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The View from Green Island GI Central - my 'net home' for several years, more or less hibernating for the last few years, but like any growly bear apt to wake up hungry and grumpy at any time, ready to engage whatever needs engaging - lots of venting, lots of good writing, lots of 'out-of-the-box' ideas you aren't EVER going to hear on the CBC (not for people who get triggered by intelligent ideas or certain words not allowed on the said CBC...) The Democratic Revolution Handbook by Dave Patterson
And a book for younger readers too, Dave's an eclectic sort of person - Aquila 
These and Dave's other books can be found at Dave's Smashwords EPUBS page - and for the curious, if anyone cares, a few words on From Hastings to Green Island - the (very) short form story of Dave's own journey.. Knowledge is like a candle. When you light your candle from mine, my light is not diminished. It is enhanced and a larger room is enlightened as a consequence. - Thomas Jefferson |
Music has always been an important part of my life. My mother was an excellent pianist who loved music, and my own musical love and talent must have come from her. She made me take piano lessons for a few years when I was in public school, which I thoroughly hated but managed to do ok at, but from the time I was 8 or 9 years old I was listening to the pop music of the time - late 50s, so performers like Dion (I remember being particularly fond of a Dion song called The Wanderer, somewhat precognitive perhaps) and Elvis - and I have memories of standing on the dining room table with a hairbrush in my hand as a mic singing (belting out really) along with records pretending I was the great pop music star. My early puberty-adolescent years came along just as the Beatles did, and something went 'bang' in my brain (lot of things were going 'bang' in my brain around that time, actually, some would no doubt somewhat uncharitably comment 'permanent damage resulting') and I was an instant and lifelong Beatles fan - I'd found my gods, and wanted to be like them. The musical background from the piano lesson days was very helpful then, as after trying the drums for awhile I moved on to guitar lessons, and became a decent player after a year or two of many hours of practice every day, and also got back into the piano, with the considerable advantage of knowing how to read music and etc from the earlier then-hated lessons (thanks Mom!!). And was soon writing songs as well - pretty uninspired stuff by and large, that's the nature of learning curves, but I still remember the odd one -
Cause We're in Love - my first 'true' love, or 'truest to date' or something, I'd had a couple of summer girlfriends {'handholding' stage sort of thing, then learning kissing with Agnes, that was a good summer, at least with Agnes, my mother decided no girls were good enough for me and a certain war got underway that was to last a few years, complicating everything else..) as I was getting 'to the age', 11-12-13-14, like that, vacationers at my home town of Hastings on the beautiful Trent River where many people came for the summer, but Kathy was 'my first love' - looking back of course just a 'puppy love', but it felt real enough, not the place to get into extended psychological analyses of puppy love or the largish number of stupid things I was doing with the non-music part of my life as I sorted out the world I had been brought into - I was writing massive amounts of simple 4-line verse for Kathy, and somewhere this very simple song came along -
 - we'll be hearing a bit more about Kathy towards the end of this little history, but for now - My mother was from Newfoundland, 'Newfy' as she usually called it, a place with a wonderful music tradition and love of the sea, and as well as the music I've also loved being around the water, rivers, lakes, ponds, oceans, whatever. Another of the very earliest, from what scanty records I have - (and to be clear, these are all newish recordings, the last year or two, a few like Fisherman Blues with some additional stuff, all done by me of course in my teeny tiny recording - well, you'd never call it a 'studio', just some minimal recording stuff set up around my 'center of Dave's world') Fisherman Blues
 - still really like that - Girl, I Won't Beg You - I really sadly have no idea about the writing of this song, I don't think it would have been for any girl in particular, I was usually more in touch with a muse of some kind in my somewhat naive search for 'true love' - but still one of my favorites - at some point in the later 60s I crossed a plateau of some kind to 'deeper words' like this, seems quite 'mature' or something for an 18- or 19-year-old - a beautiful song, in every way, still, to me, still love to sing and play it -
 And one more from 'the early period - Far More Lonely Than You - another great song, in my mind -
 Ok, on to part 2 of my musical history, it's been underway by now for a bit ... some pics too, I have absolutely nothing from the 60s .... Dave's Songs part II - The Bill and Cottage Years
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