THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT
Compendium and Consolidation
It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education is the latest vinyl (blue) offering from Calgary indie rock act The Muster Point Project. Released around the date of Keith Richards’s eighty-first birthday, the album was swept aside somewhat by the avalanche that is Christmas, a frenzy of marketing and grandiose domesticity. It’s possible TMPP did itself no favours dropping two new songs (“It’s Gonna Be Christmas” and “Darlin’”) so soon afterward. It ain’t easy keeping up with a prolific artist now realizing his full potential.
TMPP is essentially Kevin Franco augmented by some well-known hired guns. He writes the songs and plays most of the instruments. Kevin and I have been friends for, Jesus, thirty-five years now. One of my newer friends. We’ve worked together in past professional lives. He’s promoted my fiction since and I’ve co-written a few songs with him. We were sitting in a bar years ago, talking. Kevin said, “You know you’re better than this.” I had filters then, sort of. I thought, “Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” even though grocery flyer prose didn’t quite fulfil me (Pork butt whole – missed a comma, genius, whoops). I didn’t understand then that the guitar riff on his recorded Code-a-Phone “I’m-not-here” message was more than just a lark.
TMPP has been compared to Steely Dan. I don’t hear it unless “Steely Dan” is some sort of internet shorthand for literate, carefully constructed and well produced. The songs aren’t slick so much as sophisticated, and curious listeners do expect some context from which they can dip a foot in cold water. The real deal is the “The Singing Mailman”, the song of praise and thanks to John Prine which closes side one: And now, I wanna be like John/Telling stories and spinning yarns …
“Old Black Suit” reminds me of O. Henry’s short fiction. The fabric of a lifetime. Bought stylish and new for celebration days, eventually relegated to funeral wear and then ultimately forgotten in the back of a closet. “This Town Has Changed” suggests that maybe it’s not the site or the city itself shifting so much as the observer. My Gen X friend is feeling his age. Welcome to the club, new member!
I tend to date the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, rock music, from 1951 with the release of “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats who were actually Ike Turner and his Rhythm Kings playing behind their vocalist. Someone else might argue for “Earth Angel” by the Penguins. Nothing’s firm some seventy-five years on except that rock is now a subgenre of popular music. Its roots in blues, country and folk proffered subjects beyond automobiles and teenage wildlife; worksongs dedicated to its high culture outlier status: chain gangs, railway and highway construction, factory work.
Khakis forever! “Now We’re Successful” bleaches blue-collar lament white. There’s no satisfaction anywhere; things are tough all over. Rock has grown up. “Don’t Give Me Anything” lacerates a typical business meeting: Big words, you think you’re the tops/You even fool some with your malaprops. I’m not a particularly sensitive soul, but that line triggered some professional PTSD for me, having sat downwind around a few boardroom tables. A close friend (not Kevin) informed me once, very cheerfully, that working as an ad man made me worse than a whore. Ipso facto in vino veritas: these days even sex workers have better PR. There’s a loose but not lurid theme to It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education: the right-brain directive to pursue the muse over career opportunities.
TMPP is an indie act releasing songs with actual bridges and verses into the Spotify and YouTube realm in the post-album era. The dozen songs on the LP have been surfing the ether faster than 33 and a 1/3 RPM these past 12 months. It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education is, at its heart, an annual report: TMPP consolidated; 2024 was a very good year.
If you’re intrigued, the best place to start is musterpoint.bandcamp.com. Other sources of music and information include Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Pandora and fuck knows what else. What's App and TikTok for all I know. Bluetooth and cable TV. Radio, newspapers and magazines.
Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.
