Part way through Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Trent Reznor, who compiled the soundtrack, drops the needle on one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. A slow bass comes in and over the top of it the beautiful, soulful voice of Margo Timmins fronting the Cowboy Junkies, singing a deep and slow version of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane”.

The version is so true and so perfect that Lou Reed himself described it as “the best and most authentic version I have ever heard” .  I’d not heard of the Cowboy Junkies or Margo Timmins, but I walked out of that movie theatre wanting more.  I went to a music store near where I lived at the time looking for compilation that would give me an overview of the band, as well as a copy of that extraordinary song.

Fortunately the only album I could find was The Trinity Sessions. I was reluctant to buy it because it sounded like it must be demos and it wasn’t an overview of the band.  Stupid, stupid me.  I bought it and stumbled into one of the most wonderful albums I’ve ever heard.  An entrancing mix of originals and covers, it opens with Timmins singing an acapella version of the traditional miner’s ballad “Mining For Gold”. The moment I heard it I knew the album was something special, something different.  The album continues through a revisited version of “Blue Moon” (appropriately subtitled ‘Song for Elvis’ – Timmins sometimes sound like some magical female Elvis singing the blues) and more.

They say that great art takes time. The stunning thing about The Trinity Sessions is that it didn’t take much time at all. Apparently, planning time aside, Timmins and the other Junkies recorded the album in a single night, 27 November 1987, at Ontario’s Church of the Holy Trinity with just a single microphone.  Well, not one night. They had to go back and finish one track during the Symphony’s lunch break later that week, but the point holds.  Perfect, spontaneous, and soulful it’s one of my favorite albums of all time.

Today has been a bit mixed, to say the least. Marianne and I went out to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (a solidly adequate piece of entertainment that had me laughing out loud a couple times), and got to bed a bit late. That, in turn, has meant we’ve both been a bit tired today, as the young ones don’t sleep in when we do.  I had lots to do to get ready for heading o/s next week, so I was up and out early.  I finished in record time, had enough time to sneak in a sidetrip to JB and was feeling a bit smug about it, when the cooling system in the aged Camry died.  A major puff of steam clued me, and I just made it home before it was done and dusted.  sigh.  It’s been towed away, will be repaired, but no car till Tuesday probably, which leaves us mildly inconvenienced.  We have some help coming, but the afternoon plans were set aside and we ended up having a stroll in the park before heading home.  Family movie night beckons.

I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’m unprepared for the trip next week. This might be because I am unprepared, but mostly seems because I like to do this kind of thing to myself.

The late, great Miles Davis is quoted as once having said that “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”.  The quote has been attributed to several other people, but the point that it makes stands up. Music is something you listen to, that you feel, and that mostly bypasses your intellectual filters.  When you try to write about it you end up either describing flat technical details that don’t communicate much, or speaking in personal, emotive terms that are only really meaningful to the individual.

Still, it’s FAM over at GJ’s, and she suggested that I say something about someone that I’ve been listening to for years, and who deserves a mention now.  I first heard Aimee Mann’s voice when she was fronting Til Tuesday, a short-lived new wave pop group that had one major hit, ‘Voices Carry’, back in the mid-80s. Even then her clear, brittle voice was captivating and the song pulled you in.  The group released three albums, but pretty much disappeared. I think it was because of the ‘Big Hair’.

I was vaguely aware that Mann had gone on to release a few critically-acclaimed solo albums that left behind the whole ‘new wave’ thing and moved into an introspective kind of folk-acoustic pop, but I didn’t stop to search them out.  Then in 2000 she wrote four gorgeous songs that ended up on the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Magnolia. These were richly melodic pieces of perfectly-crafted acoustic pop. They were clever and perceptive, gentle and yet tough.   Songs like “Save Me” (which was nominated for an Academy Award and was one of the best song performances on the Oscars ever), “Driving Sideways”, “Build That Wall”, and “Momentum”.

Those songs were added to her utterly brilliant album, Bachelor No. 2, or the last remains of the dodo, which is one of my favorite records ever.  The thirteen songs on it at are all terrific, and rightly described by All-Music as matching her “literate, mildly self-deprecating, clever, melancholy, melodic style”.  If you have a taste for intimate, introspective pop, then there are very few better albums around. Mann’s voice is gorgeous, her lyrics intelligent, and the accompaniment is perfect.

Mann has released some strong albums since Bachelor No. 2, but it’s the place you should start, I think. You can all search her on YouTube (I hate embedding those things,  so I’ll leave it to you and your SearchFu to do it) and you’ll see what I mean. I was really disappointed to hear she’s touring OZ in a few months and not making it to Perth. sigh.

I can hardly believe it. Things change quickly around here.  Just yesterday morning I was posting to a private mailing list that I was disappointed to not be going to World Fantasy in San Jose this October.  Many of my friends are going, it’s my favorite convention in the world, and there would be a chance to catch up with all sorts of new people too. However, I had decided that I would go to Montreal for Worldcon and it would be my one trip to the US this year.

Well, life is rich and strange here at Coode Street. Within an hour of writing my email the possibility arose that I might make San Jose. Then it became more likely. Then Marianne agreed, which I really didn’t expect given what these trips demand of her. And, now, I’m going!  It’s going to be a lightning trip, but I’ll be in San Jose from Wed 28 October to Monday 2 November, then home. I really, really hope that I’ll see everyone (Jeff, Jeff & Ann, Lucius, Bill, Ellens, Locusfolk, everyone!) when I’m there. I can’t wait. I’m totally stoked and I’m very, very grateful to Marianne and to somebody else. Pink drinks!!!!!

I was born in 1964. I was five years old (just shy of my sixth birthday) when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I very clearly remember clustering around our old black and white television set to watch the lunarlanding, just as we later would watch the follow-up Apollo missions, Skylab and so on throughout the ’70s. I got caught up in the futurism which seemed to sweep everywhere that seemed to say we’d not only be traveling to the stars some time very soon, but we’d also have cities of tomorrow on the moon, under the ocean — everywhere. I have a copy of my annual primary school magazine that came out in 1971. Students were asked what they were going to be doing when they gew up. Aged 7, I wrote that I was going to be a geologist when I grew up and would live on Mars. I believed it in 1971 because it was believable then.