Prodigal sons

Back in July I went to the House of Targ to check out C'mon frontman Ian Blurton's new band, Public Animal, and was duly blown away. When I heard they were returning to town for a show at the Dominion Tavern I naturally decided to go see them again, along with local lights Big Dick and Mass, a band with a bunch of local expats now stationed in Toronto.

Mass took the stage first. The band features local scene vets Mike Laderoute (Robot Kill City, Van Johnson) and Steve Lam (Black Actors). Here he is at right, with bassist Mark.



Ex-Black Actor Steve Lam and Andrew Butko (of Disgruntled, Van Johnson and others - though the only time he's appeared on the blog has been playing guitar in Nick Gaetano's country combo).



Andrew hits!



Mark sings!



Mike sings!



Extra Steve!



Rhythm section action!



More Mike!



The whole lot!



A fine exhibition .. then it was on to some former bandmates, Big Dick ...

Acting!

Friday night, and so much to do. But not as much as I said earlier. Does anyone know if that alleged Barrymore's show with The Long Timers, Sweet Janes et al. happened? I saw a fair number of those folks in the audience, if not actually on stage, so I imagine not. Anyway, I went more-or-less directly to Babylon from the First Baptist Church, and arrived in time to catch the tail end of Black Actors' set. This show was a benefit for an AIDS orphanage in Tanzania.

Those Black Actors: In front, Steve Lam and Brent Sweet, on the stage, David Secretary and Davey Quesnelle. I last saw them at Babylon back in April, doing their civic duty.







Look out!



Look up!



The end!



That was a fair bit to get out of one song, wasn't it? I did miss a couple of acts: The Million Dollar Marxists' Steve Adamyk did some stuff (or at least he was on the bill), and a couple of other Marxists performed as part of a trio called the Dinosaurs Impersonating Androids Symphony. Jon Kiely from Harshey predicted they would be the biggest thing to come out of Ottawa in 10 years, so they must have been pretty good.

Orchestrated chaos

Torngat and Bell Orchestre were quite an experience. Instrumental music (apart from some wordless vocal addition by the Orchestre). I opted to take only a few pictures of this show. With everyone sitting in their pews it would have been disruptive of their viewing enjoyment to have me scurrying up and down the aisle, and I doubt my camera has the ISO to handle the low lighting. Nice acoustics from the high, vaulted ceiling, though - the wall behind the two Orchestre members in the picture below gives you an idea - it was way up there.



The I went to Babylon ... I caught the Black Actors' last song. Sounded good.



The Double Pumpers put on a brief but kicking set.



The Fucking Machines, back at full strength, put on a killer set.



The Million Dollar Marxists also put on an awesome show, which ended in complete chaos.



Pictures of said chaos to come!

• Show reminder: Mighty Eagle Band and Diablo Red perform at Cafe DeKcuf. As far as I can tell, the third band on this bill is Hellbros, but I see a listing on punkottawa.com for The Grey, so who knows?
  

How I like my coffee

Like openers Embassies of Denmark, Black Actors is another band with Van Johnson alumni, in this case Steve Lam and Dave Secretary. Davey Quesnelle of Quebexico, Million Dollar Marxists and the late Robot Kill City also plays bass and sings. Brent Sweet rounds out the band on guitar.

First, an introduction from Justin Considerate.



Davey in a rare no-headband picture.



Drummer David prepares to go kaboom.



Kaboom!



Davey claimed guitarist Steve Lam skipped out on his honeymoon to play.





Brent Sweet.



Anyone can play guitar, but can you poke your bassist in the bum at the same time?



Do that thing with the stuff!



Two actors and a photographer.



Steve sings!



He later ran off to the other side of the room with his kit ... it was funny to see, but was probably a better idea in the conception than results. Same goes for this overhead shot.



Acting!



As mentioned earlier, a split with Embassies of Denmark is planned, and an EP should be out by summer on the Je T'aime label. They also have a video from this show up at their Myspace account, you can see me snapping away in the background.

• Show reminder: Gris Gris and Brian Glaze play the Dominion Tavern.

The third, man

Just back from my third Civic Duty evening at Babylon, another raging success with hot sets from Embassies of Denmark and Black Actors.





And of course, a shout out to Civic Duty DJs Jeff and Bryan.



As per usual, more to come.