My weekend with some bands

Well I was feeling better this weekend having just gotten over a vicious flu (not swine apparently). I decided to break my reclusive streak and take in some tunes. I saw that The Kettle Black was back in town and my head was still a flutter with some vivid memories I have of seeing his set from two years ago, I decided to go down with my (girlfriends) camera and with a new portable Edirol sound recording gadget (also my girlfriends) I was eager to try out. So as a result the videos I took have much improved sound (after I took the time to sync it up to the video) but the picture quality remains the same brutal pixelated mess it has always been.
The Kettle Black is without a doubt the most intense solo performer I've ever come across. He is a one man band who fills the stage with dozens of fancy toys and fills venues with blistering cascades of pure pink noise.



There was a large group of us who went to see him at Distortion on Friday but he was unfortunately put at the end of a six band bill with some badly miss-matched acts and some just plain bad acts that I won't get into. Since he has so much gear and theatrical props involved in his set and since he has no one else to help him set up The Kettle Black didn't get to start his set until 3:15AM! this is after the steel gate is locked and nobody else can get into the bar. So there was just a very sparse crowd of enthusiasts left in the room cheering him on, but did he let this this get him down? hell no! he played one of the most ferocious sets I've seen in a long damn while.



I decided to come check out his set the next day at The Ship, this time opening for "The Gramercy Riffs" and "The Pathological Lovers". The hipster quota of the bar was way off the charts, I spent the night counting Keffiyeh scarves (only four so it wasn't so bad) and the faces of really uninterested people in horrible eyewear. This wasn't really the right crowd for The Kettle Black, but it was stil a good set.
I hadn't really had a chance to check out the much hyped "Gramercy Riffs" before Saturday and by the tight packed throng of people gathered by the stage while they played it was pretty clear who the crowd had come for. So did The Gramercy Riffs live up to the hype?? no not really.. I really can't give them a ringing endorsement, but this isn't to say they were terrible. In comparison to the rest of The Nordic Beat, Mercy the Sexton, Texas Chainsaw pool of bands the Riffs have derived from, The Riffs are welcome breath of tolerableness. I actually really liked most of the songs Mara sings lead on and Lee Hanlon isn't without his charm. While there were 3 or 4 songs in their set I can declare as pretty darn good, the rest of the material suffered from some supremely uninteresting lyrics and tempos that plod along way too slow for a band like this. ughh.. I'm being a bitch on my blog and I should stop before I go to far. Here is a new song of their's I filmed called "Hold my Hand" and while it doesn't sound like Hootie and Blowfish or The Beatles, it does have a passing resemblance to Roy Orbison at the end with the classic break down style.



The Pathological Lovers were on next and as previously blogged, I have total chubby for Jody Richardson's voice. This was there third show in three days and they were in a very special drunken mode throughout the night. Much silliness ensued. This video had to be cut short due to 10 minute limits unfortunately. Anyway, it was nice weekend despite the large leather clad man standing way too close to me while I filmed and the table full of overpriced cupcakes tempting me with their delightfully decorated frostings, even though I totally despise the charity they were going for. Look, I don't care how many monkeys you have to torture or murder, if it means my mom won't get cancer go for it. Kill as many monkeys as you want.

Patrick's foibles in the world of internet self-promotion

Lately this blog has turned ugly and started becoming a meager self-promotional soapbox instead of the insipid scenester rag I intended it to be. I will rectify this as soon as I feel undiseased enough to go outside and actually watch shows again. This flu I've had the last week and a bit has been ridiculous. In the meantime I'm gonna shove a big pile of Internet egotism and sales pitches at you all. I seem to have a problem obsessive compulsive disorder (a fairly common one nowadays) with creating profiles on new music sharing and social networking sites. I got the Myspace, other Myspace, Reverbnation, Garageband, Ilike, CBC Radio 3, Sonicbids, CLLCT, AMP Live, Facebook, Terminus 1525, RPM Challenge not to mention Tubemogul, Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Google, Saatchi and Flickr profiles (notice not twitter, that shit is worse then BRAINAIDS). Why does a man need so many profiles? Fucked if I know, But now I gotta new one at Bandcamp.com. Bandcamp is a bit different from the other ones in that I can properly sell things there and control how it looks and is presented to the public. I have both the "Sex Lives of The Paralyzed" and "The Pervert" albums uploaded there and both can be streamed in their entirety from the website. For downloading the songs people have the choice of either download the 128 kbs mp3 files of the songs for free or paying a small fee and downloading the song or album in whatever higher quality format they prefer.
The thing I like about Bandcamp is that if anybody buys something from me there it goes directly to me and I see it instantly, not a month or two or three down the road like dealing with Amazon or shitty ol' Itunes. Dealing with those companies is a pain in the ass and it's not like they do anything to actually help promote me or sell my music. Fuck em'. So for the time being I want everybody who would like to support me to go to my Bandcamp profile and buy songs from there. They are cheaper for one, and better quality then the third party shit. Anyways, Cheers. Here's the Bandcamp widget thingy for streaming my album. have a good one. I might step outside if it's not too rainy .

