| info@rheostaticslive.com | ||
| url | http://www.goodgonedead.rheostaticslive.com | |
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Post your thoughts on the the show here. | |
| DATE | Monday, April 2nd 2007 - 04:37:32 PM | |
| warren_snider@hotmail.com | ||
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one of the great bands i'll ever see | |
| DATE | Tuesday, April 3rd 2007 - 10:54:17 PM | |
| lmclaren@ucalgary.ca | ||
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We sang, we laughed, we cried. Thanks Rheostatics! | |
| DATE | Thursday, April 5th 2007 - 10:21:30 PM | |
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I love the Rheos! I will miss them soooooooooo much...
Good luck boys! NicoMira | |
| DATE | Saturday, April 7th 2007 - 04:31:54 PM | |
| ;itt;eriverfolk@hotmail.com | ||
| url | http://littleriverfolk.com | |
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love you always and forever, but not in a stalking way just a cool kinda aloof but meaningful way, A1 lads. too bad about the leafs though, maybe they could break up too? | |
| DATE | Saturday, April 7th 2007 - 08:56:40 PM | |
| rheostatics@hotmail.com | ||
| url | http://www.angelfire.com/band/rheostatics/ | |
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the rheostatics changed my life in so many ways. they were certainly GOOD, they may be GONE, but they will never be DEAD. we will always have the many cd's and live recordings to remember them by. i am quite sure tim will continue to play from time to time with the violet archers, martin can always get a gig with thin buckle or his own OIJ band, and dave can play with anyone at any time in between books. i'm sure mpw will fall back on his production career, i liked don kerr better anyways :-)
it's a sad time for us greensprouts, but life shall move forward. it's been a blast... mikey the rheostatics guy kingston, ON | |
| DATE | Tuesday, April 10th 2007 - 06:46:11 PM | |
| tasteslikechicken32@lycos.com | ||
| url | http://www.myspace.com/theshinydiamonds | |
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Amazing site! thanks for running this! Rheos are fantastic. | |
| DATE | Sunday, July 22nd 2007 - 10:53:11 PM | |
| mkaplanny@gmail.com | ||
| url | http://www.myspace.com/drumpickle | |
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Hi -
thanks so much for sharing the last show soundboard . I should've got off my ass and traveled a bit north for it . The rheos are my favorite band for being so damn REAL . thanks again - peace , Mike aka Toadlunch | |
| DATE | Saturday, August 4th 2007 - 10:32:56 AM | |
| jose_moura@canada.com | ||
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Thanks | |
| DATE | Saturday, December 15th 2007 - 05:50:06 PM | |
| mkaplanny@gmail.com | ||
| url | http://www.myspace.com/drumpickle | |
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hi - thanks so much for the great downloads .
love the box set - all 9 volumes . you're the best . a greensprout in new york . peace - Mike. | |
| DATE | Sunday, June 29th 2008 - 11:19:18 AM | |
| taylor_a.eh@hotmail.com | ||
| url | http://www.youtube.com/tayloreh | |
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My name is Taylor, and I'm 17. The following is a pretty detailed account of my life so far as a Rheos fan. It eventually gets into my experience meeting them in front of Massey Hall before the last show. Hopefully its not too hard to read. I just wanted to say all this.
When I think about the Rheos, I can feel Canada in my veins like with no other Canadian band. Its a wonderful feeling. I remember how much the Rheo's meant to me throughout highschool. In Grade 9, I saw the video for "The Tarleks" (thats right, I'm a douchey modern Rheos fan, though I grew to love the essential stuff too), and in my pubescent brain, the idea of having such a varied and stop and start song was fascinating... they weren't like any band I had heard before. Within two months, the video was out of circulation on (not)much more music... but I was lucky enough to find a copy of the album in Peterborough, ON (pretty much where I live). I didn't know what I was in for... and it was one of the most deeply affecting, surprising musical experiences of my life so far. That album brought me to a world I could have never imagined without it... full of extraordinary ideas and textures... but best of all... it was unbelievably inspiring for me that these guys were Canadian. It seemed to me the antithesis of what Canada in 2067 could be (not what the silly liner notes say), but a mutilated world of wonderful Canadian Cottages (I know them well), inhuman cities, castles for Ozzy to jack-off in, equally mammoth cornfields, Bizarro-Madagascar jazz animals... and beyond that, a universe of perpetual microcosms and floating excess. A galaxy of multicultural, cybernetic sorrow. Martin's guitar playing is still one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Subconsciously, I was sure there would only be a few bands in my life that I could get so invested in. One day in English class, we had to play some of our favorite music. And deeply blushing, and grinning, I put on "I Dig Music (The Jazz Animal)". The childproof yellow plastic four inch speakers couldn't do it justice though. Playing that first A minor on the guitar with some flange always makes me smile. When my interest in music significantly started to wane a few months later (from pushing myself too much, really in that direction), I felt like my whole life was falling apart. The guilt was unbearable... I soon lost most of the ability to feel. No joke. As a gangly pale bag of misery, too afraid to let myself feel anything in Grade 10 (this continued, though it was at its peak here), and while resisting the joys I thought I was destined for, I somehow landed a role in an Elgin theater Ross Petty musical "Snow White And The Group Of Seven". A very approachable comedian who went to my High School many years previous, Sean Cullen, was a star in it. I miraculously got the balls to have one or two casual conversations with him in between my perpetual self-loathing in my dressing room. One was 'what shows do you have coming up?'