SOUNDTRACK: DAVE BIDINI—The Paramount Moncton, NB [audience & soundboard recordings] (July 29, 2007).
This final show has two different recordings at the Rheostaticslive site, an audience recording and a soundboard. The soundboard recording is cleaner and I suppose better, but the audience recording is a little more fun because you can hear the audience responding to Bidini’s comments and jokes.
For the reading he asks if people want London or Finland, and so he reads Finland. He reads the funny story about trying to get a cheap 30 pound flight to anywhere only to get hit with a huge fine for having too much stuff. The section ends with a funny moment when a Finnish audience member compliments him: Your voice is excellent! Dave is excited since that’s not something he hears to often. The man follows up with: “You pronounce English very well.”
He plays seven songs all on acoustic guitar. Three of the songs are Rheostatics classics: “Fat,” “Me and Stupid” and “My First Rock Show.” I feel like hearing “Me and Stupid” in this setting really let me get the lyrics better–I never really understood the middle section. All three songs sound good in this format.
The “solo” songs are the same four: “Song Ain’t Good,” “The List” “The Land is Wild” and “The Ballad of Zeke Roberts.”
While talking to the crowd he mentions seeing signs on the road: “Free PEI Spuds for Cheap Trick” and “Red Sox nation welcomes Aerosmith.” He mentioned them in the previous days’ show as well, but in this show it sounds like someone claims to have written them (or at least seen them) but we never learn what they are all about.
He sounds great and the audience is responsive. Of the three, I like this show the best.
[READ: November 10, 2015] Home and Away
My triumvirate of Bidini books ended with this one.
I had never heard of the Homeless World Cup (which is kind of the point of the book, that no one has). But as you can imagine, knowing that that’s what this book is about you can be prepared for a pretty sad book.
Bidini follows a small group (4 players, including one woman) of Canadian homeless soccer players as they travel to Australia to play in the 2008 Homeless World Cup.
We meet the four players on the Canadian team and learn all about how they became homeless (a variety of reasons, but drugs feature prominently). These people were able to get above their bad situation, most of them through the joy of playing soccer–a cheap game even for the homeless.
The Homeless World Cup gathers homeless players from around the world to play in small venues on a small pitch. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 