Posted by The first all-original band I was ever in was The Gutterboys, an Ottawa-based retro-rock quartet that I filled out when I joined the group in September of 1989, during my first month at university in September, 1989. I played bass, my sometimes-roommate Pat played drums, my more-often roommate JP played guitar and sang as did our lovable socially-awkward guy-dressed-up-in-a-costume, Ray. We played probably close to a hundred shows before whittling down to a trio (no more Star Trek outfits or antique McDonald’s smocks), after which we played maybe a hundred more, give or take.
We went into the studio and made a record and toured and opened for some interesting bands and headlined tons of shows and then, like 99% of bands, we broke up. When we all started to get grey and creaky we reformed and played a few handfuls of half cover/half original pub shows specifically to make a few dollars – which is something we certainly never managed to do back in the day – and eventually even that sizzled out for reasons I don’t recall.
And while I don’t and won’t include Gutterboys gigs amongst these ticket tales, I am wont to make the occasional exception, something I am in the process of doing right now. And so, please allow me to direct your attention to February 6th, 1990*, when The Gutterboys opened up for British prog-rockers Marillion at Ottawa’s then-favourite live music theatre, Barrymore’s Music Hall.
We had answered yet another call from Barrymore’s booker and co-owner Gord Kent (or more likely, JP had spoken to him when the barman was making a deposit at the bank JP was telling at). Man, we played Barrymore’s so often I swear the guy must have had us on speed-dial. And no wonder; half the time our “pay” was $50 plus a case of beer and the other half of the time it was just the case of beer. Which was somewhat fine with me and JP, as neither of the other guys drank at all. (To my utter amazement, Ray eventually started taking his share of beer home with him. And I swear, a dozen years later when I went to his house for the very first time he offered me one of those Barrymore’s beers, cold and flat from his fridge.) But this was early on in the Barrymore’s/Gutterboys relationship. It was only our fourth time playing at Barrymore’s and the first time we were opening for a band that I had heard of, so we were all pretty excited.
Though truth be told I had only heard of Marillion, and just barely at that. I hadn’t heard any of their music and I knew nothing of them at the time, except that they were British and that they were a prog-rock band that used to be fronted by a guy named Fish (no relation). And to be frank, all these years later that’s still pretty much all I know about Marillion**. To this day I couldn’t name you a single song, except that now I know that they put on a very memorable live show. And I know that because I can very remember this show, like it was yesterday.
At least parts of it.
I remember that we played our opening set to an absolute full house. I mean the place was packed to the rafters, definitely well beyond the venue’s legal capacity of 600. Prog-rock has always been quite popular in Quebec and from the sounds of it most of the crowd had driven across the river from Hull (pre-née Gatineau) for the show. Of course the Marillion guys had overtaken the main dressing room so me and my Gutter brethren had been regulated to a “dressing room” way up on the fourth level, a small closet that we dubbed “the sawdust suite”. It used to serve as the projection room back when Barrymore’s was a movie-house and aside from a small trap door that opened to reveal a shenanigan-hole four floors above the unsuspecting Bank Street sidewalk, the room had nothing. That and a quickly-diminishing two-four of Molson Canadian cooling off in a grey busboy tray.
After our surprisingly well-received set*** the four of us retreated to the sawdust suite and puffed up our egos with breathless talk of future world domination (and perhaps divvied up our $50) while JP and I tried to drink all the beers before Ray went home. But as soon as we heard the crowd roar for the start of Marillion’s set we stepped out of our dressing closet and watched the show from way up in the bar’s upper tier.
And while I have many mental snapshots of a slow, moody Sid Barrett-esque concert drenched in indigo-hued concert lighting that was thick with the smoke from a thousand real-live Benson&Hedges cigarettes, one undeletable memory stands out above all the rest. Now you gotta remember this was back in the era when a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer was still a pretty impressive piece of equipment (and not in an ironic way), sound modules and MIDI cables were all still very space shuttle-esque and modern tech like MP3’s or wireless interface were completely unheard of. Heck, we were still eight versions away from Windows 95 fer crying out loud.
So when dude who wasn’t Fish anymore put on a pair of musical gloves specially outfitted with touch-sensitive synthesizer patches built into the fingertips and played a swirling psychedelic keyboard solo by simply tapping his gloved fingers on his chest, his head, and his mic stand I and the rest of the crowd were duly impressed. I had been fortunate enough to watch him soundcheck the contraption, and I can verify that these things were no novelty items. Each glove connected to a two-inch thick band of digital wiring that ran up his sleeves and into a bank of modules that were themselves connected to an extensive wall of rackmount units, all of which had been rolled out of the band’s equipment truck and up the big metal ramp behind the theatre by burly roadies with gruff English accents. My gawd I thought those synth-gloves were nifty, so when he actually pulled them on for a song after I had made a half-dozen forays into to the sawdust suite for another beer, well, it was one of the coolest concert tricks I had ever seen up until then.
Sure, for $49.95 you can probably order something similar out of one of those weird catalogues of random stuff that seems to arrive just before Christmas every year but back in the early early 1990’s those gloves would have been all anyone talked about when they walked out of Barrymore’s that night.
And possibly how handsome the opening band’s bass player was.
*Or June 27th or maybe even June 28th of the same year. After exhaustive research (which means I got pretty tired of searching the internet) I found these were the only three Barrymore’s plays Marillion did during the Gutterboys era when Ray was in the band. Barrymore’s asked us to open shows all the time, so if Marillion had been playing a two-night run we probably would have been booked to open both nights. So February 6th, 1990 it is.
(It’s funny how easy it can be to create truth****.)
**Oh, I also know two of the members names (Pete Trewavas and Steve Rothery) because they were each kind enough to give this starry-eyed little rock and roller one of their monogrammed plectrums. I’ll admit that I had to check wikipedia to find out if they were both guitar players (they aren’t; Trewavas is the bass player), during which I discovered that not only is Marillion still together, but both Trewavas and Rothery are still in the band. ‘Matter of fact, Steve Rothery has always been in the band, since helping found Marillion in 1979.
Who knew?
***I never really thought The Gutterboys were that great of a band*****.
****And before you get too cynical, it turns out that February 6th, 1990 was the truth; is the truth. I wrote to the very meticulous drummer and he sent me a list of all the shows we played up until Ray left the band, and there it was, in truth.
*****That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the group. I don’t know if I have already or will get around to writing about other cool Guttergigs like when we opened for the band Toronto at Barrymores (remember Toronto?), or John Bonham’s son Jason with his cool airbrushed drum kit. I’m sure I won’t be getting into the stint when we played three nights a week at a local biker bar, which is too bad; pretty much all of my best rock and roll stories come from those biker gigs.
Todd Man Out 