Latenights in Lotusland: tidings from the east coast

Yo music fanatics...

Here's another late "Top 25 Island Discs" entry courtesy one David Swick in Halifax, via our very own Buffalo Tim in Vancity... coast to coast, we aim to please the most.

Wig: Make an exception for Swick. He's in another time zone. TC

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From: Swick
Date: January 23, 2005 7:04:14 AM PST
To: Carlson
Subject: Here's my top 25 (no specific order!)

Hey man,

Here are my 25 Desert Discs. (Glad to see this custom keeping up with inflation. Didn’t we used to bring only 10?)

01 Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Blvd.
02 George Harrison – All Things Must Pass
03 Leonard Cohen – 10 New Songs
04 Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
05 Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
06 James McMurtry – Where’d You Hide The Body?
07 James McMurtry – It Had to Happen
08 Roy Harper – Flat, Baroque and Berserk
09 Lou Reed – New York
10 The Clash – London Calling
11 Mary Jane Lamond – Suas E!
12 Sinead O’Connor – I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
13 Sinead O’Connor – For She Who Dwells...
14 J.J. Cale – Five
15 Elvis Costello – King of America
16 Graham Parker – The Mona Lisa’s Sister
17 Bryan Ferry – Boys and Girls
18 Buddy and the Boys – Buddy and the Boys
19 Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love
20 Youssou N’Dour – Set
21 Cowboy Junkies – Black Eyed Man
22 Sam Cooke – Night Beat
23 Choir of King’s College, Cambridge –Allegri Miserere
24 Bach – Cello Sonaten, Maysky/Argerich
25 Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

My No. 26 is Talking Heads: Remain in Light. Good to see that on your list. Do you know McMurtry? Check him out!

-d

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By the bye, David Swick wrote the following story (keep scrolling) for the Halifax Daily News about coal miners-cum-call center employees and I thought readers of this space might enjoy reading it here. Relevance?

My maternal grandfather was a coal miner who raised his family in Sydney Mines, N.S.. My uncles might well have been miners too. I'll have to ask me dad about that sometime...

I doubt Grandpa would have been happy spending each day answering phone calls about consumer items but if it meant putting food on the table, so be it. Coal dust probably killed him* and far too many of his mates but I'm dead certain they were all proud men who did whatever they had to do to support their families. There weren't many work options for young men back in the day.

The same might be said of today's burgeoning throng (?) of call center sales reps and tech support staff, amongst whom are plenty of former miners, fishers and other natural resource workers, I imagine. A man's gotta do something to earn a living - same goes for women, of course.

I worked for Ticketbastard here in Vancouver answering phones for a couple years too, on and off. It sucked, big time, but it helped pay the rent during my lengthy (poverty-ridden) stint as a freelance writer, so there ya go.

When I visit your beautiful, beloved Nova Scotia next, I'll be sure to look you up, David. Thx kindly for your musical picks. Send me a mailing address and your wiggy CD is on its way - relatively soon.

This list is getting way out of control, boys and girls! : - )

Kim Goodliffe, Karen Husak, Tim Carlson, Miranda Huron, Connie Kostiuk, Lynn Coady, Briana Doyle, Katie Zuzek, Chris Hind, David Kerr, Siobhan Devlin, Kristen Johnson, Angela Royea, Jill Sharpe, Bruce Halliday and now, Mr. Swick!

-30-

*Note: My dear mum, Eileen Catherine (nee Garland) Smith, may well have died due to medical complications arising from her lengthy exposure to the toxic environment that still inhabits much of Cape Breton Island. Makes my blood boil.

Fucking tar ponds, fucking irresponsible governments, fucking mine owners and their fucking operators... read all about it.

Ex-Cape Breton miners the rocks of the Earth Capers carry on the way they always have, with fortitude, humour, longing

The Halifax Daily News
Friday, May 9, 2003
By David Swick

SYDNEY, N.S. - The last coal mine closed nearly two years ago, and Cape Breton miners and their families have survived the way they always have - with fortitude, humour and longing.

Michael Bresowar worked underground for 23 years. Today, he can tell you the difference between working in a coal mine and a call centre.

"The call centre is team oriented," Bresowar says. "No one person has all the answers. I may be good in the billing part of it, where in the technical part of it, I may need help. That's the way it works -- it's people working together.

"The difference is that I'm not really dependent on someone in the call centre. When I'm underground, say I'm under a roof shovelling, I've got a buddy watching the roof. He's my extra set of eyes. You have to work together to survive."

Bresowar is one of the Men of the Deeps, the fabled choir of Cape Breton coal miners. The men -- and their wives and families -- gathered in a Sydney Theatre on Wednesday night to see a powerful, new one-hour documentary called Men of the Deeps.

Made by award-winning director John Walker, it will air on CTV next fall or winter.

"You go into Tim Hortons in the morning now, and you leave with black around your eyes," another chorister, Marshall Poirier, said at a reception after the screening. "You go to a dance, or wherever, and you talk coal mines. It's been our life for hundreds of years."

The end of mining has been hard, Poirier said, but has also brought an unexpected blessing.

"There's a calm in the community now," he said.

"The danger's not there anymore. The longest mines went five miles under the ocean, which is a long way, and people were getting scared. But now, a mass disaster -- with 25 or 50 or 100 men killed -- that fear is not there. If you hear the ambulance siren now, at least you know it's not from the coal mine."

If Cape Bretoners are the salt of the earth, coal miners and their families are the rock. Their ability to survive hardship would put most city slickers to shame.

Like so many Cape Bretoners, Tommy Tighe knows the pain of a family death underground.

"When we sing that one song, about a miner being killed, I get a lump in my throat," Tighe said.

His only son, Alan, was killed in the mine when he just 23.

"Sometimes I lip-sync it, while the tears run down my face."

Tighe was one of the original Men. The group was formed in 1966, and debuted at Expo '67. They choir has since played in China, Kosovo, and hundreds of North American locations. This summer, the Men of the Deeps will return to Halifax.

Tighe himself entered the mines at 16, and survived to retirement at 65.

"No two days were alike, and it was always a challenge," he said.

"I loved every minute of it. A lot of people wouldn't."

Michael Bresowar will be in a nice, clean office today -- on the phone, handling dozens more telephone calls. He's a people person. He's good at his job. And he's usually so busy he doesn't think of what might have been.

"I came to this job with an open mind. It was a job that was keeping me in Cape Breton, and that's what mattered," Bresowar said.

"But I loved working in the mine. I'd go back tomorrow."

-30-