will rafuse | signs

paintings by will rafuse
of signs in vancouver, seattle, los angeles

rafuse studied art at capilano college
and currently resides in st john, new brunswick

original post aug 27 2010

alex colville | main street, 1979

 

ghostlight radio | index

Hey kids! Here's a bunch of links to some favourite episodes of my late night pirate radio show, variously called Ghostlight Radio or Soul Food: The Ghost Light Season (or even Soul Food Ghost Light: Summer Edition). See, the essence of effective marketing is to have a memorably product name and stick to it. Uh huh.

It started in 2020 as a way to keep in touch with Pacific Theatre folks when the pandemic set in, but the next summer I rebooted as one of those middle-of-the-night FM radio shows from back in the seventies and eighties. Pirate radio. Music and stories, poetry, random bits of audio. One misguided listener calls it "the Platonic ideal of late night radio." But he's a poet, so they're often out of touch with reality.

Click on any of the titles below to listen to specific episodes. You can also subscribe through most podcast apps, EXCEPT Spotify - in a very pointed irony, they dropped the show because it features recorded music. Which they play on their service and pay the artists pennies. At least I admit to being a pirate. 

There are 43 episodes so far. Here are some of my favourites, just click on the titles. You can find descriptions and links to all the others through this link. 

The Summer Edition #1

Jul 12, 2021

We're back!  Mostly music this summer, with odd bits of other stuff.  Ibrahim Ferrer, Percy Faith, The Flamingos, The Ink Spots, Rita Payés, Vic Damone, The Temptations, The Miracles, Bob Dylan, Toots & The Maytals, Etta James, Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Also the Top Ten Thousand anniversary, Danny Finkleman, Ross Porter, road trips, Dad and daughters and granddaughters and music, summer weddings, Barcelona jazz, Joe Versus the Volcano, Omega Man, The Princess and the Warrior. 

Taking The Show On The Road

Aug 7, 2021

Tonight we take our show on the road, with traveling companions Ira Glass, Carolyn Arends, Zaac Pick, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, Charlie Peacock, Bobbies Dylan and Troup, Spencer Capier, Michael Hart, the Nordic Chamber Choir, and the Road Scholars. Buckle up, Radioland.

Late Night Memories of Summer

Aug 21, 2021

Summer jobs in the Okanagan and fated encounters on "the ragged green edge of the world" - Susan Alexander thinks back to Osoyoos and I return to Tofino. We also remember summer music festivals with Sweet Honey In The Rock and The Original Sloth band, explore Nelson Boschman's Top Tunes 'o Summer, and soak in the sounds of Corinne Bailey Rae, Kacey Musgraves, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Boz Scaggs, The Langley Schools Music Project, a Daniel Amos side project, and a couple George Harrison tunes, one from his solo years, the other with his first band, the quaintly named "Beatles." Summer ain't over yet!

Thankful All Over

Oct 8, 2021

Thanksgiving weekend! At least here in Canada. So of course we'll visit an elevator in Utah, a place that sells used office furniture in Los Angeles, out on San Fernando Road, an unemployment office in France, the Hitsville recording studio in Detroit, a sheep farm in Kentucky, even (if only for a moment) a children's home in Liverpool...  Folks are thankful all over the place!  Pull up a chair and join us for a fine turkey dinner, with all the trimmings.  Updated October 20, to make room at the table for the Mad Farmer himself, Mr. Loren Wilkinson. 

Broadcast Like No One's Listening!

Oct 20, 2021

A tribute to radio DJs everywhere, from the Good Ship Ghost Light - Lester the Nightfly, The Count, Deke Duncan, Gary Keillor, Symphony Sid, and that Top Ten Thousand guy, whatever his name was. 

Show Tunes (but not THAT kind of show tunes), Pt 1

Jan 28, 2022

January 27, 2021 was host Ron Reed's last day on the job as Head Chef at the Pacific Theatre Diner, and tonight he and Jack Nicholson mark the one year anniversary of that occasion by looking back at some of Ron's favourite PT shows, and the music that enhanced their distinctive Soul Food flavour.  The Casino, The Foreigner, Tent Meeting, A Bright Particular Star, and more - tasty tunes from skits that schmeck. 

Show Tunes (but not THAT kind of show tunes), Pt 2

Feb 26, 2022

Just before disappearing into the rehearsal hall to work on Pacific Theatre's "How The World Began," Ron looks back on some more of his favourite shows, and their music: Mercy Wild, Jesus My Boy, You Still Can't, Godspell, The Disappearing, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Doubt, The Rainmaker.  Just keeping that Ghost Light burning...

Back On The Air!

Nov 8, 2024

We're back! Had ourselves some shore leave - almost three years worth, that oughta do - and it seems like high time to unfurl the sails, unpack the microphone, and start spinning some tunes once again. New releases and really old favourites, requests and discoveries, flotsam and jetsam, just right for this present moment. Or any moment, come to think of it...

No Particular Place To Go

Nov 22, 2024

We're playing exactly what we feel tonight on Ghost Light pirate radio, from Robert Zimmerman to Doris Mary Anne Keppelhoff, Domenico Modugno to Gary Keillor. The mailbag is full to bursting - Iwan from Cardiff, Tim from Saskatoon, Jack from Des Moines and Norm from Etobicoke - as we ruminate on happenings great and terrible, from Bakersfield to the moon.

True North

Dec 6, 2024

Sixty years of Canadian music - and radio! - in an hour and a quarter. We'll take a road trip with the son of a Saskatchewan premier, travel from the Cowichan Valley to Vancouver to Winnipeg to Toronto in search of CanCon, check up on some illustrious expats, and tune in the voices and sounds of a couple generations of north-of-the-49th radio. And you out east, don't worry, we'll pick up the cross-country journey after Christmas. Maybe call it "Strong and Free." 

