Author: Joey deVilla

Joe Strummer, best known for being the front man for The Clash, died on Sunday at his farmhouse in Somerset, southwestern England. He was still actively rocking with his current band, The Mescaleros, working on a tribute single for Nelson Mandela with Bono and Dave Stewart and preparing to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (along with The Police, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, The Righteous Brothers and good ol’ AC/DC).

My own discovery of The Clash took place in 1983 when my friend Kevin Matte and I sat down at his mother’s downtown condo and listened to Combat Rock album while poring over the liner notes (they were big — remember, albums were on vinyl LPs at the time). We had no idea that those in the know regarded it as their “sell-out” album — we were just blown away by the music. From the boom-chuck ranting in Know Your Rights (“This is a public service announcement…with guitar!” is eerily appropriate in the post 9/11 world) to the straight-out I-IV-V-ish Should I Stay of Should I Go to the jazzy Death is a Star, the album showed us the many interesting directions in which rock can go and led us to discover their previous albums (The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista). The Clash would go on to become a staple of my DJ sets at Clark Hall Pub at Queen’s University and later, when I picked up the accordion, Should I Stay or Should I Go would end up being one of my squeezebox anthems, netting me a lot of free intoxicants from Queen Street West to Prague sausage-and-beer bars to bars full of bikers in New York to Burning Man shantytowns.

Thank you for the music, Joe.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Key of D (major chords in the song are D, G and A)

Darling, you gotta let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

If you say that you are mine

I’ll be here ’til the end of time

So you got to let know

Should I stay or should I go?

Always tease tease tease

   (Siempre – coqetiando y enganyando)

You’re happy when I’m on my knees

   (Me arrodilla y estas feliz)

One day is fine, next is black

   (Un dias bien el otro negro)

So if you want me off your back

   (Al rededar en tu espalda)

Well come on and let me know

   (Me tienes que desir)

Should I Stay or should I go?

   (Me debo ir o que darme)

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

An’ if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know

This indecision’s bugging me

   (Esta undecision me molesta)

If you don’t want me, set me free

   (Si no me quieres, librame)

Exactly who’m I’m supposed to be

   (Diga me que tengo ser)

Don’t you know which clothes even fit me?

   (Saves que robas me querda?)

Come on and let me know

   (Me tienes que desir)

Should I cool it or should I blow?

   (Me debo ir o quedarme?)

Should I stay or should I go now?

   (Yo me frio o lo sophlo?)

If I go there will be trouble

   (Si me voi – va ver peligro)

And if I stay it will be double

   (Si me quedo es doble)

So you gotta let me know

   (Me tienes que decir)

Should I stay or should I go?

   (Yo me frio o lo sophlo?)

Occasionally, people have bad eBay experiences, but what happened to Ralph Omholt would never have happened before 9/11 and the USA PATRIOT Act:

A few months back, I successfully bid on an E-Bay item, advertised as a CD-ROM B-737 ground-school course. I was sure that Boeing had made such a CD-ROM, but there was no particular indication that such an object would contain sensitive or even proprietary information. The ad described the manual as “siimilar to that used by major airlines.”

So I made the purchase and, in good time, the instructional CD-ROM arrived at my house.

Then, as they say, the manure hit the air compressor.

Last week, I received a frantic e-mail message from the seller of the CDROM, who wrote with some urgency that he needed it back (with a full refund promised, of course). Curious, I picked up the phone and called the fellow, who works as a flight instructor. He revealed that the FBI had paid him a visit, warning that the content of the CD-ROM disc material – information on how to operate a Boeing 737 airliner – constituted “a national security threat.” The agents demanded that my new acquaintance recover and surrender to the FBI any and all such material that he had distributed. Obviously, copyright laws were also involved.

