Dear Dave Alexander,
I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know I really liked the play you wrote for the Fringe Festival this year. I laughed. I shouted. I felt up
the person to the right of me a fair bit and
the person to the left of me just a little.
You really captured the precarious situation Canadian musicians can find themselves facing in a world where failure to achieve popularity south of the border can leave them starving in the gutter playing ukelele ditties for quarters and half-eaten lunch-break sandwiches.
The plot reminded me of a song by
Guttermouth called "What If," which depicts an alternate history where
Fred Schneider, who later went on the front the hugely successful
B-52's auditioned to replace the recently deceased
Jim Morrison as lead singer of
The Doors.
Whoever was in charge of picking the music is to be commended, particularly for the inclusion of "Cripple Creek Ferry" at the end. It had Corwin and me singing along. Loudly. And we were the only ones.
And I was still singing it 24 hours later.
If intellectual property lawyers conspired with a computer virus and a crooked behavioural psychologist to remove from the world all music except "
Cripple Creek Ferry" by
Neil Young and "
Titanic Terrarium" by The
Tragically Hip I can honestly say the world would be a better place. I'd put them on infinite loop -- no,
shuffle -- and grin like an idiot for the rest of my life.
The portable audio player wars would be stopped dead, though, and the steady stream of collateral technological improvements that have spilled from their pitted battlefields into other sectors of industry and commerce would end with them.
You're a pretty cool guy, Dave.
Corwin's okay too.
--Regan
