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By Eli Levinson - Bender Night - 04/13/2008

As I entered La Tulipe on Sunday April 13th, I immediately got a feeling of anticipation. It came from behind the black doors that lead to the main room. The thumping beat emanating from behind those doors was a sign and I followed it into the packed main room. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Saul Williams!

The show started with just the band. The two programmers and guitarist were dressed like something out of a weird ‘80s horror movie, complete with neon hair and Beetlejuice-style black and white striped sleeves. They played and rocked the beats created by Trent Reznor for the latest Saul Williams album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!

The heavy industrial sound of the music, combined with the appearance of the band and the excitement of the crowd, provided the perfect setting for the entrance of Williams. And what an entrance it was. He came out, decked in a crazy headdress made of brightly colored feathers, tight pants and a whole lot of sparkledust on his face. He entered singing and dancing and was clearly intoxicated. His movements were exaggerated and over the top, but he was dancing, and the crowd loved it. Even when he climbed the speaker and fell on his face, the crowd loved him.

The man knows how to create an image. Using a highly effective yet extremely simple light setup, Williams managed to strike more awesome rock star poses (that actually did look cool and not forced) than any other performer I have ever seen. The response from the crowd ranged from wildly ecstatic to trance-like awe to a lesbian threesome right in front of the stage.

Williams is primarily a spoken word artist, that is to say that with his music, the emphasis is on the lyrics and the intricacies of the language. Unfortunately, this fact seems to have been lost in the effort to emphasize the atmosphere of weirdness and rock and roll. He must have had a hyperactive sound tech, or have simply not cared about his sound, because he had an effects set-up that rendered most of what he said incomprehensible to those who do not know his songs by heart.

The few times he did turn off the excessive delay and reverb were absolutely electrifying. His style of poetry is so complex and musical that it easily takes over a crowd. When he broke into a spoken word part (which he did only once, unfortunately), the crowd listened respectfully with rapt attention.

By the end of the night, Williams could just not leave. He loved the crowd, even taking the time in the middle of his set to hang out with us in front of the stage, singing and dancing like a madman surrounded by crazy fans. The band came out for an encore, and when it seemed like the show was over, Williams said "I feel like I'm just about to cum, I have to do one more."

Tune in to Bender Night with Eli every Wednesday from 11pm - 1am

By Eli Levinson - Bender Night - 04/06/2008

They should erect a statue of Victor Wooten. Somewhere, doesn't matter where, there should be some sort of physical commemoration of this man. He not only is the best bassist around, but he projects this image of goodness that no matter how hard you try, you can't resist. He's just so damn NICE, in addition to his seemingly endless imagination and mind-blowing chops.

He visited Montreal to promote his new album, Palmystery, at Club Soda. In front of a packed house, Wooten and company played a diverse, exciting, occasionally dragging set of some of the most complex music I've heard in a long time. The underlying style was jazz, but with all technical wizardry on display, it was more of a virtuoso set than anything. Not only was Wooten amazing, but he had an extremely worthy band to back him up.

The keyboardist was playing his first show with the band and had apparently just joined them on the same day of the show. Not even for one moment did he sound out of place. He kept up and definitely brought the funk and got a huge round of applause after an extended solo halfway through the two-hour set. The drummer was also awesome. During his solo (they all had long solo sections), he pulled out a visual stunt that was one of the coolest things I have ever seen at a show. While he was drumming, they turned off the lights and he attached some flashing lights to his sticks. As he played. And, as he played faster and faster, the crowd only had these crazy patterns to follow, a visual element that created a unique feeling in the crowd. The singer was pretty good too -- she did some scatting and had a huge range. Reggie Wooten, aka "The Teacher" (at the age nine, Reggie taught a four-year old Victor how to play bass) who is one of the best guitarists I have ever seen live. He uses a unique hybrid technique, described by my metalhead/jazz fanatic friend as being akin to Steve Vai, but with more funkiness. Finally, of course, there was the man himself, Victor Wooten.

