More Than Fifty Ways

I spent the week following Christmas cocooning thanks to both public holidays and paid time-off. With New Year's Eve on the last Sunday of 2023, there were likely parties and events in Ottawa. But to be honest, I rarely celebrated New Year's even in Toronto. It was thanks to streaming shows during the pandemic that I actually stayed up past midnight in the last few years.

The success of last year's combination of a live concert at History venue and streaming on Youtube convinced supergroup cover band Dwayne Gretzky to continue this tradition. So I settled to watch my 4th New Year Eve's stream even though I tapped out after midnight at the end of their 2nd set. I caught up with their final set the next morning.

For this year's concert, Dwayne's line-up grew to 17 members with the addition of a horn section. Their presence added a lot of oomph to the arrangements; Dwayne's version of You Can Call Me Al never sounded so good especially with Anh Phung's flute solo. With 13 years of existence, they also reached a milestone in their career. Midway through the 1st set, they played the 800th cover song in their repertoire: Tears For Fears' Head Over Heels. Song 801 came soon after with James Baley's spirited rendition of Love The One You're With.

Set two was also a lot of fun and ended on a high note with Meg Contini's How Will I Know and a full-band cover of Everybody (Backstreet's Back) complete with dance choreography. It was 12:30 am and I needed to call it a night. When I came back the next morning, someone in the chat had mentioned that set 3 was the best one yet. The final hour was wall-to-wall bangers: Jill Harris' impeccable German for 99 Nuftballoons, Lydia Persaud's assured Hold The Line, Contini's soaring Alone,  Carleigh Aikin's blistering Piece of My Heart, and Baley's joyful Freedom! 90.

Though Dwayne has always done "oldies", in the early days it was still a young crowd. But perhaps 13 years later, they have aged out with both Gen Z and the tail end of the Millennials cohort. I barely saw anyone under 40 in the crowd shots. In fact, many attendees were on the other side of the mid-century mark. It didn't help that Dwayne only played 2 songs released in the last 25 years: Backstreet's Back and The Darkness' I Believe In A Thing Called Love for the encore. Even an unhip grump like myself know that "modern music sucks" is a laughable attitude. As professional musicians, they'd probably feel the same but maybe they don't want to alienate their core demographics. Come on Dwayne Gretzky, it's not yet time to play on cruise ships!