2005-07-19 - 12:22 a.m.
What I'm listening to: Paranoid-Black Sabbath on vinyl-original green label Warner pressing, I might add.
This still sounds great 35 years later with all the pops and scratches. To my knowledge Black Sabbath started out as a blues band in the 1960s, and then when 'Paranoid' was released in 1970, they became 'heavy metal'. I can't help but think of a marginalized suburban narrative when I hear this music. It's the same feeling when I listen to old 'Rush' records (pre-'Moving Pictures'), when you could still 'feel' their suburban Scarborough roots in the music.
I remember hearing a story once that when Neil Peart joined the band, they would jam in I think Geddy Lee's basement and pretended that they were 'Cream', and ad lib 30min versions of 'Spoonful'. I wonder if there are any bootleg tapes of those sessions. They would be great to hear, as Rush as they knew themselves then were just budding into a Canadian supergroup.
I also conjure up mental images of the journey towards those jam sessions. Three long-hairs in the mid-1970s suburban Toronto. They likely lived in the same neighbourhood with a high school as focal point. The houses they lived in were possibly those red brick split level bungalows built in the late 1950s early 1960s.
I've never been to Lakeside Park in Toronto, but I believe that Rush wrote a song about that place. I think it's in Scarborough. Being eastenders, it would make sense.
One of my credos when it comes to photography is to never think that it's all been done before, or that a specific theme or subject has been done to death. This line of thinking stifles the creative process. The photographer will always bring their own eye to gaze upon the new subject, and give the subject their own personal signature.
Of course the metro here in Montreal has been photographed to death. But, I decided to explore it last January when I had a metro pass and it was way too cold to shoot outside. I'm glad I went at night, because I prefer empty public spaces when it comes to photography, because the negative space is way more powerful than images of people making up the ambient noise.
It was also an excuse for me to explore the city more. Photography is usually more of an inward journey rather than an outward quest.
This post is actually my first experience with operating a digital archive. I've never pulled a file up from the past to post in the present, but have usually in the past engaged in a form of technological translation, when I would scan a film image from the distant past to a digital file in the present.
I've always liked the St. Henri Metro station, for this view especially:
More to follow...
