30 Sep On hold at the legislature: Playlist
Tuesday afternoon, Herald political reporter Michael Gorham’s Twitter feed alerted me to Gordie Gosse’s impassioned plea for fellow MLAs to talk to the union members protesting outside the legislature, to just hear them out; his pointed recollection of the courage former Liberal MP (and later, premier) Russell MacLellan showed during a union demonstration in the late 1990s, when he twice ignored security and plunged into a menacing crowd of enraged coal miners steelworkers* to face their complaints; his grateful tribute to the health workers who cared for him during his recent battle with throat cancer.
Alas, by the time I tuned in to Legislature’s live feed, Gosse had finished speaking, and House Leader Michelle Samson had moved second reading of Bill 1, the government’s plan to merge nine regional health boards into one, and reduce collective bargaining units from 50 to four. That set legislative bells ringing for an hour, calling members to the roll-call vote requested by the NDP, and put the live feed on hold.
And what is hold without hold music, in this case, an ear-catching bit of modern jazz?
“What could that be?” I wondered.
The Shazam app on my iPhone had the answer: the guitarist Joe Pass & Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, playing ‘Tricrotism.'” This was followed by Duke Ellington, then a moody interpretation of J. S. Bach, and a calming, Celtic flavoured instrumental.
Who programs this legislative mix-tape? I wondered. A Twitter interlocutor suggested it was Muzak, but it sounded way too sophisticated for that. I still don’t know who was spinning the tunes, but I did make it my business to record the playlist that followed. I reproduce it below, for the record:
Joe Pass & Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen: “Tricrotism”
Duke Ellington: “Stompy Jones”
Steve Erquiaga: “Prelude in C-Minor for the Well-Tempered Clavier” (J.S. Bach)
Flook: “Granny in the Attic”
Jean-Pierre Rampal: “Flute Quartet in D major, K.285” (W.A. Mozart)
Bill Evans: “Blue Monk”
Joshua Bell: “Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major” (W.A. Mozart)
Chet Baker: “These Foolish Things”
Oscar Peterson: “Harcourt Nights”
Taliesin Orchestra “Excerpts from the Moon”
Skolvan: “Bal Plinn Du Vertige“
Who knew?
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* Or was it steelworkers? Both groups got bad news from the Liberal government in the late 1990s. A Contrarian reader will surely recall which. [UPDATE] I’m going to go with the recollection of Gordie Gosse, who was there: it was steelworkers (although I believe the event took place when MacLellan was still an MP, before he became premier).