Rocking… Once Again

UPDATE (added 29 November): The entire CityTV Breakfast Television segment is now available and can be viewed at the bottom of this page.

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UPDATE (added 13 November): We 'rocked it out of the park', as Terry put it, on CityTV's Breakfast Television show this morning.


We were at the Q-Music Studios. Jennifer Valentyne was the host. I won't lie... being live TV, it wasn't a walk in the park. I was nervous as hell. But Jennifer is cool and the CityTV cameraman is a seasoned pro who set us at relative ease. (I didn't get his name in all the excitement.) Having Terry, Topher and Robert around was comforting as well.


You can see a bit from towards the end of the show at Jennifer's blog here. Photos are uploaded here.


We had to get there at 5:30 a.m. for a 6:40 kick-off. It's hard to get that revved up that early in the morning! A couple of coffees helped some. We managed to pull it off , I think, though I still haven't seen a video of the entire show as yet.


How Marysia pulled those notes out that early in the morning, I have no idea. Shaky as I was, I still had fun. All in all, an awesome, awesome experience!


If Terry's phone is not ringing off the hook right now, I'll be very surprised.

Next stop... the Grey Cup Festival! Talking of which, entry is free. We're performing at the Double Blue Bash along with five other LOR bands. Front Street is going to be shut down in the vicinity of the Convention Centre that afternoon and it's going to be one massive party. We'll be performing indoors though. I hear they're expecting about 4,000 to 5,000 people. BTW, there's been a change in time, and LOR now takes over the stage at 3:15 (not 1:30 as I said earlier) and goes till 5:00. We, The RetroGreats, are slotted in somewhere in the middle, I believe.

Wow... I thought we'd be done with all this in mid-Spetember. And here are still rocking it in mid-November!

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UPDATE (added 24 October): The RetroGreats will perform at the Grey Cup Festival in Toronto on 24 November between 1:00 and 3:30 pm at the Metro Convention Centre as part of a League of Rock showcase! Further details on entry, etc., to follow.

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Ok... and here's the original blog on the subject.

It’s a funny thing… I write about all kinds of stuff. But, about two of the most important things going on in my life, I’ve not written a word. One is better left alone, joyless and homicidal anger-inducing subject that it is.

But the other…

…yeah baby… it’s been rock ‘n’ roll time again!!

It starts at Downtown Jam (DTJ), which I have mentioned earlier. After jamming there about twice a week for over a year and a half with all comers — the phenomenal, the good and a few bad — slowly a ‘band’ coalesced together. Starting about the spring of 2006, I started finding myself in the room with the same four other people every time I went in to play… the divine Marysia Gonzalez on vocals and keyboards, the good vet Gary Arzem on guitars, along with Ray Litvak. And Steve DeNiro, our rock solid bassman and frequent vocalist. Soon, we started venturing outside the DTJ bible and bringing in other songs to try. With Steve’s phenomenal ability to chart songs, it has been, and continues to be, a blast in every which way. We vibe together fantastically and every two-and-a-half hour session is a fun rock ‘n’ roll experience. Fuelled with copious amounts of beer (mostly me), and Ray and Steve’s ceaseless, oftentimes merciless and borderline maniacal ribbing of each other. We are a band, but have stopped short of naming ourselves. Perhaps because we’re not a ‘working’ band, it feels a bit presumptuous to do that!

Nevertheless, we were/are content.

But restless soul that I am, I ventured out once in a while and braved the open jam nights with Michael White and his band (a mixture of members from The White and Honeymoon Suite) at the Hard Rock Café’s Club 279. (And for that, I have to thank T1, for literally shoving me onto the stage.) Back at DTJ, I told Marysia what a rush it was. For months she would say she wants to come out and try it too. Got to tell you, it is very intimidating for a casual jammer to go up on stage there... first, you’re up with Michael and his boys, and second, a good 80 to 90% of the audience is made up of jammers of a very high calibre who’re listening intently to what you’re singing or playing and watching every move you make.

