SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-3rd Annual Green Sprouts Music Week Night 3 (Ultrasound Showbar, Toronto Ontario September 20 1995).
It has been a while since I’ve listened to a live Rheostatics show. Darrin at Rheostatics Live has added a number of new shows in the last eight months. Like this full week of shows from the Third Green Sprouts Music Week
Third night of the third annual Green Sprouts Music Week held at Ultrasound Showbar September 18-23 1995. Shorter mid week set though I believe the first song is missing and not sure if there were any encores. The show focused predominantly on Blue Hysteria material they were working on at the time with 8 of the 14 songs being unreleased. The show builds pretty nicely to epic song territory. The last four songs alone make up almost 1/3 of the show.This tape starts with “All the Same Eyes,” which sounds great–martin adds in some cool noisy guitar effects.
But, as seems to happen a lot for these guys, there’s technical problems. The first song does appear to be missing because after this, Dave says something about being only two songs in. Someone shouts “Tell me a story, Dave.” “I don’t have a story at the ready.” “Tell us the Milli Vanilli story.” “I don’t have a Milli Vanilli story…. And if I did I wouldn’t be at liberty to release that information.”
Martin tells everyone, “On New Years Eve we sat down and wrote four songs and if we made a whole song of any of them it would be awful. So we put them into one song.” “Four Little Songs” comes out perfectly. Dave says that he’s in Neil Finn’s kitchen. At the end of the song “And now they’re gone,” he asks, “Did you eat them?”
Introducing “Desert Island Poem” Dave talks about writing a song about cannibalism already: IOn “Oneilly’s Strange Dream” he has to eat his friend to survive. So we have reprise the theme in this song. Tyler from Farm Fresh adds some scratching. Don says “I feel like we’re being attacked by one of those beam swords from Star Trek or Star Wars. Everyone cracks up that he can’t remember light saber.
Martin says he was once hurt by a toy torpedo. Did one of your brothers do that to you? Martin: The mean one, the one they don’t talk about. Gus, the hidden Tielli.
Then comes three Tim songs in a row. In “Introducing Happiness’ Tim sings “your sister lives in … wherever the hell she is.”
Dave asks “How are the cats doing?” Tim: “They’re a little bored.” Dave” Bring them to the show–all kitties half price.” But… Is Dale [the Rooster] here tonight? There would be a problem.
Up next are “Connecting Flights” and “An Offer.”
Martin follows up with “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine” which has some outstanding drumming in the chorus.
Dave plays “My First Rock Concert” and I noticed that instead of “Paul Weller was Christ” he says he’s seen “The Special Beat thrice.”
They’re going to take a little break (it’s pretty early for that, frankly) and then they come back for “California Dreamline.” Martin had no monitor and couldn’t hear anything–“I sang it deaf.” Don: “That was def man.”
It’s weird how many people are talking but then how many people are excited to hear it.
A gorgeous “Northern Wish” segues into “Saskatchewan” which has a cool buzzing sound that goes from one ear to the other. Was that on purpose?
Throughout the week, there is some concern in the audience about people standing up. I guess this is a seated venue, maybe with tables? Before they start “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson,” Dave says, “you can stand up now.” As they start the song, Dave starts singing Bowie’s “Fashion” (turn to the left). Then he starts singing a refrain that pops up a lot this week and I cant figure out what it’s from
It’s tuesday night in the discotheque / I can’t dance what the heck / I’m an Uzbek.
Farm Fresh gets the Michael Shout out and Tyler does a scratching solo. There’s a fantastic vocal ending from Martin and Tim.
They follow this with “When Winter Comes, with a stomping honky tonk guitar before the main riff comes in. Someone else is sings the “blue Canadian winter” part.
Dave says they’re going to do a couple more, but the tape only has one more–a really good version of “Fat.”
[READ: February 20, 2021] We Can Be Heroes
S. brought this book home and after describing the premise I wanted to give it a read. I’d never read Mike Chen before. Apparently his books are typically a lot darker than this one. So I’m glad I read this as I don’t think I’d like the darker ones.
