BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - October 2016

Lives of Poets (with Guitars)
Canadian author uncovers 13 treasures
On North American shores, writing about
music and its cultural spin-offs has largely
been defined by the snarky authority
of Pitchfork and trash-talkin’ teardowns of VICE
giving birth to the new, new cool. Whereas those
writing for music publications in Britain, although
still cheeky, offer far more in the way of literary
craft, storytelling and historical insight compared
to the brash Americans.
Ray Robertson, a Canadian novelist, aligns himself
closer to the British tradition reinforcing that smart,
lively prose and a bit of wit goes a long, marvelous
way. In his recent book, Lives of the Poets (with Guitars),
Robertson wades into the world of musicians
who weren’t chart-bustin’ household names, but still
possessed remarkable talents turning out genuine
gold-nugget recordings. One part of Lives of the
Poets is a record guide revealing these undiscovered
treasures, the other is Robertson’s gift of spewing out
stories that simply shame most rock ‘n’ roll writers
into the hacks they really are. We caught up with
Robertson to take us on a tour of his journey writing
the book.
BeatRoute: Obviously you're a avid music fan,
listener and collector of records. You make
the all too correct observation that "our
favourite musicians are as close to real-life
magicians as most of us will ever know." What
were some of the first records you owned and
ones that you have kept listening to (in addition
to those artists you wrote about) that
had that magic?
Ray Robertson: I grew up in a small town in Southwestern
Ontario in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so unless you
were lucky enough to have a cool older sister or
brother with a great record collection, finding out
where the world kept all of the good stuff was no
easy task. The first record I bought with my own
money was Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the
Brown Dirt Cowboy. The coolest I ever felt while
buying a record was handing a copy of The Velvet
Underground’s first album over the counter to the
store clerk. Neil Young is about the only survivor from
my teenage record pile.
BR: The tagline to the book is "Thirteen Outsiders
Who Changed Modern Music"... The Ramones certainly
reinvented and revolutionized rock 'n' roll,
but most of the other artists you selected their
music is steeped in the tradition of blues, country,
gospel and folk. In what ways, then, did some of
these individuals alter and shape modern music?
RR: A guy like John Hartford was, yes, playing bluegrass
when he recorded his Areo-Plain L.P., but it was
bluegrass mixed up with, among other things, the
Beatles, pot, and Beatnik poetry. Absolutely singular.
Ronnie Lane created his own kind of music, too, as
did Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her very loud electric
guitar. The list goes on.
BR: When discussing the context of these particular
artists and their contributions, on a few
occasions you take a shot at some famous artists
bringing up some actual details (e.g., David
Crosby: the pushy, bratty rich kid; The Sex Pistols’
recording budget in the hundreds of thousands
was hardly DIY punk). In doing, when you call
these artists "outsiders" they're really unsung
heroes. Was that an impetus for writing the book
as well: to help foster the recognition and credit
they deserve?
RR: Exactly. What I mostly do is write novels, and all
you can hope for when you publish one is that it’s
Ray Robertson
the best possible book it could be. With Lives of the
Poets, there was definitely an additional, proselytizing
element: to expose the music of the artists in the
book to more people. These musicians are all heroes
of mine, so it felt almost like a duty to get their stories
“right.”
BR: How much do you weigh in on the notion that
the lives of these artists lived are largely responsible
for art they produced? Is that primarily why
you deemed them to be significant, because they
had rich, intense, tragic, eccentric or weird lives in
some fashion and, in turn, produced great art?
RR: You can’t separate the life from the work, ever.
That’s very often the academic approach, but it’s
by B. Simm
a falsification of the artistic process, as any creator,
whatever their field, knows. I vowed not to write
about an artist unless they created a very special,
unique body of work and their life story was not only
fascinating but illustrative of some interesting theme.
Like Little Richard: his music was exemplary, his
artistic influence vast, his life and his music shaped to
a great degree by his life-long inability to reconcile his
homosexuality and his love of rock and roll with his
fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
BR: When doing your research, did you unearth
anything about an artist's personal life, their work
or professional history that was totally unexpected
or you thought was profoundly unusual?
RR: Several people in the book came to understand
what they wanted to do with their lives in same way:
for the older ones, it was by seeing Elvis Presley on
The Ed Sullivan Show; for the younger, it was going to
the movies to watch A Hard Day’s Night.
