A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Sweet Victoria 

We spent most of last week down island on Vancouver Island. Ann and I flew ninety minutes west from Edmonton to hang around with her brother Jim and his wife Shannon. We made token efforts to present as utile burdens, good guests. One of those trips that’s more about visiting than sightseeing (although I did manage a couple of pints of Smithwick’s at the Irish Times). We knew that long before our bumpy touchdown. Other relatives and friends reside there too.

I had telephoned my high school chum Peter to give him distant early warning. He’d introduced me to what I consider “prog” way back then and some of that music has since stuck. His regrets were sincere. Peter and his wife were taking their daughter, a newly capped and gowned high school graduate, to Paris and London “before she hates us.” I laughed. Growing up in the olden days hadn’t been a complete fog.

But everybody else got together, three generations. The event was a performance by Majesties Request, a Stones tribute band. The event was staged at a pub called The Loft on Gorge Road. The Loft is atop a Days Inn. One of those travellers’ havens you’re desperate to checkout of as quickly as possible, no spare time to spend, no free day to waste away amid cinderblock and nylon. Where you can’t help but fret about the hygiene habits of your room’s previous occupants and the thoroughness of the housekeepers. Gorge is a ritzy street, until you drive to the other end and reach the Days Inn.

But isn’t that just dirty, lowdown of rock ‘n’ roll? The Loft’s walls were adorned with airbrushed images of Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison – you can picture black velvet renderings in Kresge, Woolworth and Army and Navy bargain basements, can’t you? The men’s room was a hive of miniscule black flies. I contemplated a moustache comb for my pubic hair. I ate a cheeseburger, relieved that the filler in the patty tasted more like cereal than emulsified abattoir floor scrapings. God, you know, sometimes bad food is damn good.

The Blushing Brides are Canada’s best, and possibly the world’s best Stones tribute band. I’ve seen them in every Canadian city I’ve lived in. They’re a fun night out every ten or fifteen years or so. The singer and the guitarist try to look like Mick and Keith. Sometimes the illusion is real. They strike the poses we’ve all seen as stills in the music press. Majesties Request had no such pretension. The guitarist resembled a member of Guns n’ Roses or Robin Zander of Cheap Trick. The drummer sang all the Keith songs and he sounded like Keith did in 1972 even though he wasn’t born yet. The hefty lead singer’s intonation and phrasing was corporate Jagger, more Stripped “Wild Horses” than Sticky Fingers, a slight nasal twang though not shotgunned to shreds. He was smart enough not to try on any moves.

I asked our friend Carol to dance. We’d caught up earlier in the week. This night Carol was at the wrong end of a table for eight, conversation was impossible. Out on the floor in front of the band, Carol asked me if I’d teach her to dance like Mick. I said, “You have to prance and mince.” Pout. Clap as if you’re deaf, fingers to palm up by your ear. When you strut move your arms like a flightless bird with broken wings. Thumbs forward for a waist clutch. If you put your hands on your hips? Profile only, curled wrists to bone. Point like any one of the nuns who taught us in Catholic elementary school, admonishing and angry. Jagger scolding is very different from Bruce Springsteen’s inclusive pointing. Twirl like a celebrated Soviet ballet defector (a high barre for Mick); James Brown and Tina Turner too. And pout. 

Carol was laughing on the dance floor. The Majesties Request singer was watching me, a bar band needs energy. I noticed a couple of senior ladies giving me long looks. That was the “it” or “thing” about Jagger in his prime: your partner was now forever inadequate; boy or girl; rebel, rebel.

I won a prize. Not for my rubber band man performance. No, for trivia. Who doesn’t know “It’s All Over Now” was written by Bobby Womack for his Chess Records soul band the Valentinos before the Stones turned it into a UK number one in June 1964. I mean, c’mon. The prize pack was Majesties Request promotional merch, lovingly packaged in a cardboard VHS cassette shipping box: a few stickers, a foam insulator for beer cans and bottles, and a ballpoint – black ink; disposable swag I loathed sourcing during my advertising career (Marla, God bless you wherever you are. I knew one call to you would keep my burgeoning insanity in check. Thank you!).

A random Friday night in Victoria. Family and friends, a pub, live Stones music complete with reminders of my obsession and career, and a pen. My life writ awfully small in a funny sort of way.         

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