"You love bands when they play it hard..."
Okay. This was quite a weekend. I know there are a bunch of folks on the f'list who have no interest in the musical posts (I'm not complaining, y'all, to a large extent the musical posts are actually aimed at people in Halifax who are not even on LiveJournal) and this is going to be a long one, so I plan to make use of LJ-cut technology.
However, I need to point out that I got about six hours of sleep between Friday morning and Sunday evening, so I may not be entirely coherent and HTML failures may occur.
I had originally intended to write one post about the whole weekend, but the Q-104 party post has gotten so long I think I had better do separate posts after all.
Q-104 is Halifax's main rock radio station. They play the hell out of the same six hard rock songs all the time, but they also play a lot of local rock bands and hey, they're better than the urban music station the kids at the barn listen to. (The kids at the barn also like the New Country station. They're nice girls so I hope they're not around when I finally run amok.) So I'm periodically grateful for the Q, and besides, the lineup for the show looked pretty good.
I picked up my brother and his girlfriend, A, as well as my old undergraduate pal L and we went down to the Cunard Centre. The show was supposed to start around eight but there was a bunch of stuff scheduled before the music started--cake-cutting, various radio dignitaries--so we didn't fuss too much about getting there right when the doors opened.
As a result, when we arrived Joel Plaskett was already onstage and the place was packed. Who knew?
Now, you may have noticed from reading this LJ that while I am generally am mild-mannered soul, I do have a tendency to get right in the middle of things at rock shows. However, I generally manage that by arriving early and staking out a preferred spot, or moving up when the crowd circulates between bands. (Which is not a guaranteed thing so I generally go for option #1.) However, considering I was with a group of people who weren't necessarily into that kind of thing, and also considering the people already at the front were the ones who had gotten there early, I didn't make an asshole of myself by trying to push to the front.
Social skillz. I has them.
Anyway, there were screens up so, despite the fact I kind of hate looking at the screen when the band is onstage right in front of you I decided to go ahead and watch them at least some of the time. Beat the view of the backs of people's heads. I also had good luck running into people I knew, which is always kind of fun. thallid and deceptivelyevil and I had planned to look for each other and in fact we found each other dead early. Neither of them had seen Joel (or Matt Mays) before and they're 54-40 fans, so it was a good lineup. I also ran into Rob and Steph (of Tribeca Tuesday fame) during the Plaskett set. There had been talk of a special guest as well as the scheduled acts and they asked me if I'd heard anything about that. I admitted that the rumour I'd heard was that the "special guest" was going to be... Joel Plaskett... which explains why he was available on short notice.
Well, that and the fact he has superpowers, of course.
Joel was his usual goofball cuter-than-a-basket-of-kittens self and mentioned several times how honoured he was to be playing the event and how sorry he was that April Wine couldn't make it. The setlist was drawn from all his albums except the first solo one (In Need Of Medical Attention, and yes, you could make several bad jokes about April Wine's lead singer's accident, but Joel didn't.) There was a lot of the usual Joel inter- and intra-song banter, but the highlight was the singalong near the end of the set. One of April Wine's hits is a version of the song "Coulda Been A Lady." This one:
The hook (which opens the song in the video above) goes:
"Coulda been all right
Coulda been here tonight
Coulda been sweet as wine
Coulda been a lady...."
Joel got everyone singing to Myles Goodwin:
"Hope you feel all right
Wish you were here tonight
Everybody loves April Wine
All the gentlemen and ladies"
Later the last lines morphed into:
"Everybody loves April Wine
Senior citizens and babies."
The Henman brothers and their Henman cousin, founding former members of the band, were on hand for the group's induction into Q-104's Wall Of Fame and I hope they appreciated the tribute.
After Joel's set there was a lull while every DJ who has ever worked for the Q was introduced. I recognized a very small fraction but tried to pay attention since they had invited us all to their party after all.
And then there was the sound of a spaceship landing on the roof over our heads, and then waves, and a keyboard intro, and we were all like "Oh hai El Torpedo" and there they were.
Matt was wearing his white suit again--it's kind of impressive how well that's held up, although someone drew a big "Q" on the back of the jacket so we may have witnessed the suit's retirement party. Although you never know...
Anyway, Matt remarked several times that it was great to be home and the band was fired up and heavy. El Torpedo isn't as interactive as Joel but they're just as friendly in their own way and they also included their own little sing-along tribute to April Wine (Matt: "I never do this because I usually think it's lame, but tonight I'm into it!") April Wine has a song called song "Tonight Is A Wonderful Time To Fall In Love"--here's a clip of the hook:
So Matt got the girls in the audience singing "Tonight is a wonderful time to fall in love" and the guys singing "Oh yeah" (Matt: "You get the easy part!") which was fun, and also funny especially because this occurred in the middle of "Terminal Romance," a song about getting your heart ripped out of your chest. However.
