Regina has ultimate taste for the Stones
Pamela Cowan, Leader-Post (Regina)
Published: Thursday, October 05, 2006
Tongues are wagging all over Regina about the Rolling Stones.
At the corner of Thornton Avenue and Rae Street, Todd Apperley has constructed a giant hand-drawn tongue, which is flanked by the Union Jack and Canada's flag and is lit by a spotlight at night
Apperley began tooling the tongue a month ago. He hopes it will entice "some nice mates from across the pond" to drop over to his Lakeview home, sign his tongue tribute and share a few beers in his backyard.
If Apperley's wish comes true, he plans to donate the sign to the Children's Wish Foundation so they can raffle it to raise money for kids.
"I love the Stones," Apperley said Wednesday afternoon.
No kidding.
He's painted the Stones' signature tongue on his cap, shirt and jacket and his cell phone rings to his favourite song, "Start Me Up."
"I think I've lost my mind -- at least that's what people say, but it's once in a lifetime for Regina and you know, the boys are getting older," Apperley said.
He admires the Stones' endurance in spite of their struggles with drugs and booze.
"The whole meaning of rock and roll is what they put forward," he said. "Now they're trying to stay clean and get on with their lives and put out good music. It's just fantastic!"
A framer and house painter by trade, Apperley was between jobs when the band's setup crew rolled into town. Satisfaction came after he made 20 phone calls to track down who to talk to about being hired to set up the massive stage.
"The timing was just perfect," said the 39-year-old. "I've never ever done anything this big before. When we're watching the show, I can say, 'Hey, I helped build that.'
"I don't think Regina realized how big it was going to be but now that I'm helping to set up the stage -- get your tickets and get out there because it's just going to be rank!"
His partner, Lorrie McNeill, bought the Union Jack flag at a garage sale last weekend.
Although she's more restrained about her allegiance to the Stones, McNeill is excited about attending Friday's show.
"I think it's awesome for Regina," she said. "It's a chance in a lifetime for people who haven't seen them. I saw them once about 20 years ago in Calgary but they were younger then. I can't imagine what they'll do now."
Stones fever is everywhere, said Mayor Pat Fiacco.
"You just have to look around and you can tell that people are excited everywhere ... Some of the display windows that we're seeing in some of the stores and the signs that are out there -- it's fun stuff," he said.
Thousands more tongues, even tie-dyed ones, are hanging out at Vintage Vinyl & Hemp Emporium on 11th Avenue.
The 5,000-square-foot store features the Stones trademark on baseball caps, cowboy hats, toques, bunnyhugs, T-shirts, ashtrays, cufflinks, wall clocks and alarm clocks. Just inside the door are Stones LPs and tons of T-shirts are everywhere.
"We have 5,000 different T-shirts to choose from," said owner Pat Baumet. "We have the largest selection in Canada. If you wanted to count all our T-shirts, we probably have 50,000 to 60,000."
Jammed on racks in the vanilla-incense-filled shop are tongues on short and long sleeve shirts, sports jerseys and "girlie-styled hoodies." Plain classic tongue shirts vie for attention among flashier numbers with liquid and tie-dyed tongues. The mind-numbing selection of shirts also marks the Stones' many tours.
"We have a very unique shirt here that's a Canadian tour shirt and it's got a moose with the Canadian Maple Leaf on the tongue," Baumet said. "The demand has been there since they announced the show and a lot of roadies that are in town to set up the stage have been very impressed with the selection we've got here."
Baumet is also sending a written invitation to the Stones.
"We hope they want to come down and have a personal tour with the doors closed," he said. "Burton Cummings was here for the first Rock 'n the Valley. He came in with his road manager and about three days later he had his wife fly in to shop here ... She absolutely loved our tie-dyed dresses. She bought four or five of them as well as a lot of other tie-dyed stuff."
Expecting a crush of customers, Baumet plans to extend his weekend hours and pledges to "stay open all night Saturday to accommodate fans."
Regina gets Stoned
Saskatchewan set to prove that it rocks
Thu Oct 5 2006
Randy Burton (the Saskatoon Star Phoneix) Posted in Winnipeg Fre Press
Stones fan Todd Apperley hopes band autographs his Regina yard sign to raise money for charity
Without doubt, it's the biggest entertainment spectacle ever to hit Saskatchewan.
