How Defying Gravity would have progressed, straight from the creator

I really enjoyed Defying Gravity, one of the new shows this year that was recently cancelled. Here's an article from Cliqueclack.com in which the show's creator talks about how the show would have progressed and ended, after three seasons.

One of the things that kills me anytime a show I love doesn’t get picked up for additional seasons — or is flat-out canceled mid-season — is dangling storylines. Being that I’m into sci-fi shows, enduring long story arcs is pretty commonplace. So, when word came that Defying Gravity was not only not getting a second season, but it wouldn’t be airing the final handful of episodes in the U.S., it was par for the course. But dammit, I wanted to know what was going to happen next!

Via powerful, mystical, magical items that I won’t reveal here, for fear the secret will fall into the wrong hands, I was able to watch the final episodes of the first and only season of Defying Gravity. Ivey’s already written about them, the final episode having aired on Canada’s CTV and SPACE channels last weekend. Unlike another sci-fi show that was cut short soon — the U.S. version of Life on Mars — Defying Gravity wasn’t allowed to wrap up its story. In fact, even if it had the time to prepare for it, there’s just no way it could wrap everything up in one season. The season only got better in the latter episodes, which makes the show being gone all the more disappointing.

Still, I had to know how the show was meant to end. If there was truly no hope that the show would get picked up somewhere else, I had to jump at a chance to find out what was going to happen next. So, I went straight to the source and contacted the show’s creator, James Parriott, to get a reading from the next book from the Defying Gravity bible. And, lordy, did he read.

First of all, let’s get the basics out of the way. Parriott confirmed to me that the actors have all been released and the sets have been destroyed, so the show is “pretty much dead” — no real hope now of seeing the show get the CPR it needs to continue on into another season or a wrap-up movie.

So, why did the show not do better in the first place, if it’s as good as I say? As Parriott explained, the show wasn’t officially picked up by ABC until a mere three weeks before the first episode aired, virtually giving them no time to market the show properly. By that time, all ad space they needed for the show to get the awareness it needed was spoken for.

Getting back to what I said about a show “bible,” Parriott said that in order to sell the show, he had to have the show worked out, and he does indeed have a bible for it. In fact, he has the first three years of the show all worked out, along with how it would ultimately end. Because Parriott has what he said is “a tremendous respect for science fiction and its fans,” he didn’t want to string viewers along too long without anything significant to reveal, which is why Beta was revealed in episode nine and not somewhere in season two; he wasn’t about to leave us with “a big hole in the ground” at the finale. Lost fans know what he’s talking about.

Speaking of Lost, here’s a fun bit he had to say about the show and how it relates to how he went into putting Defying Gravity together:

“I love the show [Lost], and Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse]. I did a lot with Grey’s Anatomy during the first couple of years of Grey’s, and that first year of Grey’s was the first year of Lost, and I did a lot of dinners with ABC buyers with those two guys and Shonda Rhimes from Grey’s. Carlton is a really bright and funny guy, and he gets up, and the first question out of the foreign buyers’ mouths is ‘where’s it going to go? Do you know where it’s going to go?’, and he said ‘I haven’t a clue.’ And then he sits down across from me at the dinner table, and I remember saying ‘Damon, come on, that’s bullshit, right? I mean, you know where it’s going to go.’ And he says, ‘Jim, I haven’t a clue. I’m four episodes out; that’s all I know.’

“And I just thought to myself, y’know, that’s really dangerous. And then when I got into doing this show, I said I don’t want to do that; I don’t want to be in that position. First of all, I’d have ulcers if I did that, which would just be crazy, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. So I went in pretty much knowing where it was going to go.”

I’ve often said that having the “Grey’s Anatomy” tag on this show really hurt it. Sci-fi fans ran for the hills when they saw it was going to be Grey’s-in-space, so it never took off. So, I asked Parriott about that.

“First of all, ABC literally bought the show three weeks before it aired. ABC, I think, in their own way, were trying to kill it. They had been planning to buy the show all summer long, so they had us on a hook. But they wouldn’t commit, wouldn’t commit, wouldn’t commit. While they weren’t committing, they were cutting trailers and were preparing to launch, but they weren’t telling anybody. And then they finally committed three weeks before launch.”

Essentially, the only people who saw the promos were the 1.5 million viewers through ABC’s summer schedule.

“[Having the Grey's Anatomy tag] probably hurt the show ultimately. But in terms of trying to sell the show, as sort of a quick pitch … for the buyers, it had to be ‘look, it’s a show in space, but it’s not a space show. This is a space show that’s going to attract women.’ That seemed to be the easiest thing to do. In fact, I don’t think we ever really coined the phrase that it’s Grey’s in space; someone had just said that and we said ‘OK.’”

So why wasn’t the show pitched instead to Syfy? Couldn’t the show have shined there and gotten the attention it needed and deserved? “You know, it could have. But we were always trying to create a network show and not a cable show. So if you go out and just say “we’re sci-fi,” the networks sort of balk at that. They want to know it’s bigger and the potential audience is broader than a sci-fi audience. However, when it became clear that ABC wasn’t going to give us a big summer launch and not be promoted as well as we wanted, I was encouraging the studio not to sell it and go to Syfy. And in fact they did go to them, but they did it too late and after we already aired two episodes. I said, ‘would you guys buy this if we pulled it from ABC and give it to you for free on rerun and buy us into a second season?’ But then you’ve already aired and you’re taking the wind out of Syfy’s sails, because they can’t promote it as ‘their’ show. And Mark Stern [Syfy Exec VP of Original Content] was very interested in it, but once it aired on ABC you lose your caché. And you’re done. But we could have survived on Syfy and done many seasons.

