Synchronicity. I was going to erase that word and start these musing anew and then realized that I didn’t want to. After all I did experience it about an hour ago while driving in the car and listening to a radio station to which I rarely listen. Cory Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” was playing and I cranked it up and listened with an intensity never before witnessed between myself and that particular pop classic. All to say that my girl Georgia Murray is taking the stage in Toronto in mere moments real-time to cover the song for tonight’s CBC show Cover Me Canada. Now perhaps Mr. Hart’s song still receives daily air play here in Vancouver - who am I to know such things - but somehow doubt it, good tune that it is notwithstanding.
I don’t know about the specific space-time continuum that you inhabit, but here in the Cocoverse music seems to carry with it a greater preponderance of synchronous moments than any other single media or entity. Perhaps because it is so intermeshed with our processes of emotion and memory at a neurological level. Or perhaps that is just part of it’s magic.
I’m a fairly recent addition to Ms. Murray’s bandwagon, having had the extreme pleasure of seeing and hearing her perform live here in Vancouver not more than six weeks ago. She was awesome live and the CBC production team has yet to capture the full range of that awesomeness on their show, in my humble lay person’s opinion.
It is no small challenge to do sound for a live broadcast for not only a disparate group of bands but also having only 90 seconds to get the mix right. I don’t envy them their task but perhaps in future, not doing a 100% live performance with such (relatively) inexperienced bands would significantly elevate the quality of the sound on the show. I’m afraid that the general public is so used to polished perfection that many can’t pick out the moments that are gems from the nerves and miscues. In truth all eight bands really have something great and raw going on and a couple of the bands have superb chops.
I offer as evidence the YouTube videos of Ms. Murray - last week’s official version from the show - which was good - and the acoustic version she and the band laid down only a few hours later in their hotel room which was all kinds of amazing. Without strangers on the sound mixing board and the over-caffeinated lighting technician strobing crazily, in the acoustic version of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” Ms. Murray and crew kicked that song’s ass from Tofino to Cape Spear and back .
As a writer and neophyte guitar player I’m avidly participating in Georgia’s journey to musical stardom for a number of reasons. One is that I get a huge buzz from “discovering” talent on the way up and watching them ride the wave. Sometimes, as we have all borne witness, the talent and genius and celebrity ends up with the artist smashed on the rocks. But sometimes, and in this case I’m willing to bet on it, the fifteen year overnight sensation can enjoy each and every moment in the spotlight and ride out the dry spots sure to come with the same joy in the music that has sustained them thus far.
For me too part of the attraction is that I am an artist that performs best in my own milieu when I find others to inspire me. And I’m not taking about famous dead geniuses or celebrities whom I may admire but have never met.
I seek out the everyday artists in my everyday little life. It is shocking how many you can find if you only look -- the accounting clerk who is genius with the knitting needles; the sister who can take a pot of dirt and a few scraggly plants and compose a living tone poem; the roommate who taught me to brew the perfect cup of coffee; the graphic designer become award winning children’s book author; the colleague entering her first ballroom dance competition; the executive assistant become novelist and yoga teacher; the 10 year old boy who would not stay in the green room during the opera performance become a tenor known round the world; the guitar teacher become film composer; the Dean become choir master; the under 30 actor become film exec -- and today Georgia Murray, reluctant reality TV contestant. Tonight she sings for you and she sings for herself, but in the Cocoverse, most of all, she sings for me
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