SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Sugar, Victoria BC (November 17, 2005).
Lucky’s Notes: [Lucky recorded this show and gets a song dedicated to him]:
This was to be the last time the Rheos played in Victoria, though we had no idea at the time. We will all really miss you guys out here!!
Given that information, it’s particularly sad when they say, “we’ll see you hopefully in the spring.” But despite that future sadness, the show itself is great. It begins with a wonderful “Easy to Be with You” which sounds terrific: the “do da” part is really rich in harmonies.
It’s followed by a quite raw “CCYPA” and then a fun, romping “Garden” which ends with: “Hugh Syme’s dance party for your pleasure”–Martin making an electronic racket with his guitar.
“Fat” has some interesting echo on Dave’s voice that I wonder if it could be bouncing off the room or not. The “don’t even know who you are” is pretty wild with many different vocal from the guys. It’s a great version overall–the bands is really into it. Having more fun with “PIN” Dave seems to be really enjoying himself with the backing vocal nonsense.
Dave says, “It’s great to be here in Victoria, the Queen’s city, once again.” When they start the poppy and delightful “Mumbletypeg,” Martin acknowledges “the amazing rhythm guitar playing of Dave Bidini. Very rhythmic.”
“We’d like to thank Shane Koyczan for opening tonight–one of the sexiest men in Canada–another Neruda.”
“Marginalized” sounds great–dark and angry with a lot of echo on Tim’s voice. That sounds weird but cool. There’s a quiet middle section where Dave is playing a gentle acoustic and Tim is keeping that bassline. It goes on and then the final verse is sung quietly with little accompaniment.
Someone in the crowd shouts “Record Body Count,” and Dave says “yes we got records, what about it?”
But Tim says, “we’ll do another apocalyptic number for you.” They play “Here Comes the Image” with lots of great synth from MPW including an awesome solo. Some really cool backing vocal from Martin make this one of the best versions I’ve heard. Then MPW sits back at the drums: “good now I can relax.”
“Christopher” starts with an interesting guitar chord structure intro before they get to the song proper. There’s an intense soloing section and a terrific quiet ending. It’s followed by “King of the Past.” It’s not my favorite version of it but there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in it. It’s followed by a wild “Rock Death America.”
When they get to “Satan is the Whistler” Dave says they’re going to try this one “coz we hope to play it [well] in two days in Vancouver.” Martin sings some verses pretty slowly and then later he plays the fast part much more slowly and sloppily than usual.
He also adds to these lines:
bouncers came and snuffed the fucking fire out / there’s no smoking in the parking lot / “I hate this fucking place” / some punks in the windy peaks
After the song Dave concurs: “You gotta keep those parking lots clean. For parking. And loitering. Gas huffing [Martin: “pathetic addicts”] nefarious activities.”
“Claire” is a little sloppy from everyone, even Tim’s singing is a bit mumbly. But there’s a great long solo from Martin. Martin continues the solid work on “California Dreamline which is slow and trippy with lovely weird keyboards. While singing, he whoops after “sand in my tequila” and rolls his r’s after the “escondido” part.
The song segues into what sounds like “Horses” with Tim chanting “do it do it do it do it ; do it do it don’t you do it” but then Martin plays a rocking guitar for the intro of “Feed Yourself.” It is noisy and aggressive and amazing, perhaps the best version of this song I’ve heard. They play a riff of “Hey Hey, My My” then Dave starts getting really intense: “what’s in his head?” he starts screaming “open it up. “Look inside.” (The loudest screaming I’ve heard him do). The intensity is undermined somewhat by Tim’s ending backing vocal of “trunk trunk… what ‘cha gonna do with all that junk / all that junk inside that trunk.”
They go for an encore break and Dave says, At this point in the gig Martin usually has a cigarette, so I felt required to write a smoking song. It’s a new song about Martin smoking. It’s called “Smoking Song,” but how on earth is it about Martin smoking when he references Joseph Stalin and Hitler? he doesn’t say, but when it’s over, he says, “uh oh looks like a 2 smoke break. He might never come out.” so they play “My First Rock Show.” During the first verse, Dave stops and asks, “What’s so funny sir? That must have been the laughter of pure joy.” You can’t hear what they’re talking about, but Dave mentions NoMeanasNo and agrees that “they sent a lot of us on the wrong road. In the best way.”
