by Amber Goodwyn
In the spirit of Facebook polls and chain-mail hexes (and their ever-mild threat to skew one’s fate), I chose to begin the New Year, Year of Our Lord Two Thousand And Fourteen, and this here column with a music-themed Proustian questionnaire with yours truly (ahem). This famed type of questionnaire-cum-interview was popularized by a doubtlessly bored or cruising Marcel Proust as a personality-divining parlour game sometime in the late 1800s. Behold my righteous answers!
FORWARD THIS TO AT LEAST FIVE FRIENDS OR RISK 10 YEARS BAD LUCK
What is your most marked characteristic?
Small lady, big voice.
What’s your current state of mind?
Future-focused: lots of planning for 2014’s world takeover, no wrecking balls included.
What’s your idea of perfect musical happiness?
Continuing to record at home and play shows while running a Rock Camp for Girls here in Regina.
Which living musician do you most admire?
Patti Smith or Bjork, I think.
What’s your most treasured musical possession?
My laptop, sadly.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of musical misery?
Admitting that my most treasured musical possession is a laptop. I like my Telecaster pretty well, too.
What is your greatest musical extravagance?
That time I had five people wrestle a 200-pound organ into my modest home. You can read about it in my Oct. 3 Sound Check, “Quest to the Frozen Northwest”, at prairiedogmag.com.
What’s the quality you most like in a male-identified musician?
The ability to share space (musical, verbal, physical) fairly with others around him.
What is the quality you most like in a female-identified musician?
Self-confidence.
What is the greatest (album) love of your life?
The Cars’ entire discography.
Which living person do you most despise?
Taylor Swift or Metric. (I’m counting the band as a person. An awful person.)
If you could change one musical thing about yourself, what would it be?
When I’m on stage I always have to fight the urge to spit-spray my beer onto the unsuspecting crowd. I once did this with red wine, with disastrous results.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Good taste.
What’s your greatest music regret?
Moving away from my band, Cobra & Vulture. :(
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, who/what would it be?
Nick Cave’s tuxedo jacket.
What is your motto?
This too shall pass.
BUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANNA KNOW ABOUT ARE LIVE MUSIC SHOWS, RIGHT?
For a wacky, punkish and often sweaty good time, do drink it up while The Faps kick it out at O’Hanlon’s on Friday, Jan. 10. If you’re looking for some earthy and ethereal country music, do make plans to attend the Kacy & Clayton CD release on Sat. Jan. 11 at the SCES Club; Marshall Burns opens the show. Finally, the big ticket show these next couple of weeks is the Honour the Treaties fundraiser for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Legal Defense Fund featuring Neil Young and Diana Krall at the Conexus Arts Centre on Friday, Jan. 17.
In my ears: Madonna’s Bedtime Stories
Check in: ag@prairiedogmag.com
