The Morning After

There are many reasons why I love the internet, but the most important for me is the randomness of discovery.

The last few days I’ve been jiving on lots of garage, mod, protopunk and 60s pop.  Reading about protopunk took me to discover and download some music from a band called ? The Mysterians.  They were the first band to ever be described as “punk.”

I was talking about about ? and the Mysterians on the radio last week when a Zoner far wiser than I called up to say, “The Mysterians might have been called the first punk band, but the actual first hard rocking punkers were a 1960 garage band from Seattle called The Sonics.”

The Sonics?  Sure enough, they have a groovy harsh punker sound.  I went to iTunes to try and find one of their classic records, either ‘Here are the Sonics’ or ‘Boom.” Sadly, neither were available.  But searching led me to a podcast for a theatre sound technician form the UK named Steve Brown.  Steve’s blog/podcast is nothing but audio soundscapes and weirdness.

I ended up poking around there this evening listening to the sounds of streets in Brighton or Seoul or wherever Steve decided to plant a mic and hit record.  One of my favourite posts is this audio/visual collage of Cold War era radio transmissions.  Very geeky stuff for you audiophiles find my blog.  I subscribed to his podcast.  Lots of great stuff to inspire and maybe one day sample for a project.

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Coral and I took Mads to Coquitlam this weekend for a little visit.  Coral bought a book on the boat called “The Book of Negros,” by Lawrence Hill.  Coral can’t put it down.  I’ll need to get in line to read it when she’s done.

The book basically follows the life of a young girl who is captured in her village in West Africa.  She is 11 years old and sent to the Americas to become a slave.  She gets freed during the American Revolution and is resettled in Nova Scotia before returning to Sierra Leone.

While reading, Coral occasionally pops up to ask me about some historical event that they mention in the novel, like Saint Helena Island or the old French colony of Saint Domingue.   I’d find it for her, do a quick read then have to keep poking around.  Saint Domingue is now Haiti!  One of the poorest countries (and THE poorest in the West) in the world.  But in the colonial times, it was the wealthiest colony.  Haiti was the site of a slave rebellion that led to its independence, the only successful slave rebellion in Earth’s history.  And yet 200 years later, the country is in shambles.  Its sad to think about.  In the late 1700s and early 1800, these black slaves are besting the armies of Britain, Spain, and Napoleon’s France… but get successfully manage their resources, and today the nation is broke and the people are poor.

The book isn’t about the slave rebellion of Haiti, but they mention it in the book… the whites in British colonies are freaking out, “what if it happens here?”

Go with yourself.

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