rate the last gig you went to

Dennis Wilson live in 78, had such a great vivid dream. I've been micro-dosing before I go to bed.

haha have you actually been microdosing?

So.

Smashing Pumpkins w. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds w. AFI last week in Toronto. When last we left "srk goes to shows with his wife that he'd kind of rather avoid", srk had bought tickets for the smashing pumpkins (who he loathed, and his wife loved), with the caveat that at least Noel would play for an hour beforehand. We got to the venue at 7, in time to see emo nerds AFI bleart their way through 30 minutes of turgid shitpunk to an 80% empty amphitheatre. Thankfully, the venue had an ample selection of craft beer to ease my pain. Then...Noel. I'm aware I'm basically the captain of Team Noel at this point, so my opinion is a bit biased, but...I thoroughly enjoyed his set. Played the entire first side of his last album, and followed it up with the two new singles. The band is goddamn tight (scissor girl is back, btw) and they really nailed the new stuff, particularly keep on reaching and the new ones. As for the fact that two of the four oasis songs he played were from Heathen Chemistry, well...he can be a bit of a dick. But stop crying your heart out was pretty damn great. Really good fun overall, and Noel seemed both in great spirits and also clearly not taking this tour seriously at all.

A fun aside: this was pretty much the weirdest split between fans I've ever seen at a non-festival show. It was pretty easy to spot who was an oasis fan and who was a pumpkins fan, based mainly on hair (or lack thereof), fashion sense (or lack thereof) and general posture (or lack thereof).

Pumpkins: I spent a fair bit of the first 20 minutes of the show looking out at the CN Tower off in the distance. To which I mean, I did not care one bit. They played the 5-6 songs I know, along with the one they played at the Simpsons' Hullabalooza episode (which I've since learned was called 'zero'). They were...fine? I didn't hate it, but I certainly didn't like it, either. The missus loved it, but concurred that Noel was better.


AFI 1/10
Noel 8.5/10
Pumpkins 4/10
Going to the wrong hotel after the show: 2/10

powerful review.

Yup, read about it in the Economist, which funnily enough is how I find out about most of my bad habits.

Sandwiching the above, I also saw two Canadian indie rock legends at local festivals this week. 54-40 at my local fair were great. They're essentially Canada's REM, but are also responsible for Hootie and the Blowfish's "I go blind", unfortunately. And then I saw Odds at a local street festival on Saturday night in front of a couple of hundred people. Also great. A fun quirk of Canadian life is the "Canadian content" (or CanCon) rule, where a certain portion of music played on the radio had to be Canadian, which means that for bands like these, I know practically every song, even if I have no idea what they're called. Makes it fun when every song, you think "oooh, I know this one!"

An added bonus is that for years, these local festivals were always headlined by crappy Canadian bands from the 70s like april wine, trooper, loverboy or chiliwack. But as these people get old, it's bands that *I* liked in college that are taking over. I imagine it's like Ocean Colour Scene, embrace and cast taking over for the likes of status quo and madness in the English versions of these.

54-40 7/10
Odds 6/10

Its not quite there yet. There's this festival called Rewind that a friend at work goes to. It's big on 80s bands though it's edging closer towards my era. This year was Michael Bolton, Bruce Foxton doing The Jam, Tiffany, Bananarama & Heather Small. Once they get in the vengaboys, the lightning seeds & East 17 I'm there.

haha with lsd or shrooms? i was doing with the former for 2 years. i really miss doing it tbh.

Stop manipulating the all-important stats of the Rate the Last Gig You Went To with your drugs boasting, Baz.*

*All the last gigs I've been to have been rated by popular forum members Mahoney and/or Columbia_rocks_man.

i can't believe you would dare to drive a wedge in this new, beautiful union of rollinice and i

shrooms, but i do lsd when i can find it.

STOP TALKING ABOUT RUBBISH MIDDLE CLASS DRUG HABITS IN THE ALL-IMPORTANT RATE THE LAST GIG YOU WENT TO THREAD.

Thank you.

Jarv Is @ Leith Theatre

Not a typo. This is what Jarvis is calling his latest midlife crisis, sorry, ‘exciting solo project’. They’ve released one very good single, Must I Evolve, which was a highlight of an otherwise fairly barren set.

