The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - gladness in the ruthless furnace

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Anna is a great writer and musician and a dear friend. Go and check out Anna's substack, gladness in the ruthless furnace: annafreer.substack.comI'm very proud to have Anna as part of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Cinematic Universe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.clom. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, look, you'll find a way. Catamaran Home! and I'm here to tell you about the new Google Pixel 9 powered by Gemini. Anyone who knows me knows the Pixel has always been my favorite out of all the phones I've ever had. Now, with Gemini built in, it's basically my personal AI assistant. Since I'm truly terrible at keeping up with emails,

I use Gemini to give me summaries of my inbox, which is a lifesaver. And if I'm feeling stuck creatively, I just ask Gemini for help, and bam! Instant inspiration. You can learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning.

Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. You know, this podcast has one purpose. I've been very clear about that. It's to buy a boat. It's to gather enough money for me to buy a boat. But we do that in positive ways where we can. And one of the positive things we're doing today is to shine a little light on a talented person, Anna Freer, close personal friend, excellent musician. She's originally an Adelaide person. She's gone off to Switzerland. I've been friends with Anna for many years.

She's the godmother of one of my children. And she's got this new sub-stack. It's called Gladness in the Ruthless Furnace. There's a link in the description. And every Monday, she has a... it's called Monday Music-ings. There's some funny punctuation. Every Monday, she's putting out a playlist of 10 songs. I've really been enjoying it. And indeed, I like to think I'm one of the reasons for it

because Anna's a great writer and I've hectic her to write something and she's settled on this is a good thing to do. So I am here today to promote that sub stack. I want people to go out, sign up to that sub stack. It's brought me a great deal of comfort knowing that these playlists are out there i have had real trouble finding new music the things that i used to go to for new music music magazines have created there's no one working at them anymore the old sources pitchfork.com it's no good it's gone very political

and just to have a thing coming out every Monday saying, here are 10 songs you might like to listen to. It's brought me a great deal of joy. I hope it brings you a great deal of joy too. There's a link to it below the Substack, anafria.substack.com. It's called Gladness in the Ruthless Furnace. Here is a conversation with anafria. The podcast starts now. Thank you.

I've come off the cigaretteos. I've come off the cigarettes recently. And I went to The Rest Is History and I saw Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. In Adelaide? In Adelaide, yeah. And I got to meet them

a little bit. But it was the end of a meet and greet and they were very tired and I didn't manage to say anything interesting. But anyway, afterwards I was on such a high that I borrowed a girl's vape

and i hit a vape and i think i must have had about eight i know it's not something i would ever usually do but then i was like afterwards i was like i'm out of control no more of this nonsense was it also disgusting or was it was it delicious or was it disgusting it was grape ice by recollection and um i've been in i was i've been a real sourpuss for a long time. Like two, three days. Post-vape. No good. But you know what has put me in a good mood? Is your new sub stack that we're here to talk about today.

What's it called? What's in it? I just want to know about the vape. Did it taste like Hubba Bubba? Does it taste like... You know what? I didn't find out the flavor beforehand. I had it blind.

But does it taste like chewing gum? It's just very sugary. Okay, anyway. And also like... It doesn't hurt. You can't drag in enough of it that it gives that very satisfying, almost eating-like quality when you have a cigarette.

That sharpness of passing down the windpipe feels substantive. It feels like chewing and swallowing. I don't think I've ever dragged down hard enough on a cigarette to have that feeling. I do remember one of our mutual friends was like, you don't inhale. You're wasting my cigarettes. Tell me about your sub stack.

