SOUNDTRACK: BIDINIBAND-Call the Office, London, ON (April 18, 2008).
Dave Bidini played some solo shows in 2007 but by 2008 he had cobbled together a band: Bidiniband. The band includes Dave, Paul Linklater, on lead guitar, former Rheo Don Kerr on drums and Doug Friesen on bass.
I’m not sure when they started playing together, but this is the first live show at Rheostatics Live. The set list hasn’t changed much since his solo shows, but the songs sound really different with the full band.
Some of Dave’s solo work is about telling real life stories of unsung people. They
re usually really interesting the first one or two times you hear them, but they kind of lose their power after multiple listens. So “Zeke Roberts” and “The Land is Wild” (except for the fantastic chorus) wear out their welcome a bit. But again, it’s a nice change to hear them with the full band.
“Fat” is interesting to hear with other musicians. The ending isn’t quite as wild as with the band but these guys chant the “everyone’s a robot” with great energy. After the song Dave says “Good night everybody” to much laughter. For the next song he says, “This is basically the same song but with a more ironic joke. The irony is not in the tuning or lack thereof.”
Someone says, “You guys and your new strings. I haven’t changed my strings in like two years.” “I thought t would be cool, you know, on a new tour.”
“This Song Ain’t Any Good” has a very different delivery than the folksier style that I’m used to. He asks the band, “You want to do it sad, what did you mean?” They do the chorus in a kind of repeated downbeat “singalong.”
Thanks to Andy and The Two Minute Miracles for playing tonight. We’re gonna do another song based in our country: “The Moncton Hellraisers.” It has a rather country flair to it.
Someone shouts, “Do a hockey song.” Dave says, “I think you’re out of luck tonight Oh, no there’s a longer one later tonight….we’re making you wait for it.”
I love the jazzy opening of “Memorial Day.” But even better is the full band rock of “Terrorize Me Now.” Who ever in the band is screaming “And then we killed again,” is totally intense.
Dave asks, “Could anyone deliver a water to the stage, or I could put my guitar down… From off stage: “only whiskey and cold coffee!” “cold cuts?”
This next song is gonna feature Dog Paul’s on double bass for a song about cannibalism and Canadian rock. “Desert Island Poem” features the line “Rheostatics eat their drummer who would cook and season the body?”
Dave once described the song: “Yeah, and that’s sort of a true story in a way. I mean not the cannibalism part. But one time the Rheos were stranded in Drumheller [Alberta] and we were listening to the radio and we heard this story about that plane that crashed in Alaska. And we began to wonder what would happen to us if we never got out of Drumheller.”
For “The List”, the replaced Zack Warner with Sass Jordan (a Canadian singer) which features the line “you say I suck but it’s that suckdom of which I’m proud.” Some one shouts, “that’s a fucking song that needed to be written.” Dave says he has one more verse but he can’t remember who its about.
“The Continuing Story of Canadiana and Canadiandy” has a cool slide guitar solo in the middle of the folk. Dave, “That’s from back in the day where all the Canadian folk singers looked like Jesus. Those nice sweaters on, a nice beard.” Mitsou? “When I think of Canadian folk I think of Mitsou too, ironically.”
Someone in the band proposes the “Top five Canadian folk albums: Summer Side of Life, Old Dan’s Records,” Dave notes: “That’s two from Gordon Lightfoot are you allowed to pick two from the same artist?” “And The Way I Feel.” Dave: “You’re just doing Gordon Lightfoot.” “That’s what I’m trying to say, dude. “I’m getting your drift that you like the Gord.” “Gordon never looked like Jesus did.” “No, he looked more like Bruno Gerussi.”
“Is everybody ready for a long death ballad? You look like the kind of crowd who would like a long death ballad.” Someone in the crowd shouts: “kill us, kill us Dave.”
We haven’t performed this song successfully ever life. “Zeke” sounds better with the guitar sliding up and down and in the middle when there’s a few complex moments and the band really takes off. But there’s all kinds of flubs at the end. Dave says, “you’re too kind. That was the best first half we’ve done for sure.”
They play “My First Rock Show” at a slower pace. “A bit of banjo for this, Paul?” After the swan dive, there’s some crazy feedback and effects manipulation and then Dave starts singing “Happy Jack.”
They finish “Rock Show” and then begin with “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and then Slade’s “Run Run Away.” (did that song have a chorus?). And then it shifts to Bidini’s “Pornography.”
“Rock Intro? Is it a rock intro nigh?” “Progtro.” Someone says something about YouTube. Dave says “Whats YouTube. They’re an Irish rock band, right?” There’s great noisy opening to “The Land is Wild.” It quiets down but sounds great with the full band. I like the lead guitar line that runs through the song. During the slow part, the person who mentioned Gordon Lightfoot sings “Ode to Big Blue” as the song gets bigger and noisier.
It segues into a really fast version of Rheostatics’ “Earth.” Its rocks. “Don Kerr on the drums everybody.” And then a romping “Horses.” Midway through the song he starts reciting the lines to “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads and then some of “Another Brick in the Wall. Pt 2.” He also throws n the “facts” portion of Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless.”
This all segues into a stomping, guitar-light version of “Life During Wartime.” Dave starts singing lines from “One Thing Leads to Another” (“one gun leads to another”), “Relax Don’t Do It” then “When Two Tribes go to war, war is something you can’t ignore.”
