Ghost town stories

I'm getting increasingly worse at blogging! This is something that I do not like and hope to correct.

Really I have no excuse to not blog right now. I'm all settled in to my Toronto dorm, I'm working five days a week and at the end of each night I come home just to hang out in my room and watch hockey.


Needless to say, my social life is beyond enthralling right now.

Toronto is great though. It really is. I've quite enjoyed my first week and a bit here. I've been lucky enough to have a cousin living in town and she's been kind enough to show me around and have me for dinner.

Work is going great so far. While I've mostly been doing copy editing, I've got two stories that I'm just starting up on. Honestly, I'm surprised that I've already been given the reins on two stories but you won't hear me complaining.

The most difficult adjustment I have found myself dealing with is the absence of my iPod #firstworldproblems. For those of you out there that know me, you certainly know all too well that I don't so much as leave my bedroom without my iPod in tow.

Prior to heading east for Toronto, I shipped my iPod west to Vancouver, where it would then make its way south of the border to Palm Springs and further east and onward to Canada's Atlantic coast where it would embark on a cross-Canada road trip. Without me.

Having a musical void in my life was not nearly as easy a thing to deal with as I imagined it would be.

With no iPod to provide my mind with regular musical enjoyment, I turned to CBC Music. I have yet to be disappointed. Thankfully, the CBC Music archives contains a whack of music from some of my current favourite folk and rock acts, Arkells, audio/rocketry and The Rural Alberta Advantage.

I've even started to discover some new Canadian indie acts, which certainly isn't a bad thing.

It is getting late and I want to have a half decent sleep before work in the morning. Have I mentioned that I could totally get used to working a regular 9-5? Weird, I know. I realize that I have gotten extremely sick of the long and slow days in the classroom and my desire to work proves that. But after six full years of post-secondary, who wouldn't be ready to move on into the working world?

I rediscovered this great audio/rocketry track today while listening to CBC Music. Enjoy Ghost Town Stories from their 2010 album, Eastward + Onward.

Ghost Town Stories by audio/rocketry

Skeleton man play a song for the alive and the dead
Sing a song to bring us at ease amidst the unrest
Let it marvel our thoughts and rattle our bones
And give all the lonely drifters the feeling of a home

Sing a song for where they’ve been and now for where they are
Either on the shoulder of a road or a freighter flatbed car
They said good-bye to the old way. It’s deceased as far
As one knows it when they’re in plight from the family farm

They moved to the shanties and left a ghost behind
In the shacks and abandoned buildings that now hold an eerie shrine
Of a better time, a better day and better way of life
The hard stricken battle stole away their lifestyle

The town settled with the boom and emptied with the bust
Folks came with the wind and left with the dust
The golden-paved streets have been left to rust
And their forgotten stories are now left up to us

To share and to tell ‘cause a ghostly spirit is all that dwells
Skeleton man, bang those pots and pans
Set the tempo for the night's song and dance
Sing out the ballads of yesterday and we will join into
The welcoming melody of those familiar tunes

Because right here is where we belong
We are at home when we’re singing along
We’ll wrap ourselves under a blanket of comfort tonight
And keep it folded at side for every campsite

The long road that stretches ahead
Was given to us without alternative
You can call it a calling, you can call it fate
We didn’t question it until it was too late

Come around all you dreamers and freewheelers
And rustlers and buskers and drifting hobos
Come around all you gypsies and hippies
And wayward wanderers and honest folk and rogues

Come about the bonfire stones
And share your hard-up tale for you are not alone
Join your voice into the swelling chorus
And sing with the howling wolves in the forest

No, no, this ain’t a dead-end route
We’ll wake up with empty pockets but a company of wealth
Even though our compasses cast us off upon our separate ways
So long skeleton man until we meet again, I’ll keep on singing