Grant Lawrence in front of the Beach Park: "resort living all year round!"

It was my home for twelve years.

Last week, I signed the papers over to the new owner of my much-loved apartment on Beach Avenue, in the English Bay neighbourhood of Vancouver. The last building before Stanley Park. So ends the era of my great rock ‘n’ roll apartment.

When I first moved in, I was the complete anomaly at the Beach Park, a 1958 mid-rise building that had mostly maintained its original art deco designs. Many of the residents were original owners and senior citizens, several of them in their 80s and 90s, one even over 100 years old. For the first few years I lived at the Beach Park, when any of them met me in the hall, they thought I was either the pizza guy or a home invader.

When I first moved in, I was the youngest host on the entire CBC Radio 2 network. By bizarre coincidence, my next door neighbour was the oldest host on the entire CBC Radio 2 network: broadcasting legend Otto Lowy. We lived side by side until his death.

Back then, my band the Smugglers was still a touring machine. Wherever we’d tour, we’d often crash at fellow musicians’ homes, so I tried to return the favour when bands rolled through Vancouver.

Hence, American touring musicians like Ted Leo, the Groovie Ghoulies, and the White Stripes all stayed on the couch or on the floor of my apartment at the beach.

New Jersey mod pop great Ted Leo.

It took me under 30 seconds to walk from my front door to the best ocean swimming spot in Vancouver: Bikini Beach, historically named because when bikinis first came into vogue in the 1950s and early 60s, they were outlawed on Vancouver beaches as being too risque for teenage girls. The cool girls who wanted to wear bikinis anyway found this secret, sandy haven, hidden from the lifeguards, nestled in between English Bay Beach and Second Beach, at the very entrance of Stanley Park.

I swam at this beach thousands of times over the past decade, almost always between May 1 and October 1 (though in 2012, the latest I was in the ocean was Thanksgiving, during a particular warm spell).

Every year for eleven years I hosted a Winter Solstice / Christmas party, packing the tiny 700 square foot space with as many friends and members of the local music community and members of my hockey team as I could.

David Vertesi and Hannah Georgas perform at a Xmas party. Photo by Christine McAvoy.

I am a great lover of live music, so over those years, I am extremely thankful to have had many musicians perform acoustically beside the Christmas tree in the living room, including: Said the Whale, the Matinee, Treelines, David Vertesi and Hannah Georgas, Cuff the Duke, the Choir Practice, Backpack Yoda, the Gay Straights, Reid Jamieson, and Dan Mangan.

A rare gig for Ween-like hipster duo Backpack Yoda. Photo by Christine McAvoy.

Dan Mangan’s early living room performance of “Robots” has become so legendary it even got written up in SPIN Magazine.

Nardwuar crowd surfed the living room.

In 2008, things changed radically in the little Beach Avenue apartment when my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Jill Barber moved across the country from Halifax to finally put a firm feminine touch on what I had always considered to be the perfect bachelor pad. (Speaking of pads, I used to dry my goalie pads in the oven before Jill moved in).

Jill eventually renovated, overhauling the original 1950s faded pink bathroom and linoleum-centric kitchen. She also got rid of a lot of my decrepit furniture, much of which was passed down from my grandparents, and much of which dated back to the 1930s when they immigrated from Scotland. Their old bed we shared for months was so tiny we nicknamed it “The Scottish Squeeze”.

Jill is a singer-songwriter, and so began a whole new era of Canadian singer-songwriters either sleeping over on tour stops or just coming by for dinner, including Joel Plaskett, Sarah Harmer, Rose Cousins, David Myles, Old Man Luedecke, Jeremy Fisher, In-Flight Safety, Jill’s brother Matthew Barber, and the entire staff and touring crew of the Vinyl Cafe.

If my elderly neighbours ever knew that the legendary Canadian raconteur Stuart McLean was in our building, it would have started a riot, like a cross between Cocoon and A Hard Day’s Night.

Our last great dinner at the little Beach Avenue apartment was hosting kayaking Olympic superhero Adam VanKoeverden and Canadian freestyle skiing Olympic hopeful Roz Groenewoud.

Adam VanKoeverden and Jill Barber.

And so that’s it for the little Beach Avenue abode. No more walking across the street for a swim after work, no more cycling the seawall to the CBC, or shooting a round of beer-golf at the pitch and putt. And no more parties.

Jill and I have now begun a new, much more laid back chapter of life in East Vancouver, but I will never forget that fabulous decade at the Beach Park, the last building before Stanley Park, in the little rock ‘n’ roll apartment.

Jill and Grant at the final Xmas party at the Beach Park. Photo by C. McAvoy.

Thanks to Christine McAvoy for the great photos!

Sure, the art direction is awesome, but...

First things first: I am a HUGE fan of western movies. They are, by far, my favourite film genre, and I’ve seen ’em all. I am also a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino. I’ve seen all of his movies too, but was left disappointed after seeing Django Unchained.

Tarantino’s western is far too long, which causes it to repeatedly lose its tension, diluting Tarantino’s rage-fuelled social commentary. There are too many cartoonish villains to care about any single one, and three too many confusing climaxes. I also found the film’s body count gratuitously bloody, and pointlessly high.

