In With The Old

Cover band Dwayne Gretzky usually hosts a sold-out New Year's Eve show at The Danforth Music Hall. I have been to many of their other gigs but never that shindig as I am usually in Ottawa over the holidays. The closest was attending an NYE concert that opened with Sheezer since DG member Robin Hatch also played that night with them at The Palais Royale.

But with live concerts disallowed due to COVID-19, DG was streaming a live show from their new studio in The Junction area of Toronto. Probably thanks to financial support from their sponsor Smirnoff and radio partners from Corus Entertainment, DG had 3 roving cameramen, a production team, and an impeccable sound mix. People stumbling across the Youtube feed from the U.S., Brazil, Europe and even Australia were flabbergasted that it was live.

Another cause for their astonishment was likely due to the passion of these musicians. DG has never been a tired bar band. Whether it was Nick Rose, Tyler Kite, Jill Harris, or Lydia Persaud's turn on vocals (and Carleigh Aikins pre-recorded from the day before), some deft guitar work and solos from "Champagne" James Robertson or Ian Doherty, or the tight cohesion from the rest of the band, superlatives would scroll up the chat box.

If there was one "complaint" from me, it was that outside of a smattering of songs from the 90s (Shania, Sloan) which themselves are almost 25-years-old, their repertoire tonight (Bruce Springteen, Paul Simon, Dusty Springfield, ABBA) were 40 to 60-years-old songs. But most viewers didn't mind the classic/dad rock and oldies format.

The DG crew reported that the audience would eventually total over 100,000 (Youtube had a view count of just over 78K the next day). During the show itself, I saw that it peaked around 8,000 simultaneous viewers and ebbed to about 2,800 at the end. This was understandable as the stream lasted 4.5 hours! DG wanted to ring in the New Year for every time zone in Canada. To that end, they played 5 sets starting at 10:30 pm (EST) interspersed with short breaks. During these intermissions, they had special "pop-up video"-style recordings of live performances from other shows. For each time zone, they also covered an artist from that region just after "midnight": The Tragically Hip and BTO went over well for Ontario and Manitoba, Coldplay did not for Alberta. The audience could also vote for the final song of each set.

Originally, I had planned on staying up only until midnight (EST) or maybe even 11 pm (adopting Atlantic Standard Time as my NYE). But I ended up watching the entire show until a superb The Weight (The Band) brought down the house at 3:15 am. If you remember your exam-cramming days (or read the excellent book Why We Sleep), after a certain point you're no longer tired. So I'm currently paying for that indulgence since I have not slept for 24 hours.