Thursday, April 10, 2008

I went to see music; I got theatre

Hopped on the Greyhound and went down to Nanaimo. To see famed Canadian chanteuse Julie Doiron. I adore some of the songs that she has on her Radio3 page. Know the words. Have listened to them over and over. Her opening act - one Ryan McMahon - was enjoyable. Proficient. Fine. But I was really there to see her. To see her play, I thought. Not to see her drummer and erstwhile singer harangue the crowd for heckling. Not to see them (in my estimation) so stoned out of their minds that they stop! half way through their song and then exclaim "oh, yeah, this is where we do the guitar solo" only to resume. Perfunctorily. I didn't go there to see Julie futily attempt to cajole her bandmate into playing instead of taunting the (admittedly rude) crowd to "take it outside" with him. I went to see music; I got theatre.