Winter Sun

Another sunny day in Londonville. It makes such a difference. I went out for a walk a little after four and took some pictures.

Old Blackfriars Bishop's Residence - now condos

Once a familiar scene - home-made skating rink on flats below Blackfriars Bridge

Bird prints at the forks of the Thames

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Live music is sometimes just so much better than recorded, a fact of which I was reminded earlier today. It's a long, probably boring, story. 

A couple of years ago, Karen and I took in a concert at the Wolf Performance Hall at the Central Library. It was part of the long-running Jazz for the People series of free concerts. Most feature local bands, sometimes from as far afield as Toronto. The concerts are always enjoyable. But this one was superb.

It featured a young Chicago-based outfit, the Joe Policastro Trio - guitar, bass, drums, Policastro being the bassist. They had apparently heard about the reputation of the Wolf for excellent acoustics, they were touring, with London falling on their route between two already-booked gigs, and they asked if they could  come and play here. And play they did, fabulously.

Joe Policastro Trio

The London audience agreed - we gave them a standing ovation. And the Joe Policastro Trio showed up on the Jazz for the People schedule the following year. (We were out of the country for that one.) I thought of buying one of their CDs but couldn't find a Canadian retailer online that had them. I did find their website and could have bought there, but in the end didn't.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I was trolling Apple Music, looking for new material, when I suddenly remembered the band and how much I'd enjoyed them, and thought, 'Aha, I can listen to their albums now!' Except, I have a 70-year-old brain, and I could not remember their dratted name. I pinged a guy I knew who had been at the concert. He couldn't remember either. (Another 70-something.)

Off and on over the last couple of days, I've tried different searches on Google to see if I could turn them up. The obvious searches didn't work, but today I found them. And sure enough, Apple Music does have three of their albums, including Screen Sounds, a collection of jazzified film and TV themes some of which they featured at the concert. So I listened to it.

Meh.

No, that's not fair. Some of it I enjoyed very much, but the recording quality is only okay. I sometimes could barely hear Joe Policastro's solos. And the engineer has done that gee-isn't-stereo-cool thing that was common on sixties pop records where each instrument has a separate place on the soundstage - drums to the far left, Joe with his bass in the middle (well, he is the leader), guitar at far right. It sounds like you're listening to three different recordings. That's not the way music sounds when it's played live. It comes at you all at once.

I'm probably being too harsh. They're a fresh, creative band, and superb in concert. But this is a problem I've encountered more than once: you see a great concert, buy the CD, and then you're disappointed with it.

A couple of years ago, we drove all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula to see Stephen Fearing, the west coast-based singer-songwriter who moonlights as one third of Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. The concert, again, was fabulous. Fearing is an engaging performer. The venue, an old community hall in Lion's Head, was charming. And the songs, many from a newly-released album, were uniformly good. So I bought the album.

It's not that the album is bad, it's just that it's not anything like the concert, which was just him and his guitar, very pared down and simple. The CD has all sorts of accompanying instruments and a very plush sound. If I'm honest, I have come to like it more. Still, disappointing.

Is there a lesson in all this? I guess, don't buy records by artists you've only heard in concert without auditioning them first.

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Every picture tells a story  Although not much of one in this case. I just like the photograph.

It was taken about ten years ago in Karen's flower garden at West Mile Road. It's a datura flower. I photographed them many times. They're poisonous and they have nicknames that allude to that fact: devil's trumpets and hell's bells. They go to bed at night. The pleated blossom with its tips that always remind me of medieval curl-toed shoes fold up like an umbrella. Then when the sun comes up, they open again. The picture was taken with flash at dusk, so it's already partly closed.