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| Photo from Shauna De Cartier's Facebook page |
Rheostatics
Massey Hall, Toronto
April 29, 2016
Never in my life have I walked an
emotional highwire at a musical performance the way I did at Massey Hall last
Friday night. Never once before have I spent an entire show on the edge of my
seat, wondering if it would even continue, if the lights would suddenly go up
and everyone would be ushered out and thousands of fans would stand outside the
venue wondering what the hell they had just witnessed. Never have I seen a show
of this size go so severely off the rails, repeatedly—only, it must be said, to
have everyone else on stage rally together as a band of brothers to salvage the
show and, for a few songs and ultimately for the closing number, ultimately
triumph. There was a happy ending, but could just as easily have not reached
any kind of closure at all.
But this is the Rheostatics.
The Rheostatics mean more to me than
any other group of musicians of my generation, of any performer I've been lucky
enough to see live during their prime, of people I've been fortunate enough to
know, however tangentially, as a writer and fan and part of an extended circle
of friends. When they decided to call it quits in 2007, they played a final
show, at Massey Hall, which was one of the most beautiful moments of musical
history I've been privileged to witness.
So there's that.
There’s talk of a reunion of the ones that didn’t stay.
In recent years there had been
rumblings of a reunion, all of which made me nervous. A 2012 show at the
Horseshoe Tavern, with original drummer Dave Clark (1980-94), was announced and
then cancelled due to Martin Tielli's anxiety and stage fright, which he wrote
about in a Facebook post (which I reprinted here, and Brad Wheeler wrote about here and here). That came a year after Dave Bidini published a book
ostensibly about Gordon Lightfoot, in which the author—in easily the most
beautiful, heart-wrenching passage of his prolific career—wrote about the
alcohol addiction of an extremely close musical comrade, whom he refuses to
name, but whose identity is obvious to any Rheostatics fan able to read between
the lines.
Then, last fall, the band did reunite
to perform their 2005 album Music Inspired by the Group of 7, at the Art
Gallery of Ontario. I went, with some apprehension, but: a) it's a largely
instrumental album that is not even in my top 5 Rheostatics records, so I
didn't feel the same level of emotional investment; b) they were joined by
keyboardist Kevin Hearn and violinist Hugh Marsh, veterans who can handle any musical
challenge or curveball thrown at them; c) with visuals by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, the whole performance
promised to be more than a regular rock-show reunion gig, and more of an art
gallery event.
The show was good (though the sound
in that venue was terrible), Tielli seemed in decent shape, and yes, it was
great to see all those men together; I also
happened to be an AGO event earlier in the week where they made a surprise
appearance, with Terra Lightfoot and Mary Margaret O'Hara joining them on
vocals. I declined an invitation to a late-night show at the Monarch Tavern at
the end of that weekend, where the band played a full set of their regular
material, with the aforementioned guests and more. Memories of glory from the
2007 Massey Hall gig were still resonant; I didn't want to tamper with them. As
one friend told his spouse before last week’s show, "I've already said my
goodbyes."
That brings us to last Friday.
Again, I was apprehensive. This is a
band who, as everybody but the die-hard apologists will tell you, were capable
of playing the worst show you've ever seen and then follow it up the next night
with the greatest show you've ever seen—by any band, ever. (Any time I say this
it makes them sound like a jam band. Raised on new wave, punk, Max Webster and
arty folk rock, this band has nothing in common with children of the Dead—to
which I’m allergic.) How good could a one-off at Massey Hall possibly be? My
concerns were only tempered when I heard there was to be a warm-up at the
Starlight Room in Waterloo the week before; rave reviews of that show were
heartening, to say the least.
No one said this would be easy / But no one said this would be
hell
Massey Hall 2016 opened with “King of
the Past,” from the beloved Whale Music,
a song that plays to many of the band’s strengths: co-written by Dave Bidini
and Tim Vesely, sung by Tim, a guitar solo from Martin, and Don Kerr’s drums
driving the song to a thrilling conclusion. Solid choice: the song develops
slowly, one can hear the band warming up and finding their feet as it evolves. So
far, so good.
Then “California Dreamline,” one of
many Rheostatics songs that is largely a showcase for Tielli’s voice—a voice
that on this occasion started dropping lyrics and eventually flubbed a full
verse. The next Tielli-sung song, “P.I.N.,” required Bidini to prompt him with
lyrics. Anxiety was building. This was every performer’s stage-fright
nightmares coming to life.
Meanwhile, the letters of the band’s
name were mounted on wheels behind the band and rearranged during the course of
the show into amusing anagrams; at the beginning, they spelled “RHEOSTATISC,”
to the confused delight of the assembling audience—even if, in retrospect, that
seems to have been an omen. When things first started going awry, the letters
spelled “SORTA ITCHES.” As things got worse, they spelled “SHIT COASTER.” Oy
vey.
Once I get good. Once I get better.
As another fan has pointed out, Tielli has always been emotionally bare on stage: he has no
game face to appease a crowd. If he’s feeling it—joy, amusement, bewilderment,
anger—you will see it. Kerr and Vesely are perpetually poker-faced, soldiering
through any potential mishap. Bidini will always be the coach and cheerleader, fully
devoted to spectacle, craving attention but also exceedingly generous and
encouraging to anyone with whom he shares a stage. Bidini was all those things at
Massey Hall, and thank God. Never once did Bidini visibly express concern; every
one of Bidini’s glances toward Tielli seemed to tell him, “I’ve got your back.
We can do this.”
