Going Japanese

I fear my blog has become overly music-centric lately. I promise to remedy this in the near future...but since this was Canadian Music Week, here's just one more.

I went to Toronto this weekend to celebrate my father's 58th birthday. I am a thoughtful and dutiful daughter.

Alright, fine. The truth is I went home this weekend to see the almighty Zoobombs from Tokyo play a show at the Comfort Zone. The fact that it also fell on my dear old dad's birthday was nothing but a happy coincidence. More on the Zoobombs later.

On Thursday night, I caught a bunch of shows at the 360. Instead of reviewing them here, I urge you to read the Chart report cards I wrote for The Statues, The Dudes, The Ashgrove and The Remains of Brian Borcherdt. Apologies to Montreal's The Lovely Feathers for missing your set, but reliable sources deemed it super.

Friday night consisted of birthday celebrations and essay procrastination.

Saturday night was the night. After dinner at Oasis with the favourites, I headed to the Comfort Zone for a night of high highs and le le lows. Regrettably, I missed Femme Generation (who gave away free stickers and buttons, thus earning my love sight unseen) and Shikasta, but got there just in time to catch The Two Koreas, which is a band made up of almost every key music critic in the city. Audience reactions were mixed, but I found their set endearing, overall. They do The Fall way better than The Fall do The Fall. And I thoroughly enjoyed watching the always-entertaining Stuart Berman rockstar it up. Next on was quasi-albino pocket friend Gentleman Reg, who was all sparkly and did a very lovely rendition of Give Me the Chance to Fall. I think his voice has improved since I saw him at Pop Montreal (or maybe it was just the acoustics of the place). That led to a performance by the Boy Ballz, who are about as good as their band name suggests. Truly the worst band I have ever experienced (which is saying a lot since I have judged a couple of Battles of the Bands in my day). I couldn't stomach their set, so I retreated to the back of the venue and listened to much better music on my Walkman ("Love After" by The Riots, for the record).

Finally:

!!!!THE ZOOBOMBS!!!!



They were well worth the 5 hour train ride to T.O. (and the 6 hour train ride back to Montreal). When I heard that Don had put aside his love for the Rolling Stones and had recently become inspired by jazz and blues greats like John Coltrane, I was a little worried. I wanted to see a rock show. I was not disappointed. The jazz/blues influences came out in some inspired improvisation, but the music was ROCK. The Zoobombs unleashed a sonic assault and barely gave the audience a chance to applaud, let alone catch their collective breath. In summation: The Zoobombs kicked this city's ass until it was bloody and raw but then the city screamd "More! I demand more!" so they then pulled out a spiked dildo and went to fucking TOWN on Toronto.

Montreal is next in line to totally take it up the ass from the Zoobombs.

Monday. Be there. I know I certainly will be.

(Now playing: "You Can't Be Trusted", The Seeds)