Seriously, I know westerns are inherently violent, so are Tarantino films, it’s the perfect blood storm, I get it, but in these immediate times of real life horrific gun violence, do we really need to watch outrageous, prolonged blood baths as entertainment?

If Tarantino wanted to make the first honest film about American slavery, why does the film digress into Django’s victims becoming a staggering parade of faceless video-game-esque hillbillies piling up in a crimson, soaking heap… what’s the point? Make me care about who you’re shooting down, Django!

That brings me to this list… five westerns I think are better than Django Unchained based on story alone.

1. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). My all-time favourite western and Clint Eastwood movie, about a Missouri farmer whose family and farm is destroyed by marauding Union soldiers at the end of the Civil War. So begins Wales’ long journey of being both the hunter and the hunted, slowly gathering an amazing and unlikely ensemble cast of supporting characters, including an Oscar-nominated, hilarious and profound performance by Chief Dan George.

2. True Grit (1969). This was the movie that finally won the aging legend John Wayne his Oscar. An outstanding adventure set against the backdrop of Colorado, this movie focusses on a young, extremely headstrong girl who is bent on bringing her father’s killer to justice. To do it, she enlists the help of the awesomely cantankerous US Marshall Rooster Cogburn. The film is worth it for the climatic gunfight on horseback in the open field, when Rooster Cogburn shouts out at outlaw Ned Pepper (a very nasty Robert Duvall) “fill your hands, you son of a bitch!”

3. Deadwood (2004 – 2006). Yeah, it’s a TV show, but there is arguably more historical fact and realism in the first ten minutes of this brilliant series set in the ill-fated town in the Badlands of South Dakota than there is in the entirety Django Unchained. Characters Al Swearengen, Sol Star, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock, and many others were all real people, c*ck s*cker!

4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). A classic John Ford western about the early attempts to civilize the west, featuring the acting trifecta of Jimmy Stewart (the shaky new lawyer in town), John Wayne (the larger than life good guy), and Lee Marvin (the evil Liberty Valance, armed with both six-guns and a bull whip). Contains the classic line “This is the West. When legend becomes fact, print the legend”.

5. Unforgiven (1992). A gothic western of pathos, regret, guilt, and deliverance. When a hooker is disfigured in a remote frontier town and the sheriff (Gene Hackman) refuses to act, a bounty is put forth, attracting all manner of gunslinger, including the previously retired, ailing, alcoholic William Munny (Clint Eastwood).

Honourable mention: High Noon (1952), 3:10 To Yuma (2007), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), The Searchers (1956), Winchester ’73 (1950), Shane (1953).

Let me know what you think. Have at ‘er in the comments section below. What is your favourite western? Did you love / like / loathe Django Unchained?

It sucks.

Just about a year ago, I was very excited and honoured to announce my signing of a two-book deal with D+M, Canada’s largest independent publisher.

A lot has changed in eleven months.

On the weekend of Oct 19 / 20 / 21, I took part in the Vancouver International Writers Festival. D+M apparently usually throws a big party at the festival, but it was abruptly cancelled. Rumours began to swirl. I began to sweat.

Sure enough, on the evening of Monday October 22 immediately following the festival, myself and all the other authors working with D+M and Greystone Publishing received a cryptic blind carbon copied email with the news that D+M Publishing was filing for bankruptcy protection effective immediately. I was stunned.

Within an hour of receiving the email, some of the affected authors were discussing it on Twitter. There was talk of tequila. Within three hours, there was an article on Quill and Quire with most of the details contained in the email.

Ever since, I have been asked questions as to what this means for the two books that I have been *cough* diligently working on. Here’s what I’ve been instructed to do by my literary agent: keep writing and hope for the best.

The rough plan was for my first book to be published in the fall of 2013, but since D+M has currently suspended their 2013 production schedule, that obviously means that release date is up in the air.

Here’s the bottom line: I’ll be fine. My books will come out somewhere. On D+M if it can pull through, or on a different publisher.

My first book, Adventures in Solitude, is not affected, as it was published by Harbour Publishing, which is not affiliated with D+M.

I truly feel for D+M’s published authors like Carmen Aguirre and Charlotte Gill, who are owed various amounts of money and are under threat of not seeing it unless there is a miraculous intervention from a new buyer, which remains to be seen.

I’m frightened for Canadian arts and culture when the largest independent Canadian publisher, which in the last few years has featured titles that have won multiple national awards, can’t survive.

I also feel terrible for the staff of D+M, some of whom have been laid off, while others go through a daily grind of uncertainy trying to work through all of this.

In the meantime, I’ve been sharing new stories both on DNTO on CBC Radio and at a various live story telling events in Vancouver like the Vancouver Writers Fest, Rain City Chronicles and The Flame. I’ve been flattered by the response and can’t wait to get the stories into the printed form. Somewhere.

Thanks for your support, and good luck to D+M Publishing and to the Canadian publishing industry.

And hey, try give the gift of the written word this season, and try and buy a book from your neighbourhood independent bookseller. And check out A Good Book Drive.

Thanks for your support,

Grant

ADDENDUM as of Nov 21, 2012.