Boy, Shaker, and Matt Mays & El Torpedo
Lee's Palace in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
September 25th, 2004
Reviewed by Adam M. Anklewicz
Boy: 
Shaker:
Matt Mays & El Torpedo:
Lee’s Palace feels empty for a Saturday night. About fifty people sit around waiting, talking, and enjoying a beer. Ready for the band to arrive, the crowd waits patiently as Boy prepares to take the stage.
Boy are five men: guitar, drums, more guitar, bass and keys/slide guitar/more guitar. Blasting the venue with loud guitars, Boy is capable of getting the few people at the venue moving. Poorly mixed, the audio is muddy with vocals and the Rickenbacker guitar is drowned out. Generic rock is a term that can be used to describe Boy, but they brought something else to the atmosphere. Not the greatest songs, not the greatest musicianship, but a good start to a good night of music. Fun songs, fast beats, and a feeling of 1970s rock, all collided into a wall of rock and roll.
Shaker provides some all out gut wrenching rock and roll as Lee’s Palace slowly fills to capacity. Great songs (helped by a significantly improved sound mix) following the sounds of such greats as The Allman Brothers Band and Neil Young, Shaker are able to rock out loud while still retaining a sense of melody, something lacking in a lot of bands today. Seeming to know how to handle the audience, Shaker takes control of the stage presenting a rock and roll spectacle without the need for fancy lights and stage. Ripping up in a jam and enjoying the music they’re playing. With very few mistakes in their playing, Shaker is a very tight band which seems to be heading in the right direction.
Perhaps modeling himself a bit too much on Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Matt Mays is able to bring the night home. Moving away from the alt.country label which has followed him since his days with the Guthries, Mays now carries an air of rock royalty in his music. Filling Lee’s Palace, the floor is packed all the way to the bar. Song after song, everything is great. His CD contains a who’s who of Canadian rocksters including Bob Egan (Wilco & Blue Rodeo), Mike O’Neill (The Inbreds), Dave Marsh (Joel Plaskett Emergency), Charles Austin (Super Friendz) and many more. El Torpedo are able to live up to the great musicianship found on the record and reproduce it live with great results. Matt Mays leads them from song to song clearly enjoying the performance which bounces onto the audience.
A great show all around. All three performers were very good, only getting better as the night goes along. At 2 AM, Mays finished his set, the band cleared the stage and the audience slowly left Lee’s Palace.
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Brian Wilson
Massey Hall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
October 6th, 2004
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
I shouldn’t have to tell you who Brian Wilson is. Written off by some as founder of The Beach Boys (who frankly, deserve more respect than they get), those who are better versed in music history know him as a legendary singer, songwriter, arranger, and producer that provided us with the classic Pet Sounds (1966), the album that inspired Paul McCartney and The Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Brian Wilson’s February concerts at London’s Royal Festival Hall marked the first time that his lost follow-up to Pet Sounds, the masterpiece Smile (see my album review), was heard in its completed and finalized form.
The shows were a revelation. Music journalists young and old wrote rave reviews, calling the concerts an experience of a lifetime. Those who had heard bootlegged versions of Smile in the years since its abandonment in 1967 had claimed the work to be stronger and more innovative than Pet Sounds, and it seemed that the critics agreed. I knew before a North American tour was even announced that if similar shows were brought to North America, I would have to be in attendance.
When it was announced this summer that Wilson would be playing my favourite Toronto venue, Massey Hall, I purchased tickets immediately.
Like the successful European shows early in the year, the centerpiece of Wilson’s tour would once again be Smile (now available for all to listen to on CD), but that didn’t stop Wilson and his large ensemble (consisting of mostly multi-instrumentalists who would constantly jump from one instrument to another) from entertaining us for approximately 2 ½ hours in a set filled with Beach Boys classics, solo gems, and the newly unearthed masterpiece Smile in all its glory.
The performance began with an ‘Unplugged’ style set, with several members of Wilson’s band crowded around the 63-year old legend. In this setting, they performed sparse renditions of “Surfer Girl”, “Wendy”, “Add Some Music To Your Day,” and other Beach Boys songs. The audience was clearly impressed by the recreation of heavenly Beach Boys vocals that the band managed to recreate on stage.