Victor Wooten can rip it. He can solo for hours and play the most insanely complex patterns, but the true magic he brings to the bass are those little moments here and there where he plays a fill that your mind has difficulty grasping but you know was truly amazing. It has to be seen/heard live to be believed at times. During his set, he showcased all of this, including his experimentations with looping, where he layered different patterns (including percussion rhythms) as he played them. It's insane, you should check it out on Youtube.

Now it's time to talk about the spiritual aspect of the show. That's right, spiritual. First of all, I need to say that the crowd was awesome. It was extremely diverse, from guys in their fifties with ponytails and too much leather, to metalheads. At one point while the audience was singing along, the band stopped and the crowd kept going for like forty-five seconds (a long time let me tell you), and actually got a round of applause from the band. All throughout the show, Victor kept expressing his love for the crowd -- a feeling that was more than mutual. This show was a huge love-in. The music was so absurd but with so many moments of tenderness and happiness that after a while, it was impossible to be in a bad mood -- all anybody could do was smile. At times it veered on sappy, but it put you into such a good mood that I'm not going to really complain. I'm just saying they sometimes lay it on thick. By the end of the set, the crowd was going nuts and got the band out for an encore, with the show ending with Victor singing "I'm gonna miss your smiling face." Need I say more?

Listen to the Bender Night Wednesdays at 11pm! You don’t need all those brain cells!

By Georgia Wisdom-Kuhns - MoonRocks - 03/26/2008

True story. Raine Maida fans are the worst dressed people in Canada. Before last night's show at Club Soda, I wasn't aware it was possible for one to turn their comb over into a mohawk, or that sweatpants and leather boots were considered a winning combination. Raine Maida fans are also, apparently, the horniest people in Canada. For the majority of the opening acts (Ontario's Billy the Kid and my own personal version of hell: A beat poet from Providence who thinks the U.S. planned 9/11), I witnessed three couples making out in direct line of sight. Some of them were old, and there was butt grabbing.

Moving on.

Raine Maida is pretty much a national icon. Canadian kids in the 90s grew up listening to his music, and you'd be hard pressed to find a twenty-something in this country that doesn't keep a copy of Clumsy in their glove box. That being said, I think it’s fair to admit that Maida's 2007 solo effort, The Hunter's Lullaby, is a pile. Save for the first single, "Yellow Brick Road," which is a pretty innocent and uplifting track about the freedom of being young, the rest of the record is almost unlistenable. With cringe worthy lyrics like "she was sweet like honey and sour like democracy" running rampant throughout the album's ten tracks, it’s pretty much the musical equivalent of getting hammed in the face.

But apparently I was the only one at Club Soda last night who thought this. Oh my God are Montrealers crazy about Raine Maida. When he emerged on stage, accompanied by a drummer, a cellist and wife Chantal Kreviazuk on the keys, the place went crazy. And not just girls, but guys as well were screaming at the top of their lungs, "RAINE I LOVE YOU. RAINE MAIDA I LOVE YOU," for such a length of time that even Maida himself was a little weirded out.

The set list for the night was fairly typical. Done all on acoustic guitar, Raine played almost all of the songs of his new album, with a few surprises like covers of Neil Young and Billy Talent's "Try Honesty". In between songs he talked about his various charities, and raised the question of whether or not the figure of the guitarist could still bring change to the world. The answer was a grim maybe.

The highlight of the show, I think it everyone's minds, was Kreviasuk's haunting rendition of The Pixies' classic "Where is My Mind?" While slightly Canadianafied, I think it was a respectful and loving tribute that even the most die hard Pixies fans could have got behind.

As the night went on, I kept waiting for Maida to bust out an Our Lady Peace track, but to my dismay, this didn't happen until the encore, when he played only one, "Innocent," the second worst Our Lady Peace song in existence (second only to "Somewhere Out There"). But still the crowd exploded and sung along -- which led me to believe that the fans of yesteryear, the fans that grew up on Naveed and Clumsy weren't there that night. The fans of Hunter's Lullaby with its cheeseball lyrics and too blatant anti-Capitalist sentiment are a newer generation of Raine Maida fans, that from what I could tell from the heartfelt sing along, came in around the time of Our Lady Peace's 2002 effort, Gravity, their only album to achieve commercial success in the United States, and ironically, also the album hated most by diehard OLP fans. Gravity lacked the pure heavy rock, head banging vibe of the band's former records, replacing it with contrived political themes and predictable sounds. I felt disappointed, and wondered if the Raine Maida I used to love so much growing up, was gone.

