I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 9 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (November 19, 2004).

The Rheostatics, live at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, November 19, 2004. This was the 9th night of their 10 night Fall Nationals run at the Horseshoe. This is the final night with a recording.

I compared all of the setlists from the nine shows and was somewhat surprised to see just how much repeating they did (you can see the grid at the bottom with all of the songs for each night).

Kevin Hearn joined them.  And this 2 hour and 45 minute show ended with a Twist competition and a “Whole Lotta Love” jam which went on for 19 minutes followed by Neil Young’s “Powderfinger.”  Two versions are available – Mark Sloggett’s soundboard recording and 8-track files provided by Steve Clarkson.  As with the other shows with these two recordings, the Clarkson one is audience recorded and louder, but with audience noise.

The show starts with a song by Martin and a song by Tim.  There’s no Dave for a full ten minutes!

“Self Serve Gas Station” has loud keyboards that fill out the introduction.  In the middle of the song, when Martin sings “worry about their son?” Tim asks “which one?”  And Martin sings, “What went wrong with Johnny, is he dumb?”  “What about Doug?”  It’s followed by Tim’s “Soul Glue” which sounds great.

Tim seems to be having a lot of fun this night.  When Dave sings “Me and Stupid” Tim is full of backing vocals, including chanting “Gabba Gabba,Hey!” when Dave mentions the Ramones.

“The Tarleks” has a bit of a rough opening, but after a quick tuning, all is well.  “Claire” opens with some interesting washes of keys before the familiar guitars come in.  Tim is still goofy this time singing “horrify me, Claire, roto-till my hair.  Let me see you say a line that isn’t there.”

Tim says they’d like to send “Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne” to The Buttless Chaps.  Thanks for coming and rocking.”

During “Four Little Songs” Dave says, “Kevin, Sing us a song.”  He sings his song “This Is It” “There was fresh butter melting on a waffle…”  As the song moves to the fast part Martin sings “who stole the kishka,” a nod to the previous night. It ends and Tim yells, “Someone call the cops” and Martin plays a siren on his guitar.

Dave introduces the Bastard Brass who will play with them for three songs.  They are Brian on trumpet, Alexi on trumpet Alain on the ‘bone and good ol Seth on the saxophone.  Unlike some of the horns they have play with them, these guys are the real deal and they sound great.

They bring a lot of depth to “P.I.N” and I love when they play the riff of “Mumbletypeg.”  However, there is an interruption during the song, which I assume is real.  Tim sounds very concerned, asking if “you know that guy.”  Then he calls for Security.  When the song is over, he says, “It’s okay to have a good time but don’t be gross about it.”   Then…  “This guy’s gotta go.”  Then “Well okay, you can stay.   But seriously mind the person next to you.”  even Mike gets in on it: “You know you’re gonna get turfed it you keep it up, buddy.”  Then quieter: “Granted not by me.”

Things must settle down, because they play “Marginalized” and Tim thanks the guys “that was worth listening to all the practicing in the dressing room.”

They play a beauty couple of songs: “Shack in the Cornfields” and “Try to Praise this Mutilated World.”  Dave explains that “Pornography” is another song about America.

And then Martin says that they are the Rheostatics, but Tim says, “We are the Toronto casts of the Rheostatics.  That’s Mike’s line.  I thought it was good.”

They send “Making Progress” out to Mike Dunne who named the band back in Grade 11 (or earlier).  Thanks, Mike its all your fault.”  Mike: “very new wave.”  Tim: “This goes out to the city of Bolton, Ontario.”  Why is that?  That’s where Mike lives.”  “Well, somebody’s gotta.”

For “My First Rock Concert” they bring back Kevin Hearn.  The Kevin Hearn Revival.  Him and his fancy T-shirts.  Dave says that Kevin and Dave will interweave their songs.  This is Dave and Kevin’s journey of rock and roll awakening.  Dave sings his parts and Kevin’s first shows include: Mr Dressup, Peter Appleyard;   Then Santana (where the guys in front and behind him threw up).  Then playing a gig between Bon Jovi and Cheap Trick.  At the after party, the guys who sing “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” showed up.  Kevin sings a few choruses and then segues into “Surrender” (with nice harmonies from everyone).

Dave asks if Kevin has any Joe Jackson stories.  Tim interrupts and says he took a full bottle of Heineken off of the stage at a Joe Jackson show, wondering whats in that green bottle.

Kevin follows that with: Once I went to Burl Ives’ house for chocolate cake and he looked out the window and it was almost a full moon and in that Frosty the Snowman voice he said, “Oh look someone’s taken a bite out of the moon.  It’s true.”

