(Our story continues…)

Now that we were committed to going, the “mad dash” began. (I.e. My Lovely Wife spent the next hour frantically beautifying herself, puntuated by sporadic commands for “More Wine!”, while I made some pizza, ate some pizza, watched some TV, ate some more pizza, surfed the web, played with the cats, and then — 3 minutes before departure — put on a clean t-shirt and brushed my hair. There. Mad dash completed.)

Once we were pretty (well, she was pretty — I was presentable) and ready to go, we hit the road for Downtown Halifax!

Having received periodic updates that the line-up wasn’t as crazy as feared, we arrived at Reflections at 8:30 to no line-up! Yay! Quick metal detection, $20 exchanged for two washable hand-stamps, and in we were. And there were Ramzi and Allison at one of the very few tables, with two stools saved (which we would proceed to alternate sitting in, standing next to, lose, and then regain as the night wore on). Then we got to introduce My Lovely Wife to Allison. (They seemed to hit it off just fine.)

The volume of the club was pitched at the exact volume where everyone else can hear everyone else while I am stuck vainly trying to read lips and spent much of the evening smiling stupidly and then saying, “WHAT?” However, I did hear one bit of info from Ramzi that surprised me:

“YEAH — WE SHOULD GO TO NATIONALS IN TORONTO NEXT YEAR — IT’S JUST BEFORE THE WEDDING!”

Shocked, I shot out, “WHAT WEDDING?”

“ME AND ALLISON!”

“YOU’RE ENGAGED?!”

“YEAH!” (Pause.) “DIDN’T I TELL YOU?”

“NO!!!”

“OH!” (Pause.) “WE’RE ENGAGED!”

I proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes loudly berating Ramzi for not sharing that little detail.

By the time 10:00 rolled around, the place was starting to fill up, but it was no where near packed. However, the stream of people continued.

The first act of the night hit the stage: Andrew LeDrew. God love him, but he just wasn’t what the crowd was looking for. His first song was good, competent folky-rock in a Blue Rodeo style… but as he played song after song, and they sounded remarkably similar to each other, the crowd sort of tuned out to him. It must be hard playing a show where you know that the crowd just isn’t there to see you. He plugged away at it, but the crowd just wasn’t there for him. They wanted FUN, and he wasn’t FUN. Cool organ player in the band, but an organ player a band does not make.

At one point, My Lovely Wife pointed out my buddy Josh across the room. Josh was the one who I have to thank for introducing me to Sloan in the first place… along with most of my other music favourites… and most comic books… and movies… the list of things he has introduced me to is really really really long. I went and did my best to chat it up with him, but when everything is coming through your ears like white noise, conversation becomes a tad unwieldy. He came over and hung out with us for a bit. He said stuff too. I have no idea what it was.

The next band at 11:00 did a much better job at getting the crowd revved up: Slowcoaster. These guys were pumped and played hard for the crowd. They played a funky ska-jazz-rocky stew of music that was a blast to listen to. At this point, the club was really filling up and people had filled the area in front of the stage. As we were just behind this area, our sightlines had gone to hell fast. I could see the heads of people on stage, but My Lovely (But Shorter) Wife could see absolutely nothing. I was starting to get worried that this night would be a bust for her.

Slowcoaster finished up at around 11:40 — 20 minutes until Sloan! However, my excitement at seeing Sloan was countered by a worry that My Lovely Wife was not going to see anything once Sloan hit the stage.

Then Allison stepped up.

“THAT’S IT! LET’S GET UP THERE!”

“WHAT?”

“WE CAN”T SEE ANYHTHING HERE! WE’RE GETTING AS CLOSE TO THE FRONT AS WE CAN!”

My Lovely Wife tried to demure, but Allison was force of nature. Thirty seconds later, we were a chain worming our way through the throngs. We ended up 10 feet from the stage — at which point My Lovely Wife’s shyness in public won through and she wouldn’t push any more people. However, we had a good spot and Ramzi and I worked to form a shield wall around My Lovely Wife to protect her from the shoving crowd. (Allison needed no shield wall — the crowd had more to fear from her than she from them. She was itching to get even closer.)

Our spot in the crowd attained, it was time to hold on until Sloan came on. It was 11:55. Sloan didn’t come out until 12.30. Bless her, My Lovely Wife stuck through the wait. She is not a crowd person. She is not a late night person. But dammit, she stood there and waited with us.

So… 12:30 — Sloan hit the stage…

Holy crap. I thought it was loud when Slowcoaster was on. But Sloan took the volume to 11.

The place was not large — maybe 300-350 people filled the place. And the ceiling was low — standing at the front of the stage, the lead singer Chris Murphy could reach up and support himself with a hand on the ceiling. So that sound was not just loud — it was compacted, hitting my ears like a gale.

It was so apparent that Sloan has been playing together for 15 years — they are tight. They barrelled through classics like “The Good in Everyone” and “Losing California” and newer songs like “The Other Man”. One of the biggest cheers was when they started “Coax Me”. But the real stand-outs of the main set were “Money City Maniacs” and “If It Feels Good Do It”.

During “Maniacs”, one audience member did a stage-dive from the side of the stage and crowd-surfed all the way across to the other side of the crowd. Then, he somehow got all the way back to where he started and tried it again. This attempt was not as successful and he fell to the floor right in front of us, knocking the people in front of us down… who then knocked My Lovely Wife down. For a moment I saw absolute red, but then she got up and said she was all right and not to worry. And then she was right back in the show.

Halfway through their set, Allison said to hell with us and made her way forward. Next time I saw her, the crowd just happened to break open enough for me to get a glimpse of her at the very front of the stage turning sideways to scream at the crowd to get louder. She was an animal that night. (She later popped up next to us again. It seems she actually got on the edge of the stage itself, when the bouncer picked her up and pulled her away from the front. This seemed to please her.)

They finished the short intense set with “If It Feels Good Do It” and then left the stage. And then began the expected call:

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

And they were back. They actually looked a little sheepish — Chris Murphy came on the mike and said that they felt bad taking an encore on a showcase night (and with another band yet to come) so they would just do one more song.

And then they started “Underwhelmed“.

Damn — I thought the crowd was loud before. The shrieking that I heard out of my right ear actually started doing odd ripply things to my eardrums. “Underwhelmed” was Sloan’s first single and the one that is nostalgic favourite for most people. Boy, could you tell. (Hell, I was singing along just as loud as everyone else there.)

Then, when they got towards the end of the song, Chris Murphy got an audience member up and gave her his bass, showed her what string to keep strumming… and then he dove into the crowd. And the crowd lifted him up. And back.

Straight to us.

Next thing I knew, I had both hands holding up Chris Murphy’s “lower back”.

(His lower back = his pooper.)

One thing they don’t tell you about crowd-surfing — those people on the bottom have a lot of responsibility. I could tell how much of his weight I was holding. And I could tell when enough people were taking the weight that I could let go. And it wasn’t a short period of time. I basically walked him across the floor for 10 seconds before I dropped out. When I looked around for My Lovely Wife, she and Ramzi were 15 feet away.

Chris Murphy ended up at the very back of the audience — and on an upper level. There was no way he was getting back to the stage. They ended the show with him up there, looking a little surprised that he made it out alive.

We made our ways back to our little table and stools, somehow remarkably unoccupied. We debated staying around for the last act, and even stuck it out for while, but some of us were really tired at that point and the next band was taking fowever to come out. So, eventually, we gathered our coats and left.

And thus we spent an eventful Saturday.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 pm and is filed under friends, me, music, mylovelywife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.