gremmie.net

Our Lady Peace played New York’s own Webster Hall last night. Since my only contrast is the near perfect September 1st show at the Bowery, last night’s performance was merely good. Standard issue OLP. The opening act, Pedestrian was an appealing mix of sonic guitar effects and Radiohead-esque vocals. I arrived a little late so that’s about all I can say on the matter; worth a listen. The second and final opening act before Our Lady Peace took the stage was a Canadian band named after it’s lead singer, Danko Jones. Eponymous is the first word that comes to mind. Kinda like Mike Doughty, except without the “Band” part at the end. I find bands whose heart is centered on one indvidual, singularly self-aggrandizing and subsequently self-defeating. I suppose that’s the point. Only Sting can pull it off anyway. Danko Jones however, plays the “me” fiddle until the strings have not only popped, but rusted, been buried, dug up, lost, found, lost again, and then taken out back and well you get the point. I lost count after ten times the instances where Danko Jones literally said, “Look at me!” And yes, I know there’s a certain amount of poetic irony attached to the notion. I’m quite sure that concept was lost on this gent. He is essentially a caricature of himself. An ostensibly thick skinned veneer, you know like the kind you see on television, and laced with a decidely American punk “fuck you” demeanor. The New York crowd was laughing. That bullshit might work in Toronto pal, but on this side of Lake Ontario we yawn and jeer at the likes of clowns like you. On a side note, the drummer looks like Hayden Christensen leading me once again to believe that all Canadians look at least a little bit like Darth Vader.

At every general admission concert I’ve been to in the past decade, tiny wars have been waged between the opening act’s set and the headliner’s set. Tactical and oftentimes brutal, it’s a war of centimeters. Last night during the Danko Jones set the main floor at Webster Hall was a threadbare mix of disintersted Our Lady Peace fans. OLP was purported to go on at 10:30pm. At 9:30pm, a third of the way through Danko Jones’ set, the crowd slowly began to amass. Molasses running down a tree is the first image in my mind. A slow build of bodies all istriving to gain ground. As Danko Jones’ set came to a close, the centimeters war began. If you have a good standing spot on the floor, chances are good that by the time the headlining act begins their set you’ll either be wedged up against the stage barrier gasping for air or wedged up the ass of the person in front of you, praying they don’t fart. People get vicious, fighting for just that extra little bit of space in an effort to get closer with their object of affection. Mainly, the band. The rule of thumb is to keep your feet firmly planted. You see, that how the sly people who have a worse view manage to conquer the tiny domain of “you”. If you start getting pins and needles in your lower extremeties, quickly shake out. Don’t dilly-dally. You might lose a couple of centimeters. It is often a good idea to assert your physical presence. If you, as a concert-goer, wish to maintain that coveted front row center spot like I had at the OLP concert last night, people around you need to know you’re not a little bitch - for lack of a more appropriate term. Move around a litlte bit. Stretch your arms. Stand up straight. Sound off like you got a pair. This will make others think twice before attempting to siphon both your spot and ultimately your dignity. In the end, none of this really matters though - you’ll inevitably become best friend’s with the security guard between the barrier and stage, or be able to tell whether the guy in front of you has prostate cancer.

The selist for the show was standard and made me wonder why Our Lady Peace nevers challenges their fans with more obscure, less radio-friendly songs. All the hits were played last night; from the decade old “Starseed” and “Clumsy” to the drum-thumping sing-along “Innocent”. Aside from that, they played licks off their latest and in this Gremmie’s opinions, second best - Healthy in Paranoid Times. They opened with “Picture”. From “Healthy” they also played “Where Are You?”, “Will the Future Blame Us?”, “Boy”, World on a String”, “Wipe that Smile Off your Face”, “/angels/losing/sleep”, and “Love & Trust”. During the bridge of “Wipe that Smile Off your Face”, lead singer Raine Maida discussed his readily apparent disdain for George W. Bush. During this diatribe he off-handedly mentioned the New York Yankees. He then put 2 and 2 together and remarked how he thought George W. Bush would want the Yankees to win. It made no sense. I can only assume that he was upset the Yankees spanked his hometown team, the Toronto Blue Jays in a recent 3-game series. Everyone knows George W. Bush is a Texas Rangers fan anyway.

Click here for more pictures.

