They Might Be Giants at the Mod Club

Just got back from seeing They Might Be Giants at The Mod Club. What an excellent show!

Met with my long-lost friend LB, who I haven't seen since the store we ran at The Eaton Centre (Outback Jack, anyone remember that?) closed way back in 1996. Ah, the wonders of Facebook. She's still tons of fun. Also met up with M&D, who I also hadn't seen for a while. Also fun.

Okay, so the opening band was Young Rival. They were okay. Nothing fabulous, but a better opener than that stupid Fiction Plane were. More suited to the music style, more fun - not amazing, but pretty good.

Main Event: TMBG. What can I say? They were amazing! Played lots of stuff off the new album and lots of oldies, got a phonecall from the grave mid-show (Eleanor Roosevelt, I think), and actually played Fingertips, how wacky is that??? I bought a Music For Anteaters t-shirt at the show - I would have preferred a Mesopotamians shirt, but I think they had trouble getting stuff past customs or something. I still might order one from their site.

Oh, and the pix I took from the gig turned out amazing - visit my Flickr set to check 'em out!

- rescued from Draft purgatory -

The Police at the Air Canada Centre

Just came back from their first night at the Air Canada Centre. They were quite excellent! We had some pretty good seats I think, but it's a damned huge venue!

They did every relative hit except Spirits I think, plus some others I wouldn't have thought they'd do. No Bring On The Night though, which is too bad. Did some reworking of a couple of tunes, mostly it worked except in one Sting went a wee bit jazzy, which is good elsewhere but has no place here.

Stewart had the most fun. And it showed, he really does have boundless energy. He had a great kit behind his main one, with kettle drums and cymbals of every description and a huge gong, every time he went between the two sets the audience went nuts, as did he!

Andy's getting old but damn, he can still play. Sting's voice is much better than it was at the beginning of the tour too, and he's still sexy. Yes, I know he's an old man, but still.

Sting's son is kinda lame though. I mean, the first couple of songs his band did ("Fiction Plane"), and the second last, were kinda okay, but the rest of the time they just sounded like kids in a garage who thought they were really big shit. When he sings you can really hear his Dad when he hits higher notes, but for the rest of it he sounded more like Eddie Vedder.

Oh, and the blatant cash grab thing annoyed me. $50 for a concert shirt? Gah.

(I got a $40 one, still too much but I couldn't help myself. Plus a tote bag. Gah.)

So what else... um, got The Peacekeeper Wars on DVD, plus The Else, the new They Might Be Giants CD, in preparation for their gig... tomorrow!

- rescued from Draft purgatory -