It's all a blur now, lots of coming and going between England, Europe and Canada.
The first time I went to Canada was in winter. I could only stay two weeks because of a very crazy immigration screw-up. We visited Manon's mother in far away snowy Rimouski and I discovered this album in the living room. I have no idea who bought it or where it came from. I bought many of their albums over the years. Renaissance.
I was very young, only 19 or so, but we had a daughter. Yumee. When she was two, Manon took that Chicago song to heart and really did leave me now. We were in England and she returned to Canada alone. Some time after, Yumee and I followed. Manon and I got back together for a few weeks, but it was doomed from the start.
Quebec City was very lonely after that. Everyone spoke French except me. I was living alone with Yumee and at first I had no friends. Then I started a French language school for immigrants and I finally began to know a few people.
One was Ricardo, and artist from El Salvador, who lived in old Quebec with all the other hippy types. I was a hippy type who never learned to follow the rules, so I live in Sainte Foy, a suburb for beaurocrats. I was down at his place one day (we had to communicate in French, even though we were both total beginners) and he put on a very interesting album by someone I'd never heard of before: Claude Bolling.
Another friend was a cross-country ski coach, Louise Barbeau. I became a serious cross-country skier after I met him. He was also heavily into progressive rock and introduced me to several European groups like PFM (Premiata Forneria Marconi), and what is maybe the best progressive rock album of all time: Contaminazione, by Il Rovescio Della Medaglia. Here are three tracks.