Yet as the show ended, in a move seen at almost every Our Lady Peace show, the former frontman took the microphone and climbed with shocking Spiderman-like agility into the balcony where he sung with fans, held the microphone out to the crowd and to a frenzy of camera flashes, disappeared into the darkness, only to reemerge on stage moments later to say goodbye and thank you.

On the way home, I listened to the Pixies.

Tune in to MoonRocks with Georgia every Wednesday from 12pm – 2pm

By Simon Howell - A Listening Ear - 03/20/2008

I love this city -- really, I do. But sometimes I can get a little fed up with our scene's superiority complex. It's as though some authorial voice proclaimed us the best scene in the world and then we started to believe it. As a result, we crank out bands like nobody's business, many of whom sound more or less interchangeable (or feature deeply incestuous line-ups). All the while we make sure to let the rest of the country know we're better than them. Well, there was no better cure for the Montreal scenester blues than a Drive-By Truckers show -- five people rocking the un-hippest sounds around with heart and effortless swagger.

Openers The Whigs demonstrated a classic case of how not to endear yourself to a Montreal audience: "this is our second time in Toronto!" they exclaimed, sincerely oblivious to their surroundings as the crowd jeered, expectedly (with that good old superiority complex out in force). Without having their recordings as a reference, their sound was something akin to Nirvana with a hint of Georgian twang and an organ, albeit with a less assertive vocal presence. What their sound and songs lacked in distinctiveness they tried gamely to make up for with sheer energy -- vocalist Parker Gispert hopped and flailed like a man possessed (but probably just drunk) and drummer Julian Dorio elevated the proceedings with Grohl-esque brute force.

The majority of the crowd, however, was obviously there for the ‘Truckers. They kicked off their first-ever Montreal show in their decade-long history with one of the strongest tunes from new record, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, Mike Cooley's "Self-Destructive Zones." The band started powerfully and only accumulated strength as the night tore on. This was the first show in ages that I'd seen wherein the relationship between band and crowd felt playful rather than strained; cell phones were giddily flipped to capture Cooley flaunting the smoking ban he surely didn't even know existed (while rocking a banjo, no less), while one onlooker shouted "we have better healthcare!" in response to their border troubles (they were unable to bring their merch along) not long after bandleader Patterson Hood's cocaine-and-chemo lament "Puttin' People on the Moon."

The incredible thing about watching the 'Truckers live is to witness just how many weapons are in their arsenal: they're a great country band, as evidenced by rich performances of "Check Out Time in Vegas" and newly contributing songwriter Shonna Tucker's "I'm Sorry Huston," aided by some lovely steel guitar work; their Skynyrdian three-guitar attack was taken full advantage of on "3 Dimes Down" and main-set closer "Let There Be Rock;" but perhaps most impressively, they retained their status as first-rate storytellers even in a live setting. Hood's preambles to "The Living Bubba" and "Eighteen Wheels of Love" shed light on his personal history as well as that of the Georgian rock scene with admirable candor. Hood's speeches also added emotional weight to the rest of the set, especially poignant rocker "The Righteous Path" and Iraq war nightmare "The Man I Shot." All the while, middle-aged men tried in vain to rock out while holding two beer cups at once. It was a glorious sight.

Earlier in the year, I witnessed a similarly long set put on by Kevin Drew and Broken Social Scene wherein the crowd had visibly thinned by the time the encore came around. Perhaps the clearest sign that I'd witnessed something special this time around was that by the time the 'Truckers had finished their 24-song set, the crowd not only stayed intact, but were still drunkenly clamoring for more until the house lights came up. Come back anytime, boys (and Shonna).

Tune in to A Listening Ear with Simon every Tuesday from 1pm - 2pm