Month: March 2018

This one is a little vaguer in my memory. I remember this being a church show. I managed to dig up my ticket stub and it places it at Grandview Baptist Church in Kitchener in late 1997.

Opener on the day was Emerson Stone from Manitoba. I remember being a little excited about this as I had heard of the band from my brother. They were ok, but had a lame song they wrote about buying their merch.

Soulfood 76 came next and although I still have a couple of their fuzzed out albums, I don’t remember too much about the live show.

Honestly, I don’t remember too much about Hokus Pick’s set either. It was after Snappy was released, so it would’ve been fairly upbeat. I picked up a shirt promoting their “Let Go, Let God” song featuring four Lego characters. I still have this shirt and you may see me wearing it from time to time. It’s held up well even though it’s old enough to drink in Canada.

After being a fan of MxPx for 3 years and not having seen them, this was the second show in a month for me. Many jokes were made leading up to this show because we had to call the “Call The Office” pub for details on the show since this information wasn’t available online in 1997.

I don’t remember much about Bracket or Reset, but one of them turned into Simple Plan, so I guess that’s something.

Sadly, someone created an entry for the show on setlist.fm, but didn’t fill in the setlist. This was still Life In General-era MxPx, so not a huge back catalog to choose from. They created a song on the spot with a lyric “Today is Wednesday, Today is Wednesday but tomorrow is Thursday”. That’s all that I can picture from the actual music.

I picked up a T-shirt that I wore a lot and still have kicking around, even though it’s pretty worn and ratty. The front had a red maple leaf with MxPx written on top of it. Anyone who saw me during the years of 1997-2002 has probably seen me wear it.

I’m not sure why I went to this show. At the time, I wouldn’t have been a huge fan of Foo Fighters and didn’t really know Talk Show or Treble Charger. This was the tour for The Colour and the Shape, so there wasn’t even that much of a back catalog for the band to choose from.

I went to this show with a friend who claimed he knew the guys from Treble Charger because he went to a lot of their shows in London. I lost track of him at some point during the show and remember seeing him hanging out with them after they played their set, so I guess the story checked out.

For Talk Show, I remember the audience generally disliking them due to the fact that Scott Weiland wasn’t there. The only cheers I remember them getting were when they played a STP song and covered an electronic song, possibly Breathe by The Prodigy.

Finally, the Foo Fighters took the stage. Two drum kits were visible at the back of the stage through the entire show and their purpose was finally revealed when Dave Grohl & Company took the stage. They kicked things off with Grohl and Taylor Hawkins each on a kit.

Only other standout memory is really wanting to hear I’ll Stick Around, which they saved for the end of the encore.

Thanks to setlist.fm for having the setlist.

I figured that I’d start with something old that I have a somewhat clear memory of and proof exists that the show happened.

I made my first trip to Toronto to see this show. This was pre-Google Maps, pre-Mapquest, so I got directions to the venue from someone that had a terrible idea of how to go places in the city. Instructions that I got were exit on Yonge St and turn on Queen until you get to the venue. Only issue is that you can’t legally turn on Queen. I eventually made it to the venue, terrible directions and all.

I don’t remember much about Weston. I think they were ok. These days, I’m more familiar with Beach Slang which features one of the guys from the band.

MxPx was on second. I don’t remember much of the show other than really enjoying the set and being the tall, skinny kid in the mosh pit with a high-centre of gravity. A couple years ago, I found a video of the show that popped up on YouTube.

I had found an audio bootleg that I found a couple years after the show. Given that this would’ve been an analog recording, it’s not that bad.

Dance Hall Crashers came on last, but I think I had a mid-term the next day, so I didn’t stick around. But that night also served as the start of a ritual that gave birth to The Slurpee Song.