On Friday night Cuz, Janis and I made or way to the Garneau Theatre to catch the Dead Venues documentary that was part of the Global Visions Film Festival, and then after the film a performance by the Edmonton band Jr. Gone Wild.
The film Dead Venues was a documentary about some live music venues that used to be part of the Edmonton music scene. The filmmakers of this movie are Mike Siek and Eden Munro whom put together this hour long movie, along with a lot of help from the fans and the collectors of posters, ticket stubs, photos and live footage. The filmmakers did a great job of putting it all together. The venues covered in the film were the Ambo (Ambassador), it was cool hearing stories about that venue. Other venues were the Sidetrack Cafe, Power Plant, Rebar and the Bronx/Rev. Having seen shows at all these places I could relate with every story told by all those that were interviewed. It was also nice to hear the big round of applause for Kirby when the picture of her was shown in the movie. Having just lost her to cancer in the last year, she was a lady that was involved in every aspect of the Edmonton music scene.
In the lobby of the Garneau Theatre they had hundreds of posters from past shows of all the mentioned dead venues. It was cool to see all those old posters. I myself contributed some posters for the show as well. Great job on the movie to all those that were involved.
Some of the posters that were hanging in the lobby.
After the movie and a brief intermission so that you could get a few beers in you, they had Edmonton band Jr. Gone Wild perform. This was a great band to have play to cap off the night, with JGW having been a big part of the music scene since the 80's.
Jr. Gone Wild played an hour and a half show and sounded great. This was the first Edmonton show the band has played in about a year, and was my fifth time seeing them, so it was good to see them play live again as they always put on a good show.
What did surprise me about the show was how many people left right after the movie and didn't stick around for the concert. The theatre was packed for the movie but dwindled down to about a hundred people for the live performance. Nonetheless it didn't stop JGW from putting on a spectacular performance. JGW played lots of old favorites and even a couple of brand new songs, which was really good to hear, as it has been many years since JGW has put out any new music.
There were three new songs played, one being called "Barricades" which was written by Steve Loree the guitarist in the band, and a profanity laced song called "Fools Errand" penned by lead man Mike McDonald and then to close out the show the band did a countrified cover of the SNFU song "Cannibal Cafe". It was a real different version to this classic SNFU punk song. From what I understand JGW have recorded this song for an album that will be coming out of bands covering SNFU songs to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of SNFU's debut album ...And No One Else Wanted To Play.
A great night out seeing a great movie and a great performance by Jr. Gone Wild. Good times!!!
Jr. Gone Wild at the Garneau Theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment