Salty Dog Kitchener, Ontario: 1985? This was a metal band, not the blues band from Australia by the same name. I actually really didn't like these guys at all, but the spouse liked them a lot and they were in the neighbourhood, so I went with them to the gig. To this day they stand out in my memory as the loudest band I have ever seen. They played some venue that maybe held about 600 people and it was painful to be in the room. I went upstairs to the balcony to get a little further away from the speakers. Still too loud. I went out to the lobby. Still too loud. I ended up going to the pizza joint across the street to wait for him because I just couldn't stand it any more. It was awful. And they blew the power like six times. The Satanatras Toronto, Ontario: 199? The Satanatras were one of my favourite punk bands in the early 90's. They did exactly the kind of powerful, melodic, loud dance-your-boots-off tunes that were exactly my pint of choice. I still have a casette I bought of their music. it was sold for $6.66. A friend of mine discribed it as "music to quit your job by." One of my favourite stories about these guys was about how they were initially slotted to open for Dinosaur Jr. They were dropped from the line-up when the band objected to their name and replaced with hHead. hHead played their entire set wearing matching Satanatras hockey jerseys. I saw these guys play about a dozen times in about a dozen different bars. Two that I can identify for sure were at a dodgy hotel called The Edgewater - it has since been converted to a Day's Inn. I went to a record release show they played at the Rivoli with Hev's Duties, Venus Cures All and Hayden, The last time I saw them was again at the Rivoli for their farewell gig. That show was hilarious because the audience did not want them to get off the stage - and the band was happy to oblige, playing until the staff finally pulled the fuse on the power to the stage. Screamin' Black Cadillacs Edge Studio, Toronto ON: July 14 2006 Cadillac Lounge, Toronto ON: August 4 2006 I've been seeing a lot of bands lately that bill themselves as rockabilly. These guys play around Toronto all the time and I had been hearing some really good things about them. The boyfriend was going to catch this show with a friend and I decided to tag along so I could check them out. The Edge studio is an odd place to see a band. There is a tiny elevated area in front of the DJs where the band was set up with hardly enough room to move. The audience stands on a narrow strip of floor between the "stage" and a set of glass doors that open onto the street. There seemed to be a lot of traffic through those doors with people milling in and out. I had heard that the band always rents a bus for their gigs so their local fans and friends can travel with them. They had a lot of people in the audience wearing the band t-shirts - black of course - and yelling "S! B! C!" between the songs. The show was great. I've always said that this kind of rockabilly-influenced bar band is where old punks went to die, and this band seems to bear that out. They have a lot of really intense bad-boy energy. The bass player spent most of the show jumping on, off, and over his instrument while beating the crap out of the strings. The songs themselves impressed me with just how much variety they could pack into a straight-forward 4/4 beat - we could hear everything from Johnny Be Good to Social Distortion in their influences. All done with the same fierce delivery. The Edge is also a dry venue, so we went for beers right after the show and blabbed about the gig. The boyfriend picked up a CD as well. They play a lot at the Cadillac Lounge, which is right around the corner from our house, so we just happened to be there for a friends birthday when we saw them play a second time. Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet Albion Hotel, Guelph Ontario: March 19 1991 There was a huge buzz going on about these guys when they hit town, so of course I hooked up with a few friends and went to check them out. I was surprised to find out that all their songs were instrumental. I don't know why. I really enjoyed the gig, but I think I need lyrics to anchor the songs in my memory. It turns out that one of the former members has started a new band called Atomic 7 who play regularily at The Cadillac Lounge. I may have to go check them out. Sheep on Drugs Whitby Gothic Weekend, Whitby UK: November 1 2004 My Sheep On Drugs story is actually pretty funny. They were supposed to play at an event I was working on - Lee Fraser had been working with Wasp Factory for a while, so when Deathboy, Goteki and Lee Chaos came to Toronto for Catalyst, we got the chance to book Sheep On Drugs as our headliner. The prep for the event was rediculous. Through various problems and fuck-ups we ended up having zero publicity for it. There was a major Power Failure immediately before the event. Everything was late. Everything was complicated. I think I slept three hours a night for a good three months before it finally happened. And then the day the plane leaves England, I get a frantic phone call from SOD's manager that Lee Fraser