If a picture tells 1000 words then how many words are told by a Video

Chris Kelly opened the show




and then we played (Super R, Alvaro Rojas, Chris Banting and Chris Rippin)

Jan 30 2008

hindsight is 20-20, so the saying goes and i guess on this night if i knew what i know now i would have done things differently. you see i decided not to play so as to give the 2 acts more time, but for some reason no music was played until 7:53... how could this possibly be? completely unacceptable.

I guess it's my fault as i showed up late thinking it was under control. A supper show really needs a draconian taskmaster and that was the lesson for me.

When the music did start, Canada Lynx Records artist Interior Design put on a fine clinic... that's when i realized my other failure i forgot my camera. One of the fine comedies of the supper show is the incredible talent of the core crew and the lack of documentation besides this narrow minded biased blog. Interior design turned heads with some rave beats and i believe he was using a remote control to get some trippy sounds from the guitar... it was at that time that Super Steve walked over and announced "well i sure picked the right night to drop acid". Shockk (who is Interior Design) then went into a more groovie segment that was packed with euphoric swells. He played a short set, knowing there wasn't much time.. the sign of a fine person.

Kirsten Starcher was up next singing and playing solo bass. A great bass player with varied styles and a nice warm voice to carry some well written songs. It's a hard gig playing the latter part of the supper show solo with all the bands coming into the club and dropping shit next to the stage and greeting each other but she did good. She recorded the set with a video camera... she reads blogs and perhaps we can get a small clip.

January 23 re-cap

Genny Trigo put on a full clinic as per usual singing some Chilean numbers and then Super Robertson played drums and battled 3 puppets in a war of rhymes. He schooled them rather severely.

21 tandem Repeats played "Fuse lit bombs" with the puppets joining in on the chorus and went into a "dream sequence" in the middle where a puppet recounted a dream. It was, i believe, a gorilla puppet.

Then they made up a song about beards which really stimulated some of the female member of the audience who later came back to watch the hockey game (which the Canucks won in a shootout) and caress some facial hair.

Jan 16

Dick Cash is a great band and we found that out @ 7:30 when the show started. A nice tight sharp unit that knows that "it's not how loud you play, but how well."

Super Robertson was ill so we had Simian Special singing which worked out well... and on the drums JLS (sound man, bass man, cable builder and drummer).

all in all a good night

what happened last week (Jan 9)

Connor Mcguire opened the show, and did the middle as well, with a fine set of acoustic based folk rock. A generous crowd came to see him and listened to the show, which was nice to see... kind of odd if you know what i mean (People listening in Vancouver). Then around 8:13 21TR was trying to set up in amongst a maze of musicians worrying about themselves dropping gear on the stage and taking it off and trying to figure what the hell is going on. The show after the supper show brought a ton of people ( Winston was the main act) so there was much chaos and little time. Sound checking and confusion faced 21TR for their opening number (Never wanted to be anyone), but then King dinosaur requested On Frozen Pond and a round of bass and drum solos tuned in the folks. Then the lovely Land of Deborah came up to sing "blue skies", and after it was time for Poem Moment... the reading of the poem that the audience wrote... it went very well. And just for laughs since the room was packed we did Mr Greenie with a full set of push-ups and sit-ups... that old bit.

My man Deuce said it was a great show, and he has seen a lot.

January 2 Re-cap

The show started about a minute late as a result that the tables had to be moved to create a more open space to bring in the new year. the obvious choice was to relax with the ancient technique known as "beer yoga". Deep breathing, stretching and heavy swilling is a fine combination on any night and the capacity crowd at the Railway agreed. Willingdon Black, Shockk and Snow Leopard set up a fine spiritual groove while Robertson led the class. you can use breath and beer to cure any stress you have accumulated throughout the day... "Imagine you are a shark swimming in a ocean of beer... your gills filtering the cold carbonated ale"

After that all went well with a band version of the song "Robertson's dream orchard" which actually saw some crowd surfing. Shockk, Black and Rojas put on a fine clinic in their own right holding the fort while a disorganized Robertson tried Reggae, Rap and the art of the sermon for various diversions.

upcoming shows

Jan 02, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM)
Jan 09, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with guest Connor McGuire
Jan 16, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest Dick Cash
Jan 23, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest Genny Trigo
Jan 30, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest Kirsten Starcher
Feb 06, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest Chris Kelly
Feb 13, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest CARVING HEARTS
Feb 20, 2008 Vancouver BC The Railway Club The Super Robertson Supper Show (7:30-8:30PM) with Guest King Dinosaur

The Last Supper... of 2007

On December 19 2007 we did the last SR supper show of the year. The sound man came late but that allowed John Altamount to race across town at high speed to retrieve a distortion pedal for the show. Super Robertson opened the show dedicating it to his father who was in the house and played a song called "Robertson's dream orchard". Next up was a man named Ken Beattie who put on a soulful clinic with a brief 5 song set. Known to some as Canada's premier independent publicist he went back to his roots as a singer songwriter for this night, and it was indeed a treat. After that 21 tandem Repeats played with their full lineup for the first time in months, and played rather well. Which makes me think about the whole idea of rehearsal... a smart person could tell the difference between people learning songs and rehearsal... they don't have to be the same thing.

