SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-The Casbah, Hamilton, Ontario (November 6, 2004).
This was a Hamilton show between the 2004 Western Fall Nationals and the 10 night Fall Nationals at The Horseshoe Tavern the following week. The band attempted to play all of 2067 succeeding apart from “The Latest Attempt On Your Life” and “Try To Praise This Mutilated World.”
The recording opens with some wild jazz playing–rather incongruous opening music. But it quickly fades and you hear the guys plucking away as their noodling solidifies into “Easy To Be With You.” They seem to be having a lot of fun with the hoo ah hoo ah middle part–making it a bit more rocking, perhaps?
Martin: “This is for Yod’s sister.” Mike: “And Daryl from Niagara Falls, Happy Birthday.” Tim: “We couldn’t download the lyrics to ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ so we’re gonna do this one instead. Mike: “All the teleprompter rentals were eaten up by the U.S. election.” Martin: “And Velvet Revolver are on tour.” They play a stompin “Record Body Count.”
So we have a new record out. It’s called “twenty one twel–“. It’s called 2067. Tim: “It’s our 2,067th release.” Martin: “We’re a very prolific band. And we’re gonna attempt to do it top to bottom.” Mike: “And you know what they say, there’s a fine line between flagship and guinea pig and you’re it.”
The first song is “Shack in the Cornfields.” Martin introduces it: “This song had a large head. But Mike and I got down to it and made sure it was born. In the corn.” It sounds good and has a really long percussion ending and then opens up into Dave’s quiet “Little Bird,” a song they have played a lot over the last year.
Next up is “Marginalized,” which is a bit softer and less angry than some other versions.
Dave says, “We’re gonna do a song we just shot a video for. We do a video every couple of years. We got Frank Bonner to co-star in this video with Martin. It’s called The Tarleks and it’s about Herb Tarlke from WKRP in Cincinnati from the late 1970s and 1980s, the heyday of modern American sitcoms. And one day it will be done and you will see it. But until then you just have to fantasize what it might look like.” It’s a little slow an angular. Like much of the show it feels either tentative or like they want the audience to be able to experience the songs fully.
“Power Ballad for Ozzy Osbourne” has the opening stanza which they hadn’t been playing live. This is slower than usual, I think–although it feels like a real ballad the way it builds. There’s a buzzy wire as well, which I’m sure bugs the band. “I Dig Music” is a little goofier and less rocking than other versions. On the way after the middle section MPW plays the drum fill for Rush’s “Lakeside Park” but not quite right. For “Here Comes the Image” Mike plays a playful almost bell-sounding keyboard solo–although it does cut out a few times during the lengthy solo at the end.
Dave notes: “The worst part of switching instruments is not knowing which beer is yours.”
Mike says, “This song [“Who Is This Man and Why Is He Laughing?”] has no words. It’s drifting and mellow. Next up is supposed to be “The Latest Attempt on Your Life” which they have played live before. But you hear Martin say he doesn’t want to do it: “Let’s skip that one and do ‘Polar Bears.'” Mike agrees, “If we were doing Dark Side of the Moon or something we’d stick to it but we’re going to deviate.” It’s a spare but romping version of “Polar Bears” with some loud “hey hey ho hos.”
Dave: This next song is about yesterday’s football game that Tim wrote, uh, four weeks ago. Two days ago? Friday night? What day is it? That was yesterday I was talking Tiger Cats.
Mike: “Making Pierogies.” It’s a slow mellow song. Very pretty, especially the guitar parts at the end
Next week is our 4th annual Fall Nationals at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto (corner of Queen and Spadina). Ten nights in a row this year starting next… the coming Thursday.
Tim: Thanks to Wayne Omaha for playing tonight. They’re selling their new album back there and if you wanna get their other one Can the Maps. Go For the Beauty, bug them, and they’ll sell it to ya.
Dave: I think those guys should tour prisons. I think it would be really good for the country. As long as they’re on the right side of the bars.
