With apologies for the late update of the site, here is probably the most unique and potentially most exciting episode of the slipstream to date. This past weekend I trawled around the sights and sounds of the LOLA festival, with my digital camera in tow, which turned out to have a sound recorder for its damn decent mic. So as it turned out I used my status as a community radio host to get some interviews with various folks. The interviews are occasionally of subpar quality, but I did learn a lot about the process from a technical and theoretical standpoint. I also managed to record a few special LOLA performances, which crop up also (see tracklisting for details of course). And just to keep things lively, behind my inane ramblings, you can hear snatches of many live performances recorded throughout the weekend at Victoria Park. It was thrown together in a bit of a mad panic on Sunday as I was leaving in the evening for Toronto, but I think it’s still worth a listen, and hope you will to. So what are you waiting for.. check it out (on the podcast, or the link above). Also, LOLAfest is a really exciting event and one of my most favourite things of a long while, so it’s worth looking into and encouraging similar endeavours.

Holy Fuck / The Pulse / Holy Fuck (EP) (2007)
My Brightest Diamond / Golden Star (Stop Die Resuscitate Remix) / Unreleased (2007)

*DJ TLO / Scratching Solo / Live at LOLA (2007)
Sixtoo / Sidewinders / Chewing on Glass & Other Miracle Cures (2004)
OK Cobra / Child In Rhyme / OK Cobra (2006)
Prefuse 73 / One Word Extinguisher / One Word Extinguisher (2003)

Interview with LOLA festival director Andrew P Francis

Beach House / Apple Orchard / Beach House (2006)
Sandro Perri / Family Tree / Tiny Mirrors (2007)
Torngat / Minute By Minute / You Could Be (2007)

Interview with artist Mr Ghosty

*Final Fantasy / Paris 1919 (John Cale cover) / Live at LOLA (2007)
Ohbijou / Steep / Swift Feet For Troubling Times (2006)
Basia Bulat / Snakes and Ladders / Oh My Darling (2007)
Meligrove Band / Planets Conspire / Planets Conspire (2005)

Akron/Family / Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music For Moms / Love Is Simple (2007)
The Acorn / Flood Pt.1 / Glory Hope Mountain (2007)
The Hylozoists / Strait Is The Gate / La Fin Du Monde (2006)

Interview with Constantines singer Bryan Webb

*Constantines / Million Star Hotel / Live at LOLA (2007)

Old Man Luedecke / Roustabout / Hinterland (2006)

Read on for an assortment of videos and pictures that i managed to grab while I was hanging around…
(more…)

Yes.

Some I want to see more than others.

Italicized shows have been attended. (Parenthesized shows mean I probably won’t go, but are noteworthy). Starred shows I have tickets to.

Here’s a brief, in progress, rundown (this list will hoperfully be kept uptodate, also some weblistings contradict each other, so I might not be sure wtf):

Oct 02: Yo La Tengo - Phoenix - Toronto - $22.50
Oct 09: Under Byen (w/Giant Sand) - The Horseshoe - Toronto - $15.00
Oct 11: The New Pornographers - Kool Haus - Toronto - $20.50
Oct 12: TV on the Radio (w/ guests, Grizzly Bear?) - The Opera House - Toronto - $17.50 - sold out.
Oct 14: Art Brut (w/ We Are Scientists, Spinto Band) - The Opera House - Toronto - $17.50 - Doors 2030
Oct 28: The Hold Steady - The Horseshoe - Toronto - $15.00 Adv
Oct 29: Love is All - The Horseshoe - Toronto - $10.50 Adv
Nov 05: Califone - The Horseshoe - Toronto - $10.00 Adv
Nov 06: The Decemberists (w/ Alasdair Roberts) - Kool Haus - Toronto - $22.50

From Sept 17-21, I saw the four best concerts of the year so far. Four very different concerts at four very different venues. And they all blew my mind (or at least came damn close) in their own big way. I was going to post this all nearly after the fact, but the busyness, fullness, laziness and a little bit of the greatness of life conspired for it to take rather long.

Following is a lengthy but brief account of U2, Lal, Peoples Republic, Saul Williams, Amina, Sigur Ros, Annie and Royksopp live in Toronto and Hamilton over four sweetly consecutive days.

Saturday, Sept 17: U2 - Air Canada Centre - Toronto.

