For the final day of Canadian Music Week, punk rock supergroup Off! played Lee's Palace along with Australian band Twelve Foot Ninja, Toronto's Organ Thieves, London, Ontario's Single Mothers and Brooklyn-based Cerebral Ballzy.
For those of you who don't know, Off! is fronted by former Circle Jerks and Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris, and features the Burning Brides' Dimitri Coates on guitar, Redd Kross' Stephen Shane McDonald on bass and Rocket from the Crypt's Mario Rubacalba on drums.
Here's what you missed.
1. The magic weirdness of Single Mothers’ frontman Drew Thompson
In addition to having a delivery that moves between snotty old school punk and borderline spoken word, Drew Thompson is a wonder to watch on stage. He poses like Freddy Mercury, thrusts, rolls around on the floor and waggles his butt at the audience. He doesn’t even stop moving between songs.
2. Cerebral Ballzy being everything you want in a hardcore band
Every song by Brooklyn punks Cerebral Ballzy is introduced with something like "this song is about skateboarding," or "this is about a girl we know," and is a two-minute long burst of intense sonic violence, helmed by a man who looks like a scarecrow and sounds like the Tazmanian Devil. It's amazing.
3. Cerebral Ballzy having an ongoing dialogue with the sound man
As much as they sound like a an old school, DIY New York hardcore band, Cerebral Ballzy sure seemed to be fussy. Over the course of their half hour set, they asked for more reverb on the mic and more guitar in the vocal monitor at least twice, more vocals in the guitar monitor, "more guitars everywhere" and less guitar in the drum monitor.
5. Keith Morris proving that age is indeed a state of mind
While he may be in his fifties, Off! frontman is just as high energy, just as angry and just as razor sharp as he was 30 years ago. He still mocks the crowd constantly, he still sings like a man possessed, and he still really hates Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn. (Off!'s "I Got News for You" is the punk version of a diss track, aimed squarely at Ginn.)
5. People losing their mind for new music from old guys
Generally, when a veteran artist plays new material, that's when everyone heads to the bar. With Off!, that doesn't happen. People are there for the express purpose of hear a group of guys in their late 30s through mid 50s play new punk music. No one came out wanting to hear Morris sing "Group Sex." (Although if he did, that would be cool, too.)
6. One man’s repeated stage diving failures
Going down on your back is always better than landing on your stomach, and your angle was way too low. All four times.
7. Punk as a intergenerational affair
The audience was equal parts 40-plus '70s and '80s punk scene veterans, 30-something members of the Warped Tour generation of '90s punk revivalists and kids who were almost certainly at their first 19-plus show. The bands covered a similar spread, from youngsters Cerebral Ballzy to cranky oldsters like Morris. We ran into at least one father-son combo in the crowd. It's nice to see multiple generations getting down together. It was almost like a family reunion, albeit one with way, way more slam dancing.