Another really fun moment was the return of Jarrett Murphy for a couple of songs (Matt introduced him as "the handsomest man in Halifax!") Jarrett's departure from El Torpedo really led to a change in the whole vibe of the band. Jarrett played rhythm guitar pretty well exclusively and Jay Smith was the lead guitarist in Rock Ranger, so Jarrett leaving and Jay joining meant El Torpedo now has potentially two lead guitarists. And since Matt and Jay seem to play well with others, they do trade off a lot. Jay is really heavy and that's had an influence on the band's sound--it's been kind of cool to see the change in tone. But there have been less tangible changes in tone as well. It may be simply a function of where they're at in their career rather than Jay's influence directly, but the band is not only heavier, it no longer has quite the friendly-goofball tone I found so endearing and always associated with Jarrett anyway. (A classic example would be the dead-bee story the night I saw the band open for Blue Rodeo. Matt was telling a story about how their tour manager, Troy, had recently eaten a bee when Jarrett, in apparent concern, quickly interjected that the bee was already dead before Troy ever got his hands on it. "It was dead, it was dead already, it was a dead bee!" Because apparently it's funny to be disgusting, but it's not funny to be cruel to bees. I appreciated that.)
Anyway, obviously I continue to like the band's direction and find them likable, so I'm not complaining. I'm just saying. And it was fun to see Jarrett up there again for a couple of songs.
Jarrett left the stage to hugs all around and El Torpedo's set ended a few minutes later (Matt's not-exactly-rock'n'roll signoff of "Thank you for having us!" perhaps indicates the tone of the band hasn't really changed all that much) and after a break for more ex-DJ stuff the Sam Roberts Band came on.
And speaking of tone. Actually, let us speak of something far sillier. Back in the day, when I first started following El Torpedo around, I used to say that if that band turned into dogs they would definitely be golden retrievers. The Torpedo might come off as a little more serious these days, but it's more a matter of being grown-up goldens rather than some other breed entirely.
If Sam Roberts was a dog, he'd be a border collie or some kind of herding breed with a mission. (And intense, spooky eyes.) I like the band and their music but they're not exactly playful.
Which means they might have been a little too intense for the event, although they certainly sounded good and sent well-wishes to April Wine as well. I don't have the new album yet (I seem to buy mostly local CDs these days but I should buy the SRB one on iTunes, and soon) but their older stuff sounded realy good. Just a little darker than the previous two bands (even with El Torpedo's heavier direction) and maybe not entirely right for a birthday party.
There was a significant time lag between Sam's set ending and 54-40 coming on. 54-40 was scheduled to start their set at 12:30 and teardown was supposed to begin at 1:30, but by 1:15 54-40 still wasn't on. There was also an auction scheduled--Q-104 had two Gibson DSM guitars to be auctioned for a charity the station supports. One was supposed to be signed by Matt and the other by Sam.
Now, I thought they were going to be signed in advance and auctioned separately. In fact, had I arrived early enough to get up front, I had toyed with the idea of bidding on one for the hell of it. (I gave myself a $500 upper limit and fully expected to be outbid.) thallid remarked later than it would have made sense to auction each guitar immediately after the set played by the person signing it. Have it signed right there onstage and take the buyer backstage to say hi later.
What the Q actually did was auction the two guitars as a pair (which is a little weird considering they were apparently identical) and hold the auction late enough in the event that the DJ doing the auction had to keep sifting the drunk-idiot bids out from the serious ones. They didn't raise anything like the face price of the two guitars but I guess if the guitars were donated the charity came out well ahead. Still, I expected the auction to do a little better.
Good on the woman who bought them, though. I wonder if there's any way to get the signatures sealed so they won't be damaged if she plays the guitars?
54-40 came on far too late, and they were obviously aware the audience was fading fast so they played right through their set without much stopping to chat. It turns out I know more 54-40 songs than I thought, and the lead singer was playing what I assume was a Gibson Dove and it was really nice. (Epiphone makes a version of this guitar that would be closer to my price range--I hardly think I need a guitar that retails at twice what I paid for Mitzi.)
54-40 was good, but by this time it was nearly two AM, we'd been on our feet since shortly after eight o'clock, the show had turned into a bit of an endurance contest and besides, Friday night I'm usually tired out already. In short, my skin was crawling from tiredness and my back was sending out distress signals so my party sheepishly called it a night. Sorry, 54-40.
