Posted by One of the few snippets of paper in my ticket binders that is woefully devoid of detail points to a performance by Canada’s premier Led Zeppelin cover act, The White. The small, torn scrap of paper reminds me that the show took place at the Cosmo (AKA the Club Cosmopolitan) – which I would have remembered regardless – and that I went with my good friend Glen, my less-good friend Sean Nason, and Danny LeBlanc.
I have made mention of this show elsewhere in these monotribes, if only to point out that the lack of an actual ticket stub coupled with an embarrassing dearth of information essentially disqualifies this show from being included in these tales, a stance reiterated by the frustrating fact that I have been utterly unable to nail down the actual date of the gig, though it almost nearly doubtlessly took place in the spring of 1989.
As such, if I were to write this one up I would assign it the date of May 23rd, 1989, for three reasons. 1) I’ve never seen a show on a May 23rd, and I’m always happy to fill one of the few dates on my rock and roll calendar that remain empty, 2) May 23rd, 1989 was a Tuesday, and I suspect that the most popular dance bar on Moncton’s Main strip would hesitate to bring in a band on a weekend night, and 3) It’s as plausible a date as any other.
And y’know, I will write this one up, and not because of The White. If required: The White is a tribute act featuring a big-and-tall longhair named Michael White who looks and sounds an awful lot like Robert Plant, and a well-rehearsed band who does a great job playing Led Zeppelin songs. The guitar player had a violin bow and everything. I suspect you don’t need any more than that.
I would rather focus on my show-mates for this one, and one in particular. Glen was far-and-away my very greatest and bestest friend back in high school (this show would have come in our final semester) and we did pretty much everything together. With apologies to Danny LeBlanc I can’t place him in my memory, but in my defence “Danny” and “LeBlanc” were pretty much the two most popular names in Moncton at the time and I’m sure there were at least a hundred Danny LeBlancs scattered among Moncton’s five high schools that year.
Instead I would like to focus on my brief friendship with Sean Nason. I had been aware of Sean throughout my three-year tenure at Moncton High but we ran in different crowds. Sean was what we called “preppy” back then – he had short hair and wore nice clothes, sat on the student council, etcetera – while I was whatever the opposite of preppy was, unconcerned as I was (and still am) with clothes, haircuts, and posturing politics. However, my bestest buddy Glen was such a blatantly awesome guy (and heckuva guitar player) that he managed to travel freely between the social circles, existing as the sole occupant in the middle circle of my high school’s social Venn diagram. As a result I sometimes found myself a mostly unwilling and generally unwelcome guest at some of the nicer parties.
And that is how I started hanging out with Sean, sometime just before the end of grade 12.
As spring turned to summer Sean started wearing a brown leather hat that I thought looked rather silly on him, though to be fair I thought most of the clothes that the preppy kids wore looked rather silly (remember Far West jackets?). On the other hand, I tried Sean’s hat on once and I thought it looked great on me. ‘Matter of fact it is the only time in my life that I can think of where a piece of clothing made me feel good. So I guess I understand fashion a little bit.
Anyway, one Friday night Glen and Sean and I were at a backyard bonfire party out the Irishtown Road and well beyond the city limits when Sean spontaneously got a nosebleed. It just happened out of the blue and it got real bad real fast. IF YOU’RE A QUESY READER PLEASE SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH RIGHT NOW. Soon blood started seeping out of his eye socket and the general consensus was that we had to get him to a hospital, and fast. This was your standard high school beer-pounder but it was pretty early in the night, so I was definitely sober enough to drive but on the off chance that we hit a RIDE program (or a telephone pole) there was no way I’d blow under the limit.
But this was my friend and he was clearly in trouble. By the time an ambulance found it’s way to the party we could already have him at the hospital so Glen and I and our girlfriends took Sean to Moncton General in my ’82 Buick Skylark, at breakneck speed.
I don’t recall what exactly was wrong with Sean, though it turned out being no big deal. But after waiting who-know’s-how-long in the waiting room at Emergency there was no going back to the party for us, and by the time the doctors gave Sean the green light I had definitely sobered up enough to legally drive everyone home.
To thank me for risking my driver’s license rushing him to the hospital, Sean kindly and quite unexpectedly gave me that leather hat of his, and a month or two later we both went off in separate ways, me to university in Ottawa and Sean to…well, I don’t know where, but likely also to university somewhere. I do know that I never saw or heard from him again.
And finally, the point:
Once that hat went on my head it stayed there. I know I had it at least a month before I moved to Ottawa because I had been wearing it when I met Stevie Ray Vaughan on August 10th (we complimented each other on our hats). When I went to university I was “the guy in the hat”. I never, ever took it off, as any picture of me taken between 1989-1996-ish would prove.
The final night I wore my hat was not one of my proudest, but it probably ranks as one of my drunkest. I can see myself in a vivid hazy dream throwing it into the Rideau Canal from the Bronson Street bridge, though in reality I might have lost it at a house party I’d attended earlier in the evening. Or it could have ended up in Campus Security’s evidence locker, as that was the evening that I was officially banned from Carleton University’s residence buildings. Regardless of what happened to that wonderful hat that Sean gifted to me, when it was suddenly gone I was thrust into an inescapable Kim Mitchell hairstyle that was eventually abandoned in favour of self-shearing, a practice that I sporadically continue to this day.
Though I have started poking my head into haberdasheries when I see them, so a new lid may be imminent.
Todd Man Out 