Northern Wish

10. Tempus Fugit - …When You’re Having Fun
So here we are at the final post of my top 10 albums I voted for as a voting member of Bob Mersereau’s book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. TEMPUS FUGIT!! Let’s Rock or Let’s Suck as our not so fluent in English bassist would say. If you haven’t heard of Tempus Fugit or you think that it is only a Yes song from Drama then you are by far in the majority. If you know any of the members of the band then there is a pretty good chance you have heard this album. For those who don’t know it, you can download it here. Everything you never wanted to know about the band can be found at F.U.G.I.T.L.A.N.D. How could I not vote for it? It is my band. I’m the singer, rhythm guitar player and I wrote a lot of the songs (at least in their original acoustic guitar state).

Anyway this album ROCKS. Some of it is even very good. It did not chart in Bob Mersereau’s book. Since I can pretty much guarantee that I am the only voting member who has ever heard of us or heard the album, I’m not surprised. Should it have made the list? Absolutely. Once a friend of mine got into a car accident on the Allen Expressway while listening to it and they haven’t listened to it since. It is that powerful. Give it a listen. Our first album came out in 1986. This one in 1998. The next is due in 2010. We’re working on it. That one will make my top ten in the next book……….. Thanks for listening. This is a sendout for Superfly!

At the beginning of 2007 I got an email from Bob Mersereau mentioning that he was going to be putting together a book of the top 100 Canadian albums. We needed to submit our top 10 picks. I figured I would give it a shot. The funny thing is on any given day I could pick 10 favorite Canadian albums and probably 7 of them would be different from the previous day. Easily I could have included Harvest or Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young, The Band or Music From Big Pink by The Band, Moving Pictures by Rush, Melville by Rheostatics, Shyfolk by The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Fully Completely or Trouble At The Henhouse by The Tragically Hip, or a dozen others. On that day January 27 2007 this was my number 1 pick:

1. Rheostatics - Whale Music
On any day this will be my number one pick. It is my favorite Rheostatics album, my favorite Canadian album and one of my favorite records. Ever. If you have never heard Whale Music pick it up. The only other albums you will ever hear which are like it are probably other Rheostatics albums.
The cover is beautifully painted by Martin Tielli. The production is masterfully recorded by Michael Philip Wojewoda and the music is sublime. quirky, weird and heartwrenching. From the progressive opening riff of Self Serve Gas Station to the Punk Rock of RDA (Rock Death America), folk rock of Legal Age Life At Variety Store, the sad anger of Shaved Head, the Walter Ostenak inspired Sickening Song, to the Pink Floyd of Dope Fiends And Boozehounds the musical styles are as wide ranging as the content being sung about. Queer is a letter from a son to his brother who has been kicked out of his family home after revealing that he is gay. Dave Bidini in one sentence managed to unify a difficult social issue with Canada’s national pride in the line “I don’t care about the damage, but I wish you were there to see it when I scored at hat-trick on the team that called you a fucking Queer”. Shaved Head deals with a Cancer patient. Soul Glue is related to Benji Hayward who died after the Pink Floyd show on May 13 1988. There is also a slew of great musicians on this album apart from Dave Bidini, Dave Clark, Martin Tielli, and Tim Vesley including Dave Allen on Violin, Neil Peart on Drums and Lewis Melville on Pedal Steel Guitar. The album was named from the Paul Quarrington book of the same name. It was later turned into a movie staring Maury Chaykin, Cynthia Preston and Paul Goss. In one of the many, many shifts in style over the 30 year history of the band they would record the soundtrack to the movie which would lead to their one an only hit single “Claire”. But that is the story for another day. This is my is my Desert Island Disc. Incidentally the Basilosaurus, or Zeuglodon, was an archaic Eocene whale thought to have been about 55 feet long.

Here is the video for Shaved Head

Here is one for King Of The Past

And here is a live version of Soul Glue

Tomorrow Song#2
Incidentally if you go to page 198 of the book The Top 100 Canadian Albums by Bob Mersereau I’m listed as Darrin Cappe, Tempus Fugit, Toronto. I had to mention my own band. More on that later as well.

This album was ranked #19 in The Top 100 Canadian Albums book by Bob Mersereau

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