HUMAN WRECKAGE

Music Is the Doctor

It’s been a long winter. I’ve never known any other kind. It’s been a fatiguing pandemic. I’ve never known any other kind. Ann figures the malaise enshrouding the Crooked 9 has been lingering for about three or four weeks, likely longer. Another fucking war in Europe. Other fucking wars elsewhere. Another year of inbred, home-schooled government here in Alberta.  Neither one of us has felt like ourselves. The discomforts of mysterious minor ailments have been alleviated only by the new discomforts of other mysterious minor ailments. Simple errands are drudge, epic chores. Ann and I are bored with our lockdown habit television, fuck all is funny. And we’re sick and tired of damaged detectives wrestling with their inner demons as they solve particularly tricky murder cases in moody, noir locales; these enigmatic streaming mavericks have no friends while we miss our real ones.

But our world and our world view is not entirely glum. Tim, my friend of five decades and counting, was in touch from Calgary. His nephew’s band, The Agonist, has one Alberta date booked for its upcoming tour, a venue in downtown Edmonton. If Tim was to run up Highway 2 for a visit, would I be interested in going to the show? I said I was all in; the two of us have not ranted face to face over cigarettes and beers for three years or more. Tim: “Melodic death metal. Not exactly our cup of tea.” The Agonist is big in Japan (really), god-like in the gloomier parts of northern Europe and, here on the Canadian music scene, a Juno Award nominee.

Live music. Live music! I set about scrolling the iMac power window to the outside world. Tim had inadvertently goosed me out of an extended funk. Ann had introduced me to Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, a presumed one-off collaboration of three established artists that still has legs 25 years on. Roots music to rival The Band and rawer than Blue Rodeo. We’ve seen them a couple of times. A plague-postponed show had been rescheduled for next November. Buying tickets so far in advance amid a pandemic rife with contradictory protocols is an expensive act of faith.

I asked Ann, “Shall we go?” She thought something to look forward to in a future dreary month was a fine idea. “Done.” I did not logout of the Ticketmaster website.

“Lost in You” is an inferior rewrite of “You Wear It Well” and stubbornly catchy as hell. The song was current in 1988, the last time I saw Rod Stewart perform. Tim attended that Montreal Forum show too; we were late to the gate, walk-ins. Tim continues to describe Rod as “a consummate showman.” He is all that because I doubt there’s a single person on the planet who’s purchased a “current” Rod Stewart album since Unplugged… and seated was released in 1993. When I’m stuck for a Crooked 9 stereo selection, I generally default to a Faces record or one of Rod’s early solo Mercury recordings. Ann enjoys his good old stuff and yet she’s never seen him in concert. The essence of Rod Stewart remains performance. Next September promises a retro fever dream double bill, Rod Stewart with Cheap Trick. Alas, if only the year was 1982 rather than 2022. I bought tickets for us anyway.

Atomic rockets to power! I had the Ticketmaster time machine at full throttle. The old crate began to shake, rattle and roll. I asked Ann another question. “Where’s the Century Casino?”

“Fort Road, a sketch part of town. Why?”

The Blushing Brides bill themselves as “the original tribute to the Rolling Stones.” They have also billed themselves as “the world’s most dangerous tribute to the Rolling Stones.” I saw them first in a sold-out Montreal club. The eighties, time was... Their debut album, Unveiled, garnered one regional radio hit and it was easily mistaken for a track on the second side of a seventies Stones album. I saw them again in Calgary during the oughts, after all pretence of a unique band identity had been dropped. They’re good; then again, they’ve been interpreting Stones music for 40 years.

“The Blushing Brides are playing there in a few weeks’ time, toward the end of the month.”

“Who are they? A Beatles cover band?”

“Erm, no.”

I save our back issues of The Economist for our friend Netflix Derek who passes them on in turn. His stack of pre-perused weeklies has been growing since last December. It’s been a while since we’ve seen him and his wife, Alex, a close friend of Ann’s and like her, a talented violinist. The four of us have attended shows together in the past, notably when their eldest son was fronting a local punk band. Masked bubbles, six-foot social distancing and whatnot; whatever we misunderstand to be the right or wrong things to do. We live around the corner from our friends. The weather’s not been cooperative, not conducive to sitting outside for a half hour of catching up and common complaint.

I said to Ann, “Would you be up for a couple of hours of ersatz Stones? It is what it is. Maybe we could turn this into a mini-event? Why don’t I phone Alex and Derek and see if they’re game? We haven’t seen them for ages.”

Ann said, “That would be fun.”

Right. I had to sell Netflix Derek on a cover band’s performance in a desperate place, probably shabby, definitely dodgy. He’s long since ditched his landline, so I dialed his cell. He picked up. The background noises made the timing of my call seem very inopportune. I said, “Hi, it’s me. Sounds like you’re in the middle of something. I won’t keep you.” Maybe he was washing his car. “Phone me back when you have a chance.”

Derek said, “I’m running in the river valley.” The north bank trail had been plowed after the latest snowfall. He was somewhere between the athletic clubhouse and the botanical conservatory, the plant pyramids, possibly proximate to the ballpark on the south flats and the dormant Pink Floyd power station, brown brick and seven white stacks. “I was just thinking about you. I’m listening to live Stones now. How can I not make that association?” He’s a psychologist. “We must get together.”

“Derek, man, you are not going to believe why I’m calling…”   

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of eerie coincidence since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.