SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 1 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (November 11, 2004).
The Rheostatics, live at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, November 11, 2004. This was the 1st 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.
PIN is kind of sweet sounding, Martins guitar “sounds” even “smaller” than usual. As with many versions of this era, he’s changed the line to, “you’ve got the key to my bosom.” Then you hear Mike say, What are we playing, I don’t have a setlist.
They are playing “Soul Glue” which is delightfully chaotic with all kinds of backing vocals (MPW is great with the b voc). Tim is having a bit of fun with this song, calling the “poliziei” and adding the line: “execrate, take a big dump on.” It jumps right into “Polar Bears and Trees.” Martin is making some really cool scratching sounds before he brings in the big riff. The “can’t do it” part feels like a fun improvised section with lots of different vocal parts overlapping.
Martins guitar sounds great on “Marginalized.” I love the little fills and of course the crunchy guitar. This song does loud and quite together very well.
Introducing “The Tarleks,” Martin says we made a new friend the other day. His name is Frank Bonner and he played a brilliant character Herb Tarlek in the WKRP TV show. He knew what was going on. You never know when you meet somebody what their situation is, but his was good.” The song is really great with lot of keyboard accents from Christopher… Lots of banter from the band:
We got a new guy, Chris Stringer. He’s shy but he’s new. He’s just checking us out. He got the elite week pass–sit on stage and play synthesizer with the group. Did you win that off the radio station or something? He didn’t go far enough to get the vocal mic. Oh he got it, he went for the super deluxe gold. He helped us make our last record and he’s up here to help us remember how to play it all.
This is the first song on our new album “Shack In The Cornfields,” it’s about growing up as a kid in Kitchener and wandering around cornfields. Next comes “Pornography.” The intro sounds like “Bread Meat Peas and Rice.” When the song ends Mike shouts: Four. More. Beers!
The keyboard solo on “Here Comes The Image” is pretty similar to what Mike plays but with a few more frills. “Try To Praise This Mutilated World” starts out quietly with some picked acoustic guitar. Then Martin throws in some gentle solos and Tim adds some bass. I love this song as it gets bigger and bigger–the guitar lines and the harmonies are just wonderful. Its unclear who does the spoken word–recording or live? I assume recording.
“The Royal Albert (Joey Part 2)” starts almost comically with a really strange pacing before Martin starts singing about Joey. Midway through the song they start the riff to “Satisfaction.” As it ends, Mikes says, “that was corpulent.”
Dave introduces a “couple of songs that kind of go together thematically.” They play a quick two-minute romp of “Torque Torque” which segues right into “Claire.” Martin gets a great solo which is followed by a rather strange keyboard solo.
Torque, Torque is a quite 2 minute romp that segues right into Claire after a great martin solo there’s kind of an odd.
Send those two out to Paul Quarrington our friend nominated for the Giller Prize tonight–didn’t win but it looks good on him. A friend of his daughter will be opening for us on Sunday: Hebrew School Drop Outs. All ages, late afternoon matinee.
Dave: I got my beer back. Touch and go for a minute there. It’s called “Trailhead,” I’ve never seen of it before either. Is that a kind of fish, Martin? Nope. “A mythical beer fish? Canada’s national animal is a mythical beer fish.”
“It”starts out slow and then has a roaring guitar solo in the middle.
Our new back drop for 2004 (up at the top). Designed by Martin. We’re auctioning them of at the end of the run and all profits will go to ….charity? Mike: “yeah, that’s right, charity.”
“Making Progress” has a cool creepy synth opening and a very pretty acoustic guitar ending. The more I hear “It’s Easy To Be With You” the more I’m surprised it wasn’t a hit. There’s certainly some weird lyrical content what with it being from a kids’ album, but it’s so catchy.
“Stolen Car” starts out slow with a lengthy intro. Martin sounds great and there’s a terrific solo from Martin. He ends it in the middle of a line though, I think he should have stopped but kept going.
“Little Bird, Little Bird” is slow but nice. There’s some lovely, quiet work from Martin throughout the song. When it ends, Dave says, Happy remembrance day. Do you say happy Remembrance Day?” We’ll do two more for you. It’s getting late. Don’t want to overstate our case.
They play “Aliens” which sounds great. There’s a cool spacey solo and some fun bass work from Tim in the middle of the song. It gets extended with Tim playing a faster bass line and Martin saying “jamming!” Martin gets into it with some crazy guitar sounds muttering “gabba gabba hey” and then the group singing all kinds of classic rock lines: “Mother…” “Voodoo Chile.”
Dave thanks everybody but Martin starts playing the opening to “I Dig Music.”
Tim: he said two more.
They have a lot of silliness with this song, appropriately. Mike: there’s only so many more times I’m going to come out here and do this. This is one of them. During the end part “some say I’m an animal,” Tim sings “too bad,” “too fucking bad” in falsetto. The full song is called “I Dig Music (The Jazz Animal)” but by the end they are singing “Jazz enema.”
During the encore break, Dave says “Chris will be with us every day but tomorrow. It’s his brother’s wedding tomorrow (Mike says: “he’s got to spend the night in jail).
Tim: thanks to By Divine Right for starting this whole thing off in the rockingest way possible. We have a weeklong pass that’s available for sale.
When they mention the all ages show, Mike points out: “there will be a little bowl of earplugs for the young ones. Dave says: “You can eat em too.” And cigarettes for the youngsters. Dave: they don’t call them candy cigarettes anymore they call them candy stix.
They play the mellow instrumental “Who Is That Man, And Why Is He Laughing?” which I would find a disappointing encore, except it’s followed by a rocking intense “Fan Letter To Michael Jackson.”
This is a terrific show and runs almost 2 hours and 15 minutes.
[READ: Summer 2017] Olympians 9
I’m still not sure how many books O’Connor has planned for this series, although in his introduction he talks about saving his favorite books for the end, so I assume there are at least two more (although 12 seems reasonable).
Here’s the summary of the man himself:
George O’Connor is a massive geek and Greek scholar. He has done lots of research for these books, including going to Greece and visiting sites and antiquities as well as comparing all manner of ancient stories to compile the most interesting pieces. He explains that since these stories were orally passed down, they were modified over the years. He doesn’t change the myths, he merely picks the story lines that are most interesting to him. And then he adds a lot of humorous modern touches (and dialogue) which keep it from being at all stuffy.
O Connor’s drawing style is also inspired by superhero comics, so his stories are presented in a way that seems much more like a super hero than a classical hero, which is also kind of fun.
Each book ends with an author’s note which is hugely informative and gives plenty of context. It also has a bibliography, but more importantly, it has a list of notes about certain panels. Do not skip these notes! In addition to providing a lot of insight into the myths of the characters themselves, there are a lot of funny comments like “Greeks raced in the nude (point and laugh)” which really bring new depths to the stories. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: HADESTOWN-Tiny Desk Concert #977 (June 1, 2020).
