Rockin' the Boat

After my despair about the current lameness of music I saw a couple bands yesteraday that made it all better. And all for $5 at The Boat.

The Boat is a strange Asian karaoke place in Kensington Market. That is because the inside is made to look like you are in a Boat. Some nights the Boat gets taken over for gigs.



Slave to the Squarewave (left) was the opening band, but the reason I decided to check out the show after listening to some of their stuff. Think 80s new wave and pimp funk. Talking Heads meets Parliament. They fuckin' put on a SHOW. There were maybe 20 people in the room for their set - which is mind blowing since Slave was one of the best live acts I've ever seen. These mofos should be huuuge.

I could only find a coupla samples of their work :


Heavy Bones (mp3 sample)

Gorilla Swing Disotheque (mp3 sample)

They also do some Spandau Ballet style ballads which I don't dig so much (and would've killed the energy of the live show) but you can check it all out at their myspace.

Unfortunatly in the year 2006, every douche thinks they're an artist or a writer or a performer, so we have to tolerate an endless stream of lamers and their grade 10 thoughts.



Thus the next two bands sucked. This gave me a chance to go grab some noodles and tripe in chinatown and have the ATM swallow my bank card, but I knew I had to catch the Primordials (right), with a name like that I knew they HAD to be a garage band.

I like a band that can not only play the songs, but also play the part, and the Primordials did that, with their hollow body guitars and tight black suits.

In that pic from last night you can not only see one the brass portals of the Boat, but also a very garagey Selmer amp with the green backlit logo.

Another good bet if you're into live music is the semi-regular feature on Wednesday nights called at Sneak's called "Cheap Beer/No Cover". I checked out +/- there last Wednesday. If you read the music blogs you'd get the impression this is a big up and coming band, but at this free show there were about 30 people. They were technicaly pretty good, thought they really sounded like the Killers, but otherwise pretty blah. Except the drummer. The drumming was awesome.