samedi 30 Aoû 2008, 11h35m

Tonight had a whiff of beginning-of-the-end to it, being one of only two shows I've got scribbled down on the calendar in the month or so before I move back to Toronto. That probably explains why, like a huge fanboy dork, I scuttled up to the stage after Acid Eater had finished and swiped their set list. I wish it explained the sweaty "dancing", too, but that's just sort of a given when I'm really into a show now.

So… Acid Eater. Their gear was already set up when I got to Bears, with a sexy Nord Electro plopped down on top of the usual Vox Continental organ to provide some decent rumbling low end. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but I hadn't noticed it at previous shows. Anyway, with a photographer in the room, there was plenty of rockstar posing going on, but Maso's regular charges out into the crowd also wrung a bit more energy out of the people who were mostly there for the headliners and eventually got more than four of us dancing. (Or maybe his leopard-print shirt and huge-framed sunglasses have strange hypnotic powers…?) The set was about half material from their album and half… that wasn't, I guess. (The opener, which was pretty much the main riff from "A.C.I.D." to a slightly different rhythm, is helpfully titled "新曲" ("new tune") on the set list; other mysteries therein include "Dirty", "Crime", "女子" ("Woman") and some kanji that means nothing to me.) The energy wasn't always pouring off of the band, but there were some great Doors-y moments towards the end and Organ Guy's backing vocals were finally a little more prominent; I'm really tempted not to book any private lessons on the 21st so that I can see them one last time at Rockets.

And then the 80% of the crowd that had been steadfastly hugging the back wall surged forward and it was time for King Brothers to take the stage. Sadly, they were one of those bands with a million things going for them (good sound, relatively slick suits, drummer who pays plenty of attention to the toms and kick and seems willing to sweat to death for the cause, etc.) who still manage not to actually rock enough to make me care even a little bit. Maybe it was the douchebaggy sneers all around; maybe it was the well-rehearsed middle fingers to the video cameras — three in total, scattered around the room — at the end of every song; maybe it was the way everyone in the crowd Lost Their Shit™ in precisely the same way at certain points in certain songs… whatever it was, they come off like they really wished they were Andre Williams (or even the Blues Explosion), and they really aren't. (Extra points deducted for the clichéd "Thank you, good night! Oh, you're clapping? Okay, well, gee, I guess we'll do an encore, then" nonsense; if you're going to play those last few songs, just PLAY THEM and stop wankily demanding that the crowd stroke your egos first.) (Half a point restored for the fact that their band-of-the-people gesture — dragging all of their gear out into the middle of a crowded room for the last song — meant that a fairly attractive woman who was really into the music kept grinding up against me for want of dancing room.) I didn't stick around to see if they could be goaded into playing a second encore.

PS: I've been meaning to say something about the show at Katakamuna last weekend, if only because it made me feel guilty about my faint-praise comments on Bonnounomukuro/Boss of Naked's performance at Yaso on the 14th. In addition to being a really friendly, chatty guy (in spite of my abysmal Japanese), he came out and completely tore the place up on the 23rd. Yeah, his singing was still pretty tone-deaf, but it mostly came out as nodding patter dropped on top of his jerky beats this time; he was probably going for a Lee Perry vibe, and just like with His Upsetterness, it works when you're in the mood for it. So… toasted toasting, drum machines gradually shuddering into a steady groove for a minute or two, a dash of completely uninhibited dancing and some ghetto VJing courtesy of a girl cut-and-pasting stuff to hell and back in MS Word projected on the rear wall; a definite step up from the total hash I made of my set that night.