isn't on it. Much panic ensues on two continents. By the end of the day, Mark fanally tracked down the missing musician and it was just too late to get him here in time for the gig. Our headliner had to be cancelled. Two months later, SOD was booked to play at Whitby Gothic Weekend for their big 10th anniversary gig. I ended up deciding to go at the last minute, along with friends Astrid and Monica. I contacted Lee Chaos (Wasp Factory) about sorting us a place to stay, and he replied that they had space in one cottage - the one where they were housing Sheep On Drugs. I think my exact response was, "You did that on purpose." And that was how I finally met Lee Fraser. They had hired a "handler" for him by this point, a friend Fraser had known since childhood who was hired to make sure he showed to the right place at the right time. My impression of his handler was efficient, sweet-natured and eternally bemused. My impression of Fraser was that he really needed to lay off the pills. I wasn't sure what to expect when I finally saw him play. I was pleasantly shocked at how good they were on stage - all that scattered energy suddenly focussed on what he was doing and he was performing. Twenty minutes later, I lost interest. He was engaging - and engaged - on stage, but only in comparison to what he was like off of it. He's entertaining to get drunk with, though. The Shuffle Demons Toronto, ON: 1984 The Shuffle Demons were this hilarious jazz band who wore brightly coloured clothes, wrote songs about buses and cockroaches and hopped about like mad while playing. They started off busking on street corners, and they would instantly be surrounded by a fascinated crowd. Not only were they entertaining to watch, but these guys could play. I actually witnessed their street busking performances a couple of times while walking around downtown. You don't see to many street performers that actually get people dancing all over a busy sidewalk, but these guys did it. Silent Seymour The Drake, Toronto, Ontario: March 4 2005 I saw these guys kind of by accident. A friend put together an industry party for their label during Canadian Music Week, so I ended up going. These guys were one of the main bands that were being featured. A four-piece; two guitarists, bass player and drummer. They were all wearing suits and touques, giving them this kind of demented Catholic-schoolboys-gone-grunge kind of look. They were preceeded by a series of really sad solo acts who sang over guitar, so maybe my enjoyment of them was influenced by that, but I really liked them. They had a tendancy to sing songs slower than the music, which worked for what they were doing. They had really good chemistry on stage. And the drummer was just beating the living shit out of his drums. I would probably put them into the category of not my thing, but they were definitely engaging. I'd be pleased to see them in the opening slot for a band I wanted to see, they wouldn't make me want to eat my own head like Cuff The Fucking Duke. Siouxsie Sioux The Fillmore, New York City NY: February 9 2008 This was my week for geriatric punk shows, I saw From The Jam and Hugh Cornwall in Toronto on Wednesday, then on Friday we packed up the rental car and drove to New York to see Siouxsie Sioux. Geriatric is of course me being facetious - the woman has more energy than most people in their 20's. She leapt and purred around the stage in a skin-tight cat suit, belting out songs to a room that was just rammed solid. She focussed mainly on her new album, but she threw a couple of old favourites in as well. Then the Fillmore made everybody line up outside to retrieve their coats. In the rain. Um. Sisters of Mercy Electric Factory, Philadelphia PA: June 28 1997 The Warehouse, Toronto Ontario: February 1 1998 The Sisters gig in Philly was where I first met my friend 50 Ft Queenie. silentq and I along with a couple of other people had made plans to drive down and see the show, we posted an invitation for people to join us, and 5FQ showed up. This was the first Sister's gig in North America in about six years, and the only one on this tour, so people from all over the place were showing up - I hooked up with people who had driven in from Pittsburgh, New York and Boston for this show. The Electric Factory turned out to be a big warehouse-type place with those massive slatted windows that all old factorys have. It held about 3000 bodies. It was actually a pretty good venue, the sight-lines were great from everywhere in the house, and the sound was excellent. There were three opening bands. I remember being petty unimpressed by Tapping the Vein. Somebody else suggested that their singer sounded like Pat Benatar, which sounded about right to me. I rather liked some of Heavy Water Factory. but their music started sounding the same about half-way through the set and my attention started to wander. These two bands were replacements for Sunshine Blind and The New Creatures who had been booted off the bill by Eldritch less than a week before the gig for being too "goth" -- after they had already paid for all the pre-show advertising. Nice, huh? The final opening band was Switchblade