SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Live at Massey Hall (April 29, 2016).
After their farewell concert at Massey Hall in 2007, who would have guessed that some nine years later they’d be back again.
When I heard this show was announced I immediately bought a ticket, not really thinking about how I would logistically manage such a thing. I was able to get it to a fan who could go, but at least I’ll have my email confirmation:
Live at Massey Hall: Rheostatics
Fri 04/29/2016 8:00 PM
Main Floor Centre Front Seat I-44 $29.50
This time Martin’s voice is working again. But in the intervening years he has had something else go on with him. I don’t know details, but there’s some kind of anxiety present–and it comes out during this show.
Amazingly, for such a big show, there is hardly any evidence of it online. There’s a few fan videos but no full sets available.
The only performance available that I can find is the official release from (the terrific) Live at Massey Hall series. The whole series is wonderful–professionally filmed and beautifully recorded. The only problem is that it’s so short. I don’t know how long the show was, but the video is only 40 minutes.
The video opens with Martin talking about his laryngitis, “laryngitis taught me to enjoy singing in a lower range.” There’s Tim talking about seeing Devo (who were walking on treadmills the whole show) at Massey Hall and overheating from wearing a heavy coat in winter. Dave saw lot so new wave bands who weren’t great live but were great because they were in Massey hall–it’s a forgiving and inspiring place.
Big red letters in the back of the stage spelled out RHEOSTATISC (sic).
The set opens with “King of the Past” Martin plays a lovely solo and gets some applause and the whole thing sounds great.
“Californian Dreamline” opens with some great sound effects from Martin, Hugh Marsh and Kevin Hearn. But after the “sensamilla” bit, Martin freaks out. He steps away from the mic and waves everyone off.
Dave jumps in, “this happened in Montreal once. It’s true. We were opening for Moxy Fruvous, so it’s a kind of curse we’ve got to exorcise.”
The band jams on and them Martin comes back to sing and the crowd gives him a big cheer–there really is no more forgiving crowd than a Rheostatics crowd.
The opening acoustic guitar of “Claire” begins. That’s Tim on acoustic, Dave on bass and Martin on his gorgeous double neck guitar. The letters have been rearranged to say SORTA ITCHES and Martin plays a great solo. Tim sounds perfect, of course.
They start “P.I.N.” Martin sings the first line and then has an issue. He steps away again while the band plays on. He catches himself and returns (again to encouraging applause). Once it gets going it all sounds great.
Dave finally gets a lead vocal song. The letters spell out SHITCOASTER as they play a flawless “Mumbletypeg.”
Then apparently the entire rest of the show happens and we get the night-ending encore–a wild and raucous “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds.” (The letters finally spell RHEOSTATICS). The song gets off to a pretty good start. For the middle, Martin and Hugh face each other (Martin always seems comforted by being with Hugh) and then Don Kerr gets a drum solo (with sound effects from Kevin Hearn).
At the end of the song, for the “moon,” there are howls, probably from Kevin, possibly from the audience. As they slowly fade away, Dave jumps of the drum rise and the end of the song begins. But this is an extended jam ending. Hugh and Kevin make some menacing sounds and then Martin plays a solo with a slide. It’s a weird, very undramatic ending for such a dramatic band.
I have always been sad that I couldn’t go to this show, but it sounds like it would have been a real roller coaster of a night.
Read this review from Radio Free Canuckistan for the perspective of someone who was there.
Over the closing credits, Kevin Hearn’s father read “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski. I assume he read that before the band came out (accompanied by Hugh Marsh).
I don’t know much by Bukowski, but this is great for its simple profundity.
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
[READ: March 5, 2018] Head Games
As with some of my favorite books, the story behind the creation is almost as interesting as the book itself.
Craig McDonald is a journalist and he says that he is often frustrated by trying to write the truth: “read five biographies about the same person and you’ll feel like you’ve read about five different people.” With fiction maybe you can find something bordering truth.
