Thanks for the great love

Friday, September 16th

The Stills.

What can I say. I have a soft-spot for this band. The concert gang went to see them in 2004 - three times in three months, one of which was a show in Montreal. After many many many rumours and speculations in the past 6 months about Greg Paquet (one of my rockstar boyfriends) leaving the band, we got a confirmation last week that Greg had officially left the band. I'm sure you all heard my heart breaking. I didn't know what the concert in Hamilton would be like. No Greg, Dave on vocals/guitar, new drummer, new (well, now officially part of the band anyway) keyboardist. AHH. But we had to go see them. They are our band. Our first road-trip band.

Friday afternoon, I picked up Janice at her house about 4:15 pm and I recounted my jaw-dropping reaction to U2 walking on stage to Arcade Fire's "Wake Up." That's when she informed me that she knew for months but didn't tell me because she didn't want to spoil it for me! Don't I have the best concert gang ever?! Thanks for the surprise :)

Wendy got home from work around 5 pm and we were on the road (after a pit stop for gas and steeped teas and danishes from Tim Hortons) by 5:45 pm. Hamilton...hmmm takes maybe 1 hr, maybe 1.5 hrs since we were sort of driving in rush hour traffic. How long did it take us? OVER 2 HOURS!! We didn't get to the club until 8:05 pm. People don't know how to drive in the rain, and people like to stare at trucks pulled over by cops. Idiots. GRRRR. Anyways, we parked in the lot across the street from the Underground, and ventured to look for washrooms and food. Let me just say, Hamilton is seriously sketchy. At least 6 crazy people passed us. Who would want to live there voluntarily, I have no idea. Even temporarily living there is something I don't understand. After walking down the street for about 5 minutes and passing nothing but Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Chinese-Canadian/Korean-Japanese restaurants, we decided to turn back the way we came and headed further along. Thank goodness we found a Pizza Pizza.

We got back to the Underground at 8:35 pm, where we realized at 9pm we were in the wrong line :( We got in the right line for the people with phone reservations...and the doors finally opened at 9:20pm. No worries, we secured our front left spot. This club was tiny. Really really tiny. It was amazing - we were right up front, and only one foot away from the band.

Openers Alive & Living took the place of Wintersleep. They were all right. I can't even remember much of their music. At first I thought they'd be interesting because they had a violin player. But they were pretty bland and I now I think they just had a violin player because they thought it would look kind of cool but they didn't make much use of that instrument because they didn't add to their sound. And I didn't like the guy's voice much.

Finally at about 11:45 pm, The Stills came on. Oh, it was actually really cute because they had to set up their own equipment so in fact, they were kind of on stage a little earlier than 11:45. They started off with a new song, sung by Dave. Then they played "Lola" (woo-hoo) and then another new one, "Mountain." All's going well until some drunk idiot shouted out, "Why don't you play the drums" out to Dave. At first, it seemed Dave was going to take it well because he just stepped up to the mic and said, "You know what, FUCK you." But then, for the rest of the night, Dave wouldn't shut his own fucking mouth, going on and on about how he's "unfortunatley," singing the next song, why shouldn't he sing, and why the heckler should try to sing. At one point, Dave called the heckler up there to tell the audience why Dave shouldn't be singing. I think the kid was shocked. He went up there and sort of apologized and tried to hug Dave - he looked like he was sincere. To be honest, it looked like it was just a joke but the kid didn't know what to do so he just went up on stage. Oliver and Tim tried to calm Dave down, and Tim told the kid to get back into the crowd. WTF is wrong with Dave. When you have such a drastic lineup change, you have to expect people to throw around these kinds of remarks, whether they are meant as a joke or meant as an insult. Obviously Dave has some insecurity issues or he's just an asshole. He couldn't just brush it off. What a loser. His moodiness just ruined the concert for me. The entire time he was pouting. During the encore, he stood off in the corner and at the end, he basically walked off without a wave to the audience.

Back to the music itself, they played "Lola," "Gender Bombs," "Changes Are No Good," "Yesterday Never Tomorrows," "Still in Love," and "Love and Death" from Logic. Their new songs are all right. I can definitely say I like the new songs Tim sings better than the ones that Dave sings (I love "Halo the Harpoon" and "Helicopters"). Tim's voice is so much better. Dave can't sing very well, although it is an improvement from before, and he has absolutely no stage presence (or rather, poutiness is not an acceptable stage presence). And his guitar playing skills are not up to Greg's rocking performances. And he kept stepping in front of Tim, which sucked because Tim looked really hot. I normally don't like facial hair, but it works really well with Tim so for him, I'd make an exception. At one point in the concert, a bunch of girls right behind Wendy and Janice screamed for the band to play "Killer Bees" and Tim looked in our direction and said, "That's a possibility." I almost melted. That was hot. HAHA. I am crazy.

The concert ended and I was really close to getting the set list again. The guy beside me (who was with his gf - they were an extremely ANNOYING PDA couple) grabbed it first. BUT Tim had tossed his guitar pick on the ground, so I grabbed that right away. Score!

After the concert, we went to the bathroom and when we came back out, we saw Tim signing stuff for fans. We waited our turn and Janice broke out the Montreal silver marker. I was quite upset at myself for leaving the CD at home :( But Tim was so nice, we talked about how we saw the band at Club Soda in Montreal, how we're from Toronto... and then he signed Janice's CD, "To Janice (and friends) - Thanks for the great love." How awesome is that!! Because Greg is gone, Janice has graciously decided to share Tim as me & Wendy's rockstar boyfriend of the Stills. We also got the merchandise lady to take pictures for us. So after four shows, we finally met Tim. Nice!
























Lessons learned: Dave is a jerk. Tim is really hot. Next Stills concert, we will be hanging around the front right in front of Tim and Oliver. Never go to Hamilton again unless absolutely necessary.