During the set Robertson cut some cake and as he was doing it some hammerhead lost his fucking mind and jumped on stage and began uttering gibberish... luckily somebody drew the curtain to stop that nonsense. Complaints... probably should have skipped Mr. Greenie and gone for Dish pig but hey hindsight is always 20/20... and sometimes even better.

The week before a great band played but an atomic bomb went off during their first half of the set blasting all of the tympanic membranes in the house... the tympanic membrane is of course the ear drum. The during the second half a jet engine fell into the club and destroyed more ears...


And the week before that there was no supper show.

the white Prince and the Land of JLS

Some of my ideas are good... others could use some more thought.

Interestingly on the morning of this supper show (november 21 2007), i received what one might call a "setback email" at around 6:15 am... which is unfortunately the time i had to get up to go to work as a pizza, drugstore and school advertisement flyer boy... i mean mailman. Word to the wise would be to always take your time to digest things because what you think might happen may in fact not happen at all.

About an hour before the show i had a good idea of who was going to be there and there was a chance that some of them were going to be on time, but then at home we had a baby malfunction and he twins needed a nap so as CT put one down i held the other while Kaiya entertained. That setback put me a few minutes behind and i thought i would take the bus to the sky-train to save some time. There was a lunatic in the bushes yelling at something and two women talking about why the bus is so late... i began to waffle about trying to walk towards the sky-train but then surly the bus would come right. In the end it was me who was late as i walked into the club to see JLS lounging with everything ready.

The good news was we had 2 ace drummers in the house and 2 sound-men one of them being an expert bass player. All we needed was for someone to think ahead and have a bass guitar... this is where one of my good ideas came through... you see as part of my deal for doing the supper show the club has given me a fair sized titanium locker with a galvanized thompson bank lock that is big enough for a few things like a Bass guitar i call "the white prince". The white prince was my original ROADBED bass that constantly turned heads with it's booming tone and full fret-board. Now all i had to do was put on my white gloves, work the combination, submit to an eye-scan, get the bass to JLS and presto we were ready to rock.

21 tandem Repeats opened the show and with Simian Special on drums we hit some songs from the Supersimian disk "how the tiger got lionized" to get going. We also hit "dishpig" (that saw a total WB guitar clinic), "4 feathers", "sun rises" and then called up Deborah to sing "Blue skies" from our cd "never wanted to be anyone" which went very well if i don't say so myself. Then i left the stage drummers changed (Shawn Killaly for Simian Special) and The Land of Deborah played a wonderful set of original music with shawn, Willingdon Black and JLS. Powered by her strong voice she stayed on guitar and played some LOD hits including one called "Optimistic Death Song" one she wrote for a movie a while back. She plays the Railway on November 29 if you are looking for something to do... nudge nudge. A few audience member came up to me during her set to ask who she is and "is she from here", which i always take as a good sign for various reasons.

At the conclusion of the land of Deborah set we did a version of Mr. Greenie with Shawn Killaly on the drums and JLS leading the band on a song he played once before... which of course is why we had to do it.

November 14th re-cap

Ween played this night in town with their show starting at 8pm... some sceensters were warming up at the Railway. There was also a Canucks game, so i pity any fool that drove downtown on this night. Come to think of it i got a ride down with one of those fools... i even got let off at the front door while Parker went to rustle with the parking dilemma... Never Mind.

Don Alder was up first and he gave a packed house a guitar clinic with some fine warp speed finger-picking. there was also a song called , i believe "the Wall" or "wall" that was written on the great wall of China some time ago. Don also played a harp guitar, which put my faith back in "double guitars" that i lost a long time ago during my time in the band Knockin' dog.


21 Tandem Repeats followed with a fine set that included "Blue skies", "wishing Machine", "Saskatchewan" (nothing to do with football), "bay city Kitty" (with Simian Special on Vox) and a version of the Key of 5 that ended up Robertson preaching about the Devil and the Holy Ghost in the vain of some movie i saw years ago about a preacher who is on the run from the law because he killed somebody with a baseball bat... you probably know the movie... i did a search but you know... i can't spend what time i have left in the day looking for a clip on you tube that i was going to embed.

The Canucks went into a shootout and lost to Edmonton... it was good to watch some hockey with the boys.

bloggerson strikes again... Nov 7 re-cap

I opened the show by playing a few new numbers "Robertson's dream orchard", about a fantasy of mine to move to the country and run an apple orchard, and "the littles", another snapshot of life with a nod to the two newest Robertson's in the spirit of "Blue skies"... a song from the disk "Never Wanted to Be Anyone". That was a bit scary, which i guess proves it was a worthy exercise. When you are finger-picking and you sing the wrong line and you back off there is nothing there. I think i did OK. My hosting was decent as well for like the first time ever... I found 10 weird english laws to read in the transition from me to the next act..

Next up Genny Trigo put on an absolute clinic. So much so that a well known music critic flagged me down with crazy eyes and said "WHO IS THIS... SHE IS AMAZING... WHERE DID YOU FIND HER!!!". I tried to play it cool "She is a scientist i know through my wife... yea we have made some changes" and then i caught myself and shut the fuck up.

Genny plays music like music should be played. Singing in spanish she covered some classic songs of revolution... i couldn't understand what the words meant but it didn't matter.. i was fulfilled.

After Genny's set a packed house had full attention to the stage... as 21tr set up i gave out some Super Robertson Supper Show buttons to those who could answer some Bird Trivia correctly. One of the good things about being me is that i have these bizarre banks of information in my head... I never would have thought when i was in grade school that my obsession with ornithology would come in handy as a 37 year old hosting a free show in a bar in Vancouver (that would be the Railway Club every wednesday from 7:30-8:30).

21 tandem Repeats started out with a mellow version of "Mr. Greenie"... my subtle comedy in that one was the standing wall push-ups... you either get that or you don't. Let's move on.

Fine improv moment was when... in a prelude to "Fragile Day" i explained why Tiny Marsh is called Tiny Marsh in an effort to lure a certain "lyric forgetting delinquent" to the stage and then we made up a song about the marsh hawk and people were digging it.

By around 8:30 we were in the breakdown of the song Wastelands, so i did what any normal person would do and stood on my head, thanked people for coming, barked out the names of those involved and my main man Walkinshaw pulled the curtain. Done.

It was Halloween

Me, being a man with many children, well, i was out trick or treating with my young daughter. And for the record i did not pick my kid up and run her from door to door in an effort to get more candy... my wife was strongly against that and even went so far as to disrupt our training run the day before.

As it turned out 3 year olds want to go home after a few blocks so it turned out i was at home at 7:45... just in time for a mad dash down to the supper show in my best fangs and formal attire. I brought a few of the supper show regulars down with me as my house seemed to be the hotspot. So of course i was delighted to finally be able to go and see a supper show... what a great idea. i got over the mild regret that i didn't change Super Robertson to Spooker Robertson on the chalkboard and walked up into the club... but no music on the way in... how can this be?

Rather a beautiful woman with an erotic puppet dressed as a scientist... i believe she was giving a lecture on the erotic art of puppet-erring. All good in my books... I am a big fan of lectures.

Unfortunately i missed D. Trevlon who had Simian Special (the man) sit in on drums. When it comes to music D Trevlon is a winner... you can never go wrong.

Then it was Simian Special the band, Sim's latest and greatest working project. A fine trio that gets the most out of minimalism powered by Sim's golden voice, melodic bass and the rock steady guitar work of a stella drinking man named Marty. I noticed that the Mule had a Simian Special demo in his mitt.

In the end i left feeling honored that 2 great musical acts came and played a stage that had my name on it.

Speaking of that.. i had this idea. Bring out the old sony reel to reel 4 track to the supper show... record the shows and call it the "I got 4 tracks supper show" 2 mic's on the band 1 on the room and one on a "theme" table... a clapping table

ideas like that always hit a snag once you write them down

the Supper Show

when i was pacing around the room thinking about this post, er i mean blogaroo, i think the first line was "I love the Supper Show...". Now sitting down with a more sane perspective i see that as a harder line to put a finish on.

Kind of like juggling with chain-saws, sooner or later you are going to do yourself in... just don't whatever you do start blogging about it...

I remember Rodney writing some words for a song that never went anywhere. The opening line was "it's like 1000 miles of space, between what i've done and what i meant to do".

A man i talked to tonight... I told him that I might stay home with the kids for a few years until the twins go to school... and he came back with i should go and do an MBA at UBC during that time to keep myself occupied. I was kind of thinking hang with the kids and make some music somehow, but now i see that what i really need is a Masters of Business Administration.

Now just for laughs let's imagine me Super Robertson, sitting in a first year business administration class... savour that thought and think of it on those days when you are down, enjoy. When i do it i only get a few seconds into the dream-sequence because it always starts with a pan shot of the classroom coming in from the right, and as soon as i see myself in the second row i burst out laughing and remember that i am sitting at at a table and the dishwasher is on.

