There is now a video on YouTube of this performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdJeCjIwGFk

Anyone who saw the Canadian Walk of Fame on Sunday night will have witnessed a truly glorious moment in the history of Canadian Prime Time television. I had never heard of this show before this year, I guess it's a new thing -- just like all these other glitzy over-the-top Canadian shows trying WAAAAYYYY too hard to be American and failing miserably. Think about it, Mike Bullard vs David Letterman. Puh-LEEZ! It's embarassing. I mean really, why bother? We're not American, we can't compete with them in that arena, so why not do something that uniquely ours and just be ok with that? That's why I like the Mercer Report and Corner Gas so much, because it's truly Canadian and not mediocre diluted wannabe-American ...

ANYWAY, back to the Walk of Fame. The whole evening was hosted by wrestling bimbo Trish Stratus, and she was GAWD AWFUL! It was painful to watch. The recipients of the awards, however, were well-deserving and great to see ... Eugene Levy was fabulous as always, Jann Arden sang beautifully and then gave her usual hilarious, completely raw and unpretentious commentary, Alex Trebek proved that one can still speak very decent French after living in California for a couple of decades ... (better than mine and I've lived in Montreal for 10 years. Shame on me!)

But the pinnacle of the evening was when Paul Shaffer was invited up to receive his award. (Yeah he's the keyboardist & musical director for, and an essential part of, the David Letterman show -- you know, one of the late night talk shows that doesn't suck! Guess what? It's based in NEW YORK). He did a cute goofy little song with Dan Aykroyd (they've been buds forever, they can get away with that stuff!), and then instead of getting up and tooting his own horn, reading the predictable blah blah from a teleprompter, he went and did the coolest thing I've ever seen. The lights went up on the stage, and there were FOUR Hammond B-3 organs. Sitting at them were the one and only Dr. Lonnie Smith, the amazing Joey DeFrancesco, and Canada's own B-3 legend Doug Riley ... Paul Shaffer joined them at the fourth organ. He is a great Hammond organist himself, and like all of us he knows what a special thing this is and what a close-knit family we are. Right before they started the tune he said he wanted to pay tribute to a dying art and got the 3 best organists in the world to help him do it, playing a tune written by the guy who started it all. He counted off the house band and they all broke into "The Cat" by Jimmy Smith and just tore it to shreds. It was AWESOME!!

Earlier in the night, Trish did a little faux-lesbian kissing scene with the other featured high-profile blonde babe -- Pamela Anderson -- which elicited little more than a few half-assed claps and bored "hmph"s. But "The Cat" brought people screaming and cheering to their feet. A standing-O for classic organ jazz -- on prime time national television!!! I couldn't believe it. I was so proud of my fellow Canadians for choosing real art over plastic boobs. I was also very proud to be a jazz organist and to feel connected to the beautiful moment that was happening, to see that perhaps a seed or two was planted in the collective psyche of the audience ... that this really is great stuff, and maybe people will actually get out and see a good jazz organ show instead of plonking their butts down in front of MTV to watch air-brushed tarts bumping and grinding to machine-generated corporate garbage. Maybe there's some hope for us after all ... thanks Paul, you rule!!!

Ok, how much does it COMPLETELY SUCK that Steve Irwin is dead? I love that guy. What an inspiration -- he was probably the happiest person on earth -- if only everyone could be so passionate about their jobs and their everyday lives, and care so much about nature, animals and about other human beings; what a freakin' utopia this world would be! It just blows my mind how a young, able-bodied and seemingly invincible guy like him could be killed by something that's generally pretty benign, yet a miserable snarling old crumudgeon like Dick Cheney can get through HOW many quadruple-bypass surgeries and just NOT DIE, like a stubborn cockroach or something. I guess some people are just too good for this world ...

