Dead To Me — African Elephants

This San Francisco trio's third Fat Wreck release is a relatively diverse punk album. 
Opening track "X" songs like one of The Clash's reggae efforts, and the Jamaican influence can also be found in "A Day Without War." "California Sun" isn't a cover of The Rivieras classic, but has a nice tropical vibe and a call and response chorus. 
"Liebe Liese" deals with the development of the atomic bomb, but the dark subject matter is counterpointed by pure pop backing harmomies. Acoustic guitar works well in "Cruel World" and "Bad Friend" builds momentum as it progresses. 
"Tierra Del Fuego" is a melodic punk-pop number, while "Modern Muse" and "Fell Right In" are a little more aggressive, and closer "Blue" even verges slightly into metal territory.
I'll give African Elephants an 8 out of 10.
The album is out on Nov. 10. 
You can  find out more here.

The Scenics

I have to review the Gaslight Anthem show at Toronto's Kool Haus on Tuesday night (Oct. 13) and I'm unsure if I'll be able to make it up to the El Mocambo in time to catch The Scenics, who I saw at The Last Pogo 30th anniversary show at the Horseshoe Tavern last fall. But even if I can't write about the group's show, I still want to publicize it and the band's new Sunshine World album because The Scenics are one of the secrets of Canadian music that shouldn't be secret any longer. So here's the artist bio that the band asked me to write for it this summer:  

Andy Meyers and Ken Badger formed The Scenics in Toronto in the summer of 1976 and, with a rotating cast of drummers and bassists, made some of the most innovative music Canada has ever produced during their six-year original run.

You can hear elements of Pere Ubu, Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground, Television, Roxy Music and free jazz in The Scenics' intricate yet powerful twin-guitar sound, but the band put everything together in a way that was uniquely their own.

"We were kindred souls, but we created our own thing," Meyers says of The Scenics' acknowledged influences, while asserting their independence.

"The Scenics never toed the line. Never once did someone bring in a song and was told, 'You can't do that.' There was complete acceptance and support of each other just because that's the way it went. Musically and lyrically, there was this sense of being able to do anything you wanted."

The Scenics opened for Talking Heads and The Troggs and were part of the infamous Last Pogo punk blowout concert at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern in 1978. The band recorded their Underneath The Door album for Bomb Records in 1979 and the "Karen/See Me Smile" single two years later before breaking up on amicable terms in 1982.

Almost nothing was heard about The Scenics after that — not that they were well-known when they existed anyway. But when Meyers finally got around to listening to some of the more than 300 hours of rehearsal, live and studio recordings that had done little more than sit on a shelf for a quarter-century, he was knocked out and "totally taken by surprise with the songs and the passion of the performances."

The Scenics re-introduced (though it was more like an introduction for most people) themselves to music fans in early 2008 with the release of How Does It Feel To Be Loved: The Scenics Play The Velvet Underground. This collection of 10 live recordings taped between 1977 and 1981 and released on the band's own Dream Tower label received Canadian campus radio airplay and earned critical acclaim across North America. But as positive as the feedback was, the album left many music writers asking if The Scenics wrote any of their own material.

Those scribes will get their answer with the Oct. 13 release of Sunshine World, which features 14 original songs and intriguing covers of Tommy James And The Shondells' "Mony Mony" and The Kinks' "Where Have All The Good Times Gone?" The songs were laid down in the studio in 1977 and 1978 and, while they were cleaned up in mastering, there are no overdubs on the original four-track recordings.

People will finally be able to discover such previously buried gems as the art-punk album opener "O Boy," the jangly "In The Summer," the melodic yet still mildly cacophonous "So Fine," the outsider pop of "Sunshine World" and the danceable rock of "Do The Wait" — which features an unsettlingly long pause two-thirds of the way through that literally makes listeners "do the wait." The album ends with its longest and most experimental track, "Scenic Caves," which was the group's original name in the spring of 1977.

Meyers and Badger were both prolific songwriters, and there are almost another 100 originals from The Scenics' early days still sitting in the vaults.

"It's not like we had a few good songs and the rest were dreck," asserts Meyers. "If you like Sunshine World, we have a trunk full of songs that are like them."

The Scenics' originality earned them a small core group of devoted fans, but they were far from universally beloved in the late '70s Toronto punk and new wave scene that spawned the likes of Teenage Head, The Viletones, The Ugly, The Mods, The Secrets and The Cardboard Brains, all of whom are featured along with The Scenics on The Last Pogo CD and DVD released on Dream Tower last fall (and which included seven Scenics songs performed on video as a bonus feature on the DVD).

"Punk was this revolution, but there was no room in the revolution for another revolution," says Meyers. "And that's what The Scenics were.

"There were a lot of people in the Toronto scene who hated us and there was a serious debate in the Toronto scene about whether what we were doing had any validity whatsoever."

While there's little doubt that what The Scenics created was musically ahead of their time 30 years ago, it's easy to agree with Meyers now when he says it no longer sounds like "some totally foreign experiment" and that "then was the perfect time to do the creative end of it because there was so much space and freedom, and this is the perfect time to do the marketing end of it."

The Scenics have played a few shows over the past year-and-a-half with singer/guitarists Meyers and Badger joined by former bandmates Mark Perkell on drums and vocals and Mike Young on bass and vocals. They recorded 14 new songs — written by Meyers and Badger over the years following The Scenics' break-up — while in Toronto for The Last Pogo 30th anniversary show last fall. Those tracks will be released on an album next year.

But there are a lot of things going on in The Scenics' world before that.

They'll be featured in Treat Me Like Dirt, author Liz Worth's tome on the history of the southern Ontario punk scene that will be published by Bongo Beat in September.

