April 23 re- cap

Supper Show 3rd year anniversary show photos by Peter lolley is a good way to get an overview of what happened on Wednesday April 23 2008. I would suggest watching it as a slide show. Notice William Lee gets shutout yet again going home without gold... mostly due to the fact that we didn't have time for all the awards like "best slide show presentation"... others who were shutout include Melissa and Bethanie... we didn't have time for the "myspece award" or the "soundman assistant award"... we also missed the "most annoying realtor award".

It's what happened before the show that is interesting to note. There was a guy, a one man band, who needed an hour to set up before HIS big show later on in the night... so it was up to us to make sure to be done by 8:30 PM. Now that's all good and i'm always up for keeping us honest. i heard about this the night before, as this was clearly a big concern. So the dude shows up when we are setting up and spends 20 minutes holding up the sound man to emphasize he needs what he needs and of course to talk gear... the result being that we are late getting started. At 8:30 we stopped and cleared stage with our usual stealth tear down with this dude standing over us to make sure we don't inconvenience him.

Come up for a name for this ignaramus and you could win a Canada Lynx Records shirt.

Here is the show in 10 minute segments (the maximum i can upload)

Part ONE



Part TWO



Part Three



Part Four



Part FIVE

What is a Super Robertson Supper Show anniversary show... photos speak better than words.

Supper Show 2nd year anniversary show photos

there will be no Super Robertson Supper Show on Wednesday April 30.

we will be back in May.


this happened last week



and our guest was Kingsway

Now if i was smart i would have edited the tape so the announcement happened and then the curtain pull happened and then we did the song.

The following was written as the original post... the stuff above was added later.

the good news is i played guitar for the better part of this evening once the children went to sleep. Better than going over the tape and festering in my own disapproval of my actions.

After the show i was standing next to A. Parker when a friend left and said "good show"... i thanked the person and muttered under my breath towards A Parker "but was it", to which he replied "that is for you to think about for the next few days". indeed. You can't become too predictable... like the guys at work knowing that i am about to come across something that will surly stoke my anger so they set up a stack of bins for me to punt at Roy's head. Actually the term should be "place kick" at Roy's head.

The show will go online later this week so the truth will stand... but i would like to take a moment to go over the show's failures.

1) I hate the blues
2) should not have played "Rain"
3) should have played "banting tree"
4) Lincon Park was mentioned
5) i took the touque off for the song "The Duke of Touque"


the successes

1) somewhat recovering from the blues
2) good audience interaction ( Fire-man makes the best audience member)
3) we played pretty good for the most part
4) the audience wrote a song and we performed it from nothing
5) a picture of beer arrived on the stage

April 2 re-hash

well last week i remember being behind the curtain and not really wanting to play so i touched the guitar and there was some feedback so i figured i should play a bit to work out the sound kinks. It was about that time that somebody opened the curtain and the show began. Fair is fair... it was a bit past 7:30. Shortly after that fiasco chris banting and Willingdon black came up and we were then a trio. I pulled the curtain shut again for good measure and i heard some people mutter something about "what kind of clown show is this". Then we cut into "Never wanted to be anyone" and played a good part of the song behind a closed curtain... never a bad idea. Did i mention that WB was on bass. anyhoo the curtain was opened by King Dinosaur and the show began again. Just as the song ended Cory Curtis blew into the club (Cory Has played bass for us before and is one King hell player) as the band was aggressively scanning the bar for our ace on bass Mr. A Rojas i mentioned the Corey was in the club. I think some people could see the wheels turning which created some comedy. A few songs later Rojas was present and on Bass and we rocked the old Knockin' Dog number "Wasteland".


Then before you could say "super robertson has the mad temper of a lunatic" Margaret Taylor was on stage with us.



Some pundits mentioned that the show was like one of those hockey games where the team that got it's balls stomped in the first period comes back in the third to force overtime

March 26 re-cap

Genny Trigo Played solo and with 21 tandem repeats. Due to © issues i cannot post the songs she sings in spanish. You will have to come out and and hear them live next time she plays.

21 Tandem Repeats had a fairly strong show






And Genny came back up



Take note. The Super Robertson Supper Show 3rd year anniversary show will be on April 23.

March 19 re- cap

March 12 Re-Cap

Supper Show aside March 12 2008, will forever go down as the day the wrong thing happened in a cruel and incompetent manner and left an eternal and visual reminder of the ugly stupidness.

About 3 hours before the Supper Show one of my idiot neighbors hired a incompetent, hate-full and utterly stupid crew of greedy hacks to top 3 large cedar trees on our block. Now perhaps i could be considered one of those "Fucking Loon tree-huggers" you hear about from time to time, and if you were stupid and ignorant you could see that as an infringement on your human rights (the right to make $1000 in about an hour climbing up a tree with a chain-saw, or the right to be paranoid about a tree falling on your house and your ability to make your wrong choice in dealing with that fear that oddly enough will increase the likelihood of that tree falling on your house).

lets go to the situation, then to the optimal solutions, then to what happened, and then finally to how a human can no longer exist on his block under the presence of this nasty mammoth beacon of stupidity.

Guy worries about his neighbors trees being blown over on his house in a windstorm. Now this could happen, but I happen to have a certain "thing" about this man vs nature battle in where man beats nature but loses by robbing himself of majestic diversity.

