#stage_fright

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Joe Buck Made A Touchdown Call While Peeing

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w574A74mjV4)

Battling Gear, Demons and Stage Fright

Last night, the Rheostatics (iconic Canadian art-rockers, as the standard bio puts it) reunited at Toronto’s Massey Hall, the venue where they staged their “farewell show” in 2007. The hall was packed, the audience full of love, but guitarist/singer Martin Tielli might long remember it as the show where his worst stage-fright nightmares came true.

The Rheos have never been a “normal” band. They are a four-headed, genre-hopping, unabashedly Canadian monster whose path briefly arced close to mainstream success, before the mainstream decided it couldn’t contain their idiosyncrasy. The band has three lead singers who are also its songwriters: Tim Vesely is the stoic folk-rocker, penning world-weary but hopeful ballads; Dave Bidini, the spiritual son of Joey Ramone and Stompin’ Tom Connors, is the ringmaster, the agit-prop truth-sayer, the solid centre. Then there is Martin Tielli.

Tielli has two voices: the one that comes out of his throat, and the one torn from the heart of his electric guitars. The singing voice, which ranges from deep growl to soaring falsetto is lyric and acid — sometimes terrifying, sometimes heart-breaking. As for guitars, he has two perennial axes: the little wedge-shaped Steinberger, and a dual-necked monster, hand-painted with a maple leaf. Both are played through a labyrinthine set of pedals and racks (and, for all anyone knows, mystic crystals and sacrificial goat heads). Tielli in full flight pushes both of these voices to the limit, playing nasty and haunting lead guitar on songs at the same time as he rips and caresses each phrase of the song vocally. He will spit rhythmic blasts of words before swooping into the stratosphere to soar on long, ringing vowel tones that sound eerily like the high, bent notes of his guitar. Both voices celebrate the lyrical and terrible. As he is also a painter, a painting metaphor is appropriate: he is the Francis Bacon of art rock.

He is always in motion. Singing lead on a song jam-packed with poetry, Martin will still find moments to drop to his knees and make an adjustments on a pedal. At some dramatic juncture, he is likely to grab his microphone boom and twist it into some strange position that requires him to sing upside-down for the next three lines. His face contorts, he does ridiculous high-kicks and Chuck Berry struts, all the while focussing all his energy into the microphone, through which he pours his terrifying rage, his blistered pain, his cutting humour. In between songs, he paces the stage, rocks from foot to foot, adjusts every knob in his rack.

Martin Tielli suffers from stage fright. He used to chain smoke through performances, and was sometimes drunk. Is it too romantic to say that he cannot be as raw and unguarded a performer as he is without suffering for it? Sounds right to me. The band’s 2012 reunion had to be cancelled at the last minute due to his fear of facing the audience again. Only after a successful series of gigs at the Art Gallery of Ontario last fall did the possibility of a real reunion come together.

Last night’s show started well, with Tim singing “King of the Past,” Martin big and bold on guitar and backing vocals. Next came Martin’s classic, “California Dreamline,” (in which the neologism “Californication” appeared, years before the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ album of the same name). Things started going wrong in the second verse; Martin seemed to lose his place and waved at the band to stop the song. Maybe this had been happening in rehearsal, but for whatever reason, they didn’t stop. They kept playing while Martin almost walked from the stage. He then returned, pacing unhappily, and finally found his way back in and finished. This was a pattern that repeated itself on several more songs. Even during the acoustic, off-mic version of “Northern Wish,” a song Martin has sung thousands of times, Dave Bidini had to feed him lines.

One of the things that makes Tielli mesmerizing as a performer is that he has no game face. Everything he’s feeling, he gives to us. And maybe for that reason (and maybe because we knew the backstory of his stage fright), the audience could see the palpable devastation that radiated from his face and body. When things were falling apart, someone in the crowd called out “We love you, Martin!” This was the other great story of the evening: the band, the audience, everyone in that venerable theatre seemed to be beaming support his way.

The second half of Martin’s nightmare started a few songs later when his travel-worn, Frankenstein-patched guitar rig failed. Epically. For three songs, the band played on while Martin and the guitar tech laboured on their knees. Over and over, Martin picked up the Steinberger and strummed, only to give up in fury and frustration and put it away.

Finally, resigned, he chose to be a singer only. He sang gloriously, a man fighting demons. But there was an undertone of terrible suspense, too. Would he give up? Would he kick over his gear? During one song, he was gripping the Steinberger by the neck, like he was hanging an enemy over the edge of a building. Over and over, he retreated to the back of the stage, and I kept thinking “he’ll go off and not return.” But maybe his pride didn’t let him. Maybe he couldn’t betray the goodwill of so many.

Singing is not itself enough action for Martin Tielli, so stripped of his guitar, he compensated with constant fidgeting. While singing one searing song of anxiety and loss, he picked up a red, plastic cup of beer from the top of his guitar rack and, finding it empty, launched it across the stage. The cup beside it was half full, and he kept trying to find a pause between vocal lines to take a swig. But it was as if his mouth was determined not to give him the chance. Over and over, he lifted the glass to his mouth, only to find it singing. At one point in this battle of hand and mouth, the hand tried to force the issue, but the mouth wouldn’t stop singing, and Martin ended up pouring the drink down his shirt.

Finally, the show was in encores. Dave Bidini picked up his acoustic guitar and launched into the Rheo’s classic, “Dope Fiends and Booze Hounds,” about the near-cosmic ecstasy and agony of growing up in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. At some point, he and Martin realized that Dave’s black Les Paul was free. Martin put it on, turned the switches and knobs like an experienced pilot jumping into an unfamiliar and yet utterly manageable plane, and then the Rheostatics finished the song in epic manner. Bidini leaping from a riser, drums cracking, guitars blazing, they powered through the song’s hammer-drop of an ending. As the rock and roll faded, the rest of the band exited the stage, leaving Tielli and guest keyboardist, Kevin Hearn, playing a storming orchestral noise coda.

Only then, did Martin Tielli’s smile twist from ironic and defeated to satisfied. Only then did he seem at peace.