Editorial

Hi folks,
Hope everyone enjoyed this past sunny weekend. I know mine was very full.
I spent some time at the Libra Room this week, and caught some footage of and the Amanda Tossoff and the Zoe Trio.
Also went to a good party last night at Kempton Dexter's and took some amazing video. Watch out for another video featuring Natalie von Rotsburg and a host of incredible musicians from that scene.

Kathryn Peterson aka Salmon Avalanche, of Blackberry Wood, and her prized squeeze box were at Kempton Dexter's fling on the weekend.

Speaking of the almighty Libra Room, I was truly sorry I had to miss the CD launch for the Monica Lee Band's newest release, a collection of songs recorded live at the Libra Room. The fact that she and her fellow band members, Marc L'Esperance and Jesse Waldman, sold 50 copies of the CD that night is a testament to their obvious talent and popularity. Buy this music!

A big high for me this week was getting a $40 donation from Annii McGuire Barta, whom some of you may remember as a Vancouver veteran and one-time publisher in the 90's of a small publication focusing on Main Street life called More On Main. I used to write the occasional literary review for it. Annii currently lives in Europe, so it was very gratifying to receive recognition for what I'm doing. I know she used to work very hard on that paper. If there were blogs back then, she might still be publishing it! Thanks so much Annii! While the blogging technology I use is free, my time and energy are required to distill information from off the web, and also to go out on occasion to cover live events. ... the fun part of the blog! Editing photos and videos take time and going out takes money!

Today was a busy day for me. I hosted a workshop on Tax Fundamentals For Artists. It was great to see so many people dedicated to improving the professional side of their career, battling the pull of a warm, sunny afternoon to learn about taxes, no less! I'm proud they did! Thanks folks!
Today ended in the best of possible manners. My friends Carol Anne and Ivett came over to this neck of the woods and did some way cool night photography. We had a lot of laughs. I needed that.
So what's up for me next week? Irish Spring is in the air. Coming up March 12-16 it is the 5th Annual Edgewater Casino CelticFest. I've been a volunteer since day one. As a matter of fact, I was the festival's very first volunteer.
Every year I put on some type of literary event for the festival. This year it's The Battle of the Bards Pub Crawl. A cross between Dublin's world-famous literary Pub Crawl, and the phenomenally popular Poetry Slam (which makes it's home right here on the Drive at Cafe Deux Soliels every Monday and produces consistently top spoken word artists.
For this event, hosted by the lovely Ravishing Rhonda, Dylan Thomas, W.B Yeats and Robbie Burns (played masterfully by Damon Calderwood, Mark Downey and Todd Wong - of Gung Haggis Fat Choy fame) go head-to-head in a poetry face-off at 3 different venues and are judged by members of the audience the grand finale is a karaoke battle at Ceili's Pub, with a live DJ (local spinmaster Michael Louw) and celtic fiddler Elise Bloer. It all ends with a wild dance party courtesy of
Sound crazy? YOU BET! Be sure to join us on March 13th. Email me at srduncan@shaw.ca or check out the CelticFest website at www.celticfestvancouver.com for more details.

Until next time, as Garrison Keilor says in his regular poetry podcast:

Stay in touch and do good work.

Editorial: The Sunday Muse (on Monday)

Big News:

Commercial Drive – Live! will be taking on its first major sponsor!

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome aboard Charlie Kiers, of Remax Crest Realty as our banner supporter! Starting in February, Charlie will be offering some great insider advice for people looking to live or invest in, what experts are calling, “one of the hottest real estate markets in North America”. Plus, he’ll be sharing with us some local listings to help start you on the road to home-owning happiness! Check out his great website: www.buythedrive.com and stay tuned to CD – L! for his regular posts.

Well, my 2007 Christmas wish came true when last month Commercial Drive - Live! broke the 15,000 visitor mark! Thanks to all the people who have dropped in from all over BC, Canada, the US, South America, India, Africa, Asia and Europe! Please keep stopping by!

I’ve been raving about my new little Canon Powershot camera. Most of the pictures from November onward on Commercial Drive – Live! have been shot with it and I’ve had great responses to them. This gadget has really opened up possibilities, by helping me to put more real faces on the blog, like in my “Denizen of the Day” and “Live on the Drive” columns.

But most exciting is the video I can now shoot! You may have already seen some of the clips I’ve added, including a song I shot of one of our radio guests on Wax Poetic, Doris Lavoie, and some impromptu video of Queso Blanco at the Libra Room. Most recently I threw up a video I shot on New Years Eve of Wyckham Porteous and the Skedaddlers.

You can watch them all by either clicking on this link to go to the YouTube Playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=478EF0B433DBB8C3;

or simply clicking on the label “video” at the bottom of any post with a video in it.

The next step is to start doing interviews. I’ve got one on file that I did with Battlestar Galactica’s Lorena Gale, on the patio of Fets last summer, using a simple web cam. Now that I’m starting to understand how Microsoft Movie Maker works, I’ll be finally able to cut it up for the web soon.

If you want me to catch you in action or cover your event, just drop me an email and I’ll do my best to fit you into my schedule. You get free access to the video to use as you please (as long as you don’t mind link information to Commercial Drive – Live! popping up every now and then).

Also, check out our fabulous sister site, run by entertainment guru LL Fisher, Live On The Drive! We’ll be working even closer this year to make sure all of the great stuff on the Drive gets covered completely!

