Blood on the tiles

I have good memories of several sets among this year's Ottawa Explosions, and offerings from Montreal's Thee Nodes and Hamilton's TV Freaks were among them. When I heard both would be performing at Mugshots this Friday as part of Funhouse!, I knew just were I'd be last night. In addition to those crazy characters, Brannock, Pennsylvania's Blood Red were on hand to start things off with some polemical punk.

Prepare for re-education, people of Ottawa!



Bass action with Cassie Staub!



A shouty bit with Dave Rosenstraus (formerly of Pissed Jeans)!



Double action with Cassie!



Garrett Corbin hits, turns 30!



Fisheye action!



The whole lot!



Cassie sings!



Dave works the crowd!



With some guest guitar action courtesy of Dave from TV Freaks.



On to Thee Nodes and TV Freaks, after the jump!

And your mind will follow

Let us turn now from the gentle twang of the surf to the beats of the club, courtesy of Silkken Laumann. The duo of Adam Saikaley and Rolf Klausener were raising funds for the upcoming Arboretum Art Festival with great success.

Assemble the musicians ...



Pat hits!



Mike Dubue helped out for this set.



Gripping action!



Smokey action!



Knob-twisting action!



Rolf shakes it about!



The shouty bit!



They're opening for Toronto's DIANA at Mavericks Saturday night.

Cloud city rock

On to more surfin' sounds (or at least, pictures of people making surfin' sounds) at Zaphod's, with The Calrizians, a Toronto quartet with a thing for Billy Dee Williams.

Here's Ben Jewer and a murky Oscar Laguan.



And keyboardist Tom Osborne, for that touch of the Muscle Shoals sound.



Extra Oscar!



Matias Silva keeps the beat.



The whole lot!



More Ben!



More Tom!



Oscar takes a spin on guitar.



The blurry end!



No word on what they're up to these days ....

Strictly verbal

Mere weeks after seeing them at the House of the Targ I had another chance to see The Reverb Syndicate action. This time the venue was Zaphod's, opening for Toronto's The Calrizians.

Twangy action!



Faceoff action!



More guitar!



More Michael!



More Jeff!



Burnsian action!



Guest Theremin action!



The end!



They'll be at the Surf'n'Turf festival at Irene's Nov. 8.

Behind the brain

Let's play a bit of catchup and roar ahead to March 13, 2013 - a mere nine months ago! The show in question was at Pressed, with David Jackson (last seen in The Fucking Machines) in ambient guitar mode and The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol deploying some krautrock sounds.

David strums!



And the view from the back.



First, some wide angle action!



Jan bows!



Shadowy action with Nate and Dave!



The whole lot!



Dave hits!



Extra Nate!



Jason adjusts that dial.



More guitar!



The end!



A fine evening of mind expansion.

Oh the humanity!

The show at the Clocktower wasn't just an introduction to Greg Watson's new outfit, it was also the first outing for former Evil Farm Children Janice and Dave's new rock combo, The Mere Humans. Along with Boom Creek vets Ian Vance and Chris MacDonald.

Introduction action!



How amusing.



And they're off!



Dave sings!



Janice handles the low end!



The whole lot!



Chris hits!



There was some dance instruction for those who wanted to cavort in the style of Cowboy John.



Janice sings!



There was also some table dancing.



An excellent debut. They also rocked it at the Dominion at the tail end of July opening for White Mystery.