My first introduction to Steve Irwin was in 2002 when I went to study with Dr. Lonnie Smith in Florida. He has satellite TV so we used hang out in the evenings and watch the Crocodile Hunter together (there ain't much else to do in Fort Lauderdale, so my month there consisted solely of practicing Hammond organ and watching the Discovery Channel). Lonnie would laugh so hard at Steve's antics and comment on what a great thing he was doing and how neat it was that his wife and kids were right in there with him, up close and personal with the animals. Of course this type of thing wasn't without controversy, given that famous incident in which he fed a crocodile a dead chicken with one hand while holding his baby son in the other; though despite his off-the-wall ways, it is indisputable that he adored his family. It is terrible that his death was so untimely, yet he died doing what he loved, frolicking in the great outdoors surrounded by wildlife and hamming it up for the camera; more tragic is the fact that his wife and kids have lost an amazing husband and father and will have to be constantly reminded of the gaping hole in their lives where one of the world's most-recognized personalities once was. Because he was such a prominent public figure, there is sure to be a widespread outpouring of sympathy; yet the Crocodile Hunter was not beloved by all, and some loudmouths have been quick to spew their vitriol without first taking a step back to consider the emotional impact of their outbursts. Take Germaine Greer for instance; now she can just shove her self-righteous, insensitive garbage right back where it came from ... "the animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin". Those who knew and loved him as a person shouldn't have to be subjected to that kind of poisonous slander on top of all the other grief they have to deal with. I mean, I'm all for free speech and everything, but geez, get some human decency!

But I digress. Steve Irwin was so full of joy he had no room in his life for any negative energy, so I'll take a lesson from him -- I'll stop ranting and start discussing the admiration of all things crawly and slithery ...

When I was in grade one I got to pet a tarantula, and I thought it was really cool. I also really like iguanas and geckos and snakes, and when I saw the Komodo dragons in Indonesia a few years ago, I thought they were majestic and wonderful. It's easy to feel that a furry little koala bear or baby seal is adorable and deserving of our care -- and the positive attention they get is most certainly justified -- but there is a general tendency to be repulsed by reptiles; their beauty and worth are not so immediately obvious to many people, but these animals need to be respected and protected too, and Steve Irwin was on a mission to make that happen. Sure maybe he was a little crazy and over the top and did some things that were a bit questionable, but there's absolutely no doubt that he really loved those animals and was very knowledgeable about them. He knew exactly why he was put on this earth (he said so himself), and he managed to bring his message to the whole world in his own larger-than-life unorthodox way.

I am sure we will start to see many tribute-style animal documentaries -- similar shows to the Crocodile Hunter have already been on the air for years; the hosts make goofy noises, wrestle with large beasts, and desperately try to be the same charismatic, intrepid child-like ball of pure energy that Steve Irwin was; they of course fail miserably. Yet we can all hope that the cause of nature conservation and wildlife protection they all share will continue to be nurtured in his honour. There was only one true Crocodile Hunter, and people all over the world are crying real tears for the loss of one of the most unique, lovable, exuberant and genuinely free-spirited human beings we will ever see in our lifetime.


The following website contains some very touching memorial messages from all over the world
(my favorite is from sandiego_guy):

http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/crochunter/steve/condolences/condolences.html

On June 6, 2006, we lost the greatest gospel organist of all time. Billy Preston died of kidney failure after being in a coma since November of 2005.

Since there is an abundance of information out there on the web, from biographies to discographies, etc. I won't go into much detail here ...
(One of the best short bios I've found:
http://theband.hiof.no/band_members/billy_preston.html
google "Billy Preston" for more information)

Billy Preston was much more to many artists and fans than just a "gospel organist", but I am talking about him from my own perspective here (I will elaborate later). I'll never forget the first time I heard him; I was sitting in the lower lounge on the MS Song of Flower, a cruise ship I was working on at the time. It was the middle of a day at sea and I was just idly passing time hanging out with my good friend and bandleader Stu. A powerful, punchy downward piano riff cut into the the room, each chord coming down lifted me up higher and higher out of my seat -- then the organ came bursting in and poor Stu just vanished into thin air ... there are no visuals to speak of in my memory of that moment -- all I remember is sound swirling around me, and that I was suddenly on a raving mad quest to find out what that sound was. Turns out it was "Will It Go 'Round In Circles" by Billy Preston. I couldn't wait until we docked in Hong Kong so I could run to HMV and find more ...

