Zaphods 2Ottawa, Ontario
May 24, 2000; 10:30pm
Zaphods 2 made an interesting venue. Especially with the addition of a cage to the right of the stage. That's right, you read the last sentence correctly. Cage. Jen, Luke, and I parked ourselves in front of The Cage just as the Flashing Lights were starting, directly in front of Gaven.
Perhaps the only clue they had travelled 15 hours straight from Winnipeg was the fact there wasn't any of the usual Matt Murphy craziness or Flashing Lights enthusiasm. Regardless, the Ottawa audience was totally in love with them even before they finished their first song, "Where the Change Is". The FL set consisted of mostly songs from their new Elevature EP, (which I had just purchased hours before) along with a few favourites from the previous LP. During the last song, "Elevature", some practiced fans had started chanting "Flashing Lights!" even before the cue. Ottawa loves the Flashing Lights, if that isn't already blatently obvious.
LIMBLIFTER
Zaphods 2Ottawa, Ontario
May 24, 2000; 12:15pm
This marked the first time I had ever seen Limblifter. My Limblifter knowledge is minimal, besides the radio hits and videos on Much Music - I don't own a single album. I do remember making an effort to get one a few years back after "Tinfoil" came out, but refused to pay $24 for it. I'm used to knowing so much about a band before I see them live, and I can barely name half of the members of Limblifter. This was somewhat of a first for me.
I only recognized the lead singer, and found out why, half-way through the show. Kurt couldn't make the tour for some reason, so this guy called "Juice" was filling in. Juice was quite the drummer, he really knew his Limblifter stuff. If someone didn't yell out "WHERE'S KURT?!", probably half the audience would have left the show thinking Juice was their full-time drummer.
Another addition to the Limblifter family; they had a new guitarist. The new guitarist liked making painful this-guitar-riff-is-really-hard faces, and kept screwing up. I only know that because Ryan kept pointing it out, and at one point cut his sound so he had to re-tune.
Oh, and let's not forget The Roadie. The Roadie kind of sucked, he seemed very grumpy. I wonder if he hates his job. Also, I'm not sure if he really was playing keyboard for selected songs, or if he was just pretending.
I recognized past favourites that were played... "I Screwed Up", "Tinfoil", and the catchy new radio favourite, "Ariel Vs. Lotus". Aside from that, let it be known that Limblifter are very loud. Rock. And the t-shirts they were selling were tres cool.
My roommate tried to grab the setlist after the show. He snatched it after the encore, and passed it to Jen and I. We noticed there was duct tape on the back so we turned it over to reveal, written in black marker, "Remove this setlist from the stage and I'll kill you". Needless to say, the list got thrown back on stage... :P