NXNE Film Review: You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story [Chris Terry, Ross Edmunds]

Posted on by Paul in Everything, North By Northeast | Leave a comment

Toronto – Handsome Ned was a country/rockabilly musician who was the pinnacle of the Queen West music scene back in the mid-’80s.  Made up of a mix of concert footage, interviews with Ned and bandmates back in the day, and more current interviews of Ned’s contemporaries reminiscing about his career, You Left Me Blue is a detailed portait of an emerging artist and music scene as well as a window to the past – a look back at a world that seems vastly different than the current indie music scene.  It’s hard today to imagine a Toronto like the one seen in the film, where the independant music scene was virtually non-existant, made up of a close knit group of musicians with vastly different influences just trying to get a show anywhere.  We take for granted these days that on any given night there will be a good number of bands playing across the city.  This was not the case back then.

“We were fighting a system that suffered roots-type music, or music that had heart,” says reggae musician Mojah at one point, illustrating the uphill battle faced by musicians going somewhat off the beaten path.  Mojah’s “rastabilly” collaboration with Ned on “Johnny Too Bad” is one of the highlights of the film, despite the Hilarious House of Frightenstein type effects that appear briefly on the screen at one point.  I guess those were cutting edge effects back in the 80s.

The reverence for Ned held by so many of the musicians interviewed, from Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor to Steve Leckie of The Viletones, is clear.  All share a deep admiration for him and an appreciation for what he stood for.  Of course, dying young always helps to cement one’s status as a legend and unfortunately, Handsome Ned died of an overdose January 10, 1987.  This film is a fitting tribute to his legacy and worth seeing for anyone interested in the history of Toronto music.

You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story is playing June 18, 8:00 pm at The NFB Theatre.

Concert Review: The Futureheads, June 10th, Mod Club

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Music | Leave a comment

Toronto – The Futureheads were in town on Thursday night to promote their new album the Chaos, and they put on an awesome live show. After the FM light hearted pop of Athlete, and the moody (but spectacular) sounds of The Antlers and The National, nothing was more refreshing then when The Futureheads, upon taking the stage shortly after 8:45, asked the crowd “Are you ready to rock?”

The crowd was indeed ready to rock. So the band complied. What happened over the next 80 minutes was a show that moved along at a blistering pace that featured songs from all the Futurehead albums. It was a great rock show and the Futureheads have one of the best on-stage presence I have seen. Instead of going through it chronologically, I’ll just recall moments in the show that I found to be entertaining.

beer

First of all, the Futureheads were drinking Steamwhistle. Barry Hyde, the lead singer, when looking at the beer, asked ‘This is a good Canadian beer, yah?” to which the crowd yelled an emphatic yes. He then proceeded to open the beer bottle WITH A WATER BOTTLE. I was like ‘wtf?’. That was impressive. Later on in the night, someone bought the band Molson beer, to which the band was like ‘Molson?’ with a tone of displeasure.

fans

It was pretty apparent that the band just likes to have fun with the crowd. It was also clear that if you were in the front, the band was going to have some fun with you. At one point, Ross (the bassist) pointed to someone in the crowd during a conversation and said something like “I’m sure this perpetual screamer over here would like it”. Haha. Shortly afterwards, they talked to another audience in the crowd and told him he “had the straightest spine known to man” and that he had “good rock posture”. These kind of jokes happened throughout the night, and I’m pretty sure most fans had a smile on their face.

rock. and. roll

The Futureheads love to rock and roll. Barry Hyde used the guitar to machine gun the crowd and their post-rock punk meets 60s harmony sound was enough to start a mini mosh pit. The band even got the crowd to do what they called the ‘bouncey bounce’ for the tune Skip to the End, which consists of the people just bouncing straight up and down, to which Ross pointed to the guy with the straight spine and insisted it wasn’t a problem for him. Other songs that rocked the show included Man Ray, Area, Decent Days and Nights and Beginning of a Twist. New songs like I can Do That, Jupiter and Heartbeat Song got good reactions as well, in particular the Heartbeat song, which was introduced as a ‘John Hughes song where you fell in love fiver minutes ago’.

Hounds of Love

As I had previously eluded to, The Hounds of Love was a great moment in Oh, and it proved itself to be true on Thursday night, as the band split the concert hall into two sides for dueling Ohs to begin the Kate Bush cover. When Ross’s side won, he was so ecstatic for the victory he talked trash to Jaff for two straight minutes. The song itself to be a nice sing-a-long and even after the show was over, Ross was still thanking his side for picking up the victory. That’s some genuine fun.

Appreciation

When the Futureheads came back for an encore, they basically said ‘Alright, this has been a great gig, so from now on, we’ll just play requests from now on’. They then proceeded to play three requests before ending the night. What a great way to end a show.

All in all, a wonderful show full of energetic upbeat music and a great time was had by all. We also discovered pints at the Mod Club was cheaper then bottles.

The Futureheads – Heartbeat Song by Fuzzy Stereo

Concert Review: Kings of Convenience, June 8, Phoenix

Posted on by sarahw in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – When the Kings of Convenience (KOC) show was cancelled in February due to Eirik’s case of the flu I was quite devasted, KOC are probably one of my favorite bands. This devastation was temporarily remedied when I saw Whitest Boy Alive at Coachella (Erlend Oye’s side project), they were very impressive to say the least which left me anticipating KOC’s June arrival even more!

KOC came out a little after 10:15 PM, it was just Erlend and Eirik with their acoustic guitars. They kicked off the set with an ultra slow jam, My Ship isn’t Pretty, the packed house literally stood there in awe of Eirik’s amazing voice – it gave me Goosebumps!

