Most of you already know by now Fucked Up played a killer set this past Tuesday night at The Mod Club in Toronto, besides taking a few good shots I also brought my small digital recorder that I would normally use for interviews, but tonight I decided to record their complete set....so without further ado...for the unlucky few that did not make it to the show...here is Fucked Up LIVE
Set List
No.1 Queen Of Hearts
No.2 Black Albino Bones
No.3 Remember My Name
No.4 David Comes To Life
No.5 Under My Nose
No.6 I Hate Summer
No.7 The Other Shoe
No.8 A Slanted Tone
No.9 Turn The Season
No.10 Running On Nothing
No.11 The Recursive Girl
No.12 Police
No.13 Son The Father
No.14 Baiting The Public
No.15 Two Snakes
So for all o us (all of us meaning myself and another hundred thousand people...give or take a few) that decided to lay out the cash a few weeks ago to pre-order Fucked Up’s latest Punk rock Opus “David comes to Life” this week we were entitled to listen to the record before all of you that decided not to pony up the “Dough” (More about Dough* in a minute).
OK, this is not a complete review of the record, I’m going to wait and give my thoughts on it closer to the actual release date (June the 7th I think), just think of this as a little taste of what’s to come...a teaser some of you might say and a bit of a David Comes To Life history lesson. First, I have never seen a build up to a record like I have seen with this one...last year sometime the Fucked Up camp started talking about their next record, and they were saying that it was going to be a Rock Opera, now most people would have tossed this aside thinking that they were just trying to throw us off the trail of what they were really working on..Well I knew that they were serious about what they were proclaiming...and before long everyone else would find out too. The title with the name David in it was being thrown around in interviews and on their BLOG “Looking For Gold” time and time again (If you follow Fucked Up you know that the name David has always ran through their career over and over again) . Speaking of Looking For Gold, in a post on the 23rd of January Mike Haliechuk wrote…and I quote “If anyone from like a magazine or a blog asks, it's not a "rock opera", but between you and me it is”then he went on to give the title of the record, the number of tracks on the record the whole deal, people always ask me why I know so much, it’s because I read everything.
Then March of this year came around and they started releasing the singles from the album and also gave us details of their RSD (Record Store Day) release “David’s Town”, this was all just a bit too much for a Fucked Up fan to take…but take it we all did. As they continued to tease us with cryptic writings about this “Rock Opera” and new songs being debuted live the description that was given to us by singer Damian Abraham during an interview with exclaim.ca went as follows "The basic story is that David works at a lightbulb factory and he meets this girl Veronica who is a local political activist. Somehow -- you never really find out -- she accidentally dies while they're doing political action in the lightbulb factory, and then it's David on trial. You hear the story from all different perspectives as various people tell what they saw and various things. You never really learn who has the true perspective." , now if that didn’t sound like a Rock Opera I don’t know what does.
So here we are, it’s May the 14th 2011 and we have the complete record at our disposal …I have listened to it all the way through now three times and all I have to say is that it’s a much different record than Chemistrywas, it reminds me of the days when you would have to sit down and listen to a record all the way through to get it…as I type this , the final track, track 18 that is titled Lights Go Up is playing in my headphones, it wraps up what this record is…and what’s that some of you might ask, well….come back on the 7th of June and I will tell you
Joe Cornelisse-SSGS
*P.S.
Just got word today that Fucked Up will be opening up for the Foo Fighters at the Air Canada Center in Toronto on the 9th of August 2011, also on the bill is reformed Montreal rockers The Doughboys
As I leaned against the wall downstairs of the Toronto Underground Cinema, checking my Twitter feeds (@sonicmoremusic1) and studying the vast array of old and new movie posters that adorned the walls , the same questions kept replaying over and over again in my mind...what were Fucked Up going to do tonight ? And would they be able to pull it off? We were all about to have those 2 questions answered.
As part of the Images Festival Closing Night Gala in collaboration with Wavelength Toronto, Fucked Up had been asked to perform a live soundtrack during a screening of the 1928 silent film West of Zanzibar. West of Zanzibar is about the vengefulness of a cuckolded magician paralyzed in a brawl with his rival , the film stars Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore.
Coming back downstairs from checking the list and getting our tickets I noticed the doors to the great room had been opened, so I and my partner in crime for the night, celebrated concert photographer Kevin Lamb made our way inside. As I leaned against one of the theatre seats we saw members of the band trickle in and out checking on their equipment and just basically getting ready for the performance. The band had all of their instruments and equipment set up right under the large movie screen, I was still running the question through my mind “What were Fucked Up going to do tonight ? “ ...that question was about to be answered.
So after a much tripped out screening of the General Chaos Visuals film Luminaries and then some introductions of the people that helped put on the Festival it was time for the film to start. The lights went down, the opening credits started appearing on the screen and the music began.
From that point on it was all just this swirling, wall of sound, blur of music and visuals. This was not the Fucked Up we had become accustomed to seeing live on stage over the years, this was a band without an In Your Face, Charismatically driven lead singer (Damian Abraham was in a seat enjoying what was going down with the rest of us), this was a band that was for lack of a better term Naked...this was a band that was stepping out front for the first time...and dammit, they made all of us in that audience sit up and listen.
I don’t know exactly how much time and effort they had to work on this project, but they synced every high hat and snare with every snarl and scream up on that huge movie screen, they made us all believe that their music was the original. Whether it was the one two three punch of guitarists Mike Haliechuk, Josh Zuker and Ben Cook, or the always solid bass playing of Sandy Miranda (at one point she just couldn’t sit down anymore and had to stand up to get it done) and the furiously depth and controlled drumming of the mighty Jonah Falco.
The whole thing lasted approx about 63 minutes or so, but hours after I still had it buzzing in my mind.
Fucked Up is a band that is well known to push the musical boundaries and with this performance, they didn’t just push them, they shoved them down on the ground and kicked the shit right out of them.....Thank You