If it had been an ABC developed show, believe me, we would have been promoted and been put into a better time slot.”

Now, let’s get into the answers to some of the unanswered questions from the show. First of all, Parriott won’t yet reveal to me the ending of the show, as he’s still holding onto hopes that something will come out of left field and cause it to be revived again, in one for or another. If, in six months, the show doesn’t see the light of day again, then we may get our answer.

Let’s go over the characters Parriott and I discussed:

Nadia — She had quite the odd hallucinations, didn’t she? Who was that man she kept seeing, and why did he look so much like Nadia? As Parriott revealed to me, some fans of the show got it right in their guess that she was, in fact, a hermaphrodite when she was born. The choice was made for her when she was 11, by her parents, which sex she’d ultimately become. So that man we’re seeing is actually what Nadia would have been, had they chosen to raise her — or him — as a man.

Now, here’s the wild kicker. All those DNA changes that are happening with the crew, caused by Beta and the other artifacts? Well, they would eventually wind up causing Nadia to gradually turn into a man.

Parrriott also said that it was planned for Nadia to really have a more significant presence in season two. “If you see the way we wrote her, she sort of had that male sexuality about her, that ‘fuck ‘em and forget ‘em’ mentality. So we wanted to write her sort of as a male character in a female body.”

Donner & Zoe – Probably already guessed or assumed by many, but Donner’s reversed vasectomy was part of the DNA change brought upon by Beta. Eventually, toward the very end of the series, the true reason for that happening would be revealed, when Zoe becomes pregnant again on the trip. So yes, even Zoe’s hysterectomy would be “reversed” in order for that to happen.

“They were all going to be tested. The idea was that they all had points in their lives that, if they could do them all again, then they would have chosen a different path. Beta — the ‘fractal objects’ — were going to put them up against those same situations and stand them up to themselves again, give them a chance to make another decision.”

Wass — I asked what the Wassenfelder character’s significance was going to turn out to be, since, for the most part, he only seemed to serve as the comic relief for the show. “Dylan [Taylor] sort of has that different gear that we had to exploit, which is sort of that funny gear. And he had a relationship with Paula Garcés the first time we put them together, and we just though that was a relationship we have to mine. That wasn’t the initial plan, but Wass was going to have something like Pervasive Developmental Disorder [similar to Autism] and have a great fear of people touching him and having contact with other people. He was going to become a weirder guy. One reason I didn’t have hallucinations for him was because I didn’t have any for him worked out yet!”

Arnel Poe — “Yeah, people guessed pretty early on that it’s Arnel’s leg loss that gets Zoe back into the program. At the beginning of the second season, she’s going to be at home, has a job teaching college, she’s going to have another romance, she’s going to have washed her hands of the whole thing. Donner’s going to be going nuts. They’re going to be doing the survival training for the mission and Arnel was going to lose a leg, and Zoe would be called back.”

Jen — Was she mistakenly put on the mission? Why can’t she see the fractal objects? “No, she was correctly put on the mission. And she can’t see [the objects] because, if you look back at when she was in the isolation tanks, she has a fear of abandonment. Jen seems to always need a man, and she’s very needy that way because she was abandoned as a child. And what the fractal objects were doing was she was going to become extraordinarily lonely in season two, and the bunny was going to fuck up the ship and she was going to have to kill that bunny. That’s her thing she was going to have to overcome, that incredible loneliness.”

Eve — “In season two and season three, and leading into Mars, Eve was going to discover that the flashback she has of Mars, where Ted is yelling ‘go go go’, she’s going to realize that on top of his helmet there it says ‘Antares’ — so she was actually seeing the future. And she’s going to realize she has to go to Mars.”

Rollie — “Rollie was going to be in jail for his [driving incident] and have to be pulled out and take Eve [to Mars]. And they were going to go up in one of the resupply vessels to Mars.”

Goss — “Goss would not be the bad guy in the end. Goss would find out that he’s been being duped a little bit, and that it’s bigger than all of them.”

Beta and the other “fractal objects” — “I was never going to define what they were. I think that’s one of the themes about the whole show, is the theology of it. Is it God? Is it not God? Is it alien? What is the Universe? I do believe in a greater being, a greater thing, and this fractal thing is really an amazing thing. I was reading in The New Yorker how stock market swings follow Pi, the fractal equation. And that’s sort of a scary thing, that it just moves. You can plot the right dips and curves [of the market] that it does indeed move fractally, and that just blows me away. There’s just tons of stuff we don’t know.”