October 6th, 2005! Gremmie is playing again at the Red Lion! Don’t remember last time? Click here. Only this time it’s not Gremmie it’s (drum roll) Gremmie’s Noise Bucket!! Yes that is the newly minted name for the rock cover band I have been playing with, formerly named Something Else. Much to the surprise of gremmies in the know, the name Gremmie’s Noise Bucket was NOT devised Matthew Moore, but rather the guitarist in the band, Pete Parella who is obviously a massive Gremmie fan. Mark your calendars Gremmies and make sure you bring your friends!!

Gremmie’s Noise Bucket will be the second band on the bill and will begin playing at roughly 9pm. For directions to the Red Lion, click here.

Since I know exactly everyone that reads this blog, even those who swore never to speak to me again. You too are invited.

First of all let me begin by saying I just devoured a giant smoked turkey leg for lunch and the tryptophan is slowly setting in. This morning I wrote 3 sentences with the intention of extolling the pride I have amassed over the wedding of my brother and fellow Gremmie, Goof. It went like this:

The joy is overwhelming to the point of feeling knocked cold to the ground. The numb of suddenly not knowing where you are laced with the satisfying clumsiness of not caring anyway. The middling quandary and it’s best friend, first name: second, last name: guessing.

I didn’t get very far before I was yanked away by a pressing issue at work. Before I abruptly fall asleep leaving the imprint “QWERTY” on my forehead, and before I get pulled away for yet another pressing issue that will inevitably make the first issue look like a louse compared, I feel compelled to tell gremmies everywhere how happy Regis Gremmie is with the wedding only 2 weeks away. Goof and Gremlynn, Sarah, are happily plodding along and are emanating serene in the face of what is typically deemed a shitstorm of pre-wedding worry.

Since the upper crust at Bear has not yet found a suitable replacement to my once and former partner Edwin, the thought of taking off more than a single day in a row has gone from pipedream to a pipedream’s pipedream. God I sound like a plumber. That reminds me, I need Drano for my kitchen sink. Anyway, having already cancelled my trip to Maine this summer, I do not want to let my remaining 2 weeks of vacation go to waste. Working within the rigors of my current work schedule I plan to take off Monday, effective yesterday, until my days run out. That puts me through to just before Thanksgiving. I spent yesterday walking around lower Manhattan. My only goal was to make it to Rueben’s Empanads for lunch. I succeeded. Yesterday, this Gremmie was a success. This is what the day looked like. Click on the pictures for bigger versions. Captions include the cliche “Isn’t it gorgeous where I live?”, “I ate lunch here.”, “I read a book in this Church graveyard.”, and of course the self aggrandizing “Don’t I look cool?”

Habit is a function of humanity. Right. Duh. Everyone does it. It’s like sex, only you’re legal while still in the womb. Addiction, Habit’s more tryful and less appetizing sibling, is what happens when Habit goes on a drinking binge for four weeks, is found in an abandoned alley NOT protected by The Maxx, lying face down in a messy pile of his own vomit with heroin needles sticking out of his arm and a sore ass. The soundtrack is a one song repeater of Our Lady Peace’s “Everyone’s A Junkie”. It isn’t uncommon for Habit to suddenly be bolstered by a catalyst instance or medium and delve South towards Addiction. The catalyst is usually a more appealing, sexier, more savory variant of the Habit’s affection.

Like most gremmies, I have a Habit of playing video games now and again. I’ll play once every few days if I find a game of particular interest. If not, I’ll hardly play anything at all. This is my Habit, punctuated, playful, and pleasant. Alliteration aside, there have been occassions in the past where Addiction has taken hold. Action Quake 2 comes to mind; a game I would play until I felt proficient enough that I could teach a class on the pros and cons of jumping off the east highrise building in hIghrIse2.bsp while bleeding and surely plummeting to my doom, turning around and shooting my opponent in square in the head using pistols akimbo for effect. Goof and I would play Action Quake 2 until the sun came up most nights during my college years at Albany State. Enter Warcraft.

Since last Thursday, after months of nudging by my actual brother Neil, I picked up a copy of World of Warcraft. Having had the game for exactly a week now, I have logged in over 30 hours of playing time. 30 hours. That’s like playing straight for an entire day then watching the first 2 Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is a Massive Multi-Player Online Game. Layman’s terms? All across the world at any given time there are a half million people playing the game. While you’re playing you encounter these people in-game and can potentially interact with each and every one. It’s a gigantic virtual world. According to the 9.5.05 edition of the New York Times, the game has some 1 Million subscribers. That’s more than all of Wyoming! The opening screen where you enter your account information before enterting the virtual world displays a dimensional portal whose center appears to be a vortex sucking inward as if the developers of the game, Blizzard Entertainment, were making the not-so-subtle joke, “We’re gonna suck you in! Suckers!” The world is runs in real-time and never shuts down, allowing for a truly simulated universe filled with gamers from Timbuktu to the shores of Tripoli. Economies and markets develop where the value of goods rise and fall, guilds are developed and exist in varying degrees of seriousness and clout; there are even certain people in the game that play it entirely in-character. Naturally this Gremmie is NOT that much of a nerd; at this point however, my cool-guy cred has sunken to new and wholly depressing lows anyway so there’s no real use in splitting hairs.