Last week I had sent out an email about the possibility of "audience show and tell", but we managed to miss courting that disaster. Any number of snakes could come out of that bag, but the on i spent the day preparing for was an audience member with a horn. In my head i had some good shit worked out... i was going to keep asking questions about the horn so that the horn couldn't get honked... it was all in fun of course and we were all laughing... gotta stop having these dream sequences... but it's the only way to insulate myself from the incessant insanity.

In any rate Dustin Rilcof played a fine little set amusing Super Steve with his smart song concepts. and Two Sticks Hobbs made his first appearance back at the Supper Show since having one baby to power the 21 tandem repeats through the song MAIDEN and a few others.

Next week is Halloween

the Spooker Robertson Supper Show

To create a "scene" i guess one needs something "sceeneworthy", but mostly one needs to hammer away with various means of propaganda. There was an article in a band related site about how to attract people to your band website... i think there were about 19 easy steps and the jist was to immerse yourself into the world of blogs on your topic and spend your time posting and commenting and engaging... and i stopped watching TV years ago so that i could focus on music.

So

The Supper Show has had some solid shows as of late... Dave Gonko, Alvaro Rojas, Shockk and Jeff Younger put on one heck of a feat doing an all improvised show a few weeks back, and then last week a woman named Genny Trigo sang some South American revolution songs and a room full of Brazilian exchange students joined in, and then Alvaro Rojas and Robertson put on a two man clinic with Rojas providing brilliant solo axemanship during a poem the audience wrote that Robertson performed.. Last night Emily Milliken played some beautiful music with her voice and bass yukelle to open up for 21 Tandem Repeats who turned in a solid set and then we gave away Canada Lynx records and S/N ratio Buttons.

the new poster for the show was designed by the best... Mr Simian Special of S/N ratio

Mule Hughes the hero

Well a fine Supper Show last night down at the Railway.

We Dragons- Mule Hughes, Smash, Willingdon Black and Snow Leopard laid down a fine clinic... Super Steve's head swiveled at one point when Snow Leopard went into a solo. He studied the show hard and declared "Now there is a good drummer".


Sonneteers- Playing their first show ever the band sounded fine after some unfortunate delays due to a bad patch cable. Super Steve gave his blessing again to this act.

21 tandem Repeats- pooched Mule Hughes for drumming at the last possible second and then forced him into a drum solo.

A good night was had by all.


Rumor has it that Interior Design will play next week.

Upcoming

On Wednesday September 12

Simian Special

On Wednesday September 19

Sonneteers

Tiger Prawn

Tiger Prawn rocked the Super Robertson Supper Show a few weeks back

Carl Fatman set to come out of retirement

This report just in...

It appears that distinguished Journalist Carl FATMAN is set to come out of his semi-retirement. Carl Fatman, who was last seen years ago at a Mongoose Show around August 18 2004, believes that a pod-cast could be the format for him. "it's true" said a jovial Carl, "perhaps i was just a bit ahead of my time, in terms of technology and ground breaking pulse following journalism".

"Carl looks good, sounds good and seems to have a new direction" said Robertson, Canada Lynx records CEO... we can only hope that this time his experience with Rock &Roll lifestyle will help him negotiate his way.

Here is Carl Fatman years ago:

touring guest

All around ace Shockk has some friends from southern Ontario on tour and Jen Militia are set to play the supper show.

Also i wanted to make a point about why Super robertson does sit-up's during the song Mr. Greenie. I guess there are 2 reasons... number one would go under the heading of multitasking (performing and doing back exercises), but more importantly it is to emphasize the idea that being "green" (the years buzzword), actually takes work. This idea that humans should have it easy is what is getting us into the mess (along with corrupt world leaders cow-tailing to economic powers).

There is a garbage strike in vancouver so lets try to make less garbage. Don't buy things that have excess waste associated with them.

Buy your meat from a butcher so your waste is paper that can be composted rather than having a styrofoam plate and plastic.

any other ideas?

New 21TR Signing Imminent?

Reports out of Vancouver indicate that 21 Tandem Repeats are on the verge of hiring former Philadelphia Flyer general manager Bob Clarke as a managerial associate.

A source close to 21TR's parent company, International Amusement Corporation, confirmed that an announcement regarding Clarke's hiring would be made in the next few days.

International Amusement CEO John Altamont was apparently considering Mike Keenan for the role of 21TR mentor/disciplinarian, but Keenan's signing with the Calgary Flames last week led to renewed speculation on who Altamont would tap for the position.

Aside from Clarke, Altamont was apparently also considering former New Westminster Bruin coach Ernie 'Punch' McLean for the role. Contacted yesterday, McLean confirmed that he was approached by one of Altamont's associates.

"I think he's trying to get the franchise to the next level," said McLean. "But I'm not sure I want that challenge at my age."