Unplugged Open Stage on the Event Horizon of a Black Hole

            On the Monday evening of August 15^th my next-door neighbour came to my door and said, “You know, when you’ve got a big space you need lots of air flow.” I thought he was talking about my apartment, since it’s probably the biggest living space in our building. Cesar’s place above me on the west side is probably a little smaller and everybody else just has bachelors. But he was actually talking about the Coffee Time donut shop downstairs from us. It turned out that their air conditioner had broken down and there were a couple of guys on the roof trying to fix it. My neighbour claimed that a larger space needs a more powerful air conditioner than was originally installed last year and that the size of the space has caused the machine to break down.

            On my way to the Tranzac along the new Bloor Street bike lane, as has happened several times since the path was opened, pedestrians just casually stepped out in front of my vehicle without looking. People seem to have the unconscious impression that this new extra space between the sidewalk and the parked cars is just an extension of the sidewalk.

            There was a younger group of musicians than usual performing in the Southern Cross bar when I arrived. After putting my name on the list I went outside to tune up. There was a middle-aged woman sitting just outside the door. She asked me what kind of music I play at the open stage. I told her that I’d like to think that I have an eclectic mix of songs. I said that I do my own and translations of French songs. She expressed regret that she couldn’t stay and explained that she was there with her daughter, who was playing with the band that was onstage right now.

            I started trying to practice one of the songs that I’d planned on doing that night, but someone came out and lit a cigarette, which made it too difficult to breathe and sing at the same time, so I stopped. The woman said that what I’d played sounded good to her. Around that time, the concert finished, so we both went inside. She waited for her daughter to pack her stuff up and they left.

            John Sladek was hosting that night, without his band-mate, Dave Lang, because Dave had a gig. Dave’s Bass Lesson was scheduled to host the week before, but they’d switched with Sarah Green. John said that Colin, the guy who often does the sound at the Tranzac, had said he would be coming to help John out with the soundboard.

             John surprised me when I overheard a conversation he was having with someone. It seemed like such a contrast for someone that likes to sing songs like, “I wish I was a mole in the ground” to be explaining the nature of the particles on the event horizon of a blackhole.

            Cad came in and sat with me. Somehow we started talking about time, and I told him that the future and the past don’t exist, and so one could never build a time machine, but he didn’t get it.

            John P and Chas Lauther arrived, for the first time in about a month. Once they’d settled in, John P said to John S, “I hear you have quite a collection of vintage guitars.” John. He confirmed that he had a few, but mentioned in particular his Martin guitars: 0-18 model from 1919 and 0-21 from 1927.

            I always have a tendency to think of other musicians at the Tranzac or Fat Albert’s as living in poverty like me, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. They all tend to have jobs and money.

            Colin didn’t show up, and since John doesn’t know how to do the sound, he started an unplugged open stage at twenty minutes after the official start time with his rendition of “The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns” by Phil Ochs – “ … Bubble ball is rising from a whisper or a scream …”

            John’s next choice was the traditional blues song, “Bottle Up and Go” – “ … She may be old, ninety years, but she aint too old for to shift them gears … Got to bottle it up and go, now them high powered women …”

            The first open stage performer was John P. From his first song – “ … Red heart burned to grey … Why can’t you and I get off the ground … I dry my feet of clay … All your excuses they seem kind of lame …”

            John told us that he saw Todd Rundgren perform in New York City a while ago and it inspired him to write his next song, which was called “Big Opportunity” – “ … I came upon an accident scene. It was really grizzly. It was a limousine. Thousand dollar bills … A suitcase full of cocaine washed up on the beach … I was working late one night at the morgue … They got a really cool website … A fresh one came in on a slab, she really didn’t look half bad …”

            John’s final offering was a cover of a Robin Hitchcock song, which he said has one of his favourite lines of all rime. He said he wasn’t going to tell us the line but would let us guess after he sang, “Chinese Bones” – “Watching Romeo dissolve … I had never seen a man so abuse his refection as the light shines through your Chinese bones … Something Shakespeare never said was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ … The line between us is so thin, I might as well be you …” After he was finished, he told us that line was the one about Shakespeare not having said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” I thought thee were several lines better than that.