When Martin arrives, Mike asks, “Where to, lads?” After some mumbling, you hear Mike say “boogers?” Dave says “vetoed! songwriter gets veto.” He then says they “support the locked out Telus workers. Telus is the shittiest service. They just got so big and fat there sitting on themselves.” More quiet discussion then Mike says “that’s good, Martin you had a smoke and now you’re asserting yourself.”
Perhaps they agreed to the earlier request, because they play “Record Body Count” which sounds great. When the song is more or less over, Martin starts playing a riff and begins singing “I’ve Been Thinking of You” and the crowd cheers. They jam that song and afterwards, Martin says “What was that song we did in the middle was it April Wine or something?” No one knows. It was a band called Harlequin.
Dave says, “We were in Nanaimo last night. Home to two of the greatest record stores.” Someone shouts: “Home of the Nanaimo Bar.” To which Dave replies: “Home of the Naniamo Bear. That bear likes them dead salmon.”
They play “Making Progress” which opens with a buzzy staticky guitar and big echo on Tim’s voice. When they get to the synth part it’s all messed up and someone apologizes, saying “don’t let me near that thing again.” Then it gets fixed and the synth is back on.
They end the show with “Dope Fiends.” There’s a big echo on Martin’s voice. Someone else sings some great falsetto along with him. During the slow part, Dave stars singing “Legal Age Life” but the music doesn’t change–it’s rather disconcerting but cool. The melody starts playing a keyboard that sounds like “Norwegian Wood” and at the end Tim does backing humming to “Norwegian Wood” before Martin’s loud and wild guitar ending.
Despite the odd echo, it’s a really great show. The band sounds in great form and they are having a really good time. It’s hard to believe they broke up so soon after this.
[READ: February 15, 2017] The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
Sarah and I have really enjoyed the Squirrel Girl graphic novels. She was really excited to see this actual novel about Squirrel girl from Shannon Hale.
This book is part of the Marvel Universe. And what I’ve learned recently is that while I enjoy the Marvel Universe, I far more enjoy the peripheral characters of the Marvel Universe–like those of S.H.I.E.L.D. (even if I don’t watch the show anymore–it got a little crazy). So I find myself enjoying Ms Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy and now Squirrel Girl–characters who reference The Avengers but are not actually part of the team.
There’s some thing so much more enjoyable about these characters where the stories can have fun of the major Marvel figures. And this one has a ton of fun with that conceit.
In this story Doreen Green is a teenager with a massive squirrel tail. She has just moved from California to New Jersey. Doreen Green liked her name because it rhymes and it is a composite of her father’s name (Dor) and her mother’s (Maureen). And boy does she ever hope there are squirrels in California.
One thing I rather enjoyed about this book was that it was chock full of humorous footnotes from Doreen *(as if she was reading the text and adding comments after the fact: “I’ll be reading this book along with you if you don’t mind. If you do mind, just pretend these adorable little numbers are word hats and ignore these footnotes.”
Doreen loves The Avengers (and had sheets that were washed out and faded). She was pleased to be living so close to Avengers headquarters (in New York) and she had always imagined meeting them and maybe even joining them. She wondered if she had special powers (she does) but always thought she was too young to join them (she is).
When Doreen was younger, her parents told her to keep her tail hidden because the other kids would be jealous. So she always tucked it into her pants (which led to people always thinking she had a big behind). Dor and Maureen are very chill and Doreen is a pretty happy kid. Even after moving across the country.
She heads out to the park (to see about squirrels) and runs into a bunch of medieval LARPers who chase her away (although one of them does apologize for their intensity),
When she gets to school, she sets out trying to make friends by being very bubbly. She tries and fails to be befriend the Somebodies–and of course they make fun of her large behind. Then she turns her attention to Ana Sofia, a girl with hearing aids “I read lips but I need to hear some of what you’re saying to make sense of it and my hearing aids pick up too much background noise in here.” Ana Sofia is not interested in being friends with anyone, but Doreen is hard to turn away.
Chapter Three changes things somewhat in that it is written from the point of view of Tippy-Toe. Tippy-Toe is a squirrel and she marvels that a human actually apologized to her. And more importantly, this human saved Tippy’s life. That’s when Tippy learns that Doreen can speak to squirrels and likes them very much. Doreen is so happy to have a friend, that she gives Tippy a pink ribbon to tie around her neck.
