SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS–Bathurst Street Theatre Toronto ON October 7 1994 (1994).
I have been listening to a bunch of the Rheostatics live downloads as of late.
This is one of the first concerts they have available on the Rheostatics Live website (there’s a 1991 show as well). But what’s especially nice about this one is that it was broadcast (and taped) on the radio, so the sound quality is quite good.
The show is from just before the release of Introducing Happiness, so the band is trying out some of those tracks.
I’ve never seen the band live (and of course, now I never will) but these recordings show how much fun they had live. They were never afraid to experiment or to make jokes in their chatty sections (original drummer Dave Clark was also a lunatic–it often seemed like he wasn’t taking things seriously at all, and yet he never missed a beat).
The shows from 1996 & 1997 also showcase a lot of these songs too, but having the crisp recording of the radio (and the reasonably short set) makes this a good place to start if you want to hear some Rheostatics live. Some of those other early shows are recorded in the audience, so the fidelity isn’t always 100%.
All of the shows are available at the Rhesoatics Live site (thanks all contributors). This show is available here.
[READ: July 27, 2010] “The War Between Sylvania and Freedonia”
Your enjoyment of this story depend a lot on whether or not you have watched (and enjoyed) the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. The reason is that this is a retelling of Duck Soup–sort of from the perspective of the mayor of Sylvania and sort of from an impartial observer who is on the side of Sylvania, or more specifically, anti-Firefly.
What Coover does is simply present the audacity and insanity of Groucho’s character, Rufus T. Firefly, as if it were a historical account. Any reasonable person could see what a terrible mayor he would make. And this accounts for the amusement in the story.
Coover is known for playing around with established formats and tropes. So in that respect, he is the ideal man to write this piece. But when all is said and done, I’m not sure it needed to be written. Sure it was kind of funny, but Duck Soup itself is much funnier. The end of this story was particularly amusing… maybe my problem is that I’m not sure it needed to be published in Harper’s, when there’s so many other good, original pieces.
But for what it is, it’s pretty funny.
Leave a Reply