SOUNDTRACK: BIDINIBAND-The Carleton, Halifax, Nova Scotia (December 6, 2009).
There are two recordings of this show up on RheostaticsLive. There’s an audience recording of the full show, and a soundboard recording of the first set. Normally the Soundboard is the recording of choice, but the quality of the audience recording is really good and has a bit more ambiance.
Dave greets the folks: “Hello its great to be in Halifax, port city.”
They open with the Rheostatics song “Fat.” They mess up a few words in “Fat” and Dave goes, “yea, something like that.” The song is generally slower and less angsty than the Rheos’ version. The middle section has a real jazzy feel.
He introduces the next song “Desert Island Poem,” “This is a wintertime song for the first snowfall of the year. It’s really bad snow in this song. The worst kind of snow. Cannibal snow.” Before the songs he says, “We’ve been giving Leo Sayer a hard time. [not elaborated upon]. We’re gonna lay off Leo Sayer for this one. They change the line to “Pantera and Slayer eat their drummer–who will cool and season the body?”
“Paul and Donna” is a sweet, catchy song. Dave says “The song was written for Paul and Donna’s wedding. It’s a wedding song. “Stairway To Heaven” was a wedding song. Marriage of an evil maiden and a bewitching knight.”
He talks about getting his first photo shoot and addresses “Molly”(the opening act): have you done a photo shoot yet? It’s so weird isn’t it? One day you’re trying to play “Two Tickets to Paradise” in a mirror and then some weirdo is taking your picture. They talk about travelling and a taxi driver asking what kind of music they play. New Wave? Contemporary. And while one of them said, yes exactly, Doug said, “straight ahead rock.” When they ask who you play with they always assume you’re in the The Hip. Its’ cute to disappoint them. “Not that I was wishing…..” Being in this band is like being in The Hip. Dave: “Yea right, $10,000 to be in the Hip? Yea, I would too.” Back to the photo shoot, it was in a bowling alley. The guy said he was a musician too–guys, listen to this story it’s really good. (Sorry Dave). He says he wrote a song that’s going to be famous. It’s called “Led Zeppelin Town” where all the heavies go to when they die.” Before beginning Wild Ride, Dave starts singing a made up chorus of Led Zeppelin Town.” The whole song is a short rocker.
“Yemen” has that great guitar line that I really like. Then Dave says, “Mike O’Neill will you join us–it’s a cavalcade of stars tonight– a cavalcade of ‘staches.” They sing the O’Neill song “Mr Carvery.” At the end of the song he says, “one of Ontario’s finest exports.”
“The Continuing Saga of Canadiana and Canadiandy” is an imagined comic book loosely based on the lives of Paul Linklater and Don Orchard. Only geographically I suppose and their misadventures across Canada. Doug Friesen starts it with an electric bass solo–Doug I’m really looking forward to this bass part.
“Big Men Go Fast on the Water” has a very pretty chorus. At the end, he confesses, “that song totally has no ending yet endings are hard. Come back tomorrow night to hear the ending. We’ll leave you shy and ending and you’ll have to come back tomorrow to see if we finish it. But we’ll leave a different ending shy tomorrow. It’s in the handbook… on page 48. Someone asks, “Is that song your ode to the jet ski…? Part of the 14 songs you wrote about Lake Ontario and how its being destroyed? Yes 30 in 30 swim drink fish club, the waterkeepers online music club. It’s true, you can go download them. Whoo! Lets hear it for downloading! Dave: “How was the gig? It was a big downloading crowd.”
They play a groovy version of “Earth Revisited.” The end is stretched out with a nice jam with Dave saying Keep Going and them singing “Keep Going” as backing vocals. Dave says that song goes back to 1994. Doug the bassist says, “I was 6…. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” Dave says the young blood is what keeps him going. During the applause they confirm that “Halifax is a really big Doug town.”
“The Ballad Of 1969” is a song about a lesbian school teacher. The best. After a verse, he messes up the lyrics, and says hold on hold on but they keep going with that groove and he catches up. It’s a great song with and excellent guitar solo and multiple parts. And interesting story song that is enjoyable multiple times.
They end the first set with “Stolen Car” featuring Ruth Minnikin on vocals. I don’t know her and her delivery is a little flat (in fairness, it’s a challenging song). But overall the song sounds good.
We don’t usually do breaks but Mike said he wouldn’t pay us unless we did. This is the second song from our record The Land is Wild. I have enjoyed this song, Memorial Day” more and more with each live rendition. The band seems to be really gelling on this song. The melody is great and the lyrics are really strong. Linklater makes some great roaring guitar noises in the middle of the song that sound intense.
Show of hands for those who like to rock. Solid. They like to rock and they like to download in Halifax. This is called “We like to Rock.” It’s a folkie song, fun and all that, which is not all that loud or heavy. Doug says, “We like to rock at a reasonable volume.”