. And he told me he was opening for the Rheo's, and of all things, singing 'Power Ballad For Ozzy Osbourne'. I couldn't believe it... I forced myself to be ecstatic. I'm sure I would have been if I let myself be anyway, though then I was too afraid to find out. Music had been too much a part of my life up until then to not approach it the way I was... I felt I'd ruin my life if I did otherwise. Irony! Anyways... I tried getting into the show in question at The Horseshoe, but couldn't due to age. My Mom and I saw Sean walking down the street to the show as he left, which was a beautiful moment to me... it seemed like the antithesis of the giants of Canadian entertainment, blissfully ignored, walking down the streets with the knapsacks on their backs to their next show. It again, made me proud to be Canadian. A similar moment occurred as we somehow saw him walking to the Gemini awards... no limo, just a knapsack. Apparently, there was a 14 plus show on a day that I went back to my home and wasn't staying in our morbid, 27th floor apartment. If I would have been around, in my state, I probably would have had a breakdown. I felt so much pressure that this entire Elgin theater experience couldn't feel like anything else but a blip. During the last few times coming back home from the play, I started listening to Wings... but I also found Whale Music and stuck it on my walk-man, with my expensive headphones that made me feel like I was spoiled and horrible. I felt so much like damn tired Martin at the kiosk... part of me wanted to end it all. But this album also found a way to touch me deeply. I sure was the King Of The Past. But there was hope in the song for me too. I casually learned lines from songs like 'Dope Fiends And Boozehounds' and 'Little Bird, Little Bird' on guitar. Somehow, despite feeling as isolated at Kurt Cobain, I still managed to get acting/music jobs that took me away from school, where I didn't have the self esteem to make any friendly connections anymore. Everything was part of an elaborate destiny that I was forcing myself not to be a part of so I would destroy myself a bit more inside. I was an inward Punk. I got to go to Ottawa, to the seediest part I'd ever been in, to play in a little cafe to audition for the Mariposa festival. I felt like I was trapped in the early years of Bob Dylan's career... all the bizarre performers I got to see on that little stage. I played 'Little Bird' from 2067. I was a good enough actor that somehow people wouldn't believe I felt horrible all the time. I didn't want to. I also got to play a piece of crap song called "Off On An Adventure" to appear in an Ontario-wide talent showcase. I wrote it as lil folk-filler for a two-disc concept album I wanted to make after steeping myself in the White Album when I was 13. A few years later, I'd describe this as my Brian Wilson 'Smile' phase, before I knew much about the Beach Boys. My album also had a one word title: 'Utopian', and dealt with Americana in a way close to Van Dyke Parks. Hahaha and I was only 13... I've sort of lived a full career in a bubble already. But before going to the audition for that in some seedy part of Scarborough, I had found Melville (at Sam The Record Man, RIP, along with Paul Simons 'One Trick Pony')... sort of my least favorite Rheos album, but I grew to love it still, just for its simplicity. I loved 'Aliens (Christmas 88)' the most it seemed, also 'Northern Wish'. I remember listening to it most while driving to the creepy marketing guy who I had to rehearse the songs with in the basement of a Church. I had some anxiety worries around this time that I'd have to make some low budget music video to a song in a hidden Canadian studio. Thankfully, this never happened. Pursuing music was pretty much destroying me, but it was all I knew how to do. I also bought some more Rheos ("Double Live", and "Introducing Happiness") when I somehow landed a part in CBC's "Hockey A People's History". Walking over to the CBC from the nearest parking lot with my little guitar and my Mom, I sang some Rheos songs. I remember trying California Dreamline and Soul Glue. (I also had a nice experience listening to that album with my older brother and our best friend in his car as we drove through the woods to Haliburton to the cottage. I wanted to show them more than Billy Talent... though the album was a little too much for them.) I worked "I Dig Music" into a 7-track one man rock opera I wrote about Hitler's rise to chancellor (and of course performed). In the tradition of many so-called 'odd subject' musicals it was just called 'Hitler! The Musical", before I had heard of any of them (such as "Cannibal!"). It