Random Access

Two hours never went by so fast.
Last night's CBC documentary on the Canadian music scene in the 1960s, called Shakin' All Over, is the best thing I've seen on TV in a long time.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one of my generation with the irresistible urge to rush downstairs the minute it finished and rifle through albums that have been gathering dust for years and slap them on the turntable.
Probably start by playing Ian and Sylvia's Great Speckled Bird, with Amos Garrett on guitar, which the program rightly credited as a launching pad for the country-rock or alt-country movement that was already gaining momentum to the south, after Gram Parsons' short sojourn with The Byrds.
The show featured a little piece of the Speckled Bird singing "Smilin Wine," one of many snippets of artists old and new paying homage to the roots of so much of today's music.
Scripted by Nicholas Jennings and based on his book Before The Gold Rush: Flashbacks To The Canadian Sound (betcha that's going to sell some more copies now), Shakin' All Over touched down briefly across the country in the various cities that developed their own unique scenes in splendid isolation from each other. That's something no longer possible in today's environment where no group emerges fully-formed because they're "discovered" after their second rehearsal.
What I really liked about the show is that it didn't play favourites. It wasn't skewed to the ones who made it big, although Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and The Band got their due.
There was equal time for those whom fortune or fad denied mega-status for some reason: Luke Gibson (Luke and the Apostles), Robbie Lane who still plays in Mississauga all the time, Gene MacLellan, the superb songwriter David Wiffen (More Often Than Not, Drivin' Wheel) and the Paupers, who featured Mississauga's Skip Prokop who went on to a lot more fame with Lighthouse.
The Paupers' first album had a song on it called Southdown Road named for you-know-what. (There's your requisite local content).
What shone through all of the interviews with musicians was that sense of wonder and admiration they had for each other.
Colin Linden talked about trying to figure out how Robbie Robertson got that sound, honed in years of playing in Yonge St. bars, a sound no one else could duplicate.
Ron Sexsmith and Diana Krall didn't have to say anything. They just performed loving treatments of If You Could Read My Mind and A Case of You to pay ultimate tribute to their feelings for Lightfoot and Mitchell.
Sarah Slean talked about a transforming moment for her, and for lots of other people, when Joni Mitchell sings about drawing, "a map of Canada - oh Canada - with your face sketched on it twice" on her cocktail napkin.
It was a watershed moment for Slean because it was a realization that her personal experience and her own songs, could have universal appeal.
What an especial pleasure it was to see and hear the late guitarist Dominic Troiano (Rogues, Mandala, Bush, James Gang, Guess Who) talk about the music.
It brought back long-ago memories of smoky bars, Prakash John on bass and Troiano wearing a funny hat and playing a ferocious lead solo that you never wanted to end.
Let's hope there's going to be a sequel.