Thursday 25 October 2018

A FAN’S NOTES

Through a Sepia Lens, Darkly

No sport on Earth can compete with baseball when it comes to perpetuating its own mythology and disseminating its lengthy history. Ballparks may be bandboxes or cathedrals, sometimes both. The game has seduced writers, musicians, painters and filmmakers. I’m aware that my perception of baseball is the result of these various methods of subliminal indoctrination. Every baseball photograph I’ve ever seen, whether in a newspaper, magazine or book cried out to be rendered as a daguerreotype; I crave the intoxicating mercury vapour whiff of a pastoral nostalgia that I’ve been led to believe existed before I was born.

The modern game has oozed into a tedious stasis. Nine innings can stretch 54 outs into four hours. Defense is strikeouts; offense is home runs. Baseball’s much more fun to watch when the ball’s live, in the field of play. Still, this October’s World Series has an old-timey quality about it whatever the twenty-first century analytics. The competing teams are virtual strangers with long histories but not with one another. The Red Sox and the Dodgers have not faced off in inter-league play since 2004. The last time they met in the World Series was 1916. Babe Ruth was a Red Sox pitcher.

When I was a kid growing up in Montreal a couple of generations of our family gathered annually for summer holidays by the ocean in Maine. New England was Red Sox turf. An old family friend who now lives in Connecticut says his state’s unofficial demarcation between Red Sox and Yankee fans is Interstate 91 which stretches between Hartford and New Haven. Since the Expos did not begin play in my hometown until 1969, I cheered for the Red Sox who lost the 1967 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals who would eventually provide the opposition for the Expos’ inaugural home opener.

The Brooklyn Base Ball Club variously known as the Robins, Superbas and Bridegrooms in its early days did not adopt the Dodger nickname officially until after the Great Depression had gripped the globe (the Red Sox began life in 1901 as the Americans but have gone by their current moniker since 1908). Brooklyn had a connection to a Montreal I was born too late to know, their AAA International League affiliate played up north as the Royals. That all changed when the major league club decamped for Los Angeles before the 1958 season. Like most baseball fans, I was entranced by Roger Kahn’s elegiac ‘The Boys of Summer’ which chronicles the Dodgers’ final years in their New York City borough. I own a Brooklyn cap.

Strings and threads remained. Duke Snider, one of the best there ever was and a Flatbush legend, drawled laconic and droll insight into the grand old game from the Expos’ broadcast booth. I once helped him find the raisins in a grocery store and took the opportunity to ask him about ‘The Boys of Summer.’ Difficult to discern what annoyed him more, my question or the book’s contents. By this time the Los Angeles Dodgers had long been regular visitors to Montreal.

The Montreal Expos were always cursed by short pockets stuffed with lint and maybe a few singles of Canadian currency. One of those small market teams that always stood to benefit from owners playing hardball with players. The cure was temporary, an ineffectual salve which prolonged the agony of a fatal disease. The payrolls of the 2018 editions of the Red Sox and Dodgers are beyond obscenity by millions.

The 1981 major league season was interrupted by labour strife. The solution was to steal a ploy from the minor leagues, a split season; two sort of equal halves to keep disgruntled fans engaged. The Expos qualified for the jury-rigged post-season bracket. The hockey Canadiens were in decline, here was an opportunity for the city’s baseball team to establish itself as an equal in Montreal’s sporting scene; winning is the only reliable sports marketing strategy. The Expos’ World Series aspirations were crushed by the Dodgers on October 19, ‘Blue Monday.’

In 1994 the Expos sported the best record in baseball when play was cancelled. There was no World Series. Why speculate about what might or might not have been? So many leagues, so many teams, so many heartaches and frustrations because ultimately only one can win. My team no longer plays in Montreal. I had a ‘Blue Monday’ ticket but I gave it to a good friend because I was scheduled to bag groceries at the A&P following a morning university classes. I’ve made an incalculable number of poor decisions through the course of my life and that one ranks right up there.

I’m typing this post with a Red Sox hat on my head and this is weird because I always cheer for the National League, where the Expos played, in the World Series: Boston’s a bit against the grain as I’m not reaching for those idyllic days in Maine because I’m 58 now, not eight. I believe the American League’s introduction of the designated hitter in 1973 was the first misguided step toward the boring games fans must endure these days. Specialization got really specialized. But I cannot bring myself to hope for the Dodgers because I believe they were the original Expo killers.

