Over The Rainbow

The Black Boot Trio had the CD release show for "Eternal Return" at The Rainbow April 15. I got out of work late (again); so I chugged down a carrot muffin I had in place of dinner and ran down Elgin St. - destination, Murray St. I actually have no idea where Murray St. is, but fortunately bumped into Casey Comeau on the way. A quick stop at a Rideau Centre Shopper's drug store for earplugs and to pick up And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead pictures, and we made it through the door just as the trio were making their way through their first song Many Young Men Consider Themselves Cowboys. The Rainbow's an interesting place, with an upper half-storey. You can look down, and see the band kind of like this:



Look, it's Geoff "Big Daddy" Taylor's on bass ... he even looks big from up here ...



People were lining the staircase up to the 2nd floor (really the third - a restaurant occupies the building's bottom floor). The view is a bit like this:



Of course, you want to check out Stef Bennett's killer drumming ...



A quick peek as you hit the landing ...



The stage is a good three or four feet above the dance floor (incidentally, can you guess the name of the record station that sponsored this shindig?).



All that going up and down stairs can do strange things to one's shutter speed. Must be the altitude fluctuation.



The club packs out pretty quickly.



For the encore they played Hank Williams' My Bucket's Got a Hole In It and George Jones' Out of Control, and reprised their own Four Horsemen. Is This All There Is figured in there somewhere, too.

• Spiky hair reminder: The Casualties, The Briggs and The Sewer Rats play Babylon; doors open at 5 p.m. so no way in heck I'm making that show ...