was part of a song about Jewish swingers being apprehended by Nazis called 'I'd Rather Swing' which also used some Django Reinhardt recording bits. "Some say this is a fad. I say too f*** bad. Can't you see I just wanna swing? You can try to enlist me... but I'd rather swing. The music of the angels set to a million beats. You can try all you want... but I'd rather swing. They say that we've all got our thing. Well ya guessed it... mine is just the swing... And some folks like to dream, of a stardom so obscene..." I found a way to mimic some of Martin's guitar character for a hidden track on the album too. For some reason, making this little musical caused me some sense of creative triumph, the first amount of it that I'd felt in a while. I recorded some pretty decent pop songs that summer as well, one called 'Little One, Little Bird', certainly with some subconscious influence. I was through the worst of my misery, but I could still become emotionally petrified at any great chance. And great chances were to come. These sort of Canadian moments (buying Rheos albums downtown and then appearing in CBC things), how hard it is to believe... I fear are gone with the loss of the Rheos. There was an energy all their own that you could feel that they had left in downtown Toronto. However miserable I was, I was doing some wonderful things, and I miss those situations. I've accepted how I lived that time in my life though. It was an energy that I also relate to being a performer in Canada, especially when I got to go to auditions and act in some TV shows growing up, before the acting industry pretty much died in T.O. I also found myself buying Tielli's first solo album (still with the 'new release' sticker on it despite being five years old at the time), and slowly falling in love with it too. Along with this, I scoured the net for any info and video I could get about them, like I do with any artist I'm fascinated with. And then! In Grade 11, I landed a lead voice acting role in a kids series called 'The Future Is Wild'. I worry this will be my last experience with professional acting for a while... But we had 26 episodes lined up, so I had a steady gig! That Christmas, my Dad surprised me with tickets to both Queen and Paul Rodgers (a band that is equally inspiring to me, and was just about as terrifying for me to actually see in concert.), and The Rheostatics live at Massey Hall. Right after the recording of an episode (the series voice director was a fan of Melville, got to see them live once), my mom and I walked down to do some shopping, which meant we had to pass Massey hall. As my vision became clearer... I realized the band was standing in front of it with their wives (groupies?). I had fantasized times before about what it would be like to meet them (meeting Martin in a random Mr. Sub, of all places)... it was too much for me to comprehend, to actually talk to them and really let myself get into it, play my role in history... but I knew it had to be done. I was going to try to face my fear of music once and for fuckin' all. I didn't want to hurt myself any more. I got to tell them that I was a stereotypical super-fan, which made Bidini especially laugh. I felt I was surrounded by giants, no different than a huge landscape done by The Group Of Seven (appropriate considering their album about them). Their hands are still the biggest ones I've ever seen on anyone (How Martin doesn't crush his little headless guitar when he plays it, I don't know!). I got to tell them how much 2067 meant to me, Tim seemed really appreciative. I asked them what music I should look into. Bidini of course said The Ramones (and while I'd be open to it now, it seemed too plebian then to really listen to hardcore Punk)... but Martin suggested Mary Margaret O'Hara's 'Miss America' which I still love to this day. He told me about a film he worked on with her... I can't really expect to be more than someone for him to pitch his work to I suppose. (Have you all noticed the nod to her in 'Voice From The Wilderness'?) I had a few little hopes and dreams... like one day collaborating with them. Seeing how they write would be fascinating. But I did something unspeakably horrible there too... which part of me still burns from... and I worry might have ruined their concert. To meet them before the last show makes me feel insanely privileged... back then, it was as if I'm the one boy who was to carry on their torch. While today I might be able to get the sense to call that ridiculous... Anyways... I sort of said, right in front of them, quite unconsciously, that my favorite band was Queen. (slaps himself in the face!) before their last show... I got to sing part of their 'Millionaire Waltz' with one of their wives... my favorite Queen song back then. Martin's upper register was gone as you know for that show, but he tried to join along :). I also didn't say Wojewoda's name right, and didn't recognize him right away... (smack!), and I asked them if they had seen the Elgin theatre play with Sean because they were friends, but that was a family play and I couldn't imagine them sitting down for it (smack!). It was cold out and Tim was very kind, perhaps thinking I was deranged, but said that they had to get ready. I realized I had probably kept them out in the cold, chatting for twenty minutes or more. It was like a performance; you realize you've done it, but you don't remember it at all. I got