Despite the fact that he made such tremendous contributions to popular music throughout the 60s and 70s, it was pretty difficult to find exactly what I was looking for from Billy Preston under his own name -- sure he put out some great stuff, but a lot of what I loved to hear were just organ textures and fills in the background, in a more supporting but still very present setting. Not long after I came back to Canada after the ship, I was in a record store in Edmonton minding my own business, and a sound caught my attention (much in the same way as a stern teacher with pointy glasses grabs a child's ear to make them listen and listen up good -- I was frozen in place -- to move away from the source would have caused me great pain!). I demanded to know what CD was playing over the system. The clerk looked it up and said "Eric Clapton" -- I said "Ok ... who's the organist????". He didn't know. But as soon as I could verify it, it made prefect sense.

I don't need to ask anymore ... the touch, the attack, the sound - rich and warm yet so powerful, the perfect small sequence of chords right out of a Southern Black church ... it's absolutely unmistakable. And it takes my breath away every single time.

It's no secret that Billy Preston was the victim of a vice or two; I can barely even begin to speculate as to why so many of the great artists we look up to were so messed up on drugs and always getting thrown in the slammer. I suppose it was partly a result of the social and societal conditions they were brought up in, as well as the experimental caution-to-the wind attitude towards drugs, and the whole culture of that era in general. I'm a little white-ish girl from Edmonton who grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, so I have no further insight to contribute to that discussion. HOWEVER, I have met and dealt with people who did live through that (and who are actually still alive and breathing on their own, miraculously enough!). Even though they are technically clean, it feels as if there is something not quite there anymore; as if a part of their humanity has been worn raw from years of abuse to the body and the spirit. They are unpredictable and alarming -- pleasant and courteous one minute, irritable and enraged the next. I never had the chance to meet Billy Preston so I can't say for sure, but it seems that unlike many who went down the same troubled path, he didn't let that get the better of him. Despite his personal demons, he rose above it and always wore a big smile. He addressed the crowd as his "friends", and sang and danced his heart out, almost right up until the end. He had said "I do believe that God has his hands on me and that he has work for me to do."

Which brings me to the point I made earlier about Billy Preston being the heaviest Gospel organist of all time. I'm not going to get into a big religious discussion here, but I will say that I believe worship music in particular is extremely powerful; somehow all the individual ego-fuelled hang-ups that usually plague performers (come on, we've all dealt with these issues at one time or another, otherwise Kenny Werner's "Effortless Mastery" wouldn't have been such a big hit -- and you KNOW it!) are put aside to serve something much greater. Music is an extremely crucial part of a religious service, yet it functions as a means to an end -- a soundtrack to the act of worship -- thereby eliminating any sense of "me me me" and drawing everyone present to let go of themselves and travel into a deeper awareness of God/Atman (a collective soul)/the Universe. The great Mavis Staples said that even when she is singing a secular song, she's still singing to the Lord. No matter what your particular creed is, if you ever hear Mavis, your spirit will be moved, guaranteed! (Case in point - The Band's final concert "The Last Waltz" - if you don't cry when she starts to sing the second verse of "The Weight", you just ain't human!). I say that Billy Preston is a Gospel organist because no matter if he's performing with The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, or playing his own love songs or groove tunes, he exudes that same transcendent spirituality that can be felt during the most intense moments of a Southern Black church service. He always played and sang to his Lord, and never lost faith even under the heavy burden he carried through much of his life.

It is with deep regret that I say I never got to see Billy Preston live in concert; I would have especially loved to see him perform duo with Mavis Staples -- for me it would have been the ultimate spiritual experience. Sadly, I have to accept that this is the way it is, and I can take comfort in the fact that he left behind a massive recorded legacy by which I may continue to learn from him, enjoy his music and receive his poignant message of passion, love, perseverance and faith.