It’s no secret that Damon likes U2. Hell, he basically didn’t listen to any other band between 1994 and 1998, and then it was about 50% U2 for 2 years and a bit. Now, of course, they don’t get to occupy much of my aural schedule and they probably never will again. Largely because their new material is uninspired. But whatever. The old songs are still as good. They still know how to work a crowd like nothing else. The light show is fookin’ incredible.

I was looking forward to this concert less than I might have been. But when it got down to the wire and Wake Up by Arcade Fire was playing and then the arena was plunged into darkness, I was pretty damn thrilled. I actually trembled with excitement for a bit, which was nifty. The band was pretty tight (they’ve probably been tighter). But ohh the lights, and ohhh the crowd, and the soaring songs. Here’s the thing… at a U2 concert the audience is almost as important as the band. Being in a huge room with 20k overly enthusiastic people, it’s hard not to be quite enthusiastic oneself, and it feels damn good. Everyone singing along, cheering loudly, being moved, being rocked. It’s all one giant churchlike catharsis.. and that’s the power of music as went on to be demonstrated on this and on the next three days.

Highlights of the show: Great setlist and good variety of songs from their older albums (too much from Bomb, but that’s to be expected) we even got a B-Side, and the Ocean and Electric Co. During One they pulled up Daniel Lanois and afterwards Eddie Vedder onto stage for a little singsong of Old Man River. Very cool. The first encore was just about the best thing ever. All of a sudden we hear a familiar beat and melody… … popmuzik!! which eventually turned into Discotheque (first song from Pop on the whole tour i think). we hoped for Mofo, but that was swell enough. The ZooTV style fly display was hella awesome. And Bono bellowing out Pavarroti’s part in Miss Sarajevo was incredible. I especially liked Bono’s intro to Miracle Drug: saying how Edge is from the future on another planet, and when he landed in Dublin his spaceship was playing those 4… no 5 notes. When Edge came out of his spaceship, Larry asked him “what’s the future like?” and Edge just said “better.” Then he dedicated the song to the Sick Children’s Hospital. A powerful little sentiment. A powerfully gigantic show.

Sunday, Sept 18: Lal, Peoples Republic, Saul Williams - Pepperjack Cafe - Hamilton.

This show was a bit of a gamble. Lal sounded pretty neat on record, Saul Williams is pretty cool and has a pretty hot rep but some people weirdly don’t seem to like him, and Peoples Whothehellwhatsit? *shrug*

First of all, props to the venue. Really nice place, nice atmosphere, nice stage, good acoustics. Makes the Underground look like a hole in the ground… wait.. never mind. It was easy to see it was an older clientele: no IDing, quieter, less hollering and lameness, a very mature crowd; probably mostly determined by the slightly steep 25 buck ticketprice (for another show that might be a concern, this one was worth more).

LAL was awesome, because LAL is trip-hop. And it actually worked really well live. The singer had an awesome voice, and kept doing this thing where she’d sing the same line over and over while walking to and away from the mic - sounded really good. The production courtesy of dude in the back with a laptop was mellow, kinda glitchy sonic massaging. Come to think of it, every act was just one emcee and one producer guy with a whole whack of confusing buttons and cranks to pull and twist. I guess that’s hip hop live for you. Haven’t seen to much of it in all honesty.

Peoples Republic was startlingly awesome. Good production (are you afraid of the dark? scrrreeeeeach). The fella spittin’ tha rhymes (and in fact the other dude) used to be in Warsawpack (notice a trend with the names?) nothing wrong with some good old whiteboy socialist rap, right? Most of the lyrics were pretty jaw-droppingly good, which is always surprising when you have no idea who the bloke is. Unfortunately I can’t really find any info about this stuff online as it’s not the easiest thing to google for.. I don’t quite think they have any releases yet. Wish I could quote the lyrics.. but some songs were: monotony rock, terror level red, blackout, we walk among devils. much bang on lyricism.

