Rheostatics C or D:

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They're pretty big everywhere I've stayed for exented streches of time, just wondering what the rest of the world thinks about them?

― Mr Noodles, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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They did sing a song for Wendel Clark and instrumental in getting Stompin Tom Connors out of retirement.

― Mr Noodles, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Classic, without a doubt, in my mind. The problem, really, is that the rest of the world typically DOESN'T think about them, which is a shame, because they're possibly the smartest thing to come from Canada. (For some reason, saying "from Canada" is the kiss of death to a lot of people, I guess dredging up horrible memories of Shania, Bryan or Celine, forgetting utterly that similar thinking about the good ol' USA would bring up such timeless classix as Billy Joel, Mariah Carey and Michael Bolt-on).

. I'll skip the whole song and dance here and just say that anyone who wants to know more on my feelings on the band can check out their entries at allmusic.com.

― Sean Carruthers, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ok, more specific one for you then, Melville vs Whale Music? As much as I would like something with The Ballad of Wendel Clark on it (as he is my all time favorite hockey player just a nose ahead of his captian Rick V), I've been told I need one or the other.

― Mr Noodles, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sloan to Washington DC crowd: "Fuck you! We're big in Canada!"

― Mr Noodles, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wuv the Rheos.

Did anyone else see Sloan play in giant headed plush costumes for the Halloween show on (urgh)Mike Bullard? Chris Murphy was a big moose and his head fell off when he tried to belt out that final chord. It was oddly appropriate.

― Kim, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That shark costume rawked, though all four were pretty great. There should be a Sloan thread, hard to imagine Kate being on a list for this long and there not being on about her favorite Haligonian midget.

― Mr Noodles, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mr Noodles: You need both of them! If I had to pick, though, it'd be Whale Music, if only for the first two songs, which are just perfect. But please don't make me pick: Melville has a bunch of classix, too.

― Sean Carruthers, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's an all Canadian crowd here...

Have you taken a look at "Have Not Been The Same: 1985-1995 The CanRock Rennaissance"? The publishing compnay I work for just launched it a couple months ago. It is a giant, sprawling 800 and some page book with lotsa cute photos and a whole chapter on the Rheos. My favourite little chunk of the book is that dedicated to miss Mary Margaret O'Hara.

― cybele, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Am I the only Canadian around here with an inferiority complex? I can barely even listen to any of the names being tossed around (Sloan are okay but they've devolved into "no frills" schtick the last few years). That 800-page book mentioned above has a picture of Celine Dion on the first page with the caption, "Not included" (or something to that effect). Risky stuff.

― scott woods, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

yeah, but did you read beyond that?

― cybele, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

*I* read the book, and thought it was pretty okay, even though it had some amazing gaps in it. Looks to me like the boys just took their old interviews from Exclaim! and reworked them into a book, instead of trying to make it comprehensive. Fair enough, though, because what's in the book has a ton of really interesting nuggets, and it made me want to go back and find a bunch of the albums mentioned.

― Sean Carruthers, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, I haven't read it. I think it's the sort of book I'd rather own (it has an index!) than actually read. But the suggestion that there are possibly *gaps* in an 800-page book about a relatively short period of Canadian pop music... I mean, I hate to over-exclaim but ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

― scott woods, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yeah, I'd included a few of those exclamation points, but not quite as many...there was an awful lot of ground to cover. That said, we could have done with less Sloan, perhaps. And there were huge scenes that were totally ignored, like anything from the prairies. Fine, you might say, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal pretty much ruled the music industry, but that does a severe injustice to, say, Edmonton: SNFU is mentioned in passing instead of being celebrated as one of the shining lights of the hardcore scene throughout all of North America. There should have been a mention of the Northern Pikes' indie days. And while Winnipeg was pretty barren, it wasn't THAT barren: if Sarah can get the better part of a chapter, why not even a page on the Crash Test Dummies in the early days? (Not that I like them all that much, but the first album was certainly not the disaster that later albums became.) Or dig into Winnipeg's folk-rock scene a bit?

Again, that's not to disparage the information that IS in the book. I think it was just far too selective, based on the legwork that the authors had already done as interviewers for Exclaim!. It would have been a much more valuable service to have gone back to fill in the gaps, even cursorily.