Following the acoustic set, the rest of the band joined the stage to perform more ‘Wall-of-Sound’-oriented Beach Boys hits such as “Sloop John B”, “California Girls”, “Don’t Worry Baby”, and “God Only Knows.” Each of the songs were played skillfully by Wilson’s band note-for-note, several with the Stockholm Strings and Horns, a talented ensemble that would also join Wilson’s band for Smile.
After an intermission, Wilson and his band returned to the stage with the Stockholm Strings and Horns to perform his newly unveiled Smile in its entirety. With the CD recently having been released, many of us in the audience already knew the album note-for-note, so the jaw-dropping wasn’t quite as noticeable as it would have been at Wilson’s London performances. It was still an amazing experience to hear this music live, though. Of course, to those who were more happy to hear Wilson’s hits from the early Beach Boys days, the sounds may have been too rebellious. By the time Wilson and band had reached “Roll Plymouth Rock”, I saw several people walk out, but these were in the minority. Most of the audience responded enthusiastically to Smile, even getting emotional at times, particularly during songs such as “Surf’s Up” and “Wonderful.”
The Smile set closed with the crowd-pleaser “Good Vibrations,” before Wilson and his band exited the stage. They returned for an encore of early Beach Boys hits (“Help Me Rhonda”, “Fun Fun Fun”, “Surfin’ USA”), allowing Wilson to play bass, an instrument he played during his brief time touring with The Beach Boys before his nervous breakdown in 1964. Effective as it was, the encore almost seemed inappropriate after the musical innovation of Smile, the definite highlight of the concert. If there was anybody in the audience who didn’t own Smile before the concert, one wonders how long it took before the rest of them purchased a copy of their own.
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Nick Lowe
Bowery Ballroom in New York City, NY
September 23rd, 2004
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
Nick Lowe dislikes touring. For this reason, he doesn't do it very often, and has therefore been on my list of "people that I absolutely must see" for quite some time. So, despite the fact that I was still getting over a bout of pneumonia, I knew that I couldn't miss this show for any reason less serious than death. By the time September 23rd rolled around I was still mostly alive, so I joined the throngs of Nick Lowe fans who packed into the Bowery Ballroom that night to see the 55-year-old English rock and roller still commonly described as "dapper."
The show was sold out and even inspired a handful of people to hang around outside the venue begging for an extra ticket. After a nearly hour long opening set by Geraint Watkins, whose sound has been likened to a modern day Nick Lowe crossed with John Hiatt, Lowe took the stage alone, with only an acoustic guitar to accompany him. His last proper album, The Convincer, came out three years ago, but he continues to tour in support of it and is now also promoting his first live album, Untouched Takeaway, which is only available for purchase at his shows and online. Near the beginning of the show, Lowe proclaimed his intention to avoid nostalgia, but still offered fans a trip through his back catalog. This included the crowd favorite "Cruel To Be Kind," his sole Top 40 hit. Lowe opened the show with an unreleased song "There Will Never Be Any Peace (Until God Sits At the Conference Table)," and closed with a moving, slowed down version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," bookending his set with two very straightforward political statements. In between, he played over an hour of songs culled from his thirty year career, many of them coming from The Convincer. A few of the show's highlights included Lowe's rendition of the John Hiatt penned "She Don't Love Nobody," the aforementioned "Peace, Love and Understanding," and a few new and as yet unrecorded songs, such as the crowd-pleasing "Trained Her," about getting romantic revenge on womankind.
Near the end of his inspired set, Lowe was joined onstage by Watkins, who accompanied him for a spirited version of "Half a Boy and Half a Man," and then stayed on stage through the end of the show. Lowe was in high spirits throughout, talking to the audience between songs and at one point even rattling off his address in Brentford, London for "the girls" in the audience. The highly appreciative crowd, packed tightly into the Bowery Ballroom's small space and made up of concertgoers who appeared to be for the most part twice my age or older, hung onto Lowe's every word, and attempted to sing along with many of his better known songs. They succeeded most admirably with "Cruel To Be Kind," and made a valiant, if slightly muddled (and hilarious - to me at least), effort on most of the rest. Lowe's voice has never been better: deep, soulful, and effective, and the intimate space of the Bowery Ballroom was acoustically perfect for the sparse, stripped down format and Lowe's English charm. It was a fully enjoyable and satisfying performance that would only leave you wondering why he hasn't had more mainstream success in his long career. At any rate, the Abominable Showman is well worth catching any way you can.
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