Green Girl/Gordie

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> My friend Mike liked to read on the line, couldn't honestly understand why if he was set up for service which hadn't yet started, it wasn't kosher for him to read a book in the kitchen of the brewery pub. Back then I had a 70s pioneer boomboxes that played at 97% speed. My music at work: Not enough bass to sound like hip hop to the kids from George Brown, the blackout dancers at yonge and st Clair, at Yonge and Bloor, or the kids for whom I read fortunes on the night bus, tribe  and the prince and the jazzy summertime helped me feel safer in downtown late night weekend transit. Downie's on the radio, holding nothing back. On TV, he winks and calls out mike in an interview. CBC describe his hats, his shoes, unravel the mystery, feed the phenomena. Intoxicated by your overbite. I'd be your intern. When they passed the mike, everyone found out he didn't know the words to the song. Scene, history. One day, a night, and 6000 people at a time. One last time. I called  50mission cap right off the top. Capacity and convalescence. Poetry and power politics. Wars for words to right the wrongs, pretzel shaped cats mewling in private codes, children with blonde hair, on the waterfront, shucking spadina, deeper into colonial zones, looking and listening for the old modes. Feeling cold in the collective waters, feeling naked on the beach. Five years ago, one boat and a hundred people. Now look. Stare. My blue hat and her hair. Fistfights, free mirrors. Waves echoing the voices all around in a whirling rush across the sand. Storytelling in the diner, the garage, the kitchen, the basement. A lot of walking wear, but the Hips in fine form. Fire and water. Sonnetry, klaxons and clarion-calls. What's her story? I don't know these songs. Back to the Greeks again. Captain's looking for a constitutional, and third time's the charm as far as free coffee. Let's do it again next Friday. Glass Hand is playing at the Silver Dollar on August 26th, with Hot Kid, tearjerker, and the inanimates. Back to the streets, post-hip:


> That's your Wes Anderson face?

> That's my sandwich face.

 Wtf am I writing about?

> There's a thing we're all going thru right now. There's a place that's comfortable and terrifying. Not Lorraine's. There's no place you should be less worried, waxes the sandwich philosopher beside me at the bar. I've got a solid half hour in the can with Jason Farrar. I've got both the Shabbat and the Fridays off now playa piano style. I've got a cut on my tongue and a bad case of you. I've got to get rolling on this Green Girl EP release promotion. It's moody and smart, or rather they are. Here's a short taste of the interview  we did on the topic of their upcoming musical offering.


> Sam: How did the band form?
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> Bryn: Ben and I knew each other when we were teenagers.
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> Ben: We played in a bad punk rock band
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> Bryn: So I tracked him down, about 15 years after we had played together the first time, and he said yes! That’s how the band started . . .
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> Bryn: Jan was a fan first!
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> Jan: Yes, I was a fan... I ended up temporarily filling in for the drummer and then it just became permanent.
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> Ben: Yes, our whole rhythm section spontaneously combusted.
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> Sam: Tell me about the forthcoming EP.
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> Bryn: It’s called Wilde.
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> Jan: History is made!
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> Ben: With an “e.”
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> Bryn: With an “e.”
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> Ben: And an “i.”
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> Bryn: And an “i” also. There are two vowels... it feels like a really cool time for us to be recording and putting some songs together.
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> Ben: We’re capturing some fresh energy with some of the songs.
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> Bryn: Yeah, it’s this great moment where it’s like we are “a band” and yet everything is still really fresh and new.
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> Ben: And we’re still unpracticed enough.
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> Suzanne: Yeah, we’re trying to keep it raw and real and not too polished.
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> Ben: I’m nodding.
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> Bryn: Yes, we are all nodding enthusiastically.
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> Suzanne: And it’s going to be awesome!
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> Bryn: It is going to be awesome.
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> Ben: I think Bryn should talk about how the songs connect to moments in her past, ‘cuz there’s a thematic element to what the recording represents.
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> Bryn: Oh man...
> I guess it was a very dark time. I think it’s a lot of things... it’s weird, because now like ten years later I’m writing all these songs about this shit and I think it just took me all that time to be able to process it in this way
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> Suzanne: I definitely think that usually there is about a ten-year lag time in terms of writing.
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> Bryn: Totally, right! I feel funny because people are like “oh, this crazy shit happened to me, I’m going to write a song about it!” And I’m like “there’s no way.” I needed that distance.
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> Suzanne: you can look at it more objectively, like in a different light with more life experience behind you to actually understand it better...
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> Sam: does Green Girl music come out of trauma and loss?
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> Bryn: ... I think we answered that. Yeah, I’m talking about loss and trauma that happened a long time ago and that’s about as much as I want to say about that.
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> Ben: It’s not just Green Girl, but... I find myself, through that time, continuing into now, realizing how seriously I take this... and I don’t take for granted that I get to play music with people and in front of people and all that stuff.... the right time for this project to come about because . . . I’m ready for it! I want it. I want to make music with good people.
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> Jan: Coming back into the experience of playing in a band, there is definitely a new appreciation for playing with other people and making something together that I didn’t have playing in bands when I was sixteen or seventeen. Seems like we’re in the process of growing and creating all the time, so it’s a great experience right now.
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> Ben: So, when this is transcribed, you want it to say “Spice Girls and others.” That’s what you’re saying, right?
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> Bryn: I dunno, who else was big back then? Aqua? Does anyone remember Aqua?
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> Ben: Vaguely.
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> Bryn: I dunno, we were in junior high. It was a bleak time.
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> Ben: I’ve always had a dream of owning a bar that no one comes to. It’s kinda dingy... It’s where you go when you’re heartbroken. You don’t go there to have a good time, you go there to listen to Tom Waits.
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> Suzanne: I would go there.
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> Ben: I’d go there a lot. I’d get my heart broken every week just so I could go to this bar.
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> Jan: Reminds me of a Twin Peaks bar from Firewalk With Me. The sad one.
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> Bryn: It’s tough because the scene is so big and diffuse right now you could never know all the amazing bands that are happening.
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> Jan: Someone should create a website tracking Toronto bands.
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> Suzanne: See, this is why I wish I were independently wealthy, because I would totally do that.
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> Ben: I guess you can’t start a record label anymore because no one buys records but doing something like that: some kind of promotion company where you hype bands online...
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> Suzanne: I would be doing so many cool things if I didn’t have to do paying work. I’d just play all the time.

 Weaving worlds together is a small matter of habitual scheduling. I sit in the spot where you first came into my consciousness. I weigh my habits and healthy decisions. I cough. Obvi I couldn't touch you today, honestly my glands are swoll and my passage raw. Tanya had a twin at the Timmie's today. She tried to get another free maple iced mocha whatevs, had to keep trying and dropping bday boms till  solidarity prevailed. Ok so your coffee wasn't free, but I had a cheese croissant and what's the change of that out a five? Please. You're welcome. Thank you. Y'know. So good that slowdown, a couple nights of oh boy and a few hours at Hanlon's and a decent laundry window and cousins getting older who will never catch up, chasing their own blackouts and body switches, smoking out the sadists and weeding out the warlords. Sarah, I'll just take the bill when you have the chance. He's the Captain, not my dog. The shuddering gap left in the national consciousness' live music fix with the Hip replacements, handsome pants and pretty shots. Gosh, it is too much. Can you burn smokes on happy thoughts, is the juice worth the squeeze? Do you work with Conviction? Is Nicole ok? A young bleached blonde in a pizza party, facing the wall. Friends whisk her away. Intersections and intersexuality. Six million times seven days times three working shifts equals thirty six million chambers of possible encounters, spottings, introductions, affiliations, like hundred sided dice shook up in a sack marked aleatoric romance by John Cage or James Tenney, source material or statistical data supporting an extant theory, extending a bourgeoning, blossoming bitonal expression. Patriarchal musical theory. Homeroom, home row. Home key.
> Homophobia and hatred. Of what?
> Where and when does gender binary even seem like a full view of sexual or social potential spectrum. Deeper than a coastal shelf. Raise kids, have em if it happens. Teach kids, grow em if the tide is right. Load up on the late empirical poetry, take a Larkin the pool of propaganda. A shell of silver skein. Mariachi bar hopping. It's also a trap, says Quinn. There has to be another place. RIP uncle Diliza.