two weeks ago i had the fortune to see two classic punk bands, television and the buzzcocks, in the same weekend. both were at the same venue (the phoenix), both had the same bizarro doors opening time (6pm - due to the phoenix's weekly club nights), and both had no opening act. i hadn't initially planned to see the buzzcocks, but more on that later. although television have played sporadic shows here and there over the past couple of years (my roommate saw them in tokyo 3 years ago), this has been their first stop in toronto, and i was mighty excited to see them.
i was mildly disappointed.
first off, they only played 3 songs off marquee moon during the main set, plus
marquee moon itself for the encore, which meant that most of the set was filled with new material. new material from an as of yet unreleased album. i spent most of the show feeling lost.
the thing that i took away most from the show was that it reinforced for me that television are a musician's band. the strength of the show lay in their technical prowess, which was mostly wasted on me as a mostly non-musician. sure, watching richard lloyd play guitar is pretty awesome, but it was marred a bit by the dour face he had the whole show.
in fact, the entire band looked like they wanted to be anywhere else but on stage, which made it difficult to get excited despite how good the music sounded.
as my friends and i were leaving the venue, we were handed flyers by some dude, as is typical. except they weren't flyers...they were buzzcocks tickets! for the next night! we had just finished griping that the show was definitely now worth the $45 we had spent, and now we had something to make up for it!
next day
the three of us arrived at the venue less rushed and grumpy than we had been the day before (since the show was at 6, we had to leave straight from work and therefore didn't have dinner before beers and tunes). it was a really weird sensation, being in the exact same place, with the exact same people (including a lot of people i didn't know, who also had got free tickets the day before), at the exact same time two days in a row. but i digress. would i be disappointed again? not a chance!
they were amazing! it was the highest energy show that i had seen in ages. every song was played hard and fast, and the drummer kept playing in between songs, which only broke long enough for steve diggle to scream into the mic
"ORGASM ADDICT!!", before hammering away at his guitar again. good old steve looked like he was having the best time of his life, jumping about, raising his guitar up in the air, shouting incomprehensible comments into his mic...plus, he had a smile on his face the entire time. pete shelley looked like he was having loads of fun as well, but just wasn't at manic.
possibly the whole thing only lasted about 40 minutes, including encore, but it was ok, 'cause they packed into that time i have no idea how many songs.
when the show was over, steve diggle took ages to leave the stage 'cause he just kept shaking everyone's hands. it was incredibly cute.
so the buzzcocks restored my faith in aging punk rockers. maybe it's 'cause the buzzcocks are drunken mancs, and television are arty new yorkers. for all i know, they could've played shows back to back at the el mo in '78, and the difference may have been exactly the same.