We’d like to invite Ian on stage. It’s our first time ever laying with a saxophone player on stage. Ian how do you feel about what you’re about to do? “I’m excited and nervous.” Dave asks, “Do you like the movies, Ian?” “I love the movie I recently, rented Up.” Pretty good eh? “Great, I cried the first ten minutes.” Someone in the audience goes “Squirrel!” and they kind of have to explain that joke. “Popcorn” is a sort of song about the movies. The song seems to sound a little different every time. This one is more fun than usual. With a really long jam section–and lots of sax (that’s not too loud).
Before the next song the guitars are all playing some weird noises–flat picked notes, the bass sliding up and down. And over this, Dave starts singing “Song Ain’t Any Good.” The band kicks in after a verse and the song sounds great overall.
The download seems to be somewhat out of order here. There’s a song about a Christmas Tree, which I can’t place. The song segues into “The List” which has some different guitar styles and sounds great, especially the rocking guitar during the Stephen Harper verse. It segues back to that “Hanging by the Christmas Tree on Christmas Eve” song which ends with some futzing around with guitar picking sounds. They begin “The Last of the Dead Wrong Things.” This sounds great with the drum solo in the middle (with Dave scratching his guitar strings throughout).
They call up Al Tuck and Dave thanks everyone for coming and Chris for loaning them stuff. Al says, “I wanted to play my old song ‘I’ve Got to Hand It To You,’ but I’m not going to play that one.” Then he says, “I wrote this on the piano: ‘What Kind of Soul.'” He also says he wrote this one his daughter’s birthday.
Dave says it’s fun to visit a city and see friends who you don’t get to spend time with and to have them up on stage. He talks about the first time he played Halifax. He feels his life changed after that show–he talks a lot now, but he didn’t talk much back then. He was less secure, but something changed him in Halifax. He also says that after the second song they heard muted cheering and wondered where that was coming from. There were like seven kids behind the back door of the club–they couldn’t get in.
Thanks to Molly for opening for them.
This song is about he life of Bryan Fogarty and it’s the best version of this song I’ve heard. I love that he whispers “Let’s Go” before the slinky guitar line kicks in. Linklater adds some great interesting guitar sections to the song.
It’s followed by a quite folky version of “Moncton Hellraisers.” Note: “Unamplified, Band moving around the bar. Dave on acoustic, Paul on Al Tuck’s acoustic guitar, Don and Doug on tambourines A 13 db boost was added to make more audible.” You can hear them wandering the floor. And then it’s time for the solo. Dave asks Paul: “Want to stand on the chair so everyone can hear? It’s a really good solo.” “Woah–bad table,” He cant get the solo right, and seems to be trying to climb back on the chair. Finally he says, “Wanna get on my shoulders?” The crowd loves it (“watch your head man.”) It’s sounds pretty spectacular: Dave plays the main part with Paul on his shoulders (I assume). The crowd loves it. Someone says, “That was the most interesting double neck guitar I’ve ever seen.”
Someone requests, Conway Twitty. “None of us have the hair to pull off a Conway Twitty song.”
Instead it’s a rocking version of “Horses” which sounds very different with Martin not playing the solos. But the song rocks through to the end where Paul seems to have the song degenerate with crazy warped noises until Dave starts playing the guitar intro to “Michael Jackson.” It is quiet and has spoken verses. It works perfectly as a show ender.
While Bidiniband will never match the Rheostatics for amazing live performances, Bidiniband has really upped its game over the years and they sound pretty great–and do seem to out on quite a show.
[READ: April 13, 2017] Sweet Tooth: In Captivity
As happens with many series, I read the first book and then forgot the rest. Well, conveniently for me, the remainder of the books were all in at the library so I grabbed them all and devoured them over a spring break.
“In Captivity” begins with a flashback. In fact, the bulk of the story is about Jepperds. We see him as a young hockey player–he’s a bruiser and he is currently beating up Jeff Brown. In the locker room the announcers say that when a hockey player is reduced to that, it means the end of career is in sight. And then we see him carrying a bag. This is the mysterious bag that he received at the end of Book One.
Next we flash to Gus. He is in captivity by a bald guy with red-tinted glasses. He has just thrown Gus into a room with other “freaks.” But the scenes with Gus are few and far between and soon we are flashing back to Jepperds again.
He is with his wife Louise. She is watching something on TV and we soon learn it is a story about the Sick and how people are dying everywhere. Jepperds wants to flee their house, but Louise thinks they are remote enough to be safe. Louise doesn’t want to leave but Jepperds insists and tells her that when it’s all over he will bring her back home.
It is then that we learn that Louise is pregnant. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 