Game three is tomorrow night. Red Sox versus Dodgers, 102 years in the making and it matters to me on some level. Don’t know why.

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.

Tuesday 23 October 2018

SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Dog’s Calling

Sparky is a certified Emotional Support Animal (ESA). He is a mid-sized mutt, short haired, handsome, curious and alert. He took some time out of his busy day to speak with meGeoff. We’d arranged to meet in a dog park on the elevated and steep south shore bank of the North Saskatchewan River. The air was crisp with fall but the sky was a lovely and clear pale blue. Sparky munched on bone-shaped biscuits as we chatted while meGeoff got legally baked for the first time ever.

meGeoff: Tell me how you first became involved in the ESA program.

Sparky: It’s a bit of a long story, a shaggy dog, if you will. Since I was whelped I dreamed of being a service dog. So when I became a pup I auditioned for the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind). That did not go well. There was an incident at a crosswalk involving a bus and a squirrel. Subsequently I was diagnosed with a touch of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I tried to be a drug-sniffer but I already had about a million scents catalogued in my head and anyway, cocaine made me crazy. In a good way, not! Bomb-sniffing was out of the question, as if.

meGeoff: So…

Sparky: Well, the great thing about being an ESA is that absolutely zero training is involved. No qualifications required! Some human with a bit of paper framed on their office wall says you’re an ESA and then away you go. It’s a noble calling. You just need the right owner. It’s a bit like a lottery, I suppose. At the end of the day, you know, from 30,000 feet, I’m just a lucky dog.

meGeoff: Seems to me you’ve found a sense of fulfillment, given your life some meaning.

Sparky: I can go anywhere, man. I wish I’d been named Rex which means ‘king.’ Places other dogs can’t go: hotels, airplanes, grocery stores… To be honest, I find grocery stores particularly stressful.

meGeoff: How so?

Sparky: Well, it’s a bit like a pothead in a cannabis store. An analogy you’d understand – not that I’m judging because I don’t, I’m incapable - but c’mon, the meat aisle, the cereal aisle. The pet food aisle is a special form of hell. All that kibble…

meGeoff: How do you cope? How do you restrain yourself?

Sparky: I get help. I attend a support group once a week.

meGeoff: Excuse me?

Sparky: Hey, you try living with a depressed and anxious person every waking minute of every day. You’re always on call even as you worship them. My friend Walt the Cat, an ESA who’s never worked a full day in his life by the way, tears his fur out the few hours he’s actually awake, lazy tabby bastard that he is, but you get the picture. We’re all a little wired. Love sick, I guess you could say, a bit needy. But to make a long story short, caregivers need care. I can self-medicate, I mean I can lick my-

meGeoff: I get it.

Sparky: Hang on! Is that my owner over there standing at the edge?

meGeoff: Yeah, it’s a place we locals call ‘The End of the World.’

Sparky: What’s the drop?

meGeoff: About 20 metres.

Sparky: Damn! I better get going. ‘Put my Lassie voice on,’ as we say in the biz. Pardon the jargon but you know how it is with niche industries; you said when you first introduced yourself that you’d worked in advertising, didn’t you? Anyway, thanks for the Milk Bones. Nice chatting with you. Gotta run!

meGeoff: Godspeed, Sparky.

Sparky: Whoa, whoa! Wait a doggone minute. Did you see the way that squirrel just looked at me? Look at that smug, chirping little rodent. Bastard needs to be taught a lesson right here and right now. Hold my treat.

meGeoff: UhMind if I have a bite?        

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.

Thursday 18 October 2018

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Something in the Air

October 17, 2018 will always remain ingrained in my memory. The forecasted highs for yesterday ranged from 21- to 23-degrees Celsius depending upon the weather source but virtually unheard of for this time of year in this part of the country, especially since the first snow fell on September 12. Oh, and recreational pot usage became legal.

Canada’s great soft drug experiment is officially underway. Though my days as a giggling puddle of goo have long past, I’ve been following this national news story with avid interest. Officially sanctioned stoning conveys a very different message in a major Western democracy than it does in a Middle Eastern kingdom, not to torture and dismember hairs.