My sub stack is very, got a great title. It's called Gladness in the Ruthless Furnace. Gladness in the Ruthless Furnace. From a great Jack Gilbert poem that is called A Brief for the Defence. It's very sad. The sub stack's not going to be very sad. Oh, but the Jack Gilbert poem has some hope in in it so maybe it is like the jack gilbert poem i'm sorry i'm not very good at interviews no it's the writing where you flourish the conversation and the interview to

promote it we're doing fine we're getting through you're gonna have to do so much editing no i won't have to do that much editing probably hardly any of these songs are new to you and probably hardly any of these songs are new to a lot of people because i didn't grow up listening to the popular music i didn't grow up listening to anything but classical music and so i mean as an aside i think a reason that you love this this list is because um there's always songs that you've recommended to me on it um and we'll talk about them in a second yeah but the thing that i am interested in and that i've become really interested in like in classical music in the last few years is how do we take things that people know that are not necessarily like new new out of the blue like all of these things but how do we place

them in like slightly different contexts so that then they take on some sort of a different life and I was thinking about it and I was especially thinking about it with a couple of the the pairings in this week's newsletter it's like they they have such fun connections to each other that I think it can become like a new experience for a listener. Even if you know, I mean, it was so funny when I called you the week and I was like, I'm going to put Cry, Cry, Cry by Johnny Cash. What a great song. And you were like, you don't know Cry, Cry, Cry by Johnny Cash? Well, I will start by saying,

so your dad and your mother are both quite heavily involved in classical music. You have like an extremely classical music family. You're the youngest of many siblings, all of whom who I have met, play classical music at a very high standard. When did you illicitly start getting into the pop stuff? I think it was um two big memories one is of my oh maybe you should edit this out but one is of my um dad discovering a cd of my brothers um putting it in the cd player that was at that time one of these really fancy cd players that opened from the front um listening to like five seconds of it or 10 seconds of it and then grabbing the front of the CD player, forcing it open

and was like, what are you listening to? And my brother, all I remember my brother being like was like, I just had that CD for the Cat Empire. Do you remember what it was? It was like ACDC or something and like it was like heavy metal. I don't know that your dad would have any particular problem with that story. He'd probably take it as like a bold action. Yeah.

And I also think, you know, I think having this many young children, I'm sure you can relate. It's a stressful time. And so, but also funny was that from that point on, whenever you would put a CD in our CD player and try to close it, it would be like... So it was like forever reminder. But I think, look, I think my siblings were listening to it.

I remember, like, I have vague snippets of, like, Ben Folds songs that my sisters would sing around and, like, my brother would... Like, my brother taught me the one Sufjan Stevens song about John Wayne Gacy Jr. Now what was the second memory? The second memory was when um my best friend's older sister gave me her old mp3 player and then I used to catch the bus to things and I used to listen to um I was like that was the big discovery and i i don't think i hid that i but i didn't i didn't i didn't advertise it but i don't think i hit what you was this how old were

you when this is happening oh um i reckon i was around 12 or 13 so like 20 wow i was like 10 years ago, but I'm not 23 anymore. So 2010 around. And on the bus, on the H30, listening to I Discovered Arctic Monkeys. A great bus. Yeah, such a good bus. Turns left once you get up to the end of the parade. Carrara? No, it doesn't go down the parade.

It goes down McGill. No. You're thinking the H20. You're thinking the H20. Oh, excuse me. Well, it used to be the 123. I don't even know what's going on anymore. This used to be the 104. What was on there?

What was on the MP3 player? Arctic Monkeys. Yep. Blue October. Yeah. Regina Spector. Very of a time Who else?

I really remember the Arctic Monkeys a lot And just that one album That he's smoking the cigarette It is a great album And I don't like anything else as much as that album Oh Infinity Base, Hotel and Casino It's a good track

Yeah the album I don't make track. Yeah, the album. I don't make it through any of the album. The album. Or the subsequent album. This is a weird time for me to be recommending something with music because I have never been so criticised for my music taste as I am right now. By who? I put up a video on Instagram about...

And the joke is Europeans don't write good pop songs anymore. They don't. And, but the, I mean the longer bit, well, the longer bit was about, they used to do classical music really well.

