Dive Bars
If you love dive bars, the Hard Luck Bar is amongst one of the coolest in the city.Like most bars these days, it is a hit and a miss for the size of the crowd. Weekdays can be a tough spot to fit and Thursday is tricky because people don’t want to go into work tired the next day.
The audience this night was mall but ready to go out and have fun. I saw a dude named Roark out on the dance floor sweating his nuts off and videotaping parts of the evening. We need plenty of more Roark’s out there filling up these clubs and keeping them lively.
Ugly Bridesmaids
Well, this band got the ugly part of their name right from the first notes of their set. Then you heard those ripped whiskey vocals from Darren the singer and things looked grim in the coolest way. His hardened vocals fit the sound of the band immediately and like a perfect puzzle piece
Let me go off on a side note tangent for a moment. This is for some of the bands that I do see that have a lot of potential. There are plenty of lead vocalists that do not have traditional vocals skills but sing from the heart and have its own unique sound. The problem I find is that your vocal and the band’s music do not gel properly. I believe if you have a unique vocal style, you should find a way to make it fit with your music; two distinct styles that don’t gel can be frustrating to listen to.
Here are a couple of examples where strange vocal fit the music. Tom Waits would be at the top of this list. Lemmy from Motorhead. Victoria Williams would be another.
Back to our regularly scheduled review: The Ugly Bridesmaids are like a Hell’s Angel riding his bike blind drunk as he crashes through the barrier that kept you safe from the cliff.
I enjoyed their song about a boy toy. Being sung to a roomful of men a little strange, until I saw one rocking chick begin to dance and sway to this rough ride.
I found it funny that they had to stop the show to fix the drums that were falling apart because the drummer was smashing them that hard. Darren even sat on the bass drum during a song to keep it from splitting at the seams.
A quick summary of this band would be, that they are hard and fast and very thirst quenching, so remember to tip your bartender.
After all the mayhem they wrapped up with a song called, “Happy”. I was happy to have survived their Rock and Roll set!
Ugly Bridesmaids-
Deadly Alfano
After a blistering set from the Ugly Bridesmaid, Deadly Alfano played a slower and safer set of music. Their sound was that of a straight forward rock band cooking at medium heat. What caught me was that the second song had a didgeridoo sound built into the background of the music. This added a new sonic texture that added real spice to their sound.
Another song had the sound of rain and the feeling of doing a spiritual walkabout trying to figure out a mystery and how to deal with it. This was a pretty cool and pensive song.
We then got a loon singing on another song which placed me next to a campfire as we lazily sat around enjoying some wheelchair weed. This is a song that will give you the munchies.
I think this band is onto something with added these extra textures to the elements of their music. This process may put them onto a path of much bigger ideas.
Deadly Alfano-
Pete Kyrie Band
From the moment the band started, Pete’s guitar tone and rhythmic method dragged us into a gutter and then taunted us with is dissonance.
It was a fragmented song that led us into more of a solid powerhouse Rock sound. “I on’t want to be your enemy”, woke the crowd up with its solid groove and some of the audience moved closer to the stage.
Sorry, here is my second diatribe of this article. The formula is simple. Bands want to play to an audience when they are close to them and having a good time. You will usually see me near the stage every time because I can feel more of the music when I am closer. If you just get out of your seat even for a few songs, you will find a very different experience when you get closer to the stage. You may find you do not want to go back to your seat to doom scroll on your phone or talk to your friend incisively. You then can be present in the room and forget about the outside world for a short time. Just treat these moments like you are in a movie theatre. Forget the world for a couple of hours, you will fell mentally refreshed.
Back to our regularly scheduled review: There next song, “Mad mad world” was a total ripper with an undercurrent that swept you out to sea and left you gasping for air.
Pete had a great story where he was g playing a great rocking song with a stripper pole directly in front of him. I will only let your imagination let you fill in what this moment looked like. After this story, a couple of fans were trying to recreate that moment, but it went down like a cheap Hoover.
What worked for me was that Pete is the kind of guitar player willing to try out different kinds of guitar solos. Some of them sounded off kilter because he is looking for new ways to get the crowd excited. I believe he is till looking for that style that will separate him for all the other guitar players in this city. This is just one more reason to check out this band.
The band slipped into a section of the Blues where Pete was going Down, down, down, and the crowd was gearing up and dancing and having fun. The room felt like one big seesaw at that moment.
Then out of the Blue, Pete decided to play “Voodoo Chile”, but only if his friend JC would get up and sing it. Well, JC did fly through the audience and climbed up and belted out that monster.
Pete is a guitar player with many different styles and is looking to lock in on tht sound that will help make him one of the movers and shakers in today’s music scene.
Pete Kyrie Band-
Blast loves hearing from you, so if you were at this show, please leave a comment about your experience in our comments section.
You can also leave a tip if you want to read more articles about this kind of music.
Here are some links to these artists. Go and find new Toronto music here.
0 Comments