In any case, Marysia finally stepped out of the DTJ comfort zone. I was there the first night she took the stage with Michael’s band at Jeff Healey’s old place down on Queen and Bathurst… She wanted to do Kansas’s Carry on Wayward Son, which the boys were wary about attempting because none of them had played it for years. But Marysia cajoled them into it. And sweet baby Jesus, did she go up there and belt it out…

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I believe Ms M first smelt rock ‘n’ roll blood. Appetite whetted, she was ready for more…

As for me… I was a lost soul, landing fleetingly to greedily suck sustenance at the bi-weekly jams at DTJ, but otherwise floating adrift in a life bereft of any rock ‘n’ roll purpose.

And then in the spring of this year (2007)… though for the life of me, I can’t remember from whom or how… I heard about Terry Moshenberg’s League of Rock (LOR).

Though, in principal, there are similarities with the DTJ concept of adult non-pro jammers getting together to play, there are big differences too. For one, it’s much more money to join, and second, it’s not an open ended thing where you jam when you feel like it. At LOR, it’s a tight 10-week programme where you rehearse and are coached once a week for the first nine weeks. The coaches include some very heavy duty, long-time Canadian rockers… Alan Frew (Glass Tiger), Mike Tilka (Max Webster), Dan Clancy (Lighthouse) to name only three. Along the way, you get do two live performance showcases, at locations like Healey’s, in its new location on Blue Jays Way, or the Gibson Guitar Centre. (Though the earlier spring session had one showcase at The Phoenix, which I would have loved to play in.) At the end of the 10 weeks, you're thrown into a professional studio with real producers to record and make a CD.

Mike Tilka telling me to stop "growling". Larry agrees.

As it happens, though we had talked about going our separate ways to experience making music with other people, Terry drafted Marysia and I into a band along with bassist Pauline Blackwood. We’d jammed in the past with Pauline a number of times at DTJ, and I’d always thought highly of her as a bassist. Also drafted were guitarists Larry Ross and Steve Prentice, who we met for the first time ever at the draft event. Steve had played in bands earlier, but… and get this… Larry has never played with other people before!! Hooo boy… I thought to myself. This is going be interesting. Was it ever! But, in ways very different from what I thought it might be!

Seven bands were brought together that night.

Anyway… our name: The RetroGreats.

The three songs we picked, with very little discussion and dissent: Crazy on You (Heart), Refugee (Tom Petty), and Shook Me All Night Long (AC/DC)... pretty ambitious song list for a band comprising a stay-at-home mom, a busy TV producer, an investment banker, a show systems provider, and an equity research editor. I think of myself as either a very brave or very foolish person for things I have done in life… but it seems that in this band of people, for a brief while I had four equally crazy fellow travellers on the road to rock ‘n’ roll ignominy or glory.

Larry: concentrating way too hard

For the following eight weeks, we, and the six other bands that were brought together, went each Wednesday night for two-hour sessions, at the Rehearsal Factory. This is a huge rehearsal facility up at Geary Street, just north of Dufferin and Dupont.

The first few rehearsals were challenging, to say the least. Each of us had our noses buried in the song sheets and would whale away at our instruments. It was horrible. But Terry, his co-conspirator in LOR Topher Stott, and the coaches would pop in with words of encouragement and make suggestions. To their credit, they never winced once when they walked into our rehearsal studio. I suspect things weren’t going all that swimmingly in the other six rooms either.

Pauline: getting her groove on

Every rehearsal we went for, Terry and Topher had seven of the best rehearsal rooms picked out for the seven bands. Beer and pizza lined up... along with freaking oodles of energy and enthusiasm.

And we fed off it all… beer, pizza, the energy, enthusiasm, the psychedelic art on the walls, the mindbendingly loud and cacophonic ambience of the Rehearsal Factory…

Steve and psychedelia: feeding off the energy

As the days progressed, we started looking up from the charts and just playing along. And not as effing loud as when we first started, drowning each other out. Things started falling into place. But I was still having difficulty with the pitch of Refugee, which I insisted on singing. Damned if it didn’t hurt hitting those notes that Tom Petty somehow pulls out of his gonads. And then Mike Tilka ambles in and says to me after the Healey’s showcase, “Stop growling and you’ll hit the notes!” And damn, again, if he wasn’t right. The high notes still strained, but at least they didn’t shred my vocal chords to bits at every rehearsal.

I'd be lying though if I said if it all happened at the rehearsals. I had a week off during the summer (part way through this) all to myself up at my good friend John H's gorgeous chalet in Collingwood. I took backing tracks along with me, and sang my head off... till I hit those goddammed notes without collapsing on the floor in a coughing fit. The neighbours' dogs were in a bit of a state though, by the time I left the place at the end of the week.

