Saturday, July 17, 2004

Where we left off, aka Bare Naked ladies and the Nits

     So going back to yonder days is going to be a little hard since a lot has happened since then, but lets see what I can remember.  Now I think I already told you all about the walk over and dinner, but let me reiterate that dinner at the Lava Lounge was meh at best.  The waitress was a little flaky and looked really weird.  Its like she had all the elements of a person who could be very attractive in a neat pile before she left the house, and as she went to assemble then she tripped and got them all mixed up, and tilted.  I don't want to slag the place to much more then that, but a review with out mentioning the food would be incomplete.  The food was inexpensive and cheap, and burnt, but I guess if it is the Lava Lounge I should expect that, hard to control the temperature of a volcano... Now on to the show, or at least the venue, I will get to the show in a moment.  So we walk from the lava lounge, and it's getting a little overcast, brad began what would become a repeated joke for the next while, and that was about rain.  He insisted that the weather channel had indicated "No more then 1 millimetre of rain.  So we are all in line in front of the place and it's getting gloomier and gloomier, and some one would say, "Don't worry there will be only 1 millimetre."  Brad would chime in, "Less then 1, less then 1."  Well it turns out both were wrong, because when the sky opened up, it got wet and FAST, fortunately we had partial shelter from a tree and they started letting people in, but I can assure you it was more then a millimetre. So the place the concert was held is called the Mod Club, which isn't the name of the building but some roaming entity that can be in any number of buildings, and that night it was in that building.  I think, but I may be too uncool to get 'it,' but I think Mod stands for post modern, as in retro, and that would go along with the décor, very Austin Powersesc.  My kind of place (for those who don't know it, Erin and I are definitely children of a different cultural era, but I wouldn't be willing to give up my technology era for my culture and style era, so we choose to have lots of electronic toys, and decorate in a way that pretty much offends the rest of the sensible world, but screw'm  (well I guess that is you, and so I just said screw you, sorry.))  Well that was a tangent; suffice it to say I liked the place.  At the time we got in it was maybe at 1/8 of its capacity, what was great it was a club more then a concert hall.  They had a stage at one end, an open floor in front of the stage, to the left was the main bar, and to the right was elevated area with a leaning rail and a bench of seats.  That was just the main floor, behind the entrance was a set of stairs that went up to a balcony over the bar, from which you could sit and enjoy the show.  It was full when we got there.  So we lined up along the leaning rail, chilled and waited.  So around 9:30 the Bare Naked Ladies role on to the stage with much fan fair and start into why they are here tonight.  As it turns out Kevin Hurn, (sp?) who plays keyboard, mandolin, accordion and 'other' for the band, is like the biggest fan of the Nits.  He attributes the Nits as one of his prime influences and an influence he has brought to the band.  Now the Nits are about a 30-year-old band from Europe with little to no following in Canada, but Kevin heard they were doing a North America tour of small venues and Kevin wanted to give them an audience.  So he, with the help of the band, put together the show I was at, the plan was BNL brings the audience and the Nits bring the music.  So I think there was maybe 400 people for an awesome set by BNL, it was an acoustic set, and just fantastic, they joked, they had fun, and they were really back to there small venue roots, just a great show, they even had the Nits join in for their last song, can you blame them it was a great segway.   When the Nits came on, I was a little disappointed with the audience; I really thought it was a part of the deal.  BNL kindly does this AWESOME show, and then the audience stays around and gives the Nits a chance.  To my disappointment, half the audience left nearly right away, what a bunch of jerks!  So it took about 15-20 minutes for the crew to change over the stage, we all relaxed and then when the nits came back out, they kicked off into a great set of interesting music.  I can definitely see some of BNL in the Nits, I guess I really mean I can see what part of the Nits that BNL has made a part of them, but I was a BNL fan first.  A little more electronic then BNL, with synthesizers and sampling, but very fun and up beat, some funny songs some serious songs, just good stuff.  My only complaint isn't about them, its really me, as they sing with a Dutch accent, it made it difficult for me to understand all the songs, but I could get the gist, and they had some great talent with the instruments as well. So the night ended the show was great, by the end their couldn't have been more then 50 people in the crowed and that included BNL because they came down to enjoy the show.  (They just really really like them.)  Kevin also got to play and sing with them. By around 12:00 or some I caught a cab with Brad and Jodi, and then a subway to union.  I missed the 12:20 bus home and hung out in the station until 1:20.  It was really funny because I watched these too really creepy/slimy Canadian's try and pick up these to tourists who couldn't speak English very well.  They were surprisingly successful, like disgustingly so, but I never thought being a tourist made one a floozy, so I guess those guys just tried the right lines on the right pair of girls, in either case it provided me with an hour's amusement, it was sort of like a train wreck, you know is a terrible tragedy but you can't stop looking.   So I got back to Mississauga around 2 - 2:30 I think, I was definitely in bed by 2:40, but the next day when the alarm went off at 6 am, I was exhausted!!!  I think I survived Thursday, but I don't recollect, I probably turned on the music, and got the coffee flowing and turned of my cognitive abilities and just got some programming done. 
 

No comments: