A FAN’S NOTES

Some Old Loves Are So Hard to Shake

Google Analytics paints pretty pictures for me. Graphs and pie charts. Dispatches from the Crooked 9’s readership oscillates between 20,000 and 40,000 pairs of eyeballs per month. I’ve learned that eyeballs don’t buy my books. They tend to read other ones. Before or after I dropped my university microeconomics course, I should’ve dropped one in statistics too. I believed my last couple of titles were good enough to sell more than a few hundred copies. But what do I know about absolutely irrational numbers and logic?

If you’re a regular visitor here, yeah, you with the dusty credit card, Welcome back! You will never scan or scroll alone. And you know by now my marginal propensity to go on a bit about the Rolling Stones. I’ve never contemplated the opportunity cost of my fanaticism. I’m too old, weathered and well-seasoned to be embarrassed by anything anymore. Confidentially, strictly on the hush-hush, I was more sweet 16 than cynical 66 when I lapped up Foreign Tongues on its July 10 release day. I bought the double green vinyl “indie” record store version in support of Blackbyrd, my primary music destination in Edmonton. I bought the workaday CD too because a new Stones album always takes three or four listens to get a handle on. The singles are usually tangential from the guts.

Carbon dating the Stones corporate ascension into irrelevancy is an amusing parlour game. Like discussing old time baseball and hockey in a pub where whiteheads are invisible to an indifferent and poorly trained staff. At some unfixable quantum point in my life the pop culture force that was rock ebbed into a sociological footnote; a fuddy-duddy sub-genre in an upended popular music industry. I read somewhere recently that hip-hop is a dead art form now. Somehow, the Stones – or the ones still alive beneath their banner, the partners too committed to quit – are still standing in the aftermath beside the merchandise tent.

How many tongues can a pair of Nike high-heeled sneakers have? I don’t know, I passed on the fashionable footwear. There must be more tie-ups and tie-ins available in their Carnaby Street department store. The sleeve art of Foreign Tongues is a collage of caricatures by an artist so hip that only Mick has heard of him. It’s not a selling point. My alternatives were FIFA World Cup-themed covers or Marvel Comics superheroes. No surprise though because Hackney Diamonds, their shockingly good studio “comeback” of a few years back, could be had in a dizzying assortment of Major League Baseball sleeves. A sheepish confession: Had they resurrected the Montreal Expos I would’ve given the pigeon gouge some consideration.

I heard my mother shout at me from her Montreal grave last Friday. “TURN IT DOWN!” I spun the CD on the stereo, the amplifier set to my usual preferred volume. A stray cat in a wind tunnel; my ears were pinned like Keith’s pupils in the 70s and what’s left of my hair blew away. Producer Andrew Watt (apt surname) has engineered a sonic boom that punches through iPod docks and whatever subsequent audio technology that rendered them archaic.

Watt is a presence on nearly all of the album’s 14 songs. Mainly guitar, curious for a band with a couple of infamous experts. Watt’s also graced with two co-writing credits (Stones touring party alum, keyboardist Matt Clifford, racks up one). Poor Ronnie Wood, still the new guy after 50 years and still seeking his elusive fourth or fifth hyphen after Jagger-Richards.

The charm of Hackney Diamonds was its undiluted 70s length, about 40 minutes. Foreign Tongues runs for over an hour. It’s no Exile. More A Bigger Bang, an album begging to be pared down to the decent single disc lurking somewhere amid the dross: The moon is yellow/Your tits like Jell-O – ‘nuff said. And it’s a big, nostalgic and certainly foolish cri de coeur to demand that three golden agers – survivors of rock’s golden age – define yet another amphetamine era in western progress when nothing’s making sense to nobody. Expertise is left to influencers and geopolitics to a few old men all whom are just titch younger than Mick and Keith. 

Foreign Tongues is Hackney Diamonds on repeat with less oomph. Formulaic, the new paradigm. Its feel is Mick and Friends (and employees). Not a capital crime because his Wandering Spirit is the second-best non-Stones Stones album out there after Keith’s Talk Is Cheap. Just five keepers on Foreign Tongues for a fanatic like me who now clearly sees the end of the line. “Jealous Lover” may’ve charted 40 years ago, but that was then. My love train’s left the station with blue lights on behind.

