Gravity Wave
(Toronto) For those who don’t know, every few months the Steam Whistle Brewery hosts a concert series called Unsigned, where, you guessed it, bands who are not signed entertain the Pilsner happy beer crowds that gather. Although the location of the show (The Steam Whistle Brewery, right beside the CN Tower and SkyDome) is a bit out of my typical Annex walking show radius, I decided to make the hike downtown to check it out. A couple of things I learned about this Unsigned series:
1. It is only $5, and that one payment at the door goes to charity, gets you a drink ticket and if you are fast enough, a free slice of pizza. Plus, additional drinks are only $4. Those are east coast booze prices.
2. The charity is the Artists’ Health Centre Foundation(AHCF). This foundation helps artists who have been injured and who might not be covered by OHIP. Since most artists are self employed, they don’t have health plans. For example if you make your money as a dancer and some jack ass runs into the back of your foot with their cart at Loblaws and injures you so that you can’t dance, the AHCF will help you out. By dancer, I don’t mean stripper, but I suppose even they could get help from the AHCF.
First up on the bill was Hexes & Ohs from Montreal. A pretty impressive looping, drum playing, girl bass busting two piece outfit from Montreal. They cranked out Whadaya Know?, which I was really looking forward to. I was familiar with this track since it has gotten some recent CBC3 airplay over the past couple of years. It rocked and left me with warm fuzzies. The rest of their set was tight with Edmund switching between instruments and Heidi sticking with the solid bass lines.
Next up was Bocce. I missed most of them. I was busy getting beer and more ice.
Headlining the show was Gravity Wave (The). I first heard of Gravity Wave about a year ago when he played at Sneaky Dee’s. A friend of a friend had told me that Gravity Wave (Ken Farrell) teaches little kids how to play hockey and that he makes music with his Nintendo. Cool. Ken started his set off this night with an interactive video rap-off which didn’t really hit with the crowd. It required people to shut the fuck up and actually pay attention for more than 5 seconds. Which they didn’t.
The Gravity Wave stage show and sound has definitely changed over the last year. The most obvious difference would be that Mr. Wave has added a full band to back him. Even a trombone. This has given him a bigger sound. Although bigger, I feel like the subtleties of his sort of electronic music were lost in the shuffle. Songs like Princess where you are waiting for the Jump, Fireball sequence lost their catchy, cutesy, admiration. Even Footprints seemed to blend into the other songs, where on his Maytr’s Brrigade CD (available for download on his site) is a stand out track. Ken has a great unique voice and a stand out rock star confidence about him when he performs, rubber boots and all.
The night was caped off by a couple of Steam Whistle yahoos who introduced the bands and hosted the evening. At one point I think they threw T-Shirts into the crowd as if it was the seventh inning stretch at a J’s game. Whatever. Still a good night and worth the trip downtown.
