Reminiscences with a very old friend...

After a LONG night at work (Went in for six hours to renovate some walls) last night, it was a welcome change to have Thanksgiving dinner with my friend of 12 years, Heath, and his new girlfriend Pam.

Last time I saw Heath was a year ago, when he came up to see Kow perform at Northern Harmony 2002.

It's nice to see things don't change much, as was evidenced by Heath yelling at me through the closed doors of the store.

After a delicious dinner, we sat on the couch, and talked.

I feel sorry for Pam, who had to sit through a crapload of "Ooooh! Remember when we did that thing with so-and-so?" and then Heath and I laughing our asses off, while trying to explain the story behind that gem of a joke.

And there were a lot of things that Heath brought up that I had totally forgot about, such as the "Mister Flat Five" solo I was gypped out of back in Grade 12, because my voice decided to take a long extended vacation.

Or the parody of Guys and Dolls' "More I Cannot Wish You" that Heath, Shauna and I wrote back in Grade 12.

(Story behind this: I was in a jazz choir back in high school, one that was probably in the top ten in Canada in terms of quality for a few years, anyway...

We had gone to the Rocky Mountain Music Festival held in Banff and had Phil Mattson (one of THE vocal jazz arrangers in the world today) listen to our performance.

He came in to our workshop afterwards, and said, "It's so nice to not have to deal with the usual things a vocal jazz group usually have problems with. There's nothing I can really fix with your performance. Let's just sit and talk."

So we were talking to PHIL MATTSON!!!! about vocal jazz. And we were just awestruck.

Here was a guy whose songs we memorized, whose arrangements were notoriously hard, but sounded SO beautiful when done correctly, saying that we didn't have to worry about anything to change during HIS arrangement, and just talked about how we felt about music. One of the best musical moments of my life.

The next year, we got a copy of a song he was arranging (More I Cannot Wish You) before it went to the publisher, just because he wanted us to be one of the first groups to perform it.)

I remember the song WE wrote went a little something like:

Velcro I will miss you, you can do such neato stuff
Like tie my shoes and keep my zipper up
Velcro I will miss you, for you're awesome, swell, no guff
My leggings won't ride up...

Afterwards, the three of us took a walk down Whyte Ave.

I get to see him tomorrow, before he goes back to Prince Albert. Whoo!

* * *

Kit, thanks for the invite to last night's dinner. If I weren't up to the elbows in Panasonic video wall parts, I would have been SO there.

ESPECIALLY if pumpkin pie was on the menu...