But you will, you will, you will be happy / In spite of the shit
and the pain of it
Forgetting lyrics is one thing (and a
bit Desmond Howl-ish, but that’s another story). By the time they started
“Self-Serve Gas Station,” Tielli’s volume pedal—a key element of his sound and
technique—and his gear in general was not functioning. The song’s intro dragged
out for several minutes while the problem proved it was not going to work
itself out, to Tielli’s visible dismay—he stalked the stage and it looked like
he might actually just leave. What’s weird is that Tielli has had this exact
same problem with his gear for at least 25 years, since the first Rheostatics
gig I ever saw. Here, however, as De La Soul would say, stakes is high.
Tech snafus happen; we’ve all been
there. But when they do, you pick up another guitar, you move on—which is what
the Rheostatics have always done, which is what I saw the Flaming Lips do at
Massey Hall in 2002, after all their sequencers and visual gear stopped working
mid-show. As Bidini joked during this show, that’s what live music is all
about. Should we all stay home and watch perfectly edited concert videos?
(Speaking of which, this show was being filmed for the Live at Massey Hall series.) Isn’t the thrill for the audience supposed to be the tightrope walk of the performers? Aren’t the
most memorable shows the ones that go off-script? By the same token, no one goes
to professional theatre and tolerates large swaths of dialogue gone missing or
sudden curtain drops.
It wasn’t all discomfort; naturally,
there were many moments of utter magic. Kevin Hearn’s elderly father was
escorted on stage to read a carpe diem
poem that brought tears to my eyes. The vocal trio Trent Severn, featuring Emm
Gryner, was brought out to sing backups on an inspired “Fan Letter to Michael
Jackson.” Don Kerr busted into a few bars of “I Would Die 4 U” over the
beginning of “Queer.” After one of the particularly squeamish snafus, Bidini
led the band to the edge of the stage to perform an entirely unplugged
“Northern Wish,” during which Tielli rallied and triumphed, hands cupped over
his mouth, calling out to the furthest corners of Massey Hall; Marsh’s violin
danced around the edges of the melody, the way it once did with Bruce Cockburn
and Mary Margaret O’Hara at this same venue; 2,700 people sang the “land-ho”
backing vocals; Hearn looked particularly verklempt (as a child, he used to
sing in Massey Hall with St. Michael’s Choir School).
Yet the show took another turn south,
however, for the set-closing “Shaved Head,” the centrepiece of Whale
Music. Again: Tielli dropped lyrics, but channelled everything he had left
into an intense, operatic and transcendent delivery. It was certainly
electrifying, but not exactly pleasurable; it simply encapsulated the emotional
roller coaster ride we’d been on.
By this point the anagrams had read
“ETHICS ROAST” and “ARTISTS ECHO.” This appeared to be not at all a new
beginning for a revered band, but a fading memory of glory days. By the time
the set was over, I wanted to cancel post-show plans with friends—friends who
had travelled from Vancouver, from Ottawa, from upstate New York—and crawl
home.
Forgive me, I don't know what made me this way / But I'll be all
right if you'll be okay
But wait: there’s more. (With the
Rheostatics, there is always more.) For the encore, the letters had finally
been assembled to spell “RHEOSTATICS.” It was revealed that the
anagram-assisting stage hands, who had been clad in white hazmat suits, were
four long-time associates: Ford Pier (sideman), Michael Philip Wojewoda
(producer, drummer 2001-07), Selina Martin (frequent guest singer, collaborator),
and Justin Stephenson (video director), who all unmasked and sang back-ups on
“Stolen Car” and “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds,” two more epic Tielli-led live
staples. Tielli played Bidini’s electric guitar, without incident. All lyrics
were there. Negative energy had dissipated during the short set break. The
forgiving crowd—and you could not ask for a more forgiving, generous crowd than
Rheostatics fans—rallied the band on. We would not let this band fail.
I feel like I'm swimming, and things will work out anyway
“Dope Fiends” is a song in which the
lonely narrator feels abandoned by his childhood friends in his snowy suburb;
he wonders, “why didn’t they stay here and help me shovel the walk?” Well, here
we were, helping hands all, witnessing a concluding performance that was
monstrous, powerful, gut-wrenching and glorious in all the best ways. There was
a sharp left turn into a noise improv featuring only Hearn, Marsh and Tielli, an
exorcism before everyone reassembled for the crashing coda, providing the
pent-up emotional release we’d all been waiting for all night. It was what the
Rheostatics do best, what they do better than any other band I’ve ever seen.
And as that old song always does, as it did concluding the 2007 Massey Hall show, it
ended on a suspended note.
CODA: The next morning, I put on Mary
Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America album.
It was the only thing that made sense. It’s a Tielli favourite.It features Hugh
Marsh. She sang with the Rheostatics at their most recent gig, which sent the
Toronto music historian in me into fits of ecstasy. She is someone who is
always lost in her own moment, with both brilliant and disastrous results,
surrounded by sympathetic musicians who somehow tune into her wavelength. The
first time I saw her play was full of false starts, falls, random spontaneous
covers, and, of course, some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard in my
life. She is someone to whom fans have learned to adjust our expectations—of
everything. On this morning, titles, phrases from that record resonated with me
in ways they never have before: “Body’s in Trouble,” “Help Me Lift You Up,”
“Not Be Alright.” And of course…
You will be loved again.
Set list, not in order:
From Melville:
Northern Wish
From Whale Music:
Self-Serve Gas Station
California Dreamline
Queer
King of the Past
Shaved Head
Dope Fiends
From Introducing Happiness:
Claire
Fan Letter to Michael Jackson
From Nightlines Sessions:
Stolen Car
From The Story of Harmelodia:
It’s Easy to Be With You
Monkeybird
From Night of the Shooting Stars:
PIN
Mumbletypeg
From 2067:
Making Progress
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