Northern Wish

This week’s upcoming show is an homage to The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir and the recordings of Chris Brown and Kate Fenner. Podcast is below.

BTC Set:
1. Grow - Superior Cackling Hen
2. Put Your Head On - Single
3. One More Time - ShyFolk
4. While We’ve Got Your Attention I’d Like To Point Out A Few Things - Sister Anthony
5. Rude Groove - Superior Cackling hen
6. Asleep At The Wheel - Superior Cackling Hen
7. Lose The Apple/In A Salient Way - ShyFolk
8. Decomposition Blues - ShyFolk
9. Ain’t It Better To Ignite Than To Explode - Superior Cackling Hen
10. Afterglow - Superior Cackling Hen
11. All Peace - ShyFolk
12. Original Grin - Superior Cackling Hen
13. Make Amends - Superior Cackling Hen
14. Death Is The Great Awakener - Sister Anthony
15. When All The Shyfolk Finally Get It On - ShyFolk
16. Love Like Nothing - ShyFolk
17. Overjoyed - ShyFolk
18. You Can Come From here - Superior Cackling Hen
19. By The Time - ShyFolk

Chris and Kate Set:
20. Snow - Other People’s Heaven
21. Mountain - Geronimo
22. Oklahoma Tape Deck - Geronimo
23. Failed - O Witness
24. The Gates - Oblivion
25. Resistance - Other People’s Heaven
26. Pair Of Twos - O Witness
27. Trainwrecks - Geronimo
28. Apology - Other People’s Heaven
29. Alberta Sky - O Witness
30. Never Done - O Witness
31. Time Murder Ballad - Other People’s Heaven
32. Dark Quiet - Geronimo
33. The Last Thing That You Said - O Witness
34. Supply And Demand - Other People’s Heaven
35. Women And Children - Geronimo
36. Amen - Oblivion
37. Walk The Lake - O Witness
38. Pigeons - Other People’s Heaven
39. Lift You Up - Other People’s Heaven
40. Morning Song - Geronimo
41. Simple - ShyFolk

I love the lyric in Alberta Sky that seems to be the most self-referential words Chris has written:
“I did not set out to think this way
I don’t know why I do
the pettiness and the violence
confine me
piss them off, it’s my arrogance
and when they’re scared
they call it politics
really I’m just trying to find trouble
before it finds me

So read about yourself
quoted in the paper
scared for all the explaining
you can’t do
half afraid for who you might offend
and half afraid you spoke the truth”

 

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SERIOUSLY I’VE BEEN WAITING 12 YEARS FOR THIS!!!!!

I missed the band’s last show in 1996 but I saw their second last show in Toronto. The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir were my definitive life changing band. I first saw them at a Halloween show at The Diamond - Dave had long hair and was dressed up like Olive Oyl from Popeye. Actually the first show I saw was at their first show at The Battle Of The Bands at The Concert Hall in 1985. You can read about it at http://www.bourbontabernaclechoir.com/history.shtml.

Then I remember hearing some cuts from Sister Anthony on Q107 on their “Indie Hour” back in 1990. I must have seen 100 Bourbon shows between 1990 and 1996. Clinton’s Tavern, Lee’s Palace, Kingswood, Maryhill, Kitchener, Guelph, London Fairgrounds, Call The Office, A Gathering Of Human Beings (easily the weirdest show I have ever been to …. ever), Hamilton, Peterborough etc, etc..

I can’t Imaging how many nights I must have annoyed them off backstage in my post show excited state (courtesy of many double rum and cokes).

The Bourbons were the by far the best live band I ever used to go see (except perhaps for Rheostatics but they are a whole different kind of fun). Bourbons were drink you face off, dance wildly and get your funk on kind of fun. I have missed them every day since 1996 and Never EVER figured they’d play together again.

Well it looks like Never EVER has arrived! On Saturday July 26 after a 12 year hiatus Chris Brown, Dave Wall, Kate Fenner, Chris Miller, Andrew Whiteman, Jason Mercer, Gene Hardy and Tom Bona will take the main stage at Hillside 2008. It will not be a night to miss and I’m sure just like the final Rheostatics show, there will be people coming from all over the country to see them once again, if only for one last time.

I can’t wait!

Check out all things Bourbon at my http://www.bourbontabernaclechoir.com site. Lots of Live shows, Videos etc.

