I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:RHEOSTATICS-The Nightlines Sessions (1998).

I have mentioned this disc before, but having listened to some live shows from around this time, it made me want to check out this disc again.  I’ve always thought it was kind of a silly goof of a record without a lot to fully enjoy.  And while the goofy tracks stand out, there’s also a lot of really good music on it.

“The Pooby Song” opens the song and while it is a slight and silly song, it is a fun folky introduction.  What its title means is a mystery to me.  The second song is the first version of “The Junction Foil Ball,” a great track that would later get re-recorded for The Night of the Shooting Stars.  “Frank” is another interesting song with some cool scratchy guitars and a good riff. It doesn’t get played much live, but it could easily fit into their set.

“Majorca” is a pretty song from Tim, although it is very strange (to me) that these Canadians are singing about Majorca (a song they would play live in a few bootlegs).  Another vaguely silly song is the sitar (?) based “Ugly Manhattan,” which makes fun of Wall Street.  Perhaps the most unexpected song is “Trans Jam” a rap which features Farm Fresh and The Subliminal Kid.  It’s quite good, too.

And yes, there is a lot of really silly stuff.   “Henry’s Musical Beard” is a weird 27 second toss off. “Alien Boy” is a goof commercial about mysteries of the unknown.  “Baby, I love You” is introduced as being by MC Vanilli  and the Sedaka Prince.  It’s an absurdly goofy “pop” song which reflects some pop song stylings rather well.  “This is Nightlines” is a profane rambling by Dave about the radio show that’s going off the air.

And yet just as you think the end of the disc is going to be nothing but silly, they play a fantastic version of “Stolen Car” (click track notwithstanding).

It really makes me want to hear the some Nightlines shows.  And, ta da, I recently found Network Effects, a site where a kind soul has been digitizing his taped copied of Nightlines sessions.  That’s pretty cool–more radio stations should take chances like this.

[READ: February 24, 2014] A Wild Stab for It

I found a bunch of Dave Bidini’s smaller books online.  And after reading his book about Keon, it seemed complementary to read this book about Game Eight.

Now, if you’re not Canadian or Russian, Game Eight might be meaningless to you.  You might even somehow think that a game of Canada vs the USSR is an Olympic event.  But it wasn’t.  It was the Summit Series.  Bidini assumes you know what the Summit Series is–this book is pretty explicitly for Canadian hockey fans (meaning pretty much every Canadian) who were alive in the 1970s.  They would all know what Game Eight was and why it was so important.  So, here’s some context from Wikipedia, because again, they summarize it better than I could:

The series was played at the height of the Cold War, and intense feelings of nationalism were aroused in both Canada and the Soviet Union, as well as on the ice.  Known at the time simply as the Canada–USSR Series, it was an eight-game series of ice hockey between the Soviet Union and Canada, held in September 1972.  It was the first competition between the Soviet national team and a Canadian team represented by professional players of the National Hockey League (NHL), known as Team Canada. It was the first international ice hockey competition for Canada after Canada had withdrawn from international ice hockey competitions in a dispute with the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). The series was organized with the intention to create a true best-on-best competition in the sport of ice hockey.

The first four games of the series were held in Canada and the final four in Moscow. The Soviet Union surprised the Canadian team and most of the hockey media with an opening game victory, 7–3. Many sportswriters had predicted an overwhelming victory for Canada in the series. Canada won the next game 4–1; the third game was a tie and the Soviets won game four to take a two games to one lead after the Canadian segment. The series resumed two weeks later in Moscow. The Soviets won game five to take a three games to one series lead. The Canadians won the final three games in Moscow to win the series four games to three, with one tie. The final game was won in dramatic fashion, with the Canadians overcoming a two-goal Soviet lead after two periods. The Canadians scored three in the third, the final one scored with 34 seconds left, by Paul Henderson.

So, as you can see, Game Eight was a pretty big deal.  And this book looks briefly at random people and their experiences with that game.

Some notes from Canadians: Bidini was in eighth grade during the series.  They brought everyone into the gym, during school mind you, to watch the game.  He says that a friend of his who was in 3rd grade (they weren’t watching the game, but were receiving periodic updates over the intercom) was dispatched to the principal’s office to find out the score.  He walked in on the principal watching the game just as that final goal was scored.  And they jumped up and down and cheered together.  It was the first time most students had seen their teachers emotional in any way,

He also talks to some players (or at least quotes from interviews) about the game. How it slowly dawned on them that an entire country was counting on them.  There is a lot of talk about Phil Esposito–a hero of the games and a media darling (the Russian women swooned over him).  And of course about Paul Henderson.

There is discussion about how differently the two countries played–with the Soviets training 11 months of the year and the NHL players mostly taking it easy during the off-season. And also that the Canadians were a lot rougher on the ice–that the Russian would never dream of talking back to referees or committing intentional penalties (as Bobby Clarke did).

Bidini traveled to Russia in 2004 (he made two documentaries called The Hockey Nomad and The Hockey Nomad Goes to Russia to document his hockey trips abroad).  He talked to a few people about their memories from the game.  And also how the Russian players were blown away when the came to Canada and saw some of the amazing things that were available (which is why so many Russian player eventually moved to play in the NHL).

This is basically a souvenir for those who remember the game.  Otherwise it’s probably a pretty inessential read.  I enjoyed parts of it in a sort of weird nostalgia for the Cold War kind of way.  And while I’ve heard of many of thee players, I didn’t know much about them or the series.  In retrospect I’m somewhat surprised that Americans weren’t more excited about it, especially since the Canadians defeated the Soviets.  Of course I was only 3 at the times, so what do I know?.

This book reminds me a lot of a Douglas Coupland book.  In part because it has the same font that Coupland uses on his books, but also because each chapter is very short (a page or two) and there are a lot of photos.  It has that kind of personal-story-that-actually-reflects-how-many-Canadians-feel quality to it.  Americans don’t seem to have as much of a country-wide consciousness about events.  And certainly with the divisiness of the last few decades there will be very few things that will unite us the way this game united the Canadians.