So Sahira and I went to see Massive Attack at the Sound Academy last night. She was late because she was helping her mom move,
more on that terrible story here:
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/806414--can-linda-sepp-possibly-be-helped
The situation is just.....I'm tired of explaining it to people because it's such a long story, and it's really sad, and ridiculous at the same time, from a "can't we do anything about this" standpoint.
It seems cruel to move on from that to Massive Attack, but, at this point both of Linda's children (her son Skye is one of my besties) don't want to think about the situation. Anyway so - we were both in various stages of grump-dom. The weather in Toronto has been kind of shit lately, it was nice in the morning. Jacket weather however turned into violent rain, thunder and lightning. We took the streetcar down to around Cherry St. and then got a cab to the Sound Academy which is on the water. Nobody likes this venue because of how awkward it is to get there, if you don't drive you have to walk, or take a cab, it's completely out of the way. Our cabbie Bruce gave us his card so we could call him after the show because it was going to be a clusterfuck to get out of, cab-wise. We got in at around 9ish and got drinks. Some girl was on stage. Tight shiny tights and white shirt, weird glasses, we were like "wtf?". So we went closer and both looked at each other funny - she was kind of a hybrid of scenester and a throwback to the 80's. So we hung around and watched her - she was really spunky and energetic. I think what won me over was that she looked like she was having fun singing her songs and doing her thing, and no matter whether people were dancing or not she was optimistic. The other cool thing was that she was on the stage alone. She had all sorts of synthesizers and junk, probably some sort of MOOG and other stuff which I can't name. (a quick check of her blog shows she uses macbooks and gadgets like an OB-8, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Buchla too)
She played piano too, well keyboard. We were totally into it by the end of her set. I ended up buying one of her supercool shirts and her EP. Oh yeah, her name is Amanda Warner (which I had to google) and her band name is MNDR. She was really sweet and signed the shirt for me, I'm wearing it right now.
here's a link to her myspace, it's the only place that actually has decent fidelity, (bad youtube, bad!):
http://www.myspace.com/mndrtronica
I Go Away and Fade to Black (which is her song for Black Flag I think she said yesterday) are awesome to start with.
The next opener after that was Martina Topley Bird. Let me just say - I wasn't super into her set, but fuck, she is absolutely gorgeous, like - "I couldn't take my eyes off her" gorgeous. She was also wearing an awesome sequinned dress (purple) with a hood and big shoulders. Her voice was awesome but her music just wasn't my cup of tea. It was also her birthday. I'm not sure how exactly to describe her music - it's kind of, well it reminded me of a British version of Andrew Bird, except he's waaaaaay cooler to me, with his hilarious lyrics (crazy, they have the same last name, and both basically appear on stage alone and create a wall of sound by/with looping/pedals). She was a little more jazzy - it's kind of what I imagine 40 year olds listen to. I don't know what that means, whatever (TG excepted). Anyhow after she was done we waited almost a whole hour for Massive Attack to come onstage.
And that's where the weirdness began. Don't get me wrong, the concert was amazing. Robert Del Naja is just....well...as well as talented, very good looking. The backdrop was great, interesting light show, lots of scrolling text - mostly political stuff, Howard Zinn quotes, etc. Each song had some sort of corresponding graphic displayed on the (I'm having a hard time describing it) ...light board? Maybe I can find a picture.
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/806414--can-linda-sepp-possibly-be-helped
The situation is just.....I'm tired of explaining it to people because it's such a long story, and it's really sad, and ridiculous at the same time, from a "can't we do anything about this" standpoint.
It seems cruel to move on from that to Massive Attack, but, at this point both of Linda's children (her son Skye is one of my besties) don't want to think about the situation. Anyway so - we were both in various stages of grump-dom. The weather in Toronto has been kind of shit lately, it was nice in the morning. Jacket weather however turned into violent rain, thunder and lightning. We took the streetcar down to around Cherry St. and then got a cab to the Sound Academy which is on the water. Nobody likes this venue because of how awkward it is to get there, if you don't drive you have to walk, or take a cab, it's completely out of the way. Our cabbie Bruce gave us his card so we could call him after the show because it was going to be a clusterfuck to get out of, cab-wise. We got in at around 9ish and got drinks. Some girl was on stage. Tight shiny tights and white shirt, weird glasses, we were like "wtf?". So we went closer and both looked at each other funny - she was kind of a hybrid of scenester and a throwback to the 80's. So we hung around and watched her - she was really spunky and energetic. I think what won me over was that she looked like she was having fun singing her songs and doing her thing, and no matter whether people were dancing or not she was optimistic. The other cool thing was that she was on the stage alone. She had all sorts of synthesizers and junk, probably some sort of MOOG and other stuff which I can't name. (a quick check of her blog shows she uses macbooks and gadgets like an OB-8, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Buchla too)
She played piano too, well keyboard. We were totally into it by the end of her set. I ended up buying one of her supercool shirts and her EP. Oh yeah, her name is Amanda Warner (which I had to google) and her band name is MNDR. She was really sweet and signed the shirt for me, I'm wearing it right now.
