Sometimes the algorithm gets it right. It just alerted me to a documentary about the legendary London, Ontario bar and live venue, Call The Office, and it’s right up my alley.
I only had the extreme privilege of visiting Call The Office in London, Ontario, once, but I felt much closer to the venue than someone with just a single visit under their belt.
That’s because you can see Call The Office from the London train station, and the train from Toronto to Windsor stops for a relatively long time in London. I have taken the train from Toronto to Windsor at least 200 times, so I have stared at the exterior of Call The Office for an inordinately long period of time. 237 times. Or so.
Countless times I have sat on the train, trapped in a metal tube, my eyes dewy, thinking about what might have been as I locked eyes with Call The Office. “That was a GOOD time. I want to go back there sometime,” I imagined. I suppose I am a diesel-fueled stalker of that storied rock-and-roll hall.
The one time I visited Call The Office in London, ON
London is 2 hours from Detroit and 2 hours from Toronto. It is smack dab in the middle of southwestern Ontario. I think I visited Call The Office in 1999. Maybe it was November 19, 1998, if setlist.fm is to be trusted.
Two American friends drove out from Michigan, and I took the train over from Toronto. Or maybe, on second thought, it was the bus. Another friend lived in London at the time, so it was two Cannucks and two Yankees taking in Canada’s finest, Rheostatics. Four guys, two countries, zero borders.
In short, Nationalities were blurred.
We bridged the seasons, we bridged the border
It was a bridge between seasons time of year. We were either heading into winter or coming out of it. Snow flurries would pop up for 10 or 11 minutes, then it would be beautiful again. Until another flurry popped up again, rinse and repeat. As I travelled west, I hoped the weather for my friends driving east from Michigan wasn’t too treacherous.
In short, Seasons were blurred.
“London is kind of like Ann Arbor, except dirty”
I have another friend from Michigan who played Called The Office with his band a couple of times. He described London, Ontario as “Kind of like Ann Arbor, except dirty.” (Take THAT, Elbows Up minions!)
And my friend would know what he is talking about. He is a University of Michigan graduate and, as such, lived in Ann Arbor for half a decade! (Take THAT too, Elbows Up minions!)
Everyone arrived safely. We ate beans and built bridges.
“In 1886, Heinz Baked Beans were first sold in the UK at the Fortnum & Mason department store in London.” That’s a fact, so long as you do your fact-checking on Wikipedia. But who needs fact-checking when you have the CBC, your elbows are up, and “you don’t vote Conservative, because you never have”?
For the first half of my life, all I knew about Bush’s Baked Beans, the American equivalent of Heinz, was the “beautiful bean footage” that Duke would roll on TV.
But Prime Minister Brian Mulroney saw the value of bringing Canada and the USA closer together, and these days no Canadian alive has to go without the gastronomic masterpiece that is Bush’s baked beans.
But in London, Ontario, American bean lovers met with Canadian bean lovers. My friend in London took us to eat at a restaurant with a couple hundred bean recipes on its menu before the Rheos gig.
A deep intellectual discussion about beans was had, a bridge was built, and Heinz met Bush’s. The Meeting of the Beans, an international meeting perhaps only surpassed by Reagan meeting Gorbachev in terms of importance, happened only because Rheostatics played Call The Office, so a heartfelt thank you goes out to both the band and the venue.
There was a place across the street that was promoting “BA BARACUS” on their marquee, which was a nice touch.
Go, BA!
Harmelodia is a gorgeous art project – you should check it out.
The album Harmelodia should have been the end of Rheostatics, their victory lap after Double Live, but sadly it was not. Harmelodia was also the album Rheostatics were promoting when we saw them at Call The Office.
In hindsight, Harmelodia seems like a vanity project, Dave Bidini’s EGO gone wild. The album is a “children’s story”, written by Bidini and narrated by his wife. The “rest” of Rheostatics seem to have been demoted to session musicians for this one.
Harmodia as a physical product IS gorgeous tho. The CD feels like a leather-bound book, and the pages inside feature Martin Tielli’s amazing visual arts. I wouldn’t recommend buying it, but if you get the chance, take a look at it.
Harmelodia might be the musical equivalent of the Francis Ford Coppola movie Megalopolis: some guy of Italian descent with an admirable artistic CV betting it all and losing.
Cuts like a knife
I don’t remember anything about the Rheostatics concert on that night at Call The Office in London, Ontario that night. That is not to say it wasn’t a good concert, or I was drunk. That is to say, it was a quarter century ago or more. And I have seen the Rheos dozens of times before and after that gig.
What I DO remember is Dave Bidini and Don Kerr working the merch booth before the gig. Dave and Donnie were the friendliest cats ever, at least in those days. My American friend bought the aforementioned Harmelodia disc, and the edges were cut wrong. Every other page was joined together.
I told Bidini, Kerr and my Michigan amigo about receiving a book from RE/Search that was miscut the same way.
The RE/Search book was 11X17 or so, so I could reach in and cut the edge with a razor blade. Harmelodia was 5X5, so that wasn’t a solution.
Bidini and Kerr looked at me incredulously. They were speechless, but the looks on their faces said:
“Oh, my God! Books from outside of Canada? Oh my God, you took matters into your own hands and fixed something!”
Monkeybird flew away
But that’s the thing: I can’t go back to Call The Office again, nor can you, or anyone. The times are different. I am different. Everything is different.
I can’t even listen to the song Monkeybird from Harmelodia anymore. I just tried, and doing so made me sob like a baby. As much joy and happiness as my wife and I used to share and feel singing that song together, hearing it now is an avalanche of emotion, of sadness, of emptiness. That’s because my wife passed some time ago. And because Dave Bidini won’t let the Rheostatics die the death they deserve.
Harmelodia was the last worthwhile thing the Rheostatics ever did. Bidini et al keep trying to go to what they once were, to “a night at Call The Office”.
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