SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-University of Calgary (September 5, 1992). 
This set is also them opening for Barenaked Ladies, just following the release of Whale Music. It comes four months after the previous show online and I love that the set is almost entirely different.
It opens with a slightly cut off “PROD.” I can’t believe they’d open with that. AS they pummel along, the song pauses and the band starts whispering “what are they gonna do? I don’t know.” Then they romp on.
Bidini says they have three records out. The first you can’t get, the second is called Melville and this is “Record Body Count.”
They’d been playing “Soul Glue” for a long time, this one sounds full and confident. Then they introduce “King of the Past,” as “a song about looking for Louis Reil’s grave site. You know who he is, right? Canada’s first and foremost anarchist.” It’s a gorgeous version.
When it’s over they announce “Timothy W. Vesely has picked up the accordion!” (Earlier Dave said that anyone who could guess Tim’s middle name would in a free T-shirt). They play a fun if silly version of “Whats Going On.”
“Legal Age Life” is a fun folky romp. They get very goofy at the end with everyone making funny sounds and then Clark shouting “everyone grunt like a seal.” Bidini asks “Is Preston Manning in the audience tonight?” Clark: “No fuckin way.” Near the end of the song they throw in the fine line “Eagleson ripped off Bobby Orr!”
Martin almost seems to sneak in “Triangles on the Wall.” This is a more upbeat and echoey version than the other live shows have. The end rocks out with some big drums.
As they preapre the final song, Bidini says, “We’re going to play one more song and then we are going to leave like sprites into the woods.” He asks if anyone knows “Horses” and if they wanna “sing Holy Mackinaws with us?” But they need more than 1–we need at least 3. The three “imposters” are named Skippy and His Gang of Fine Pert Gentlemen. They are told to behave until the chorus or “I’ll get Steve Page to sic ya.”
Then, back to the audience he says, “This is a song about Peter Pocklington and what a fucking asshole he is.” [Pocklington is perhaps best known as the owner of the Oilers and as the man who traded the rights to hockey’s greatest player, Wayne Gretzky, to the Los Angeles Kings]. The fans aren’t very vocal during the shouting, but the band sounds fanasttsic. Just a raging set. It segues into a blistering version of “Rock Death America.”
Not saying that they upstaged BNL at all, but that would be a hard opener to follow.
[READ: January 17, 2017] “The Quiet Car”
This is the story of a writer who had been granted a temporary teaching job at a prestigious University. I don’t exactly know Oates’ history with Princeton, so I don’t know if she was ever in the same position as the character of this story, but I was secretly pleased when she mentioned the Institute of Advanced Study, so that it was obvious that the prestigious University was indeed Princeton.
But the story starts many years after he has left the University. R— is standing on a train platform. The story begins with this excellent observation: “nowhere are we so exposed, so vulnerable, as on an elevated platform at a suburban train depot.”
While R– is standing on the platform waiting for the train to New York City he notices that someone is unmistakably looking at him. He has been recognized before–there’s a small subset of the population who really likes his books. And, in what is a wonderful detail that tells you a lot about this man: “if the stranger is reasonably attractive, whether female or male, of some possible interest to R—, he may smile and acknowledge the recognition.”
This detail proves important because as he gets on the train he begins to think about the stranger–he believes he recognized her face.
The story is called The Quiet Car because R— loves to ride on this car. Again, a wonderful detail about him:
It is not an exaggeration to say that R–who loves few things about his life, loves the New Jersey Transit Quiet Car. He loves the isolation, the solitude, the “invisibility” of quiet.
He is pleased that this woman did not follow him onto the Quiet Car. And he settles in to read his paper. But then it comes into his head just who this woman is. Carol Carson: “that bland, generic name!”
She is a former student. She took a class with him that first semester that he taught at the University. The class was called Distopian Visions, and twelve students were accepted. He had been impressed by Carol’s submission that got her into the class (one of only 3 women). But as soon as he saw her, he was disappointed and bored by her.
He spends the ride into the city remembering back to that class. How she seemed to be too shy to talk to him. She didn’t have any fiestiness or flirtatiousness. She even asked him to sign copies of his book so she could give them as gifts. His memory is mostly about her fixation on him. He recalls that he had blown off an appointment with her.
By the end of the semester he has 12 excellent papers. And never again would he invest so much enthusiasm energy and zeal in to a university course. But he also could not hand out A’s to more than half the course. So he sprinkled in some A-‘s and for Carol a B+ (not the lowest grade–he’d given some of the boys a C+, but not a great grade by any means).
She had even written to him after the course, but he had ignored that as well. He had totally forgotten her: “Not one minute of one hour of thousands of hours since he’d last glimpsed her… had he thought of Carol Carson.”
That is the bulk of the story, but the end twists things somewhat. For when the train arrives at Penn Station, she has gotten off the car behind him and he can hear her stutter “H-hello! Professor–”
The last few paragraphs are wonderful, simple and concisely written to totally make you rethink that rest of the story, and what she says to him is so surprising, I loved this story.
Leave a Reply