By the way, if you are interested in learning more about blogging and why it is an essential promotional tool for most artists and small businesses, consider taking one of my upcoming Shoestring Marketing classes held at John Oliver Secondary through the Vancouver School Board. Find more info here: http://smart-arts.blogspot.com. We spend a lot of time covering internet technologies, and blogging specifically.

So until next time, Happy New Year, and best wishes to you and your families!!

Sincerely,

Steven R. Duncan

Publisher – Commercial Drive – Live!

Editorial

It is funny where a person finds himself sometimes, speaking both physically, mentally, and spiritually, too, I suppose.

Life has put me in many strange places. On Friday afternoon a week ago, it was at a bus stop in North Vancouver. I’d just left a gymnasium full of about 300 elementary school kids going nuts dancing to Quebequois folk songs. Quite the spectacle, I tell you. A real Tylenol 3 moment.

Work put me there.

And as I was waiting, a car pulls up, the window rolls down, and a heavily-accented voice calls out to me, “What are you doing here?” It was Oscar, the ever-smiling owner of the Latin Quarter. He was taking his teenaged son to Bikrim Yoga for the first time. Not something I would have expected, but cool.

He offered me a lift down to the drive, and with snow starting to fall on that damp, off-the-beaten-path street, I could hardly say no to the offer. Besides, it was a good opportunity to get to know the man who’s business had been such a strong Arts supporter for so long.

We chatted a little bit about his business. The session at yoga was just one of about 3 other items he hoped to cross off his checklist before opening the restaurant doors later that night.

“Owning a restaurant is hard work,” he sighed. Being my own boss, I could commiserate. There were a thousand other things I needed to do too. But an afternoon like that, watching a talented kid’s performer like Marian Rose do her thing, was all part of it. I think of it as field work.

He mentioned his other endeavour, down in Seattle, Kirkland actually, www.mixtura.biz, another restaurant specialising in Andean cuisine.

Rent and overhead was bringing the monthly bill for the place down south up to almost $50,000 (not sure if that is in CDN or US pesos). Yikes! It feels good when I compare it to my measly $10,000 debt load. Life could be worse.

Then we talked about rents on the Drive. As expected, they are cropping up, too, but traffic into the restaurant hasn’t necessarily kept in step.

He complained about returns being tight. They are thinking about trying a lunch menu, but in that business, every thing you experiment with is a financial drain and a risk because of the upfront cost of ingredients, labour and utilities.

So as the story usually goes, the artist suffers. Oscar’s having to cut live music a couple of nights a week. It’s not a decision he likes to make but inevitable. Something has to go.

It’s hard to hear this story when one thinks of all the new businesses cropping up and re-evolving. It makes me wonder how many of them have done any market research. Do they know what they’re getting into? Or maybe we just don’t know what’s coming.

“Life is difficult,” is the line that starts M. Scott Peck’s famous book, The Road Less Traveled. As North Americans, more specifically, as Canadians, most of us have not really had to learn this lesson. If you are reading this article, it means you have access to a computer and the internet, and that puts you at a level beyond most people in the world.

And yet these days, more and more, we are seeing and hearing stories of friends, neighbours and relatives finding life difficult. And while the latent causes for this despair tend to be things beyond our mortal control, like death and sickness, one can’t help but think that economics is playing a subtle role in the sadness we are experiencing.

The Drive has always been considered working class, although working poor is probably a more accurate description – a catch-all for artists, musicians, shift workers and small business people, etc.. This area attracted two types of visitors – the rich and the poor. The rich came for the food and atmosphere, the poor for the compassion. Both seemed to disappear when the businesses closed shop for the night.

These days those visitors are becoming the new residents. The poor are taking up residence in doorways while the rich are buying up houses and pushing property values to levels which were unimaginable just a few years ago.

The high cost of living is in contradiction with the fallen minimum wage. People are working more for less. And those not able to work are looking leaner and longer in the tooth. Relying on the kindness of strangers is its own kind of work. The problem is that many of us in this neighbourhood are only a paycheque or two away from being on the street corner beside them.

Most of the postings I put on this blog and in the email blasts I send out are for benefits or fundraisers of some sort. Has it always been like this?

I know dropping live music is not a decision Oscar takes lightly. He’s a big supporter of the arts. The Latin Quarter threw us a great wrap-up party after last year’s ANU, the multi-disciplinary event which happened at the Roundhouse (and which I was lucky to direct). Another option besides paying performers directly might be to start charging a cover, but the risk there is customers turning away at the door. Some places let performers pass a hat after their set. Personally, I find this a little hard to swallow. Frankly, I'm often stepping into a place to seek refuge from outstretched hands.

The Campbell government and the mainstream media keep telling us that unemployment is lower than it has been in years and that there are more jobs than people to fill them. I guess that all depends on what you want to do for a living. I don’t see many job postings that do much more than cover the bare basics.

I was at the Latin Quarter last Tuesday. Lache Cercel was playing. In my opinion, he’s one of Commercial’s best kept secrets. A classically trained Romanian violinist, he plays with incredible passion and versatility. The audience loved it. So did I. The day had been a tough one Lache’s music was the perfect tonic.

Lets hope that this new economy somehow finds a place for music and for art to not just exist, but thrive, and that, as a society, we find a way to always respect each other and the work each of us does.

Until next week.

Keep up your good work and stay in touch!