More of ME!!!

It was my birthday this weekend, I'm motherfucking 30 Goddamn years old now. To celebrate this multiple of 10 anniversary year I played a free show with my band "Patrick Canning & The Suffering Mothers" down at CBTG's (it was also CBTG's 7th anniversary by the way). I'm not going to get into it, but there was a lot confusion and major hassles with schedules, sickness, awkward set interruptions, etc.. It was way more of a hassle then a free show should be but it was still fun. My chickiboo took a few videos of my set, this is the one with the fewest fuck ups by me. It's of a new song of mine called "Don't Be Obscene" it'll probably be on my next album as soon as I can secure a place in town to record drums for it. The song is missing the intro and my voice is shot and it also ends pretty abruptly but it is a new favorite of mine to play. So enjoy

I need to get some more shows on the go, if anyone wants to book them for me go right on ahead. At this point in my life I'm willing to sacrifice all my personal responsibility to someone else. If you want to do it go to town, I'm sure most of you could run my life better then I could right now.

The Burning Hell

Okay, so they are only 10% local content, but I'm still going to talk about them. "The Burning Hell" the ten piece band from Peterborough Ontario (and other places) seem to be catching a bit of that ol' zeitgeist action as they came into town for a three night stop over here at CBTG's on their cross Canada tour. The place was packed to the gills for the each of their three shows. They seem to have developed a taste or dare I say a chemical dependency for St. John's as this is their third time coming out here in the last year or so and have added local sweetheart Alison Corbett (aka Black Molly) to their roster. The Burning Hell have a ton of infectious energy and just drip charisma on stage. They were in town this time to promote their new album "Baby" (going so far as bringing Burning Hell member Jenny Omnichord's tiny newborn Otis along for the trek)

"Baby" is the album that finally got their sound right. While their previous album "Happy Birthday" had some strong material in it; the mix was weak, the tempo's lagged and it just lacked that spark of charisma and just didn't present the band very well. The new album "Baby" sounds fresh and full and the songs rollick along a zippy, poppy jaunt. Front man Mathias Kom is a master wordsmith with a masters degree who has way more good lines then a songwriter should be allowed. He has a deep droll baritone delivery that sort of instantly recalls Kurt Wagner of Lambchop with the important distinction of being tuneful, entertaining and not crap. Mathias's lyrics are spread on quite liberally with great breadth and depth of detail, but he never forgets the importance of a catchy hook or sing-a-long chorus. Occasionally, the large volume of verbiage can come across as a bit forced and drain a bit of the punch and drama from the song but with lines like "We're all line dancing in a furnace of sex and misfortune" or "So out with the adenoids and in with Ballads" in there it's an easy sin to forgive. Anyway, they are a grand mess of talents and influences and I felt compelled to take a few videos at their Saturday show. The sound and video quality came out shit, even by the already low standards of my ancient digital camera it's shit quality, but I still felt the need to document an amazing show. Even if you can't see or hear it very well.
Anyway, buy their album and go to their shows if you have the chance.

New SUPERGOD!!!! music video

Cara Lee Coleman

Bad ass local songstress Cara Lee Coleman overcame her prolonged absence from the St John's music scene (I haven't seen her on stage in a couple of years) to put on a CD release show last Saturday at the ship with a full band to celebrate her new CD "8 Weeks". It was an really awesome show and it was excellent to see Cara Lee back at it in top form with a really solid backing band. I took a couple of videos of the event, the audio quality on the video at the bottom didn't turn out so great but I enjoy this song too much to not put it up. Hopefully this marks the start of Cara's full return to the music scene. As well, pick up "8 Weeks" if you get a chance, it's a fun and intimate collection of tunes worthy your ear canals.