King Khan & The Shrines Get Freaky

Horseshoe Tavern

Toronto, ON

on Jul 23 2008

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

07/24/2008 12:31pm

Hamilton's Young Rival opened this show and considering the headliner is known for his crazy showmanship it's a bit unfair to say this band were boring... but they were. Their style is inconsistent and while frontman Aron D'Alesio is a talented guitarist and drummer Noah Fralick really gets into his performance, Young Rival's songs are ultimately flat.

When King Khan & The Shrines took the stage, I was surprised to see Khan dressed somewhat normally, despite the presence of a rubber Bismarck helmet on his head. Of course, the normalcy didn't last long and that's a good thing.

Khan and company opened with the very appropriate "Land Of The Freak" and launched into more songs from their recently released The Supreme Genius Of King Khan & The Shrines. Before long, Khan and a few of his band members had jumped off stage and were wandering around in the crowd. This would happen several more times before the end of the night.

After a few songs, Khan decided to try and take things up a notch, because he seemed to think the Toronto crowd wasn't enthusiastic enough. Before he launched into "I Wanna Be A Girl" — which he dedicated to "all the transvestites and transsexuals in the city" — Khan asked the crowd if anyone knew what a "mangina" was (no, it's not a misspelled heart problem). He explained what it is — I won't get into that — and then asked if anyone would like to demonstrate. After he got no volunteers, he jokingly berated the crowd and half pulled down his jeans to demonstrate, but thankfully stopped. Later in the set, he leaned over to a gentleman with a rather large beard next to me, grabbed him and said, "See, you do have a mangina!" (No, manginas have nothing to do with beards.)

About a quarter of the way through the set, Toronto concert promoter Dan Burke was brought on stage to dance. If you've seen Burke dance before, you know he's pretty entertaining and this was no exception. He was only there for one full song, but it was amusing.

This wasn't the only circus-like entertainment of the evening. Halfway through the set, after making fun of the crowd again ("Stay away from Montreal, Toronto!"), Khan busted out his cape and cobra staff and started getting crazier. Organist Fredovich was the spectacle early in the evening when he jumped around and slammed his hands all over his Korg organ, using more glissandi than any keyboardist I've ever seen. But once Khan brought out more ridiculous get-ups, Fredovich tried to lift his keyboard in the air while playing it. At one point he even had it on his back, Jimi Hendrix-style. Khan and his friends finished their set, but they weren't gone for long.

The lights went out and they were back on stage, but before anyone knew what was happening, water was flying on the crowd courtesy of Khan, who was by then sporting a bucket helmet and spitting water through a grill on the front. I heard a rumour that he practices this. I wouldn't be surprised if this is true. This went on throughout the three-song encore. The audience — maybe a bit more enthusiastic by then — praised him by chanting his name at the end, and he stood off to the side for a while, as if he seemed to be considering coming back on. He didn't, though. Maybe if we'd been Montreal, he would have.