            Next was Chas, playing slide on an actual guitar, rather than the steel guitar he usually plays. He was accompanied on guitar and lead vocals by Kevin as they played “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar” by Alton Delmore, with Kevin doing some mild yodeling as they went along.

            Next they did “Along the Navajo Trail” by Dick Charles, Larry Markes and Edgar DeLange – “Every day, long about evening, when the sunlight’s beginning to pale, I ride through the slumbering shadows along the Navajo Trail … The wind is strumming a sagebrush guitar …”

            Their next selection was the gospel song, “Jesus On the Mainline”, with Chas singing lead vocals this time – “ … Call him up and tell him what you want, the line aint never busy …”

            Everyone was sounding fine without amplification. Chas commented that there was no need for a sound system, but he had his steel guitar hooked up to a little amp. I told him he was cheating, but he explained that it would be impossible to hear his steel guitar with electronics.

            They were wondering if they should do another song. John made a strange comment that, “You’ll want to be out of here fast after Christian plays!”

            They decided that since they had both signed up for the open stage, that they’d do one more song. They chose “Someday You’ll Call My Name” by Hank Williams – “ … When your hair has turned from gold to silver and your eyes are dimmed by passing years, you’ll remember darling what I told you, but there’ll be no one then to dry your tears …”

            I was after Chas, and started with “The Wooden Leg”, which is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Couleur Café” – “ … The effect is so crazy that you have on me when I see you rolling your eyes and your hips through the whole night. You drug me like coffee, stimulating me and exciting me, so it won’t be dark tonight …”

            I followed that with my own “God Goes to My Head” – “Someone slipped a tab of Moon into our drink of sky so now Parkdale is hungry but it don’t know why. It licks my face, to test the flavour, scowls and backs away, I’m just a little too bitter for its sheltered taste …”

            Not messing with microphones and DIs seems to save a lot of time, because once I’d sat down, the list was finished. A big, burly Tranzac regular named Tony, with prematurely white hair and a longish beard often drops in for the last bit of the open stage after the ukulele session across the hall breaks up. He never signs up for the open stage, but he does write and play songs, so John asked him if he’d like to play for us. He did a cover of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields – “ … If I never had a cent, I’d be rich as Rockefeller …”

            While Tony was playing, I realized that I had only done two songs, though everyone else had done three.

            Tony ‘s second song was one of his own called “Coffee and Cigarettes” – “We were at the Ritz, the band was grand. But formal settings are not for me, I hate superficiality … In an old greasy spoon, while the jukebox plays on, it’s hookers that come through the door …”

            Tony’s last song was “If A Piano Could Talk” – “Tickle my ivories, play on my senses … Walk in the rain, come to me, play me again … Improvisation, the ebb and the flow, then bask in the sweet afterglow.”

            When Tony had finished, I called out to John, explaining that I’d forgotten to do a third song because I was so used to playing two that I thought that I was done after two. He had no problem with me doing another, so I sang my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Joanna” – “ … Joanna is a dancehall barstool connoisseur, when she sits at the bar she takes up three or four. Oh yeah but Joanna, Joanna, Joanna she sure can dance lightly, lightly …”

            John closed down our unplugged night with three songs. The first was the gospel song, “They Hung Him On A Cross For Me”.

            He followed that with Leanne Scott’s “LA International Airport” – “ … Shaking hands I pack a bag, trembling voice I call a cab, slowly I start walking out the door … Baggage car goes quickly by, I see my case and I start to cry, stumble to the lounge to be alone. While I try to get some rest, bite my lip and try my best to fight the pain that’s making me leave home …” There was some discussion about the authorship and whether it was actually a Country song. It’s certainly a little more complex than most things that come out of Nashville. John had said that it was by Susan Raye, but she was just the singer. I had thought that Lynn Anderson had also recorded it but it seems I was mistaken.

            John finished with “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” – “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill, he sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is whining low, I’m so lonesome I could cry. I’ve never seen a night so long when time goes crawling by. The moon just went behind the clouds to hide its face and cry … The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky …”