MtH #15 Holy Toledo
Holy Toledo
Hi everyone
I’ll begin with a story about a fairly well-known and well-liked Canadian singer-songwriter named Brent Titcomb. I worked with him on and off from 1980 until the early 90s. I did most of his live shows and played on his second album. His producer, guitar player, and music biz partner, Tommy Graham, hired Ken Friesen to be the engineer. Ken just happened to be Gordon Lightfoot’s engineer hence, my connection to that world.
Brent had an excellent on-stage patter that avoided the usual “and then I wrote……..” stuff. Totally improvised, it was as prone to hilarity as it was awkward pauses. And hilarious it was, including the pauses, because when he had no idea what to say next, he’d look over to Tommy and say “The Dead Air file, please.”
This file was a collection of strange oddities snipped from mainstream newspapers, not tabloids, that he and Tom had amassed over the years.
I don’t remember any of them but there were stories similar to the one where a guy strapped a jet engine onto his small car to try to break the land speed record. His car quickly decorated the side of a mountain.
Or the nice old man who pitied the homeless guy and hired him to do some minor repairs to his Chev Malibu. The bum fixed it, ran over the old man and stole the car.
Now, neither of those stories are funny unless you consider that it was a dummy in the jet mobile (race car driver humour) and that the old man put tread marks on his shirt to get an insurance settlement.
An Excerpt From My Own Dead Air File
February 20 1981 will live in infamy (my apologies FDR), as the day the new boy fell off the stage.
Not during sound check. No, it couldn’t be while the place was empty. It had to be in the middle of a performance.
It was just my 12th show with Gord and the guys. Gord and I still hadn’t worked out keyboard parts for all the songs and consequently I would just sit out of a few tunes and look nonchalant.
One of those tunes was The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald. During the second of the numerous instrumental sections Gord was trying to give Chuck a message to turn his vocal down but because of the sight lines on this oddly designed stage was unable to get his attention.
The venue was a basketball arena with a temporary stage that rose five or six feet (as I recall, it may have been more) above the floor. The “station” for mixing the monitors was a narrow extension right at the front, stage left. It was at the same level as us and in the dark appeared to be part of the stage.
Well, being that I had nothing to do and there were no lights on me, I donned my team player persona and strolled over to Chuck (in those days I was positioned on Terry’s side, stage left) to relay the message. Just as I got close enough to speak to Chuck I took a step into “Oh Shit! No Floor!” hell. Chuck put his arm out to break the fall but most of my 160 pound mass was unhindered. I landed in an open flight case that was sectioned off for storing cables. My left knee broke one of the partitions, my right scraped a large metal clasp.
Chuck looked down and did not say “Are you okay?”. Nor did he say “I’ll be right down to help you.”
He said “What are you doing?”
Possible answers: “Nothing,” “Looking for a cable,” “LSD flashback…….. I thought I could fly,” “Sleepwalking, The Fitz is a long song.”
I could have been seriously injured and for all I knew I was, but my first reaction was a quick look around to determine if anyone other than Chuck saw it.
Horribly mutilated for life or not, the show must go on. Somehow I made it back to the keyboards in time for the next tune.
Somebody in the band did see it happen. When we gathered off stage waiting for the encore Gord apparently noticed that I looked a little rough.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“I think he fell off the side of the stage” someone squealed.
I didn’t personally hear it but I understand Gord’s response to this was “that’ll teach him to go wandering around.”
Francie’s project is pencilled in to resume next week. I’ll take some pictures and report on the progress.
All those who watched the video “My Studio” in last week’s post, will be pleased to know that I spent 20 bucks on iMovie so the quality of future clips and movies should drastically improve. I’d put money on it (I did)…….. that bar’s set pretty low.
See you next week