National Velvet Trasheteria, Guelph Ontario: 198? El Mocambo, Toronto Ontario: 199? Phoenix, Toronto Ontario: December 29 2003 The first two venues I listed there are the only ones where I can actually confirm that I saw them. In reality, I probably saw that band play about 20 times. I loved this band. They played energetic poppy songs with enough balls to knock you off your feet. The singer, Maria Del Mar, wasn't one of these honey-voiced girl singers. She belted it out like a Valkyre and looked about 10 feet tall when she up on stage, kicking and jumping and belting it out along with the music. The last gig I saw was one that was hardly advertised at all. I happened to see a post by one of the opening acts on a local Livejournal community mentioning the gig. I didn't even know if it was the original band or not, but on the chance that it was I headed out to the Phoenix on a cold winter night. It was them. They still got it. I was curious to see if they still had the original lineup and it turned out that there were four out of the five original members on stage. After about three songs the reason for the missing person was explained - they brought the former bass player's mother on stage to talk about her son, who apparently died the year before. The whole show was very much a nostalgia gig for family and friends. I got the sense that a lot of people who knew them as people "back in the day" were out for this night and that a general audience was pretty much an afterthought. Which explains the minimal amount of promotion. Since it was a nostalgia gig, I wasn't surprised that their entire set list was old material. Their performance hasn't changed much either - very energetic good show and they were obviously enjoying themselves. Only the complete absence of falling off anything gave away their 20 years of additional maturity. Del Mar still downed a shot handed to her by somebody in the audience and tossed it off the stage just like in the old days. There were about 150 people in the club which is a tiny number for the size of the place. They were enthusiastic about the band and happily hollered on command when it was suggested NV might play some more shows. That was over a year ago, and I'd been hoping that those gigs might materialize, especially if it meant the possibility of new tracks, but that hasn't happened yet. New Model Army Mohawk Place, Buffalo NY: April 21 2004 Lee's Palace, Toronto Ontario: September 26 2005 I blame Axel for just how much I love this band. I've been listening to their music for years, but for some reason I never owned any until we started swapping tapes and CDs. They grew on me to the point where they are now one of my favourite bands. Problem, they hardly ever toured in North America. Then they announced a date with just Justin Sullivan doing an accoustic set. I got the flu. Then a tour was announced with a threesome. Canada wasn't on it. Well to hell with that. A bunch of us packed up and drove to Buffalo to see the show. We got pulled over at the border and held for close to two hours while they dug through both our documentation and our vehicle, trying to figure out why four people would be driving for two hours and entering another country in a borrowed car just to see a band. When they finally let us through we belted our way into the venue five minutes before the band hit the stage. And it was fantastic. It was a small bar and the place was packed with people swaying and singing along to the music. It wasn't exactly accoustic - he had a drummer and keyboard player with him - but it was definitely a more stipped-down version of the music. Shortly after that, a follow-up tour was planned with the entire line-up. And I got the flu. By the time they came back around to Toronto, there was no way in hell I was missing that gig. As soon as they hit the stage, Axel was front and centre. I followed him a couple of songs later - they had set up two sound booths, one on the floor and one above the stage, and I wanted to check out how the sound was at different parts of the room. Oddly enough, it was decent at the back, wall of mud on the floor, but really clear directly in front of the stage. I ended up standing directly in front of Justin Sullivan. He was singing with such a look of intense concentration on his face that I was completely mesmerized, several times I saw him almost "psyching" himself up to launch into a new song. Every note came out with the driven intensity of somebody who feels what he is singing about. I was so hypnotized watching him that I almost forgot to dance - until somebody behind me pushed me into the mosh pit. Which snapped me out of it completely. Half an hour or so later, I walked out off the floor covered in sweat and with a glowing purple lump on my chin and announced to my friends, "Damn, that was fun." I can't wait for them to come back. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Lollapalooza Barrie, Ontario: July 28 1994 Kool Haus Toronto, Ontario: April 28 2002 Kool Haus Toronto, Ontario: June 22 2003 The first time I saw Nick Cave was at the forth Lollapalooza. I remember thinking how cool this guy was, sitting down at the edge of the stage with the microphone in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. That was pretty much all I was impressed by at that show. It was my third time at the festival, and I was getting to the point of being fed up with long lines and sore feet. I tend to go through periods anyway where I can't stand being at really big shows - and I was probably already at that point. And then it rained -- all freakin' day. Smashing Pumpkins were the headliners, and the other bands were The Beastie Boys, Green Day, George Clinton, A Tribe Called Quest, The Breeders and L7. The Beastie Boys were kind of fun, and I really dug L7 and George Clinton, but by the end of the day I was tired of being cold and wet. We left a couple of songs into Smashing Pumpkin's set, and that was the last Lollapalloza I went to. And that was it for about eight years. And then I stared hanging out with Axel. And Axel loves all things Nick Cave. So when The Bad Seeds came to Toronto, he was going, no matter what. And he convinced me to go with him. And it was fantastic. Just amazing. He did a version of The Mercy Seat that just about blew the top of my fucking head off. And I was not in a field being cold wet and miserable, I was actually in a very packed venue wedged up against a very dancing German. And when they came back the following year, we went again. And I expect we will go every year after that. Oh yeah, and the opening bands for the Warehouse shows were Neko Case and Cuff The Duke. They both bored me to tears. Nine Inch Nails Air Canada Centre, Toronto Ontario, November 11 2005 First of all, I don't like stadium shows. I find them very impersonal. But BC had a couple of free tickets that she had received from work, and I'm not one to turn down the offer of "free", so we went to the show. We ended up sitting in a rather odd position, to the side of the stage and staring straight down the security pit. It gave us a great view of the top of the mosh pit, which was kind of.. strange. I don't usually get to watch it from that viewpoint. We could see all the crowd-surfers getting pulled over the barriers by security and packed off to the back of the grounds. It also occured to me, looking at the seething mass dancing all over the floor, that the single four-foot barricade and the thin line of red-shirts in front of the stage was nothing if not the height of optimism. Anyway. The show. First band up was Death From Above 1979. They're a local metal band consisting of a drummer/singer and a guitar player/flailer. The played at NxNE a couple of years previously and I guess they aquitted themselves well because somebody paid to get them on the opening slot for the eastern leg of this tour. For the first couple of songs I was really bored. By the time they were halfway through their set I had to admit that they weren't bad. They are very into the performance, which is good. The "1979" part of the name was obviously a reference to the kind of metal they like to play and that's really not my thing. BC was bored to tears. They obviously had a few fans in the audience, probably due to the fact that they're locals. Queens of the Stone Age were up next. Generic rock band. The singer did some "fuck the building" rant at the beginning of the set because the venue lost their licence for the gig, which made me roll my eyes. They do a reasonably competent rock set with some formula guitar riffs which didn't inspire me over much, but the crowd seemed to like them. BC hated them a lot less than DFA1979. When the stage was being set up for Nine Inch Nails, a bunch of gauze curtains were lowered over the stage so we couldn't see what was going on. We were sitting far enough to the side that we could see what was happening behind the stage, and watched massive quantities of gear and lights being hauled back and forth. One intrepid soul even walked over the top of the roof, wearing a safety harness clipped to his belt. The first two songs were done with the curtains in place and lights being shon on them. The back of the stage had a translucent screen that moved up and down and there were walls of small square lights behind that. There were also a series of irregularily shaped structures on stage that patters and lights could be projected onto, more lights positioned at various places on the stage (including directly over the drummer and keyboard players - I remember hoping that they were flourescent, because incandescent lights close enough to bounce with every bass stroke would be uncomfortably hot) and the entire lighting rig could be moved up and down and tilted during the set. They actually did a really good job with the stage setup. One of the hard things about shows in venues that large is keeping it visually engaging when the band is just a bunch of ants to the majority of the people in the audience. For a few songs they lowered the curtains back down and projected images on them - war scenes if I guessed correctly. We couldn't actually see them since we were sitting on the wrong side. One thing that was really weird was seeing Trent Reznor on stage. When I hear his voice I automatically think of the skinny angsty kid with the emo hair that he was 10-15 years ago. Well the guy I saw on stage was shaped like a grown man. It just seemed a bit discordant listening to the voice from Pretty Hate Machine coming out somebody who looked more like Henry Rollins. The guitar player kicked ass. He was throwing his body and his instrument around the stage like a bundle of pure fury and without missing a single note. I was impressed enough to go look up who was touring with him, he turned out to be Aaron North from The Icarus Line. It ended up being a two-hour, incredibly high energy show. I have never been to a stadium show I have enjoyed that much, ever. The band was tight, tight, tight and Reznor was belting the songs out like his life depended on it. Even way up in the stands it was impossible not to be completely swept up in the energy of the show. Of course, now I owe BC another Ani Difranco gig. Last Updated November 12 2005.
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