Ending a prohibition on a relatively innocuous substance such as weed is probably a good thing, an example of enlightened thinking. The action takes a bite out of the black market, crimping criminal consortiums. An over-stressed justice system can stop sweating some small stuff and direct its attention elsewhere. There’s also a new category on the financial index though analysts and investors are to be reminded of the dot-com bust, and Canadian banks with interests in the United States should be wary of their ties to non-traditional drug companies. For the tax collector there’s too a new source of tsk-tsk sin revenue. But that potential stream could be a case of robbing Van to pay Roger: if people allocate their altered states money, getting high to Dark Side of the Moon could preclude a late night Irish whisky session with Saint Dominic’s Preview.

The staid formality colouring the lurch to legalization has amused me. No stoner or petty dealer I ever knew ever once uttered the nouns “marijuana” or “cannabis.” Last Saturday various Globe and Mail food critics positively gushed secret sub-culture intel in girlish up-voices: the best munchies with aioli and kale to be scoffed by the newly reefer maddened in major Canadian cities! Curiously, police services across the nation who have dealt with herb impairment since before the Jazz Age are stymied by the newly legislated challenge of funneling high drivers into drunk driver check stops. It’s as if this green plant, some kind of alien species, popped through the Earth’s soil last week, maybe October 10, 2018.

There is nothing new under the sun except regulations and restrictions. Since Canada’s provinces and territories took some 150 years to sign a document that resembles a domestic free trade agreement, the rules around the country regarding the sale and possession of pot are a tangle: imagine Medusa having a bad hair day. What’s laissez-faire in Quebec may be illegal in Ontario. What flies in Toronto might be a lead zeppelin in Markham. And so it unrolls. Meanwhile all Canadians should be reminded that while pot is legal in some American states, the United States border is a federal jurisdiction and there are no grey areas in that nation’s the war on drugs.

The advertising guidelines for pot as they now stand intrigue me. The green, green grass of home has been lumped in with tobacco by federal authorities. That is any advertising vehicle which has the remotest chance of reaching any one potential customer under the age of majority is not allowed. This is in contrast to alcohol advertising tactics which market hooch as a lifestyle-enhancing elixir. Prescription drug advertising falls somewhere in the middle; you can say the brand name but not what it does or say what it does but not the brand name – ask your doctor.

A few months ago I yanked an avid cyclist’s chain. I said, “You ride on the roads, you ride on the sidewalks, you don’t dismount at crosswalks, what are you, a vehicle or a pedestrian?” He replied, “We’re a third element entirely.” I can see the pot industry lobbying (and there will be a lobby) for an easing of existing advertising restrictions once the retail roll out has been debudded. The “third element” argument holds bong water. For instance, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) is an inexpert and archaic body in this new age of Netflix and other streaming services.

Today is the day after an historic day in an industrialized country. It feels like any other day, maybe a little cooler since yesterday.             

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.

Saturday 13 October 2018

SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Gaia Old Time

Decades ago I borrowed a book from my father’s library because its spine intrigued me. Its title was ‘Rats, Lice and History’ and it had nothing to do with the movie ‘Willard.’ The author was Hans Zinsser, a medical doctor and bacteriologist. From it I learned that many outcomes in human history were in part dictated by natural forces too small to discern until their symptoms manifested. It’s no mean feat to catch an opposing army with its pants down, wracked by dysentery. 

Many years later and perhaps because of the similar rhythm of its title, I read Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ which expands upon Zinsser’s premise of disease as destiny. The winners when tribes of humans come into conflict militarily or otherwise have usually been cleverer in managing and exploiting their natural resources; that know-how in turn generates superior technology. If a group possesses a surplus of staples as the result of refined agricultural practices and animal husbandry, its members have the leisure means to explore other endeavors whatever they may be. Technological leaps become self-perpetuating. Let’s make iron weapons! Let’s make internal combustion engines! Future cost is incalculable.

Between those books I’ve read two others that relate. ‘Fourth Horseman’ by Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk was my introduction to Gaia theory: essentially everything organic and inorganic inside our planet’s atmosphere bubble is in some way connected. Cause and effect. And if you’re at all like me you can render yourself near paralytic as you jiggle and jounce other strings like synchronicity and quantum probability. Fishing in the dark. Our world is a complex place.

Because Gaia posits Earth as a super-organism, Nikiforuk argues convincingly that it must from time to time cull its most annoying and prominent parasite. In his view documented methods include epidemics of bubonic plaque, tuberculosis, influenza and AIDS. Nothing personal. The implication though is clear: in the eyes of Gaia the billions of us are persistent yet inefficient slackers when it comes to eradicating ourselves by other means although God knows we try hard enough with the tools at hand.

The feel-good book of the four is a suicidal misanthrope’s wet dream: ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman. In cosmic terms humanity’s existence on our home planet is a blip. Should we disappear, Nature will reclaim her realm surprisingly quickly in the aftermath. The warranties on our infrastructure, parts and labour, and the machines that operate and maintain it are void in the event of apocalypse – it’s a bit like that unnerving ‘civil war’ clause in your home insurance policy. Humankind could become a cold case with some shreds of scant trace evidence left in the solar system’s dossier. Meanwhile, our self-regulating biosphere will continue its evolutionary journey. What’s another extinct species in the great universal scheme of things?

News this week continues to suggest Gaia has another weapon in her arsenal to rid herself of us. Hurricane Michael juiced up to a devastatingly powerful category four storm by sucking energy from overly warm ocean waters smashed into the Florida Panhandle like a fist. High above the Medicine Line Canada lit up like Neil Young on a bender. The country’s largest oil refinery located in New Brunswick blew a gasket. Irving Oil officials admitted to media outlets there’d been an ‘incident.’ The black tornado cloud was something of a tip and not a particularly anonymous one at that. North of Prince George, British Columbia, a major natural gas pipeline blew up. Unsurprisingly, people noticed the orange column of flame. These types of explosive carbon emissions, sudden, are tricky for any government to tax no matter its ideology. Alarmingly, these disasters constituted just another couple of business days in North America.

Lost in the destructive winds, horizontal driving rain and billows of poisonous charcoal smoke was a report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was no news in it, the experts just pointed at the writing on the wall. Cataclysmic climate change abetted by our dependency on fossil fuels is occurring faster than computer models have predicted and may be unleashed upon us before the halfway mark of this century. Special interest groups’ social media hashtags will be meaningless in the wasteland.

Traditionally, when rival powers play nuclear poker one of them blinks because ‘mutually assured destruction’ isn’t a terribly attractive option. Gaia does not play poker; Gaia will not blink; Gaia will be just fine without us. Celebrity entrepreneur Elon Musk, he of the James Bond villain name and characteristic megalomania, believes humanity’s future lies out in space, on Mars. I haven’t placed a lot of faith in him, stable as he appears to be.

The UN study suggests that though we’re all a little late to the climate catastrophe crisis meeting, that potential jury-rigged and eventual long term solutions lie in the hands of the leaders of wealthy countries. There are no easy fixes to a complex threat in this era of strident populism on either side of the political divide. Confronting climate change will require a bipartisan political will of steel. Those summoning the courage to stand in the firestorm will expend careers’ worth of political capital. Things never end well for martyrs. And so we are left with an existential dilemma staring down the powers that be because working to ensure the future of humankind is a really bad career move.         

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.

Thursday 4 October 2018


HUMAN WRECKAGE

An Ever-present Absence

Why?

Our very fine house, Ann’s and mine, used to have two cats in the yard. Now there are none and they’re not coming back. Our home is cleaner. It smells better. Certain items of abused furniture will not deteriorate beyond their present shabby states. Stray granules of kitty litter will eventually no longer crackle in the vacuum hose – though that’ll take some time.

The unwelcome and unhoped-for process of becoming pet-free has given me pause. A few years ago a close friend of my late brother told me, “He always said you marched to your own drum.” I’ve always believed I’ve done my best just to get along without much fuss, trouble and strife. Which doors to kick in and what walls to bang my head against are always carefully considered. I see myself as the patient in that hoary joke: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Then don’t do that!” And so I won’t.

Why?

Why haven’t I enjoyed a novel or a history book in the deepest, most enveloping armchair in the house? Because the cats always slept on it and cats sleep a lot.

Why was our metered water usage up? Because the cats slurped from running kitchen and bathroom taps at their pleasure.

