SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-The Icehouse, Victoria, BC (July 18 2001).
After playing the free show earlier that afternoon, the Rheos played a show at The Icehouse that evening. And it seems like quite a number of people showed up. And they were not disappointed. They also got to see Michael Phillip Wojewoda on drums.
Although the show begins with some slightly sketchy sound quality, it clears up pretty quickly. This show starts with a bunch of great older material “King of the Past,” “Fat,” “Northern Wish.” There’s an amazing guitar solo in “Christopher.” And “Fat” is one of the best live versions I’ve heard.
When they play “Four Little Songs” it gives MPW a chance to sing his bit. But when someone requests “Guns” Dave says that MPW doesn’t do poetry. At what I believe is a fan’s request, the play “The Pooby Song,” and then joke that they are going to play the entire Nightlines Sessions.
Then they talk about Stompin’ Tom Connors and how they met a 65-year-old man who scares the Canadian into you. This is an intro to “The Ballad of Wendel Clark” which includes two Stompin’ Tom fragments “Gumboot Clogeroo” and “The Ketchup Song.” The seven minute version of “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds” ends with a crazy riff and noisy drums–a rare jam section. There’s more great drums on “Song of Flight” and excellent harmonies on “California Dreamline.”
This is a really fantastic show–one of their best. And as Lucky notes the “Dopefiends -> California Dreamline -> Song of Flight -> Self-Serve -> Winter Comes Reprise” is killer. The end of the show tacks on an amazing version of “Horses.” But it doesn’t seem like it’s from this show. The sound is a little different, and it seems pretty certain that the night ended after “Record Body Count.” But who knows.
[READ: April 19, 2015] “Hitler in Chicago”
This short story, from the book Learning Cyrillic, is fascinating in the way it begins as one thing and then turns into something else entirely. David Albahari is a Serbian novelist and the story was translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać.
As the story opens, the narrator talks about how afraid he is of flying on planes. He would much rather ride by carriage. Why is everyone in such a hurry, anyway? But he needs to fly and so he does. He pays careful attention to the stewardesses and then tries as quickly as possible to fall asleep.
On this flight to North America, he falls asleep pretty well, but when the book he was reading falls off his lap, it wakes him up. His seat mate picks up the book and smiles. The book is by Isaac Bashevis Singer and is called Enemies, A Love Story (a real book). The woman says that knows Singer and asks if he has read the story where Singer met Hitler in New York. He has.
Then she says,
“I spent a night with him.”
“Hitler?”
“No, she said, I would never have allowed myself such a thing. I meant Singer.”
She says it wasn’t sex. Rather, he was teaching and she saw him and said that she had seen Hitler walking around in Chicago. The two had a late dinner, spent the whole evening talking and then he fell asleep.
She says that about a year later, Singer’s story about meeting Hitler in New York was published.
What is a she meant to think of this?
I really liked this story. I liked the audacity of it, the way it started as one thing and turned into something so much more interesting and also the economy of it.
I’d be interested in reading more from Albahari, and maybe even Singer’s Hitler story (which is called “The Cafeteria” and is available from the New Yorker’s December 28, 1968 issue.
For ease of searching, I include: Ellen Elias-Bursac
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