SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 3 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (December 10, 2005).
This was the 3rd night of their 10 night Fall Nationals run at the Horseshoe. Each night’s show has gotten longer, with this one reaching almost two and a half hours.
Ford Pier is back on keyboards. They are joined by Alan Pigguns for a couple of songs and Jen Foster on accordion.
Throughout the show, someone is yelling “Legal Age Life” It never gets played–so that ought to teach you something about shouting requests. But they are very friendly to the folks from San Diego who get lots of shoutouts.
The opening band was The Mellow Grove Band, and Tim says, “I’d only ever heard The Mellow Grove Band on CD. I wanted to see them live. They totally blew me away.
“Saskatchewan” is a beautiful slow opening with twinkling pianos. Martin sang the first verse through his robot voice and it sounded pretty cool, but seemed to throw everyone off–no one did backing vocals and no one caught on to the chord changes. Dave says he screwed him up with that robot voice, so they start over and it sounds great (and you can hear someone yell “Thank you, Martin”).
As the song ends, Martin plays a few lines of “Hey Hey, My My” before the final piano keys twinkle out and the rhythmic clapping of “Rain Rain Rain” picks up. Dave is playing the bongos and Martin calls out “Bongo Davey!” Dave keeps playing and Mike shouts: “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you! You go! Dave says “Bongo solo is supposed to be at the end of the show.” Mike: “This is the end of the show.” Tim: “No, it’s now or never. Let him go a bit.” When “Rain Rain Rain” starts, you can hear the loud woman singing along with him. It even makes Martin chuckle.
During “Polar Bears and Trees,” Dave interjects, “the land of polar bears and trees, that’s Canada.” Then Martin says “Hi there” which gets the Martin fans nutty. Before singing “The Tarleks,” He does a lot of talking in the Tarlek voice: “Love what you do. Dave Bidini, your books are such great books. Mike, your production work…fabulous.”
Dave send the next one out to people who aren’t from: Toronto, Scarborough, Markham, Etobicoke or North York. Mike: what about Mississauga. Dave says you know I don’t even acknowledge Mississauga, mike. You know that all of the worlds problems stem from Mississauga, let’s face it. Tim: Our last drummer was from Mississauga. Triumph was from Mississauga.
They play a delightful “We Went West” and then start talking about hydrating. Dave mentions “precious bodily fluids. It all comes back to Stanley Krueger, Krubrick. Someone put liquid acid in my bottle of water. Everybody knows it was the guys from San Diego. They scored liquid acid at Queens Park today (they shout “last night”). And you thought it was a Tylenol.
“PIN’ starts with the outro music and then launches into the intro with lots of strummed acoustic guitars. There’s pretty twinkling sounds at the end with Martin stating “On the Dirty Blvd.”
During “Mumbletypeg,” Dave states: “We’re Klaatu from Etoboicoke.” During the outro, three of them are all singing different things in a chaotic fugue.
While people are shouting out their requests, Dave says, “Thanks for your requests, we’ll get to them later. Or not. You’ll go home disappointed but we’ll have your money. That’s the way it is. That’s the rock n’ roll business.”
This seems to get the audience riled up and I hate that you can hear people yelling and talking loudly during the opening quiet part of “In This Town.” Whats’ wrong with these people?
Dave adds an intro to “Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne” “Death to you and death to me / death to the head of the company / corporate whores and superstores bring death to the future that i see / death to the men in pistols and pointed hoods who run F.M. radio and Hollywood.” There’s some really pretty vocals at the end of the song before Martin and I assume Ford take turns screaming the last note.
Why is someone hollering during the quiet beginning of “Northern Wish”? Martin sings “gonna launch it from my garage.” And after that Martin seems to get lost but Dave is there to help him out. At the “we don’t need submarines” (fucking hate em). And then someone starts doing a doot doot submarine sound. And then at the end, Martin is still doing the “land ho” when the band kicks into the “launch it from my pad” section. Then Martin starts singing another verse and Dave says I believe it’s the end of the song. So they do the land ho part again and everyone (even the crowd) sings along.
Martin: I think somebody slipped some ludes into my bottled water. I was just enjoying the sweet grooviness of what was going on and I fell into a dream.”
Then up comes Jennifer Foster on the squeeze box. She’ll be accompanying on “Who Is This Man And Why Is He Laughing?” Dave: It’s a Michael Philip Wojewoda composition and it goes something like this (he plays drums really fast). Martin: “Put Dave behind the drum kit, he can barely contain himself.” By the end on every fourth beat the audience starts shouting “oh!” in time.
