SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Fall Nationals, Night 10 of 10, The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto (December 17, 2005).
This was the 10th and final night of their 10 night Fall Nationals run at the Horseshoe. And their final show on the Rheostatic site before the “final” shows in 2007.
Great guest moments including Anthony Fragomeni reprising his Drumstein character from Dave Reid’s Centennial High School Production, Selina Martin and Jenn Foster guesting on I Dig Music/PROD, Robin Lowe taking another shot at Sweet, Rich, Beautiful and Mine due to issues with Martin’s Rig on Guest Vocalist night, Ida Nelson and Tim performing Listening, Kaitlyn and Nevil guesting on the Pogues Fairytale of New York and an awesome version of Powderfinger wedged inside Feed Yourself. Great show to end the final edition of the Fall Nationals.
The show opens with “a folk song for all you drinkers here at the hustling Horseshoe Hotel” It’s a big friendly welcome that introduces the band as well. Martin: As the song says, “Welcome. Things have been pretty hairy the last few nights.”
As they start “Northern Wish,” Dave says, “Hey, who is that guy. You’re not in our band. Someone call security.” It sounds great. Then Ford starts playing the “Everyday People” chords. They sing the song and fun and then Tim segues his bass line perfectly into “It’s Easy To Be With You.”
There’s a very nice “Introducing Happiness.” Ron Koop from Peep Show comes out, “He’s been our knight in shining armour.”
During “Queer,” Ford gets a lengthy piano solo which suddenly changes to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Alberta Bound” (send this one out to Dutch)
Up comes Ms. Robin Lowe, she’s been selling you shit for the last ten days. There’s some talk about Roger Clemens. Martin “What?” Robin: “The Astros. Baseball.” This leads to a discussion about the Italians on the Moon. Dave: “The Italians wouldn’t go to the moon because it’s just too far from home, from mama’s kitchen. Unless mom could go too and lay out his spaceman clothes on his space bed.” Martins mom is there tonight. “So no cussing, Martin.”
“There’s no swearing in this one.” On “Sweet, Rich, Beautiful, Mine” Robin makes up for the problem the other night and does a great job–such high notes! The only thing I miss in the song is when Martin’s guitar soars at that one mention of “rich.”
Martin then says “This is Ford’s set list. I wrote this song when I was a teenager. And I think the last time we played it i was still one.” For the line: “And mother said [Mike: tonight] lying’s wrong.” Martin: “I like that song. I forgot about it.” Ford: “It got played last year. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”
Selina Martin and Jennifer Foster come out for “I Dig Music.” Ford: “now there are beautiful women, who knows what will happen next. They sing backing vocals but not very noticeably. Mid song, Dave notes: “we defer to the velvet fog or in this case the Polish fog.” (MPW’s vocal about “Senor Slime.” They get really insane by the end with everyone screaming “jazz animal.” Dave says with just a little bit of hard rock thrown in there. It turns into “P.R.O.D.” Ford plays the horn. Dace: “That’s a big horn. What hardcore needs is more French horn.” Tim is called on for a bass solo, but it’s the wrong bass. “Shall we pause while Tim puts on the right bass.”
It’s our last night so we feel required to walk the tightrope–always on the edge of trying too hard.
Send this out to George Collins: “Making Progress.” At the end Tim says, “That’s for Lisa.” Dave: “No I already dedicated it to George.”
Ford plays a long wavery weird keyboard note as a transition to “Who Is This Man And Why Is He Laughing?”
Dave says “On Wednesday we did Whale Music and we brought some songs out of the woodshed and here’s one of them in case you missed it.” It’s a nice version of “Who?” Tim: That was definitely from my They Might Be Giants phase [I can hear that].
But it takes a bit to start because Michael’s having a pee. Every time he plays that red guitar he has to pee.
Martin says “We’re gonna tighten up the space between songs from here on.”
Dave: “That was peeing problem.”
Martin: “I’ve noticed as a general trend. It’s not a gabby night. Last night was a gabby night.”
Tim: “incontinence was a trend.”
Mike: “Tim is one of those toque guys who when he takes it off you think male pattern baldness but then he peels it off and he’s got lustrous hair.”
Dave: “hair pride, hair shame, hair shame, hair pride.”
Tim: “You guys are talking not rocking.”
I Am Drumstein. Anthony Fragomeni (formerly Anthony until he went to jazz college, now he’s Tony). He was the lead of Centennial High School’s Story of Harmelodia. Tim says it was a career highlight seeing that. Tony adds personalized notes about the band in the lyrics and they really rock the end.
MPW plays a drum fill through the end–I just did that because I blew the ending and I thought I’d do an interesting beat to a new song.
Tim: “That drum part reeked of cover up.”
Mike: “You’re right. Me and Karl Rove.”
After a pause. Mike says, “Let’s do something sprawling and epic.”
Martin: “Almost as sprawling and epic as the space between songs.”
