Posted by There are many, many live music events missing from my ticket books, mostly (exclusively?) bar shows that I unfortunately did not deem worthy enough to include in my personal ticket history, though I assure you lots of those shows were very worthy indeed.
One show in particular stands out as so unique and so memorable that I recently took the time to do some research to pin down the date, just so I could include it here. It was the time I saw Look People at Zaphod Beeblebrox – a relatively small and yet surprisingly notable live music club that held sway in downtown Ottawa for decades – and if the internet has anything to say about it the date of the show was September 17th, 1993.
If I’m not mistaken I saw the Look People live three times. The first was at the Fenn Lounge in Carleton University’s Residence Commons building during my first or second year. That was the first time I had heard tell of the band and I was instantly smitten with the costumed quintet who blazed through gem after gem of high-brow novelty songs set to raging Zappa-esque post-rock music. Songs like Five, In Saunders Fields, I Think I Might Possibly Be Indecisive But Then Again I’m Not Exactly Sure, and Nails converted me to their side instantly. Hell, they could have just played half of Nails and walked off the stage and I still would have forever worshipped them…my goodness the things that song did to my insides. As it was I walked out of Fenn Lounge with a copy of their newest CD Boogazm and I played it until the wheels fell off.
I also saw them in Florida at a Daytona Beach Canadian Spring Break party that was headlined by Kim Mitchell. At that show the Lookers brought a random guy up from the crowd and got him to lie down on the stage. The band pressed in all around him, the musicians hovering motionless just inches from the stunned concertgoer while they played their overly-manic He’s Short and Intense directly at him. Speaking to the band after the show I griped that they hadn’t played Nails and they told me that they had given up on the song and stopped performing it. I was flabbergasted, and remain so to this day.
But neither of those shows – notable as they are – were enough for me to try to pin down the dates and type up full reports*. This Zaphod’s show, on the other hand, was another thing entirely.
Now, I wasn’t intending to write a book about it or anything so I’ll keep it short from here on out; much shorter than it deserves. First, the band stepped on stage looking as wacky as they sounded. Kevin Hearn (now a member of Barenaked Ladies) was the keyboardist and I remember his instrument being decorated with all manner of wackiness, including a robotic hand with the index finger raised and spinning around and around. Longo was the guitar player who’s seven-foot frame stretched to the ceiling. He donned his usual spacemen chromeo onesie complete with attached beanie. Drummer Great Bob Scott was dressed in his standard Clockwork Orange garb while host and frontman Jaymz Bee wore a tattered and dated tuxedo. My apologies to the bass player, whose name and image both escape me.
Put simply, the band was on fire. Not only were they playing well, they were on the very top of their wacky-game. One very fun element of the band was that drummer of theirs, who spent as much time running around the stage beating the floor, the mic stands, and the amps with his drumsticks as much as he sat at the drumkit. I mean he would constantly jump up from his kit and run around playing the stage – midsong, mind you – and not miss a beat, eventually sliding back onto his drum stool and finishing the song at his actual drums.
Another fun and unique thing about the band: when each musician took their showcase “solo” of the night they would invariably do anything but play their instrument.
For example, for the drummer’s “solo” Great Bob Scott came to the front of the stage and pulled a guy out of the audience. In fact it was their road manager who had secretly planted himself on the dancefloor holding an ice cream cone in each hand. So Bob pulls him up on stage, then he turns around, drops his pants, and bends all the way over. The road manager then proceeded to take turns shoving and smearing the two cones, one after another, up the drummers naked butt. For real. On stage, at a bar. After what seemed like a very long time Great Bob Scott simply pulled up his now-stained white pants and went right back behind the drums, where he sat down and counted in the next tune like everything was normal.
And it sounds crazy, impossible even, but from where I was standing in the crowd it almost seemed normal. I vividly recall having to remind myself that I had just seen something very, very odd. But coming on the heels of all the other wackiness it was just another drop in the bucket of weird.
Take, for example, Jaymz Bee, who took a moment from his “solo” to scurry backstage and retrieve a large, half-eaten deli tray. He implored the audience to crowd around the front of the stage to join him in a game. Stuffing jumbo shrimp up his nose, Jaymz (rather easily, I’m surprised to report) convinced the assembled patrons to hold their hands behind their backs and open their mouths. He then started honking shrimp out of his nose and into the crowd, who dutifully jumped and fought to catch these flavoured little morsels in their mouths like dolphins clamouring for frozen perch at Sea World. Now that I think of it there was something else he did with that deli tray that was equally shocking, but I can’t recall what it was…Perhaps my mind is blocking it out for personal protection.
When I met the band in Florida I mentioned the nasal-shrimp Olympic trials to Mr. Bee and not only did he remember the incident, he recalled that he had no idea that he was going to do it until he did it, adding that he was shocked and somewhat disgusted to find that people actually played along with his improvised gag.
Okay, this ticket story has already gotten way, way too long, so I’ll urge you to use your imagination on how weird the rest of the show was. And as a reminder, beneath all of these wacky theatrics was simply amazing, utterly fantastic music. I recognized and approached Bob Scott at a bar in Toronto about ten years after this show and asked him why the band had faded away. I’m paraphrasing here, but he explained that it was because their music was too interesting, so interesting that it mostly only appealed to other musicians. And (he explained) musicians were generally too broke to pay cover charges so they either stayed home or got on the guest list, and those few musicians who weren’t too broke were generally famous enough to get on the guest list too. Which sunk the band.
Basically, he was saying that playing music for musicians is musical suicide, and as a guy who was also in a “musicians” band for a while I can concur, and I’ll further add that this phenomenon is probably one of the more tragic of the countless career-shattering dichotomies that are systemically embedded into the music business.
Good band though.
*Of course I eventually broke down and wrote those ones too, with correct dates and all. Completist’s gonna complete…
Todd Man Out 