Text and video by Mike Parker
Maybe it is me but it seems like Saint John is suddenly wealthy with talented people who are taking their place on center stage.
On Thursday, Jessica Rhaye launches her new CD Good Things at the Blue Olive. I’ve listened to the CD at least a dozen times since she gave me a copy a few weeks ago and it features some of the musician’s strongest work to date. So you know that the show at the Blue Olive is bound to be a memorable one.
Also on Thursday, Saint John poet and teacher Anne Compton gives a reading from the last installment of her award-winning islands trilogy at UNBSJ. In 2005, Compton won the Governor General’s award for poetry in English for her collection Processional.
On Friday, poet Clyde Wray, dancer Kelli Wray and local musician Gordon Halvorson present an evenng of song, dance and spoken word at the Saint John Arts Center on Hazen Avenue. The show begins at 7:00 pm.
And then there is Wes Jagoe. Last Friday, Jagoe and fellow musician and friend David Estabrooks performed at Backstreet Records, as part of the For the Sake of the Song concert series.
In the following clip, Jagoe and Estabrooks tell the story of Topsy, a circus elephant with the Forepaugh Circus at Coney Island’s Luna Park in the early 1900s. Because the elephant had killed three people including an abusive trainer, it was labeled a threat to the public and killed by electrocution in 1903.
The American inventor Thomas Edison administered the 6,600 AC current that killed the Kenyan elephant and he captured the elephants last moments on film, which he later released under the title Electrocuting an Elephant.
We shot a short video of Jagoe and Estabrooks performing. You can watch it below.
Serf City 
That was fabulous.