Hella Stella

REHEARSAL

At rehearsal last night, the clickity clackity of the fan was driving us insane. Jeff put on his engineer hat and disassembled it, fiddled with the screws, adjusted the blades, and VOILA! A quiet, cool room for our practice. Yay for engineers!

Brian suggested near the end of the night that we have an extra song prepared. I don't think we're allowed an encore for this kind of show, since it's very structured and we're all following a script, but I agreed that having a backup song was a good idea. Even just something to play in sound check.

It took me about five seconds to decide to cover a Hawksley song. It remains to be seen whether or not this is a terrible idea, but I cover his music regularly, and I love him, and damnit, I'm going to play this song in sound check. He probably won't be in the room while we're checking anyways, but it will still make me happy to break it out. Because... Dudes? I still can't believe I'm playing this gig. I may as well enjoy myself while I'm there.

MR. JACKSON

I wasn't going to talk about Michael Jackson's death... Everyone in the world is talking about it, and my brain is already getting overloaded. Still, I feel the need to say something before I lay it to rest. Hearing about the death of a musician makes me especially sad - I tend to get extremely attached to people through their art, and music is at the top for me. It's such a personal thing. I cried like a baby when Nina Simone died. Same for Elliot Smith. But with Jackson, when I read the report last night, I gasped so strongly that my throat burned, and sad there dumbly until it sunk in

I grew up largely without a TV, so a lot of popular 80s goodness was lost on me. I still knew all about Michael Jackson, of course. I thought he was one smooth dude, and I remember trying to understand how a human could move like that. My Thriller album on vinyl was a personal favourite... Thankfully, I still have it. But his increasing weirdness over the past ten years made me forget how great he was. His name had become a joke. He became the creepy old guy parents warn their kids about. It was hard to remember the good.

All these tributes to him have reminded me that he was truly the king of pop. Probably a drug-addicted king with a serious mental health problem, but a king nonetheless. It seems very strange that he's gone.

Let me tell you something cheerful about this whole crisis. When I was walking to rehearsal last night after the news broke, I heard it. House after house with open windows, and they were all playing Michael Jackson. Some were blasting it. Some playing it quietly. His songs were floating out into the street and mingling there. I walked by one house in particular that was blasting Thriller, and one lone dude was dancing to it in his living room.

What a tribute. All of Centretown came alive last night. Thanks for that, Mr. Jackson.

UPDATE: Oh! Oh! Oh! Thank God!