If you’re planning to come to the War Child benefit in Ottawa tonight, unfortunately I’ve had to cancel due to a family emergency. This rest of the show is, of course, going ahead and it is going to be a great one.

cheers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLYz3jQd8s

This Thursday May 1 I’ll be at Mitzi’s Sister 1554 Queen West in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto as part of a fund raiser for Soul2Soul, a small inner city program that helps kids who have lost loved ones, often through gun violence, deal with their grief in creative ways. Unfortunately, as happens so often in under serviced areas of the city, the funding for this program is on the chopping block and the very committed group who run it are trying to save it. Good for them. It’s 25 bucks a ticket, Ghostwalk Creek plays at 8:30, I’ll be on at 9:30. Tickets can be had by calling 416.440.0290 ext.13 or you can try your luck at the door.

The following Friday, May 9 I’ll be playing a couple tunes as part of a fund raiser in Ottawa for War Child
This is a world wide org that helps children who are affected by war. According to their stats 1 in 10 soldiers worldwide is a child. Weapons manufacturers have obliged by making machine guns lighter so kids can carry them more easily. (Place expletive here). It’s shaping up to be quite an interesting, eclectic night of music; some classical, some folk and me. It’s at St. Joseph’s Church (151 Laurier ave. East at Cumberland). Show time is 7pm. 10 bucks in advance through maplemusic.com. Tickets are also available at the venue office. $15 at the door.

The event, co-hosted by Catherine Lathem (CTV Ottawa) will also feature the Stellae Boreales ensemble as well as Doreen Taylor-Claxton.

There will also be a silent auction (with an interesting mix of items donated by Sen. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Ishmael Baeh, Elizabeth May, Max Keeping, and others); and a fair-trade/organic/gourmet intermission café (courtesy of Bridgehead, Culinary Conspiracy, The Table Vegetarian Restaurant, & others)

Wow, I have a huge, honking new recycling bin. It seems like overkill, coming in just under the size of a Smart Car, and I really can’t tell if my household is up to the challenge of filling this baby on a regular basis.

After chucking in two weeks of recyclables, we’d barely reached the halfway mark at pickup time, a clear indication that we’ve been neglecting our role as citizens, er, I mean, consumers. Obviously, we need to start buying more.

Alas, what started all those years ago as a valiant effort to nudge residents to get with the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) has morphed into a fervent consumer campaign that has vanquished “reduce.”

It’s not just evidenced by the new supersize bin, but also by the endless variety of ways we’re encouraged to be “green” while indulging unabated our addiction to shopping.

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Loath as I am to admit it, music alone won’t change our war-making ways.

That’s why the April 4 all-party (except the governing one) panel kicking off a conference the next day promoting the idea of a Canadian Department of Peace at Friends House on Lowther is such a tonic.

Not only do the 250 mostly veteran anti-war types in the pews at the Church of the Holy Trinity hear the Greens’ Elizabeth May, the NDP’s Olivia Chow and the Libs’ Borys Wrzesnewskyj sing from the same peace page, but the non-partisan collegiality of the event underscores the idea that, if peace-building is ever mainstreamed, humanity will make an evolutionary jump.

Speaking of neanderthals, politics is a blood sport. But when you see Wrzesnewskyj applauding Chow’s moving description of what NDPer Alexa McDonough could do if she were minister of peace, Chow praising May’s support for a federal conflict resolution department, and both May and Chow clearly sympathizing with Wrzesnewskyj as he guardedly describes tensions in the Liberal party over Afghanistan, it tends to stand out.

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Okay, wag your finger at China all you want over Internet censorship in Tibet – then clench your fingers into a fist over how your very own Canadian service providers, Rogers and Bell, are limiting what you can access online.

It’s not the same as China’s blocking of YouTube and the BBC, but now that Bell and Rogers have admitted they are slowing online connections, it should make you very afraid.

Confirming what many had suspected for a year now, Bell last week was forced to admit that users of popular peer-to-peer software like BitTorrent, which facilitates quick, efficient sharing of large files, were having their connections slowed on its network during peak hours between 4 pm and 2 am. (Rogers engages in the same practice.)

Bell claims it’s necessary to “traffic-shape” because a small clutch of “bandwidth hogs” illegally sharing music and movies are clogging the pipeline for everyone else.

Bell’s decision plays into the popular spin promoted by Hollywood and the major record labels that everyone using BitTorrent is a thief.

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As I walk up St. George to the Chinese Consulate on Tuesday, March 25, a chill runs through me, and not because winter has made an unwelcome late-March comeback.

I’m thinking of something a friend of mine said recently: “Once China takes over the world as the dominant superpower, we’ll all be pining for the days of the American empire.”

Sitting on the frozen sidewalk across the road from the consulate, 40 supporters of the Tibetan freedom struggle are staging a week-long hunger strike (from 10 am until 4 pm). Such gatherings are becoming a common sight here.

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Songwriters are at the bottom of the music industry food chain. They don’t get asked for their autograph at airports and, aside from cashing the infrequent royalty cheque at which at least the bank manager raises an eyebrow, they trudge along in their craft largely unheralded and anonymous.

So it’s interesting that these lowly folks now caught in the crossfire between file-sharers and multinational labels may have tapped into one of the most promising solutions so far to the entire downloading dilemma.

That’s the intro to a possibly historic meeting, Thursday, February 21, at Ryerson where the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) – to much fanfare, not to mention gnashing of teeth – debuted its version of a plan to monetize the downloading and sharing of music files.

The problem the songwriters are dealing with, indeed, the one plaguing the entire industry at a time when voracious Internet appetites demand instant diversion, is how to get paid while still making the peer to peer experience feel free.

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For local indie bands, postering in Toronto has never been more challenging. Sometimes the notices get torn down by the city’s vigilant poster squad before the paste is even dry.

But if you’re a mega-corp, the city doesn’t seem to mind when you slather ads all over public spaces – at least not on the pristine white boards of Withrow Park’s outdoor rink, where massive orange plastic Home Depot signs recently marred the landscape.

The background here is that the Depot and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment ponied up about $80,000 to help refurbish five sad-sack rinks, including Withrow’s, in Riverdale this winter. An open-air Leafs practice at the rink honoured the donation a couple of weeks back.

But after the team bus pulled away, the community was left with a fresh paint job in the clubhouse, some new mats for the dressing rooms and a snow blower – and Home Depot and Leafs signage all over the boards. The Leafs insignias were one thing, but, residents asked, what’s with the orange takeover?

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