SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-3rd Annual Green Sprouts Music Week Night 1 (Ultrasound Showbar, Toronto Ontario September 18 1995).
It has been a while since I’ve listened to a live Rheostatics show. Darrin at Rheostatics Live has added a number of new shows in the last eight months. Like this full week of shows from the Third Green Sprouts Music Week.
He writes:
Rheos had just come off of the 2nd Another Roadside Attraction tour with The Tragically Hip in July. The band would perform their Group Of 7 commission in Ottawa a month later and during this run were working on material for what would become The Blue Hysteria album. Some of the working titles are listed (Crescent II, Two Flights) as well as Drumheller which would end up as “Desert Island Poem” on Dave’s first Bidiniband album The Land Is Wild.
I don’t regret missing many shows that I’ve missed, but I do very much wish that i had been able to go to a few nights of a Green Sprouts Music Week. Seeing them in a small club with them chatting away and experimenting seems like it would have been a wonderful experience.
As the tape starts on this first night, someone asks
“Are we going to play that song tonight?”
“What song?”
“The $1.79 song.”
“Of course it wouldn’t be a Green Sprouts…”
Never find out what that is. But then Dave tells the audience
The plan is over the next 7 days to pay every song we know and even songs don’t know. He says that it’s Roger the sound man’s first Green Sprouts week and he hasn’t caught Green Sprouts fever yet. This is also Don Kerr’s first green sprouts, too.
We’ll lay a couple old ones to start. Someone shouts “YAY!” Dave: “Hey you haven’t even heard the new ones yet.”
They start with “Me & Stupid” which features the spoken part of the poem “Wilderness Gothic” by Al Purdy: “Something is about to happen two shores away a man hammering the sky”
Dave: “The great thing about green sprouts is you forget different stuff each night.”
Up next is “another Southern Ontario song” “Fish Tailin’.”
Then Martin unveils his new (as yet unpainted double neck) guitar: “overcompensating for the lack of headstock for the last 6 years. Now he’s got a guitar with two big ones.”
Tim gets the first new song with “All the Same Eyes,” a song that doesn’t change much between now and the record.
In what will be a theme for the week, they have a really hard time coordinating the opening countdown for “Four Little Songs.” They have to start it three times. And they mess up the 4321 at the end. Martin’s verse seems different.
Kevin Hearn joins them for the next song. Dave says they stole some part of “Four Little Songs” from [Kev’s “on patrol? Cabs On patrol? No idea].
Kevin plays on “Fan Letter” and in they chant “Farm Fresh” instead of Michael.
Over the course of the week we’ll get more details about the creation of “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine.” Onm this first night, Martin forgets the second verse.
Dave says that Neil Peart said that he preferred playing smaller places (meaning arenas) because he could hear himself (he preferred arenas to open air venues). But in arenas there’s big speakers but it sounds small. But it’s snugsville in here, boy.
It’s been a long time since we did this song (“Palomar”), which gets a good response. After which “it’s the fall but we can still play summer music” (“Introducing Happiness”).
Dave says he saw Asleep at the Wheel and the last song everyone did a solo. Then the lead singer had a guitar shaped like Texas, but instead of his solo, he picked up three balls by his feet and did some juggling. The last one he threw up in the air and it landed on the brim of his cowboy hat. They’re working on that for later in the week.
They start the new “Connecting Flights” but can’t find a capo. They do an improv “capo shortage,” a goofy bit a fun. Up next is the new “Desert Island Poem,” which sounds great.
Then comes the popular section. A rocking “California Dreamline” which segues into a lovely “Song of Flight” and right into “Fat.”
They haven’t played “Queer” in a while (which is a surprise). As they start Dave says, “now there’s a little matter of the words.” Someone recites them for him.
Dave is going to play “My First Rock Concert” every night this week and the and are kind of learning it on the fly. In the middle of the song, some words are different.
Dave: “I sense something funky coming on (start of “Soul Glue”).
The last song before “our first encore” is a rocking version of Jane Siberry’s “One More Colour.” I love their version.
Heading into the encore break Don says, “We just played 18 songs without a pee break.”
That reminds him of a gig they played in Pennsylvania: drinks were free until the first person has to pee. It was a real classy establishment. The most boring place on earth–Harrisburg, PA. It’s a great place if you have a huge bladder.
Martin says “My assessment of tonight is that it started out very vague and hazy, like we haven’t played in six months or like we’re getting back together after a year breakup. But it gelled together in the last three or four songs.”
Martin tries to remember the new song “A Midwinter Night’s Dream.” He doesn’t go for the high note in the middle of the song–choosing a lower growl instead. It works pretty well, but I love the high note.
Dave jokes: You don’t know what it was like touring in Platinum Blonde town after town having to play the hits with the drummer under the stage playing the parts for the fake drummer on the stage.
A delicate “Take Me in Your Hand” is followed by Don Kerr’s first time playing “Northern Wish.” Martin gets the first line but missed the rest of the verse and starts the song again.
The first night ends with a ripping “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds.” There’s a drum solo for Don and then martin ends the song with interesting guitar effects.
It’s a good start to a great week.
[READ: February 20, 2021] Leviathan
I signed C. up for a YA program at the library. His subject was steampunk and they chose this book for him. S. had read this series and loved it, so I decided to give it a read while it was still in the house. I found it to be a fast and fun read.
The story is set in 1914, the dawn of World War I. But it’s an alternate reality–one where zeppelins and other hydrogen-based flying machines dominate the air It also has a very cool component of animal/machine hybrids that are really quite impossible to explain except to say that the Leviathan is a living airship that is made out of whale–they are in side of a whale–but it’s also a machine. Or something. Best not to think too much about that.
It’s here that I should mention the drawings by Keith Thompson. They are wonderful pencil-looking drawings–dark but detailed. They really help to get the visuals down of thes extradoridfanly machiens tah Westerfeld has createa. I’m not always certain that I could picture the without the drawings.
The book opens on teenaged Prince Aleksander, the heir to the Austrian throne. While he is playing with toy soldiers, imagining a war, two of his servants enter the room and tell him they are off to do some training in the dark–his father’s orders.
The machine that Aleks is being taken to is a Cyklop Stormwalker. This is a giant machine that walks on two legs (Star Wars, yes). Alek has never piloted something this large before, but they tell him it’s important for his training. But Alek senses something is wrong and that’s when they tell him this is not a drill. His parents, the King and Queen of Austria, were killed that very night. He is probably another target and they are trying to keep him safe. (more…)
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