On the Beat II is Odd Squad's all-star compilation CD
Bruce Springsteen was the first of many artist who agreed to contribute to a benefit CD produced by Odd Squad Productions. Initially contacted in February of 2008, Springsteen contributed a song and a licensing agreement was signed on June 11th 2008.
Odd Squad Productions have subsequently negotiated licensing agreements with several more socially conscious artists including The Barenaked Ladies, Colin James, Randy Bachman, Charlie Major, Barney Bentall, Jim Byrnes, 54:40, Paul Hyde and the New Odds. |
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 Featuring music recorded between 1980 and 2006, ON THE BEAT is a unique teaming of the Vancouver Police Dept's documentary filmmakers the Odd Squad, and some of Vancouver's most critically-acclaimed songwriters and musicians. Containing some previously unreleased tracks by these artists, the music features songs that spotlight a world that others might want to look away from and ignore--the hellish lifestyle of the drug addicted residents of the notorious downtown east side in Canada's poorest postal code.
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performed by Aaron Chapman
Through the mid to late 90's I was living in an apartment just down off the corner from Hastings & Abbott. I used to wake up on Christmas morning and walk down to the corner and hang out for awhile. The pawnshops were closed, but the junkies were still milling around, shuffling up and down the street.
While people across town in Kerrisdale or Ambleside might have had their familes around the fire, enjoying their Christmas mornings fit for a hallmark card--Hastings street was still busy with people stumbling around high or passed out with their head in their hands. It might have been just any other day, and Christmas sure seemed like it was a long way away--though you might hear somebody walking by slurring a Christmas carol. Another time I saw somebody in a Santa hat shooting up in the Abbott street alley.
One year I went down to the Union Gospel Mission that hosts a Christmas dinner for the poor. I purposefully wore an old overcoat and I hadn't shaved for a few days, so I just sort of blended in there. I was seated at a table with an old timer who used to be a logger who talked over dinner about Christmases with his wife who'd died, and that he'd been alone ever since. Across from us was a woman about my age had brought her young son who was just happy to have a decent meal for her son. There we were, a little family together for Christmas dinner.
I just sat and listened. I wanted to hear them talk and hear their stories, and I was honoured to sit and eat with them. When I left I dropped twenty bucks in the donation pot when nobody was looking. I didn't need the meal, I had money in my wallet. I knew I was really just visiting.
I always thought "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" was one of the saddest sounding Christmas carols I'd ever heard, and I'd had the idea for a couple of years to do this before guitarist Rod Bruno, my roommate on Abbott street and I worked out the arrangement. With Rod on guitar, the track also features friends Gene Hardy (Bourbon Tabernacle Choir) on baritone saxophone, Bryden Baird ( Feist/ Blue Rodeo's Bushwack Horns) on trumpet, and a good portion of it was recorded by Eugene Ripper in his living room, and by Jono Grant who helped adding the strings at Victory Drive studios in Toronto.
"Hastings Street Christmas" is also a tip of the hat to William Burroughs' "The Junky's Christmas" and the great Hal Wilner produced backing track done to Burroughs reading of that story, which Francis Coppola also produced into a short film.
--Aaron Chapman
www.aaronchapman.net |
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One of the finest Canadian rock albums of 2001 was "The Hidden World" by Vancouver's Copyright (occasionally remembered as Circle C). The whole album is rife with the subject matter of addiction and Copyright's witness to life in the downtown east side. The band consciously designed the album's opening half to replicate the early salad days of a drug romance. The second half is where reality kicks in, hard and unforgiving when the experimentation turns to deadly habit.
"It wasn't easy and I don't know how successful we've been," conceded Copyright vocalist Tom Anselmi at the time about making the album "It will be misinterpreted and probably condemned by some people. What we want to be is a challenging rock band. And writing about addiction is challenging. To me the whole idea of addiction is completely far-reaching through every aspect of our society. This is an obsessive-compulsive society that wants instant gratification. All of us sacrifice so much of ourselves -- our souls, if you want to use that word -- to be comfortable. I wanted to show what happens when you take that kind of compulsion to the nth degree."
