ETA: Speaking of those Alan-Green calendar days...for those who missed Alan's guest appearance on last night's NHL Awards as a co-presenter (with Islanders' Hall of Fame goalie Billy Smith) of the Vezina to winner Marty Brodeur, a clip of that appearance can be found here. It even includes film of a few brief, blissful moments of that grand goalie performance Alan put on against a team of NHL players at the Winnipeg Juno Cup in 2005, showing one of his many (20+ in the first period, as I recall) saves that game, this one against NHL great Mark Napier. Alan played so well in that Juno Cup that he made the front page of the next day's Free Press sports section. a great big photo of him making yet another dazzling save. I still have my copy of that paper. I'm guessing that Alan still has his.
Bits and pieces seen and heard (and felt) recently around town:
Three fellows are talking serious shop a few nights ago at the Duke; I am unabashedly eavesdropping. A late arrival joins the continuing conversation, offering his opinion on the current topic of choice: Alan Doyle is the epitome of the songwriter/businessman - he's into everything!
Again the setting is the Duke, a week or so earlier; this time during a Stanley Cup game. The place is packed, noisy even during the height of play and steadily growing noisier. During the first-intermission commercials, an unmistakeably familiar set of accordion-drone notes is suddenly heard from the television; the entire pub instantly falls totally silent, every face turned up toward the screen, watching the Hockey Hall Of Fame commercial that's set to the music of Ordinary Day. In the hush, a wide-eyed young woman sitting across from me whispers, "Wow." The silence outlasts the music by perhaps a half a second, then the cheerful noise resumes.
Sitting in the downtown KFC - cheap chicken and a million-dollar-view - I finally hear Walk On The Moon on the radio. Not sure if it's because KFC's speakers are that much better than my shitty little laptop speakers or if the radio mix really is that much different from the CD version. Or perhaps it's a matter of listening with my heart as much as with my ears. Whatever the cause, the song sounds great - heartfelt vocal mixed up front, bells sweet and sweeping, big chorus appropriately muted. It's suddenly wonderful, no qualifications or hesitations. And like a silly fool, I'm staring at the window, looking straight out through the Narrows, blinking back tears and trying to still a rebelliously quivering lip - thinking about Nashville, remembering New Orleans. I get as far as Charlottetown and now the still-quivering lip decides it wants to join its partner in a shaky grin. By the final chorus, that view straight out through the Narrows leads directly to the Road Ahead and the smile is steady and settled. The song still sounds great, all the way to the final note.
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There are times when reading can be even better than seeing and hearing, those times when the writing is good enough to make it that way. Three excellent examples of such from three skilled and accomplished writers are presently available all at the same time over on the GBS site, a triple dip of pleasure and delight.
Sean adeptly captures both the perfect voice and the appropriate subject matter of his literary alter ego in the most recent (June 5th) Tosh Tail:
Nothing like being smack dab in the middle of nowhere to clear your cluttered mind. All alone in nature. Birds singing, trees creaking, water rambling, wind blowing the dust off your weary soul. Pee wherever u like. Beagle paradise.
This is lovely - tangible and concrete expression, along with a strong and sure characterisation of his pup-narrator and that narrator's believable concerns. Sean is getting quite a good handle on who that Pup is and how he talks, as well as what's on his mind - excellent writing progress to have made so early in this particular game.
Bob's most recent (June 11th) Soundtrack piece is masterfully written, hilarious and poignant, mordant and revealing, by turns and in combination:
During one school Halloween dress-up day, I turned up dressed as Jesus, with my clobber including a robe, bare feet, and a crown of thorns made up of some branches I broke off an alder on the way to school. Amazingly, there was no trouble. In retrospect, I think my teachers just felt sorry for the sad lunatic. It is not a well-known fact, but Sean and I went to the same high school at the same time, although we never spoke one word to each other. Nonetheless, many years later he mentioned that even he remembered the Jesus costume. Oh dear.
Priceless stuff here, the whole entry. Music as the mirror which shows the man, as well as the boy, and writing good enough to make it a real and lasting glimpse of something true in both past and present. It left me wishing so much that the determinedly rebellious boy who never exchanged a word with the likes of Sean McCann in high school could have been able to see Black Flag and DOA play live as many times as I did. That boy would have loved those raucous, chaotic, supremely rebellious shows, even if LA would have quite likely made him genuinely cracked. I like that boy, and I am going to be seeing him in the man he has become from here on out; the next time GBS finds themselves on stage in front of a suitably dark and rowdy audience, it's quite likely that the shout-out for Live Fast, Die Young will be coming from right up front, somewhere over there between Alan and Murray.
It has been a very long time, far too long of a time, since Alan's last journal entry. I sorely miss his words during such lengthy pauses in his writing. In his most recent (again, dated June 11th) Tour Diary entry, Alan's tone is brisk and his words informative...and right beneath that efficient surface, his eagerness and excitement over what is very soon to come is palpable and infectious.
The honest to God Fortune’s Favour Tour per se will actually start in September and take us all over North America well into 2009. We hope to do a two set show again this time as it gets us more stage time to play the zillions of tunes we’d like to perform. Is that cool? I sure prefer it, myself...
Only a few days till the new GBS Progeny is born onto the world making anxious parents of us all.
With this, Alan manages to catch his readers up in his own hopes and concerns and anticipation, even to the point of momentarily distracting this reader from her initial concerns about the potential stress a two-set-show tour and all of those zillions of songs might put on his pipes, especially if they go with the five and six consecutive nights of shows the way they did last time. It takes a great deal of eager excitement in the undercurrent and skillfull persuasion in the writing to distract me even momentarily from this particular concern, and he managed to do just that, leaving me with racing heart at the mere thought of seeing him and his mates performing those zillion song, and most of all at the thought of what is and will always be my favourite part of all GBS tours: seeing Alan Doyle's (zillion-song/two-set show) I'm On The Road Again delight.
His description of the Red Sea on his Google calendar is also compelling, quite the imagination-capturer, making me sincerely glad for all of the vivid Great Big Red even while I am also hoping for as much of the lovely colour of AlanGreen as is possible. No matter how many other desires and hopes and concerns are competing for my attention, still, his words beckon and invite and entice his reader into sharing his own excitement and anxiety and delight over that incipient birth. That is a powerful image and a serious metaphor, and it evokes a powerful and serious hope.
These men can write. And God knows they can play.
That view straight out through the Narrows to the Road Ahead is looking brighter and more promising with each passing day.
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I was going to do last summer's Rogers Glacier show photos next, but I changed my mind. In a way that would take far too much time and space to explain - suffice to say the issue centres on a continuing Act of Faith - the two Vancouver casino shows last November wound up being quite significant to me in both the there and then and the here and now. In response to the here and now, I decided to work next on the second casino show's photos. These are just a start, a small selection of photos from that show which cause me to think about, and to look forward to, the Road Ahead.
I think this is a very nice view of Bob, and as for Alan...I do not know how anyone finds it possible to resist that face.
Rock Star.
No way am I leaving these guys out. They are much too special - and necessary - for that. 
An expression that brings to mind his and Russell's lyric: I don't know where I'm going/But I know where I belong.