Christ. If there’s another Stones album, dregs from the can, I’ll buy it. They can’t leave me. I’ve no solid memories of my life without them in it. Value is an abstract in an artificial market.    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel. 

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

“That’s How They Getcha”

Kevin Franco of The Muster Point Project and I have co-written about a dozen songs. A modest fraction of TMPP’s growing catalogue. Friends for three decades now, we kind of click: I’m his bit on the side. We work well together because we don’t rely on one another. Kevin’s a complete musician, lyricist, composer, player and arranger. And I’ve got my own stalled novel to nudge forward beyond consternation, pages of notes and five frustrating false starts.

Collaboration between Edmonton and Calgary (and often Santiago, Chile) keeps Messenger humming. Separate cities; separate rooms. My lyrics are block printed on a yellow legal pad. They’re not etched in stone. There’s always a better line or a slicker phrase to sing. My silent songs are untitled, that’s Kevin’s job – not my call. “Stuck in Transit” was the only song of ours where I suggested a sound. I got very, very technical: “I hear this one as kinda Stonesy.”

Our creative relationship has evolved since 2023 when TMPP’s 5 KG EP was released. “Goodbye America” is a fine recent example. Kevin sent me his unfinished lyrics and a short initial demo. He had a little more than half a song. Did I have anything to contribute? I loved where he was going. We’re on the same page politically. The current White House administration (if you can describe chaos and incompetence as administration) reeks of end of empire narcissism. I got to writing. I supplied Kevin with another eight or ten lines, enough to fill out his song.

“That’s How They Getcha” had a similar genesis. Kevin said, “I’ve got a title …. I was thinking about desktop printers, how they’re so cheap, they’re not built to last, but they gouge you for the ink.” Have you ever wondered why mattress store A does not match the price of mattress store B no matter what its flyer boasts? Both outlets sell the same mattress. The convenient catch is that mattress A and mattress B leave the factory with different model numbers. “Can you work with it?”

Oh, yeah. I filled up my yellow page, leaving room for Kevin to add more key lines including the audacious rhyming of “wallet” and “product.” Singers are like hucksters with their patter down cold – they can get away with stuff like that. 

We both spent too much time in advertising and marketing. One of my best friends once called me a whore (he worked for an insurance company). And this was before I became something of a burnt-out case. Still, there was no disputing his barroom assertion. And so, channeling the Rolling Stones (“Get Off My Cloud” and a really obvious one which escapes me), Jonathan Edwards (“Sunshine”) and Tom Waits (“Step Right Up”), Kevin and I wrote a song about manipulation in its many forms; the all-invasive persuasive perversity of the consumer culture mindset. It’s endemic; everything’s been infected.

The audio stream of “That’s How They Getcha” drops Friday, 3 July, in all the usual digital spaces. The video has been up on YouTube for a few days; Kevin crafted a reel that see-saws between hilarious and hysterical. There’s no mouse type in this new TMPP song. No double-talk, no scam. “That’s How They Getcha” is a public service announcement: some fine, fine new music in exchange for a few minutes of your time. Nothing but guitar strings attached.                                

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for a taste of TMPP and links to its YouTube channel. You can also buy my last couple of books. And really, buy my books. I mean, fuck Kevin, I’ve addictions to feed.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Of Beer Packaging and Promotional Swag

Moosehead is Canada’s oldest independent brewery. The Maritime operation was established by the Oland family in 1867, the year of Canada’s Confederation. Despite some recent and particularly salacious allegations of patricide (a guilty verdict since overturned), the dynastic enterprise has managed to sidestep the traditional tri-generation pattern of establishment, maintenance and obliteration.

Moosehead is no longer a regional rare bird eagerly sought by beer label watchers east of the four Atlantic provinces. And so, it must have been a slow national news day last year when the brewer received coverage simply by announcing its intention to revamp its packaging. Green, long-necked bottles were to be phased out in favour of aluminium cans. This in the face of der Trumpenfuhrer’s elastic tariffs on Canadian aluminium and steel; aluminium cans are like automobiles, there is tons of cross-border to and fro.

A cheap nylon and highly noninflammable Canadian flag dangles proudly from one wall of the Crooked 9’s garage. Beer case swag, folded into a discounted long weekend two-four. Landfill fodder from a factory in a country where no patriotic Canadian beer drinker would care to live, let alone work. Junk less sustainable and more disposable than fast fashion. Still, as a soft nationalist winner in a cosmic lottery, I felt a black bin fate to be a conscious act of disrespect. Anyway, Canada’s flag is a triumph of minimalist design, essentially a one-colour stylized symbol highlighted on a white field.

There is beer case swag etiquette too. Refuse the petroleum product “coozies” at the cash. Fingernail ping the durability of branded glassware because it sure isn’t crystal. Hats, trucker or bucket, are verboten unless you’re missing more teeth than the rotten ones left between your jaws. Ask yourself, “Are my parents blood relatives?” Beer swag t-shirts are trickier, Miss Manners and Agony Aunt material of a polyester nature.

Last week life was fraught. DEFCON 11 at the Crooked 9. No beer in the kitchen fridge and no warehoused stash in the garage. After the Tuesday Night Beer Club wrapped its evening up at one of the pubs in our standard rotation, Stats Guy graciously drove me to a particularly sleazy liquor store downtown on Jasper Avenue, the kind of place that caters to the desperate. No need for specials or loss leaders. He idled the engine and locked the car doors while I ventured inside to experience life’s rich down-and-out pageant. An imposing ziggurat of Moosehead lager caught my eye. Hooked me. The price was shockingly competitive and my choice of a free medium or large t-shirt besides. Bonus: the shirts were packaged in plastic prophylactics, impossible to pick over like the flayed wares in Costco.

Beer swag t-shirts are problematic because they’re tasteless and their lives are short. Their ultimate destiny is Molotov cocktail wicks, laundry room rag bag shreds or landfill. And yet they serve a perspirational purpose: vacuuming, painting, yardwork; decent shirts absorb the effluvium secreted by a hard-working man who’s earned a cold beer for waking up in the morning. My mother told me to always wear clean underwear in case I was in an accident and had to be rushed to the hospital. A variation of that rule applies to beer swag t-shirts: NEVER WEAR ONE BEYOND THE CONFINES OF YOUR PROPERTY, NOT EVEN UNDER A SWEATSHIRT OR AS THE FIRST OF MANY LAYERS ON A COLD WINTER’S DAY. Dignity goes to the emergency ward to die – no need to embarrass yourself further.

Beer cans have come a long way since I was underage. Light, efficient containers and like mouse traps in their way as there’s not a lot of room for improvement. They’re now made from two sheets of stamped aluminium (the world's most valuable metal back in the day - it caps the Washington Monument). Three if you count the riveted index fingertip “stay-on-tab” (SOT – tee-hee) opening system or pop top. The top or lid of a can is an “end” in industry lingo, a horizontal noun for a vertical container. Pardon the jargon.

I bought a 15-pack of Moosehead lager. NOW AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN CANS! Marketing initiatives payoff. I grabbed a gratis t-shirt because if the spring rain in Edmonton ever lets up, I will mow the lawn because I desire perfect turf when the opportunity arises to release the Umbro Size 5 2026 FIFA World Cup commemorative football to our grandchildren; Yoko Ono off-pitch shrieks.

Moosehead bottles were green. Its cans were always green, but this new design features a red band at the rim which matches the red lid. The pull-tab is still silver. The standard fingernail-shaped punch-out is instead a maple leaf. A precise miniature stencil overlayed on a red field. Subtle, vibrant branding. Clever. On message.

There’s nothing new under the sun. A “King of Beers” pop top sports a crown stencil. Rigid manufacturing standards will always crush a designer’s ultimate vision; factory machinery will never be retooled for a design studio’s affectation. But somebody at Moosehead (and Budweiser or whichever international conglomerate owns the brand, for that matter) or its ad agency, fully aware of the packaging’s constrictive parameters and what big league competition has already done, still sat back and pondered: “What if…?”

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to purchase either one of my two latest novels from your preferred retailer. Collect the set. While you're there, listen to music from The Muster Point Project and link to TMPP's YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

Opening Day

The charm of minor league baseball is its scale. The ballparks, whatever their state of upkeep, are more intimate. Tickets and concessions are affordable (although beer remains as stubbornly expensive as gasoline on the Friday of a summer long weekend). It’s in places like these that baseball exists in its idealized form, as fiction and longform sportswriting and those few instances when filmmakers didn’t drop a flyball, bobble a grounder.

The West Coast League Riverhawks (who should’ve been nicknamed Magpies – those lovely, noisy, strutting, curious popinjays are everywhere) now trot on to the diamond in place of Tigers, Trappers, CrackerCats, Capitals and Prospects. Baseball in Edmonton is akin to W.O. Mitchell’s roses: difficult here. The WCL is short-season and usually savvy enough to elude the darling storms of May. Opening Day was a night game even though the sun stays up awfully late as the summer solstice approaches.

Canada’s Old Age Security allowance secured three senior-discounted tickets. Ann, Stats Guy and I sat close to an aisle (my bladder bleats like a faulty alarm in the middle of a row) along the first base line. Our preferred spot these days. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Stats Guy and I were in our thirties and would-be rakes about town when the ballpark was named for a person rather than a corporate sponsor, made of wood and bordering on decrepit. Back then he and I preferred watching the Pacific Coast League (AAA) Trappers from the third base line bleachers.

Bill Veeck was baseball’s ultimate hustler. Believe it or not, he was Barnum, Bailey and Ripley combined. The Riverhawks marketing people have memorized his methods. Every home game comes with an opponent and a theme. “Paws in the Park” welcomes dogs and feral children. Star Wars night lures incels from the clammy privacy of their mothers’ basements. Opening Day ceremonies at any level are elongated exercises; some will go to any length for the sake of a good intention.

The Riverhawks inaugural 2026 festivities were in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation. We were gearing up to watch baseball on private property that had been First Nations territory for thousands of years before the establishment of a fur trading post in the latter half of the eighteenth century. An iron horse followed. History cannot be undone. And the gauge of the line separating abashed acknowledgment and pandering tokenism runs awfully narrow. Overwrought earnestness can be cringeworthy. I was however more inclined to applaud the drumming, singing, smudging and speechifying than groan. I’m nothing if not an insensitive and very soft leftist. I supposed it was a minor irony that the staged rituals were to be followed by “O Canada.”

The rendition of a national anthem before an everyday sporting event is an irksome formality. Tonight, there would be two because the visitors were the Wenatchee (WA) Applesox. Anthems pair nicely with affairs of state and it’s not as if Canada is at war with itself or a foreign power. Maybe we are; the nature of that dirty business has changed dramatically in recent years. What has not been weaponized, undeclared or otherwise?

The rain began before I was able to stand and respectfully remove my throwback St. Louis Cardinals road cap. Not the “little drops of rain” from Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” nor the “silver rain” of “London Town” and “Silver Train.” These were great mercury globules, the short, foreboding prelude to a downpour. Within moments my Levi’s jean jacket was washed for just the fourth time since I bought it in the late 70s. Some of the green grime around the inside of its collar was rinsed away down my back. Ann and Stats Guy were in the same sudden miserable state. Water sloshed down the stairs between sections like some sort of elaborate fountain feature. Our running shoes, socks and feet were sodden. We were soaked through. Seeking shelter became an acute matter of interior warmth.

The capacity of our ballpark is about 9000. Its interior concourse is designed for flow, not corralling near capacity. The ramps leading to cover were awash with people but the only movement was water over concrete. This is the nature of the modern digital mob. Stop and check your phone in the most inappropriate place possible oblivious to your obstructing the people behind you. It no longer matters that the exit doors of every major public venue open outward. The hunchback herd will stop in the frame. That little bandsaw lag symbol is real; common sense downloading: This may take a while.

It was raining inside too. An elegantly choreographed cascade of silver through the ceiling indicative of structural flaws. The crush made me anxious; that woollen wet smell of a Catholic grade school cloakroom in winter. No personal space for shivering. The lines for the toilets and concessions demanded elbows up endurance. The three of us consulted. If the game was delayed there’d be at least another hour’s worth of the chafing, saturated hell of other people – and the anthems had yet to be sung. If the game was called, we’d have rain checks. Pull the goalie for a pinch runner.

Aw, but you know, it was nice to be back in the yard if only for an hour to smell those metaphorical roses. And admire the manicured diamond, red dirt and striped shades of green, poorly designed signage on the outfield wall. I always enjoy the view no matter how long it lasts.                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!