We took a detour through Pizza Corner on the way home and I managed not to hit anyone, but wow, there were a lot of drunk youngsters on the streets. I was in bed by three or so.
Worth it? Definitely. Let's see how I fare when the station turns fifty!
However, I need to point out that I got about six hours of sleep between Friday morning and Sunday evening, so I may not be entirely coherent and HTML failures may occur.
I had originally intended to write one post about the whole weekend, but the Q-104 party post has gotten so long I think I had better do separate posts after all.
Q-104 is Halifax's main rock radio station. They play the hell out of the same six hard rock songs all the time, but they also play a lot of local rock bands and hey, they're better than the urban music station the kids at the barn listen to. (The kids at the barn also like the New Country station. They're nice girls so I hope they're not around when I finally run amok.) So I'm periodically grateful for the Q, and besides, the lineup for the show looked pretty good.
I picked up my brother and his girlfriend, A, as well as my old undergraduate pal L and we went down to the Cunard Centre. The show was supposed to start around eight but there was a bunch of stuff scheduled before the music started--cake-cutting, various radio dignitaries--so we didn't fuss too much about getting there right when the doors opened.
As a result, when we arrived Joel Plaskett was already onstage and the place was packed. Who knew?
Now, you may have noticed from reading this LJ that while I am generally am mild-mannered soul, I do have a tendency to get right in the middle of things at rock shows. However, I generally manage that by arriving early and staking out a preferred spot, or moving up when the crowd circulates between bands. (Which is not a guaranteed thing so I generally go for option #1.) However, considering I was with a group of people who weren't necessarily into that kind of thing, and also considering the people already at the front were the ones who had gotten there early, I didn't make an asshole of myself by trying to push to the front.
Social skillz. I has them.
Anyway, there were screens up so, despite the fact I kind of hate looking at the screen when the band is onstage right in front of you I decided to go ahead and watch them at least some of the time. Beat the view of the backs of people's heads. I also had good luck running into people I knew, which is always kind of fun. thallid and deceptivelyevil and I had planned to look for each other and in fact we found each other dead early. Neither of them had seen Joel (or Matt Mays) before and they're 54-40 fans, so it was a good lineup. I also ran into Rob and Steph (of Tribeca Tuesday fame) during the Plaskett set. There had been talk of a special guest as well as the scheduled acts and they asked me if I'd heard anything about that. I admitted that the rumour I'd heard was that the "special guest" was going to be... Joel Plaskett... which explains why he was available on short notice.
Well, that and the fact he has superpowers, of course.
Joel was his usual goofball cuter-than-a-basket-of-kittens self and mentioned several times how honoured he was to be playing the event and how sorry he was that April Wine couldn't make it. The setlist was drawn from all his albums except the first solo one (In Need Of Medical Attention, and yes, you could make several bad jokes about April Wine's lead singer's accident, but Joel didn't.) There was a lot of the usual Joel inter- and intra-song banter, but the highlight was the singalong near the end of the set. One of April Wine's hits is a version of the song "Coulda Been A Lady." This one:
Click to viewThe hook (which opens the song in the video above) goes:
"Coulda been all right
Coulda been here tonight
Coulda been sweet as wine
Coulda been a lady...."
Joel got everyone singing to Myles Goodwin:
"Hope you feel all right
Wish you were here tonight
Everybody loves April Wine
All the gentlemen and ladies"
Later the last lines morphed into:
"Everybody loves April Wine
Senior citizens and babies."
The Henman brothers and their Henman cousin, founding former members of the band, were on hand for the group's induction into Q-104's Wall Of Fame and I hope they appreciated the tribute.
After Joel's set there was a lull while every DJ who has ever worked for the Q was introduced. I recognized a very small fraction but tried to pay attention since they had invited us all to their party after all.
And then there was the sound of a spaceship landing on the roof over our heads, and then waves, and a keyboard intro, and we were all like "Oh hai El Torpedo" and there they were.
Matt was wearing his white suit again--it's kind of impressive how well that's held up, although someone drew a big "Q" on the back of the jacket so we may have witnessed the suit's retirement party. Although you never know...
Anyway, Matt remarked several times that it was great to be home and the band was fired up and heavy. El Torpedo isn't as interactive as Joel but they're just as friendly in their own way and they also included their own little sing-along tribute to April Wine (Matt: "I never do this because I usually think it's lame, but tonight I'm into it!") April Wine has a song called song "Tonight Is A Wonderful Time To Fall In Love"--here's a clip of the hook:
So Matt got the girls in the audience singing "Tonight is a wonderful time to fall in love" and the guys singing "Oh yeah" (Matt: "You get the easy part!") which was fun, and also funny especially because this occurred in the middle of "Terminal Romance," a song about getting your heart ripped out of your chest. However.
