SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 2 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (November 12, 2004).
The Rheostatics, live at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, November 12, 2004. This was the 2nd night of their 10 night Fall Nationals run at the Horseshoe. This show was exactly 13 years ago!
I compared all of the setlists from the nine shows and was somewhat surprised to see just how much repeating they did. Most of the repeated songs are new ones–they played a lot from 2067, which makes sense. But for a Fall Nationals, there’s really not a lot of “popular” or “rare” stuff. But the band is in terrific form for all nine shows and the recordings are consistently great.
They open intensely with “Christopher.” It’s a great version and Martin is in very good voice. Similarly, “King Of The Past” sounds terrific. Once again, “Pornography” opens a lot like “Bread, Meat peas and Rice,” but the backing vocals sound great . At the end, Dave notes: “a bit of folk disco there for ya.”
Introducing “The Tarleks,” Dave says it’s “from our new album called 2067. It’s the year of Martin’s 100th birthday and Canada’s bicentennial and the year we get a hit single. We’re having a party and you’re all invited. Martin: “Unfortunately so are these guys, the Tarleks.” The song is perfect and segues right into “Marginalized” which is also great. The whole band is in great form and I love the guitar sounds as it segues to the chorus.
“Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne” is slow and fine. And Dave says, “and you doing the super tokes you are…. from the country. Tim: “Mmm smells good. Smells like grade 12 math class.” MPW: Shop class. Dave: Back in the 70s they let you do that sort of thing …80s. Tim, snapping fingers: “It’s cool. Foosball is like soccer crossed with shishkabobs.”
“Fish Tailin'” rocks and then comes “Me and Stupid,” which hasn’t been played in a while. Tim plays the riff and sings “Dave is tuning, tuning his guitar, Dave is learning how to use a tuner on his guitar.” Dave starts the song and after the first verse he stops the song “I gotta re tune.” Tim: “He’s just leaning.” MPW: “That’s okay my hands hurt a little.”
“PIN” and “Mumbletypeg” sound terrific and mid song Dave says, “We’re the Rheostatics were from Etobicoke, it’s west of here.”
Dave: “We’re gonna take it down a bit.” Tim: “We’re gonna take it down but its gonna become very heavy” with “Here Comes the Image.” While waiting Tim pays the bass riff to “Tom Sawyer.” Tomorrow at 2 o’clock we’ll be at Sam the Record Man.”
“Shack In The Cornfields” sounds quite different with Dave’s bass backing vocals. It takes a while for the song to start really rocking but once it does it’s so much fun. I like the chorus of “Try To Praise This Mutilated World” more and more. I’m assuming by now that the spoken part is prerecorded.
“In This Town” starts quietly but martin sings a big growly ending. “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds” slows down in the middle with a drum solo and a clapping solo. After the solo, Selina Martin comes out and sings the end with Martin.
Martin: “Dave Alexander Herschel Bidini wrote that in 1972.”
Dave: “Hell of a year. What with Ian Sunter’s field goal and everything. This refers to the 60th Grey Cup in which Hamilton ran the clock down while getting close enough for Ian Sunter to kick a 34-yard field goal on the last play of the game to win.]
Tim plays a great “Bad Time To Be Poor” and Dave says “We will conclude with a song from 2067.”
Someone in the audience shouts: “what do you mean conclude?”
Dave: “what do you think I mean? We’re fucking right off after this one. The limo is idling, baby.”
Tim: “conclude the first set.”
Martin: “it’s really just a smoke break for me.”
Dave: “oh we got rail and hoo-ers waiting, don’t worry.”
“Making Progress” is lovely as always. “Feed Yourself” starts off a little rocky but it sounds great. Dave gets a little crazy with the “inside his head” bit at the end (and someone is manipulating his voice to echo and process in one way or another, which is cool).
After a quick encore break, they’re back with a Dave song while Martin smokes. In “My First Rock Concert” he changes The Ramones to Johnny Winter for some reason.
Someone keeps shouting “Saskatchewan” and you can hear a rhythm guitar playing the melody. Mike says this ones for the greasy wheel, but then the guitar switches to “Self Serve Gas Station” and Mike says “make up your mind I’m trying to decide which way to adjust the chair.”
Before “Desert Island Discs,” Martin notes: “We stayed in the same hotel as Van Halen a week ago. (Those hookers in the lobby were not for us).
Desert Island Discs is sloppy and fun with people picking these discs:
Dave: Ramones-Rocket to Russia; Cars-Cars; PiL-Metal Box.
Tim: Bob Marley-Survival; Tom Waits-Closing Time (huge cheer); Pavement-Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.
MPW: It’s his first time. He says it’s like ordering last in a restaurant. Anything by Gino Vanelli; Music for a Large Ensemble; Steve Reich (Tim: try to follow the groove) Metal Machine Music-Lou Reed.
Martin: my first record is (plays “Tom Sawyer”); Second Mary Margaret O’Hara-Miss America; Third uh… uh… uh… uh… Mood Music for Beer and Pretzels
audience members
first one has a hard time: Led Zeppelin, Martin Teilli-Operation Infinite Joy; Rheostatics, of course.
second one: Weakerthans-Left and Leaving; The Beatles-Rubber Soul and… [Dave: you don;t want to hear the E minor chord] Weezer-Weezer.
As they wrap up the song Mike keeps going after the final chord. They bust his chops and say he is in the legion hall trance.
The set ends with a great “Legal Age Life At Variety Store.”
They take an encore break and Martin comes back out with a ‘suede banana’ jacket “Very Century 21–he sold the most houses in the band.”
For the encore, they play “Rain, Rain, Rain” and Martin introduces “Mister Dave Bidini on lead” (it’s sloppy but fun).
This show runs about 2 and a half hours and it sounds great.
[READ: April 6, 2017] Star Scouts
Boy I loved this book. I loved everything about it, from the understated to the perfectly stated.
The book opens with an alien creature getting yelled at. Her name is, humorously, Mabel. Mabel is scanning planets to collect a new species. It turns out that she is doing this for a badge for scouts. She selects a newt. But she accidentally switches from Newt to New Kid (an amusing joke if not a little strange) and the teleportation begins.
The New Kid is Avani. Avani speaks Hindi (which in itself is pretty awesome). She and her dad (there is no mention of a mom) have just moved to a new place. Avani has no friends. She thinks everyone thinks she’s weird. Even though she feels like an outsider she is also keeping people away, determined to feel sorry for herself.
The only social activity she has is Flower Scouts. Back home he Scouts were awesome, but here they just talk about make up and boys. When Avani tries to talk about rodeos, the other kids laugh at her. And they are equally horrified when she doesn’t swoon over Chaz Wunderlip the boy band sensation. She would like nothing more than to get out of Scouts but her dad won’t let her quit. (more…)
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Atlantic City is not a convenient location for me–2 hours at best. And yet when Phish announced a three night residency on the back in 2020, I jumped at the tickets. Unsurprisingly, the show was postponed to 2021. I thought it might get postponed again as COVID cases started rising, but they plugged along and played an amazing three night miniseries.