He’s still a captivating front man with great chat, but I’ve seen him several times over the years, so it’s not enough to just fawn over him because you happen to be in the same room.

He played a couple of Relaxed Muscle numbers, which were pretty good, and I liked a newer track that’s been floating about for a couple of years called Swanky Modes, but there was none of the highlights from his first two solo albums. But generally this was pretty thin gruel by Jarvis standards and easily the worst gig I’ve seen him do.

I’m in the minority of course. This gig was part of the Edinburgh International Festival and as a result got widely reviewed, using all the usual Jarvis cliches like ‘georgraphy teacher chic’. 6.

The missus supported 'Peter Broderick and friends play the music of Arthur Russell' the other day which is very very good and worth seeing even if you know nothing of arthur russell, their live version of this is perfect, (the record is re-interpretations but live it's more faithful)


8/10

Saw Dry Cleaning at the Shacklewell Arms midweek. They sold out the venue so it's nice to see the word is spreading. Great set, did a new one I'd not heard before that sounded excellent. I love this band. Support was from Brother May, a British rapper, great energy about him though wasn't so keen on his choice of beats. Also Garden Centre, really addictive indie-pop/rock reminded me of Neutral Milk Hotel, or a stripped down Polyphonic Spree, though the singer has a voice that is an acquired taste to say the least, enjoyed them though.

Couldn't decide all week whether to buy tickets for Maiden Voyage festival to see Roy Ayers & when I did decide to pull the trigger they'd put the price up to £40 so I decided against it. Woke up Sunday with not much planned & regretting not going then I saw Dirty Water Records share a post on Facebook about a free day in the Spa Fields in Clerkenwell. Turned out to be a great little day out. Got there in time for THE DOG SHOW, my second in a month they also had a mini boot-fair/tarot card reading. Dirty Water Records regular DJ's were there throughout the day so plenty of obscure garage-rock/surf-rock/Rockabilly being played. Saw Daniel Davis of Wolf People do an acoustic set (OK), The Shadracks led by Billy Childish's son, solid garage-rock, did a frantic Brian Jonestown Massacre cover plus Boredom by Buzzcocks, very rough around the edges but good fun. Next up were Daemonik Fonce, garage-punk with some novelty songs thrown in, again a lot of fun. The day was headlined by Young Knives, I didn't even know they still existed.  They now look unrecognisable and are a two-piece with drum machines/synths and other electronic gadgets. They did some of their older material but in their new style which reminded me of Tom Vek. Gotta say, I wasn't much of a fan back in the day other than a couple of singles but their set was a pleasant surprise.


Fine day out, also the bar was only £4 a pint which for TCOTU these days is about as good as it gets. 

Sloan in Ottawa the other night. I've now seen sloan more than any other band except Dylan and the tragically hip, mainly because they're always around, but also because they are fantastic live. This was no different, hot summer night at a brew pub down the street from my office parking lot, so the trip in and out was easy. The DJ beforehand was playing a bunch of 90s and early 2000s radio hits, including (bizarrely) a Blink-182 song, which a lot of the crowd inexplicably sang along to (it was at a brew pub festival, so...alcohol?), which I guess the guys in the band heard, because they spent the whole show justifiably mocking the crowd for singing along. They played the hits, it was great as always. 8/10

The Who with an orchestra. One of the most riveting shows I've ever been to, and I didn't even have to sit on the moon at Wembley to see it. Something about Pete's songwriting lends itself to orchestration, and the big moments in songs like Who are you and most of Quadrophenia were BIG. But the highlights for me were Roger and Pete doing won't get fooled again (my favourite song by anyone ever) just the two of them with Pete on acoustic, and Roger either losing his voice or having in-ear monitor problems during "love reign o'er me", as he got visibly frustrated and stopped singing for about half of the song, and during Pete's solo, he went to the back and chugged a bunch of water and as the song crescendoed, blew out the water and let out a primal "looooooooooooooooooooove". An incredible moment, which led to him having the crowd sing all of baba o'riley because he was done. One of the great concerts of my life. 10/10