SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 4 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (November 14, 2004).
The Rheostatics, live at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, November 14, 2004. This was the 4th night of their 10 night Fall Nationals run at the Horseshoe. It was an all ages show and ran about 90 minutes.
There are two recordings available for this show. The Sloggett version is from the soundboard, but the Clarkson recording sounds a bit bigger with more bass and stage noise. Although you can’t hear the spoken word part of “Mutilated World” at all. You can hear Dave’s daughter Cecelia chatting you can hear her at one point say “Hi, Tim!”
The start off saying they’ll do a coupe of songs from The Story of Harmelodia to start us out, get us in the mood.
They open with “Home Again” which sounds appropriately cute–Martin has fun with it. Then for “It’s Easy to Be with You”, they “invite Don Kerr up on stage for this next number on the tenor guitar. A man of many talents, above all growing a handsome mustache (MPW: or perhaps partially shaving a fanatic beard). Don says: “Somebody called me papa smurf the other day because I had a cap on.” Dave: “I think Papa Smurf was a little rounder around the middle.” The song sound nice with that extra guitar.
You can hear on the Clarkson recording “When is my song?” Dave: “Gonna be maybe in about 5 songs? Maybe in about 4 songs? Wanna do it now? well. alright. Does your brother wanna sing too?” Cecilia (who is like 4 years old, maybe) does an amazing job with Dave Edmund’s “Almost Saturday Night.” She has a great sense of melody and really gets the feel for the song. At the end Mike says, “It’s a perfect song to sing on a Sunday. That’s optimism.” As she walks off you hear Dave say, “Good job, Cees.” And she replies, “Good job, dad.”
Then it’s on to a solid version of “Claire” which they send out “to Paul Quarrington, Gillar nominated, should have won.” Tim says, “co author of this song.” Mike: “At least on the SOCAN form.” Dave: “A man who launched 1,000 careers.”
“Aliens (Christmas 1988)” opens with a kind of rocking rhythm. Martin starts singing a weird version of Split Enz ‘ “I Got You” before doing the “whoo hoo hoo” and launching into an incredibly fast paced version. When it slows down in the middle, Martin says, let’s bring it to normal speed.
For “Try To Praise This Mutilated World,” they also shout out to Chris Stringer on keyboard “bringing down the mean average age of the band.” I normally can’t hear the spoken parts, but you can hear someone speaking polish I believe. Each version of this song sounds better and better.
To continue this mellow middle section, Jen Foster is back on accordion for “Who Is This Man, And Why Is He Laughing?” and then comes “Making Progress.” However, they start in wrong key. As they get situated, Martin asks Dave why no one is showing minor league and jr league hockey. Dave says that the CBC is complicit with the NHL in holding back younger players. Once they get the song going, it sound perfect.
As an introduction to “Take Me In Your Hand,” Martin plays a quick guitar lick from one of his solo songs (“Waterstriders,” I think) and then segues into a very delicate version of the song.
Dave asks if any of the horn players from the Hebrew School Dropouts are still around (they opened the show). Up come Adam and “Fedora guy” to play horns (including solos) for “Legal Age Life At Variety Store.” Dropping out of Hebrew school is the best thing you guys ever did.
“Northern Wish” is a very pretty, very mellow version. It’s followed by a really lovely slow version of “Stolen Car.”
After the encore break, Tim comes out to play a special request “all the way from California.” He starts “Row” and asks if it’s the right song (it is). He forgets a few lines but is otherwise quite pretty. When it’s over, the requester shouts, “Thank you!” Someone else shouts “Saskatchewan” but Tim says the Hebrew School Dropouts are going to school in Etobicoke so we’ll do a good Etobicoke song for them. That song is “Self Serve Gas Station.” Martin changes a line to “What went wrong with little Jimmy, is he dumb?”
It segues into a wild, upbeat “Song Of The Garden.” It’s rollicking and crazy and sort of segues into a slapdash cover of XTC’s “Radios In Motion.”
And that’s it. It’s short show for the band, but probably perfect for an All ages crowd. Speaking of All-ages, it’s pretty kid friendly, but not entirely (with some of Martin’s songs). It would have been really fun to see though.
[READ: July 7, 2017] Animal Crackers
The origins of this story are confusing to me. It was originally written in 2011 (and published by a different publisher (with a different cover, of course). But there’s not much you can find out about it. There’s also a prequel (also originally released in 2011) which came out by First Second around the same time, but that’s for another post.
This book bears the sticker that says “Now a Major Motion [Animated] Picture (due out in Fall 2017).” Given how short this book is, I wonder if the movie is based on both books or what. Guess we’ll see. Since I first wrote that, I have seen that the film has been released, but not in the States. And, it has major stars associated with it. I still can;t imagine how they stretched this premise out to 94 minutes.
This story is cute and fun with some good humor. The problem is that the entire plot is given away in the blurb on the inside cover (so don’t read that). (more…)
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