Indoor outdoor world. Last night

October 08, 2002

Indoor outdoor world. Last night I got back to my hotel room late and opened the drapes. It was the SkyDome hotel in Toronto. My room had floor to ceiling glass facing into the vast techno lego cave. It was dark and lit only by the exit lamps and amber safety lights in the tunnels and concourses. The gridded turf and the space station catwalks were shades of deep blue with golden accents. Silent. I could open the windows and lean over the edge of the 4th story into musty air. An enclosed space that is this massive can play tricks on your senses. Why is the first invitation always to the fantasy of jumping in? I guess your brain tells you something must be done to fill the space. Rush forward quickly and confront what you can’t instantly comprehend. I spent two nights and a couple hours of the night before in this hotel. The lack of natural light became an issue when the novelty wore off. It really was like life blasting in when they opened the roof one day. My activities here ran parallel to the idea of the indoor outdoor world.
The creation of SkyDome speaks to the idea of insurance. All the charm of an insurance office. With this astroturf biosphere we insure that no baseball will ever be rained out and thus remove the one element that made baseball games precious. The fact that baseball swung with the weather was part of its charm. No time limit and the possibility of postponement. In musical terms my gig in this building was an illustration of the same neutered reliability. I was computer editor and tenor sax player for Colin James and the Little Big Band. A computer being used to run a swing band show is as pragmatically gross as the retractible roof at the dome closing to protect the ball game. By the way . . . I can’t play the sax.
In the same way that the Dome offers a protected environment this idea runs through all half-time entertainment. Those of you who are surprised that performers at half-time shows are playing to tracks can now catch your breath and begin the long journey to reassembling your faith in humanity. All these shows are played karaoke style. The singer might be singing but that’s it. On this occasion I had been out playing “actual” shows with the CJBand and was enlisted to help put together the backing tracks for Colin’s half-time and pre game stint at the Argonauts vs B.C. Lions football game. Pat Steward had gone home so we had Joel Anderson subbing on drums with no rehearsal and only two hired horns with no charts. Simon Kendall had never played keys on a Little Big Band gig so that left only Colin and Norm with any experience. Someone had to fill the tenor sax chair to make it look convincing. I had a suit. I was in. I don’t think I’ve played as surreal a show since Sharkskin did the on-ice extravaganza at a Christmas Canucks game with the sexy elf figure skaters and Santas repelling from the rafters. At least then I had a guitar on me.
As we were being driven to the stage, waving to the crowd from our golf carts the dream began. Like driving with a cop chopper searchlight tracking your vehicle the spotlight increased the sensation that I would soon be sucked up into the roof and into the belly of the alien mothership. Here they would strip me down and make me do strange things with the saxophone that lay in my lap. Nothing could be stranger than what I was about to do.
In the souldcheck I had been the trumpet player so I had a basic idea of where some of the shots were but I was unprepared for the four solos I would take. My friend Dave said I forgot to move my top hand on the fist solo so it looked like I pulled the whole thing off wearing flesh coloured mittens. There was no reed in the mouthpiece so drool was channeled straight from my mouth and down the centre of the beak of the sax to my black suede hushpuppies. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in that band laugh harder and lord knows I’ve seen them laugh. I gave my camera to a friend for the half-time portion of the show and he captured my “Lenny Pickett in the headlights” performance on the "Jumbotron" screen for the record books. At one point in “Train Kept a Rollin” there was a huge horn shot that featured all three horn players caught on the giant screen with their horns down. After the pregame songs I asked Pat, the bari-sax player, to take the solos in the half-time portion so I wouldn’t look so ridiculous and he bailed on me saying they were really tenor solos and he couldn’t possibly do that. Its half-time at a football game and the audience is drunk and a hundred yards away. The difference between tenor and bari sax is as important as someone wearing a historically incorrect polyester toga in a crowd scene from Ben Hurr. It slips past pretty easily. I got two more solos in the three songs in the half-time and he took one. Afterward Pat and the trumpet player (William) were doubled over laughing that he took a tenor solo on the bari sax -- he said sprocket not socket. I was doubled over laughing that I took four solos and the actual professional sax player took one. I felt a lot like George Plimpton must have felt as a “participatory journalist”. He once played in an NFL game. I now know what it feels like to be in the horn section of the Little Big Band. I ‘ve stood in front of them and enjoyed the sound blasting up behind but now I’ve been in the back row. Maybe this will give me the secret powers they possess to drink for twenty straight hours and still stand?
It all takes a bit of the charm out of the performance for those who know the dirty little secrets but at least the show wasn’t rained out. Now the teams can move out into the open air and we can go back to actually playing. Just as most pro sports facilities build in these insurance markers there are big name acts out there who play to tracks all the time. Their names might surprise you. Its a strange idea that we create these giant indoor spaces to build a perfect context for some aspects of life. They allow the fragile elements of our culture to go untested. Darwin winces. Shelter. They are marvels of human ingenuity but it only takes a day or two for the wonder to wear off if you stare into them long enough. A perfect show leaves your system when its done. They say the public demands this. Consumable, reliable and disposable. They still write about Alice Cooper falling off the stage after one song and breaking six ribs but nobody is still talking about any of the U2 shows from a tour that just happened. I’m sure the shows were well done but somehow the idea that they are guaranteed to go off without a hitch changes things. The sound is good, the lights are good, but not in the way they would have been "good" when most sound was shitty and musicians were unreliable. If those variables were reintroduced the show would be “fucking amazing” by description. Indoor outdoor performance. Impervious to the elements. The outside world can never be fully taken in. The inside world is good for a laugh on the best of days.