Overdue Finds

Jan 1, 2025

We're clearing out the Soul Food closet, hauling out all the neglected-but-not-forgotten treasures that didn't quite fit in episodes past. Discoveries old and new: music very old and brand spankin' new, poems about love from many sides - up and down, win and lose, break-ups past and pending - and stories about songs I've been waiting too long to tell. There might even be stuff I found in a book or two that I need to get back to the library...

Where You Been?

Jan 1, 2026

Happy New Year! The good ship Ghostlight is back, freeform radio that bids goodbye to the first quarter of the twenty-first century. A few farewells, a bit of poetry and a load of tunes to welcome a new year and launch a new season of soul-feedin' sounds.

Letter To A Friend

Feb 25, 2026

Kicking back on the porch tonight with musical guests Taj Mahal and Keb Mo, Daniel Amos and Paul Desmond and plenty more, and even a poet or two. Ghost Light Radio: it's pirate radio, it's a letter to a friend, and it's about time.

stefan brunhoff | landscape + figurative painting | mar 7, basic inquiry gallery

advance notice of Stefan Brunhoff's one man art show of landscape and figurative paintings 

opens March 7, 6-9 pm

  

Basic Inquiry Studio and Gallery

1011 Main St. Just S. of Georgia St. on the W. side

paul & audrey | by paul rogers

 

Audrey

Dave Brubeck, feat. Paul Desmond

story and illustrations by Paul Rogers

The New Yorker, February 1, 2021

photos | mark menjivar | refrigerators

 

midwife / middle school science teacher

bartender

short order cook

street advertiser

lots more fridge photos at mark menjivar.com

dorothy parker on ernest hemingway

I have heard of him, both at various times and all in one great bunch, that he is so hard-boiled he makes a daily practice of busting his widowed mother in the nose; that he dictates his stories because he can’t write, and has them read to him because he can’t read; that he is expatriate to such a degree that he tears down any American flag he sees flying in France; that no woman within half-a-mile of him is a safe woman; that he not only commands enormous prices for his short stories, but insists, additionally, on taking the right eye out of the editor’s face; that he has been a tramp, a safe-cracker, and a stockyard attendant; that he is the Pet of the Left Bank, and may be found at any hour of the day or night sitting at a little table at the Select, rubbing absinthe into his gums; that he really hates all forms of sport, and only skis, hunts, fishes, and fights bulls in order to be cute; that a wound he sustained in the Great War was of a whimsical, inconvenient, and inevitably laughable description; and that he also writes under the name of Morley Callaghan. About all that remains to be said is that he is the Lost Dauphin, that he was shot as a German spy, and that he is actually a woman, masquerading in man’s clothes. And those rumors are doubtless being started, even as we sit here.

He is in his early thirties, he weighs about two hundred pounds, and he is even better than those photographs. The effect upon women is such that they want to go right out and get him and bring him home, stuffed. Heaven help him, if he ever settles in New York and is displayed to the sabre-toothed ladies of stage, pen, salon, and suburb who throng the local Bohemian gatherings. He is susceptible to flattery, and then is stuck with the flatterer. He is afflicted with deep-seated illness in the presence of unhappily married women who are interested in the Arts.

The New Yorker

November 23, 1929

photo | lothhar wolleh | rene and georgette magritte with their dog after the war

Lothar Wolleh, 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ7sL9rdl58

Paul Simon, 1983

photo | venizia | david nykl

 

steveston

 

photo | lincoln clarkes | happy canoe year

 

pender lake, vancouver 1997

rollieflex camera

"Simon borrowed his father’s canoe and we cut a hole in the fence. 

After an hour security guards threatened to call the police if we didn’t immediately leave."

read

 

2026

Left Unsaid, Karl Petersen

The Godwulf Manuscript 

God Save the Child 

Promised Land 

The Judas Goat 

Looking for Rachel Wallace 

Early Autumn

A Savage Place 

The Widening Gyre 

Valediction 

A Catskill Eagle (didn't finish)

Iron John (portion)

C.S. Lewis's Oxford, Simon Horobin

Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon (audio + paper)

Dog Stars, Heller

bob dylan | things have changed

bob dylan cover by danny michel & superspreader

A worried man with a worried mind

No one in front of me and nothing behind

There's a woman on my lap and she's drinking champagne

Got white skin and assassin's eyes

I'm looking up into the sapphire tinted skies

I'm well dressed and waiting on the last train

I'm standing on the gallows with my head in a noose

Any minute now I'm expecting all hell to break loose

     People are crazy and times are strange

     I'm locked down tight, I'm out of range

     I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain't doing me any good

I'm in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood

Just for a second there I thought I saw something move

I'm gonna take dancing lessons do the jitterbug rag

Ain't no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag

Only a fool in here would think he's got anything to prove

Lotta water under the bridge, lotta other stuff too

Don't get up gentlemen, I'm just passing through

     People are crazy and times are strange

     I'm locked down tight, I'm out of range

     I used to care, but things have changed

I've been walking forty miles of bad road

If the bible is right, the world will explode

I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can

But some things are too hot to touch

The human mind can only stand so much

You can't win with a losing hand

I feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet

Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street

     People are crazy and times are strange

     I'm locked down tight, I'm out of range

     I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don't show it

You can hurt someone and not even know it

The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity

I'm Gonna get lowdown, I'm gonna fly high

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie

I'm love with a woman who don't appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake

I'm not that eager to make a mistake

     People are crazy and times are strange

     I'm locked down tight, I'm out of range

     I used to care, but things have changed

     Yes, I used to care, but things have changed

photo | michael pasche

 

photo | london, 2017 | robert smyth

fred herzog | staircase, 1958

 

fred herzog | barber shops