And they just aren't that many English composers in the classical, you know, in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries to compare. And so it was like, and I was like, Oh,

why does this happen anyway? But I just left in the bit going, why can't the Europeans write a good pop song i it has now had uh almost two million views on instagram and hundreds and hundreds of comments every time i look at my phone it's uh brutal brutal comments from europeans about my music taste. Here's the thing, they think, because they like, I don't think you should take those too seriously, because these are the people that think they're sending the best to Eurovision.

Some of them have said, actually we're not. We don't take it seriously either. Maybe they're all from Iceland, which are the only people that sent the good ones. They are all from Iceland, which are the only people that sent the good ones. Well, they are all from Sweden. Oh, come on.

So I've gone viral with Swedes going, every pop song that's any good has been written by a Swede. Use the Wikipedia. There is actually, there's one good pop song called Heard Somebody Whistle by J.J. Johnson. But you don't think he's a Swede because it's just spelled J-A-Y, J-A-Y. But actually, if you go on his Spotify, it's J-A-Y Johnson. I'll look it up.

Heard Somebody Whistle. And then I did, I also, I mean, it's a joke. First thing I'd like to say, my thing's a joke. But the cardigans are Swedes. I mentioned ABBA. ABBA are Swedes. Max Martin, I think is his name. The songwriter, he's just written everybody.

He wrote Hit Me Baby One More Time and 20 other songs. He's a Swede. There are a lot of Swedes. Okay, Swedes? You got one thing. You got the one good, But it's not enough. You know? It's not enough to save the whole European Union.

I'll say this. It doesn't... Well, it doesn't even... I don't think Sweden is even competing per capita compared to... You know? Like, if it was, like, Sweden versus Florida. I bet you Florida's having more good pop songs than Sweden. Isn't it funny that, like england sent their one random guy

and he did they win that year the spaceman no they came second because the ukraine won excuse me ukraine don't use the definite article that's very un-pc ukraine won but then of course they couldn't have eurovision in ukraine because the unpleasantness. Yes. But that was such a good song. Spaceman is such a good song. I'm a spaceman. You don't put that in. I'm meant to be a musician. Anna Freer there.

Gladness in the Ruthless Furnace. It's available on Substack. I've popped a link below. I guess below doesn't really make sense in a podcast. Unlikely if you were in a YouTube video, you say below. It's below the video. But this is just around. The sound does not exist really on the same plane as the visual medium.

Hey, it's been a dreadful week. Dreadful week for Jimmy. Dreadful week. I'm just churning through the visa stuff, cannot wait to, whoo, cannot wait to get to America, very sad about leaving Adelaide, having lots of feelings, just getting through it, eating a lot of cheese, having a lot of wine, having a bottle of wine every night at the moment, that has to come to an end. That absolutely has to come to an end. I can't live like that anymore. But I will be living like that for a few more days. There's a lot of forms to

fill out and how much suffering am I meant to go through? If I'm not smoking, I'll be drinking. And it's important for me not to smoke because if I get to America and the price of cigarettes are like $4 a pack or something, I'll go crazy crazy i've got to have a very strong no smoking regimen now before i go because here okay you have one or two and then you have a bad you know week getting back to normal and then you don't have one for months and months which is you know that's okay because it's so expensive to get back into it but in in America, boy, so cheap, really affordable cigarettes, and nice cigarettes too, American spirit, yum, filter free, hello, rolled for ya, that's what I'm talking about, anyway, so I can't, I endeavour, I want to live, I want to live

and I want to be strong and I want to be capable. So there will not be smoking in America. Certainly won't be vaping. Absolutely repulsive. I wish I had never admitted to that publicly. But, I mean, I could just stop the episode coming out. But I did it. I'm open to it. I'm sorry.

I hereby apologise. There will be no inhalation of any nicotine-type products moving forward. Leaving the door open to have those little pockets, those pouches that go on the gum, the snus. I'm not going to have that either. Nicotine's so wonderful. I'm not going to have it. We're going to get to the end of this process.

I love you. I miss you. This is the penultimate episode. There's a thank you goodbye episode coming out very soon. Catamaran Ho, everybody. Keep it real. Ciao for now. Bye-bye. This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant.

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