Summer Dreams

As usual, so much to fill you in on and so few drugs to keep me awake long enough. There was a week-long trip to Maine with Alison, meeting up with my parents and sisters, nieces and nephews, brothers-in-law, family friends, and even a coworker who happened to be vacationing with his family a few miles down the road. It was a well-documented blast. Here are some telling snapshots, courtesy of Instagram:













Then the other big deal was that I got to play a show last weekend with my songwriting idol, Robyn Hitchcock. No kidding. He brought his Carrollian English eccentricity to town as part of the Halifax Urban Folk Festival, and my friend Charles had been asked to put together a band to back him up for one of his two sets. Charles knows I'm pretty much as big a fan as he is, so he'd invited me to play keyboards and do some backup vocals.

The band practised extensively for a week to learn the list of songs Hitchcock had requested, and on Sunday we met him for a two-hour sound check in the afternoon before presenting the fruits of our labours to a full house that night. If you don't believe me, here's proof that this rock 'n roll dream come true really happened.




Robyn was an incredibly charming guy and super easy musician to work with. He enjoyed playing with us, and added five more songs to the set list than we'd planned, mostly covers. The gig went over really well, ending with a solo rendition of the first RH song I'd ever heard: "Ted, Woody, and Junior."



Sometime back in 1986, when I was attending high school in Markham, Brent Bambury played this song on CBC Two's excellent late night show, Brave New Waves. I was as usual listening in bed with headphones, taping any songs that seemed interesting, and trying not to fall asleep. At first I thought it was a John Lennon song I'd never heard. Then I was sure it must be Syd Barrett.

Then it became apparent that although it was neither of those guys, it was possibly the weirdest song I'd ever heard, which was saying a lot, even in those days. Brent back-announced it a few songs later, and the next day I rushed down to Toronto's Records on Wheels to buy whatever Robyn Hitchcock record I could find. Invisible Hitchcock was the latest one out, and I liked its radishy cover, so that's what I ended up with.

It didn't have that song on it, and was in fact a pretty odd place to begin listening, being a collection of outtakes and oddities that didn't fit on previous albums. But I grew to love it, often using it as Walkman accompaniment to the long bicycle rides I would take. My friend Matthew Grimson introduced me to Hitchcock's early band The Soft Boys a couple of years later, and my lifelong fandom was cemented.

But I didn't hear that song again till last Sunday night, so it really was quite a treat and a nice way to end a magical show. I got to hang out with Robyn a bit afterward, sharing a cab home with him and Alison. I asked him about that song, and he explained that he wrote it after finding a collection of old gay pornographic magazines in a New York antique store.

The magazines were from a time when any kind of homoeroticism was unacceptable, so pornographers had to make up ludicrous news stories as excuses for printing pictures of naked men together. The one in question was about three men, actually named as Ted, Woody, and Junior, who were allegedly forced by a water shortage in New York to share a bath. Luckily, a photographer was handy to document this selfless act of conservation. Robyn found the article so fascinating that he immediately wrote this song about it, maintaining its straight-faced tone.

This VH1 Behind the Music story ended just as the cab pulled up to my house at around four in the morning. Alison and I got out, shaking Robyn's hand and wishing him well. He bid us "sweet dreams, darlings" and drove off into the night. I'm still waiting to wake up.