Other reveals:

• They would eventually get all of the fractal objects during the course of the show.
• Arnel, Trevor, Ajay and Claire would have been behind the “true” mission being revealed to the world, eventually. The three would be forced to work with Trevor in a sort-of underground initiative and ally with him when they see that he’s right in that something larger is being hidden. We would find out that Goss is hiding a larger agenda, and then there’s an even larger agenda that even Goss is unaware of.
• The state of the world — the planet Earth itself — would have been revealed. “We didn’t have the budget to do it the first season — it was struggle enough just to get the ship up and running and do the shows with the quality that we had. We were going to reveal the world at large and, y’know, it’s kinda a fucked up place.”
• On that note, I mentioned the scene where Wass says he “could sleep through World War IV,” and Parriott had no idea what I was talking about. He said he’d been through the shows “eight million times” and never remembered seeing that. When I told him the episode and scene (episode 11, Wass at the isolation chambers), he said it must have been another case of Dylan Taylor ad-libbing again, and he totally missed it.
• “There was horrific stuff we didn’t show that happened on Mars. Sharon and Walker had actually lived a couple of weeks in the habitat on the planet. Half of season three would probably have taken place on Mars or in orbit around Mars, but we hadn’t worked out fully what exactly they were going to find on Mars. But we did talk in the writers’ room about possibly having the two still alive when they arrived.”

Well, there you have it. As for the remaining episodes not shown yet in the U.S., Parriott tells me not to expect them on network television, though you will see them appear on Hulu and/or iTunes. The full set of episodes should arrive on Blu-ray next January.

I really want to thank Mr. Parriott for taking the time to talking to me and revealing so much of what many fans were wondering about this show. If only we’d get that sort of resolution with every other killed series. See me again next spring when I try to pry the show bible from Parriott’s hands to find out the rest of the details yet to be revealed.

Soweto student computer program founders on power shortage

Geoffrey York The Globe & Mail.

Soweto, South Africa — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 8:36PM EDT Last updated on Friday, Oct. 16, 2009 2:15AM EDT

In a dusty corner of a Soweto youth centre, a stack of laptop computers is sitting idle. For the dozens of kids playing soccer outside, the laptop revolution is, temporarily, stalled.

The computers were supposed to set the children free. Instead, on this day, they are gathering dust in a back room. A shortage of gas for the generator, a common occurrence in Soweto, has left the youth centre without any power or Internet connections. So the laptops are piled up on the floor to conserve their fading battery power.

It's an example of the daily realities that frustrate the dreams of an idealistic band of volunteers who have vowed to distribute laptops to millions of needy children in some of the world's poorest countries.

The project, known as One Laptop Per Child, is one of the most ambitious aid projects in the world. Yet its collisions with mundane obstacles are prompting many critics to predict failure. Some say it has proven too grandiose and utopian. “The dream is over,” one blogger scoffed recently.

The concept was simple and alluring. Provide a rugged $100 laptop to millions of children in developing countries who could never otherwise learn about computers. Revolutionize the education system by giving impoverished kids a free ride on the information superhighway. Make them computer literate and give them a boost into a high-tech labour market that would otherwise exclude them.

The dream was unveiled in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, the famed futurist and computer scientist who co-founded the MIT Media Lab. He predicted that up to 150 million of the low-cost laptops could be shipped annually to developing countries by the end of 2007. His vision was so entrancing that he quickly attracted $20-million in start-up investment, along with a host of sponsorships and partnerships from leading high-tech companies. Google and Nortel were among the early backers of the project.

When the first child-friendly XO laptops rolled off the factory line, many were impressed by the design. The cute green-and-white laptops were durable, rugged, and resistant to dirt and moisture. To save on power and avoid breakage, the laptops contained no motor-driven moving parts.

But problems cropped up almost immediately. Early ideas such as a human power source and a child-friendly operating system had to be abandoned. The laptop could not be produced for the target price of $100, and the cost was closer to $200 in the end, making them less attractive to the developing-world governments that were supposed to buy them and give them away to their students. Commercial rivals leaped in, including Intel, which created a $250 laptop, the Classmate, that some countries preferred.

Mr. Negroponte tapped into the early wave of excitement with a “Give one, get one” promotion, allowing enthusiasts to pay $399 for two laptops, one to keep and one to be given away to a developing country. The first year of the promotion was successful, but the second was a failure. By early 2009, only a few hundred thousand laptops had been given away to needy children. Corporate sponsors were fleeing, and Mr. Negroponte's non-profit organization was obliged to lay off half of its staff.

In many poor countries, a key problem is a lack of electricity and Internet connections. In some schools, the laptops were briefly played with, then stacked away in storerooms.

In Malawi, a volunteer teacher discovered a box of 15 brand-new XO laptops buried in a box in a supply room, never used. The $2,300 cost of the laptops could have paid the tuition for 23 students for a year, the teacher said.

In Ethiopia, some teachers banned the laptops from their classrooms because they were seen as toys that could distract the children from their studies. One official in the Ethiopian government, blogging anonymously, said the laptop project is a “vanity project” that would consume a “disastrous” proportion of the government's budget.

Critics complain that the laptop project has failed to commission any studies of whether the computers are actually helping children. Studies of other computers in schools in Colombia and Romania suggest that the computers had no impact on student performance – or even had a negative impact.

“Despite the instinctive appeal of distributing laptops to schoolchildren, there is precious little evidence that making computers available to children improves educational outcomes,” wrote Timothy Ogden, editor of Philanthropy in Action, a web journal for donors.

He argues that schoolchildren in developing countries would benefit more from cheap, simple programs such as mass de-worming, which would boost school attendance, even though this would be “nowhere near as sexy” as the stylish laptops.

Mr. Negroponte concedes that the laptop project has been “harder than I expected.” He blames other computer companies for undermining the project. But despite that, a million laptops have now been deployed in 31 countries around the world, and another million are on their way, he says. Three countries – Rwanda, Peru and Uruguay – have made large-scale commitments to the laptops. “The dream is not over,” he wrote in response to the blogger criticism.

At the Kliptown Youth Program in Soweto, donors have provided 250 laptops for the children. On a day when the generator is not working and the batteries are fading, the staff agree to let the children show off their laptops for a few minutes. Most of them quickly turn on the video cameras in the laptops.

“I feel happy about them,” said 15-year-old David Mangaliso, who had never used a computer until the laptops came along.

“They look nice. You can do maths on them, you can write or play games. And they have a camera, so we can see our faces on them.”

Aug. 25, 1991: Kid From Helsinki Foments Linux Revolution

From Wired.com, 24 August, 2009.

• By Randy Alfred

1991: Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old university student from Finland, writes a post to a user group asking for feedback on a little project he’s working on. He’s built a simple kernel for a Unix-like operating system that runs on an Intel 386 processor, and he wants to develop it further. The kernel eventually becomes Linux, which is released in 1994 and distributed over the internet for free.

Thousands of contributors began refining the Linux kernel and the operating system built on top of it. Linux went on to become, arguably, the biggest success story of the free-software movement, proving that the work of thousands of volunteers can create a piece of free software as powerful as one sold by any corporation.

In the early 1980s, the Unix operating system was already in widespread use throughout academia and businesses for both servers and workstations. It was being rapidly developed and deployed. Unix code could be made to run on hundreds of different types of computer hardware. This high level of portability was integral to its popularity.

But as it grew more complex, Unix (and its many Unix-like cousins) became increasingly saddled by licensing fees. Demand began to rise for a free operating system, something as powerful and flexible as Unix, that could be distributed and modified openly and freely without the encumbrance of commercial licenses.

To that end, Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, founded the GNU Project in 1984. Stallman and his collaborators began assembling the various pieces of a free operating system that would be compatible with Unix, strictly adhering to the idea that software should be not only be freely available, but also give its users the ability to freely experiment with its inner workings.

A few years later, the GNU team (the name is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix”) had created several of the building blocks of an OS, but a few of the key components, including a kernel — the master control program essential to an operating system — remained incomplete. The project was stalled.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds was a student at the University of Helsinki. He had written some software that would enable his new workstation, a PC powered by a 386 processor, to access the university’s Unix servers.

Torvalds’ simple terminal emulator was based on Minix, a Unix-like operating system that worked on many different computer hardware platforms and was widely used in academia as a teaching tool. Torvalds kept tinkering, and before long he had created a working operating system kernel.

Torvalds had borrowed none of Minix’s code, but he had adopted much of its architecture, including its file system. So, he enlisted hackers from the Minix community to help him flesh out his project.

On August 25, 1991, Torvalds posted a note to the comp.os.minix Usenet group titled, “What would you like to see most in minix?“:

Hello everybody out there using minix —

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-).

Linus (torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes — it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

In a follow-up post, Torvalds asserted that his operating system “probably won’t be able to do much more than minix, and much less in some respects,” and that it would be free “probably under gnu-license or similar.”

Unlike his initial announcement, Torvalds’ follow-up post contained no emoticons.

From these humble beginnings, a full operating system kernel would emerge. The first version was called Freax, a name chosen by Torvalds because it incorporated elements of “free” and “freak” — the “x” at the end is a common attribute of the names of many Unix-like systems. But when the source code files were posted to the FTP servers at the Helsinki University of Technology, the sysop renamed the kernel “Linux” in honor of its creator.

The first version of Linux, released in late 1991, was published with its own license. But since several pieces of GNU software were required to run the Linux kernel, Torvalds eventually relented and published Linux version 0.99 under the GNU Public License in December 1992. The change made Linux fully compatible with the rest of GNU’s software, and the GNU Project began integrating the kernel — the project’s biggest missing link — into its free operating system.

Linux 1.0, the first fully-baked version of the GNU Project’s operating system, was released in March of 1994. It was quickly ported to multiple platforms and was updated to include support for multiprocessor installations. By the late 1990s, Linux had grown into a major force in the server space, ending Unix’s dominance within corporations and becoming the biggest threat to Microsoft’s commercial-server-software business.

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group chartered with the task of promoting Linux and fostering its development, estimates the Linux ecosystem will reach the $50 billion mark by 2011, as the software continues to make inroads on PC desktops, netbooks, servers, mobile phones and embedded devices like TV set-top boxes, GPS units, and media players.

Now, the Linux kernel is kept up to date by thousands of programmers from around the world. Most of them are volunteer contributors or work under the sponsorship of corporations like IBM, HP and Intel. Torvalds himself is now sponsored by the Linux Foundation and continues to work on the Linux kernel full-time.

In other words, it’s no longer “just a hobby.”

Source: Various

Image: Linus Torvalds/GFDL. Permission of Martin Streicher, editor-in-chief, LinuxMag.com

Concert Review: Progressive Nation 2009 Tour, Burton Cummings Theatre, Winnipeg, MB, 16/8/09

As I suspected, Dream Theater opened with "A Nightmare To Remember," which has opened many of their shows on this tour as well as being the first track from their new album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings.

