K-os @ Yonge & Dundas Square

8:30 pm on the sunny Friday evening found me hitting up one of the free NXNE shows at Y&D Square. Arriving just on time I valiantly dove into the beyond packed crowd of fans, random wanderers, and broke music lovers to get a better look at the Toronto emcee who strode onto the stage with a full sense of ownership. The crowd was diverse reflecting his appeal and his increasing mainstream status. K-os has a quick, rapid, and smooth delivery, that was backed by a full live band plus DJ/producer. Not bothering with intro stage banter, he launched right into his first song and then quickly blew through a couple of old hits like “Superstarr” and “Man I Used to Be” which prompted cheers. Like any good emcee K-os repeatedly engaged the crowd and by the time he launched into “Crabbuckit”, probably his most well known song, a significant number of the crowd were dancing as much as possible given the extremely tight confines.

DD/MM/YYYY @ The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom

It took until 11 pm for me to make it back into The Gladstone because Timber Timbre, a band that had topped multiple “best of” lists last year and which I definitely wanted to see, had previously played at 10 causing a massive overflow of people. Earlier the place had not only been over capacity, but was also endowed with a huge winding line of people outside that had stupidly arrived far too late.  After Timer Timbre’s set there was a sizable exodus, and only then was I able to make it in. Fortunately all was not lost as the next band was hometown heroes DD/MM/YYYY who play loud, jerky, fast, 80’s video game synthesizer drenched, rhythm and percussion driven math rock.

The 5 piece band produced a primal and guitar heavy trance inducing onslaught that was overlaid by brief, simple, and repetitive lyrics that are more embellishment and emphasis than content. Often the vocals are not even words, being yelps, grunts, and cries fractured into repeated beats. At their best the band has layered vocals and rhythms that play off of each other and can go from cacophony to order and back again repeatedly,  always with hard beats, high energy, and incredible stamina. There were barely noticeable stops between most of the songs with the band launching into the next one immediately after the last ended. In the rare moments of pause, the band engaged the audience by screaming phrases like, “You wanna dance? Please dance with us!”. Despite the sometimes sudden momentum and time signature changes mid-song, DD/MM/YYYY still play strangely and vividly danceable music that the crowd took full advantage of. The band is definitely, in my opinion, one that would be perfect to orchestrate a futuristic post-apocalyptic action chase scene.

C’mon @ The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom

At midnight the veteran band C’mon came on stage to a rowdy crowd ready to tear the place apart/ This was fitting since the band’s give’em f*#% reputation definitely preceded them, testified by a slightly drunk fan who had randomly accosted me during DD/MM/YYYY’s set to enthusiastically gush about the last C’mon show he was at. The 3 member band play very hard, basically metal rock with intense riffs. They are true performers with showmanship to spare and tons of in-your-face attitude. Ian Blurton (lead guitarist and main vocals) wasted no time to launch into theatrics and midway through the first song jumped right into the crowd and stumbled around like a slow drunk while still perfectly shredding his guitar before falling backwards onto the crowd. Katie Lynn Campbell (lead bass and vocals) spent the second song taunting the crowd exclaiming that the band and the rowdy crowd were “Not from Toronto, that’s why we’re partying”, despite the fact that the band definitely, and the crowd presumably, actually were. Not deterred, Campbell shouted out Sudbury and Sue Saint Marie and the crowd went wild, which Blurton responded to by accusing the crowd of lying. Finally the drummer Dean Dallas Bentley was barefoot and throughout the set seemed like a man possessed, wailing at his drum set with crazy energy while the crowd almost universally head banged to the beat. Near the end Campbell screamed out once again to the crowd, accusing them of “fading” while yelling out expletives. During the last song, Blurton, again the consulate performer, jumped into the crowd once more and tilted the mic stand downwards to finish the song by sharing vocals with a member of the crowd. After the raucous show I was prepared to call it a night and as I made my way out the door I noticed that C’mon was the first band to have managed to fill the ballroom all the way,  which was unsurprising and well deserved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Events, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.