But how can you even talk about lyricism in comparison to Saul fucking Williams? This dude… this dude. wow. He really is a poet. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on stage with quite that much conviction and sincerity. Slow songs, thumping songs. Standing still, the crowd enraptured. Dancing around manically, the crowd pumping. During one song, the beats cut out and it was just Saul a capella, and then he lowered the mic and it was just his unamplified voice twisting and bending words like nothing else. He was in fact perhaps at his most powerful a capella, but the raucous grimy beats were a necessary and pretty sweet counterpoint. Saul was pretty much like a preacher a lot of the time, and thankfully his messages were definitley ones I’d agree with. If not, by the end of the show I’d probably be convinced. It was obvious he himself stood behind his words 100%.

This show certainly taught me some things, or rather reinforced them in a boot-to-the-head sort of fashion: people who think hip-hop is not a completely profound method of self-expression, and those that think music shouldn’t be political are completely wrong and should have terrible things done to them if they refuse to change their opinion after being asked nicely.

Monday, Sept 19: Sigur Ros - Massey Hall - Toronto.

I’d heard some very very good things about Sigur Ros live from two of the people who went to the show with me (Ian ‘lowball’ Delong and Michael Mikhai Hightower Dealerdog MacCool Roellinghoff el Conquistador) so I thought I was in for a bit of a treat. Boy was I wrong. This was not a bit of a treat, this was a gigantic mother of a creamsicle filled crazy-pie of a treat. Though I must say that using sweets and candy to describe this show might be completely dumb.

This was my first time at Massey Hall, and seeing music somewhere that was designed to be have it played in is absolutely wonderful. It was a very different crowd, too. We even got shushed as we came up the stairs a couple songs into Amina’s opening set (they played a saw with a mallet and a bow, it was all pretty great, and definitely cool but nothing on Sigur.. even though they ended up being Sigur’s string quartet) and there was actually silence during the songs and then polite and exuberant applause in between.

The band started with a gigantic sheet across the stage and lights shining outward to splash their shadows on it in a large fashion, it was a really neat effect though they got rid of it for the second song. The image of Jonsi’s gigantic shadow holding a violin bow and playing his guitar with it will not soon leave, it was just such a peculiar and unique motion, in other surrounds it might have been truly terrifying. The production of the show was quite excellent, lots of lights in many colours but very appropriate, and a lot of abstract sorts of films projected gigantically behind the band.. birds on a wire, a baby’s face for a whole song etc.

The music itself is obviously the focal point of a show like this, and boy did it deliver. Sigur Ros could easily be lumped with what we in the biz call post-rock. Long, langurously intense songs, built on fluttering of pianos and walls guitar and violin noise, with some plaintively high vocals that are either Icelandic or gibberish, but it doesn’t quite matter. The songs move with grace between hammering intensity and sparse, delicate beauty.

Half of the experience was mental, which is rather unique from the concerts I usually attend. The music sort of provided a nice set of paints to use on the canvas of my mind. It’s a really lame sounding metaphor, but it’s fairly appropriate. I had a bunch of really nifty ideas just from hearing the music, cause this music is probably best described as profoundly inspiring. The only difficulty with the concert was that every three minutes I wanted to rush out of the hall and write a novel or shoot a movie. Powerful, deeply affecting sorts of stuff. And recommended for basically everyone in the entire world.

The concert was perhaps best summed up by Ian’s friend Erin who attended the concert having never heard the music of Sigur Ros before. Mike asked her if she liked the concert and her response was something along the lines of “how could I not? it was like, pure beauty or something.” Yes.

Tuesday, Sept 20: Annie, Royksopp - Opera House - Toronto.

After Sigur Ros, the stakes were pretty damn high. How could sometimes goofy Norwegian electropop compete with those profound Icelandic swells of inspiration? It turns out this show might have taken the cake if Ontarians/Torontonians knew how to be not lame and dance at a blatantly DANCE SHOW (I’m planning much longer diatribe and analysis for the Sil at some point, perhaps in a new column entitled why everyone should be more like me). But it was still pretty awesome.

The Opera House is a pretty sweet venue. It was indeed, at one point, an opera house. There’s fancy windows, an arch over the stage and a big balcony up at the back. There’s haze and red light falling on the surrounds so it looks like a sort of post-something ghost of an opera house. Very funky.

Annie was really more than you should bargain for for an opening act. Unfortunately short set, but she played all the main ones and for some messed up reason the songs were actually better live than on album. She was backed with 2 Finnish gentlemen: a guitarist/percussionist and a nob-twiddler, and they really did a good job of even having some jamming etc. Also, Annie is extremely attractive. And Norwegian. So that was good.

