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Mish and I went to see King Khan & The Shrines last night at the Red Room on Richard’s.  King Khan is formerly of the Spaceshits from Montreal.  Yes, the same Spaceshits that Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) used to play in before Les Sexareenos.

As you might expect, King Khan’s apple doesn’t fall from the Spaceshits/Sexareenos tree.  His schtick is a bit of a sloppy James Brown-meets-garage-rawk-party type thing.  Fronting the Shrines, a 7-piece band and go-go dancer, King Khan is the master of ceremonies who occasionally sports a guitar but mostly just sings and mingles with the crowd.

Not a bad show but the whole thing kind of fell flat.  The place was packed and by the time King Khan hit the stage everybody was fully juiced up to get their collective rocks off but it didn’t seem like ol’ Blacksnake was giving the expected 110%.  Definitely worth the price of admission but not quite as good as I expected.

Here’s a track from the Shrines’ latest platter “What is?!” called “Took My Lady Out to Dinner”

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The Daily Mail in the UK has run this article which may have revealed the true identity of graffiti artist Banksy. It’s not really conclusive but it is a pretty compelling theory.

Too bad if they did actually figure out who he was.  Banksy’s gone to a lot of effort to maintain his low profile.  His success is certainly tied to his anonymity so it’d be a shame if he lost that because of these Daily Mail twits. Seems like they should have more important things to report on than the identity of graffiti artists.

Saw one of my desert island bands tonight — Moncton, New Brunswick’s own Eric’s Trip.  Formed in 1990, broke up in 1996, reunion tour in 2001 and have done the occasional mini-tour here and there since 2006.  Despite not releasing any new material since 1996 and only a couple of post-humous releases shortly after they disbanded they can still pack a room… and crank out a setlist’s worth of some of the best lo-fi indie rock to come out of this country. Period.

As I stood in the club (stupidly without earplugs) enjoying this killer performance my mind wandered.  I thought to myself — I’m going to blog about how awesome this is when I get home.  And so here I am.  My mind continued to wander.  It wouldn’t be a very interesting blog post if I were to just gush about how awesome Eric’s Trip is.  I agreed with myself.  It wouldn’t be.  My mind also agreed.  And it wandered some more.

Then I had a small epiphany. Eric’s Trip means so much to me because they’re my Ramones. They’re the band I heard around the same time I got my first guitar and made me think “Holy shit, this is so good. I need to learn these songs and then write some of my own just like them”.  And so I did… kind of.  The songs I wrote weren’t really that much like Eric’s Trip but I can safely say that band totally inspired me in a way that Joey, Johnny, DeeDee, and Marky (and briefly Tommy… but not CJ) did for so many fledgling musicians for the previous 20 years.  And when you look at it, Eric’s Trip isn’t that unlike the Ramones — syrupy sweet melodies over really loud guitars.  And no solos or wanking of any kind… ever.

There we go — a reasonably significant blog post that came out of a totally killer rock show.

Here’s a couple tracks for your listening enjoyment. “One Floor Below” from 1996’s Purple Blue (the only album they ever did in a proper studio)

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And “You’re Always Right”, a live recording from their August 2001 show in Regina.

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ps… I saw some people camped outside a few Rogers locations tonight. Presumably to pre-order Love Guru on DVD.  There’s no way they’re actually lined up for the iPhone… that would be ridiculous.  It’s not Radiohead tickets, people.  Get a life.