Weeeezer & Born Ruffians

Weezer and Born Ruffians were in town last Friday.  

I am the biggest Weezer fan, well at least of their early material otherwise known as their first two albums.   If I had to pick five albums to be stuck on a desert island, their self titled debut would be one of them.  

I was pretty disappointed a couple of years ago when Rivers announced the band was breaking up, that I had never seen them, when I heard that they were back together and coming through town I knew this was my opportunity.

One of the first things I noticed upon entering GM Place was how hideous Weezer fans are, yes douchebag central which I fit perfectly in with.

One thing worth mentioning about GM place, if the ticket says doors at 7 it means the first band will be on at say 7:15 (right around the time I wake up) and that no matter how good your delicious pre concert spirits are you should be at the venue if you plan on seeing the opening band.  I was very disappointed to discover I had missed the Tokyo Police Club and that Angels and (H)Airw(e)aves were on.  

WTF is up with Tom DeLong’s of Blink 182 fame and his side project, Angels and Airwaves??  I knew I wouldn’t enjoy this band but holy fuck fuckity fuck, (ignorant people use swear words to express frustration when their vocabulary fails them) I now have a new least favorite band. Sure Travis is all burnt and all, but why so angst’y grey skies? You’re a 32 year old, rich aging rocker not a confused 13 year old. 

Sure Weezer may be the original emo band but why do they have to be paired with the current champs of, “nobody wants to touch my wien” rock? A lot of milk has gone sour along the way.

The moment where I threw up in my mouth the most came when Tom, holding his hand out in front of him (see above but minus any hint of irony), as if reaching out to his audience emoted how much he apparently loves Vancouver and that, “when the summer fades into winter, he wants us to look up over to the mountains and sing this song” and then started off into something worthy of self castration.

Rivers and Weezer arrived on stage in the nick of time opening with My name is Jonas and continuing into a fan pleasing early set of old school weezy which I along with my new bff’s sang along to.  The group went through a number of costume changes from painter outifts to track suits and managed to trade instruments and singing duties quite a bit and managed to fit in a cover of Pink Floyds, Time.  The second half of their set featured more of their newer material which a lot of the other people there seemed to really dig.  I managed to catch a bit of their encore where they brought on what looked like 50 or so highschool music students to play “Island in The Sun” with the group to great effect and missed thier cover of Nirvana’s Sliver as I had to make it to Richard’s for Born Ruffians.  

All in all i’m glad I went and have removed any piecings I once had.

Now, not enough people know of the Born Ruffians as you could still get tickets at the door, although the place was quite full.  Here’s a picture of them, now you know them. They are from the small 2,300 person town of Georgian Bay just North of Toronto.  They are signed to Warp who you may of also heard of? They deserve just as much hype as MGMT or Vampire Weekend.

I’m going to keep this short as I’ve rambled way too long for most people’s attention span and probably lost most people at the douchebag bit. Born Ruffians are amazing live as their formula of barn funk indie rock lends it self quite nicely to loosing yourself on the floor and the crowd ate it up.  The group did three encores as the mob refused to leave even after the lights and music came on and everyone had lost it by the end.  Not having a third encore planned they improvised with their cover of Grizzly Bear’s, The Knife with members of the opening act Plants and Animals on the stage.  

If you made it to here, good on ya, I would of just copped the mp3z and ran.

Born Ruffians - Knife (Grizzly Bear Cover)

Weezer - Suzanne from the Mallrats OST