Black Water

So here's another post.

Figured I should add some pictures to compliment the last one.

I mentioned a song with vocals. Well, I've called it Black Water since that is the current colour of Nut Brook, which passes through a rural Industrial zone on the outskirts of St. John's. It is about as polluted as water can get. I'll post two phases I have seen it in:

This phase was observed in 2005, when this section of the brook was only visibly affected by landfill leachate, quarry sediment, and a slight bit of oil and raw sewage. (See above pictures of the reddish-brown water).

The second phase was observed in 2006 when the vegetation began reappearing on the sediment deposit but the river got far worse:

It turned black when it became visibly contaminated with an increased amount of oil and raw sewage in addition to the leachate and sediment. The water was so stagnant after that, toxic blue green algae was observed to be colonising the stream. Have a look:





























Sooooooo, there's a "slight" problem here. I won't get into it, and I don't think I should post pictures of the source (they are too gross to look at), but that's the mindset of the people who are responsible for the discharges, and of all three levels of government who know about this but as of yet have not done very much to work out this problem.

That's where my song Black Water came about. Maybe I'll record it and post it sometime. And a reminder to newcomers, all the other songs posted can be heard by clicking on the titles on the top right.

Finally a New Post

Well, I haven't been posting on this site at all for the last many months, but as far as I know, people actually do still check the site, and since I'm aware that this site gets advertised on other people's sites and posts and things, and since I can't figure out how to hide the old posts anyway, I guess I should start making new posts, and eventually the old ones will get pushed into an archive somewhere anyway, automatically making this page fresh and new again.

So, to update:

I play a lot of gigs, and people hear my music all over the place so they tell me. I have one, for example, in Mount Pearl at Centennial Park at 7:00pm on Thursday the 12th of July. It's for the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl's summertime Gazebo performance and arts series. Apparently it's just me that night, so if anyone comes to see me, I'll play better, lol. I might even sing, as I have been toying with the idea of expanding my musical versatility.

Which brings me to something I should discuss. Occasionally, people ask me if I ever sing, and some of them ask me why I don't sing. These are people who are two things:

1) Innovative, and can detect a way for me to advance my musical ability and target a wider audience, and...

2) Have missed the musical point of the type of genre I am practicing

In the latter case, if I start adding vocals to my songs, I will effectively change the subgenre of music I play from (self described) traddy, post-modernal instrumentalism - to - cliched early 70's folk genre with a bit of Johnny Cash thrown in, (LOL)! Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is certainly a drastic shift from what most people would expect me to be playing (the former).

However, I have taken that advice of those few of my peers who mentioned and I may start piloting some new stuff in the near future. It may or may not work out as I really have no singing voice either. But then again, neither did Bob Dylan.

So.

In other news, I also have a small bit of new instrumental material that is unrecorded and not on the site as of yet. But since I have been playing a lot more lately and still pretty involved with the environment stuff, I haven't given much go at the songwriting in the past little while. Luckily I have lots of songs anyway.

I am also involved with a fast punk band called "Are You Phobic?" that is unrelated to my 12-string show, but we gig a lot and hopefully soon will have a demo finished and a website up that I will link to here if anyone is brave enough to check it out.

So, that's that. Business as usual, still going, but just have been very quiet on the website. I've got the odd wedding coming up too, and most likely many more benefits to come. I was going to put a picture of something up, since this page probably looks a little bland now, but I think I'll do it later.

Yay! New post.