Since sometime early last year, Geist magazine has been lobbying to get Stan Rogers inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, which strikes me as the most complete no-brainer imaginable. (For 2004, despite an 11,000-signature petition, 4,000 letters of support and a resolution in the Nova Scotia legislature backing Stan, they picked some guy who's lived in LA since 1985.)
La luta continua. You can sign the petition here.
In the meantime, Geist got some wonderful reponses to a call for memories of Stan Rogers:
Both Me Legs
I first met Stan in Fredericton, in about 1976, between sets. I asked him what he meant by "the main truck carried off both me legs," and he said, "The main truck is a gun carriage." I said that I thought it was the top of the main mast. Several years later I met him again in Yarmouth. I asked the same question, and Stan replied, "the truck is the top of the main mast."
—Eric Ruff, cyberspaceAshore
While on board the USS Nashville during a NATO combined arms manouevre, my battalion, 2RCR, was sitting within the Amtrack assault vehicles waiting to go ashore, and someone started up "Barrett's Privateers." Soon 150 Canadian soldiers' voices were belting out the song. It spooked the U.S. Marines like nothing I've ever seen before.
—Ronald Parker, FrederictonHorse Shit
Back in the early 1970s my sister sent me to a small folk music store in Toronto to pick up a copy of Fogarty's Cove. I'd never heard of Stan Rogers; I timidly asked the store clerk to help me find it, and when I brought it to the counter this burly, surly looking guy hanging around there bellows, "You're not buying that, are you? That stuff is horse shit!" I stood there stunned, then he takes the album and says politely, "Would you like me to sign it for you?" To this day I am jealous of my sister for owning an autographed Stan Rogers album.
—H. Mowat, Winnipeg
Click here for all of them.