A line from Our Lady Peace’s latest record, “Healthy in Paranoid Times” forcibly states “I’m gonna wipe that smile off your face.”; a song about the current state of the world in its harrow and mistrust. Last night Our Lady Peace rocked the Bowery Ballroom and it would have taken a jackhammer to have wiped the smile off my face.

The band went onstage at 10:20pm after a surprisingly good opening act called Stand whose lead singer belts out American riffs but speaks with an Irish brogue. They opened - ironically - with their new record’s closing song, “Al Genina (Leave the Light On)” which is a haunting balld about hospitality and the dreampt up facades of the modern world. Since the new album dropped just a few days ago, most of the crowd didn’t know the song. Fanboy me mouthed every word. They followed up with “Picture”, which is bound to be the band’s second of third single from this new disc. It’s a melodic burst of sonic guitars, laced with a senimentality one can only find in Our Lady Peace’s sincere concern for the state of humanity. /Angels /losing /sleep followed. Great to hear these songs live. The band is clearly happy playing the new material as they assault the crowd with their latest and greatest. Fan favorite, well-worded “Innocent” is a crowd pleaser with the entire place singing along while lead singer Raine Maida occassionally turns the mic around to face the crowd as the place erupts in a mix of applause and singing. Old reliable “Starseed” off the band’s first album Naveed follows. This Gremmie’s new favorite song, “Wipe that Smile Off Your Face” EXPLODED after “Starseed”. Raine’s vocal rendition of the chorus’ opening word “war” got the entire floor level of the Bowery Ballroom bouncing off the walls and easily made for the night’s most memorable moment. For those who haven’t heard it, the word “war” is vocally stretched to last for 6 or 7 seconds and sounds like “waaaAAAAaaaaAAAAAaaaaIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEr” Intense in the way everyone imagines rock n’ roll. Mid-song, Raine spoke to the audience about the song’s meaning and made the admirable comment that “Even if you don’t agree with what I say, it’s important to have an opinion - a strong opinion on the world and what’s going on.” I can respect that.

“Walking in Circles came next and was shortly trumped by what is Our Lady Peace’s most recognizable song, “Clumsy”. Interestingly enough, the band began the song with chords from Gravity’s wonderful “Bring Back the Sun“. Then the band’s eponymous track from their first album, Naveed, bled right into their current single, “Where Are You”. As is the case with every Our Lady Peace album I’ve heard since Clumsy, it’s always taken about a month for their new albums to grow on me. Consider last night a box of Miracle-Gro because hearing these songs live, the atmosphere the band creates, and Raine’s stunning renditions of the new material immediately satisfied my perseverate incipient disdain for new OLP. “Boy” which sounds too much like a b-side from U2’s The Joshua Tree is slightly more interesting live, but if you already don’t like it, chances are good that hearing it live won’t change your opinion on it. “Will the Future Blame Us?” and “Superman’s Dead” closed the first set in a frenetic rush. I thought of Chris Reeve. Then Brandon Routh. I need to get out more.

The encore’s 2 songs began with Raine turning the mic around towards the audience as we sung 3/4 of “4 a.m.” unassisted by Raine’s singular falsetto. The show ended with “World on a String”, a song off of their still-born album that is reminiscent of the theme song of a thousand sitcoms. The band thanked the crowd and walked off stage. It was a good 5 minutes before the crowd dispersed as everyone kept yelling “ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!” The house lights suddenly illuminated and the show was, in fact, over. What a show.

Setlist: - 9.1.05
Al Genina (leave the lights on)
Picture
Angels/losing/sleep
Innocent
Starseed
Wipe that smile off your face
Walking in circles
Clumsy (with Bring Back the Sun intro)
Naveed
Where are you
Boy
Will the future blame us?
Superman’s Dead
____________
4am (Raine let crowd sing 3/4 of the song)
World on a String