The introduction by McDonald tells us that we will be riding with pulp novelist Hector Lassiter. Lassiter is the protagonist of a finite arc of ten novels. The last one, Three Chords & The Truth is a sequel to Head Games and appeared in 2016. Lassiter is a charmer, a rogue, a rake and a crime novelist who lives what he writes and writes what he lives. Hector was born in Texas in 1/1/1900 and the arc of the novels spans the 20th century.
McDonald says the publishing history of the books is not chronological. Head Games was the first novel published. The second was set in 1935 and features Hemingway prominently. Other books hopscotched through the decade. They have recently been reissued and presented in roughly chronological order.
The novels “follow secret histories and underexplored aspects of real events.” They’re set in real places and use history and real people to drive the plots.
In a background to this story Hector lied about his age and joined Black Jack Pershing to hunt down Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa who had attacked Americans in Columbus, New Mexico–the first and only successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to 9/11/01.
This book is set in 1957 (mostly).
It begins in 1957 in sepia and black and white. We see square-jawed tough guy Lassiter along with Erskin “Bud” Fiske, poet and interviewer sent by True magazine to profile Lassiter. Bud will accompany him on most of his adventures in this book.
They are with Bill Wade a solider of fortune and fugitive, the one who lured him south of the border. Lassiter is supposed to be on the set of an Orson Wells film but Wade is promising him real money-80 grand. Sitting in front of them is Pancho Villa’s head.
Pancho Villa was killed in 1923. They say that two men dug him up in 1926 and hacked off his head. Some say they put a treasure map in it. Either way it disappeared from history.
Wade tells him if he brings the head to Senator Prescott Bush he’ll get the $80 K. Bush had the head stolen back in ’26 for “some fraternity that collects skulls.” Hector knows it–Yale, “Skull & Bones.”
While they are thinking of it, men crash the room guns a blazing. Wade is killed and Hector and Bud make it out with the skull (and a few other skulls in Wades’ trunk). They make it to Hector’s house where some frat boys charge in with guns demanding the skull. He gives them a fake and then they take off again. This time for California to find Emil Holmdahl, the man arrested for stealing the head in the first place.
That’s all pretty exciting.
While in California, they get to the set of Touch of Evil. Lassiter hangs out with The Kraut, Marlene Dietrich. Welles tries to get Hector to be in the film, but Hector is a busy man. He also meets a Mexican woman who is beautiful, and Hector falls for her pretty hard. She has a child and he imagines taking care of both of them.
But his life is not one of families. Carrying around skulls and guns is no life for a young mother.
After a ton of action (some of it confusing) we get to Part II, ten years later. Hector is 67 he is missing half of a leg and he is pretty much useless. In kind of an epilogue of what happened in the last ten years, the biggest news is that Prescott Bush has run for Senate “they say he’s grooming his sons and grandsons to follow the family path into politics…may god help us all.”
But the story is far from over as the final page of the section tells us.
Part III reunites us with Bud. He has become a minor celebrity appearing as a guest on TV shows, doing cartoon voice overs. But he has a score to settle. In Connecticut. When Bud enters the Skull and Bones room he hears them talking about the Pancho Villa skull. “That barbarian Villa invaded the US and killed Americans. Now we avenge that. That hack Lassiter took the skull when it was almost in our grasp.
Then other person standing there says “drop this ‘temporary’ bullshit, it’s ‘George W.'” The young Yale student Bush says that sending in Black Jack to attack Villa was shortsighted and vengeful. The head of the organization says “I hope you don’t follow Poppy into politics. Not with these naive simpleton notions of yours.”
The end of the book was really exciting to me–more exciting than the rest of the book–Hector is a little too hard-boiled for me). The way the story wrapped up was pretty great –with little extra help from George W.
The art work by Kevin Singles is terrific. The characters are distinct and recognizable (George W is particularly spot on and even Prescott who I don’t know by sight is a dead ringer for a Bush. The violent scenes are pretty violent but not gratuitous and for a graphic novel about skulls it’s not all that gruesome.
This didn’t sound like a book I would like but I wound up enjoying it a ton.
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