― Sean Carruthers, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have to admit, as well, that I got a kick out of seeing my ol' pal Greg being used as an authority on Skinny Puppy. How neat! I hope his head doesn't get too big because of it.

― Sean Carruthers, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I agree with those of you saying that there are gaps in the book...it's pretty tough to cover everyone. I was just glad that ECW did it.

― cybele, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yup I got a copy of Never been The Same Im chugging away through. I havent seen the picture of Celine Dion though. They take some pretty harsh shots at people, David Foster and radio folk in particular (I love the hippie hangover comment, been saying about my own station for years). I had an inprtomptu interview with Ian AD Jack in Halfiax during HOM, I wish I had been able to prepare for it but I didnt know it was being launched that early (and it turns out it wasnt but thats a different story). Like the section on Art Bergman, I knew next to nothing about his past. Also helped me feel a little sympathy for Patti Schmidt as it explains why Brave New Waves turned up the suck dial. The book is one of the reasons I finally asked about the Rheostatics, its christmas time so I gotta put at least some music on it. They've played Sackville several times and remained one of the biggest shows everytime they do, sadly I tend to be in Halfiax or Moncton whatever city they arent in when they come east and miss them by a day.

So anyone think theirs a Sloan thread in the past?

― Mr Noodles, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ok I'm perhaps a bit naive, but what exactly was wrong with BNW? I used to stay up late every sunday thru thursday just for that show. In fact, if not for the existence of Brave New Waves, I doubt I would be quite the same person I am today. I've heard people rag on it before, but they wouldn't elaborate, so I'm curious.

Every once in a while now, I seem to bump into Brent Bambury when I'm on lunch - I never get up the nerve to say hi though.

― Kim, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well when Patti came on they chopped the staff and the budget. I'm also not as hot on it just cause Im not that big on the electronic music tip as the show gets sometimes.

― Mr Noodles, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I used to love love love Brave New Waves, but after Brent left I didn't find it quite as compelling, for much the same reasons already stated. But as for Brent-era BNW, it wasn't without its problems: I would have been able to program that show, what with the rigidity of the schedule:

"some surreal comment or story here."
First song, not introduced
Backsell, brief look ahead at what's coming up on the show, another surreal comment
Two songs in a row, without fail
Backsell and more banter
etc

Not that I disliked the show at all, but in a way it was so predictable. And did anyone ever notice that Tuesday was always METAL NIGHT?

― Sean Carruthers, Friday, 23 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's true. I appreciated the routine after a while though I think. I listened in a ritual way after all, so why not? But if we're trashing the predictability of it all, how about that everything played after 2:00am was always 20 plus minutes long, usually from a film soundtrack, and full of long silences and intermittent clanking and bleeping? Or maybe I was always half hallucinating by then, wondering how I was going to *ever* get my butt out of bed in five hours for school. 8)

I remember how odd it was to finally see Brent's face on TV. I mean, here was the soothing deep voice I fell asleep to nearly every night coming out of this goofily enthusiastic looking young guy. I think I was quite pleasantly surprised really. You know, it's funny - one day I was home sick and actually sat and watched Midday (with that weird stiff Tina Srebotnjak ) and they're showing national political opinion clips of the ordinary person on the street type, and after they show this one girl from the Maritimes, it totally slew me the way Brent seemingly could NOT stop himself from pointing out how much she looked like Bjork. So incongruent! So Brent!

― Kim, Saturday, 24 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I remember him returning for the 1994-95 season of BNW after hosting Midday all summer and saying he'd spent his summer vacation doing nothing but listening to the Wu Tang Clan at loud volumes.

I thought Bambury was pretty crappy, and was always really happy whenever Patti or anybody else hosted, and was glad when he announced he was leaving. His last episode, though, where he did the trepanation profile and was the interviewee, was pretty good.

That said, I haven't heard the show in well over three years. I think I just outgrew it.

There's a pretty good write up of the history of BNW, why it's important and the backlash against it now (which would explain why a Rheostatics fan would hate it) on BNW's site.

