Melissa Auf Der Maur and Matt Good in Charlottetown

OK, I'm back home a little later than I had planned, but that's ok. It was a great show tonight, the show part anyway.

Met Sabrina there after actually managing to get her to come out on a schoolwork night, and our (until recently unbeknownst to us) mutual friend Justin comes by shortly thereafter. Now, having Justin on your team when you go to see a rock show has many advantages. The first being that he had gotten a couple of people to stake out some prime territory right at the front of the stage while the opener, Limblifter, played.

Inside we met up with my old friend Taylor (also of the Dirty Dozen blog) and someone I hadn't met before, but who is very cool to be sure, Janelle. (yes, everybody has blogs these days, get with the times, yo.)

The first group is pretty good, but the 'only-funny-after-he-said-it' line for Limblifter went to Justin: "Hey I liked this song when I was 16." They did the in retrospect probably rather juvenile trick of turning up their sound so it would be louder than the next two bands. Certainly something I would have done, but I also would have turned it back down once I realized I was killing my audience with feedback. Good rockin' tunes, though, so it's all good.

Next up was Melissa Auf Der Maur. I'll admit now she was the main draw for me. Yes, it's true, I'm a total slut for non-Can-con celebrity musicians. Here I was not a week ago saying "what? she's got a solo album out?" and having to go check it out to see what it's all about. Needless to say it sounds nothing like Pumpkins or Hole. I suppose I should certainly not be surprised that after so long with those groups she would have a pent-up desire to write something upbeat.

Trying to describe her music I can only come up with 'punk rock, if it was unabashedly for fun.' The kind of music you can get up out of bed and rock out while making your bed to. (any music magazines can feel free to hire me any time they like to write reviews.) On stage she carried that spirit over and just looked like she was having a total blast for her entire set. I guess for someone who could live off of royalties for as long as she wanted, if she is actually writing new music and touring around the Maritimes it must mean she actually enjoys it.

Now I have to explain that Justin has some kind of mojo working for him in spades, because at the end of her set she came over to where we were and says to him "thanks for rockin' out so hard." How fucking awesome is that?

Matt Good was up next. Unfortunately for me, anyway, his rather on-the-nose political message paled a little bit given that the intermission music was Steve Earle's new album, The Revolution Starts Now which includes a serenade to Condoleeza Rice. You simply can't compete with that. I only new a handful of the songs he played, never having owned any of his albums, but he could definitely play, and kept up a good rockin' pace all night, not really slowing down except to play that old 'apparitions' song on an acoustic at the end and another song about protesting something or other.

I have to say the crowd at Myron's tonight was among the worst audiences for any decent-sized rock show I've had to put up with. Someone got a verbal bitch-slap from Melissa for drunkenly yelling at her contradicting anything she was saying at one point. Someone else during Matt Good's set shouted "super size me!" I'm as puzzled as you are on that one. I'm told this is the typical PEI crowd. This doesn't bode well.

Now, Sabrina skipped out early so she didn't get to stand with the 4 of us in the cold waiting for people to come out of busses. Which is too bad because Melissa came right on over to us and started talking. (She doesn't know when the Metro DVDs are coming out either, by the way, and her favourite Sabbath album is Master of Reality. Justin had to protest this, because he disagrees with me that it is the best and we've argued the point before, but he only ventured a disagreement without putting too much force into it. Not to would have been a victory for me, of course. We got a picture with her, that Janelle was kind enough to take, and she seemed really happy that I knew the band Tinker that she was in way back before her Hole debut in Montreal. As rock stars go, she's the friendliest and nicest I've met, hands down. And she likes Kyuss. Which is awesome.

As for Matt Good, I have to wonder what it was you all were doing in that bus while we waited outside for half an hour. They did play for a long time, though, and I couldn't blame him in the least for not coming out into the cold to talk to someone from the rather shitty crowd of the night, even if we were the saving grace of the show's audience.

It gave Taylor and I a chance to catch up, anyway, which was cool in itself. And Janelle got to be entertained by 13-year-old inside jokes for a while. Good times.

(Click to enlarge)

Left to right: Melissa, Justin, Taylor, me. (and thanks Janelle for taking the picture)