[BRIEF NOTE] Rainbow Valley

This news item makes me sad:

Rainbow Valley, a Cavendish tourist attraction that's given memories to most Island children, and thousands more tourists, has been sold to Parks Canada.

This will be the last summer that visitors will have a chance to ride the attractions and play on the waterslides.

The purchase was announced at a news conference on Tuesday morning. David Lipton, who works with Parks Canada, said the owner of the amusement park was planning to retire and approached the federal government about buying the 39 acre property.

However, Lipton said P.E.I. National Park isn't getting into the amusement business.

Fellow Islanders will certainly remember the Rainbow Valley amusement park, located in Cavendish. Myself, I strongly associate it with the end-of-year trips made by my classes at L.M. Montgomery Elementary School. It might be a small park by global standards, and perhaps mildly cheesy, and I've not been there for years. But still, Rainbow Valley's fun. I mean, swan boat rides, people, and flumes, and the haunted cave, and the flying saucer-cum-gift shop, and the talking owl. C'mon, people.

Jim Day's recent article in The Guardian suggests that the park's owner, Bart Bourne, is trying to keep the park open by making economic arguments.

Bourne said Rainbow Valley, complete with water slides, monorail, paddle boats, midway and petting zoo, is a driving force for Cavendish tourism. He estimates the proposed dramatic shift in use of the site from amusement park to eco-tourism will result in a drop of between 10 and 30 per cent in visitation to P.E.I. every year.

He noted in a visitor’s survey conducted in 1988, 7.2 per cent of respondents cited visiting Rainbow Valley as a specific reason for coming to the province.

“The Island is already experiencing substantial decreases in visitations and this (death of the popular theme park) will escalate the trend and make recovery impossible,’’ he said.

“It’s probably the biggest industry story on P.E.I. this year.’’

Given how this is Prince Edward Island, appeals to the tourism dollar might actually work. Here's hoping.

[NON BLOG] Meeting up with lesslyn

In the end, we couldn't decide whether we last met face to face in August or September of 2004. We decided that it has been much too long regardless. Supper at the Yonge-Wellesley What-A-Bagel, book shopping at the Manufalife Indigo, walking west to the Spadina TTC: It was rather fun. We must do that, or rather something like that, again.

[MUSIC] Depeche Mode, "Never Let Me Down Again"

I became a fan of the Mode relatively late in life, several years after seeing several of their early 1980s videos on a MuchMusic 80's music weekend and shortly after the release of 1997's Ultra. I tend not to be a fan of early 1980s Depeche Mode since the songs of Vince Clarke and the early songs of Martin Gore tend to be too saccharine-poppy for my taste, and the more rock-oriented 1990s output of the band leaves me a bit cold. The best Depeche Mode output, I think, came in the second half of the 1980s when the band perfected a certain attractive routine: multiple excellent official remixes, Anton Corbijn art film-cum-music videos, the crowded stadium concerts, and provocatively ambiguous lyrics (Martin Gore did say that "Behind the Wheel" was about learning how to drive not about S&M sex, but still).

1987's Music for the Masses Until recently, I saw 1990's Violator as the Mode's best album, and "Enjoy the Silence" as the Mode's best song. It still appeals to be tremendously with the desperate romanticism of its lyrics ("All I ever wanted/All I ever needed/Is here in my arms/Words are very unnecessary/They can only do harm") and with the play of Dave Gahan's resonant voice off against Gore's catchy and--perhaps--even funky instrumentals. Of late, I've found that song and its album too personal, addressed towards a second-person object. Music for the Masses is, as the album title suggests, an album aimed for the third-person audience, for a mass audience. Its songs are anthemic, crafted for performance in a rock stadium, for reception by large audiences.

"Never Let Me Down Again" is the highest-profile song off of Music for the Masses. It's a fantastic song, with its starting compressed guitar riff suddenly slamming into a huge-sounding percussion/keyboard/piano combination, anchored to a constantly repeated melodic hook, ever-building synth/orchestral parts at the song's end. Dave Gahan's vocals are particularly compelling here, evocatively melancholy and plaintive. And as always with the Mode's songs, there is the wonderfully vexing question of what "Never Let Me Down Again" is about, really.

( The lyrics, for your reading convenience. )

There's enough textual evidence to suggest that "Never Let Me Down Again" is about a relationship; more, that it's about a fairly intimate relationship between two people marked by the singer's dependence on his partner ("He knows where he's taking me/Taking me where I want to be"), and that the relationship is marked equally by high expectations ("We're flying high/We're watching the world pass us by") and by a history of failures ("I hope he never lets me down again"). The Corbijn video goes into a abit more canonical detail, concentrating on a burned-out Gahan who drinks coffee with an old man then starts driving around a farmed countryside in a little car. Wandering about the fields until he collapses, Gahan's bandmates finally catch up to him and drag him away, but forget his shoes.

What is going on? Certainly there's a possible homoerotic reading of the text, with two lines in particular ("Promises me I'm as safe as houses/As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers") being particularly provocative. A straightforward reading of "Never Let Me Down Again" as a text about a gay relationship doesn't convince me, though: Those two lines are at best equivocal, certainly nothing is explicitly said, and I'm loathe to read "best friend" as a euphemism for lover. Sedgwick's theories of homosociality might be more relevant. ( It all comes down to triangles. )

But then, if we apply theories of homosociality to "Never Let Me Down Again," one question arises: Where, or what, is the third party?

It might well be that North American fans of the Mode read too much into their lyrics, that "Never Let Me Down Again" really might be a song about a man singing about his closest friendship. Looking for evidence of homoeroticism or homosociality in "Never Let Me Down Again" might be as silly as reading "Behind the Wheel" as a text about sado-masochism. This tendency was briefly examined in a 1990 article in Spin magazine:

"It's real existential music," says Ken Patronis, a 28-year-old fan who works as a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Ken bought Speak & Spell at a time when he was also buying Bauhaus, early New Order and early Cure. But those bands have either parted ways or let him down. "I don't really listen to the Cure anymore and New Order's doing music for 'America's Most Wanted.' That kind of says it all. But with Depeche Mode, I know that I'll probably like whatever they put out. I guess I'm more prone to understand a song about feeling socially detached than your average Joe Blow. The band doesn't' hit you over the head with this macho stance that so many pop bands have."

Which may be ne reason Depeche were originally lumped in with openly gay groups like Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Pet Shop Boys. It's a characterization that bothers the band. "I've never understood this misconception about us being homoerotic," says Andy, looking as straight as they come, in jeans, sweater and businesslike hornrimmed glasses. "What about all those American heavy metal bands that wear tight leather, all this makeup and teased out hair? How come that's not considered gay? Maybe it's not our look, it's our lyrics. Are they too sensitive for the American male? You can't be sensitive and straight at the same time?"

"There's a great tenderness and sadness to our music sometimes, and I know this is going to sound like a stereotype, but gays in general seem to be more open and receptive to these types of lyrics," Martin says. In fact, when the band first started out, a considerable portion of their fans were drawn from the gay club scene. This is no longer the case, as, in many ways, the band has come out of the closet, shedding more and more of their mystery with each new album.

Even so, it is fun to parse these songs for their hidden meanings. One should just try to remember that this is popular music. It wouldn't do to get too carried away.