They skip “Try to Praise This Mutilated World” and go into “P.I.N.” They play the coda at the beginning and then the songs starts. Martin sings his verse in a kind of flat deadpan and Dave says Martin Stop rapping and Martin seems to get annoyed or something–he starts singing crazy–more deadpan and then he screams a punky style and then redlines the volume with a scream on the mic–it’s a little disturbing. They jump into a poppy “Mumbletypeg” and after the first line Dave says “That’s a lot of beer.” It gets pretty wild by the end. It segues into a dark “Stolen Car,” with Martin singing “Goodbye suburban motherfuck.” The middle has a lengthy instrumental section with Tim getting to mess around on bass a bit.
After a relatively long encore break, the come back with “Pornography.” “We wish that song wasn’t relevant; however, it is.”
Then there’s a slow “California Dreamline.” And they end with a long “Feed Yourself” with a really creepy section of Dave whispering all kinds of things like “me and you in his head.” The song ends with some wild effects from someone–almost a minute of pinging sounds after which Dave says, Sorry.
[READ: February 21, 2017] Furry Logic
This book came across my desk at work (I’m still bummed that they changed the way we get books at work so I don’t see as many interesting ones as I used to). It looked interesting, so I brought it home and read it over the weekend.
This is a pop-science book that looks at how animals use physics to their advantage: “If you’re scared of physics, don;t worry, we’ve kept things simple.” I enjoyed that the book states right up front that the authors are anthropomorphizing the animals because that makes for a much better story. Even though, in the end, they dismiss this idea.
Chapter 1 is called Heat: The Warm Up Chapter. In which we learn about gender-swapping snakes, floppy skinned dogs, mosquitoes that wee blood, killer bees, hot-tailed squirrels, vipers that see heat and beetles that hear infrared.
The chapter looks at (using the research of others) how snakes in Manitoba keep warm by piling together in a big clumps. But more interestingly, there are certain snakes which swap genders (temporarily). Male snakes secrete female pheromones to attract males for body heat. We learn that dogs shake the water off of them because the energy they expel from the vigorous shaking is actually far less than the energy they would have to use to keep warm if they were so wet. The authors talk a lot about just how interesting it is to see their skin flip back and forth (this goes for all mammals since they all seem to shake in vaguely the same way.
There was also a fun section about mosquitoes and the scientists who research with them. The section talks about how their bodies actually get too hot when they suck our blood so they have to pee out some of the blood to help them cool off.
There was a fascinating section about the Japanese honeybee. The Japanese giant hornet (2 inches long, good lord) with a sting that kills 30 to 50 people a year. It also goes after bees. It decimates a hive and takes all of the reserves and the larva back to its own hive. But Japanese honeybees have learned to defend against them–basically by swarming the hornet until it overheats and dies. Yikes.
The part about the squirrel is fascinating too–not least for the kind of work that the researchers put into it. They look at showdown between the Pacific rattlesnake and the California ground squirrel. They learned that the rattlesnake is able to sense heat, so when the squirrel becomes aware of the rattlesnake it makes its tail very large and fills it with blood making their tails warm.
The final section concerns fire beetles. Beetles are attracted to fire. The part opens with a true story. In 1943 the amount of heart generated by smokers in a football game attracted a swarm of beetles who then proceeded to bite everyone in sight.
Chapter 2 is about force and looks at a light-headed dragon, raindrop dodging mosquitoes, a shrimp which punches above ts weight, the worlds fastest animals, a snappy ant, and the lizard that thinks its spiderman.
The dragon is the Komodo Dragon. The dragon, although huge, does not have a very strong bite. Rather, it clamps downs and then twists its body. It does doing damage much like a crocodile, tearing and twisting its victims. They think that these creatures might be the reason for the “here be dragons” fears on maps. And that their yellow tongue might have been an indicator of the fire they thought they breathed.
There’s a fascinating section looking at how mosquitoes deal with rain–they effectively fly right through it–it drops them a few inches but hey survive (unless they are close to the ground–then they get smooshed)
Then there’s the awesome section on the harlequin mantis shrimp (the book includes pictures and a very great close up of the shrimp). It can fling out its claw at 50 mph and crack open a crab shell. But that is nothing compared to the jaws of the trap jaw ant which close at a remarkable 143 mph. They even say that sometimes these ants close their mandibles so hard that it propels them up into the air.