here's a link to her myspace, it's the only place that actually has decent fidelity, (bad youtube, bad!):
http://www.myspace.com/mndrtronica
I Go Away and Fade to Black (which is her song for Black Flag I think she said yesterday) are awesome to start with.
The next opener after that was Martina Topley Bird. Let me just say - I wasn't super into her set, but fuck, she is absolutely gorgeous, like - "I couldn't take my eyes off her" gorgeous. She was also wearing an awesome sequinned dress (purple) with a hood and big shoulders. Her voice was awesome but her music just wasn't my cup of tea. It was also her birthday. I'm not sure how exactly to describe her music - it's kind of, well it reminded me of a British version of Andrew Bird, except he's waaaaaay cooler to me, with his hilarious lyrics (crazy, they have the same last name, and both basically appear on stage alone and create a wall of sound by/with looping/pedals). She was a little more jazzy - it's kind of what I imagine 40 year olds listen to. I don't know what that means, whatever (TG excepted). Anyhow after she was done we waited almost a whole hour for Massive Attack to come onstage.
And that's where the weirdness began. Don't get me wrong, the concert was amazing. Robert Del Naja is just....well...as well as talented, very good looking. The backdrop was great, interesting light show, lots of scrolling text - mostly political stuff, Howard Zinn quotes, etc. Each song had some sort of corresponding graphic displayed on the (I'm having a hard time describing it) ...light board? Maybe I can find a picture.
Ah there it is. It was for lack of a better word, COOL. That light fixture approximated photograph quality images - at one point during the encore there was a globe that looked three dimensional and had flight times on the side. It was, well it warmed the cockles of my heart. My favourite part might have been when binary was running all throughout - which reminds me I got one of the limited edition screen printed posters - it's pretty. This was the debut of the North American tour and they were all on top of it. It was easily one of the more fun concerts I've been to, just because of the dance-ability of the songs/tracks. 3D (Del Naja) brought Martina out for a few songs - namely Teardrop. I got goosebumps - I've loved that song since I was a young'in. Overall I feel sorry for whoever missed it - but they're doing it again tomorrow night at the same venue. I'm not really sure what else I can say about it - Massive Attack have been around for a long time -their music is very well known - I mean Teardrop is the intro to House (the show) in a lot of countries so they're definitely mainstream so I don't feel that I need to get into particulars about their music. The one thing that did strike me was how Radiohead-like the concert felt. And of course it's the other way around because Massive Attack have always been electronica whereas Thom et al., only got into that around Kid A and Amnesiac (both of which I love) - but both have an inherent danceability - this is important to me. Which people don't really know about me, it's not something I advertise. As a child of two dancers/choreographers, I'm not that good - rhythm I've got....dancing....eeeh, maybe.The crowd was significantly older than Sahira and I, we may have been some of the youngest kids there. And thus the weirdness. I've never in my life been to a concert where people have been so incredibly rude and inconsiderate. People kept pushing and shoving, I got elbowed in the middle of one of my favourite songs, people kept bumping into me, and not a little bit, a LOT. People were coming out of the center of the crowd to get beer and drinks and go back, and they were completely careless about who they shoved. I don't understand this kind of attitude. You're there to see the show, pick a spot and fucking stay there, if you need a beer bring one with you, but once you're in the MIDDLE of the crowd you're disturbing other people's experience by constantly coming and going. There was a meathead in front of us who keept creeping on his girlfriend and just in general being gross, and shoving us a lot. I smashed my bag into someone on purpose because they kept pushing me forward, and I told a lot of people off. I'm pretty good at being pedantic and belligerent when I need to, but I've never been as close to punching someone as I was last night. My levels of rage were really high, and it somewhat diminished the concert for me. I've never been so ashamed and disgusted by the people of Toronto before. Here's hoping they were all from suburbs or something.
That being said, it was Martina's birthday and 3D asked us all to sing Happy Birthday to her, so we did - which was nice. Debut of the North American tour on her birthday and the whole crowd sings to her - she seemed so happy and embarrassed, it was adorable. Overall I had a great time - I'm just a bit sore about how rude people were. Massive Attack is definitely a show that's not to be missed, or at least experienced once in your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment