NxNE: Night 2

For Friday night I decided that C'est What would be the place for me. I definitely wanted to see Winnipeg's Christine Fellows, who was playing there at midnight. I had received her latest album, The Last One Standing, as a submission to my Showcase page, and was mightily impressed. She'll be appearing in the next issue of the mag.

The other bands I would have wanted to see at other venues were either local artists, or those who will likely be coming back soon, such as Starling, who have a new CD to plug. And even though it's tough to pass up Jim Bryson, the logistics just weren't working in my favour.

So I settled in at C'est What, nabbing a stool at the end of the bar in that little alcove-type place that every live music bar should have ó an area that affords a brilliant view of the stage, stools to perch on with the option of back support from the bar, and, with a quick swivel, direct access to the bar staff!

Mia Sheard was first up, she of the choir-trained voice and the razor-sharp mind. Last time I caught Mia she was playing a solo acoustic set at the Rivoli, and apologizing for what she deemed her lack of guitar skills. Here she was wearing a cherry-red Gibson SG electric and rocking out with a crack band. Lovely version of veal's "Mexico Texaco" and "Cover Girl". Good start to the night.

Next up, Ellen Reid of the Crashtest Dummies. She played electric piano accompanied by a guy on acoustic guitar. Other than her cover of XTC's "Peter Pumpkinhead", which the Dummies had a bit of a hit with, nothing much about her set stuck with me. Her stage presence was a kind of forced goofiness. Not enough to be truly annoying, but enough to make me not really care.

So, on to Priya Thomas, who was a bit of a buzz girl at CMW back in March. Girl With Beatbox, she's being billed as. I think that's the name of her latest CD as well. The music wasn't too bad, but it wasn't anything special either. But what really annoyed me were her scissoring arm and leg movements while she wasn't singing. She obviously felt that she needed to add something to her act. That's usually a sign that the music isn't strong enough to carry the load by itself. To test my hypothesis, I closed my eyes for about 30 seconds, and just listened. Yep, pretty uninteresting. Girl With Beatbox? Girl With Gimmick is more like it.

And the music on the beatbox wasn't anything bizarre or particularly hard to reproduce, just essentially drums and bass and keys, so why not just hire a band? Particularly ironic since this was a SOCAN event! She's just been signed by The Management Trust, the same people who manage The Hip and the Watchmen. I think they must have been swept up by the hype.

Then came Christine Fellows, whose electric piano was set up just to the right of centre stage, cello to her right, one main drummer, one secondary drummer on one of those baby drum kits and other percussion, and a guitarist on each corner of the stage (one had to stand on the floor). I may be forgetting someone. She was great. Played all my favourite songs from her latest album. Wonderful wonderful. The percussionist was doing the coolest thing. When they were setting up, I saw that he had a saw (er, I seen that he... uh... oh, never mind), which I assumed he would play as a "singing saw" , but there came a point in the set where I heard this ratcheting sound, and I noticed that he seemed to be "bowing" his snare. It became evident, though, that he was actually drawing the teeth of the saw upwards across the rim of the snare! Very cool.

Afterwards I approached Christine to say hello and introduce myself (we had had a fairly enjoyable and often silly phone interview earlier in the week), but I don't think it really registered with her. She seemed in some kind of post-gig haze or something. Whether naturally induced or not, I don't know. 'Course I was a little hazy myself, so I just hung out a bit, helped John Sampson load some of Christine's gear into the van (they had sooo much gear, between the cello cases and such, and no one else was helping), and then I bopped on home, generally feeling more satisfied than the stale taste in my mouth from the previous night.