I was too hungry to go to any shows on Wednesday.
Thursday though, the dream team (consisting of myself, Cailyn, Aurella, Ashley and Ac Slater)headed to Yonge and Dundas to see the Black Lips play a free show with our bellies full of beer. Mid-set I suppose Ashley and I decided it would be a spectacular idea to crowd surf, which lead to a stage invasion, which lead pure chaos:
More Black Lips from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.
Oh and I found this review:
"Five insane Georgians posing as a rock combo then took the stage and proceeded to keep security both busy and infuriated for the next 45 minutes by encouraging the insane young people who decided to jump the barricade and dance onstage. When a security guard tried to remove the first two dancing girls, bassist Jared Swilley and guitarist Ian Saint Pé crossed their instruments to physically block his way..."
And I keep finding these little gems all over various websites:
We keep it classy... After that we headed to Sneeky Dees to see These Are Powers. There's been a lot of buzz around this band lately and I was pretty excited to see them. But after a "What the fuck do you mean my id is fake?!" friendly debate with the bouncer, it was a no-go. After further listening to them however, I feel like this is the kind of noisy shit that my old junkie roomate would blast at 5 a.m. when I was trying to sleep.So no love lost there.
We then found ourselves at The Horseshoe, with our dream team dropping like flies, it was now just Cailyn and I. King Kahn & BBQ show was amazing from what I hear. I could barely see the stage, could taste sweat and just really wanted to go home and eat left over roti.
Friday morning greeted me with a hangover from hell. And a run in with a ghost from the past at the Beer Store sent me into an existential crisis/panic/'what am I doing with my life?' kind of mood. Needless to say, I took Friday night off.
I found my sanity again on Saturday; just in time, well almost, to see our friends Final Flash from Montreal play.
We got to The Drake just after their set finished which was unfortunate. With appearances at Canadian Music Week, SXSW, NXNE and a mini tour in China to their credit all in the past four months, you'd be wise to keep an eye on them.
From there we walked, or stumbled, to The Reverb to catch Grand Analog's set. Some solid hip hop tunes with a little reggae thrown in...nothing mind blowing, but pretty impressive.
Next it was over to The Silver Dollar to catch The Hoa Hoa's. Now I know I'm not supposed to shit talk them, since they are Toronto's undeground psych-pop darlings. But i can say they're music is just not my cup of tea. Live though, they're good shit...except they could afford to lose guest tambourine player Cameron Ingles of The Disraelis (The Disraelis to The Hoa Hoas = foot to shoe) along with his sunglasses and pretentiousness...Alright that was rude, I'm a little bitter ever since he gave me shit for tagging The Velvet Underground a few weeks ago. I'm sure he's a lovely man.
I called it quits after that and woke up Sunday morning, went home to say Happy Father's Day to my dad, and eat a proper meal before heading to Dundas Square to see The Cool Kids. The crowd was dead. I'm talking no energy at all. Perhaps a lack of stage presence and charisma were to blame, or maybe the crowd was all as equally as hungover and too worn out to yell "Kids" when ya'll say "Cool." Plus I couldn't get this memory of me seeing this kid have a seizure on Yonge Street a while ago out of my head for the whole show. Weird...
Well that's all. Goodbye NXNE, it's been a pleasure. See you next year.
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