A Plausible Future

The Tipping Point: A Global Death and Rebirth Story: Jim Fournier writes "For anyone who has any grasp of the multiple global trends accelerating toward crisis points, it is not difficult to imagine end-of-the-world scenarios. Indeed, the problem is to imagine a plausible future in which humanity ultimately arrives at a positive outcome."

a sample: "When Google recognized that trade credits were just information and enabled global clearing online, The Google became the standard international unit for mutual credit exchange among individuals and small businesses." :)

Indeed Jim presents quite a grand gauntlet challenge for would-be Futurists everywhere: It is oh so easy to gripe (heh - proof enough of that that right here!) but is it possible to weave the same trends and observations into a plausible positive? Mete enough for a blog if its own, I'd say.

Albert Hofmann Departs

Vale Albert Hofmann 1906 - 2008: inpirator of the 21st century, has passed on, age 102. Not only inspiring the counter-culture of the 1960s, but also breakthroughs and cutting edge creations by scientists, technology pioneers, musicians and artists: DNA researchers Francis Crick and Kary Mullis, Apple pioneer Steve Jobs, the Beatles, Alex Grey ...

the most infamous bicycle ride in history

Season Of The Witch

Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger, 1968.

strange
so strange

A Place To Stand

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3hDqKoHUqU&hl=en]
What do we do? Up there, on a daïs or a bandshell, in step behind the flags. what is our purpose? Yeah, I'm in a philosophical mood, but bear with me just a bit.

We know a concert band provides a soundtrack music to real life. Unlike a bar-band or a dance-band, we're not about people paying us to make their customers spend more on beer, we're out there, nearly invisible, out in among the everyday. We illuminate sermons, we set the flow in VIP visitations and set the frame of the public moment in a parade or to cheer the hometeam in a ballpark or as the orchestra to the ballet of a fireworks display. We deal out sound-emotion, binding waves of co-compassion, and that leads me to a topic of patriotic anthems and iconic tunes like Dolores Claman's "A Place To Stand".

This song was originally commissioned to illuminate a film by the same name shown at the Ontario Pavillion at Expo-67 in Montreal. Everyone here remembers it, not necessarily enough to sing along, but it gets instant recognition. The song is iconic.

And it also is, well, kinda ... quaint; we have band members who cringe when it bubbles up in the playlist and it's for fixing that sentiment that I wanted to post about this tune.

You see, it's simple and plain, but not at all a boring song; it's only kitch or cliché if we play it as such. But we aren't required to kitch it up: If we get inside any tune, when we get inside the head of the composer and discover their intent, when we find the meaning and purpose of the work, the band can re-invent it, and reinvigorate the spirit of the thing. Far from boring, patriotic icons can become a rich vehicle for expression because of the cliché.

Like this tune. On the surface, a government commission, yes, by a jingle-writer true, and for a blatent tourism commercial yes, but ...

• This was one of the most popular displays at Expo-67, with huge line-ups and many repeat visitors


• The film was an Academy Award winning short film


• It's innovative technique of the multi-panel live action montage won the praise of Norman Jewison (who subsequently used the method in the Thomas Crown Affair) and blew the socks off Steve McQueen; there's even homage to this film today in every episode of 24!

That's pretty cool, really. That's something of A Place To Stand in itself: This short tourism flick and the chart-topping jingle were crowning moments that Ontario film-art on The Map! The song and film actually lived their kitchy message!

The song has since been covered by Jim Carey and the Barenaked Ladies yes, that's something of itself, and it must have hit a nerve because was a hit: it sold 50,000 copies and still makes the news.

But here's something else to ponder in our play. Think about the set and setting of this work: This was 1967, a very different and very optimistic time, Lester Pearson and the days of Penny Lane and Happy Together, and here, drawing us a sound portrait of those times, we have the same composer who later writes our National alter-anthem, the ubiquitous theme to Hockey Night In Canada

Rising prices, global warming ... Dolores Claman has left us a flashback time machine to snap us back to those innocent times, and all you and I need do is power it up!