After the first song Erlend addressed the crowd to say that they play many “quiet” songs and that we need to be quiet during those but we can get rowdy during their “not so quiet” songs. He also went on to say that The Phoenix denied their request to shut down the bar (Bastards) so he politely asked the audience not to buy drinks, a strange request at a concert but I could literally hear the change jangling, the register open/close, the person in the back sneezing and at one point a phone ringing (the nerve).

The duo then played a delightful set that included Love is no Big Truth, I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From, Mrs. Cold, Boat Behind, interrupted only with hilarious banter between Erlend, Eirik and the audience. They are quite the comedic twosome, at one point Erlend was late getting to the piano for his piece and Eirik commented that he would have to bring that episode up at the next band meeting. Flight of the Conchords anyone? Hearing this in their Nordic accents made these quips even funnier.

Being such a big fan of KOC I was worried my expectations for them were too high, well, their melodic, soothing songs coupled with amazingly precise and coordinated guitar work truly do all of their albums justice.

When they neared the end of their set KOC invited the opening band, Franklin for Short, on stage and proceeded to sing two songs with them (Rule my World and I’d Rather Dance With You). The backup band added another dimension to their final songs and gave the songs a little more punch. Erlend encouraged the crowd to move closer “like at a rock concert” he also showed off the best gangly-awkward-Napoleon Dynamite-esque dance moves I’ve ever seen (I got a sneak peak at Coachella but he was on FIRE during this show). Very entertaining.

For the encore they played Little Kids and then ASKED the crowd what we wanted to hear, that has NEVER happened at any of the concerts I have attended (I’ve been to a few..). Obviously we all yelled for them to play Misread which was the perfect wrap-up to an impeccable show, they said it best in their song Homesick “Two soft voices blended in perfection…”.

Kings of Convenience – Boat Behind by eduardodv

Concert Review: The National, June 8th, Massey Hall

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 3 Comments

Toronto – Welcome to part 2 of my review of Tuesday night’s show. Part 1, featuring the Antlers, can be found here

Fake Empires, Mistaken For Strangers, Bloodbuzz Ohio, Albel, Lit Up, Karen, Mr. November

These are the songs from the National I can name off the top of my head. Needless to say, I am not overly familiar with their material. However, I know a hot ticket when I see it, so when the National announced they were playing two shows at Massey Hall, I felt like I had to go. I had gotten myself acquainted with most of the bands material before the show, but like that random stranger you meet at a house party, I could only scratch the surface of what the band was about before the show.

First of all, let me tell you, Massey Hall, your basement bathroom area is a death trap during intermission. If there was a fire, everyone down there will DIE. No clue why I thought about this during that time, it’s probably the effects of aging.

Anyways, shortly after 9:20, the band took the stage to a rapturous applause. I was surprised by the size of the band, when I saw them at the Horseshoe back in the day, they were a much smaller band (and also, they still claimed to be from Cincinnati, instead of Brooklyn). Accompanying them was a horns section and a multi-instrumentalist named Padma. He played violin, piano and all sorts of stuff. I can confirm that having a horn and strings section really helps add depth and amplifies the sound. Makes songs sound more epic. I like epic.

The band started off with the track Runaway, off their new album, High Violet. The stage had some nice lighting for this song, including two shiny disco balls set on the floor that provided some trippy effect. Sadly, they never utilized the disco balls again. Matt Berninger’s baritone voice carries so well in Massey Hall. The song was quickly followed by fan favorite Mistaken For Strangers and then another new song, Anyone’s Ghost, to which he said

Matt: The following song is a new song. Wait.. so was the first one. Nevermind

I found that to be rather humourous. After the third song, the photographers had to scram (usual 3 song photo limit) and sensing that this might be a sit down show, Matt quickly went into the crowd encouraging everyone to stand up, and as usual per Massey Hall show, everyone then made a beeline for the front. On a side note, I know a few of my respected colleagues are concert photographers, but it is pretty funny watching them scurry around each other when you are far away. Just sayin. They do a good job though.

The rest of the 2 hour set consisted of the band taking much of material from their most recent albums. As a casual fan, I was impressed at how good they sounded, but some of the songs did sound kinda-samey. I guess this is what you get when the lead singers delivery is so unique. Having said that, Berninger is a great front man, he has good crowd banter, is intense when he needs to be and humourous when the moment calls for that. He can scream the hell out of the microphone as well. I think in another life, Matt Berninger could have either been a college professor or a ship captain.

Highlights for me included all the songs I knew and especially the song Abel, which featured Matt heading directly into the crowd on what must be the world’s longest microphone cord. He could have went to Frans and ordered a corn beef sandwich if he wanted, the chord was that long. He would later repeat the trick for the encore performance of Mr. November, which I had mistaken told Paul was called ‘Ms October‘. Yup, music expert here!

All in all, a great night of music at Massey Hall. My ears were ringing. I thought Massey Hall had volume control, so I didn’t bring earplugs, but let me tell you, it was definitely worth it. Go check them out tonight. They might play Lit Up.

I shazammed all the songs while at the concert to come up with this play list.

Runaway
Mistaken For Strangers
Anyone’s Ghost
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Secret Meeting
Slow Show
Squalor Victoria
Afraid Of Everyone
Little Faith
All The Wine
Available
Conversation 16
Apartment Song
The Geese of Beverly Road
Abel
Daughters Of The Soho Riots
England
Fake Empire

90-Mile Water Wall
Lemonworld
Mr. November
Terrible Love

About Today

Just kidding, I got it off setlist.fm

The National – Conversation 16 by wereofftherails