Didn’t really know what to expect from Royksopp, live electronic music is never easy to predict, or pull off. But wow. Royksopp (that being two Norwegian dudes.. I don’t know their names so I’ll call ‘em Royk and Sopp from left to right) came out dressed in fancy red shirts with black ties, and behind them they had a gigantic inflatable cassette tape with their name on it, and in front of that a whole bucketload of electronic shenaniganery… there were mixers, and keyboards, and some drum kits and other more mysterious devices.

The performance itself was pretty flawless, they were awesomely into it, the songs worked surprisingly amazing live, the light show was awesome. It was really cool when they brought real live girl singers on stage to sing, too. Their music is pretty mellow, almost chill-out on album (at least Melody AM), but live it really jumps out and grabs you, and shakes you around a bit. The show was really great at the beginning, but the stoic audience really detracted from it, for the last couple songs of the main set things got better. (I had been going bananas consistently for a while) It is a demonstrable fact that when during poor leno everyone just let go and started jumping and singing along, you could tell that everyone in the building.. the band, the audience, the lighting technician, even the coupld people who still refused to dance.. everyone’s enjoyment of the concert increased dramatically.

I’ve always wanted to see a band like Orbital or Underworld live, and though I wasn’t expecting it beforehand, Royksopp pretty much gave me that oppurtunity. The first encore (as confirmed later by a setlist someone managed to snag) was made of unreleased songs.. basically jams it seemed like, that occasionally incorporated bits of their other songs. Really great idea for an encore, I think (like when the Cons just do covers for their encores) that makes it really seem like a bonus, rather than just a prerehearsed hollow excuse to make the audience wreck their voices. But what’s a better bonus? An actual unplanned encore, which we got due to the mindblowing exuberance exhibited by the crowd. It was great. Kevin and I started doing this unison arm bopping kinda thing during the chorus and Royk acknowledged us with a point of finger and a nod, which was way cool.

Hearing such great music so loud, and as organic as it really can be and just going all out and grooving to it is a wonderful experience, and an appropriate way to end my concert marathon with a bang, just as it started.

There’s some pictures and further discussion here

The Organ

Controller.Controller

Adem

Explosions in the Sky

In the afternoon Colin and Amy came up and they, I, and Brian saw the play ‘The Love List’ which had Colin’s uncle in it (so we got 2 free tickets which made it quite worthwhile). It was very funny, light-hearted, goodtimes. Then we ate some really good cheap pizza and showed up to the Underground for the Arcade Fire show. And these guys really have blown up, my oh my there was quite a line-up. Then Colin decided the ten dollars was too much for him to spend on a band he didn’t really know, so he got in the Lexus and drove back to London. Poor guy. In retrospect, it might have been criminal to charge any less for the show.

The first of the opening bands was Heston Rifle. They play what might be described as post rock metal. Violin and guitars and interweaving melodies and then lots of hardcore noise-wall rocking. The violinist was cute but she kept hiding back by the rear speaker-stacks, and the bassist played really hard and made his fingers bleed all over his guitar. I guess it was pretty cool, but not really my cup of tea, so to speak.

Belle Orchestre followed, and they were awesome. They called for silence by raising their right hands and just waiting for the crowd to quiet down a bit and then launched into their orchestral intensely fun music. They used a wide variety of instrumentation, and at one point the guy with the french horn and the guy with the trumpet went out into the crowd and played a bit. Lots of neat percussing with chains and multiple drumsticks and stuff as well. Three of the members were shared with Arcade Fire as well. Overall they were pretty awesome, similar vein to Arcade Fire but a bit lighter and sunny. I really wish I’d had the money for their CD.

