Satiety

The El Mocambo venue at College and Spadina was shuttered through most of the aughts. I went to a few shows in the early 2010s when it briefly re-opened but only to close again. But after Dragon Den's millionaire Michael Werkerle took over, it went through extensive renovations and was now hosting live shows once more.

I was there on Tuesday to check out a showcase of "new music". I only saw the upper-level bar-room but deep pockets can transform a space. The Lemmon Stage was the most over-powered bar stage I've seen. Smaller than many bars, yet it boasted 4 racks of line-array speakers, a full lighting and sound set-up, and multiple cameras to stream live concerts. The walls had graphic prints of old El Mo concert posters and large black-and-white photos of famous alumni including The Rolling Stones. In these early days, it was clean, new, and corporate (think Hard-Rock Café).

So I wasn't surprised that host Rudy Blair had to thank sponsors and did the typical hype (sans DJ Airhorn sounds). I was a bit bemused to see baby-faced indie band New Friends (first show ever in Toronto) and their fans (some likely drove up from London) trying to generate some excitement. It lacked a certain organic growth because at their stage of development (even with 3 million streams of Purple Candy), they should be rocking out at The Monarch Tavern or The Baby G. The young fans thrilled at hanging out at a big city venue reminded me how old I was. This was triply true when the band's idea of nostalgia was the 80s ("Spin our favourite eighties tunes/All night") or to close with a 2008 cover (Kevin Rudolf's Let It Rock).

It was odd that this new music showcase included SATE. After all, she was recently nominated for a Juno with her album The Fool. I haven't seen her since 2015 and a 1-song set in 2017. Tonight, Ms. Talibah showed them how it's done. In a black dress with shoulder fringes like a warrior-priestess, she led the crowd through a short but powerful set of metal-heavy and loud songs about empowerment: Famous, Warrior,  Nobody and The Fool. She won over many new fans tonight.

There were two other acts but the problem with these showcase nights are the weird mish-mash of genres. In any case, my elderly body was flagging and I had a long streetcar trip back to the East End.