Symphony. I caught them at Convergence II the year before, and they are a lot of fun, very lively and demented. Then the Sisters hit the stage. I was prepared to be cynical about the show, especially after such a long hiatus, but I ended up being really positively impressed. The performance was energetic and really engaging, and by the end I was even dancing. So when they came to Toronto the following year, I jumped at the chance to go see them. And they were awful. Wall of mud. Smoke, feedback and mud. What a disappointment. And that was the last time I bothered. He has since toured through and played at various venues, and I never bother to go. Skrew Lee's Palace, Toronto, ON: 1991 I'm not entirely sure when this gig happened. I was reading a 'zine called The Underground Party Papers and somebody was talking about great this band was. So I wandered over to Lee's to catch the gig. I had no pre-conceived expectation. I didn't even know what kind of music they played. I've seen a lot of really shitty bands through this method. This was not one of those times. I loved the show. Thick grinding industrial metal that shot sparks right off the stage. I hauled ass over to the merchant table and bought their CD about half-way through the show. S.N.F.U. The Loft, Guelph Ontario: 1985 The Loft was a tiny venue upstairs from something else. You went up a narrow dark stairway and there would be a bar hastily assembled from an assortment of boxes and coolers. The tables were the folding kind normally used at church bake sales, and the chairs were hard and cracked. The stage was a square of floor that had been taped off and a bunch of extension cables powered the whole thing. S.N.F.U. headlined a show organized by a local group called "The Roach Motel". Openers were D.O.A. and a local band from Brampton that I can't remember the name of, but who played about five billion really fast songs that each lasted about 38 seconds each. A tiny audience in a tiny room and a lot of really great energy. Good old fashioned punk rock when everybody else at school was dancing to Wang Chung.. Brilliant. I'm sure I've seen D.O.A. since then, but as is typical of most punk shows, I was too fucked up to have any idea where or when. Sons of Freedom El Mocambo, Toronto Ontario: 1990? Trasheteria, Guelph Ontario: 1991? Spectrum, Toronto Ontario: 1992 I absolutely loved this band. I'm pretty sure I saw them more than the three times listed but those are the actual venues I can remember. I caught every gig I could. They had the most amazing bass lines, and their live shows were sweaty, driving and intense. Fantastic. The last show listed was part of what was called the "Lollapahoser Tour", a series of dates by a bunch of Canadian bands. The opener was Art Bergmann, playing without the The Showdogs. His sets were interesting - without a backup band he came across as very intense Billy Bragg. Pure also played, but to be honest I don't remember much about them. I don't think they made much of an impression. Bootsauce were the final band on the bill. They were getting quite a bit of Much Music play at the time, so I was really curious to see them perform. The singer came out in a nun's wimple and started bouncing around the stage right off the bat, so I started really enjoying their set. By about four songs in, I was bored. Everything they did sounded exactly the same. They were the band all the kids in the audience were waiting for, but I think we ended up leaving before their set was even over. Speed Kings Silver Dollar, Toronto, Ontario: November 14 2003 I saw these guys play when they opened for the Gutter Demons. A quartet, two guitar players, a drummer and upright bass. Most of their songs are mildly catchy - nothing in the way of strong hooks, but entertaining enough. I thought it belonged more in the kind of alt.country or roots-rock category as opposed to rockabilly. Their guitar-player was probably the best musician in the band. The singer was very obviously reading off of a songbook. The energy level was sporadic. At one point they did get into a very energetic groove, and the singer followed it up by saying, "If we did all our songs like that, you'd get bored." Say what? They may have been negatively affected by the fact that the audience was very obviously waiting for the headlining act. My overall impression of this band was "functional". They are fine at what they do, but they don't really shine. Stiff Little Fingers The Horseshoe, Toronto, Ontario: June 13 2006 I now can cross another band off my "Must See Before I Die" list. I have loved these guys for years, but for some reason it's just never fallen together that I have managed to make it to a gig. It's pretty common for me to feel like the oldest person in the room at a lot of gigs. Not this one. I have never seen so much grey hair in one place at one time in my life before. I tell yah, punk is not a genre that is aging gracefully. There was a bit of genteel bouncing going on front and centre, but the Horseshoe has truly awful ventilation and it was a hot humid day to start out with so nobody had a huge amount of energy. Including the band. Axel did some