TIckets for Hillside 2008 go on sale May 3 at 10AM - http://www.hillsidefestival.ca

4. The Tragically Hip - Music At Work
I know you’re thinking what the hell am I thinking. Surely Road Apples or Fully Completely. Maybe even Up To Here. Nope. I love those albums as well but for me it is Music At Work at the top of the heap. I think my reasons are similar to why I like U2 but would rather listen to One Tree Hill over Pride, or Drowning Man over Sunday Bloody Sunday. The bands I really like tend to be due to the songs which never get played on the radio. The album cuts. On some albums these cuts are filler and sometimes they are the meat of the project. When I first bought Music At Work I thought it was the biggest pile of Tragically Trash I’d heard to date. I listened to it a few times, saw the “An Evening With” tour in Toronto (I think I’ve seen them 20 times since 1992 at The Concert Hall show prior to Road Apples being recorded). I didn’t really listen to it again until about a year later. Then it hit me. This was an incredible record. It is a weird, non-commercial album album - an “Aim for the gutter” kind of album as Neil Young might put it. When I see them live now it is songs like Sharks, or The Completists or Wild Mountain Honey I want to hear, not Courage or 50 Mission Cap or even Music At Work. This album for me is full of those “other” songs that I love, not the commercial singles. The Hip have these types of songs littered throughout their catalogue in the form of Opiated, The Luxury, Emperor Penguin, Titanic Terrrarium, Eldorado, Are We Family, The Darkest One, Leave, Dire Wolf, Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin’ Man, On The Verge, World Container, Sherpa, Don’t Wake Daddy. Music At Work is like an album full of these types of songs and it is what I really like about The Tragically Hip. The dicotomy between the intensity of Tiger The Lion and the gentleness of Lake Fever is one of the great transitions in their Catalogue. Stay is an underappreciated beautiful song as are, As I Wind Down The Pines and Toronto#4. I think the thing is that all the songs on this album sound like The Hip but at the same time they don’t sound like The Hip as one would expect. A left turn. I still don’t like Freak Turbulance, though. Never did. Everything else on here is a 10.

Like most of Gord Downie’s lyrics I don’t really know what he is talking about but he sure makes them sound good.

Here is a version of Sharks Live in Hartford, Connecticut at The Webster Theatre on August 4, 2000 featuring Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, formerly of The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir.

Here is a live version of Lake Fever from Queen Elizabeth Theater, Vancouver, BC Canada.

This album did not chart in Bob Mersereau’s book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. I’m probably the only person who voted for it. Fully Completely came in at number 5, Up To Here at 15, Day For Night at 21, and Road Apples at 26. The closest this album got was Love Tara by Eric’s Trip charting at number 39. Julie Doiron sand back up on The Completists, Toronto#4 and As I Wind Down The Pines on Music At Work

Well I guess this is where it all starts. I’m not sure what this blog will end up as. Even if I was to guess it probably would end up being something different anyway.

Why Northern Wish?
Well I’m a Rheostatic fan. Northern Wish is the third song from the album Melville which recently charted at number 38 in Bob Mersereau’s book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. Back in 2000 it ranked number 5 in Chart Magazine’s top 50 Canadian Albums. It isn’t my favorite Rheostatics song, although it ranks pretty high on my list. I think just referencing it makes me feel proud to be from Canada for some reason.

One of the sites I run is rheostaticslive.com. It is a band sanctioned archive of live Rheostatics shows, videos, photos etc. There are other sites as well that I run. They all kind of look the same. It is easier for me to maintain them that way. They idea of them all at the beginning was really just a glorified FTP site so I wasn’t too concerned about creating beautiful websites. Content is the key for me.

So how did it all start?
My taste in music has always been eclectic, ranging from Progressive Rock bands like Yes, Genesis and Marillion to the New Wave sounds of Men Without Hats, New Musik and Spoons.
About 2 years ago (2005) I emailed Ricky Brennan from the band Wheat about setting up an archive site for live shows. To my surprise the band was OK with the idea and I set up the first site thiswheat.com. At the end of 2005 I emailed Gord Deppe about setting up a Spoons site. I was always a fan of Spoons and was amazed that for a band that had so many big songs, there was only 1 site on the web which was known as Carolyn’s Spoons Tribute Page. It wasn’t really being maintained so I emailed Gord Deppe about setting up a Spoons site that would have music, videos, photos etc. He was cool with the idea and that led to Site Number 2 - The Spoons Music and Video Archive.

I then followed that site with Rheostatics Live and The Unofficial Bourbon Tabernacle Choir Site. In 2006 I noticed that Jonathan Moyes had posted some Thomas Trio And The Red Albino footage on youtube from a show they did with The Bourbons in 1992 in Nova Scotia. I offered to host the videos and from there, along with material from him, Stephen Legge, Todd Sauvé, Colin Squires and myself, The Official Thomas Trio And The Red Albino site was born.

Following the last Rheosatics show at Massey Hall on March 30 2007 I set up Good Gone Dead, an archive and memorial to the last show by the best band ever to come out of Canada.

Next came my big idea for a website: The Canadian Music Forum. I’ve been working on it for quite a while. One day it will be done. As of today I have finished the letter “A”. The forum is all set up and ready for action. It is a massive forum of mini forums dedicated to hundreds of Canadian Bands. The site is to mirror the forum’s band list to provide a snapshot of online sites related to each band. Jam Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Myspace, Official sites, fan sites, places to buy their music etc.

Finally there is Fugitland, a site dedicated to my band Tempus Fugit who I have played with on and off since 1987.

There you go, 8 sites in 2 years. Now I’m going to write about stuff I like. Music. Videos. Songs. Youtube. I don’t know, whatever comes to mind.

By the way, if you have any content for any of the sites I have just mentioned, email me at info@thecanadianmusicforum.com.
I’m Darrin