When the song is over Dave says, “I imagine the UN General Assembly sitting together with the world on the brink of war and deferring to Kevin and he will tell that Burl Ives story and save the world.”

Tim continues, Dave and I, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, Disneyworld in Florida.  Dave and I were both in the crowd.  We did know each other but we were both there.  My first show.”  Dave: “Five seconds of complete bewilderment.  What the hell is that guy going there?”  Martin: “Who is Bo Donaldson.”  Tim: “Remember ‘Billy Don’t be a Hero?’ The greatest protest band ever.  Or was that The DeFranco Family?”

Tim continues, “We’d like to celebrate our ethnic heritage with this next song.”  Jennifer Foster is back on accordion for “Who is that Man, and Why is he Laughing?.”  It’s followed by “Yellow Days Under A Lemon Sun” with verses from Kevin, Tim and Dave.

They play “Aliens (Christmas 1988)” and before the final verse, when the song gets mellow, Tim starts singing “ABC, 123” and then Dave picks up “Michael Jackson.”  But then he says, “Why don’t you just give us some “It feels good to be alive.”  Tim asks what kind?  Phoning it in?”  Dave: “Oh no, big sale. ”  And after doing some of the song in a slightly different way Martin says now I feel like doing the riff, so they rock out.   At some point, Mike asks, “Are we still playing aliens?”  They get into some jazzy chords–merch chords.  Jazz and merch sales go together so well.  Jazzy Swag.  Martin comes out of the jazz with some blistering punk chords to open “RDA.”  They’re having crazy fun now, Dave starts singing “They don’t give a fuck about anybody else.”  After they wail, Mike asks, “Where’s the no solo sign?”

At the end of the song, they thank The Imponderables, and The Buttless Chaps.

After the break, they play “Legal Age Life” and jam it for 13 minutes.  The middle of the song features the Fall Nat’ls annual Twist competition.   Tim asks for gaffer tape to tape up “Wendell.”  It’s gonna be a really great bit when it’s ready.”  Tim: “I want to give Martin a laugh when he comes out.”  When Martin comes out, Tim asks, “Martin is that a Steinberger hockey stick?” (It doesn’t seem to go over well).

When the Twist competitors come up, Tim asks, “You’re not obnoxious drunk guy, are you?”  “No he knows all the words.”  The audience votes for Ann.  And Mike says, “Make that guitar talk for me Martin.”  he does and they have a “conversation.”

Tim asks, Do you know “The Things We Do For Love?”  I just wanna hear it.  Is that Hall and Oates?  It’s 10cc (Mike then explains the origin of that band name).

Martin starts “Record Body Count” by speaking the ending: “Joey stepped up on a block of ice, put a rope around his neck and fell asleep before he fucking died.”  Mike: “What a goof!”

Dave says, “We’re here tomorrow for one more night.  Good night!”  And yet, there’s 25 more minutes of music!  There’s some general jamming fun–in fact this jam (the Whole Lotta Love jam) runs about 19 minutes.  Someone takes a “Vegas walk off.”  And then Dave I think plays the Green Sprouts Theme, but there are washes of chords overwhelming everything.  Then people just start jamming song riffs: “Cat Scratch Fever,”  a Led Zeppelin riff or two, “Daytripper” “Tom Sawyer” Martin does the zooming sounds from “Bullet the BLue Sky” (or “Whole Lotta Love”).  And then someone starts jamming “Whole Lotta Love.”  About 7 and a half minutes into this, Tim says “We’re gonna do this all night long, so you might as well go home and gets some sleep.”  While “Whole Lotta Love” is playing, Kevin begins singing “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison (“Candy Colored Clown”).  Then Tim says, “I’m serous, this shit’s going on all night.  Get the fuck out of here!”

Dave says, “On that note, Good night.  I gotta go to St. Catherine’s Ontario in the morning.  I’m reading in the mall.”  Mike: “Two Vegas walk offs.”

There’s a sample played from Colonel Sanders “This is Colonel Sanders here to tell you about my exciting new chicken..  in addition to herbs and spices there’s  shampoo and dish soap in it, so while you’re eating, you’re cleaning.”

At about 12 minutes, Kevin starts singing “Whole Lotta Love.”  Martin mocks the “every inch of my love” part and Mike and someone else do the moaning.  Then Kevin starts singing “I’ve Been Everywhere” while samples galore play.  Finally Kevin sings a mellow version of “Like a Hurricane.”

And then a proper start to “Powderfinger” which makes up for the depravity of the previous night.  When they finish someone asks, “Hey are you still here?”

It’s not the final night of the residency, but it’s a really fun and kind of loopy night.  Some great playing mixed with some real silliness.

[READ: April 12, 2017] Bats

This has been my favorite Science Comic yet.  I love bats and this was great way to learn even more about them.