And then it was time for The Arcade Fire. And it was an instant sort of ‘holy shit’ moment that almost gave me chills. They did Laika first and Richard Reed Perry (the distinctive looking fellow with the glasses) went manic and started smashing everything with his drum sticks.. the stage, keyboards, tambourines, you name it. There were splinters flying, and damn it was intense. And with such an awe inspiring initial impression working away at piquing my exuberence, the show progressed. Win’s voice was pretty rough (listening to the album, the way he sings really doesn’t seem healthy) but it didn’t make too much difference. I would have wished that the audience could’ve all sang along every single word a la a U2 concert, but.. maybe in a couple years. The slow songs often missed a bit of punch due to Win’s hurting vocals but they were still awesome, and the fast songs kicked major major ass. They played everything from Funeral plus four other songs which were likely all from the EP (I know at least No Cars Go was). They had really good, entertaining stage banter as well, which is always a plus.. talking about how they finally realized there was more to Hamilton than the 20 ft around Underground, etc. They had all sorts of fun instruments as well… accordian, french horn, violin, stand up bass (sometimes bowed), 2 keyboards, 2 xylophones, drums, bass guitar, guitar, 12 string guitar, bells on guy’s legs, fun flute, triangle, steel drum, lots of tambourines and various other percussive type things, and maybe some other things I’m forgetting or didn’t manage to notice. And they also switched instruments like mad.. Regine played drums for a couple songs, and they were constantly moving around. Except for the violinist who stayed put on the other side of the stage, but I don’t think she’s technically in the band. Regardless, It was powerful, powerful stuff. It’s difficult to describe the music, I suppose earnest, honest, emotional, and soaring would be some choice adjectives for it, as well as wickedly good. The highlight of the show for me was probably Power Out, wickedly followed up by Rebellion (Lies), and Tunnels was also high up on the list, but there was nary a dull moment to be found. I have definitely not used that much energy at a show this year, nor have I heard that much audience enthusiasm at a club show… ever, I think. I was totally stoked afterwards and so bought a t-shirt and a CD, and then some gatorade to rebuild those electrolites and have green sweat. Oh I’m a good little consumer, I am. The excitement and rush lasted well after the concert had ended, which is the sign of an evening supremely well spent. It’s hard to decide definitively, but The Arcade Fire are at least dangerously close to being the best live band (out of 30+) that I’ve seen in the last three years.

Pictures here.

my camera became a bit of a community commodity this time, so only most, and not all, of the pictures were taken by my own hands

Heston Rifle

Belle Orchestre

THE ARCADE FIRE

http://www.radioslipstream.com/wp/?p=28 Expectations can be a real bitch. I’d been keenly looking forward to the Ted Leo show at Call the Office for a rather long time. It was a strange situation: I found out they were playing at CTO a month and a bit ago, and the name sounded familiar, so I looked into them… and it was love from first note. I started counting the days until the concert; and so my entire relationship with the band has been based around their performance in London, that happened last night.

Ted Leo and his (fully certified?) Pharmacists (Chris on drums, Dave on bass) didn’t waste much time getting on stage and getting the show started. They got all their shit together, microphones checked, amps connected, and they hit the first note of My Vein Ilin somewhere around a quarter to midnight.

And they rocked.

Pretty much any positive musical adjective I can think of could apply, but I will pick and choose for the sake of time and length constraints. Around the time of All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s release, one of our friend Bono’s stock quotes was about joy in music: how it’s easy to sing about broken hearts and wasted lives but much more difficult to deliver a compelling song that has true joy at its core. Well, Ted Leo makes it seem pretty easy. And profound. The well of the high spirits as the beat pumps along at full force and the melodies leap deliriously about is truly spectacular. The songs are not all of a single mood, they bend from menacing to tragic and angry to euphoric, but they constantly maintain the pure vitality of flight and energy that generally permeates great music (at least the kind I find myself partial to). It puts a smile in your heart a bob to your head. Moreover, the musicianship is technically masterful; intricate, complex, and inspired. There were moments where it seemed as if there was a drum solo, a guitar solo, and a bass solo taken and layered on top of eachother to create a beautiful, ordered cacophony. And on top of that some really poetic, insightful, wise, and bigworded lyrics.

