2003-03-31 - 0:47

The giant hamburger

Another successful Toronto trip complete. The Godspeed show was excellent, although it was somewhat of an endurance test. The middle band in the bill, Black Dice, was entirely without merit, although they attempted to compensate by being ridiculously loud. Keep in mind, I'm not even opposed to noise, per se (I own Kollaps); but it's hard to tolerate relentless high-picthed droning that fails to build towards any purpose. At least they were memorable, I suppose. Rare is the concert at which I've seen multiple people in the audience standing with their fingers in their ears.

At any rate, Godspeed made up for that fiasco, in spades. In fact, everything that Black Dice got wrong is what was perfect about Godspeed. To be sure, a nine-piece instrumental unit is able to produce tremendous noise; but they channeled that power into actual musical compositions. Shocking!

I was definitely glad to have made the trip; Godspeed gave a flawless performance with a sound unlike that of any other band I know.

The remainder of the weekend was mellow but enjoyable. Richard and I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario and to Soundscapes, an extremely impressive record store. Amazingly, I stayed true to my intention of not purchasing any CDs; but it was difficult. Apart from that, I mostly relaxed at Richard and Leah's apartment, which is never a bad thing.

I'll see what I can do about writing a more detailed concert recap for my other web site, sooner or later. For now, I should probably just be trying to readjust my mangled schedule.

J.