I noticed an advertisement outside the Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles that they were playing Roadkill tonight, so I went. Don McKellar and Valerie Buhagiar did Q&A afterwards. I saw it in 1989 when it premiered but seeing it 35 years later again was wonderful. All so improvised and I especially noticed it was all about Neal Arbic from the revolutionary 80s Toronto band A Neon Rome. I was reminded of the time I called him, who was a powerful unique and somewhat mystical front man. I wanted to ask if he would do a double bill with me at the club off Front street called C’est Wha? The telephone answered but the person on the other end only made a sound, sort of like uh huh. Sort of with the inflections a baby might make. Very dynamic and glissando-like. I said hello is Neal there? Again the answering voice said something sounding like uh huh. I said Neal? He replied uh huh. I said it’s Bob Wiseman calling, he said uh huh. I said I was wondering if you would like to do a show with me at such and such date at C’est Wha? And he said uh huh in the affirmative. And because I had read lots of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Ram Dass, Pramahansa Yogananda, Aleister Crowley, etc. I right away sensed this guy has taken a vow of silence. How interesting. I said goodbye, again he said uh huh. He showed up on the date to do the show, didn’t speak to but seemed cheery and played guitar and sang words – but never spoke words. That was that. An odd duck and that was fine with me. I admired his work especially in the band. They blew me away more than any other local group I ever saw those days. I think it was 1988 because when Roadkill came out, about a band that was touring who had the problem of a lead singer that took a vow of silence, I instantly realized who this must be based upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I noticed an advertisement outside the Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles that they were playing Roadkill tonight, so I went. Don McKellar and Valerie Buhagiar did Q&A afterwards. I saw it […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-8292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}