Entry #3 - Dreamwalker, Complaints Choir and Hurdy Gurdy

Before attending this concert on Sunday night, I don't believe I had set foot in the LSPU Hall since 1994. I like the changes...the renovation has given the venue a fresh new look, while retaining the intimate and home-grown feeling the LSPU has always possessed. This hall is a special place, and lately I wonder why I ever stopped coming.

The show opened with the Dreamwalker Dance Company, comprised of Andrea Nann and Brendan Wyatt, who performed routines to music by Gord Downie. It wasn't Tragically Hip stuff, but a different band altogether. I forget the names of the band - apart from Julie Doiron, I didn't recognize any of them. I liked the music...sounded to me like a cross between the Hip and the Rheostatics.

I'm no dance expert, so my only comment on the dance routines is that if I tried to move my body like that, I would need some serious medical attention. I enjoyed the routines; one seemed to evoke a couple tossing and turning in the dead of a sleepless night. Several times throughout I forgot I was watching professional dancers...by that I mean I was really into the images they evoked.

I loved the Complaints Choir! They had me at hello, as it were, the second I opened the program and read Sean Panting's wicked, wicked lyrics to "Everybody Else is a Whiner." I don't think there was anything left to complain about; Sean managed to address just about everything about which your average townie would throw in his or her two cents. He even mentioned how people use "it's" when what they really mean is the possessive article "its." See? I'm glad someone is addressing these things. Oh what a world!

My favourite rhyming couplet:

"Looks like the South Side Hills were struck by a meteor;
Drugs are getting worse and the skeets are getting skeetier;"

Man, Paul Simon couldn't have written better on the best day he ever had. Well, okay...maybe he could have.

I remained for field (Ben Grossman and Deb Sinha) but I think I had reached my saturation point. I saw CGI visualizations, I heard electro-hurdy gurdy, loops, etc., but my mind was still enjoying all those delicious, clever stanzas of "Whiner."

Sometimes you've just had enough.