Why was electricity so expensive every month? Because Ann and I tended to leave the lights on all night; because we were afraid of what we might step in during the restless, wee wee hours.

Why do I habitually use the john in the basement? Because one of the tabbies lurked behind the door of the bathroom on the main floor and was curious about any human activity. There was no talking to him: “I don’t hang around between your legs when you use your litter box, do I?”

Why don’t I spend any time in our living room? I’m not a kid anymore; I haven’t been banned; I won’t bust anything. The couch is ancient Roman orgy comfortable. The books on the coffee table are there to be perused and enjoyed. I appreciate the paintings we’ve hung. I used to like lying spread-eagled on the floor listening to the devil’s music at excessive volume on evenings when Ann went out. We blocked off the largest room in the house because it was never intended to serve as a feline vomitorium and litter box.

Why can’t I ever wear a new baseball-style cap again? Because there’s no tabby on the kitchen counter to wipe his muzzle on the ridge of the cap’s brim, break it in and certify it Crooked 9 authentic.

Ann and I lived under the benevolent and often inconvenient tyranny of two tabby cats. They ran the house. But that was just the way things were. We unknowingly adapted to the cats’ behaviours and demands which became more pronounced as they aged. Our lives seemed normal enough to us and our friends were likely too polite to say anything. “No charge for the cat hair and saliva in your food! Enjoy your dinner! Thanks for coming. Good to see everyone again! How come nobody’s eating?”

These past couple of recent evenings Ann’s been out meeting professional and social obligations. So during the middle of this week I was truly home alone for the first time in years; without another soul in sight except for maybe that spider on the ceiling by the kitchen door. Last night I watched the Canadiens lose their first game of what I suspect will be a long and futile hockey season. And since I’m incapable of sitting passively through an entire televised sporting event I wandered and puttered around the Crooked 9.

Every single door inside our house was ajar. There were no barriers, no boundaries. I was not dogged by close personal friends. There were no cats lounging in Ann’s music rehearsal space, curled up in the bowl on the dining room table or lying across my laptop keyboard. There was no spat and flung crunchy dental-formula kibble on the kitchen floor. There was no tail poking out from underneath the bathroom door. The taps weren’t running.

At first I felt a dizzy sense of liberation. As they aged the cats increasingly dictated the course of our everyday lives. The guileless process had been insidious and gradual. Hypnotized by loyalty, love and affection, Ann and I had made accommodations and concessions to the detriment of our own quality of life. It was real at the time and we lived this way in a shrunken bungalow because that’s the way it was and we did not know there was an alternative until circumstances finally compelled a final reckoning.

I’m reminded of the shaggy dog story about the Jewish fellow who’d no idea he’d suffered from heartburn his entire life until he moved out of his parents’ Brooklyn apartment and ate food other than his mother’s home cooking. You don’t know until you do. The gag slays because of its nuanced metaphor. Any person who’s eventually escaped the clutches of a soul-sucking employer or life partner always wonders afterward why the walk to freedom took so damn long. Just how and when exactly did the intolerable became acceptable and mundane? All those wasted years of pain…

But I kept expecting to encounter a cat, probably underfoot at the top of the basement stairs. I hunted the house for cats. I checked out all of their usual hangouts. I peered into places that I knew they knew they weren’t supposed to go. I don’t record mix tapes any more, haven’t for years, and I’m too much of a fossil to compile a digital play list but I started to pull one together from the ether.

“A couple of country laments to start things off,” I thought. Aaron Neville’s ‘The Grand Tour’ of an empty home to be followed by Willie Nelson’s ‘Hello Walls.’ Next up, ‘You’re Missing’ from Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, possibly a little overly dramatic given that album’s 9/11 context, but well, why not? I’m imposing my meaning and interpretation now. The punch would be provided by Better Than Ezra’s ‘Good.’ “Walking around the house, searching for signs of life, but there’s nobody home… It was good, living here with you, oh… it was so good.”     

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.