And while on the subject of singing, one other thing... they say that if you hit a note clearly, you’ll feel the buzz down in your nuts. Trust me… it’s true.

Marysia: startling the neighbours

Marysia was transforming into a rock goddess… stalking around the room with her handheld microphone. (Which, we were later told, was feeding into the amps in the neighbouring rooms!) Pauline got off her butt, and started pounded out her bass notes with increasing doggedness. Larry, what to say of Larry? The man who’d spent all his years noodling on his guitar in the basement, was suddenly letting loose those demented lead licks from Crazy on You. And Steve, always finding that quiet counterpoint when the rest of us were going hell for leather, coming back each time with greater and greater clarity and polish on his rhythm. And me? I was just having a time of my life…

Refugee: getting it right

The night it all came together… I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. It was week six. As the rehearsal progressed, the band started gravitating toward the centre of the room till the four of them – Marysia, Steve, Larry and Pauline – were standing around in a shamanic circle as they played. Even back behind the drums, where I almost felt left out, I could hear everyone clearly. It was a moment of beautiful, tangible energy.

The Gibson Guitar Centre: waiting for the doors to open before a showcase...

...taking the stage, giving it all we got.

The music wasn’t anywhere near perfect. But that didn’t matter. We’d already told ourselves we weren’t going to be a note-for-note tribute band. We couldn’t be, even if we tried. We were re-interpreting the songs as best we could, within our abilities. The coaches seemed to like our ideas too and were helping us find ways to build on them.

Steve and Larry: finally loosening up and just 'playing'

That night, I came away feeling, for the very first time, that The RetroGreats were going to do just fine after all.

Too soon, our rehearsal weeks were done and we were facing studio time square in the face. It was quite a nerve-wracking week-long wait for me personally. I was itching to go. Terry had allocated two late night shifts to us, back to back, on a weekend. At Q Music, we ran into co-producer Robert Sibony. (Sentence deleted here at Robert's request.) He kept calling me Jizz (to the great amusement of the rest of the band, Terry and Topher) and got mightily upset when I drank his booze. But, what can one say… the man made magic with the imperfect raw material we gave him to work with.

At Q Music, top left to right: Topher, yours truly, Larry and Steve.

Bottom left to right: Robert, Marysia and Pauline.

Friday night, we had practically one take each on the three songs. Live. Straight off the floor. Some guitar parts were overlaid. And Marysia got a couple of cracks at her vocals. And that was it for session one. The next night, Saturday, I overlaid Marysia’s ghost vocals on Refugee. We did the backing vocal parts, and overdubbed a couple of guitar solos on all three songs. And then settled down for about three hours to watch Robert work his mixdown magic on Pro Tools. It was an awesome treat to see how the songs came together. At the end of the night, our three songs were ready. Mixed down, ready to be burned onto CD.

Simple and painless. A bit of tension. But, no breakdowns. No rock ‘n’ roll tantrums.

It was a beautiful thing... warts and all.

And two weeks later, graduation day (as Steve called it) at the Gibson Guitar Centre. What a night of celebration that was. Seven bands on stage one after the other. Each band was given the choice of doing one song live and having another played off the CD. We were slotted fourth in the line-up. We had decided on Crazy on You live, and Refugee off the CD. The room was packed with friends and family… come to see what we’d been up to one night a week all summer long.

On Graduation Day: Marysia, Larry and Steve

Marysia was a demon on stage. Arms lifted high in the air, unleashing those impossibly high notes of Crazy on You on a visibly awestruck audience. Larry and Steve nailed their guitar parts with precision – Steve cool and collected as ever, and Larry with his face scrunched up… Joe Walsh style. And Pauline, standing by me. Laying down a gut shaking groove… like our groove briefly held up the universe for those three and a half minutes.

And after we came off stage, the press wanted to talk to us.

Terry promises the complete rock ‘n’ roll experience… from forming a band, choosing songs, rehearsing, performing live, recording, producing… we got it all. And media exposure to boot.

Eyes shut wide: feeling the groove

Effing hell… I could get used to this rock ‘n’ roll business…

…all over again.

Note: All photos on this page are courtesy Terry Moshenberg/League of Rock. Video courtesy CityTV.