An overlooked gem, the whole album is worth a listen and the title track of Copyrights album appears here on the ON THE BEAT compilation.
THE HIDDEN WORLD performed by Copyright
Down where its seamy and I get a little notion
To turn off and get dreamy with a magic potion
Now you can't see me because I'm showing no emotion
But if you want to be me
Its going to take some devotion
I've been living to bad effect
I've been driven a nervous wreck
But I've been given a place to rest
Down near death, down in the depths
of the hidden world
You've got to get on my level
in the hidden world
All you young daredevils
all you boys and girls
you've got to get on my level
down in the depths of the hidden world
Now you watch me stagger on to another stage
You know I get run ragged before I earn my wage
And like a hungry maggot you know like my meat
and like a careless faggot I don't care where I eat
I've been living to bad effect
've been driven a nervous wreck
But I've been given a place to rest
Down near death, down in the depths
of the hidden world
You've got to get on my level
in the hidden world
All you young daredevils
all you boys and girls
So come on to get on my level
In the hidden world
in the forbidden world, in the hidden world
You've got to get on my level
In the hidden world
All you young daredevils
Down in the depths, down where jesus wept
in the hidden world, you've got to get on my level
in the hidden world
All you young daredevils
all you boys and girls, you've got to get on my level
in the hidden world, the forbidden world
Down in the hidden world
Anselmi/Bourne/Marxen/Thor Valdson © SOCAN
Produced and recorded at Mushroom Studios
Courtesy Sony-BMG © 2001 BMG Music Canada
www.divineindustries.com
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Big Town is a song I wrote after reading about the realities of the drug problem on the downtown eastside through a series of articles right around the time Odd Squad productions was producing it's first documentry, "Through a Blue Lens" Inspired by the idea that I could help draw attention to the issues by writing a song about it, I approached Al Arsenault at a lecture he was giving and pitched a rough demo of Big Town.The intention was to collaborate with Odd Squad to make a video presentation to show school kids etc the magnitude of the problem and hopefully scare them from ever ending up there.The song was well recieved by Odd Squad members and tentative plans were made to use the song in some capacity.
Fast forward years later and I finally professionally recorded Big Town as a song on my CD "Pedestrian World". The song ( and CD ) was produced by talented up and coming Vancouver producer/musician Tony Mariott, who amazingly captured the mood of the song with haunting, epic string, guitar and vocal production. I am proud that Odd Squad has included Big Town to be included on this project and potentially others.
As a side note, since the song was written I have "lost" a nephew and more then a few high school friends to the dark side of the drug world. Lost though still living, they have disapeared into the Big Towns (which exist in many communities and not just the downtown eastside). Hopefully through the work of Odd Squad and many others we can shine a light on the realities of this problem and save others from it's grasp.
--Danny Davies
BIG TOWN performed by Danny Davies
Big Town another one lost in the Big Town another one's down
Big high they're all searching for that high
Big hopes swallowed in veins on the
Big streets of broken dreams
Big Town, this town has got a wound and it's bleeding
Sisters, Brothers are going down now
They're all living in desperation in the Big Town
East side the sun's going down on the
East side... the lights gone first
Dark night, brings the dark side at it's worst
Big numb, numbing all the pain all the
Big crimes... to do it again
Big Town everybody looks away
They're living in desperation trying to gain some ground
All those meaningless celebrations...in the Big Town
And the sirens ring out; it's a damned dark night
There's madness in the air
Then daylight breaks on the toll it takes...look around
Take a good look around... can you hear the sound?
Of the Big Town
Big town another one down...in the
Big town, another one's lost...in the
Big town, another one's down in the
Big town
© Danny Davies 2005 Dig Divine Music
www.digdivine.com
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