Monday 1 October 2018

A FAN’S NOTES

Freshen Up: Paul McCartney Live in Edmonton

I punched the clock to close off another eight hours on the night shift. I grabbed my knapsack and then jogged the four or five blocks to the Montreal Forum. Tickets for a rock show would go on sale in 90 minutes, Paul McCartney. The queue, a double rank, snaked along Ste-Catherine, up Atwater and around the corner of the arena along de Maisonneuve, and then back down along Closse toward Ste-Catherine. I imagined a perfect rectangle of fans, those at the front of the line staring at the backs of those at its end. I did not get close enough to the box office to even fantasize about a pair of nosebleeds dangling over the steep bowl. That crushing disappointment occurred sometime during the mid-80s. I cannot remember the specific year and so I cannot say for sure which album he was promoting with that North American tour.

The Beatles formed in 1959. They recorded about ten hours of music over 12 years. McCartney has been an ex-Beatle for 48 years. Calculating how many hours of music he’s released in various guises since 1970 is beyond my limited arithmetic skill. Though production may have slowed to a trickle from time to time, the tap was never turned off. The only contemporary of McCartney’s who also continues to perform and release new material on a regular basis is Bob Dylan. These two artists are so prolific that their careers must be sub-divided into eras. The hardcore fan ideal of being a completist, owning everything, becomes a daunting snipe hunt, an expensive rabbit hole.

Dylan remains a human rebus. He’s always been his own man, a solo artist though a calculated projection of one of himselves without the baggage, bedbugs and beetles of being a former New Lost City Rambler, New Christy Minstrel or Weaver. Aside from Ringo Starr, the only person alive on Earth today who might understand McCartney’s vegan pothead may be Robert Plant. Plant has made some remarkable records with Band of Joy, Sensational Space Shifters and Alison Krauss but nearly 40 years on he’s still perceived as the golden god who shrieked centre stage for Led Zeppelin; a weight to be carried a long time.

Edmonton was the last stop on the Canadian leg of the ‘Freshen Up’ world tour. When McCartney was in his prime major acts did not cross Canada, there were only nerve-wracking encounters with customs officials preceding stray gigs in Montreal or Toronto, maybe Vancouver. That’s one reason why I’ve had to wait decades to finally see McCartney live and in concert.

He’s been playing music longer than I’ve been alive. I do not know life without the Beatles, Wings or McCartney. Last night he played songs from Egypt Station which was released last month and debuted at number one on the Billboard chart. He also played ‘In Spite of All the Danger,’ a song so primordial that neither Stu Sutcliffe nor Pete Best had yet to be recruited for John Lennon’s skiffle combo.

McCartney is a lot like Mick Jagger in that he is an astute business man. That acumen, which may have hastened the dissolution of the Beatles (try to see it my way), might account for the four songs in his three-hour set from the ‘white album’ which is being readied for a 50th anniversary re-release. Then again, who wouldn’t want to hear ‘Helter Skelter,’ the Chuck Berry-Beach Boys mash-up ‘Back in the USSR,’ an alone and acoustic ‘Blackbird’ from an elevated platform and the stoned calypso of ‘Ob La Di, Ob La Da’ when decent seats cost $300?

I’ve come around to ‘Silly Love Songs’ over the years but was delighted he didn’t sing it; ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ were difficult enough to squirm through. The miracle of McCartney though is that he appeals to everyone, his audience has no demographic; he is rock’s ultimate democrat. I love his Little Richard voice but I guess that diaphragm power is difficult to summon for a singer closer to 80 than 70. I suspect ‘Hi, Hi, Hi’ was the second song of the night for that reason. ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ was early too. Pacing. I guessed correctly that the throat-shredding ‘Coming Up’ was out of the question this night. The joyous barks and squeals over the endless fade of ‘Hey Jude’ were carefully meted out. Then again, ‘Let Me Roll It’ with its nasty, hypnotic guitar lick fronting a chorus of voices behind which he could hide his own well-worn vocal cords was sublime.

 The weird and glorious thing about seeing McCartney in 2018 is that it’s 2018, a modest gift in the great scheme of things but a massive one in current pop culture. He is the most famous rocker on Earth and unquestionably the most beloved. Perhaps it’s the British music hall tradition, but my feeling is that McCartney has always written, sung and played to please his audience. When he thanked the crowd his words rang humble and genuine. Maybe he’s still amazed 60 years down the long and winding road. An assumed role of distant, arrogant tortured artist is anathema to him and that’s refreshing because the convenience surcharges on last night’s tickets cost more than the actual tickets I tried to buy in Montreal all those years ago.    

Copies of my latest novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.