concerts – Sheryl Kirby

TV Party Tonight – January 17, 2022

Stuff we’ve watched recently…

Films

Boiling Point (2021)
We were poking around on Hoopla looking for something else when this popped up. Love that Hoopla gets these odd new releases; love that a Toronto Public Library card gets you access to both Hoopla and Kanopy.

Anyway, Stephen Graham plays chef Andy Jones; his life is falling apart – he’s split up with his partner and is missing his kid, his water bottle is full of vodka, and he’s become a detriment to the smooth operation of his business, but it’s a Friday night and his hot new restaurant is full, so he’s busy with a health inspector, a kitchen team that are either high-strung or incompetent, front of house staff who are far too busy chatting with guests and each other, and a hostess/manager more interested in getting the place pumped up on social media than in competently managing her staff and ensuring good communication with the kitchen. His old boss/mentor shows up with a restaurant critic in tow, there’s a pending engagement proposal to a customer with a nut allergy on table 13, and the Black waitress refuses to tell anyone that she’s having trouble with a racist customer.

And it’s all done in one seamless 90-minute shot. Continue reading “TV Party Tonight – January 17, 2022”

Bag Ladies and the Arena Conundrum

Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch.

It used to be that everything the average person needed to carry with them out into the world could fit in a few pockets. Well… sort of. Bespoke tailors regularly add extra pockets to custom-made suits for well-to-do clients. In a recent conversation my husband had with friends about how people used Crown Royal bags once the booze was gone, someone admitted that his grandfather would have the elegant pouches sewn into coats and jackets as extra pockets.

It seems we all have more to carry than we think.

Women, of course, didn’t even have the relative convenience of a couple of pockets. Before handbags became common in late Victorian times, they literally wore a small sack attached to a ribbon around their waist, accessed through a slit in their skirt seams. Housekeepers carried a small version of their tool kit around via a chatelaine; a large brooch that was pinned to the waist and which might include a pen, thimble, scissors or other items attached by small chains so as not to be lost or misplaced.

Times have changed, and we now carry a lot more stuff with us pretty much everywhere, to the point where bag-related neck and shoulder issues are common, especially for women. Clothes for the gym; the ubiquitous water bottle or reusable coffee cup; a phone at minimum, but probably also a tablet, e-reader or laptop; cosmetics; a wallet; probably a lot more if you have a kid, or any kind of health issue.

Continue reading “Bag Ladies and the Arena Conundrum”

How to Go to Concerts When You’re Middle-Aged

Let’s face it, middle-aged folks don’t go to many concerts. We’re busy doing other stuff. Or we can’t afford it. Bands we like, that are still around with some semblance of the original line-up, are pretty rare. Mostly we take a pass more often than not. Bands also tend to go on stage well past our bedtime.

I am mostly fortunate to not fall into those parameters (except maybe for the late set times and early bed times, those kill me) and probably go to more concerts than the average 50-year-old. I’m lucky enough to live in a major city, and have a household income that allows for such extravagances. I spent part of my twenties and thirties as a concert promoter and ran a small record label for a few years, so those connections still come up occasionally to lure me out to see bands, in addition to checking out bands from my youth that I missed back in the day because I grew up in a city that few bands bothered to travel to.

The concert-going experience has changed a great deal, though, and it’s important to keep that in mind if your most favouritest band from when you were twenty reforms and comes to town. Especially if every concert you’ve seen in the last decade has involved children dressed as angels or shepherds. It’s not 1987 anymore, people.

Some tips for your middle-aged GenX concert experience…

Continue reading “How to Go to Concerts When You’re Middle-Aged”

Billy By Numbers – or – How the Future Fascist State Will Control Us With Free Concert Tickets

1 sweaty t-shirt thrown to a fan in the front row
3 songs from the new album
2 Generation X tracks (one obscure) for the old punks in the house
4 costume changes
1 in-joke (in this case about Gordon Lightfoot and Massey Hall)
12 frisbees tossed into the crowd
2 of the biggest hits saved for the encore
1 rocker chick sitting backstage who looked like she had been time-warped from LA’s Sunset Strip circa 1987
20+ the number of times the name of the city of the current concert was said to the crowd

First off, don’t get me wrong, I dig Billy Idol. Idol was the first concert I ever attended, in 1984, and the imagery in his “White Wedding” video, full of Bat Cavers in black vinyl and religious iconography, was the impetus for me to become part of the punk/goth scene and thus, the person I am today.

But let’s not for a minute forget that Idol is a “rock star”. That concert I went to in the 80s – filled a 10,000 seat arena. More than he mastered singing and playing music, he mastered his persona. He is a celebrity. And undoubtedly revels in the power that comes with that.

Continue reading “Billy By Numbers – or – How the Future Fascist State Will Control Us With Free Concert Tickets”

Review – Erasure at Danforth Music Hall – Needs More Vince Clarke

Pared down.

While Vince Clarke and Andy Bell showed up and delivered the goods last night at the Danforth Music Hall, long-term fans, and anybody who has seen their previous live shows, would have come away with the same term – pared down.

Working with a basic laptop, and occasionally an acoustic guitar, Clarke’s synth grooves remained as lush and infectious as ever, but compared to their 2011 show at Sound Academy and the stand shaped like a giant gargoyle (complete with light-up eyes), or the 1997 performance at the Molson Ampitheatre (for the album Cowboy) where Clarke had so much gear it was mounted on scaffolding that he regularly climbed up and down, there was little going on, and little for the talented keyboardist to do. Whole songs from the new album The Violet Flame, with many tracks emulating a Northern Soul sound, left Clarke with nothing to do – he was spotted for long periods during songs standing with his hands by his sides. Like we say about just about everything “Needs more Vince Clarke!”

Missing also was the sense of humour and dynamic between Clarke and lead singer Andy Bell. In 2011, Clarke came out to help Bell with a costume change, using an extra-large pair of scissors to cut a red satin corset off Bell’s body. Nothing like that occurred last night, and Bell’s costume change, where he stripped down to a tank top and sequinned shorts, was done off stage.

Bell is definitely an entertainer and an energetic one at that, but after opening the set with Oh L’Amour, we were treated to a series of tracks from both the new album and what could be referred to as “the muddy middle” of Erasure’s discography. Sorry boys, but the songs we all know and love are from the 80s and early 90s. Efforts to update or rework tracks didn’t always succeed. I commented before the encore that they were still to play Ship Of Fools, only to have my husband point out that they had done it already – hadn’t recognized it at all.

They made sure we left still loving them however, saving the best for last with Respect, Chains of Love, Sometimes, and Always.

Erasure will always have a place in my heart, mostly because they are so much fun to see live. Their show last night was still great, but was less than I’ve been used to. It was fine compared to most concerts you’d see of a similar genre, but Erasure is usually so much fun live that the pared down version felt lacking on a few fronts.

You can never go wrong with giving Vince more to do.