Hollerado, the pride of Manotick, Ontario, took to the stage in front of a sparse yet enthusiastic Phoenix Concert Theatre crowd on Friday night. The four young lads, one of whose mother was in attendance, launched into to a kinetic set that was a mixed bag of straight-ahead punk-tinged rock ‘n’ roll sprinkled with charming melodies and super-charged stage antics.
An early standout in the set was “Americanarama” with its U.S. city name checking. Lead singer Menno Versteeg and drummer Jake Boyd were chatty with the crowd, talking about Stephen Hawking and time travel. They debuted a new song described as being about god as well as launching into an extended version of “Fake Drugs.” There were some overly jammy bits that took away some momentum, but it was a treat to watch Boyd stand on his stool and pound away on his floor toms. The set was short and sweet and the growing audience was highly appreciative of the recently Juno Award-nominated band.
After the usual wait the main event began a bit with a whimper. I had thought Gang Of Four’s Jon King and Andy Gill might want to start their return to Toronto with something recognizable. Instead they chose “You’ll Never Pay For The Farm,” one of a number of unremarkable songs off the band’s new album, Content. It definitely was a crowd deflator.
Gang Of Four soon gave the crowd what it wanted by jumping back in time for one of their many classics, a rousing version of “Not Great Men.” They followed up with “Ether,” in which the vocal interplay between King and Gill was simply jaw-dropping.
King’s dancing stage antics were vintage. Through most of the set, he raced around playing musical mics with his sometimes-confused bandmates. King would start singing through the middle microphone, but then bounce to the mics set up stage left and right, all within the same song.
The one unfortunate constant throughout this process was muddy and disjointed sonics. The soundman sucked at the Phoenix and it was nowhere near loud enough. Yeah, I know it was mainly 50+ crowd and they let us all out of the old age home for the show, but man, a Gang Of Four show is supposed to be a blistering aural experience, not a soundtrack to a trip to the mall. The visceral energy of the original post-punk band was lost in a toneless mix.
Gang Of Four’s classic songs cut through this shoddy presentation, at least. The band’s new material sounded dead in comparison. There were times on some of the newer slow songs they sounded more like Sisters Of Mercy than Gang Of Four. Even a decent new song like “A Fruitfly In The Beehive” was a casualty of the bad sound. We couldn’t even hear King’s less-abrasive lyrics.
After putting up with the material-from-the-new-album obligations, Gang Of Four finally got to giving the audience what they wanted with a bring-down-the-house rendition of “To Hell With Poverty” followed by an intense reading of “What We All Want” featuring blistering drumming of Mark Hearney. Later, the band crushed a fantastic booty-shaking version of “We Live As We Dream, Alone.”
The crowd screamed for more after the relatively short set and the band obliged with a couple of encores, the first featuring some classic Gang Of Four product destruction as King bashed up a microwave with a wooden stick and the band rocked out to “Natural’s Not In It” and “Damaged Goods” before returning again for “At Home He’s A Tourist” and a heart-wrenching take on “I Love A Man In A Uniform.”
In the end it was an uneven that show that had some wonderful musical moments, but just as many mediocre ones.
- Song Of The Day: Gang Of Four’s “Never Pay For The Farm”
- Live In France: Gang Gang Dance
- Gang Gang Dance — Saint Dymphna
- Gang Gang Dance Are Saintly
- Gang Gang Dance — God’s Money
