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For one reason or another, Simone and I haven’t been to as many concerts over the last few months as we would like.

I won tickets to see an Edge “Next Big Thing” concert with The Constantines. These concerts are getting worse as time goes on. Mind you, the first NBT concert I went to was for the Kaiser Chiefs while Damon Albarn was in town signing copies of the new Gorillaz album. It was a high-point of the summer to listen to a live rendition of “I Predict A Riot” performed with the lead singer of Blur.

The next concert I won tickets to was Tokyo Police Club at Drake Underground.  They went on 45 minutes late and played for 44 minutes. I also came to realize that the vocalist really doesn’t have that much range.

At The Supermarket (located comfortably in Kensington Market), we sat in a freshly renovated lounge for a few hours while the opener went on 45 minutes after curtain time, and subsequently sucked. Some hippie, Kensington Market weirdo with a hemp dress and played the same three notes over and over while she mumbled into the microphone. After twenty minutes she left, and we waited another fifteen before the Constantines finally graced us with their presence.

They were good. Don’t get me wrong. But in the recent renovation of the club, they forgot to put in a decent sound system. The music was maxing out and distorting the speakers that were probably still tuned for the burnout who went on before them. It only served to accent the horrible opener they had. Even though we waited almost an hour and half, we left after three songs.

After that rather disappointing concert at the Supermarket, my motivation for the Toronto music scene was low.  Couple that with the virtual disappearance of some of my favourite bands like Crush Luther and The Salads and I was faced with a need to find some new music to follow.

Simone got a chance to go take photos of People In Planes for an online music mag and for the $12 cover I could follow. The doors opened at 9 and they went on just after the curtain time.  Very professional. From the very start, I had the feeling that I was in the presence of Rock Stars. They acted like they were performing on a big stage with thousands of fans, but crammed into the tight space that the Rivoli stage yields.

The lead’s guitar kept dying. While it was never determined whether it was his instrument or the A/V system he managed to croon his way through the set, occasionally strumming at his muted guitar to keep time. Looking at his watch he mentioned at the 50-minute mark in the set that this was the longest set they’ve ever played. They continued to finish off the double-set (~90 minute) with stuff from the debut album as well as from the forthcoming disc.

The night finished with two encores. They had the audience in the palm of their hands, and I think we had them in ours.

A weird thing happens when you get engaged in a Web 2.0 world.  Since the word “wedding” has appeared in my Gmail, and I’ve updated my Facebook status, the intelligent AdWords on pretty much every page I visit have something to do with weddings.

I was already aware of how big an industry the “Wedding Biz” is, but it’s really carnivorous. Pretty much every weekend from now until late-Spring will have a wedding convention.  Some weekends have two or more to attend. Every business I guess has to get in on the ground-floor after the proposal, so they’ll have more say as to who supplies what, and gets paid for it.

The only person I know who’s officially in the Wedding Biz works out of Guelph/Kitchener and recommends finding someone who knows the local businesses.  It makes perfect sense, but I’m still nervous having everyone (including people I don’t know) in control of my wedding but me.

For example, I’ve once been to a wedding with a band, and even that was only recently. Before that, I’ve seen everything from a laptop running Win-Amp on randomize, up to a professional DJ with stage lighting.  Now that I know someone who’s a DJ (and pretty good too), I was hoping to hire her.  A Jewish friend of mine who’s also getting married this year told me with absolute certainty, “give that one up. Jews don’t have DJs”.

After some research, it seems that Jewish weddings can’t happen on Saturday, and there’s no particular (pre-18th century) rule against having Christian weddings on Sunday. While logistically the best thing to do is have it on Sunday, most people won’t want to stay late as they’ll need to work the next day. Also, having it on Saturday shouldn’t be too much of an issue for anyone who’s attending an interfaith marriage anyway.

I’ve already agreed to a civil ceremony - something I swore I would never do - in order to settle a few arguments before they started.  Since Simone is Jewish (as is her family), and I am Christian (as is my family), a civil ceremony without any representation of religion is the most politically correct way to handle the issue.  However, I’m not quite ready to eliminate spirituality from The Most Important Day Of My Life. I have felt God’s presence in every part of my life and I just can’t eliminate Him from a ceremony revolving around the importance of “Love”. I think that if I find some sort of compromise for this, then I’ll be okay with having a band instead of a DJ, or having the ceremony on a Sunday instead of a Saturday.  It just seems like a long way that we all have to go before that happens.

Until then, I’m just going to enjoy the attention. Even if it is by a database of online advertisements.

