All Good Things

Tuesday night was the last show for Dwayne Gretzky after a 3-month residency at The Dakota Tavern. As usual, a local band opened up for them. This time around it was Hands & Teeth, a 5-member indie pop band. They specialize in 4-part harmony songs. As an nod to cover night, half of their set were Beatles cover including a long version of I Want You/She's So Heavy. They have a good sound and catchy tunes.

For the last show, Dwayne Gretzky played all the "Greatest Hits" including Be My Baby and My Best Friend's Girl. Yet even at the tail end, they still include newer songs in the set such as Thunder Road and even a brand new tune: Just A Girl (No Doubt). There were plenty of guests including the all-girl country band Ladies of The Canyon doing Dreams (Fleetwood Mac). Lots of crowd participation including an exhortation to go wild on the last song of the set.

Unfortunately, I had to leave once again after the 1st set at 12:45 am. But the twitter-verse tells me that apparently they kept at it until 3:30 am.

Up In The Air

Before heading over to Dufferin Grove Park for some Circus In the Park fun in the sunshine, I passed by Kensington Market for a bit of Pedestrian Sunday. In front of Wanda's Pie In the Sky cafe, Mr. Rick and the Biscuits entertained the crowd with some rockabilly.

The Circus In The Park group has grown since it started. The circus performers with their silks and trapeze, and the acro-yogis with their mats are now joined by the University of Toronto Engineering Juggling Club (although not everyone is a U of T student or member). They are quite good, better than most buskers. While I can only manage 3 balls for a short period, they are tossing up to 5 balls , clubs, rings, and even partner exchanges. Most are also proficient at contact juggling. Even better, they have slack-lines.

As the end of summer draws to a close, I'm happy to note I am now a slack-liner, if only a beginner. A light-bulb went off this afternoon, and I can finally balance on the line. I don't last more than 10 secs and can take at most 3-4 steps, but finally some progress. It's a shame the season is over, I'm tempted to get my own to get a bit more practice before the snow arrives.

Ham It Up

For the official CD release of their 2nd CD, Tosta Mista, Hooded Fang had their concert not in a bar but outside in the courtyard of Academy of Lions, a kettle bells, rings, truck tires, back-to-basics gym on Dundas St. near Dovercourt. Two port-a-potties were set-up, Mill St. beer was available, funky arts dotted the space, and Luce Libre movies were projected onto the wall of the adjacent building.

First up was Wio-K, a 3-member rap group. They had a old school style going, though it was hard for them to engage the young hipster crowd. Odonis Odonis, a fuzzy surf punk group, had more success. The odd thing was that their drummer was using synth drum pads (for reasons of cost?) So the backing to their ragged garage-band playing was a thumpety-thump sound straight from the 80s.

The crowd had filled up by the time Hooded Fang took to the stage. The under-powered speakers were actually a benefit, allowing the multi-part harmonies and quieter instruments like the glockenspiel to shine through. Two go-go dancers wearing Luce Libre masks joined them for a couple of songs, appropriate for their 60s-inspired CD. The drummer broke his snare drum twice and the whole thing ended at 10:45 pm because of the local noise by-law. Photos here.

This meant that I was able to go home at a reasonable hour. But not before I ducked into the gym area and got me a tosta mista (Portuguese ham-and-cheese sandwich) from caterer Sky Blue Sky, a sandwich shop above Joons in Koreatown, for the walk home.

Children of the Corn

There is a Vietnamese sticky rice dish called xoi bap consisting of glutinous rice, fried shallot, crushed mung bean, sugar and corn. It wasn't until recently that I found out the corn is hominy or nixtamalized maize kernel. Searching reveals that it is also used in pozole, a Latin American stew.

It turns out pozole is served at my local bodega, Tierra Azteca. This "small" bowl ($5) came with hard-shelled tacos. It's a filling dish and the pork was tender, though there were pieces that were overly fatty. The tacos didn't soak up enough of the stew and their saltiness made the everything too salty. I think the stew would have gone well with some blander bread or baguette. I didn't taste much of the hominy except for the texture. All in all, a good stew to have as the weather turns cooler.

Of course, corn is one of the New World staples that spread throughout the world. But it is interesting to ponder how hominy made its way East. To bring things full-circle anecdotally, I learned from my Mom that when Vietnamese people arrived in the U.S. primarily after the war (circa 1975), they settled for corn in their xoi bap. It wasn't until they chanced upon Latin American stores that they found hominy. This knowledge then spread through the community, in this case to my grand-mother when she visited Orange County to see friends. Even today, you'll need to go to specialty stores to find it.

Just Dance

Since there is a James Randi lecture next Tuesday, I decided to go see Dwayne Gretzky this week instead of at the end of the month. (It turns out though that I couldn't get tickets to the Randi talk). This week the opening band is synth trio Rouge who do an 80s style dance. I supposed to fit in with the "cover band" aesthetic, for this performance, 3 of their 6 songs were covers including Britney Spears' Breathe. Their originals such as Modern Lovers I were definitely better.

Dwayne Gretzky puts on another fun show. There's been changes lately though. The bassist and one of the singers (who also play with most of the band members in the group Sweet Thing) have been replaced with other people. Also, Robin Hatch seems to be taking over most of the piano duties. One nice thing is that they are introducing me to old songs that I don't listen to including Springsteen's 10th Avenue Freeze Out and Thunder Road and McCartney's Let Me Roll It. As usual, I can only stay for the first set.

Walking on Sunshine

On a beautiful Saturday, I decided to walk around to a few festivals running over the weekend. But first, I stopped at Zocalo for lunch. This tiny restaurant is located between Lansdowne and Dundas on Bloor, a stretch of street that is not particularly lively. This boite may be one of the first attempts at gentrification.

One wall had a number of tables running along a long wooden bench. Additional tables lined the other wall. There was a small bar area and the entire restaurant was painted  muted off-white/blue-green combination. Their specialty was broken bread sandwiches (i.e., make your own open-faced sandwich from the given ingredients).

I started with a cup of cauliflower and sage ($3). It was a bit watery and could have been creamier. My broken bread sandwich ($10.99) was sticky pomegranate chicken with radish, scallions, roasted garlic and fennel slather. The salad was primarily arugula, which was a little too strong. The slightly sweet chicken went well with the crunchy radish on top of the artisanal bread.

I then made my way down Roncesvalles to check out the Polish Festival. The contingent of Canadian Forces personnel gave me a primer on the workings of a howitzer. I discovered a Polish take on the open-faced sandwich called a Zapiekanka. The children and teens doing dances in traditional, colourful costumes were fun to watch; these old costumes seem to place a premium on knee-high leather boots for both men and women.

I ended the afternoon at the Queen West Art Crawl. I stumbled upon Dylan Bell and Suba Sankaran (of Retrocity) performing as Freeplay Duo. Using a loop sampler, they layered intricate harmonies without resorting to taped music or backing track to create wonderful songs. For other songs, it was just two voices playing off each other. Their CD had some great tunes, too but it lacked the more accessible covers that they were doing live. The onsite generator died 3/4 of the way through their excellent arrangement of Chick Corea's Spain but you can listen to a version of it online.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Wednesday night, Audio Blood Media was putting on a showcase featuring 3 of its artists at the Drake Underground. Upon arrival, I found out that there was also free music in the Drake Lounge. I spent the evening going back and forth between the two events.

At 9:30, Maylee Todd started indie music night at the Lounge playing a couple of songs with her Tenori-on. The darkened stage allowed me to finally see it in action. It made pretty patterns to match the programmed music, reminding me a bit of Conway's Game of Life. The most beautiful song, Downtown, had Maylee looped multi-layered harmonies with her pedals.

Then it was down into the Underground at 10:00 to catch Ben Caplan and the Casual Smokers, an outfit from the Maritimes. There was actually only one smoker, the drummer, as the rest of band couldn't make it out East. Caplan is a manic performer, cracking jokes and trying to engage the initially stand-offish crowd. Near the end, he commented that he was channeling an old Eastern European. That was my thoughts during his show, with his enormous beard, fun folk/gypsy style, and wordless refrain. He was a crazier Tevye.

I skipped out on Sandman Viper Command, having heard them a few weeks back. Up in the Lounge, Hill and the Sky Heroes was pulling off some catchy alien surf rock. That's what hey call their music, but the blues/rock songs were uniformly entertaining. The only catch was that similar to Caplan, Hill sometimes wrote some banal lines or strained metaphors when in search of a rhyme.

The night ended for me with the powerful trio The Balconies in the Underground. Once again, I'm amazed at how much sound and groove 3 people can make. It was too bad there weren't more people enjoying their jangly rock, but those of us who stayed love every minute. The fat bass got the slim girl next to me into some major pole-dance writhing, which was a bit distracting.

Sing-a-long

Once a month, Hip Hop Karaoke at Revival on College St. so that aspiring rappers can try their verbal gymnastics skill. As part of Indie Friday, HHK took over Dundas Square so that everyone can check out the good and not so good cunning linguists.

Next to the stage was the sign-up table along with 1000-page binders containing rap lyrics for those who may not be sure of the next lines to spit. For most of the evening, surprisingly few people needed that aide. 2 MCs and a DJ helped out. The only rules: no n-word, no freestyle, and because it was outside, try to keep the cursing down.

Most of the participants were obviously veterans of HHK although there were a few newbies. Particularly impressive or energetic performers got a prize from the Dollar Store loot bag. There were only 2 atrocious rappers: a girl who could neither sing nor rap to Kanye's Stronger and a teen who got booted off the stage for free-styling off 2-Pac's California Love, even after numerous warnings. Casual rappers stuck to simpler songs such as Coolio's Gangsta Paradise while the veterans channeled Wu-Tang Clan. Fun was had by all, especially the intoxicated, middle-aged dudes, who tried to rush the stage numerous times (perhaps to prove they are still hard-core). After security repeatedly intervened, they were finally escorted from the square.

Rockabilly

It's end of month again, so time to check in with Dwayne Gretzky for another Tuesday night of fun covers. The opening act tonight was a country singer named Maia Davies (Ladies of the Canyon). Her bar band played a countrified rock that fits in with the rockabilly roots of the Dakota Tavern. But the young crowd who were there to sing "greatest hits" songs were only polite toward her twangy confessionals. However, her last 3 numbers Crime, Country Stars, and Slavery did pack enough sonic and lyrical punch to get more enthusiastic cheering.

Dwayne Gretzky was even bigger than usual. In addition to the regulars, they were joined by Robin Hatch (Sheezer), Allie Hughes, and Dan Kanter (Justin Bieber's guitarist). A saxophonist jumped up on stage for a song. With Robin on piano, the regular pianist decided to pull out his accordion instead. Dan was ecstatic on his guitar (there's probably not much "rock" in Bieber's oeuvre), ripping out solos after solo culminating in an extended jam of Neil Young's Southern Man that was even longer than a previous effort in July.

With the first set ending on such a high note, I debated whether or not to stay for the second set. But it was already 12:30 am and us old geezers have to go to work the next day.