I think he met the swine that did the job and the swine got him paranoid.

He told me about it before it was going to happen as we got talking about trees, i told CT who went into scientist mode and figured out the best solution... But his guy was giving him a deal (insert long swearing frenzy here).

CT makes good decisions.

When she was pregnant with the twins they tried to book her for a C section saying there was no way... that is just not done anymore... the usual bullshit. She had to fight like a tiger and in the end there was only 2 doctors in B.C. who would even attempt a natural birth. One was on the Island and one was here in Vancouver and the deal was that she had to be induced while that doctor was on call because if she went into labor and another doctor was on call it would be an automatic C section... no questions asked none answered. All went well of course except for the illegal epidural that was forcefully administered after reassurances that they would not force that... which i should mention almost screwed thing up.

After the birth the 11 member birth team thanked CT for allowing them to witness something that is never allowed to be done.
They play the fear card "oh you wouldn't want something to happen to the baby would you... we had better split you gut open in a hospital that has proven high concentrations of "C difficule" and other "super-bugs"

Is this still the Super Robertson Supper Show Blog?

somewhere along the line there are good decisions and there are bad decisions and there are the people who have to live with those decisions, and those who will remember and recall all things said and done ... like that pudgy hate faced asshole who saw me come out of my house and immediately put his hand up and shouted "we are not going to hurt the tree, just taking a bit off the top"

The solution of course would be to really assess the problem (will tree fall on house) and either take it down an replace it with an appropriate tree or brace it, or do what they call a "spiral cut" where you thin the tree from within it so that more wind can pass through it. the thing not to do is to top it. Search tree topping on the internet if you give a shit and you will perhaps see why this represents the death of all hope on the block where i have chosen to raise my family. where i use to see 5 majestic tree tops i now see 2 and 3 brutally savaged trees that are still big enough to wreck a house.

So that's way i was a bit weird at the Supper Show that evening... my brain just kept going over the failure again and again and again... well if i ever need to be reminded of the fucking stupidity i can just look out my window.

Juniper Watters opened the show... she was great



this is a nice piece that our new drummer Chris Banting came up with... I have titled it Banting Tree.



There was also a spelling b (sorry to Pete who would have much rather sat in his chair an enjoyed other's pain... and shame on Mule for not challenging)... speaking of that i came inches from calling Mule up on stage to ask the questions in "Hey Rock's living room".. but i had no confidance due to the tree fiacso... i guess while we are on it i should say Kudos to WB for taking the reins and nailing Heidi Stopover and bringing the group back together in a time of crisis.






More to come

again

no supper show on March 5 due to 6 bands playing the club this night.

Last weeks show was a good one... the great failure being not having the camera zoomed in on Uncle Stan the puppet

The weekly post

Sometimes i laugh at myself and other times i just shake my head. I remember when my dad told somebody that i was "different"... he was right, but alas if we going to do something let's do it.

For good or ill i have begun taping the shows with a device that makes it somewhat easy to document. The main crushing honest observation would be that my singing sucks one pretty large tortise cock. it is a correctable problem that will need me to remember some basic fundamental things, like to be ready to sing. The minute i forget that i am a singer (something that oddly happens all the time) i am doomed. perhaps i just need a new genra rather than being a singer/songwriter i could be billed as a Goat imitator/songwriter... i could rule that market... if i cared about markets other than the idea that Market trends encourage "heard like stupidity", which happens to be a pet Peeve of mine.

Oh i should mention that the Supper Show will be cancelled on Wednesday March 5 as there are 6 bands playing the club as part of the Main bill. I'll take the break, perhaps a vocal lesson that night.

Ok

finally got that Carving hearts video fixed... this happens on Wed Feb 13




Now King Dinosaur played last week... A great show with giveaways, trivia, and the usual King Dinosaur wit, playing a traditional, a kinks song, a Dylan tune, a Rolling Stones number i think there was another and a medley thrown in at the end.
I wish i had taped "Samson and delila" as i believe it is a traditional song which would allow me to post it without fear of breaking the law... i know it did get recorded so i will work on that. There was a lunar eclipse that night Feb 20 so i made a small movie with credits, the lunar eclipse, some clips of King Dinosaur banter and then the Rolling Stones song with a fade into the crowd, but then i got all paranoid about the © issues i edited the song out but i did it from within quicktime and now it's all out of sinc



I really hate myself when i cause problems like that... don't worry the twins are fine.

Of our set i would say the Robertson's dream orchard had the best vocals... which gives you an idea of how bad the others were




we ended the show with failure.. we need more curtain pulls.




If you were at the show last week and you happened to be paying attention to what i said was going to happen this week then it is time for you to forget what you heard, and feel confidant that we will have music and a puppet guest, and perhaps a few guest singers (one for sure)... remember the show is free and it starts at 7:30PM

Feb 13 re-cap

It was the day Before Valentines.

Remember that line from the ROADBED song "cost plus 10" that went like this "People tell me Super you should sing about love but i don't like love i like food". Apparently some German Band wants to cover that song... which is odd and unrelated except for the fact that the Supper Show has never been known to buck to the commercial season.

best to go with the video. A wonderful band called Carving Hearts opened the show and the small movie i made of their show had 20 seconds of the song Jupiter at the beginning so i will re-try later.

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.