Welcome to TRUE TALES OF THE ROAD, CHAPTER 87 -- Our guest this week is Edwin, the uni-named singer for I Mother Earth, which shares the bill with Moist at the Convention Centre this coming Thursday.

I Mother Earth's "gig from hell" occurred last year during a swing through the U.S., in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Edwin recalls: "The agent was like, OK, `you guys can pioneer this market. I think you could really do well. We have radio there, blah, blah, blah.' So we played this bingo hall. We headlined and there were a couple of local bands opening up. So the place was like three-quarters full and as soon as we went on, we were thinking, `OK, this could be all right,' but the room absolutely cleared by our third song. There was nobody, maybe two kids left that had actually come to see us. Everybody was there to see the two local opening bands.

"It took the wind right out of our sails. We actually played really well that night - too bad nobody except our crew saw it."

That's not likely to happen again, at least in Canada. As of yesterday, 4,250 fans have bought tickets to Thursday's concert.

Get yours by calling Ticketmaster at 451-8000.