BR: Outside these 13 chosen artists, is there
anyone else you could have or wanted to add but
didn't make the cut? Who would they be, and for
what main contribution?
RR: Well, there’ll eventually be a Lives of the Poets
(with Guitars): Volume Two, but I’ve got a novel coming
out next fall first, and then there’s another book
of non-fiction, this time on death, that’ll be published
after that. So I’ve got plenty of time to decide who to
write about next. It’ll definitely include James Booker,
Duster Bennett, and Mary McCaslin, though. I get
excited just talking about it.
Wordfest presents Roots Poets and Heroes with Guitars:
Ray Robertson with Holger Petersen Oct. 8 from
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. at the Glenbow Museum Theatre.
Is feminism for sale?
Bitch Media co-founder doesn’t buy it
As Andi Zeisler puts it, she didn’t “set out to writing a book
about the commodification of feminism.” But as co-founder
and creative director of Bitch Media, observing and steering
the pop-culture imagination of a nation, she found that she had accrued
more than enough material to pen We Were Feminists Once:
From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political
Movement, a unique tome on the subject at the heart of her two
decades of experience as an independent journalist and advocate for
women’s rights.
“Is it a more dangerous time to be a feminist? Maybe,” says Zeisler.
“It’s unfortunate that the advent of new technologies and forms of
communication means that there are now more ways for anti-feminists
to attack individuals and the ideas that they’re trying to put forward,
but at the same time the rise of social media has made it easier than ever
for likeminded people to come together and find solidarity around the
issues that matter to them.”
Finding common ground while sharing divergent opinions, and
gathering knowledge from grassroots sources of expertise, is the ultimate
expression of cultural community-building; and something Calgary’s
Wordfest annual literary festival has ingrained in their organizational
architecture. As a forum whose audience appreciates spirited debates
and discussions on the juiciest of social topics, Wordfest has set out a
cerebral buffet of events that will provoke and satisfy the rebel reader in
us all. Zeisler a.k.a. Andi Z is slated to engage in a Literary Death Match
opposite fellow print-jockeys Jillian Christmas, C.C. Humphreys, Kenneth
Oppel, Alissa York, Aaron Paquette and Mark Leiren-Young. Cajoled into
performance-mode by jet-setting host Adrian Todd Zuniga, a variety of
CITY
Andi Zeisler
authors will read selections from their most eyebrow-raising passages
before a cocktail-lubricated jury of their peers. The following evening
Andi Z will return to flex her intellectual muscle alongside a panel
comprised of women word-bombers including cultural anthologist Lynn
Coady, graphic memoir creator Teva Harrison, and novelist Lisa Moore.
This much-anticipated gathering of Bionic Women Writers is exactly the
kind of real-world activism Zeisler has identified as the true catalyst to
social progress.
“I think that over time feminism as a concept has shifted from being
a collective purpose to a source of individual identity. When we say that
feminism has been sold out, that doesn’t mean running down Miley
by Christine Leonard
Cyrus for twerking and calling it empowerment. There are many versions
of sexual empowerment. What we’re talking about is the selling of an
image of what it means to be a feminist on a much larger scale. For
example, that Secret commercial that tries to convince young women
that if they want to do their part towards closing the wage gap that they
should be wearing a certain brand of deodorant. It’s absurd.”
Given that she has written on activism for the likes of the Washington
Post, Salon, Ms., and the Los Angeles Review of Books it’s not surprising
that the Oregon-based Zeisler has encountered more than her fair share
of armchair critics. The winds of discontent swirling around the issues
she examines in her latest book have only gained momentum with gong
show that is the current U.S. election. And as those currents have grown
so have her concerns about the blatantly racist and sexist attitudes that
have been exposed in the midst of the tensions that are gripping her
country. In the end, Zeisler is more concerned with actions than words.
A position any advocate for Team Human can surely appreciate.
“I think the question that people need to be asking themselves in the
face of these massive and complex social problems is, ‘What am I willing
to do to make a difference in the world?’ Rather than just applauding
celebrities and calling them ‘brave’ for identifying themselves as ‘a feminist’
in an interview, we should be asking them how they are going to use
their fame, and their influence, and their money to really change things
for the better.”
Andi Zeisler is appearing at Wordfest on Oct. 12 from 9:15-10:45 p.m. and
Oct. 13 from 7:00-8:30 p.m. on both occasions in Art Commons, Big Secret
Theatre.
BEATROUTE • OCTOBER 2016 | 9