The book begins with Little Brown Bat flying through the night sky.  But he is lost.  And he happens upon a group of people in the desert hoping to see the Mexican Long-Tongued Bat and the Lesser Long-Nosed Bat, two nectar eating bats who help to pollinate flowers.

While the nectar bats do their things and the people enjoy it, one of the bats talks to Little Brown Bat about whats’ going on.  Finally the bat convinces Little Brown to dive down to eat all the bugs that the light is attracting–the humans won’t mind.

We learn about bat predators–foxes and snakes (which is why they stay off of the ground), but they can’t do much about owls.

Among the humans are a family. Their sullen teenager Sarah won’t look up from her phone the whole time.  But when little Brown dives for, bugs her parents freak out and swat the bat to the ground.  Sarah yells at them and says it only wanted bugs–maybe she was listening after all.

Between the drama we learn a little about echolocation and the structure of bat wings (which are actually close to human hands).

Little Brown is brought to a vet who specializes in bats–turns out he fractured his wing and she is able to bandage him up.

In the cage, Little Brow meets all kinds of other bats (the weird and wonderful world of bat faces) who each tell their story: Flying Fox Bat, Western Mastiff Bat, Visored Bat and how each of their strange face shapes affect their echolocation.

There’s a page that explains the types of bats (or chiropters).  Megabats eat fruit nectar and pollen while Microbats eat insects, fruits, and small animals. We even learn about vampire bats–which do exist but which are very small and eat mostly from animals–without the animals even knowing.

About half way through the book Sarah visits the doctor to check on Little Brown–she is surprised that she became so interested in bats.

One thing I loved about the book was the way it talked about various careers with bats–I would totally have wanted to do this as a kid:

Park ranger, mammologist, speleologist, conservation biologist, chiropterologist,wildlife rehabilitator.  We also learn about things that can harm bats–fungus and other things that humans do inadvertently to harm them

Meanwhile Little Brown is meeting different species and learning why they are there.  One was injured by a cat, another stowed away on a ship, but they have all wound up here to be cared for until they can be released back in the wild or, if they are too damaged kept on-site to educate others.

And then there’s some very cool drawings of the mass colony emergence–from caves, and bridges (primarily in Texas).

Some fun facts: bats can fly as fast as cheetah and can eat 600 to 1000 insects an hour.   Bat bones are thin and have a lot of cartilage so they can heal quickly.  Although a big tear in a bat wing often cannot be healed with glue because of the elasticity.

In terms of the narrative I really enjoyed that the bat is nervous about what the humans are doing.  It never quite accepts them, so when the vet grabs it it is always nervous.  And after being comfortable in the cage with the other bats, he is terrified to go back outside into the world.

The end of the book shows how to make and where to put bat boxes and then a rundown of bat anatomy and a glossary as well.