As the song ends Dave thanks everyone for coming: “a small but mighty crowd for a small but mighty band.” Then he introduces the band: Douglas Friesen from Manitoba, Paul Linklater from Manitoba, Dave born and raised in Etobicoke, Ontario. Donald S. Kerr from Mississauga, Ontario.
As they finish, the crowd is screaming screaming for an encore with one guy even telling him not to put their instruments down. But there is no encore.
[READ: April 15, 2017] Writing Gordon Lightfoot
The title of this book is unusual–it’s hard to even figure out what it means (until you read the book), but it’s also deceptive.
The title means writing to Gordon Lightfoot. Bidini is basically writing Lightfoot a series of letters. But it is far more than that. In fact the scope of the book is really the Mariposa musical festival that took place in Toronto in 1972. Lightfoot appeared (along with many other folk luminaries). Interspersed with his documentation oft he festival (he was too young to go so it’s all research) are his letters to Lightfoot.
The reason he is writing letters to Lightfoot in a book is because Bidini believes that Lightfoot won’t speak to him.
His band Rheostatics, recorded a cover of his “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It was one of their big songs when they were first starting out. And then, as a brash young kid, Bidini once said that it was actually based on an old Irish melody and that it really wasn’t Lightfoot’s song anyway. Yipes.
So, assuming that Lightfoot will never talk to him (I wonder if he actually tried), he decides to write letters. But the letters aren’t “hi how are you” letters, they are a biography of Lightfoot’s life as written by a fellow musician. He bases most of his notes on things that were in other biographies and he says he makes a lot of it up too.
So it’s an unusual book in many ways.
Not the least of which is that it opens with Monday July 10 1972 in which a solar eclipse was happening, there was also a prison riot and prisoner escape on that day. And the organizers of the Mariposa Festival were trying to finalize the lineup for the festival.
Each letter (alternating chapters) has a description like “letter in which I ask you about playing Massey Hall and stuff.” In this one, Bidini talks a lot about his own playing there and tries to imagine (by asking Gord) what it was like for him.
Other famous personages from the 1970s were Pierre Trudeau–president and playboy and Bobby Hull, hockey player extraordinaire who defected from the NHL to play with the WHL. And who was banned from playing in the Canada/Russia summit later that year because of this.
“Letter in which I ask you about track and field and rick and roll.” Turns out that Lightfoot really liked sports as well as music. But back then he didn’t like rock and roll. He described it as “death after the high school prom.” He joined a barbershop quarter and wanted to play jazz–whatever was cool he distanced himself from it.
As he goes through the rest of that July week he updates us on the prisoner escape, and on some local kids and on the enduring trip that the rocket Voyager was taking on its way to Jupiter. There’s also a bunch about Bobby Fischer facing Boris Spassky in chess (and man, Fischer was a dick).
One of the things that Bidini does in most of his books is talk to other famous people about whatever he’s writing about. So he has a lot of quotes from other musicians about Lightfoot and the Mariposa Festival. Geddy Lee went to the show with John Rutsey. He says that at the time no one knew if Lennon would show at the festival. They didn’t have and kind of updates like we do now, so they just sat and waited. Geddy was mostly excited about seeing Lennon and the rest of the band, while many other people found the set a disaster. John Lennon debuted his Plastic Ono band in Toronto. Yoko Ono was in a sack for much of the show caterwauling.
I learned about some important Canadian bands from the early 70’s like Chainsaw, like The Paupers whose bassist Denny Gerrard is who Geddy Lee cites as a first musical hero because his solos were so intense and complicated that his fingers bled.
Eventually Lightfoot “sold out” (although not really) by writing more popular music.
I also didn’t know that Bonnie Raitt had been playing since the 1970s, I learned about Leon Redbone and how many people thought that Redbone was actually Bob Dylan, because Dylan had been somewhat secluded in the years before Redbone came out.
Finally the Festival came and yes it was on an island. 14,000 people showed up. And there were stages everywhere–Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal, John Prine and Bruce Cockburn (who denied entry to James Taylor in the artists’ tent when he was told to let no one in.
Some players at the Mariposa festival were Bonnie Raitt, Brice Cockburn and Joni Mitchell. They really didn’t want famous people to play. The whole point of the Festival was to promote small local folkies. So when Neil Young showed up, he was discouraged from playing, but Cockburn gave him a few minutes of his set to play a few songs. When Dylan came to the show how could they refuse to let him play? But they did. He came to the island and walked around–people were mostly high and weren’t sure if they had seen him or not. But he was there.
There’s a funny moment where Bidini leaves Toronto to go away for a few days only to find out the Gordon showed up to a benefit for him a few miles from where Bidini lived–he had no idea.
Bidini also talks about seeing Dylan live–he was terrible.
As the book nears its end there are quotes from all kinds of people–musicians, fans and others about Gordon. Some say he was super nice, others say he was a colossal ass.
The truth is somewhere in between.
This is a strange book. It’s not obvious that Lightfoot fans will love it. People interested in the Mariposa Festival will like it (even if he has to make up a lot of the details). I think fans of Bidini’s writing will like it. It’s an unusual book, but one I enjoyed quite a lot.
It’s also got some really interesting pictures from the festival of Dylan, Mitchell, Lightfoot and others.
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