SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Fifty-first Column: A Canadian Thought Experiment 

The news cycle in Canada of late has spun into a cyclone. The Liberal government knows its going to have to give up the shop even as a thug from Queens, NY demands protection money. The extortion The Wall Street Journal called “the dumbest trade war ever” is on hold for the length of the warranty on a shoddily made American consumer durable.

The chaos created by the only billionaire in history who bankrupted his own casino resort (if you’re going to stack the deck, it’s at least got to be full), has forced a dormant, complacent Canada to take stock of its very essence. Maybe global affairs should matter more to a middle power. Maybe we should live up to our NATO treaty obligations. Maybe the absence of free trade within our borders is inefficient. Maybe, as a trading nation, we push harder for closer ties with the European Union (a pact is in place – as yet unratified by six or seven members). With eyes wide open, maybe we defrost our relationship with China if only because the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

Shame if the shop happened to catch fire.

Der Trumpenfuhrer says his blustery existential threat, this existential angst and dread he’s generating, could all be swept away simply by Canada agreeing to join the United States of America as its fifty-first state. And to be fair, eliminating the border would, in way, virtually erase the scourge of illegal American guns in this country. I’ve devoted some thought to this worst-case scenario. It’s going to be a bit more complicated than one more star on Old Glory. The odious vulgarian could actually end up fucking himself, his party and his country with unintended consequences. But maybe, just maybe, the felon’s big imperial idea is only half-insane from a north of 49 perspective.

Canada and the United States are wealthy Western democracies with dissimilar political traditions. For my thought experiment I will assume Canada cedes its Westminster system to our neighbour’s republican model. Alaska and Hawaii were the last two states to join the Union. That was 1959. The even number matters here. Legislators at the time, partisan even then, assumed one new member would lean Blue or Democrat and the other Red or Republican. They would cancel each other out in the United States Congress.

The US Congress is like a Montreal duplex, one up and one down. The upper storey is the Senate; every American state has two elected senators. The House of Representatives is the street level unit. There states are represented by their populations, so California will have more congressional districts than Rhode Island or Delaware. Majority margins for either the Democrats or Republicans overall tend to run lean.

Canada’s awfully big, ten provinces and three territories. Unwieldy. Regionalized. Diverse. The melting pot chime of Manifest Destiny never rang true up here. And a fifty-first state, an odd outlier rife with socialists just wouldn’t do. Checks and balances. My thought experiment assumes that Canada’s northern territories would be relegated to the status of Guam or Puerto Rico, or perhaps stitched to Alaska. I’m still left with ten new states (six if Quebec finally achieves independence and the four Atlantic provinces are mashed into one), a nice round partisan number to stitch on the Stars and Stripes. But six or ten new states with an overwhelmingly progressive bent because the Liberal Party of Canada wasn’t dubbed “the natural governing party” for nothing.

Imagine twenty new US senators, maybe fourteen or sixteen of whom will be certified pinkos. Sure, gerrymander former federal ridings into congressional districts, go crazy, make some cuts. There are currently three hundred and thirty-eight seats in Canada’s House of Commons. Slash that to a lower number easily divisible by two. Still, an alarming number of freshly minted Dems and habitual libs suddenly sitting in the House of Representatives. We’d control Congress. Both chambers. And since we’re Americans, why, we could run one of our own, saved by God to be reborn in the USA, for president (not Ted Cruz).

Someone’s knocking at the door. Let us in. We’re going to burn your nice white playhouse down. From the inside this time.                     

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 that will change in the coming months.

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.