I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Ted’s Wrecking Yard Toronto, ON, (March 25, 2000).

This was the sixth and final night of Green Sprouts Music Week–the band’s annual residency at Ted’s Wrecking Yard.  Sadly this is the only night that is up on the site, but man, is it a good one.  The band played for over two and a half hours and they cover nearly every album.  There are guests galore, there’s on stage hijinks and a great sense of fun for band and fans alike.

 I don’t know what they played on other nights but there is a still a focus on Harmelodia. Things are a little different this night from previous shows on the tour.  “Song of the Garden” and “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine” are really rocking. When they call in a female vocalist up, a fans shouts out “we could use a little estrogen” and they get it with her lead vocals.

Kevin Hearn joins them on keyboards.  He ges a verse in “Four Little Songs.”  He also adds piano to “Queer” which sounds extra jaunty  And he puts accordion in “I Fab Thee.”  There’s even the unexpected Kevin song “Yellow Days Under a Lemon Sun” which originally appears on the Group of 7 disc.

The most fun is had during “My First Rock Show, in which several “guests” appear during the song.  Meatloaf (Kevin) plays a bit of “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” Geddy, Alex and Neil (Martin) show up to play a verse of “Closer to the Heart” with Martin screeching “salesmen!” There’s a brief jam of Walk This Way (although no one can remember the words).  And there’s some fun with Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Goin Out with Him.”  Look over there.  Where?  That’s called a hook.  There’s also a funny joke about playing “Harvest X-1, Rush Never Sleeps.”

There’s some real guests too, Karmen from Sheks? sings “One More Colour” and sounds awful, like she can’t hear what the band is doing.  Julia Pietrus guests on “Home Again.”  She sings her verse in Polish (and is part of a Polish Rheos tribute band!).

There’s a drum solo (!) on “Dope Fiends and Booze Hounds.”  The set and the night ends with “A Midwinter Nights Dream.”  Martin sounds in great voice even if he cant hit all th ehigh notes which is undetsnable after nearly 2 and a half hours of playing

They also mention that their next show is Canada Day and that is our next show as well

[READ: March 4, 2015] “Make Me Live”

I am always intrigued by the fiction that appears in the front section of each Harper’s issue.  It is typically not an author I have heard of and is often a translation.  It’s also usually really short (often excerpted) so that if it’s not so good, you’re not stuck with a long read and if it is good it whets your appetite for a longer piece.

This excerpt is a definite appetite whetter.

I genuinely can’t imagine how long Mislaid (the full novel) is, because this story just seems to fly through time in a real hurry 9and feels rather complete).

It opens with Peggy Vaillancourt’s birth in 1948 in Virginia.  Her family was educated and rather reserved.  Her mother had hoped to send her to Bryn Mawr, but Peggy wanted to go to Stillwater, a former plantation and current finishing school.  It was considered a mecca for lesbians.

I’m confused about the transformative event in Peggy’s life in which a gym teacher, Miss Miller,  readjusts her gym shorts and Peggy assumes she was meant to be a boy.  The story seems to bulldoze forward whether you can keep up or not.  So I have no idea if an average female reader would “get” what happened here (it doesn’t seem to be sexual to me). It also seems odd that one incident should affect her so profoundly, but there ya go.

After deciding she was meant to be a boy, she tells her friend Debbie that she wants to join the army after school.  Debbie calls her a thespian (which I assume means lesbian, and yet…) so Peggy began paying attention the thespians at school: fat girls and nice boys.  She even auditioned for a play.  (What the heck is going on?).

But even the thespians connected her to Miss Miller, calling them both bull dykes.  It was the thespians who told her to go to Stillwater.

This whole business takes about a full page.  And then we see her at Stillwater.

Peggy arrived looking thin and chic, with a flat chest and no hips.  She still wanted to be a man, but she didn’t like hairiness or fat bellies or belching.

Peggy loved Stillwater. She loved pondering Edna St Vincent Millay.  Indeed the poets were a big deal at Stilwater.  There was a famous poet in residency–Lee Fleming.  Fleming was a local boy with wealthy parents  Many other famous poets came to Stillwater to see him.   Fleming had invited one out and the poet was so charmed by Stillwater (and all the young girls) that other writers came to give presentations.

And because of this the college asked Fleming to be a teacher (he canoed to work every day).  Instead of a salary he asked them to create a literary magazine called Stillwater Review, which became a success.

Naturally his father believed himself to be as queer as a three dollar bill.  It was his father who put him in a cottage on the family’s property across the lake from Stillwater College.  Everyone in town also assumed he was gay, and there was much talk and consternation about it although everyone assumed he was fine while he was by himself in that cottage.  In some more slightly confusing writing it says that Lee was a top, but everyone assumed he was a fairy.

It feels like a lot of people are assuming things about these two characters and they are just going along with it. Peggy’s first attempt at dating a girl was a disaster.

Peggy was interested in poetry but freshmen were not allowed to take Fleming’s class.  And while she didn’t wind up taking his class, she did wind up sharing a canoe ride with him.  And in that ride, everyone’s eyes were opened.

So much happens in these few pages that I can’t decide if they slow down now that she’s at Stillwater or if her whole life jumps from one event to another.  The novel is 256 pages and comes out in May.  I’m going to have to check it out.