Dream Theater can be described as Rush meets Metallica — who sometimes meets Journey. As artsy and technical as they can be, some of their music is melodic balladry stuff that seems far removed from their biggest influence, Rush, and much closer to the corporate arena rock of Journey. Lead singer James LaBrie is not a screamer and really does sing well. Drummer and band organizer/ de facto leader Mike Portnoy works a huge drum kit, with two stools. Melodic shredding guitarist John Petrucci played flawlessly but, despite his prodigious amount of talent, doesn't seem to have his own sound unlike fellow guitar gods like Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. Of course, hardcore fans will disagree with me. Keyboardist Jordan Rudess is the other hero-worshipped virtuoso in the band. He played a couple of "instruments" that I had not even seen before. One looked like a really small laptop screen, in which he would draw his fingers on the screen, back and forth and up and down, resulting in some fast and spacey psychedelic sounds. The other instrument was a longer and wider flat panel in which he made similar actions and produced equally fascinating sounds. At one point, he dueled with guitarist Petrucci at the front of the stage, using a keytar.

While I was a bit familiar with the new album — having played it a handful of times so far — I found myself exhausted in trying to keep up with the complexity of the tunes, many of which were instrumentals. I actually thought James LaBrie would sing more than he did, but regardless, everything the group played was met with great applause. At times, LaBrie's vocals were drowned out by the sound. And while he sang really well, he didn't appear to break much of a sweat or look like he was pouring his heart into it.

At the end of the show, which finished at 12:10 am, Dream Theater made their way to the front of the stage to shake hands with the lucky few who were standing at the front. Apparently, security were only letting those sitting in the first row to stand up front. Given the number of people standing, though, I'd say it was more like the first three rows. Zappa Plays Zappa had also reached out to shake hands following their set, and Dweezil Zappa made a point of shaking hands with the very first person who left his seat for the front of the stage. It's always nice to see bands take a moment to acknowledge the fans, and there was plenty of that.

Not every band who plays the MTS Centre bothers to have big video screens so that the fans can get a great view from every seat. It's even less common to have them in the Burton Cummings Theater, but Dream Theater brought one which featured plenty of three-dimensional computer animation interspersed with live footage of the band. Some of the animation featured a cartoon version of keyboardist Rudess, complete with wizard hat, playing in unison and then even dueling together. When you consider that many of the fans in attendance are musicians and instrument fanatics, it made sense that there were close up shots of each member soloing on the big screen.

There's no doubt that Dream Theater's show will become the stuff of legend among the local community of their fans and progressive-rock fans who know of them (and I bet your average Rush fan doesn't have any DT music). The Zappa crowd was also treated to an abbreviated but dizzying display of music prowess. I do wonder, however, how long Zappa Plays Zappa can tour by playing only Frank's music. Dweezil Zappa is a composer and guitar virtuoso in his own right and I would like to see him play some of this solo material.

Dream Theater's setlist:

A Nightmare To Remember
Constant Motion
Beyond This Life
Hollow Years
Erotomania
Voices
The Count Of Tuscany
Encore:
Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle
The Sleeper

Concert Review: AC/DC, CanadInns Stadium, Winnipeg, MB, 8/22/09

I was as close to the stage as you could be, but the band still appeared as ants.

Thankfully, there were three giant video screens. The band's arrival on stage was preceded by short animated film of lead guitarist Angus Young and singer Brian Johnson on a train with some young, naughty women who attempt to cause it to crash — as well as several visual references to fellatio.

There were many people who, if you had to guess, didn't look anything like hard rock fans. In fact, the ordinary-looking folks greatly outnumbered the long-haired, headbanger ones.

AC/DC kicked off the show with the first single from their Black Ice album, "Rock 'N' Roll Train," which featured a smoke-belching locomotive on the stage's backdrop. Later on, the locomotive would spew flames. The band wasted no time in giving fans what they really wanted to hear, though — classic material — beginning with "Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be" and "Back In Black," both of which were every bit as powerful and spirited as you would expect from a band who relies heavily on signature tunes. Even still, it was a tad louder than I had hoped.

photo by David Lipnowski/ Winnipeg Free Press

Age-defying Angus Young strutted and ran around like he's always done while his brother, guitarist Malcolm Young along with bassist Cliff Williams, and drummer Phil Rudd stayed in the background, taking no solos. Both Angus and Johnson made good use of a catwalk that extended from the center of the stage to about the middle of the field, ending at the sound booth. At one point, Angus disappeared into the booth and then reappeared on its roof to much acclaim. When the platform that he was playing on rose nearly six feet into the air, the crowd went nuts. I probably spent most of the time watching the action on the videos screens, in order to take in every facial contortion and close-ups of Angus' fingers firing out endless blues rock riffs.

Johnson still has enormous stage presence though his vocals became a little bit worn out by the time they played "You Shook Me All Night Long." He still seemed quite fit, however, especially when he ran down the catwalk from the center of the field towards the stage, jumped into the air, and swung from the rope attached the giant bell that descended for "Hell's Bells."

AC/DC are exciting when they are playing songs that I want to hear and not so good when they are playing other stuff. They played five songs from the new album, most of which were not all that memorable. Several songs were accompanied by animated videos that made them a bit more bearable, however. "War Machine" doesn't do much for me, but the video of a red-horned WWII bomber dropping guitars and sexy paratroopers (who danced on tanks with a hulking, 100-ft tall metallic Angus lumbering in the background) was fun to watch.