But I already knew all of that from listening to the albums. And I was of course hoping that all of that would translate well to the stage. I should have known. Because the band is so fervent and direct, the music works ridiculously well live, and surpasses the album versions pretty easily just from the raw energy smashed out through the songs on stage. They played a very great majority of all the songs from both The Tyranny of Distance, and Hearts of Oak. Ted himself is quite the showman, and whether he gives the songs energy or they give it all to him, he has a lot. He hopped/danced around a lot and gave the lyrics his all. Chris was pretty manically banging on the skins as well, though Dave and his bass was a much more passive affair, with his fingers doing most of the movement. Ted was also very talkative between songs without ever once resorting to the tired, overused, and potentially annoying “Is everyone having a good time?…I’m sure you can do better than that!” routine. He referenced homestarrunner and seemed surprised no one else got the reference, asked for an update on what happened in our election cause he wouldn’t hear about it in the vacuum that is the United States (the band was last in Canada about a month ago), and though he claimed he couldn’t take sides, he hinted through mime and mouthing that he would support NDP if it came down to it. He also talked about the new album (which they played 4 or 5 songs from), mentioned they’d likely be back in the fall in support of it (!!!!), gave the Blues festival several mentions, and asked the audience which song they’d like to hear at least once. At one point Dave’s bass completely stopped working during the middle of a song and when it became obvious that it wouldn’t be fixing itself quickly, it came down to The Reputation to lend a hand and some equipment. It turns out that the picture I snapped of the members of both bands conferencing at the edge of the stage was the last my memory card had room for, I was surprised this had happened so quickly until I realized that they’d already been on stage longer than your average club show headliner. In order to negate extended dead air while the bass was being, Ted Leo played a solo number (I think it was Ghosts, but I’m not totally up on all the song titles) and then as I was about to yell out a cover of Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town as a suggestion (they’ve released it on the Tell Baleary Balgury is Dead EP), Monsieur Leo said something along the lines of “This song could really be about any city…” and then played Dirty Old Town. This made Damon very happy. I really do hope my occasional loud singing along didn’t completely ruin the videorecording being done by the young woman next to me. Eventually the bass problem was resolved and they got back into the thick of things.

They ended the main set with a lovely cover of Stiff Little Fingers’ Suspect Device. For the encore they played Parallel or Together, which was very nice because it’s one of my favourite songs of theirs, but I had forgotten to be waiting for them to play it beacuse I was being inundated with so much great music (I will admit almost all of their songs are favourites of mine). Then they ended the night by playing, by request, a very nicely done cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark.

So by the time they left the stage for good and the house music started once again, it was already 1:30. Some quick math revealed that the band had been up there for something like an hour and forty five minutes! Definitely beyond what you normally expect from a club show, and even if you don’t consider the very enjoyable opening band, definitely more than you deserve for seven dollars. And in the aftermath, I’ve had seven or eight Ted Leo/Rx songs happily wedged in my head constantly trading places and vying for attention, which is usually a good sign.

The final verdict: Near perfection. Hands down the best concert I have ever seen for less than $10. I can’t logically expect to see a better show this year, except perhaps when Ted Leo comes back, as he promised he would. And when Ted Leo returns to London, Hamilton, Toronto, or wherever, you owe it to yourself to go see him. I intend to remind you.

Some info on The Reputation’s new album, including a high quality mp3 is available here. You can also find some videos and mp3s of Ted Leo & the Pharmacists ’round these parts (look under video, and the album descriptions in ‘discography’ for some individual mp3s).

The pictures I took of the night’s proceedings are here.

The Reputation

Ted Leo/Pharmacists

Junior Boys

Manitoba

And one bonus, out of focus (because I forgot to use the flash) picture of the anti-racism consortium held on stage during the end of the concert

Lyrics Born rocked that show, I think. He was totally tight, had such a great lyrical delivery, and just so fun to watch him bobbing around. I thought he seemed to be having an inordinant amount of fun goofing around with Joyo Velarde.. and I just read that they are in cahoots romantically.. which explains all the giggling. Gab was awesome, but got a little muddled and was sometimes a little hard to understand… mostly because he was rapping faster than the speed of sound. He did alphabet aerobics perhaps even faster than the recorded version, but overall he didn’t have quite the same feeling as he does on record. I also was reaaally impressed with Lifesavas.. They rocked! I didn’t get into their album too much before, but they really knew how to move the crowd, and now i’ve been listening to the album and loving it, it was super cool when Vursatyl chatted with a prerecorded version of himself on the video screens during ‘hellohihey’. All in all everybody was great. Lateef looked kinda like he wouldn’t be out of place in a band like Staind… except that he has creative spirit and is an awesome lyricist, so big difference there.

