Toronto Rocks!!
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Get In Or Get Out? Just Get Out.
What is it about us Canadians that wants to make us eat our own? Tonight, A-Ranger, K-Roc, Robo Cobo and your humble narrator took in the Hot Hot Heats with guests The Futureheads and Louis XIV. I know I should support more Canadian music (I guess owning two copies of every Sloan album is not enough these days) and these guys apparently have more alt street-cred than all the Avrils and Idols put together, but I just can’t do it. They are to the current crop of 80’s post-punk-funk bands what OLP were to the late nineties post-punk-grunge bands. I want to like them. I don’t want to attack them for their Hives-Meets-Interpol Red White and Black coordinates. Three songs in and they are putting on a good show in spite of frontman Justin Guarini, er, I mean Leo Sayer, er, I mean Steve Bays’ one handed keyboard solos. Then his jacket comes off revealing a black sequined scarf and my gloves are effin’ off. I mean c’mon. Their chorus says it all. They are just “trying too hard.” Maybe it’s the EDGE’s fault for playing Bandages and No, Not Now infinitely. Maybe Nikki Sixx is right when he says, "curly haired-motherf**kers cannot rock". All I know is they lost me when they started aping The Modern Lovers with a worn retread of Roadrunner. Did I mention that the drummer looked like the bastard child of British actor Michael York and Snake from Degrassi, or am I being petty?
Thankfully, the night was saved by the stalwart performance of the supporting acts. Louis XIV are horny and I don’t think anyone is safe tonight. If they did spend all of their Illegal Tender finding out True Love is Blind, you’d never now it. Tongue planted firmly in cheek - whose is anyone’s guess but I imagine it belongs to a drop dead gorgeous suicide blonde - they swagger into their jeepster of love and roar on down the highway to hell. They even got panties thrown on stage for their troubles. Mission accomplished. If you took two Bon Scotts and affixed them to the arms of a third Bon Scott and stuck a Handbags-and-Gladrags-era Rod Stewart on the first Bon’s shoulders then wrapped them all up in a very forgiving waist coat you’d have something approaching front man Jason Hill, only with less vomit. *** Hill’s a big hunk-a-hunk-a-burnin’ love, a whole lotta love. It gives those of us stricken with the terrible affliction of “fat-mug-syndrome” hope that we too can one-day ponce around stage and right into a limo of Band-Aids. Add a two-pronged vocal attack and you have a rock show to remember. Return to us Louis, do not forsake us.
The road has clearly been good to The Futureheads. Pray it doesn’t get too good for them. Here’s to hoping they don’t grow up to become Steve Cradock’s house band for The Modfather, The Jam/Style Council musical that Ben Elton must be penning as we speak. Tube Stations, Tower Blocks, Eton Rifles, and That's Entertainment. One new track allays fears that the lads will be easing the pace on the next album. Three-part vocal harmonies, martial drumming and blistering chords make for an impossible act to follow. They are rock’s journeymen who bring beautiful craftsmanship to their musical contradictions. I think these guys just get faster and tighter each time they blast through town. The best Kate Bush cover you’ll hear outside of yours truly doing Wuthering Heights down the karaoke. A nod to openers with a really big pair of Y-fronts magically appearing on stage. So they don’t play up the rock cliches and fill tabloid pages. They get their results where they count. Sometimes less is more.
The special guests have something HHH will never find, that romantically intangible other-ness of being from anywhere other than Canada. If HHH weren’t Canadian would I try harder to like them? Prolly, but it just seems like too much work. I’d say it isn’t their fault, but they know the rules as well as every one of us who grew up in the wake of Goin’ Down the Road. Succeed at your own peril.
*** thanks to dearly departed Douglas Adams for giving me the words. ¶ 2:04 AM 1 comments
Thankfully, the night was saved by the stalwart performance of the supporting acts. Louis XIV are horny and I don’t think anyone is safe tonight. If they did spend all of their Illegal Tender finding out True Love is Blind, you’d never now it. Tongue planted firmly in cheek - whose is anyone’s guess but I imagine it belongs to a drop dead gorgeous suicide blonde - they swagger into their jeepster of love and roar on down the highway to hell. They even got panties thrown on stage for their troubles. Mission accomplished. If you took two Bon Scotts and affixed them to the arms of a third Bon Scott and stuck a Handbags-and-Gladrags-era Rod Stewart on the first Bon’s shoulders then wrapped them all up in a very forgiving waist coat you’d have something approaching front man Jason Hill, only with less vomit. *** Hill’s a big hunk-a-hunk-a-burnin’ love, a whole lotta love. It gives those of us stricken with the terrible affliction of “fat-mug-syndrome” hope that we too can one-day ponce around stage and right into a limo of Band-Aids. Add a two-pronged vocal attack and you have a rock show to remember. Return to us Louis, do not forsake us.
The road has clearly been good to The Futureheads. Pray it doesn’t get too good for them. Here’s to hoping they don’t grow up to become Steve Cradock’s house band for The Modfather, The Jam/Style Council musical that Ben Elton must be penning as we speak. Tube Stations, Tower Blocks, Eton Rifles, and That's Entertainment. One new track allays fears that the lads will be easing the pace on the next album. Three-part vocal harmonies, martial drumming and blistering chords make for an impossible act to follow. They are rock’s journeymen who bring beautiful craftsmanship to their musical contradictions. I think these guys just get faster and tighter each time they blast through town. The best Kate Bush cover you’ll hear outside of yours truly doing Wuthering Heights down the karaoke. A nod to openers with a really big pair of Y-fronts magically appearing on stage. So they don’t play up the rock cliches and fill tabloid pages. They get their results where they count. Sometimes less is more.
The special guests have something HHH will never find, that romantically intangible other-ness of being from anywhere other than Canada. If HHH weren’t Canadian would I try harder to like them? Prolly, but it just seems like too much work. I’d say it isn’t their fault, but they know the rules as well as every one of us who grew up in the wake of Goin’ Down the Road. Succeed at your own peril.
*** thanks to dearly departed Douglas Adams for giving me the words. ¶ 2:04 AM 1 comments
Monday, April 18, 2005
Coincidence
Here I am at the Boogaloo (inspiration for the Shaun of the Dead's Winchester Arms) just days before a it played host to the reunion of Pete and Carlos Libertine. Coincidence? Hardly.
¶ 2:28 AM 0 comments
Here I am at the Boogaloo (inspiration for the Shaun of the Dead's Winchester Arms) just days before a it played host to the reunion of Pete and Carlos Libertine. Coincidence? Hardly.
¶ 2:28 AM 0 comments
Thursday, April 07, 2005