them all to sign my business card due to not having records there... (I may have given them one... I hope not). They raced into Franz across the street, and as I left I yelled "I love you guys! You guys rock!", like I never have before. I feel like I made my point... But I don't know what it meant to them. I just hope one day they can know I'm not some little douchey kid. Or perhaps they're too insightful for that, they know that people change. Back in 79 when they first started playing, I'm sure they must have had smaller phases like the kind I put myself through back then. And heck, I'm sure the cast of the Elgin play would have the guts to realize I wasn't all there either. I'm sorry I couldn't just be myself for them, but as they know, life goes on. And as you know, the show was magic (awkward to see with my Mom), and I think they may have made a joke about me when someone said, I believe: "Tim's planning to make a Young Rheos revival band." Truthfully, I wished there were more songs from 2067, but I was still very happy with it. They played better than any other lives performances I'd heard of theirs. I was still terrified of taking it all in... but I could take in pieces, which I'm grateful for. I raced down to get the best view I could of the end of Record Body Count. The way Martin raised the mic at the very end, bathed in the spotlights, was like nothing I'll ever see again. I guess what I've learned from all this melodrama and beauty was to forget about happy endings, because you can't help but be human, which means much more interesting living than a stupid happy ending. When I think back to these days, I miss them, however horrible I felt. Because no matter what, I was still just being me. I had to learn the hard way that life isn't a Hollywood Crapsterpiece. I thank the Rheos for without realizing it, helping to me this. Slowly but surely, in some ways, they're changing my life again, and I'm happier now than I have been in many years. I hope to do something a tenth of as beautiful as what the Rheos have achieved, and what they still achieve through their solo work. I think life was trying to purge me of all my over-romanticizing of music, trying to make me have a meltdown by facing too much awesomeness, so I could start over again. Now I'm starting to see that. Starting to see the light. So, presently, I'm an old man of 17. No kidding! I skipped a grade somehow and am in first year at York U. I'm hoping to see Bidini live soon so I can see if the awesome is still in T.O. I still listen to Martin and the Rheos... and The Violet Archers (well, the one mp3 they made available for free, though if I get a chance in this University semi-hellhole to do anything but work and not have enough privacy to work, and pretend to care about everyone here, I'll buy their album). Still, all that stuff doesn't phase me that much. I feel so much stronger; especially as an artist. While The Rheos were in Franz, I raced up to the giant HMV to buy the lone copy of Miss America, and met a friend from the Ross Petty musical, who knew Brian May's wife because she was a dancer in WWRY, and could pass my card onto Brian May, lead Queen guitarist. See? Life was trying to overwhelm me with youthful, magic opportunity. Thank you Rheos. Without realizing it, you've been a big part of me growing up and learning some lessons. Now that I can leave my fear behind, and just treat music as a thing made by people for the sake of it, I've been able to enjoy music again. I listened to 'Introducing Happiness' again recently and, appropriately, loved it like I never had before. I'm at a point now in my life where I think I can finally just sit back and shut up and be a person. I wrote a song about the Rheos that was kind of a weird disco thing to commemorate the concert when it happened. Part of me wishes I made a fool of myself and played it for them. Hell, maybe I could have been an opener for their opening act! :) (I think I also put these lyrics on Wojewodas myspace page as a comment after the show to try and get in their theoretical 'good graces'... I was a nervous little kid!) (That was less than 2 years ago! Maybe I need to start sounding my age again.) G F#m F#7 Bm7 They kept on twisting, since 20 years ago I know they made it, there ain't no shield to their souls I keep on prayin, I'll go hear them and know Em7 A I'm shooting into outer space Buring through the acetate Welcome to your saving grace. Rheostatics, rheostatics, thats all. Rheostatics, they kept on moving along. Its mutilated, they're crying straight to the ground Its what you hated, before you even made a sound Thats when you played it, they started turnin around "When can we go buy the disk? Tell me, what guitar it is! Spin me some more maple bliss!" Rheostatics, rheostatics thats all. Rheostatics, they kept on movin' along. (delightfully weak bridge:) F# You know you had it You know you kept at it But when you’re true to yourself Bm You’re never true to the dollar Asus A But never feel bad, Em F#m G A It’s for that flag in 67 that gave you the lesson, For everyone… When can we go buy the disk? tell me what guitar is this? Spin us some more maple bliss You’re my desert island disk! Rheostatics. And so ends my self-indulgent, but I hope useful, huge document. Thank you Rheos, I love ya. I hope to meet ya again, when I've done something really good again. Bye! T. | |
| DATE | Friday, March 6th 2009 - 02:15:13 AM | |