I gotta say, though, I got a bit sick of the pandering for crowd noise.. I guess it’s sort of the ‘hip hop thing’, but they coulda kept that to more of a minimum for great effect. I was cheering so much I was short of breath and hardly able to cheer anymore anyway, so when that wasn’t enough I got a little cranky. It feels much better to cheer when things are awesome and great (which they were) rather than because the mcs are asking us to constantly. I guess I’m still getting used to this type of sorta quiet crowds.. the first concerts I went to were the floor of U2 shows.. and at those the crowd is always so insane there’s really nothing the band could say to possibly change that. I wish everyone was like that all the time. Or at least while at concerts.

Kind of shitty they decided to not let me bring my digital camera into the show.. I didn’t bring it to the ninjatune show at kool haus last month cause i heard they’d probably take it away, but they didn’t give me any trouble so i figured this time it’d be clear sailing. Not so though. At least I got my newly bought Spectrum CD signed by Lyrics Born, Vursatyl, and Gift of Gab who were out chattin with fans after the show.. that was quite awesome! And as the night wound down I had all sorts quannum tunes raging through my head for a really long time, and now i’m listening to ‘em in a constant sort of nature. I’d quite like to go back to the show right now.. and that’s the mark of a good time. Wish I had a setlist though, cause while I recognized most of the songs, I didn’t know which ones they all were.

In other news of little import, my 2 exams seemed to go pretty well in the aftermath of the show. English I thought went very well, and Communications Studies went less well, but still decently. Or so I hope. It’s really hard to know how they’re gonna be marking the exam essays, so I guess I will find out how well it went at some later date.

I became instantly rather set on the idea of going to said performance, and spent much of the day trying to convince various people to come. Of course it’s a heavy time for schoolwork, and nobody seems to have money, or want to spend it on a band they haven’t heard of, so once again I ended up making the GO trip to Toronto by myself. I chanced to meet Dallas and Tara and their friend whose name I don’t know because it’s kind of a running gag not to tell me, which was very fortuitous, and they offered me a ride back to Mac after the concert, so that was a happy little thing. The opener was Tom Heikl, who performed several “stereoke” numbers, which basically consisted of him semi-awkwardly singing rather funny songs along to backing tapes that he put in his stereo which he had on stage along with his chair and lamp from home in Eugene, Oregon, and an empty gasoline can that he used as instrument at one point. It was hilarious at first, and still at least partially amusing to the very end.

The Decemberists eventually took the stage after an elongated opera introduction, and they were good to the last drop! Colin Meloy’s clear, earnest voice rang out brilliantly above the beautiful chorus of harmonious instrumentation. Some of the funnest parts of the show were the goof induced banter. Like when Chris Funk’s guitar playing faltered due to an alleged case of carpal tunnel syndrome resulted in an interlude of strumming and encouragement from the audience and Colin calling out that “Jimmy Page never had carpal tunnel syndrome!” as well as other very famous people, and then performing a little impromptu reinterpretation of The Modern Lovers “He could walk down you street/And girls could not resist his stare/Pablo picasso never got carpal tunnel syndrome!” Other fun things happened as well, but I will keep them all to myself. The band decided to “festoon themselves” with Canada stickers all over their equipment, and Chris wore a canada hat… good to see they know what’s what! Despite that they didn’t play my two favourite Decemberists songs (California One, Shanty for the Arethusa) there were no misses, and so many songs were imbued with a great spirit live. Their newest release, the epic “Tain” was performed at least mostly in it’s entirety… 18 minutes of Celtic metal in the loose retelling of “Tain Bo Cuailinge” from the Ulster cycle. It was very well done, and fun to see the band rocking out like that, though it was so long I felt I might have enjoyed hearing 3 or 4 of their other amazing songs. They really have too many good ones to play ‘em all. The last song, “I was meant for the stage”, was a definite highlight, beginning with Colin alone and then eventually joined by the rest of the band coming back onstage, and then Tom Heikl with a trombone.. in the end it (de)generated into a chaotic frenzy of dissonance and clatter, but in an appropriate last song sort of way.

I don’t have pictures to prove it this time…as I tried to capture one of the opening act, it soon became evident I hadn’t put the damn memory card back in my camera, despite having a memory kicking around of doing exactly that. Nor do I have, unfortunately, any way of permanently capturing the absolute perfection of the weather this night. Fresh night air in Hamilton is, happily, possible after all. This bodes well for the future!

“Those pictures of ‘the midget blow-job queen’ are incredible! Great job!!!” - Joel “Hooch” Perkins