AHH Nothing like a little nostalgia before settling in to a routine for good or ill.
I thought last weeks Super Robertson Supper Show was just fine and dandy, there perhaps was an element of cartilaginous fish... sharks that is. Sharks of course are great for oceans and metaphors alike. Just when i get all happy about closing down the SRSS and calling a good run a good run and letting the memory grow into something bigger than it actually was it seems there is a pack of hammerheads eager to try to keep the SRSS going in my absence... as if it was some fertile waters, a glorious feeding hole, or just another free gig and a chance to play music. The more i think about it, the more i realize, What the hell am i thinking about it for?, I'm done.
But what if a show were to go on in my name and the people running it didn't have the good sense to cane themselves after they loose their fucking minds... ahh all the little things to worry about. Who's writing the blog, who's filming other people and spending their time posting it, who's going to go lead a crew of people that have never met into a 3 chord song with a 2 chord chorus, who's going to leash the horn band, who's going to listen to complains from performers and audience members, who's going to tell people not to worry and just continue in the face of sure doom... I guess somebody will, or they won't and nobody will ever notice anyways.
quick fact: anybody could do a Supper Show any night of the week at any number of venues by just asking to try it.
quick fact 2: doing a regular gig is one king hell curse on your time and your psyche... it worked for me because... well you will have to wait for my lecture on "how to run a a Super Robertson Supper Show"
quick fact 3: the best thing for me is to kill this bastard... memories grow stronger with time.
quick fact 4: I never do what is best for me.
quick fact 5: Cast iron skillets used to be the leading source of iron in the North American diet!
That's a bad thing when you think of Teflon fry pans... cause that shit is toxic. I kind of want to punch myself in the face for using that Teflon pan that was all scratched up that i got from a garbage can when i went to university... I should have just got me one good cast iron pan... but then one of those idiot roommates of mine wouldn't have cleaned it properly or left it in the sink full of water and that would have caused all kinds of problems. A good cast iron skillet needs to be oiled and clean and free from water or it will oxidize... fancy word for rust. That's why iron skillets don't work with small minded mouth breathing students that believe they don't have time to clean properly.
A Super Robertson Supper Show is like a cast iron pan... solid and durable, multifunctional, it can make all kinds of dishes but if neglected will rust and become useless. Just another awkward weight in the cupboard that some crazy dame thinks needs to be shipped to the salvation army.
So the Supertones opened the show... the Supertones who were formerly a band with a name i could never spell, and then for a brief week were called "James Toren Johnson"... but now for this week seem to be called the Supertones.
This song is called "In this town again"
And then the 21 Tandem Repeats collective took the stage with the lineup we have been going with for a bit and we seem to be coming into our own... same bass and Guitar as the Supertones (Jan and Christopher), but we had Shawn on drums, a man who can play with me anytime anyplace always... and Jason Jones a versatile no maintenance "roll with the punches" piano player... also King Hell Player.
In a lot of ways I'm kind of glad we are coming to a peak as my time is coming to an end... all my other bands died a slow miserable death of broken promise and lost hopes, where this one could just stop playing when we are killing it and I'll be able to look back and think about that really wicked period that might not be marred by something rather negative (i should watch it there is lots of time left). Actually to be honest i think the 21 Tandem Repeats experience has really gotten it's shit together in the last couple of years and the big thing is that i now put people in positions in which they can succeed... that and playing with king hell drummers like Shawn Killaly and Tim Watson. Everything else is just choice of clothing kind of stuff. And by the way that all happened as a result of the SRSS... the lesson for me was, don't play a regular gig like the SRSS with a regular band, but rather have a "willing coalition" of people who can (very important) and want to (also important) play.
I think this is BOB STYLE, a song I wrote with Simian Special and we put on the Supersimian album "How the Tiger got Lionized". We basically wrote that album to have material for the SRSS lead by the track "70's rock @ the Railway", so i figured it a good idea to play some of the songs every once in a while:
And the song Nothing is heard, which will will always be hard to duplicate considering the version we spanked down on the album "One Little Dream"... that said good character on this version:
You see what happened was that my neighbour who actually wasn't my neighbour at the time but just a good friend gave me a wooden frog and told me to get down to the peace rally. Now i was always one who believed that protesting was a waste of time because nobody listens anyway, but i went down with my wife and young daughter. We got in near the Carnival Band and i got grooving on the frog and we started marching and there were such good vibes, good grooves, and i couldn't believe how many people were there... it was incredible!... a packed street for miles and miles chanting no blood for oil, "weapons of mass distraction" signs... just nothing but numbers and truth. i had the time of my life.. i even watched the news that night which made slight mention that the world had millions and millions of people out protesting the great war for oil... and in the Vancouver Sun the next day on the front page there was a blond woman on a picnic bench wrapped in an American flag and and the background was blurred so you couldn't tell it it was 3 or 4 people behind her... the caption read "People in Calgary joined in a pro George Bush Rally".
SO a few hundred thousand people march for peace and 4 people sit apathetically in a park, and one is an anti war and the other is a pro George Bush and who gets the front page? alas nothing is heard.
As we know the war happened, who knows how many were killed, orphaned, maimed... counts seem to be in the millions, and it cost billions... probably a whole generation will never get over it.
What's happening @ the SRSS this fall...
Wednesday October 19- Jovana Golubovic playing with a double bass player Cameron Lewis will share the night with the 21 Tandem Repeats collective.
Wednesday October 26- Ginger and Moonshine with Special guests.... THE BEVELED EDGES!
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 2- THE CAM AND JESSE SR SUPPER SHOW
Wednesday November 9- Tiny Tim Overdrive and the 21 Tandem Repeats Collective.
Wednesday November 16- The Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra
Wednesday November 23- Classical Revolution Vancouver
Wednesday November 30- Gogo Bonkers and the 21 Tandem Repeats Collective.
Wednesday December 7- Cam and Jesse Super Robertson Supper Show
Wednesday December 14- A Spectre Is Haunting Europe
Wednesday December 21- Chris Rzepa and the looping cello to join in the 21 Tandem Repeats Collective. Also give a homemade gift to a fellow human night.
Wednesday December 28- How to run a SRSS, a lecture by S Robertson.
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