April 12 2013 - Entry#15 - Those Moldy Oceans
The outdoor footage for the Old Emotions video was shot on a chilly afternoon at a remote beach somewhere east of Oshawa, Ontario. We're wearing heavy sweaters for a reason. The little black dog running around was my mother's and I have no explanation why he was even there. Maybe I was dog sitting that day. There was a lot of innocent frolicking on the beach and a scene where Rob and Derrick crashed their bicycles into the waves. Rob Quartley was directing again, obviously trying hard to maintain our clean, wholesome image. Most of the video was shot on a soundstage in Toronto, where Rob had a sort of floating library built; the "private library" from the song lyrics. All very nice and innocent. But the scene that would would push us to the very brink was yet to come. Something that looked so harmless on paper would quickly turn into unendurable torture.
For the end of the video, Rob had the brilliant idea of shooting us inside a small cubicle having, of all things, a pillow fight. How Mickey Mouse Club squeaky clean did he think we where!? The moms of our fans who'd grown up on Anette Funicello and beach party movies would love it. He convinced us that, played back in slow motion, it would create a stricking image. Little did he know that we would almost chock us to death on the bags of feathers that the crew rained down on us from above. Embarrrassment was the least of our worries.
Every few minutes one of us would jump out of the room hacking, trying to force the feathers from our lungs. Death by eider down. It was pure hell. I could see my singing career going down the toilet. At the very least, I saw myself singing on stage with feathers randomly flying out of my mouth like some Marx Brothers routine. How could one of the most innocent and silly looking things we'd ever done end up being so horrendous? Someone was obviously giving us the proverbial slap on the side of the head for submitting to something so utterly ridiculous.
When it came time to take our new single Old Emotions to radio stations, something that was still done in person by the artist back then, I was more than a little hesitant. How could we, after the grandiose creations of the Arias album, return with something so unashamedly cheerful? Would listeners even think it was the same band? Obviously yes. I was wrong to question the order of things in the cosmos. Our quirky little song and video caught on quickly. Even the stupid feathers in the video went by audience's critical eyes without a hiccup. Either we were getting away with murder or my understanding of our fans needed some serious realignment. Their and my universes needed to sync up. I felt like I was floating away from the rest of planet earth.
Somewhere in all this, probably to clear his lungs, Rob Preuss planned to go on a little family trip to Florida. We had a bit of down time and we decided we could be Rob-less for a week. Of course, within days of booking the flights, we were offered the opening slot for Hall & Oates at Maple Leaf Gardens and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Since his return flight was on the day of the first show, Rob was confident he'd get there on time. Of course, that's not the way of the world when it comes to the music business. The day of the Maple Leaf Gardens show arrived and the crew set up Rob's keyboards, fully expecting him to join us very shortly. We'd expected that he probably wouldnt make soundcheck and went ahead without him. Then the dreaded call came. Rob's flight was delayed. Depending on customs and driving conditions from the airport, it would be tight. A horrible realization was starting to grow deep down in some part of my brain I didn't want to confront. And then, hours before the show, our manager Carl walk into our change room and confirmed the worst. Rob wasn't going to make it.
There was actually a moment when we thought we couldn't go on without him. We were a band, we had a routine, we had a safety net way of doing things. This was way out of our comfort zone, especially since Rob not only filled out a huge part of our sound, but also ran the drum machine. I've learned to become much more flexible and improvisational in my outlook on things since then. Throw me a curve ball now and I get excited to overcome it. Back then, it hit me square in the face and knocked me temporarily unconscious. Luckily, coming to our senses, we jumped to action and came up with a plan B. Derrick retrieved the rest of his drum kit from the truck so he could play all the songs drum machine-less. Phil and Tony quickly wrote out some basic charts to cover the important keyboard lines on sax and trumpet. We could do this. And that we did, in glowing fashion.
We walked out onto the huge Gardens stage before a sold out crowd, plugged in and played one of our most urgent and energetic sets ever. Probably running on adrenalin, endorphins and whatever other lins there are, we jumped into the abyss. Periodically we would have the light man train his spot light on Rob's keyboards and assure the audience that Rob would arrive at any moment, carrying his suitcase onto the stage. In the meantime, Phil and Tony churned out the Nova Heart and Arias melodies on their brass instruments and no one seemed to care. Incredibly, when I asked everyone to stand up at the beginning of Old Emotions, most of the fifteen thousand plus audience did. I was stunned. This was probably the most profound moment of audience/peformer connection I'd ever experienced. In the middle of a show that had doomed written all over it. Remember what I said about jumping into things that scared us? How much more proof did I need?
Putting the spot light on where Rob was supposed to be didn't help at all in the end. The last song in our set, Nova Heart, arrived and no sign of our sun tanned synth player. But by that point it didn't matter any more. We were in the home stretch. We finished our show to great applause and headed backstage quite pleased with ourselves. It didn't even phase us when Rob greeted us in our change room. He'd arrived just in time to watch us perform Nova Heart from the back of the arena. He said we were very good. More than good, I would say.