...yay for tour stop #1!

I think it's safe to say that most people, like me, were pretty surprised to see Broken Social Scene tour date #1 was announced to be.... Grant Hall in Kingston? Ok, it was not as shocking as the whole Joel in Dunning Hall date, but still. I guess Grant has the stage size and a decent auditory that made it a convenient stop as a rehearsal the night before their Ottawa show.

The performance itself was really good - rehearsal show or not - and it seemed to take the crowd about 2 hours to finally loosen up, but all in all I thought it was a pretty good few hours of my time. New Buffalo was all right.... I'd like to watch her in a smaller venue if I get the chance. She was sort of quiet for the space, and a little awkward. Her music is nice, I just got the feeling she hasn't quite found her stage persona yet. BSS was as expected: great! Listening and watching to the new songs live just made me want to rock out (I guess I sort of was). The older songs all sounded quality and polished, and it's pretty fun to watch. You'd never guess the band has played songs a gazillion times before - their enthusiasm was like the entire set was brand new. I was feeling like the crowd was immune (I myself was bouncing around like an idiot) but eventually they got into it, which only fed the performance, so yay. The only thing is I wasn't such a big fan of the Harmer song in the encore, since it seemed a bit out of place, but eventually when the rest of the band came out to join her it made it a bit less odd to me.Not that I don't like her, I just felt like the style was really different.

Anyhoo, my highlight reel:

• Feist singing with the band! I'd heard rumours she'd be here, but when she wasn't out for the beginning of the set I was beginning to doubt.... She only picked up a guitar for one jam, but damn, it was pretty smoking hot.
• Kevin walking into the crowd during Lover's Spit to hug people and getting squished in a massive group hug in the middle somewhere.
• Andrew's hand (like hand puppet style) mouthing along to the encore.
• The ladies vocals (Feist, Lisa and - surprise! - Sarah Harmer).
• Watching John Crossingham bounce around on stage for virtually every single song. He's so.... long bodied.
• Synchronized drumming!

[The one thing I HAVE to mention is this dancer dude who I call crazy-scarf-dancing-guy. The sad thing is that up to last night, I'm the only one who's seen him since I was by myself the first time I spotted him. I don't know how to describe him except as an androgenous male with the body of a 12-year old girl who dances like he's on LSD. There are flailing limbs, bendy angles and lying down moves all rolled into one. I actually caught Jeremy in a jaw-dropped mesmerized stare for a full minute - he described it as a spastic seizure. Needless to say, a new people watching object has definitely come on the scene.]