Bats are awesome and so was this book.  I’m just very puzzled why Koch’s drawing style made everyone’s noses look so weird (aside from the bat noses which seemed pretty normal to me).

~~~~

Since this was the last recorded night of the 10 night Fall Nationals, and I was talking about duplicates and such, here’s what they played each night (taken from the Rheostatics live pages.

11/11/04	11/12/04	11/13/04	11/14/04	11/15/04	11/16/04	11/17/04	11/18/04	11/19/04
Crowd	Christopher	crowd	Home Again	Onilley’s Strange Dream	PIN	Crowd	Digital Beach	Self Serve Gas Station
PIN	King Of The Past	It	It’s Easy To Be With You (w/Don Kerr)	When Winter Comes	Mumbletypeg	Who Is This Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Boxcar Song	Soul Glue
Soul Glue	Pornography	Woodstuck	Almost Saturday Night (w/Dave’s Son)	Banter	Marginalized	Four Little Songs (Instrumental)	PIN	Me and Stupid
Polar Bears and Trees	The Tarleks	Introducing Happiness	Claire	Superdifficult	The Tarleks	Introducing Happiness (Robin Lowe)	It’s Easy To Be With You	The Tarleks
Marginalized	Marginalized	Mumbletypeg	Aliens (Christmas )	Marginalized	Aliens (Christmas )	Aliens (Christmas ) (Melissa McClelland)	Yellow Days Under A Lemon Sun	Claire
The Tarleks	Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne	Marginalized	Try To Praise This Mutilated World	Polar Bears and Trees	Monkeybird	Beerbash (Mike Bell)	Loving Arms	Power Ballad For Ozzie Osbourne
Shack In The Cornfields	Fish Tailin’	Four Little Songs	Who Is This Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Shack In The Cornfields	Aliens (Christmas ) cont’d	King Of The Past (Paul Linklater/Donna Orchard)	Home Again	Four Little Songs
Pornography	Me and Stupid	The Tarleks	Making Progress	Try To Praise This Ordinary World	Try To Praise This Ordinary World	It’s Easy To Be With You (Janet Morassutti)	I Am Drumstein	Horns Intro
Here Comes The Image	PIN	I Dig Music (The Jazz Animal)	Take Me In Your Hand	Pornography	The Midnight Ride Of Reg Dog Ray	Loving Arms (Kurt Swinghammer)	Marginalized	PIN (w/ the “Bastard Brass” horn trio)
Try To Praise This Mutilated World	Mumbletypeg	Here Comes The Image	Legal Age Life At Variety Store (w/Hebrew School Dropouts)	Who Is This Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Here Comes The Image	Saskatchewan (Michelle Rumball)	The Tarleks	Mumbletypeg (w/ BBs)
The Royal Albert (Joey Part )	Here Comes The Image	Who Is That Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Northern Wish	Here Comes The Image	My First Rock Concert	banter	Pornography	Banter
Torque, Torque	Shack In The Cornfields	Try To Praise This Mutilated World	Stolen Car	Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne	Shack In The Cornfields	The Tarleks (Greg Smith)	Shack In The Cornfields	Marginalized (w/ BBs)
Claire	Try To Praise This Mutilated World	Pornography	Row (Tim Solo)	In This Town	Little Bird, Little Bird	Bad Time To Be Poor (Chris Brown)	Try To Praise This Mutilated World	Shack in the Cornfields
It	In This Town	We Went West	Self Serve Gas Station -> Song Of The Garden -> Radios In Motion	Christopher	Pornography	banter	All The Same Eyes	Try to Praise this Mutilated World
Making Progress	Dope Fiends and Boozehounds (w/Selina Martin)	California Dreamline (w/Paul Linklater)		Little Bird, Little Bird	Loving Arms	It (Royal Wood)	Here Comes The Image	Pornography
It’s Easy To Be With You	Bad Time To Be Poor	I Am Drumstein (w/Ron Koop)		Fat	Saskatchewan (w/Justin Rutledge)	Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne (Steve Stanley)	Who Is Than Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Making Progress
Stolen Car	Making Progress	Satan Is The Whistler		Memorial Day	Dope Fiends And Boozehounds	Take Me In Your Hand (Jennifer Foster)	Stolen Car	My First Rock Concert (Dave alternating “verses” w Kevin Hearn)
Little Bird, Little Bird	Feed Yourself	Encore Break		Shaved Head	Making Progress	Marginalized (Justin Rutledge)	Little Bird, Little Bird	Who is that Man, and Why is he Laughing? (w/ Jennifer Foster on accordion)
Aliens (Christmas )	Encore Break	Little Bird, Little Bird		One More Colour	Feed Yourself	Lying’s Wrong (Amer Diab)	California Dreamline	Yellow Days Under A Lemon Sun
I Dig Music (The Jazz Animal)	My First Rock Concert	banter			Encore Break	Chansons Les Ruelles (Howard Druckman and Beverly Kreller)	Horses	Aliens (Christmas )
encore break	Self Serve Gas Station	PIN			First The Wheel (Tim Solo)	Northern Wish (Kate Fenner)	Encore/Break	Fan Letter to Michael Jackson (w/ much “jazz” banter)
Who Is That Man, And Why Is He Laughing?	Desert Island Discs	Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne			Banter	In This Town (Reid Jameson)	Making Progress	RDA (Rock Death America)
Fan Letter TO Michael Jackson	Legal Age Life At Variety Store	Making Progress			Satan Is The Whistler	Palomar (Dennis Ellsworth)	Monkeybird	Applause
	Encore Break	crowd			Soul Glue	Dead is the Drunkest You Can Get (Simon Wilcox)	The Horseshoe Medley (The Pooby Song / The Hockey Song / Devil Town / The Ballad Of Wendel Clark Part II / Bees / Folsom Prison Blues / Ring Of Fire / Old Vancouver Town / War Pigs / Human Highway / Rockaway Beach / Walk On The Wild Side / So Long Farewell / Who Stole The Kiska / Let’s Go Skiing In The Morning)	Legal Age Life (w/ Fall Nat’ls annual Twist competition)
	Rain, Rain, Rain					My First Rock Show (Matthew Cowley)	Powderfinger	Record Body Count
						Shaved Head (Simon Head)		“Whole Lotta Love” Jam
						Claire (David Celia)		Powderfinger
						Record Body Count (Yawd Sylvester)
						Junction Foil Ball (Ford Pier)
						Rain, Rain, Rain (Selina Martin)
						banter
						A Midwinter Night’s Dream (John Crossingham)