Another really fun moment was the return of Jarrett Murphy for a couple of songs (Matt introduced him as "the handsomest man in Halifax!") Jarrett's departure from El Torpedo really led to a change in the whole vibe of the band. Jarrett played rhythm guitar pretty well exclusively and Jay Smith was the lead guitarist in Rock Ranger, so Jarrett leaving and Jay joining meant El Torpedo now has potentially two lead guitarists. And since Matt and Jay seem to play well with others, they do trade off a lot. Jay is really heavy and that's had an influence on the band's sound--it's been kind of cool to see the change in tone. But there have been less tangible changes in tone as well. It may be simply a function of where they're at in their career rather than Jay's influence directly, but the band is not only heavier, it no longer has quite the friendly-goofball tone I found so endearing and always associated with Jarrett anyway. (A classic example would be the dead-bee story the night I saw the band open for Blue Rodeo. Matt was telling a story about how their tour manager, Troy, had recently eaten a bee when Jarrett, in apparent concern, quickly interjected that the bee was already dead before Troy ever got his hands on it. "It was dead, it was dead already, it was a dead bee!" Because apparently it's funny to be disgusting, but it's not funny to be cruel to bees. I appreciated that.)
Anyway, obviously I continue to like the band's direction and find them likable, so I'm not complaining. I'm just saying. And it was fun to see Jarrett up there again for a couple of songs.
Jarrett left the stage to hugs all around and El Torpedo's set ended a few minutes later (Matt's not-exactly-rock'n'roll signoff of "Thank you for having us!" perhaps indicates the tone of the band hasn't really changed all that much) and after a break for more ex-DJ stuff the Sam Roberts Band came on.
And speaking of tone. Actually, let us speak of something far sillier. Back in the day, when I first started following El Torpedo around, I used to say that if that band turned into dogs they would definitely be golden retrievers. The Torpedo might come off as a little more serious these days, but it's more a matter of being grown-up goldens rather than some other breed entirely.
If Sam Roberts was a dog, he'd be a border collie or some kind of herding breed with a mission. (And intense, spooky eyes.) I like the band and their music but they're not exactly playful.
Which means they might have been a little too intense for the event, although they certainly sounded good and sent well-wishes to April Wine as well. I don't have the new album yet (I seem to buy mostly local CDs these days but I should buy the SRB one on iTunes, and soon) but their older stuff sounded realy good. Just a little darker than the previous two bands (even with El Torpedo's heavier direction) and maybe not entirely right for a birthday party.
There was a significant time lag between Sam's set ending and 54-40 coming on. 54-40 was scheduled to start their set at 12:30 and teardown was supposed to begin at 1:30, but by 1:15 54-40 still wasn't on. There was also an auction scheduled--Q-104 had two Gibson DSM guitars to be auctioned for a charity the station supports. One was supposed to be signed by Matt and the other by Sam.
Now, I thought they were going to be signed in advance and auctioned separately. In fact, had I arrived early enough to get up front, I had toyed with the idea of bidding on one for the hell of it. (I gave myself a $500 upper limit and fully expected to be outbid.) thallid remarked later than it would have made sense to auction each guitar immediately after the set played by the person signing it. Have it signed right there onstage and take the buyer backstage to say hi later.
What the Q actually did was auction the two guitars as a pair (which is a little weird considering they were apparently identical) and hold the auction late enough in the event that the DJ doing the auction had to keep sifting the drunk-idiot bids out from the serious ones. They didn't raise anything like the face price of the two guitars but I guess if the guitars were donated the charity came out well ahead. Still, I expected the auction to do a little better.
Good on the woman who bought them, though. I wonder if there's any way to get the signatures sealed so they won't be damaged if she plays the guitars?
54-40 came on far too late, and they were obviously aware the audience was fading fast so they played right through their set without much stopping to chat. It turns out I know more 54-40 songs than I thought, and the lead singer was playing what I assume was a Gibson Dove and it was really nice. (Epiphone makes a version of this guitar that would be closer to my price range--I hardly think I need a guitar that retails at twice what I paid for Mitzi.)
54-40 was good, but by this time it was nearly two AM, we'd been on our feet since shortly after eight o'clock, the show had turned into a bit of an endurance contest and besides, Friday night I'm usually tired out already. In short, my skin was crawling from tiredness and my back was sending out distress signals so my party sheepishly called it a night. Sorry, 54-40.
We took a detour through Pizza Corner on the way home and I managed not to hit anyone, but wow, there were a lot of drunk youngsters on the streets. I was in bed by three or so.
Worth it? Definitely. Let's see how I fare when the station turns fifty!