Kansas City Music Blog

Broken Social Scene
October 16, 2008
The Beaumont Club
Better Than: Getting shit on by a Canadian goose.

By BERRY ANDERSON

One fall morning, at the ripe age of 17, I excitedly took a place in line at 5:30 a.m. in the Kansas Union for tickets to see Tori Amos on her Dew Drop Inn tour at the Lied Center. Shivering in my KU hoodie, I didn’t know at the time that I was also in line for my first major concert disappointment. The show was the perfect example of the disparity between the live show and the recorded version. Last night, I again experienced this phenomenon.

Opening the show was Montreal’s Land of Talk, a trio led by Liz Powell, who was totally rockin’ a bowl haircut with some ponytails coming out of the bottom. The all-ages crowd strained hard at the front of the stage for a set of not-so-typical Canadian rock. The sound, however, was nondescript.

I absolutely fucking love Broken Social Scene. It’s not a stretch to say that I listen to them almost daily. I first fell in love with them after seeing the movie, Half Nelson. “Shampoo Suicide” would later become one of my favorite songs. Today, if I had to pick a soundtrack CD for my life, it would be BSS’s 2002 breakthrough release, You Forgot It In People. Unfortunately for me, I heard little of it last night.

Early on in the set, BSS played “KC Accidental,” which featured locals Dave Gaume (Sex Police, Stella Link) on sax and Mike Walker (Sex Police, Doris Henson) on trombone. As part of the biggest backline I’d ever seen, those dudes helped bring the crescendo of instrumental sound that characterizes the BSS repertoire. It was the most gratifying part of the lackluster evening.

About halfway through the show, I posted up behind the crowd. But no matter what band’s playing or which part of the Beaumont Club you stand in, the sound pretty much sucks. So I decided to check out the rest of the crowd. While the people in the front were going wild to “Fire Eyed Boy,” in the back I saw tons of bodies, just standing there, looking rather emotionless. Perhaps people were lost in the flow of musicians entering and exiting the stage or maybe they too, were waiting for the magic.

I began to accept the fact that I wouldn’t hear the songs I love the most. The sausagefest on stage didn’t include Leslie Feist, Emily Haines or Amy Millan, just that Liz Powell and her ponytails with her supercool looking guitar joining in every now and then. There would be no delicious cacophony of instrumental sound balanced out with a dreamy lady voice, just Kevin Drew lamenting that no one wanted to hear the new stuff.

I returned to the east side of the stage where my people were. They looked bored. Someone said it dragged on too long. Some dude next to me said we were being punished because we were in Kansas City. Others told me my expectations had been too high. I simply didn’t get it. It could have been so beautiful.

Critic’s Notebook
Personal Bias: If BSS had just played “Swimmers,” things would have been a little better.
Random Detail: At the end, Brendon Canning crowd surfed and Kevin Drew gave a shout out to the Republic Tigers.
By the way: Most of the cool kids were at the Record Bar for Valient Thorr.