Several Bon Scott-era songs were played. For "Whole Lot of Rosie," a massive, inflatable hooker with giant breasts appeared on the stage. During some of the songs, the video cameras would shift from the band to attractive women in the audience. Upon seeing themselves, some smiled while others jumped; and at least one looked away in shyness.

At the beginning of the evening's final song, "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)," twelve cannons appeared, six in the center and three on either side. (When I saw AC/DC back in the '80s, I seem to recall there being only one cannon.) They weren't as loud as I expected, but they did fire several times and produced a fair bit of smoke. This was the final song of the evening and the band stretched it out with Angus churning out solo after solo, tearing up the track with his perpetually full tank of gas.

As I was exiting, the fireworks began. There would be no "Big Balls," "Moneytalks," "Jailbreak" or "Who Made Who," but AC/DC more than delivered a larger-than-life concert spectacle.

Ireland's The Answer — fronted by a Robert Plant lookalike — performed a set of '70s-sounding hard rock, but I wasn't paying too much attention to them as I made way through the innards of the stadium while on the hunt for a t-shirt and a drink.

My rating for this show is 4/5.

Setlist:
1. Rock N' Roll Train
2. Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be
3. Back in Black
4. Big Jack
5. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
6. Shot Down in Flames
7. Thunderstruck
8. Black Ice
9. The Jack
10. Hells Bells
11. Shoot to Thrill
12. War Machine
13. Dog Eat Dog
14. Anything Goes
15. You Shook Me All Night Long
16. T.N.T.
17. Whole Lotta Rosie
18. Let There Be Rock
Encore:
19. Highway to Hell
20. For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

Concert Review: The Branford Marsalis Quartet, Pantages Theatre, 6/26/09, Winnipeg, MB

As far as I can remember, this was saxophonist Branford Marsalis' second time in Winnipeg, the first being in 1991 at the Concert Hall when he performed a tribute to the then recently deceased legendary band leader and drummer extraordinaire, Art Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990.) When Marsalis spoke to the audience at that show, he did so in a gravely voice, imitating Blakey, who also gave Marsalis one of his first starts in a band.

Eighteen years later, Marsalis returned to Winnipeg and has likely eclipsed his older brother Wynton as the biggest Marsalis name in jazz and by my estimation, is one of the top five biggest names in all of jazz. Hot on the heels of his just -released 24th recording, Metamorphosen, which also celebrates the Quartet's tenth year together without a line-up change, the band performed without long-time drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, who is busy promoting his own recent 2009 album, Watts.

The band opened the show with “The Return of the Jitney Man,” penned by Watts and moved to other tracks from the newest recording, including “The Blossom of Parting,” with Marsalis performing on soprano sax. Marsalis presented himself as being supremely confident and gracious, constantly smiling. I would describe his performance as being flawless and seemingly effortless. When he wasn't playing, he quietly sat on a stool at the back and watched the then trio take flight on their own, as he chugged bottled water. He clearly didn’t hog the spotlight.

Pianist Joey Calderazzo was an absolute fireball of a performer, shifting around on his stool as if he was ready to take off, and fingers either flying rapidly or quietly caressing the keyboard, depending on the tune. He has seven solo albums, spanning 1991 to 2007 and is one of the first artists signed to Branford's own label, Marsalis Music. And he swings like nobody's business. Needless to say, I'd see the trio that he leads in a heartbeat. I’m also going to track down some of his solo recordings.

His performance was matched by veteran and Grammy award-winning bassist Eric Revis and the newest member, 18-year old Justin Faulkner. While I had had expectations for Marsalis and his regulars to perform superbly, I wasn't sure how well Faulkner would fill in for Watts, one of the most amazing drummers in all of jazz. Without a doubt, Justin Faulkner displayed a stunning command of the drum kit. His intensity on some tunes was so sustained and muscular that I pretty much expected him to keel over and collapse. It was simply breathtaking to watch him hit the kit with such expertise, ferociousness and speed, and when called for, delicacy. I believe he has a very bright future, to say the least. Not surprisingly, the applause he earned was only second to that of band leader Marsalis'.

Eric Nevis' acoustic bass was also performed with the type of virtuosity that you would expect, but still marvel at. Nevis propelled the band with subtle or aggressive selection of the notes and congruent playing. He has one album as band leader and has been a sideman on many recordings from some of the brightest players in the jazz idiom.

I would go out on a limb and say that the stars of the evening were Calderazzo and Faulkner, as they truly surpassed my expectations.

The opening band, the Michelle Gregorie Quintet, consisted of local pianist Gregoire and some of the top players in the Canadian jazz scene, saxophonist Kirk McDonald, trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, bassist Jim Vivian and drummer Ted Warren. These are the same players who performed on Gregoire's much lauded debut CD, 2004's Reaching. Gregoire proved herself to be not just a fine pianist, at times beautifully tinkling the keys when not swinging, but also a formidable composer, as the performance included some of her originals that I wanted to hear again, that the audience responded well to.Drummer Ted Warren was not just there to keep time, but to also entertain in his own right, with his own unforgettable style, which was quite notable on some of the original Gregoire compositions. He doesn’t play it safe and always looks likes he's having a great time, with his constant grin. The duo of McDonald and Turcotte each took turns soloing and earning well deserved applause. When Turcotte blasted out notes on the trumpet, he seemed to have the entire room's attention.