moshing around anyway, and managed to completely bugger up his knee in the process. And be carried home. This was cause for great hilarity by me because I got to go into work and tell everybody that Mr Banker was off for the day because of a moshpit injury. I'm convinced it would have been funnier if I hadn't had to explain to everybody was a moshpit was. The show was worth seeing even if it was more sedate than their usual stage show. They played all the old favourites and the crowd was very enthusiastically singing along. Everybody looked like they were having a total blast. The Stooges Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival, Randall's Island, New York: June 26 2004 I ended up going to this gig because my nephew called me up and told me that he was allowed to go if I went with him. By the time everything was sorted a friend and I were driving both nephews plus nine of their friends. Early on Friday afternoon, I got the call that the van had arrived in town, so I grabbed my gear and hauled ass to meet Astrid at her place. It was bucketing down, so I was soaked by the time I got there. My sister had just arrived with my nephews and a whole tribe of their friends -- a total of 11 males between the ages of 14 and 18. The trip was educational to say the very least. I have never met any group of people in my life who eat that much sugar. We stopped every hour-and-a-half or so, and they would immediately leap out of the car, hit the closest convenience store, and move through it like locusts. Then they would be hyperactive and jittery, leaping over the seats and wrestling like monkeys. It was also an enormous amount of fun. They were funny as hell and we played tons of music at very high volumes all the way there and back. Crossing the border we handed the nonplussed customs officials a small mountain of paperwork and consent forms which they dutifully leafed through and then waved us off with obvious relief. We stayed with the fabulous Miss Janette, who let us take over every flat surface in her house, tolerated the Tent City in her backyard, and showed us where some of the non-nasty diners were in the neighbourhood. We had planned to do some cruising around town while we were there, but herding 13 people just prooved impossible to do with any degree of promptness. The day of the festival we got started kind of late, so the show was already well underway by the time we arrived. There were fuzzy psychadelic noises coming from the stage, which the announcer eventually declared to be The Electric Prunes. It was going to be an interesting gig. I knew there were going to be something like 30 bands, so I kind of expected a set-up similar to what I saw at the Warped Tour, with multiple stages. Instead they had one big stage and they hustled everybody on and off really fast. On the plus side, you could catch every act - but they only had about 15 minutes each, not nearly enough to get warmed up and into the set, in my opinion. I was very impressed with the efficiency of their stage crew. However, no matter how good they were, they weren't going to be able to get the turnover time down to zero, so that meant that there was a lag between bands. So there were MC's. Lots of MC's. Lots of really, really boring MC's. Of particular note was the singer from the Paybacks, who proved to me that having a gravelly, raspy, I-gargle-with-Jack-Daniels-and-smoke-a-dozen-Galouis-before-breakfast-every-morning voice, while being a good thing for the singing of raunchy Detroit rock-n-roll, is a real pain to listen to when it's going on and on about how great this show is, how lucky we all are to be here, and how this next band invented punk rock. Other MC's included musicians, television actors and other assorted Personalities - each of whom dutifully informed us of how great this show is, how lucky we all are to be here, and how this next band is fantastic and invented punk rock. Bands that we caught while we were there included The Fuzztones, The Creation, The Chesterfield Kings, The Mooney Suzuki, The Paybacks, The Pete Best Band, The Forty-Fives, D4, The Romantics, Big Star, and The Pretty Things. I was really curious to see The Dictators live, they're a band an ex of mine used to love so I heard a lot of their music at one time but never got to see them perform. Nancy Sinatra was kind of interesting. The bands were getting longer sets as the night wore on, so she got to perform more than three songs. I thought her music didn't seem to "match up" with the arrangement very well. And of course she did These Boots Are Made For Walking as her last song. It was the only three minutes of the evening when I thought the go-go dancers lining the back of the stage didn't look really stupid. Bo Diddley was great. He didn't need any time to warm up - just came in, sat down and started belting it out. And for his finishing number he announced that although some of the young people in the audience might think that being old meant he was out of touch with modern tastes, he was there that night to prove them wrong - and started rapping. I have seen Bo Diddley rap. I may now die. As the show progressed the sky got