That bit about Spiderman is all about how geckos stick (with some cool close-ups of their ridged feet).
Chapter 3 is about fluids (liquids then gases).
Pond skaters that walk on water, cats defying gravity, stealth seahorses, convention defying bees.
The pond skaters show how insects are able to walk on water and how if we were to try to do something similar we would need skis about half a mile long. The section on cats tries to understand just how cats drink. It’s a combination of lapping and sucking apparently–they stick their tongues in the water and a stream comes up from which they are able to suck the water. Or something (even with the picture its a bit confusing). Unlike dogs who just curl up their tongues and drink hearty.
Water is an easy source of turbulence. This is how fish and other sea creatures can sense our presence so easily–any movement is easily amplified. Except for seahorses how have the ability to move exceptionally stealthily.
Finally there’s the age-old question of just how a bumblebee flies–it really shouldn’t by physics standards.
Chapter four is about sound: Seductive peacocks, the battle of the bats, snakes with killer hearing, triangulating elephants and lobster violins.
Peacocks make loud screeching sound but they simultaneously making a low rumbling sound with their tails. It is so low that humans cannot really hear it. It is that low rumbling sound which travels much further that really attracts their mates from far away (this is also how we can hear bass notes much more loudly that treble notes. This chapter is especially funny (as many of them are) because they talk to a researcher who explains that he videotapes peacocks having sex.
The section on bats is all about how they use sonar. We know this already, but it also looks at how they are able to use it differently depending on their prey and how some prey is well adapted to get away from the bats.
They talk briefly about the fakirs who try to hypnotize snakes with music (we’ve all seen it). In fact the hypnotism comes from the movement of the instrument and not the music–snakes don’t have ears. The listen through vibrations on the ground. Indeed, they are able to tell a lot about prey from where the vibrations come from (there’s also a bit about how their lower jaw is in two parts so they can eat prey much larger than themselves.
Elephants lift up one foot apparently to triangulate the vibrations in the ground–usually from their herd. And finally, the California spiny lobster is able to make a plucked violin sound (rather unpleasant) to frighten off predators.
Chapter five looks at Electricity and Magnetism: taser eels, the case of the charged bees, turtles that loop the Atlantic, hornets skilled in quantum mechanics.
There’s a lot of insight into electric eels, which is pretty fun to read (especially how deadly they are). The section on bees looks at how they dance and how they navigate (which is pretty amazing). Did you know that turtles use the magnetic forces of the earth to tell them where to go and how to get there. The section of turtles is pretty long and really covers quite a lot of fascinating material about them.
There’s even a section about hornets that makes them seem fascinating (even if they are bastards).
The final section is about Light Ants and bees that use a trick of the lights, flashy cuckoos, deadly spitting fish, underwater chameleon and the squid with giant eyes
The section about ants is fun because it wonders how ants know how to get back to their home–it turns out they more or less keep track of their steps–the test done on them uses stilts (Stilts! on Ants!) to mess up their step count (they glued a pig bristle to the ants legs–HOW??)
Then there are the cuckoos. Cuckoos place their eggs in other birds’ nests, and the baby cuckoos more or less kill off all the other chicks and get fed all for themselves. The cuckoos also have markings and coloring that makes them look like the neediest birds in the nest so the parents will feed them first. They grow to twice the size of the parents. This section also discovers that bids’ vision is quite different from our own, which is pretty interesting.
Then we look at archerfish who are able to spit water at insects on branches–they can determine the refection of light in the water and their accuracy is scary –94%
Then comes my favorite section–octopus and cuttlefish and how they can change color and even make new designs to protect themselves from underwater predators. Finally why does the giant squid have such big eyes? To see, obviously. But in the depth of the oceans, you can barely see a few feet anyhow, so what’s the point? Well, whales can trigger bioluminescent creatures to show their path, and the squid can see them from 300 or so feet away. The whale can’t see that far, but it has sonar.
This book was so full of fascinating little details. I really enjoyed the whole thing–some sections dragged a bit but it may also have been from me reading it so much at one time.
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