Now that the "New" show's outa the way, lets have a story about an old Show again... Chris Lee had had it with us. After 5 years and bout 50 shows, Chris decided it was time to move on... As a band we'd decided to continue, find a new drummer and practice space. So 2 Shows were set up to send Chris off. The first was back at the Dominion Tavern on the 30th of March (2001) with Toronto's Exploders. To be honest, i don't remember too much about that show. I remember I liked the Exploders, just like I liked the other bands those guys were in too, like the Tijuana Bibles. The Poster from that show was pretty good too... The Exploders were releasing a 7" that night. Next morning we met back at the Dominion to load up our gear and head out to Toronto for a show at The El Mocambo Club in Toronto's beautiful Chinatown...
We'd played the El Mo quite a few times. I've got a pretty good story from everytime we played there. This night as part of Canadian Music week, somehow we managed to score the headlining spot!... It looked like it was gonna be a real fun night... Chris has a friend who'd often meet us each time we were in Toronto. I forget the guy's name, but I remember nick-naming him "Ship Wreck" a couple of Toronto trips back. "Ship Wreck" was a name given to a drunk at a bar I used to work at, this guy reminded me of "Ship Wreck"... "Ship Wreck" brought a camcorder that night and capured the night for us...
A song that we used to play that was featured on our "Lost Album" We're currently working on a new arrangement of this song.
When the gig was arranged I remember filling in a form for the Canadian Music week people about the gear we were bringing. Pretty standard procedure when playing these planned events... What wasn't made clear however, was the fact that we were ordering our "backline" that the Organizers were planning to provide for us as headliners. I knew a backlines often provided for bands when they play festivals, but if you are planning to drive from Ottawa to Toronto to play a Saturday, it's pretty well understood that you're bringing your own gear. It was pretty funny when we arrived for sound check and found out someone had rented and delivered the exact gear we'd written on our form. Pearl drums, Marshal and HiWatt amps... It ewas all there! No one told us this was being provided for us and we could've save some money and effort by not bringing all our own gear to town in a rented van... That's what happens when you're not ready for the "Big Time" I guess...
Just another version of the song that caps off our record and closes most shows, even now... Pretty funny camera work here. At first the camera was on a tripod in the middle of the bar so the whole stage was in frame, at the end of the show "Ship Wreck" was running around getting shots from everywhere in the bar, missing most of the "Action" as a result..
Alot of funny things happened that night, we were playing with an all girl trio called "Sticky Rice" who were pretty bad, but made up for that by being a "Girl Band" I guess... They were pretty nice and actually helped us load out. We we the last band to arrive at the venue that night, and no one one the bill had heard of us before, So it was pretty funny to us when each all of the bands announced that "The Phantom Shifters are coming up next, they're from Florida"... Turns out there was a van parked behind the venue, all the other bands saw it and and assumed that it belonged to the Headliners (us)... Hilarious considering that it was "Canadian Music Week" in Toronto... I also remember the band that went on before us were from Sudbury and called "The New Town Animals" They weren't bad, but their Bass player decided to make a real big splash on all the Toronto Music Industry types that were possibly around by getting naked during their set... Daniel Cockburn and I were watching that mess from backstage and I remember turning to him and saying something like "Oh, great, we're going on after the band with the naked guy"...
to be continued...
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