SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Live at The Corel Center, Ottawa, ON, (November 28, 1996 & November 29, 1996).
There are two Rheostatics shows recorded at the Corel Centre (Nov 28, Nov 29). This was a gig opening for the Tragically Hip, which was probably the biggest crowd they ever played to. Gord Downie even mentions them on the live album that the Hip recorded from this tour (Live Between Us).
The Rheos usually play sets that are about two hours. These opening slots are 45 minutes, so with the two shows together you get nearly a normal Rheos show. And there’s only a little duplication among these two shows–their big hit “Claire,” their new hit “Bad Time to Be Poor” and, interestingly, “Motorino.”
Otherwise, between the two shows we get the other great songs: “Fat,” “California Dreamlime,” “Self-Serve Gas Station,” “Fan Letter To Michael Jackson,” “All The Same Eyes,” “Aliens,” “Dopefiends And Boozehounds,” “Feed Yourself,” “Horses,” and the little instrumentals (48 seconds) “Artenings Made of Gold” and (1:41) “Digital Beach.”
The sound quality isn’t spectacular–it’s clearly a fan recording. But the quality is certainly good enough to really enjoy. These come across as a kind of best of from 1996.
[READ: January 10, 2014] Bobcat
I don’t usually mention the book publisher when I post about books, but I’m quite taken with Madras Press. From their website:
Madras Press publishes limited-edition short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of non-profit organizations chosen by our authors. The format of our books provides readers with the opportunity to experience stories on their own, with no advertisements or miscellaneous stuff surrounding them.
The format is a 5″ x 5″ square books that easily fit into a pocket. At present there are four series with four books in each series.
Proceeds from Lee’s book go to Riverkeeper.org.
I really enjoyed this story a lot. It has many elements that seem disparate and yet they blend perfectly at the end.
The story is set at a dinner party. The hostess is planning a tureen, although she acknowledges that it probably won’t be very good. She is also picking a fight with her husband about the book he is writing. In the novel, there’s a woman he fantasizes about and she knows it is not her. She argues that it is really his editor, with whom he spends a lot of time (even though the character is nothing like her). He denies it outright–laughs it off in fact.
The editor is coming to dinner. As is Susan, a woman whose memoir is about to be published. Her husband’s editor hopes to “win” this book, which is why Susan is coming to dinner. Susan is a big personality–she was attacked by a bobcat and had her arm removed because of the damages. The memoir promises to be big. The hostess wishes she’d read it before so she’d have something to talk about. But she need not have worried, because Susan can talk enough without any prompting.
The other guests are the hostesses’s boss and his wife. The hostess works as a lawyer, and they are working on a case that seems hopeless (I’m leaving out the details because there’s a lot going on already). So she and her boss are working long hours. But her boss is having an affair with the most beautiful woman that the hostess has ever seen (who works with them). The hostess knows and has asked her friend Lizbet not to even hint that anything is amiss.
And thus we get a very mild dinner party with all manner of awkwardness roiling underneath.
These characters seem quite disparate with disparate crises and motivations and yet Lee wends them together so perfectly, that the ending is a total knockout. This is the first thing I’ve read from her and I’m looking forward to finding more.
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