten by ear worms.

Gentle reader:  You may, like me, be new to blogs: to read my earlier entries from this trip, click on the date (starting on June 20th) and then click on the title to expand.

Today was a Four Bixi day, to Place Bonaveture, back to the hotel, to the drycleaner, and to Jazz Fest.  Getting the hang of it, it is not for the faint hearted, but mon dieu, it works!   But there is a flaw in the Bixi:  You buzz happily around on you errands, only to find that when you arrive at your destination there is no room at the rack.  You then must cycle around in a holding pattern waiting for someone to rent one – musical bikes –  so that you can lock yours up and stop the clock.  Memo to Jako:  Maybe have more spaces than Bixis? 

So now its Jazz Fest, and that is going to be my life for the next five days.  Other stuff will happen, but once you get past the huge crowds, the multiple stages, the incredible sound and huge video screens, the overall massiveness of it all , it is about the music.  This thing is 10 times bigger than Vancouver’s, and pretty much non-stop.  If anything else happens I’ll talk about it, but the next while is going to be about the acts I see, with samples.  I hope that is interesting.  If not, check back on me in Quebec City on Tuesday.

My Jazz Fest starts with Boz Scaggs, one of the most distinctive voices in popular music.  40 years older and not much has changed; he’s the guy you want to be slow dancing to at 2:30 as they stack the chairs. 

http://www.last.fm/music/Boz+Scaggs/+videos/+1-RQlcONddQY4

It is a short concert when he breaks for his encore, and the crowd is restless and dissatisfied.  Out they come again, and everything changes.  It is not often a band ends a concert with a slow blues, and less often yet that a slow blues defines the show and makes it all worthwhile.  Here is a different version of “Loan me a dime” (that’s Greg Allmand and Derek Trucks)  If you don’t have time, slide to 4:00 for the feel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un4-IPJ1Peo

Backing up Boz was the bumptious Monet Owens, who got a Standing O for a knock ‘em dead cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.”  Couldn’t find that, but here she is in a different context doing “Til You Come Back to Me.”  Slide to 2:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ac349b4pgg

Then it’s outside to one of the outdoor stages for Billy’s Band, incredibly Russia’s Tom Waits.  Here is “Chocolate Jesus” (He switches to English at 2:00)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ8LNQN_puo

The big act of the night must attract close to a quarter of  million people (OK, I have no idea) to three separate venues, one live but with 4 giant video screens for those of us – I kid you not – over a block away, and the others are just monster screens on the stages.  Here the rockabilly Brian Setzer Orchestra doing  the venerable “Stray Cat Blues”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvdnE3nP-1w

Big sound for a big crowd.  Big fun.  And home to bed, the party is just getting started along St. Catherine’s, but after a week I am pacing myself.

Having got away with replacing pagan mid-winter festivals with Christmas, the Church did it again with John the Baptist, whose birthday supposedly falls exactly six months later and – what a coincidence – also three days after the solstice.   But from what I can see of Montreal’s celebration of this “fete” the pagans get the last laugh: the party never ends, and the hotel restaurant is full of loud drunks by noon.

There is another long torrential downpour, we don’t get rain like that, and I’m stuck at the computer all day, so I miss the parade.  From my room I look out through the rain and the forest of muscular buildings to a shiny gold tower two blocks away.   Two Great Blue Herons rise up – who knows, from nests on the grande “Marie, Queen of the World” Cathedral – and flap langourously in front of the great mirror, a little flock of pre-historic splendour.  My only other distraction is the chocolate lady who timidly brings me bon bons and the weather for tomorrow:  Sunny and warm!

I’m rescued from my room by an invitation to dine at Schwartz’s Jewish Smoked Meats.  There is a line-up when I get there at the appointed time, I don’t know whether my friends are inside so I jump at the doorman’s invitation for “one”.  Inside it is like the “Only Seafood Restaurant” in its heyday, the size of a barbershop, jammed tables and a counter with one empty stool, no sign of my party, but before I know it – not 30 seconds after I was standing outside – I am facing “what everyone else is having”:  A pickle, side of fries, cherry coke (I tell you, I had no chance to object!) and a huge pile of “medium” (fatiness) corned beef squeezed between two tiny slices of rye bread like a fat lady in a thong.  The message is clear:  take all the time you like, as long as you are gone in 10 minutes.  But the guys behind the bar are convivial, and when Earl slides in next to me – dumping Jan for the next seat – they want to know about Rotary: “you do all that for no money?” they ask in amazement.  No one offers us lattes or creme caramel, so we dab off the mustard and walk across the street for beers while the others are unceremoniously stuffed and shooed. 

I walk home along Sherbrooke past McGill University, the beauty and variety of architecture rivaled only by Chicago and of women only by Paris.  Overhead I can hear the hunting cries of nighthawks.

The Plenary sessions at the Centre Bell – home to Les Canadiens - are memorable and inspiring.  A guy from the Philipines describes the school he has set up for street kids, complete with a photo of a once-seven year old street orphan who is now married with two kids, the family he never had.  A Rotarian talks about his large network of schools across Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He believes that if you don’t teach the girls then you can never change that society.  The Canadian who is the medical head of Polio Plus tells us he has no good news, only great news:  that horrible disease is now down to just a few new cases a year world-wide.  But my favorite moment comes courtesy Dolly Parton.