We’d like to invite another beautiful person for tonight’s program, Alun Piggins. Alun: “I’m just flattered that you called me beautiful, Dave.” That idiot is still shouting of r”Legal Age Life” and Dave says, Al didn’t learn that. Dave says “we;re gonna act like we didn’t discuss what to play.” Ford: “I didn’t” Alun: “Was that you, Mike?” Mike: “No that was Ford, another smart ass in the group.” Let’s do Fred.
They do a cover of Fred Eaglesmith’s “Freight Train.” It sounds so different from anything else they play. There’s even a harmonica solo. It really rocks and sounds great. I never heard the song before.
Note: When I write about kids books I try to keep the music somewhat clean. It doesn’t always work. And since I’m in the midst of this Rheos marathon who are usually only mildly dirty and am doing First Second books, I didn’t expect what comes next. So, if you’re easily offended skip the next paragraph.
Alun asks if he can do a Christmas song. After some abuse, he says it’s a lonely Christmas song about a guy who spends Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day masturbating to internet porn. Probably at triple xmas dot com. Dave asks, Is this like that McLean and McLean song “Merry Christmas Handjob.” Alun: No, I wrote this one.” Dave is insulted by the McLean song saying “he calls it a handjob but he’s actually masturbating. You know how fucked up that song is?” Mike: “Is that from Toilet Tricks?” Dave laughs and then admits that he does like the song. Alun’s song is called “Dirty Dirty Dirty Dirty Christmas” and it’s pretty damned dark.
When it ends, Mike notes: That man was in The Morganfields (a thrash/folk act).
“Here Comes The Image” has cool long keyboard solo and effects. And a woman keeps shouting for “Making Progress,” but they don’t play it.
Dave says they’re going to play three songs from Whale Music, and that they’ll be doing the whole album on Wednesday. And that tomorrow night is the all-ages show.
“King Of The Past” is a bit sloppy although Martin plays a great solo at the end: “ride that wild stallion, Martin.” During “RDA” Tim is pretty much screaming the backing vocals and laughing like a maniac. Then Dave throws in a few choruses of “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” and starts chanting:
we have no voice
when force is the noise
when force is the sound
when guns are the melody
when wrongs are the truth
when the newspapers are the crime
Which sounds eerily prescient for 2017.
“California Dreamline” is kind of sloppy but “Feed Yourself” is really intense.
After the encore, Dave plays his two acoustic songs, “Last Good Cigarette” which he says is “our White Stripes tribute” and “My First Rock Concert.” The end gets a kind of reggae style and Dave sings in an almost reggae-but-really-inaudible way. Then Dave asks Ford what shows he saw at 14. And boy does Ford have a list
Big Country, Killing Joke, The Pogues’ first European tour, Black Flag, Husker Du. And that’s when I became a non-U2 fan. During the Unforgettable Fire tour, when he was singing Pride and Martin Luther King was projected and I thought…this is…. Dave says, “I’m pro U2.” Mike: “Martin and I are more into the spy plane, actually.” Martin: “Dave said the War tour was awesome. The Waterboys opened.”
Another request for “Making Progress.” But Martin says, “Let’s go back to the 1950s with this next number.” Mike: “When nuclear energy was still hopeful.” They play “Torque Torque” which segues into ” a rollicking Claire.” Paul Linklater comes up for a solo as well.
You can hear someone ask Dave something and he says, March 2007 at Massey Hall we hope (and that did come to pass).
They end this lengthy show with a wild “Satan is the Whistler,” which they have been doing very well lately.
[READ: October 17, 2017] Crafty Cat and the Crafty Camp Crisis
I was surprised to see that this second book had come out already (and a third one is due soon).
In this book Birdie is excited to go to Craft Camp. Birdie and Evan had a deal. He would go to Crafty Camp and afterward she would go to his house to play Pumpkins & Pirates. And when she loses the game, she will watch him do the victory dance.
She has high expectations for what this camp will be like–a big table full of brand-new craft supplies? Maybe the walls will be sparkly and decorated with all the cool crafts we’re going to make?
Her best friend Evan is running late and there’s an amusing scene where he shows up but has to go to the bathroom. While he’s in the bathroom she gets a visit from Cloudy who tells her that she is a good friend. But Cloudy won’t tell Evan to hurry because it doesn’t do bathrooms.
Evan also bursts her bubble–“Craft Camp. It’s just in our regular classroom at school.” (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: BULLY-“Dry” (2021).
Back in 1993, PJ Harvey’s album Rid of Me was one of my favorite releases. I loved the dynamic and the powerful lyrics.