progressively darker and the wind stronger. Hurricane Charley was creeping up the east coast and a couple of times it was announced that the festival might have to be cut short. So The Raveonettes got ripped off for their set - they played two songs and were hustled off. The New York Dolls were up next, and like true rock stars they took the longest to get on stage. At this point the band consisted only of David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain. Killer Kane had died less than a month earlier. They had brought in one of the former members of Hanoi Rocks (I forget exactly who) and some hired help to fill out the line-up. I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm pretty sure they were nowhere near as fucked-up as their old shows, but they still put on a pretty good performance, camping it up as much as a couple of 50+ guys possibly can. They played Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory as a tribute to fallen bandmates, and it was pretty obvious that Sylvain Sylvain kind of lost it for a couple of minutes during the chorus. The Strokes were the second last band. Now that I have seen them, I can honestly say I don't get what all the fuss is about. I mean they weren't bad. The band aquitted themselves well musically, Julian Casablancas did some dead-pan patter that was genuinely funny, and at one point he simply walked off the end of the stage and completely vanished into the crowd - and act that got my startled respect at the time. But the saviours of rock'n'roll? I don't think so. The weather was getting a lot more intimidating and during the leadup to the headliner they pulled down all the rigging and got rid of the go-go dancers. I was starting to get worried they'd kill the show at that point. Then Iggy Pop & The Stooges hit the stage. Fuckin' hell. I've seen Iggy Pop perform more times than I can count and he knocks the top of my head off every single time. He doesn't drop trou as often as he used to say, 15 years ago, but that's pretty much the sole difference. He damn near tore the stage apart. One incident that I thought was hilarious was when he staged dived into the audience - in comparison to Julian Casablancas' laborious climb back onto the stage, he did one full body hop that projected him back up in a single bound and continued running around like a madman. He also started dragging people onto the stage, berating the bouncers into letting people climb up. Through most of the show the kids were up at the front, and I spotted at least one of them on stage bellowing into the microphone along with Iggy. It wasn't until we were leaving that I found out that one of the kids had been knocked cold by having Iggy Pop's chest clock him in the forehead during one of the singer's stage dives. We were checking his pupils for the rest of the night. Sunshine Blind Limelight, New York City NY: August 17 2001 Convergence VII took place in New York City in the hottest month of the year. Everything was really expensive, and since I was unemployed that year I couldn't afford to do any of the official events. What I could do however, was stay in a hostel and hang out with some of my friends. Fortunately there was lots to do and tons of other people in town for the weekend. I ended up spending most of the weekend in my car due to various fuck-ups and insanity, but I did get to hang out at the Limelight on the Saturday night with a number of people I really wanted to see. Limelight is an amazing venue, consisting of a converted church. The main room has been beautifully preserved, with huge vaulted ceilings and lots of stained glass. They have also added a bunch of additional rooms and alcoves, including some catwalks where you can watch the stage. Sunshine Blind were the headliner that night. Mindless Faith and Unto Ashes. All very gotheek. Plus there were some great DJs in one of the back rooms including a fucking mosh-worthy punk set by the absolutely amazing Charlie the Slut. Swarf Convergence VIII, Montreal Quebec: June 1 2002 Whitby Gothic Weekend IX.5, Whitby UK: November 2 2002 I first met the lovely folks of Swarf when we hired The Chaos Engine to play at Convergence VIII, and Lee Chaos convinced us to hire their label-mates as well. They turned out to be lovely people, a great band, and they were a huge hit with the audience. The following fall when we went to Whitby Gothic Weekend they were playing on the main band night, having won the Friday night "Battle of the Bands" the year before. They do a really energetic boppy EBM show. Liz bounces around the stage like a maniac, pumping her fist in the air and hair extensions flying. We were there to see the live acts, so we spent a lot of time actually watching the show, something that doesn't usually happen when I go to big festivals with people I like to get drunk with. The Battle of the Bands night featured Beautiful Deadly Children, Ordinary Psycho, Season's End and Spermwhale (who were the final winners.) On the main night Swarf opened, to be followed by Narcissus Pool (who Axel absolutely loved) and Last Rites. Last Updated March 29 2008.
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