Eventually Doreen starts sitting with Ana Sofia at lunch. Ana Sofia seems to tolerate this (they communicate through texts). But soon enough they find that they have things in common and Ana Sofia warms up to her. They are occasionally joined by a guy named Mike who is grumpy most of the time. He just seems to sit with them–doesn’t exactly talk to them, but whatever.
Ana Sofia has lived here long enough to know that there are bad guys afoot. Specially the Skunk Club, a bunch of malcontents who go around tipping over trash and causing general ruckus. Well on the way home, Doreen sees that a street has been thus vandalized so she and her squirrel friends set out to clean it up. But the Skunk Club sees her and looks to make trouble for her.
But Doreen does some of her superpowers–jumping into a tree, unveiling her tail–and the Skunk Club thinks it might be the Jersey Ghost (why not the Jersey Devil, I have to wonder).
Chapter 6 is from Ana Sofia’s point of view (Doreen writes: this is so cool, I get to find out what Ana Sofia was thinking! Wait, how am I doing this?Hmm, maybe it’s better not to wonder”).
It is Ana Sofia who encourages Doreen to explore her super powers (she has already learned of Doreen’s tail). While out exploring, the LARPers grab Ana Sofia and put her in a pillory. Doreen (now sort of the Jersey Ghost) saves her and the LARPers talk of the Ghost sighting. At school one of the Somebodies asks Ana Sofia if it was true that she was saved by the Jersey Ghost–which they think is pretty cool. And Vin, one of the LARPers, offers Ana Sofia a humble apology We Beggeth Your Forgiveness.
It is through Ana Sofia that Doreen gets the nickname Squirrel Girl (actually Doreen had always thought of herself that way but never said it aloud). Ana Sofia also dubs a lot of the LAPRers as Squirrel Scouts.
Doreen also has a normal job too, like babysitting Dante Santino (the Cutest Baby in the World). Dante was adorable and Doreen enjoyed babysitting him. But during her babysitting job a squirrel came to tell her that Tippy and some other were in trouble. What could she do?
She ran over there with Dante in the baby carrier and helped out. This was all well and good because it turns out that squirrels love babies. They smelled interesting, their language was not too dissimilar to squirrel language and they were always dropping food.
Who was causing troubled for the squirrels? Well, it a was a bad guy whose initials were MM. Doreen makes some guesses as to what that might stand for and is disappointed when it is revealed that the villain’s name is Micro Manager. Micro Manager has been putting out traps in trees and creating robot controllers that he was putting on the dogs in town. He was generally bad news. We even get a chapter or two from his point of view. We learn that his parents were part of HYDRA but that they were sent away and he has been by himself with access to their powerful equipment for quiets sometime. His plan is to impress them (or someone else in HYDRA) with his evil plans.
His lair is full of robots and it is a wonderful comic scene because the robots constantly says COMMAND NOT UNDERSTOOD which just gets him more and more angry. When he learns that Squirrel Girl is messing with his toys, he sets out a trap for her. It involves a baby in a hot air balloon. He videotapes the entire thing so he can watch her amazing leaping ability (the scene is pretty awesome).
By the middle of the book, with Tippy-Toe’s help, Squirrel Girl gets access to the phones of The Avengers. She begins sending text messages to all of them. These sections re really funny especially since the Avengers don’t know who she is or how she got their phones. She tries Black Widow. She thinks its Peter Parker: “Parker stop texting me. Ur roommates farts do not qualify him as a super villain”
She gets in touch with Tony Stark (and makes fun of his facial hair on several occasions), but is not impressed by him. She also texts Winter Soldier (“really not sure who this Winter Solider person is, but I’m assuming a guy who works for the Avengers undercover?” (I don’t know how he is either). But she finds she has the most success with Rocket Raccoon (because they both have tails).
After Squirrel Girl does some cool things in public, the Somebodies all want Ana Sofia (and her weirdo friend Doreen) to sit with them. Ana Sofia is dumbfounded by this, and she really is pleased at the opportunity.
Of course, things go south very soon when Micro Manager uses his footage of Squirrel Girl to make her look bad. And in the darkest section of the book, everybody, including Ana Sofia (and even Tippy-Toe) turns on her.
Everything turns around, of course, when Micro-Manger gets Squirrel Girl into a show down (he captures a baby squirrel, and–oh no he didn’t–Baby Dante.
There’s a climactic fight scene with humor and robots. And everyone is happy, of course. Well, not everyone….
I really enjoyed this book. I loved that it made the transition to full novel so easily and the conversational tone was enjoyable and fun.
I Just Read About That... 
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