Rest in peace Billy Preston, and may God bless your soul.

I recently visited an organist friend of mine to whom I had mailed one of my CDs a few months earlier. He asked me why I hadn't signed it -- not in a disappointed way so much as out of curiosity -- I mean, isn't that the thing to do, to put a bit of a personal touch on it? It got me thinking about my attitude toward autographs. When I was a teenager I used to run up to all my performing idols at their shows and jazz conventions, etc. making sure I got their signatures on CD liner notes or posters; it really meant something to me. I can't remember the exact moment when I stopped doing that ... it just gradually became unimportant. As I got more and more immersed in the performing world, I realized that getting the autographs of the musicians I respect the most wasn't nearly as special to me as actually speaking to them.

This point became starkly obvious to me at a Tower of Power concert in Ottawa in October 2003. I'm assuming that not many people know what happened to their bass player, Rocco Prestia, judging by the audience's indifferent reaction when the MC introduced him to the crowd. Rocco had a liver transplant the year before; he suffers from Hepatitis C and had been in a coma. He made a miraculous recovery, and went on tour again with the TOP, tearing it up with David Garibaldi the way he did in the 70s. It was unbelievable! I really wanted to talk to him after the show -- as luck would have it, being such nice guys as they are, the Tower of Power decided to line up a long table in the lobby after the show to receive fans and sign their programmes, CDs, etc. If this was the only way to talk to Rocco, so be it. I felt like SUCH a tool going through that lineup. "Oh yes, that was such a great show, you guys are awesome, wow, blah blah blah." (of course they were awesome, but they were probably as interested in talking to me and signing my stuff as I was interested in being herded through that lineup.) Finally, I got to Rocco. I said to him "I am so happy to see that you're out playing with the band again -- thank you so much for coming. You really look great, and you sound fantastic." He grabbed my hand and looked me right in the eye and said "Thank you so much, you're a real sweetheart (or angel, or something to that effect.)" He knew that I knew. That was very obvious. He wrote his signature among the others on the programme, and before I moved on in the line, he took my hand again and squeezed it so hard (not painfully, mind you, but hard enough), looked at me intently and thanked me again. I'm telling you, there is nothing like looking into the eyes of someone who has come back from the brink of death, is living life joyously like there's no tomorrow, and KNOWS that YOU care! I continued being sheep-coralled through the line, collecting the last of the autographs (the two horn players at the end didn't even look at me as they signed my programme). Right now I couldn't tell you where that piece of paper is -- probably in a folder or box of keepsakes in one closet or another. But the signature of that brief moment is still etched on the very front of my mind, the ink still wet and gleaming.

I consider myself very lucky to have the opportunity to meet, speak to, and even get to know so many great musicians. My most significant experience with this was the month I spent living on Dr. Lonnie Smith's couch, learning much about music and life from him -- I've since gone to see him perform several times in different cities, and have at least 7 of his CDs. I respect and admire him immensely and I'd be thrilled to become even half the musician and the person that he is. I still don't have his autograph, and don't plan on ever getting it from him; I'm hoping that someday, as a result of my contact with him, his signature will come out in some way shape or form through my playing and my actions.

I now have my own CD out, and I often get asked to sign it. I am happy to do this, as I understand how much it once meant to me; how nice it felt to go see a great show, and take a bit of that artist home with me. I must admit, it feels a bit funny when friends ask me to sign the CD, but that's just my own feeling about my getting stuff autographed by other artists -- they obviously feel that getting me to sign the CD adds a special personal touch, and for that I am more than happy to sign the CD (of course I pain myself to come up with something more interesting and original than "Thanks, and best wishes, Vanessa Rodrigues" -- though I certainly mean that when I write it, I feel that my friend needs something that addresses him/her personally.)

So if you're my friend and you get a CD from me without my autograph on it, please don't be offended or even surprised. Though I'd be more than happy to sign it for you on request, the reason I didn't sign it for you in the first place is because to me, you are special, a part of my life, and you already have my signature on your spirit, as I have yours on mine.