SOUNDTRACK: BIDINIBAND-Call the Office, London, ON (April 18, 2008).
Dave Bidini played some solo shows in 2007 but by 2008 he had cobbled together a band: Bidiniband. The band includes Dave, Paul Linklater, on lead guitar, former Rheo Don Kerr on drums and Doug Friesen on bass.
I’m not sure when they started playing together, but this is the first live show at Rheostatics Live. The set list hasn’t changed much since his solo shows, but the songs sound really different with the full band.
Some of Dave’s solo work is about telling real life stories of unsung people. They
re usually really interesting the first one or two times you hear them, but they kind of lose their power after multiple listens. So “Zeke Roberts” and “The Land is Wild” (except for the fantastic chorus) wear out their welcome a bit. But again, it’s a nice change to hear them with the full band.
“Fat” is interesting to hear with other musicians. The ending isn’t quite as wild as with the band but these guys chant the “everyone’s a robot” with great energy. After the song Dave says “Good night everybody” to much laughter. For the next song he says, “This is basically the same song but with a more ironic joke. The irony is not in the tuning or lack thereof.”
Someone says, “You guys and your new strings. I haven’t changed my strings in like two years.” “I thought t would be cool, you know, on a new tour.”
“This Song Ain’t Any Good” has a very different delivery than the folksier style that I’m used to. He asks the band, “You want to do it sad, what did you mean?” They do the chorus in a kind of repeated downbeat “singalong.”
Thanks to Andy and The Two Minute Miracles for playing tonight. We’re gonna do another song based in our country: “The Moncton Hellraisers.” It has a rather country flair to it.
Someone shouts, “Do a hockey song.” Dave says, “I think you’re out of luck tonight Oh, no there’s a longer one later tonight….we’re making you wait for it.”
I love the jazzy opening of “Memorial Day.” But even better is the full band rock of “Terrorize Me Now.” Who ever in the band is screaming “And then we killed again,” is totally intense.
Dave asks, “Could anyone deliver a water to the stage, or I could put my guitar down… From off stage: “only whiskey and cold coffee!” “cold cuts?”
This next song is gonna feature Dog Paul’s on double bass for a song about cannibalism and Canadian rock. “Desert Island Poem” features the line “Rheostatics eat their drummer who would cook and season the body?”
Dave once described the song: “Yeah, and that’s sort of a true story in a way. I mean not the cannibalism part. But one time the Rheos were stranded in Drumheller [Alberta] and we were listening to the radio and we heard this story about that plane that crashed in Alaska. And we began to wonder what would happen to us if we never got out of Drumheller.”
For “The List”, the replaced Zack Warner with Sass Jordan (a Canadian singer) which features the line “you say I suck but it’s that suckdom of which I’m proud.” Some one shouts, “that’s a fucking song that needed to be written.” Dave says he has one more verse but he can’t remember who its about.
“The Continuing Story of Canadiana and Canadiandy” has a cool slide guitar solo in the middle of the folk. Dave, “That’s from back in the day where all the Canadian folk singers looked like Jesus. Those nice sweaters on, a nice beard.” Mitsou? “When I think of Canadian folk I think of Mitsou too, ironically.”
Someone in the band proposes the “Top five Canadian folk albums: Summer Side of Life, Old Dan’s Records,” Dave notes: “That’s two from Gordon Lightfoot are you allowed to pick two from the same artist?” “And The Way I Feel.” Dave: “You’re just doing Gordon Lightfoot.” “That’s what I’m trying to say, dude. “I’m getting your drift that you like the Gord.” “Gordon never looked like Jesus did.” “No, he looked more like Bruno Gerussi.”
“Is everybody ready for a long death ballad? You look like the kind of crowd who would like a long death ballad.” Someone in the crowd shouts: “kill us, kill us Dave.”
We haven’t performed this song successfully ever life. “Zeke” sounds better with the guitar sliding up and down and in the middle when there’s a few complex moments and the band really takes off. But there’s all kinds of flubs at the end. Dave says, “you’re too kind. That was the best first half we’ve done for sure.”
They play “My First Rock Show” at a slower pace. “A bit of banjo for this, Paul?” After the swan dive, there’s some crazy feedback and effects manipulation and then Dave starts singing “Happy Jack.”
They finish “Rock Show” and then begin with “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and then Slade’s “Run Run Away.” (did that song have a chorus?). And then it shifts to Bidini’s “Pornography.”
“Rock Intro? Is it a rock intro nigh?” “Progtro.” Someone says something about YouTube. Dave says “Whats YouTube. They’re an Irish rock band, right?” There’s great noisy opening to “The Land is Wild.” It quiets down but sounds great with the full band. I like the lead guitar line that runs through the song. During the slow part, the person who mentioned Gordon Lightfoot sings “Ode to Big Blue” as the song gets bigger and noisier.
It segues into a really fast version of Rheostatics’ “Earth.” Its rocks. “Don Kerr on the drums everybody.” And then a romping “Horses.” Midway through the song he starts reciting the lines to “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads and then some of “Another Brick in the Wall. Pt 2.” He also throws n the “facts” portion of Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless.”
This all segues into a stomping, guitar-light version of “Life During Wartime.” Dave starts singing lines from “One Thing Leads to Another” (“one gun leads to another”), “Relax Don’t Do It” then “When Two Tribes go to war, war is something you can’t ignore.”
As the song ends Dave thanks everyone for coming: “a small but mighty crowd for a small but mighty band.” Then he introduces the band: Douglas Friesen from Manitoba, Paul Linklater from Manitoba, Dave born and raised in Etobicoke, Ontario. Donald S. Kerr from Mississauga, Ontario.
As they finish, the crowd is screaming screaming for an encore with one guy even telling him not to put their instruments down. But there is no encore.
[READ: April 15, 2017] Writing Gordon Lightfoot
The title of this book is unusual–it’s hard to even figure out what it means (until you read the book), but it’s also deceptive.
The title means writing to Gordon Lightfoot. Bidini is basically writing Lightfoot a series of letters. But it is far more than that. In fact the scope of the book is really the Mariposa musical festival that took place in Toronto in 1972. Lightfoot appeared (along with many other folk luminaries). Interspersed with his documentation oft he festival (he was too young to go so it’s all research) are his letters to Lightfoot.
The reason he is writing letters to Lightfoot in a book is because Bidini believes that Lightfoot won’t speak to him.
His band Rheostatics, recorded a cover of his “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It was one of their big songs when they were first starting out. And then, as a brash young kid, Bidini once said that it was actually based on an old Irish melody and that it really wasn’t Lightfoot’s song anyway. Yipes.
So, assuming that Lightfoot will never talk to him (I wonder if he actually tried), he decides to write letters. But the letters aren’t “hi how are you” letters, they are a biography of Lightfoot’s life as written by a fellow musician. He bases most of his notes on things that were in other biographies and he says he makes a lot of it up too.
So it’s an unusual book in many ways. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-“The Dogs” (MGM Grand Garden Arena, Friday 10, 31, 2014).
In honor of Halloween, these Ghost Box stories will be attached to a recent Phish Halloween show [with quoted material from various reviews]. 
I Just Read About That... 