Posted by This is one of those doesn’t-count-but-I’ll-allow-it stories, a ticket tale that I let fall by the wayside mostly because I didn’t have a clue what the actual date of the show was, though I remember the evening rather well.
Turns out the date was July 16th, 1990. Our drummer was a real stickler for keeping track of things; I thought to send him a message and he knew the date. Turns out he knows the dates of every gig our band ever played. He put them online and everything.
I remember this show in particular because I was pretty excited, and I was excited because our band was opening for a semi-famous act (which explains both why it doesn’t count and also why I’m allowing it) at Ottawa’s favourite mid-level concert venue, Barrymore’s Music Hall. We were called The Gutterboys and we often got the call to open up for bands at Barrymore’s, though it wasn’t often that we were offered the opening slot for the son of one of the greatest drummers of all time from possibly the greatest hard rock band in the history of everything.
Just this once, actually, when we opened up for Bonham. Bonham was the name of the band that Led Zeppelin’s late drummer John Bonham’s son Jason started in 1988, a Zeppelin-tinged four-piece rock group fronted and behinded by a famous not-famous kid who grew up in the same house as the world’s most monstrous drummer. Well, that’s not what it said on the marquee. It said:
Tonight only
The Gutterboys
Bonham
They might have had it the other way around, I don’t recall for sure.
I certainly do remember Bonham’s fancy-pants drum kit, which I got to see up close when we did our soundcheck. He had a pretty big kit, maybe an eight-piece or so, and every single drum featured custom artwork airbrushed onto the shells. If I’m not mistaken, they all featured either a Led Zeppelin album cover or a rendering of a Salvador Dali painting, and they were all really well done.
This was also the first time I had seen drums with built-in microphones. Every drum had an XLR jack built right in to the casing, so click click click click click click click click and mic the cymbals and away you go; it was a soundguy’s dream-come-true.
I also remember that the band went straight to their tour bus when they finished their soundcheck so they didn’t get a chance to hear what we sounded like which was pretty standard as well as pretty disappointing. Of course we were hoping against hope that Bonham would love our set and invite us to finish their tour with them, we would play all the big festivals in Europe and Australia, that sort of thing, but in reality they weren’t missing much.
What am I saying? Bonham probably couldn’t afford our usual nightly fee of a dozen beers and ice served in a busboy tray anyway. While Bonham put on a really fun show the room was significantly less than sold out. I remember my bandmates and I being all alone up in the upper level of the storeyed venue – steps from our tiny dressing room and our frosty beers – looking down at a the quarter-sold room going half-bananas when Bonham encored with their only Zeppelin cover of the evening, Rock & Roll. (I was going to add “of course”, because Rock & Roll is such a blatantly drum-oriented Zeppelin song, but then I thought: Aren’t they all?)
After the show we would’ve quickly and expertly packed my red Toyota minivan to the roof with our gear before I doubtlessly went next door to Imperial Pizza for a delicious post-show drunky slice of one-and-one. Either Patrick or Ray would’ve for sure been driving the van; neither of them drank.
Gosh, those were good times. Good pizza too.
Todd Man Out 