If that’s not crazy enough for you, here’s the kicker: shortly afterwards, Omholt got a call from the U.S. Attorney’s office asking if he’d received a subpoena to appear in front of a federal grand jury. He hadn’t yet, which is the only reason he was legally allowed to write about it at the time: the USA PATRIOT Act says that once you receive such a subpoena, if it is served in concert with a terrorist investigation, you aren’t allowed to tell anyone about receiving it. Never mind the fact that it effectively cancels one’s First Amendment rights — how the hell are you supposed to explain your absence to your employer or family?

After crap like this, I find it amusing that some Americans think of the Canadian system as “communist” or refer to this fine country as “Soviet Canuckistan”. From our vantage point up here, it looks as though you’ve beaten the Russkies at their own game [Flash required].

If Cory hasn’t pointed you there yet, let me: Real Live Preacher is a blog written by an anonymous Protestant pastor somewhere in Texas. He swears, he’s more than happy to use a loaded double-entendre (one of his entries is titled What’s in the Preacher’s Pants?, which last I checked was a game you tried to avoid playing in Catholic school) and is the complete antithesis of the pious caricature we’ve come to expect from religious figures.

(Padre, if you ever need a guest accordionist at one of your masses — and hey, I’m actually an organist by training — do drop me a line.)

It’s traditional to do “top ten”-style lists at the end of the calendar year. I notice that this year, as the blogosphere become increasingly politically polarized, the left and the right have already sighted each other in their crosshairs. The Warblogger Watch crowd will probably want to look at Pandagon.net’s Most Annoying Conservatives of 2002, while Little Green Footballs readers are more likely to prefer Right Wing News’ The Twenty Most Annoying Liberals of 2002.

All right folks, I want a nice, dirty fight. Let’s keep hitting below the belt, and keep the straw men, ad hominem attacks, inovocations of Godwin’s Law, calumny and slander comin’ till the bell rings. Anyone who mentions conflict resolution gets thrown out of the ring. Go!

I thought I had some inconvenience the last time I flew to the States, but what happened to Nick Monahan and his wife is completely inexcusable.

Tomorrow night — Saturday the 21st — is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. What better way to celebrate a day that’s mostly darkness than with a Festival of Lights?

The Festival, now in its 14th year, is a parade with a twist. The people watching the parade walk through the streets while many of the performers are on the sidewalk, street corners and rooftops on the parade route. The procession will be accompanioed by the more mobile performers: lantern-bearers, jugglers, clowns, stilt walkers and Samba Squad (a percussion band of at least a dozen samba drummers) and wind their way through streets to the Kensington Market neighbourhood. Along the way, parade-goers will see a musical Nativity scene, a torch-lit Chanukah choir, a Kwaanza celebration, the legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, Raven Steals the Sun, La Befana (an Italian legend about the Winter Witch, a sort of Santa Claus-like figure), a Solstice story told through giant puppets, a giant fire-sculptue, a traditional Mummers’ play and much more.

The parade will depart from St.-Stephens-in-the-Fields Church (365 College Street West, 3 blocks west of Spadina) at 5:45 p.m. and work its way to its final destination, the park in Kensington Market near the south end of Augusta Street (the one at the corner of Augusta and Denison). I’ll probably join the parade and add a little accordion noise to the fun.

On Tuesday, I wrote a little rant about people who get offended at the mention of Christmas, and super A-list blogger James Lileks goes and writes something along the same lines.

Anyhow, Lileks is — as one would expect — in fine form. Here’s the opener to his piece:

There’s a new staple in modern newspapers: the tale of the Holiday Crank. In the past these people would be ignored, but nowadays no coverage of the season is complete without a dissenting voice. You don’t lose any points in a modern Western newsroom suggesting that the paper run profiles on people who hate Christmas. Float the notion of profiling lapsed Muslims who hold Ramadan in bemused contempt, and I suspect people would react as though you had pushed a ball of tinfoil into one of their dental fillings.

Next thing you know, he’s going to start playing the accordion and programming computers, and then where will I be?