For the record, “eff’ing metal” is a good thing. I’ve encountered more than one person who grew up in the urban center of GTA who didn’t get that. That’s the reason that I’ve thought twice about getting the “Jesus is F’ing Metal” t-shirt. Most people don’t believe me that it has nothing to do with the Revelations ramifications and the fact that I’m a PK.

Yesterday I scored tickets to the second day of this year’s Virgin Music Festival out on Toronto Island.  Saturday’s headliner was Bjork, and I’m always astonished at how I’m the only person who doesn’t like her music (it’s like she records three good songs in different tempos and keys, then plays them all at the same time). Sunday’s headliner was Smashing Pumpkins. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so happy while crammed in with 10,000 people.

When Billy Corgan through a hissy-fit and claimed that he’s tired of fighting the “Britney’s of the world”, I realised that a lot of bands I had never had the chance to see live were fading away.  That’s probably one of the reasons I jumped on the bandwagon when the Sex Pistols played the Molson Amphitheatre.

By definition, watching the Pistols 25-30 years after they were most relevant in a large venue is as punk-poseur as one can get without getting a teardrop tattoo. However, I justified it by saying that I could never see them in their glory days, so now I just want to have the experience of having had seen them. I will also use the excuse that the Dropkick Murphey’s opened, but that was really only a happy coincidence.

While the whole band wasn’t really up on stage last night, the mood definitely was.  The newest Pumpkins album isn’t going to shift the music world into new grounds, but it proved that they are still relevant to the New Rock scene.

Billy Corgan played for an hour and 45 minutes before taking a pre-encore disappearing act behind the stage. During that time, he played the hit singles, some of the new stuff, and several 10-15 minute epic songs. After the fifth such song, there was a bit of a lull in energy. “Yeah, we get it. You can play guitar really fucking well. Get on with it.”

There were also solos from the drummer, but we never got to hear from the other guitarist or the bassist. The bassist was doing her best bass-chick bit. Almost makes me satisfied I’ve never seen Melissa Auf Der Maur play (yet).

However, when they played the high-energy classics (especially “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”), the audience went mental. I was slamming my head while most of the teeners around me were just bopping to the music, but they proved that the band still has what it takes to channel angst.

Other short notes about the festival - we left before the encore started, and waited an hour in line for the ferry. I can’t imagine how long it would have taken had we waited to the very end.

The Merchant’s Row was actually pretty good. There’s one nasty trend I’ve noticed in the years since the “Bubble” burst. Few companies are willing to hand out swag. Concerts, festivals, conferences and conventions have slick sales guys (or student summer staff) in these booths costing several thousand dollars, handing out pamphlets that make it 10-50 feet before being dropped.

People will keep swag! GM had t-shirts, RBC had a whistle with a blinking LED on a lanyard, and Energizer had a stuffed bunny. Half of places appealed to people’s vanity with “let us take your photo and if you don’t win the contest you at least get a photo”. In 2001 I went to one of the very last Comdex’s here in Toronto. That was the last time I got so much cool swag up until this weekend. The Xbox 360 booth was set up for people to come up and play Guitar Hero 2, but it really wasn’t that busy. Why? NO FREE SWAG!

Other bands we saw, in chronological order, include dd/mm/yyyy (pronounced ‘Day, Month, Year), The Cinematics, Tokyo Police Club, Metric (excellent performance, bravo Emily et al.), and The Killers.

dd/mm/yyyy had a great performance, and it was cool to watch four of the five performers switch instruments throughout. I’ve heard them before on various Indie podcasts, but I found them hard to listen to live. It sounds like they’re playing a lot of minor keys and the lyrics are akin to Ross from “Friends” making music on his keyboard while mashing random sound effects. The music is good, so I’ll still listen to their songs on my iPod. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to see them play again, but that’s just my musical tastes.

My final note is that Virgin Mobile had many tents set up, but no two were the same. That was refreshing since there was no “been there, done that” as you’re wandering around to different areas of the island. One tent was selling all the Virgin line of phones for a full 50% off. I picked up a Samsung phone for only forty bucks. The shape and size are nearly the same as my current phone, except that there’s no protruding antenna. Also, the battery on my current phone barely holds for longer than two days, and the charger has to be positioned just right so that it will work. Basically, within the next year I would have to replace it and this was my opportunity to do so cheaply.

The phone also comes with a cruddy camera and Bluetooth connectivity with nothing I own. I really didn’t want to have to pay for features I don’t want or will never use, and I managed to get away with it in this case.

Plus I got a free case for it. Yay swag!