― Vic Funk, Saturday, 24 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't listened more than a handful of times since 93 or so, but I can understand the problems I guess. I suppose it is a bit of an anachronsism ever since alternative music became synonymous with accessible music. I do remember it seemed a bit odd when things you'd hear first on BNW (like Groove is in the Heart, and Head Like a Hole) were *everywhere* about a year after I'd already relegated them to the ever growing tape pile of catchy songs that were supposedly safe to over indulge in because you assumed that you'd never be super saturated from other sources. How wrong I was! It does make you a bit of a contrarian - suspicious of anything vaguely resembling a potential hit. They must have had a similar dilemma. I guess that does sound a bit insular and elitist, but at the same time I see the point in that unearthing the obscure really should be just that - I don't think their working goal ever was to have an advance jump on the next big thing, instead it was to document worthwhile things that would otherwise be marginalized and overlooked. So I can understand that there would be frustration at the sudden redundancy of their efforts, time and research simply because obscurity itself became the new hot commodity. It's not their fault that they and their kind were simply too sucessful at making us aware. Still, I do miss those days something fierce.

― Kim, Saturday, 24 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Say what you want about BNW--Patti's voice is heaven.

― cybele, Monday, 26 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

my god the rheostatics are awful

― Taco Wagon, Tuesday, 5 August 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Thank you, come again.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 12:22 (twenty-two years ago)

three months pass...

Hurrah, 13 Night stand at the Horseshoe starting next week.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 7 November 2003 16:51 (twenty-two years ago)

seventeen years pass...

this seems as good a place as any to say i've been re-listening to old Rheostatics (and Rheo's related) shit a lot lately. It's been a while and to be honest I was expecting it to feel more dated than it was, but they were still pretty fresh at times. Anyway, here are my hot-takes...

I think upon going thru it their four best albums are Greatest Hits/Melville/Whale Music/Blue Hysteria, but I have a real soft spot for Music Inspired by the Group of Seven (especially the song Seven from it) which is way better than Music for the Motion Picture Whale Music among their more instrumental projects IMO.

Horses is probably my favourite of their songs, but all of Saskatchewan/Christopher/Aliens/Lying's Wrong are great.

The Ballad of Wendel Clark 1 & 2 (especially part 2) is peak-Rheos though I think, the verse about Clark & Dave Hodge is some brilliant Canadiana vs. Politics shit as best as they ever did it. Higher & Higher and Public Square are great as well.

Whale Music & The Blue Hysteria are a slight step down from the first two I think, but both have great songs, King of The Past, Queer, Palomar, Self-Serve Gas Station are all great, if a little too clean in their production at times. Feed Yourself, Fat, The Idiot, Bad Time To be Poor are all good for Blue Hysteria, I love that My First Rock Concert has a random Valeri Kamensky reference.

I don't really like Introducing Happiness much at all, Claire is okay but Fish Tailin' is probably the best song on it.

Its not surprise to me they did a kids album, they always were good at working parts about being young into their songs (cf. Christopher, Fat, etc.) I like I Fab Thee and Father's Sad Song a lot.

Off the non big main albums I like Little Bird, Little Bird from 2067, Triangles on The Wall from Double Live and The Fire from Night of the Shooting Stars a lot, Music is the Message is probably my fav from their recent reunion album which is mostly forgettable sadly.

and here are ten songs by Rheostatic-related bands that I like...

Sane, So Sane - Nick Buzz
A Smile Is A Lie - The Dinner is Ruined
Track Display - The Violet Archers
Incapacitated - The Dinner is Ruined
The Land Is Wild - Bidiniband
Bought Yerself a Bullet - The Dinner Is Ruined
Beautiful - Martin Tielli
You and I - The Violet Archers
The Birds of Lanark County - Nick Buzz
Beauty On - Martin Tielli

Random thoughts on the side projects: The first Bidiniband album is better than I remember it, Martin Tielli solo is somehow not Martin Tielli-enough for me, The Dinner is Ruined are wildly inconsistent but A Smile is a Lie is really great, the Violet Archers are pretty rote 2000s indie pop.

― Will (kruezer2), Tuesday, 31 August 2021 19:54 (four years ago)

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