SOUNDTRACK: BIDINIBAND-Hillside Festival, Guelph ON (July 26, 2009).
Back in 2003 Rheostatics played the Hillside Festival. And here it was six years later, the Rheos had broken up and Dave Bidini’s band, Bidiniband were here to play.
And apparently there’s a downpour.
The announcer says, “I’m glad you’re semi dry. I’ll ask you to stand away from the steel poles–it’s to do with lightning and all that. We’re going to do a quick delayed sound check” Dave interrupts, “Nah we’re not. Can everybody hear your guitar? Check 1,2. There we go. Fuck the weather. let’s rock”
The Bidiniband!
Some of these songs are ones he played solo, so it’s interesting to hear the with a full band.
“I Wanna Go to Yemen” is a narrative story song. The big chorus really solidifies the song.
I know “The List” from his solo shows. It’s quite a bit bigger and more polished with the band. People hate that he disses Tim Hortons, but they love that he disses Chad Krueger. Mild reaction to Zack Warner, huge reaction to Stephen Harper.
“Popcorn” is a fun mashup of line from songs set to a neutral rhythm. He has a couple of new lines and then completes the stanza with a recognizable lyric:
you’ve gotta get a grip on the grip real fast
monkey wrangling is a pain in the ass
I”m no school boy, but I’m doing alright
You shoulda heard em just around midnight
Mid-song he shouts, “I see some indigenous dancing!”
“Last of the Dead Wrong Things” has Bidini’s intensity. There’s a drum solo with Bidini scratching away at his guitar.
This is where our music was born Guelph and Etobicoke. He starts playing a blues riff that sounds like it could be “Legal Age Life,” but is, instead, “This Song Ain’t Any Good.” The original of that song isn’t like this at all. But this faster version is more fun. He even engages the audience: come on kids you’re living a happy lifestyle out there in Guelph. You’re happy, you’re healthy… Does anybody know how to twist? Because I’m a terrible twister.
Without changing the style of the song, Dave starts singing “Making Plans for Nigel.” By the end, it has shifted somewhat to choruses of “Shine a Light on Me.”
“The Land is Wild” sounds suitably intense–he even throws in some “Holy Mackinaw, Joes.” The band gets really loud near the end.
They end with the fairly obscure Rheostatics song “Earth,” which fits well with this line up and this set list.
And then their time is up–Dave shouts, “our albums for sale, go figure.”
[READ: April 25, 2016] The Five Hole Stories
Dave Bidini primarily writes nonfiction–sure there’s a bunch of made up stuff in is books, but that’s mostly done in service of the non-fiction account he is telling. This small book (about 100 pages) is a collection of short stories. Not only that, they are all erotic short stories, and they are all centered around hockey.
Why would Bidini write hockey erotica? He blames a woman named Brenda Quinn who staged a short-lived erotic reading event at the Music Gallery in Toronto in the early 1990s. He had written two of the stories for that show.
There are six stories in total and each story opens with an illustration.
“One Hundred Bucks” is the most complex of the stories. It involves a woman of somewhat ill repute and the hockey player who sees her every time he comes to town. But unlike the other players, Eddie genuinely falls for Dolores. And every time he comes to town to see her, his team and Eddie especially, plays great. Eddie proposes to her and the unlikely couple is set to wed. But before that happens, another player comes into the bar and offers Dolores and her female friend $100 (this is set back when that was a LOT of money) to go back to his hotel. Dolores says that she is engaged, but the man doesn’t want to touch her. He just wants to watch the two women cavort a bit. It all comes to a head when he and Eddie square off on the ice and he is able to use this as blackmail in the game.
“Why I Love Wayne Brady” is a story about the love of one man for a great hockey player called, uh, The Gifted One. Can such an illicit love ever pass muster in the NHL?
“Joan” is a fun story about a man who is in love with a female goalie. He can’t stop thinking about her and he finally invites her to join his team just to be closer to her. This story is set up mostly as a dialogue between two men and so there are many funny moments like when they watch The True Adventures of Mandy and Mercedes, the hockey porno. This story even uses the titular phrase about a goalie’s five hole.
“I am Bobby Wolf” is a bout a great hockey player who goes through a drought. He is wiling to try anything to break the drought. He is given an elixir that he must rub on his balls (Bidini gives Paul Quarrington credit for this idea). It’s an amusing story with hints of magic in it.
“Cortina” is a lengthy story about the quest to find a once great player. There are diary entries and a narrator who is conducting an investigation into the life of Stephen Jackson. The diary is written in poor English (intentional misspellings and whatnot), which is a little annoying but do add a character detail to be sure.
The crux of the problem is that Jackson was eventually traded to the Cortina (Italy) hockey league. He meets an Italian woman and gets invited to an orgy. Could this incident (an orgy is never very clean) have been the beginning of his downfall as a player?
“The Five Hole” is a short, short piece. It is sort of a metaphor but not a subtle one: “because you can’t see my tits and ass through my armour–and more’s the pity–my Five Hole is everything: my weapon, my lure and hook…” The rest of the three pages are more and more metaphors each one as unsubtle as the last. I’ll bet it is funny to hear read aloud.
So it’s a fun trifle of a book, good for a laugh, especially if you like hockey.
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