Here's my views on Sloan's live gig here at the Howden Ballroom in Vancouver.
(the show was last Saturday) Howden Ballroom?! Where the hell's that?! Well, it turned out to be an old Bingo-hall, really reminded me of a highschool gym... in fact that was the same comment that came out of Thrush Hermit... "what is this, a highschool gym?" So what better to suit the venue than an ALL AGES audience... why is it that "all ages" usually translates to "all underaged" ?? <sigh> barring the absolute stupidity of the crowd, with their incessant urges to crowd surf to even the slowest, most sincere, songs that Sloan played... the show was quite entertaining! Thrush Hermit was smokin'... I only managed to recognize about half the tunes they played, I know, I should be throttled for my ignorance, I couldn't help but notice the audience's COMPLETE lack of familiarity... funny thing though, about 3 songs into their set, the lead singer (sorry, can't remember the name) said, "here's a song you can dance to" to the completely inate crowd... and lo-and-behold, the crowd went wild and started jumping around as the song kicked in... Guess that substantiates the "highschool, mindless lemmings" rumors. [ah, but I digress] Sloan came out on stage carrying this big wooden "SLOAN" sign.. looked like the kind of thing you'd make in shoppe-class. We first noticed that Patrick's hair had grown back to a not-SHORT! length... sorry to disappoint anyone who was anxious to see the bleached-buzz! They opened up with (for the life of me, I can't remember the title of it) the song that goes "I've had clear thoughts, tied in black and blue knots". I lost the 5 dollar bet that they were gonna fire up with "Pen pals"... owell. The set continued.. pretty much everything from the new album (save for Loosens and Worried Now) plus some off Smeared: I am the Cancer, Sugartune, Median Strip, Underwhelmed and 500 Up... and they threw in Laying Blame, just to confuse the audience. Jay Ferguson showed us his dancing talent doing a Duran Duran-ish prance around the stage as Chris Murphy single-handedly played "Deeper than Beauty" Jay also brought to light the misprint in Vancouver's entertainment paper, "The Georgia Straight". They had done up a full page article of the group and then put the wrong photo on the page... the picture was of some other band, not Sloan. Jay and Chris were asking the crowd who the mystery "Sloan" band was. It was pretty hilarious. After the show I talked to Chris... asked him when he was going to hook up to Sloannet so we could bombard him with Email. He said that he had purchased a Mac but didn't know how to use it, but he was determined to get on the internet! Didn't talk long, lots of freaked-out fans were crowding in... the last thing he said to me (quite timely actually)... "You know, I'm getting REALLY sick of singing Underwhelmed!" - Darryll
