1/15/99

Kay, back in NYC. If you're into it, here's a one-pager on the January 2nd "Psychedelic Millennial Roadshow" at the Oasis in Toronto ...

    In keeping with the Manitoba motif, we brought in a glorious blizzard with about a foot of snow for the night of the show  --  in fact the most spectacular snowstorm Toronto's seen since the house-covering drifts of '66!  Despite the invigorating weather, about a dozen musicians carried their instruments through the white sunshine and made the scene.  It was a warm, inclusive, family affair, like a cabin at the lake in the rain  --  except there was a stage, PA, and bar. The Oasis has a funky restaurant in the front with really great food, then there's this separate performance space in the back like a large Winnipeg basement rec room with movie posters on the walls, couches and a low ceiling which nicely filled up with the 50 or so people who came, including Dawn, Don Forgay, Barry Floch and Tom Hendry.

    After Mitch Potter's neological "melodious philonius prankster" introduction, Andy Ross joined me on acoustic guitar, Chris Cutts on djembe, and Dave Tomlinson on bass for the old parody of Hamlet's soliloquy, To Bebop Or Not.  Andy did a couple of spiritual numbers, including Building A Body of Light with the Cutts and Tomlinson rhythm section and the Subtonic Monk's Jeff Burke tweeting in on penny whistle from the back of the house. Stu Hay did a great stand-up routine about the 8-baby litter in Texas, the sex police in Washington, and the Y2K problem in our mind. The first set ended with the evening's Winged-Horse All-Star Skiffle Band -- Jim Robbins and Edward Sellers on electric guitars, Cutts on djembe, and The Monk's Glenn Gibson on bass -- for a hypnotic version of the new Oasis of Adventure poem about soaring above the turrets of Casa Loma. Then there was the Pack Jack road piece, and we finished with one of Jack's own favorite passages from On The Road known as Hearing Shearing, all with the All-Star Skiffle jammers.

    Second set highlights included Sellers solo electric guitar accompaniment on the new Visiting Vincent paean about Van Gogh, and my personal highlight -- the Kerouac On The Road San Francisco epiphany excerpt with the 8-piece Subtonic Mothers of Invention ranting, chanting and wailing -- including Bridgette Debernardi scatting a surreal effects-laden mantra in accent of the words, Jeff Burke on bassoon and electric energy, Glenn Gibson on bass, Rick Monaco on djembe, Phil Sarrazen on sliding didgeridoo, and Peter Jarvis on vocals and noisemakers, plus Edward and Jim on electric guitars, igniting a crackling blast under Jack's epiphanistic rocket ship ride, which I'm sure he would have loved.

    The Monk's played a hypnotic didgeridoo trance dance set, which was followed by an final jam with just about every musician in the house wailing on the final poems  -- Another Pious Frenzy, the climactic Woodstock paragraph, and ending with the custom-scribed Oasisburg Address where we lured Cutts back up, wrapping the stage in stereo djembe players. Quite wild.

    After it was over, we all looked out the club's front windshield and into the blowing white monsoon, trying to pick out our cars beneath the moguls.  It was so Winnipeg.  A crew of the fried and true quickly mobilized. We borrowed a shovel from the club and all these hearty Midwestern hearts took to shoveling and pushing and guiding and sliding each car out from under the foot-thick quilt and over the bulldozer's berm into the open blowing street where it was this "Hello?! I can almost see you!" storm.  We drove home skiing along the upside down railroad track roads, noticing how many other cars were out at 2 AM  --  healthy Canucks cruising in the middle of a blizzard from scene to scene.  So that gives you some idea.

Peace in '99,
Brian
 

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