Martin introduces “CCYPA” as “this is a little blues number I wrote to sell chicken wings.” Mid song Tim advises, “Remember they call it conservative but it’s still spelled Reform. They’re like wolves in dogs’ clothing.” Dave: “Stephen Harper eats babies. You can see it in his eyes. He takes off his face and there’s a lizard face.” Mike: “He went to France to get dead eye transplants.” Tim: “And under the face of the lizard is the face of a Reform party member.”
By this time, they’re down to just a few bass notes playing. “If Tim stops, are we still inside the song?”
Mike asks Martin if mid-song patter is okay, and Martin says, “yeah, I’m enjoying this.”
This next song is also brought to you by Ford Pier (Mike: and his incessant caterwauling). They play a fun “Triangles On The Walls” and Martin modifies a line to: “her name was Satan, but I guess she called herself that for her own protection because she was perfectly nice.” It’s followed by a very nice “Try To Praise This Mutilated World.”
Up next is a surprise cover of “Fairytale of New York” sung by Kaitlyn and Nevil (“and we’re both wearing matching outfits tonight.” Nevil does a great Shane/Tom Waits style. Kaitlyn is less impressive. After the first verse, no one does the penny whistle fast part, but that doesn’t stop them. They kind of fight their way through the song and it’s overall pretty okay.
There’s a really intense “Feed Yourself” with Dave singing/screaming “I wanna see her face” and getting really creepy: “open up the grave.” They play a decent “Powderfinger” in the middle of the song and then come back to finish it.” We’ll stay in the suburbs for this next song: “Stolen Car.”
Dave thanks everyone for the privilege of playing for them “It gives us lots of fuel for the future.” (Rats)
The end of “Song Of The Garden” is just insane with Dave freaking out and screaming about the beauty of Harmelodia. But as the song ends, Mike won’t stop his insane drumming and Martin is making all kid of feedback noises. Dave even tries to get everyone to stop “Hey children, you know what time it is? Rock n roll children, do you realize what time it is?” But Mike won’t stop. Dave starts playing “You Are Very Star” and Martin starts singing even while mike thunders away. They finish the song in a childlike way and someone says, “Aw young’uns you’re all so adorable.”
“The Land Is Wild” starts with Dave solo. It builds but people mess up the end on him.” Then Tim plays a new one (“Listening”) with Ida from Vancouver Great Aunt Ida has opened for them the last few nights).
“Legal Age Life At Variety Store” starts. Dave says, “I think it’s time.” Tim: “For me to play the drums?” It’s tradition. Every year for the five years or maybe even longer… I don’t mean Martin playing the bongos, or mike playing the bass or Tim playing the drums. It’s the fifth annual Horseshoe twist contest.”
Mike is terrible at the bass and Tim screws up a fill, “I know, I know, I’m back on the bass.” “Timmy ‘smooth fills’ is fired.” “I’m not fired so much as demoted, downsized.” The contestants, are Melissa, Eric “that’s Eric with his version of the twist.” Stephanie fulfilling her life-long dream to twist with the Rheostatics. Susan, Paul and James. As the twist continues, Martin starts talking in a crazy Russian accent: “Hi, my name is Wendell Clark (presumably he has the Wendell doll). Can you twist with Wendell.? I guess i think Wendell Clark is Russian or something.”
Then he introduces “the twist champion of the greater Ottawa Valley Ron Koop. All of our contestants have been super fine–they all get something from the merch table and the honor of twisting with Ron Koop.”
After nearly 20 minutes of Legal Age Life and twisting they play “Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne.” Dave switches the words to “Wendell, dear old Wendell” and Ford gets on organ solo.
After a jaunty “PIN,” Dave says, “don’t worry fellas, you guys are going to get to the leather bar. Things don’t really get started until 5 clock.
And after all of that, they end the nearly three hour show with a ten minute scorching version of “Horses.” When they get to the Talking Heads part, Martin sings it in the robot voice–which sounds pretty awesome. It’s a great ending, a great set, and quite a shame that the band broke up a few months after this.:.
[READ: July 26, 2017] The Stone Heart
It had been a year since I’d read the first book in this trilogy. I was worried that I’d forget what had happened, but Hicks catches us up pretty quickly and, more importantly, her storytelling was so good in the first book that it was easy to get right back into this exciting story.
The story opens on Rat and Kaidu–Rat has been doing some physical therapy on her hurt ankle and is feeling pretty much all better.
As a nice reminder, we see Rat and Kaidu meeting Ezri, the son of the General of All Blades. In the last book, it was Rat and Kaidu who saved Erzi and the city.
We also see that a monk is there to discuss things with the general. Rat knows the monk (named Joah) who used to be a soldier but rescinded violence when he joined the monastery. Then we also see that Erzi’d guard Mura also knows the Monk and doesn’t seem to like him much. (more…)
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