I'm trying to order Gregoire's CD, which was sold out at my favorite local book store, but I've special ordered it. Her new CD is due out in the fall. At the end of the show, each member of the Marsalis band was supplanted and then replaced by a member of Gregoire's band, until the entire band had changed, save for Marsalis. First, it was Ted Warren plunking down a stool beside Justin Faulkner and working a single drum until he took over Faulkner's kit. Kirk McDonald then appeared, taking Branford's spot. Michelle Gregoire sidled up to Joey Calderazzo and in one smooth move, took over the keyboard as he deftly slid off. Finally, Eric Nevis gave us the bass to Jim Vivian. Seeing one band virtually replaced with another while the music kept on playing was a real treat and a sign of the type of gracious person Branford is. The move had audience members applauding wildly and breaking out ear to ear smiles.

The only low point in the evening came when some member of the audience shouted out “drummer boy,” in reference to drummer Justin Faulkner. Marsalis, not sure what to make of the remark, which could have been seen as insulting since “boy” has been used as an offence way to refer to a black men, quickly deflected the comment by having him and Faulkner perform the Christmas classic “Little Drummer Boy” to the delight of the audience. I’d like to think that jazz audiences are sophisticated enough to not utilize racial taunts in this day and age, so I took the comment as being a reference to Faulkner’s obvious boyish looks.

If you counted the Derek Trucks Band’s show three days earlier, this was actually the first big jazz concert in the 2009 Jazz Winnipeg Festival. Now in its twentieth year, the festival has consistently brought to Winnipeg many of the best artists in jazz, save for a few notable exceptions like Keith Jarrett and John McLaughlin.

My rating for this show is 5/5.

Concert Review: Buddy Guy, Pantages Theatre, 6/27/09, Winnipeg, MB

Blues guitar legend Buddy Guy (July 30, 1936) performed a raucous, rocking show at the Pantages Theatre for the 2009 Jazz Winnipeg Festival, displaying not only virtuosity on his guitar, but also a unusually strong rapport with the audience, who seemed like a bunch of old friends. One of the guys in front of me was so excited to be there that he kept on punching his friend in the shoulder, to release his pent up excitement.

Unlike the shy Derek Trucks who lets his guitar do the talking, Buddy Guy was constantly grinning and speaking to the audience between songs. He playfully chided the audience when he asked them how many had purchased his most recent recording, 2008's Skin Deep. He also lamented the fact that his kind of music tends to take a long time to sell, given the state of commercial radio. He spoke about his upbringing and how, as a kid, he didn't understand how tough it was for his parents to put food on the table when all they had to eat for supper was a boiled potato. When he refused the potato, his mother sent him to bed with a glass of water. His point was that, although things were tough at the moment, they could be much worse. This earned applause from the audience.

Guy's guitar sound was excellent and his playing was delicious and impeccable. He's long been known as a master of Chicago blues, but isn't limited to commanding one particular style. I had a sense that I was witnessing a bit of history in seeing one of the originators of Chicago electric blues.

The audience were clearly in the mood to participate in the show and Guy had them singing along to Skin Deep, and made the point that "...we're all the same underneath." He spoke about rap and hip-hop artists being able to say literally anything they wanted, while back in the old days, blues artists had to use more subtle approaches. He then performed some of these older songs with double-entendre lyrics to illustrate his point. In one song, he spoke about "...one leg was in the east, one leg was in the west. I went down in the middle TRYIN' to do my best," which had the audience positively howling. When he played "She's Nineteen Years Old," in which Guy stopped and playfully asked the audience to stop looking at him that way, as Muddy Waters wrote the song, not him. The audience cracked up again.

Ever the showman, and wanting to get closer to his fans, he walked down the stairs on the left side of the stage, leading to the audience in the front row. He stopped to allow a young child strum his guitar and then proceeded to walk up the aisle, to the back of the theatre, as audience members craned their necks to catch a better view. All this time, the music kept on playing. Cell and camera phones were heavily utilized as he was literally inches away from some people. He made his way to one of the lodges on the right side of the stage and might have been expecting to simply exit there to get back to the front row. He backtracked from there to the back of the theatre and then walked down the right side aisle. While there, a woman near the left side aisle yelled out "Other side," to get him to return.

It was a virtual love-in for Buddy Guy and his solid band. He offered to "...play all night, if you want me to," but alas, after Buddy's set, there was no encore. While Guy is one of a few artists who I’ve seen skip encores, the others being Sonny Rollins and Interpol, I totally felt like I had my money’s worth.

Many famous guitarists, from Jimi Hendrix, to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan, have praised Buddy Guy for his immense talent and he's also seen as a historic link between them and the tradition of electric Chicago blues. He's won five Grammy awards during his on-going recording career which began in 1965, in addition to countless other commendations, including being listed as one of Rolling Stone Magazine 100 greatest guitar players off all time, as well as having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 by Eric Clapton and B.B. King.

Canadian blues treasure Big Dave McLean opened the show with his band. He's been a performer for over 30 years and put on a no-frills show strong on blues vocals and guitar playing. He had a second guitarist with him who also performed a lot of excellent lead work. Big Dave has been one of the top bluesmen in Canada for a long time and even toured with Muddy Waters many years ago. He also performed his famous song, "Muddy Waters For President," which drew a lot of applause.

This was my first time seeing Buddy Guy, but I hope it won't be my last. My rating for this show is 5/5.

Minnedosa and Neepawa golf courses

On Friday, my foursome made the two-hour trek out to Minnedosa, teeing off around 8 am. We had heard good things about both Minnedosa and Neepawa's golf courses, but always seem to skip them in our weekly golf outing.

Minnedosa was fairly busy so I felt a bit rushed. Not having local knowledge, sometimes I ended up shooting the ball is less-desireable areas due to the many blind shots that I made. It's full of elevated tee boxes and greens that you would be wise to read from multiple angles in order to have a chance to read. The course design is such that it doesn't appear to be, say, 30 years old. It has a new-ish feel.

Neepawa is also full of elevated tee boxes, and some elevated greens, one very elevated. This course feels narrower and isn't as wide open as Minnedosa. Some the holes and overall scenery reminded me of Morden's Minnewasta course, one of my favorites. I'm pretty sure Neepawa was a 9-hole course that was expanded to 18, so some of the holes feel older, with smaller greens. We had sunny weather for Minnedosa and overcast skies for Neepawa, but we saw virtually no mosquitoes. The only annoyance were some black flies in Neepawa.

Overall, both are very challenging courses that we will add to our list of places to play once a year. If you're a golfer looking for some place to play outside of Winnipeg, try these courses. Definitely take power carts, otherwise you will struggle with the drastic changes in elevation.

Concert Review: The Derek Trucks Band - Pantages Theatre, Winnipeg, MB, 6/23/09

The last time the virtuoso guitarist and his band (formed in 1994) played Winnipeg, it was in a smaller venue with rush seating. I lined up for over an hour outside but I ended right at the front of the stage, in the centre, close enough to grab a set list at the end of the show. This time, however, the band performed in one of nicer places in town, the Pantages Theatre, a larger venue with assigned seats.

With no introduction, the unassuming baby-faced, pony-tailed Derek Trucks (June 8, 1979) strolled on stage, and began to fiddle with his red Gibson SG guitar, not stopping to survey the audience who were hooting and hollering with great anticipation. It wasn't until the third number that he spoke into a microphone and introduced the band members, doing so by simply mentioning their names and instruments, without hyperbole. For the most part, Trucks stood in one place, near the back, beside the drummer, and simply let his fingers do the talking.

At a Derek Trucks Band show, you're going to hear a variety of guitar playing, from subtle, subdued notes to fast and fiery intensity that borders on shredding and pretty much promises to erupt in flames.

Apart from a few different blues styles, sometimes performed with a slide, they also performed a tune with a sitar-inspired opening played on guitar, "I Know," from the new album, 2009s Already Free. It was among four tracks performed from the new album. I was really hoping to hear Indian flavored "Sahib Teri Bandi/Maki Madni," from the 2006 album Songlines but it wasn't played. It's one of his most recognizable songs and possibly the most exotic.

The highlight of the evening for me was "My Favorite Things," the well-known Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the film The Sound of Music. It began quietly, in a jazz style, and evolved into a stunning, sublime, 20-minute long jam, played in homage to jazz legend saxophonist John Coltrane, who also recorded the tune in a 1960 album of the same title. That performance alone was worth the price of admission and it had me wanting to hear more of Trucks perform jazz. Fortunately, he actually recorded a couple of jazz tracks on the 2008 McCoy Tyner album Guitars.

The band members were tight, with some of them having been around since the groups's beginning, which now spans half of Trucks' 30 years of age. Every step of the way, the band members kept up with Trucks’ creativity and flawless playing. Song after song features different sounds, with the group not willing to take it easy by settling into a single style. Trucks utilized just a few guitars, never posing or doing anything approximating showing off for the audience, save for his superlative playing. He plays without a pick and has the fortunate distinction of having his own sound, something cherished by all world-class guitar players, but possessed by so very few.

About half of the songs performed featured the band's brilliant blues-soul vocalist and contributing songwriter, Mike Mattison, who sports an unmistakable afro and looks not unlike a young Mohammed Ali. Mattison may not look like he's much past his twenties, but he sings like he's channeling great singers of the past and has his own band in Scrapomatic.

At the end of the show, the lead guitarist from the Weber Brothers, Sam Weber, the backing band for the opening act, Romi Mayes,was invited on stage to perform the encore number, "Get Out Of My Life Woman."

Trucks is one half of the lead guitar team in the Allman Brothers, the veteran southern rock band. Both he and guitarist Warren Haynes were cited as being among the top 100 guitarists in the world by Rolling Stone Magazine in 2003.

If you think the blues is the domain of septuagenarians, you really must take in a show by this exciting band. They literally tore the roof off of the building.

Set List:
Get What You Deserve
I Know
I Done Got Over
So Close, So Far Away
Down Don't Bother Me
Meet Me at the Bottom
I'll Find My Way
This Sky
Leaving Trunk
Sweet Inspiration
My Favourite Things
Key to the Highway
Encore:
Get Out My Life Woman

My rating for this show is 5/5.