This Thanksgiving weekend, Regina will host not just one, but two sold-out shows by "the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world," the Rolling Stones.
Some 90,000 people in total will pour into Mosaic Stadium, the home of the Roughriders, tomorrow night and Sunday to watch Mick Jagger and his invincible cohort Keith Richards put the band through its paces.
Everything about the Stones tour is larger than life. The stage construction is eight storeys high and takes a crew of 400 people to build. To move it requires the services of 80 semi-trailers. During the course of the concert, it's expected that the fans will drink the equivalent of 360,000 beers.
In the spirit of the party atmosphere, the provincial liquor authority has decided to allow the bars to stay open an hour later, so last call will be at 3 a.m. and closing will be at 4 a.m.
document.
The city has suspended its noise bylaw temporarily to accommodate the crews if they have to work through the night to get the massive stage ready on time. The biggest controversy surrounding accommodations for the erstwhile Bad Boys of Rock seems to be whether Richards will be allowed to smoke on stage.
This kind of accommodation is not unusual where big events in Saskatchewan are concerned, whether it's a Grey Cup or any of a number of Briers.
But the significance of this event is much greater. Elton John has played Saskatchewan, but that didn't change the place. Cher came and went, but the Earth didn't move.
This time it's different. The Stones concerts are taking on mythic proportions in the Saskatchewan psyche. It is seen here as a coming of age for a province where disappointment is always just around the corner.
This time, victory is at hand.
Saskatchewan is the only prairie province where the Stones have never played. This year, Regina is one of only three stops on the Stones' Canadian tour, along with Halifax and Vancouver. And it's the only stop on the fall leg of their Bigger Bang tour where the band is playing twice.
The Stones' interest in playing before audiences that have never had the opportunity to see them before has been repaid in full by their prairie fans.
While it took a full day to sell out the Vancouver show, Regina sold out in 20 minutes. When the band added a second show, the tickets were gone in an hour. Obviously, there is a pent-up demand for the Stones here, but it's more than that. This event taps into two big undercurrents in Saskatchewan culture.
One is the conviction that given the opportunity, this province can compete with any jurisdiction in the country. The other is the tribal nature of the province. Outside of Newfoundland, perhaps, there is no other province in the land that has so many expatriates scattered across the country, nor any so proud of their roots.
You need only look at the national fan base for the Saskatchewan Roughriders for proof of that. So as the leaders of the biggest tribe of fans in the world, the Stones are the perfect fit for Saskatchewan.
Regina mayor Pat Fiacco says "it is pretty amazing, but it's about time, don't you think?"
Fiacco notes that unlike Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, a big occasion in Saskatchewan does not get lost in the competition for attention with other events. The whole province hears about it and gets behind it.
Aside from the obvious windfall for hotels and restaurants over Thanksgiving, the Stones shows will also bring international attention to the province, making it a potential stop for other major entertainment events. When the excitement from this is over, Fiacco says the city intends to start promoting the football stadium as a venue for other big shows.
"We all know this is a place that can support such an event but those who are doing it nationally have to give us a chance," Fiacco said in an interview.
Of course, no event of this size is without a political element. Premier Lorne Calvert is hoping this sends a message to those who might be thinking of leaving the province.
"It's that intangible that says, particularly to the young person, that this is the place to be, that things happen here," Calvert said in an interview. It also fits nicely into the government's effort to boost the music industry here. The province and the four largest cities embarked on a strategy some time ago to attract all the major music awards shows to Saskatchewan.
Over the course of the next year, Saskatchewan will host four major musical events including the Junos, the Canadian Country Music Awards, the Western Canadian Music Awards and the yet-to-be-announced Aboriginal Music Awards.
It was at this year's Juno awards that Calvert met with Stones promoter Donald K. Donald and got the ball rolling on bringing the band to Saskatchewan.
Naturally the premier will be on hand for the show, wearing "something warm."
Ron Waldman, president and CEO of Great Western Breweries, who beat out both Molson and Labatt for the right to sell beer at the shows, says the weekend will cause people from outside the province to take a fresh look at what's going on here.
"I think it's a situation where we're saying to the world, 'you're all invited. But the party's happenin' here'."
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