Crimson Lake, Alberta
Thank you for travelling along with Bear and me in 2024. It has been a great pleasure to share our journey with you.
We are at the cabin for our ritual New Year’s Eve non-event, just chillin’ and listening to some tunes.
Music had a significant influence on our lives this year. We compiled some of the songs we enjoyed most, and the stories they inspired. I hope you will reminisce with us this New Year’s Eve.
Purple Gas
I can’t name two Taylor Swift songs, and I wouldn’t attempt to interpret her lyrics if I did. In fact, I don’t have much in common with most Millennial singer songwriters.
There is one exception. Noeline Hoffmann is an emerging artist from the badlands of Southern Alberta. Twenty-something Hoffman and I speak the same language.
Hoffmann gained a measure of fame this year when an American music producer picked up her song Purple Gas.
The lyrics are so un-contemporary, they may require some instruction. For those of you who didn’t grow up on a prairie farm, here is a glossary of terms Hoffmann uses in Purple Gas.
- Baler twine – Hemp or plastic twine used to bind hay/straw bales.
- Bio-Mycin – pink-eye medicine for cattle.
- Fargo – Canadian-made pickup truck.
- Fencin’ pliers – tool, specially designed for constructing barbed-wire fences.
- Hammer Down, Hair Straight Back – foot pinned on the gas pedal, accelerating rapidly.
- Point nine wire – 9-gauge utility wire.
- Plates for purple gas – licence plate for a farm vehicle permitted to burn low-tax, dyed gasoline.
- Pump jack checks – payment made by an oil company to a farmer, for the use of their land.
- Retired rail ties – abandoned railway line, oil-treated, wooden planks.
- Sly thumb of rye – large portion of Canadian rye whiskey.
Far Too Long
I am a very slow learner. The Rolling Stones have been cranking out music for 60+ years, but the rock icons were never on my “favourites” list. I don’t own a Stones album and haven’t paid much attention to their music, until this year.
I finally woke up; Bear and I saw The Rolling Stones in Santa Clara, CA in July. Angry is my pick for song of the year.
This Rolling Stone has been gathering moss for …
… far too long.
For The Next Four Years
If you want to understand what is happening in the world, you should turn off CBC, CNN, FOX, or whatever your media poison of choice is, and listen to music. I disconnected from the News after the US election and tuned in to America’s music. I learned more about the psyche of the American people listening to them sing than I ever did watching the talking heads.
Take Oliver Anthony for example. The impoverished working man from Virginia independently released his single, Rich Men North of Richmond, in August last year. The song went viral; it reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and continues to sell to a broad audience.
There are 345,000,000 people in the USA. Rich Men North of Richmond has been viewed 183,500,000 times, which tells me that more than half the population of the USA identifies with being Disaffected, Afraid, Angry, Fearful of Lost Identity, and Left Behind.
An opportunistic politician tapped into the sentiments expressed by Oliver Anthony and 183 million other Americans and got himself elected President, twice.
Those of us on the Limousine Left, who haven’t been listening to Oliver Anthony and people like him, will be listening now, loud and clear, …
… for the next four years.
Swallows
Bear and I are going to Morocco in the New Year, via Portugal. Expect your invitation to join us in mid-January. In preparation for the trip, here is an opportunity to brush up on our Portuguese.
Ana Moura’s song Andorinhas, translates as…
… Swallows
A Colorblind Lovesick Fool
If you own a dog or have ever owned a dog, and this song doesn’t put a little mist in your eye, your heart might be one size too small.
Meet Riley and Taylor’s Uli, he’s …
… a Colorblind Lovesick Fool.
Old Woven Navajo
One of the more meaningful things I did in 2024 was buy a Navajo Rug from Ian Tyson’s estate sale. I never tire of this song.
“You don’t find things that last anymore, like an …
… Old Woven Navajo”.
2024 is about to end. We are not making any resolutions for the New Year, but we will make one prediction…
Bear and I anticipate that you will have …
… A Wonder-Filled Year!
Happy New Year!
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