Good Beer, Shame About the Music

No Shame Promotions had a show at The Garrison, a converted Portuguese pool hall, in the up-and-coming trendy area of Dundas and Ossington. For $6, I got to see 3 indie artists.

First up, a local singer named Allie Hughes. Before her set, I talked to some people who knew her and it turns out that she was in the CBC reality show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? As you can imagine, she has a strong singing voice. But that's about it, at least at this time. They also mentioned that her current band has only been together for 4 months. Well, it shows. They can play, but there's no connection between the players. The songs are quirky, but not in any interesting way. And it is apparently in the Sound Engineer's Code to make opening acts sound as bad as possible. The sound mix was terrible.

Next came Brent Randall & His Pinecones. The description said this band was Beatle-esque. Given the 2 guitars, bass, drums and 3 part male harmonies, they certainly had that Beatles sound, perhaps mixed in with some Rolling Stones and other 60s bands. But for their entire set, I couldn't get over the feeling that their style is about 40 years too late. Pop might be a restricted style but it has evolved. You can't stay in the past. So my attention wandered elsewhere. I spent the time watching a woman (barfly?) trying to pick up somebody, maybe for the night or maybe she was trying to meet someone new. She came in, stood beside me, ordered a beer. She then surveyed the crowd and after a moment, started her quest. Several failed attempts/beers/shots later, she sat down. Finally, she left about half-way through the 3rd set.

The final set was a quirky group called Language Arts. I knew the singer probably has a distinctive singing voice as she was one of those women who sound like they're 10 years old. The fact that she and her band played complex chords and rhythms, almost jazz-like, initially excited me. But a pop song is not a classical composition and should not contain 3-4 disparate "movements" over 5 minutes. Just when a song is getting good, it changes, and then changes again. I gave up a couple of songs in.

And so did the rest of the crowd. Actually, whether or not because of the acts, or this is typical of the venue, a lot of people did not bother with the bands. It was mostly lots of drinking and loud chatter. Only a small minority paid any attention to the music. But I guess an indifferent crowd is what you sometimes get as an up-and-coming artist.