So we’re having a bit of a moment of civic pride here in Toronto right now. Our Toronto Blue Jays are back in the World Series for the first time in 32 years – game one tonight! – and one of our most famous musical contributions, Rush, just announced their return after retiring a decade ago. Both of these are quite meaningful to me as I’ve been a baseball fan for most of my life and while they would be quite an outlier amongst my musical tastes, I grew up listening to Rush and still love a lot of their stuff, my personal sweet spot running from 1980’s Permanent Waves through 1993’s Counterparts. I always regretted not going to see them live when they were touring, and after Neil Peart’s passing, I assumed I’d never get the chance, so yeah I’ll be in attendance at one of their hometown shows next year.

So how do these two disparate things (actually not that disparate – Geddy Lee loves baseball and the Jays) fit into this blog? Well, Catherine Wheel has always had a strange connection to Toronto. They were always wildly disproportionately popular here compared to the rest of the world; I’ve joked that a reunion could be made financially worthwhile if they just played here for 20 consecutive nights. They filmed the “Sparks Are Gonna Fly” video here – no trouble finding fanatical extras to be in the clip – and apparently manager Merck Mercuriadis – yeah the billionaire guy who started buying everyone’s music catalogs – loved Mexican hole in the wall Hernando’s Hideaway, located a block away from my old condo, and they would sometimes hang out there? I ate there a lot and never saw them.

They also recorded this Rush cover for the Spirit Of The Edge, Vol 2 compilation CD put out by local radio station CFNY (the same station that the original song was written about and that I will never call “The Edge”) in 1996, but of course it reached most ears as the bonus track on the Catherine Wheel b-sides compilation Like Cats & Dogs which came out later that same year. It’s certainly one of my favourite cuts the band ever recorded both for its salute to my hometown and for just being a great version.

Maybe we can get them back together to record a version of “Let’s Go Blue Jays!”? Rob Dickinson now lives in Los Angeles, so probably not.

And oh yeah, I just won tickets to tonight’s game one so… let’s goooooo!