For many years Dolly has headed “Imagination Library”, which has given out some 25 million books to young kids.  She has some funny anecdotes about herself:  “Have I had plastic surgery?  Honey, if it flags, drags, sags or bags, I get it fixed.”  She sings “Nine to Five”, and is just generally loveable.  And then, in a gesture of appreciation for all she has done in partnership with Rotary, a fellow Southerner and top Rotarian comes on to present her with a Paul Harris Fellowship, Rotary’s equivalent of a honourary doctorate.  As he starts a roar of commiseration goes up from the crowd as we all recognize that he is staring at both our wildest fantasy and greatest fear, something we have all faced with varying degrees of failure:  Putting the pin on a woman.  But of course, not just any woman.  Dolly is dressed in 6″ heels and a spray-on mini dress with a spectacular decolltege.  She must be the nicest person in the world, but she isn’t going to make it any easier for him.   I can see the poor guy’s hands trembling from the balcony.  To waves of appreciative laughter she says “Honey, you’d better just give me that thang.  Because if you miss, I am gonna just take off around this arena like one of those big ol’ balloons!”

PS  After writing this I go to the roof – my favorite place, hot hot hot – to drink my lunch pitcher of sangria, and there is an earthquake, the old hotel sways and shakes.  The lovely little yellow T-shirted servers twitter like so many canaries.

It is easy to take maple syrup for granted in our over-sweetened world.  But imagine four hundred years ago, before the big slave plantations of the Caribbean started sending their magic into the north, when the only sweet thing was apple cider.  The delicate, airy goodness of maple syrup might just have made a hard life bearable.

But for me it means one more opportunity to eat weird things.  The Rotary Club of Laval has brought eight buses of us out to the Famille Constantine”s Sugar Shack in what appears to be most-un-maple-y suburbia.  There is a mosquito-infested tour of the maple grove, and Pierre Dubois in his beaver cap tells some fable of the syrup in ugly patois.  Interestingly, though, before iron pots arrived the syrup was concentrated by letting the surface freeze and then removing the ice, night after night.  The “cabin” is a huge banquet hall that looks like it sees a lot of weddings – frilly white stuff everywhere – but we are hungry, so hungry that we start on the pickled beets and condiments.  There is pea soup – is that really Canada’s only contribution to the cuisine of the world? – and a fair country pate.  And then it starts:  Cocktail wieners with maple syrup.  Pork and beans with maple syrup.  Maple-cured pork rinds.  A thick light Spanish tortilla with maple cured ham.  And of course a big jug of syrup to soak it all in.  And for desert – now  THIS was good! – delicious vanilla ice cream and apple pie, soaked in, you guessed it.  I was relieved when Rick won the bulging basket of maple products; our bottle has been in the fridge since Trudeau was PM, and I think it is going to stay that way.

Montreal is apparently known as the number one North American city for hosting conferences.  I wonder whether it was selected by conference organizers or delegates, because going to a city for a conference, and actually going to the conference can be very different things.  And Montreal is one non-stop diversion. 

Sunday morning I miss the opening Plenary and take my hangover for a look-see on a Bixi.  There are bike lanes and paths here that must set Gregor Robinson drooling onto his spandex shorts:  At regular intervals – including a block from my hotel – there are locked racks of 3 speed cruisers.  You put your Visa in and pop one out of the rack and off you go,  helmet-less, over cobbles and through traffic, with grace if not speed.  My preferred technique is to slip in behind a jolie jeune fille and do what she does, though perhaps not quite as elegantly.  (From what I can tell, Quebecoise women even swear elegantly, though that may be due to much practice.)  We (me and my hangover) rode around the touristy Quais jutting out into the rushing St. Lawrence, and out to the remnants of Expo on Ile St. Helene.  We ride past Habitat 67, all tastefully decorated with lovely little terrace gardens on all the odd jutting out bits, remember how incongruous those things used to look?  Now you would want one.  The bikes are for short hops, cheap to rent for 30 – 60 minutes, but after that the price skyrockets.  You just park it, do your business, and come out and hop on another one.  And they are everywhere.  According to Jako we’ll have this soon in Vancouver, and I can’t wait. 

I actually make it to part of the second Plenary session – there are about 50,000 delegates, so they have to do everything twice.  The flags of the 110 countries where Rotary is established are paraded out.  Brazil, Mexico and India get big cheers from their clubs, but seeing benighted spots like Eritrea, Sudan and Bangladesh represented gives some reason to hope.  But the rest of Team Tsawwassen has assembled at the rooftop terrace of my hotel for cocktails, and I bail when the Turkish folk dancing starts.  Dinner is warm gizzard and duck salad.

There is no point ordering a salad at Moishe’s, so I start with the chopped liver, the speciality of the house.  Well, that was after the kosher dill pickle and slaw that came with the dark rye bread.  The room is jammed, like every other restaurant in the city, and at 10 we are one of the smaller tables.  Duddy Kravit ate here regularly, and the smoke from Renee Levesque’s cigarettes still stains the ceiling.  The steaks are perfect, and towards the end we get mixed up with several tables of Italianos celebrating Nono’s 95th, and there is some muscatelle from somewhere, and richly layered cake donated by someone, and Armagnac.   The cowards head home and we stumble down pulsating St. Laurent – and it is very good that it is down – to Jello Bar.  You can buy a bottle of Grey Goose and a bucket of ice, and there is a cool five piece combo playing hip hop jazz, and the place is full, too.  When I wake up in the morning both beds have been slept in, which causes a moment of panic until I hazily remember pushing the suitcase off the bed during one of my frequent thirsty awakenings, and wondering who put it there.