This one comes from an amusing premise. It also comes from a short story that he wrote that had a similar premise but when in a different direction. In that story (called “Anonymous,” from Storyteller Vol. 1 No. 3 which I can’t find anywhere) two superheroes meet in A.A. The premise of the novel is similar–two superheroes meet in a memory loss group. But it’s that memory loss that really changes the direction of the story.
The book opens on Jamie Sorensen–a villain. He is the Mind Robber and he is robbing a bank. He is able to look into people’s minds and flick through their memories like pictures on a phone (I liked that detail). He can read them or erase them or just stun people’s memories with a flick of his finger. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone in the bank, but people are afraid that he is going to wipe out their entire memory. He just wants to get a ton of money so he can go to the tropics and hide out for the rest of his life–not an ambitious villain, really. Plus he had heard that banks are insured so as long as he doesn’t take too much at a time, no one really gets hurt.
Jamie has been developing the Mind Reader character for a couple of years, ever since he woke up one day with no recollection of who he was. He literally had no idea who he was before the day he woke up in his new apartment. And he didn’t know what to do. He started working terrible jobs until he hit upon this bank robber idea.
But this particular robbery id not go a planned one of the tellers had a heart attack–nothing he did!. It threw him off his game. And by the time he fled the scene, the Throwing Star was onto him.
Zoe Wong was the Throwing Star. Much like Jamie, she woke up two years ago with no memory of herself prior to this day. There was a note in her apartment and not much else. As she slowly tried to piece her life back together, she learned that she had amazing hearing. And was also really strong. And… that she could fly!
She used these powers to get a job doing food delivery (she always got five stars since her deliveries were so fast). But she’d always had a sense of goodness so when she saw bad things happening she decided to use her powers for good. She stopped countles muggings in town. She was getting a little tired of the Mind Robber robbing banks.
She didn’t intend to chase him after this robbery (she was delivering food at the time), but she saw what happened and she wanted to get him. So she gave chase. But just as she was about to catch him, she tripped and fell. In front of a lot of people She heard (because she could hear everything) “Holy shit, dude, the Throwing Star is right here and she totally ate it while running.”
Part of the problem was that she had been drinking which really affects her abilities.
I assumed from the blurb that the two of them would be in the same Memory Loss support group for a long time before they revealed themselves. But no. Within fifty pages, Zoe and Jamie are at their support group. Neither one knows the other person. And, this group is more for people who are helping older people dealing with memory loss. So their situations are not quite right–but what else can they go?
Their meetings are a dark basement of the YMCA. The city has been suffering from power failures lately and on this particular night the failure causes the wiring to burst into flames. Everyone in the meeting is trapped. Zoe is able to use her powers to break through the walls and get everyone to safety and Jamie is able to erase their minds of this incident so no one remember them.
Because they worked together and Jamie was clearly not a bad person, Zoe agreed to not turn in him in. In fact, she offers to make a deal. She has been desperately trying to find out about her past. If Jamie can use his powers to read minds, maybe he can get through the block that is preventing her from seeing her past.
So he tries–but it’s really hard. And as he delves deeper her body reacts and inadvertently bashes him. But he is able to see one important clue. A company called Telos seems to be behind both of their memory situations. And it seems that Jamie may have had something to do with Zoe’s erased mind.
They decide to work together to find out what Telos is and what’s going on. In the process, Jamie learns his real name and his real past (he was a wealthy self absorbed tech dude) and that Telos is performing experiments on people to try to generate superpowers in regular people.
Suddenly the story turns into something else entirely. Telos is responsible for the blackouts. They are using the electrical grid to generate the superpowers. Or something (the technical part is not important). But what’s interesting is that the “bad guy” actually has really good motives.
By the end of the story, the police are after both Jamie and Zoe (him for robbing banks, her for being a vigilante) and the people at Telos are after them both for finding out what the company is doing.
There are some neat twists–like Telos forcing Jamie to clean Zoe’s memory again, like the various ways that Zoe can use her different (and increasing powers) and the inevitable concern when her powers start to wane.
I found this story to be really exciting and hard to put down. The ending makes it seem like there could be a follow up, but it also ends satisfactorily (if with a few questions left open).
Leave a Reply