A short Canadian tour hitting cities between London and Montreal will coincide with Sunshine World's Oct. 13 release on Dream Tower. The musicians may have grown older, but their performances remain vital. These shows should be a must-see for anyone interested in learning more about a little-known but important part of Canadian music history.

The Scenics will be featured in The Last Pogo Jumps Again, director Colin Brunton's sequel to The Last Pogo, which is expected to be released by the end of the year.

Furthermore, The Scenics' website is now featuring Punk Haiku, Meyers' bi-weekly blog of his reminiscences of what was happening with the band and the exciting and changing world of music 30 years ago. Punk Haiku will be augmented by Basement Box, an online storehouse of Scenics material from those 300 hours of recordings that will be available via paid download.

"The Scenics were not a mild-mannered or small band," concludes Meyers. "Our energy was very big and very powerful, but it happened in a vacuum.

"But these things are coming out now to give people a real sense of what we did. And the story is starting to be told in the Punk Haiku blog and the Basement Box."

Find out more at www.thescenics.com.

"They were my favourite Toronto band, and having seen them play or rehearse well over a dozen times, I never heard them play the same version of a song twice. They were the most creative, the most original, the most daring — and probably the most misunderstood — of all the bands in that scene. And 'Do The Wait' was the coolest dance tune ever."

—Colin Brunton, The Last Pogo director                                                                  

Otis Redding — The Best: See & Hear

This two-disc set isn't for fans as devoted as my friends who named their son Otis after the "King Of Soul," whose life was cut tragically short at age 26 when he died in a plane crash with members of his backing band The Bar-Kays in Wisconsin on Dec. 10, 1967. But those just discovering Redding may find this set valuable.

The 12-song CD is a hits collection that includes ("Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay," "Respect" (which became an even bigger hit for Aretha Franklin), "Mr. Pitiful," "Pain In My Heart," "That's How Strong My Love Is," "The Happy Song (Dum-Dum)" and Redding's interpretation of The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."
More interesting is the 12-track DVD of performances filmed by D.A. Pennebaker, who's probably best known for his Bob Dylan documentary, Don't Look Back.
The first seven songs were shot in black and white at the April 7, 1967 stop of the Stax/Volt Tour in Oslo, Norway. Booker T. & The MG's act as the backing band, and also take centre stage for "Green Onions." Sam & Dave, who interact more with the crowd and sweat more than Redding, step forward for "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" and "Hold On! I'm A Comin'."  
Redding, oozing charisma while never over-emoting like too many of today's R&B/soul singers, covers Sam Cooke's "Shake," The Temptations' "My Girl," "Satisfaction" and the 1930s standard, "Try A Little Tenderness."
The final five songs are all Redding from his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival two months later. Pennebaker shot in colour this time, and Redding's vivid performance is brought to additional life as more attention is focused on the contributions of The Mar-Keys horn section. He performs "Shake," "Satisfaction" and "Try A Little Tenderness" again, but there are also renditions of "Respect" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)."
Bill Dahl's four pages of liner notes include quotes from MG's guitarist and Redding songwriting collaborator Steve Cropper and '60s R&B star Jerry Butler.
Otis Redding: The Best See & Hear will be released by Shout! Factory on Oct. 20.

Rubik — Dada Bandits

Publicist Joanne Setterington told me that this was her new favourite record, so I was curious when my copy arrived in the mail yesterday. The Finnish band's self-produced second album has a lot going on in its 11 tracks. Percussion and piano clash on opener "Goji Berries" and, to a lesser degree, on the busy "Fire Age," which also includes horns and synthesizers. Those last two elements also play a major role on my favourite track, "Richard Branson's Crash Landing." "Radiants" and "You Jackal!!" are both vibrant indie pop tunes, while "Follow Us To The Edge Of The Desert" is quieter and more atmospheric. "Indiana" verges too much on prog rock at times for my tastes, but it's the only song on the disc that I can definitely say that I dislike. I'll give Dada Bandits a 6/10 and will consider checking Rubik out when it comes to Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern on Oct. 15 as part of its current North American tour.
You can find out more here. 

Bob Mould and Pierced Arrows

I last saw Bob Mould 19 months ago at The Mod Club, and he returned to the same Toronto venue on Monday night in support of his ninth solo album, Life And Times, a record that I've liked more lately than when I reviewed it in the spring.
It was a short set, clocking in at 60 minutes, with two encore numbers tacked on. But the former Husker Du and Sugar frontman packed lots of goodies into that time. It's just too bad that it looked like less than 250 people (including Polaris Music Prize-winning Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham and singer, songwriter, musician Ford Pier) came out to see the 48-year-old singer/guitarist and his two bandmates: drummer Jon Wurster (Superchunk) and bassist Jason Narducy (Verbow). The band played the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in the spring, and this was its second show of the year and first of a relatively short North American tour.

Sugar's "Your Favorite Thing" was an early highlight before Mould played a few Life And Times numbers, including  the title track and the lyrically impactful "I'm Sorry Baby, But You Can't Stand In My Light Any More."
Mould then went back 20 years to his first solo album, Workbook, for a terrific "See A Little Light." Narducy then provided effective harmonies on Sugar's "Hoover Dam."
Mould put down his blue Fender Stratocaster and strapped on an acoustic guitar for "Sinners And Their Repentances" and Husker Du's quiet classic, "Hardly Getting  Over It."
Things were cranked back up for a blistering version of Husker Du's "I Apologize," but even that didn't rouse most of the statues in the audience. Another Husker Du favourite, "Celebrated Summer," followed.
The encore was composed of "Circles" and a slightly different arrangement of Sugar's "If I Can't Change Your Mind."
While a lot of songs overlapped with the last Mould show I saw, the previous performance had more energy and lasted longer. But I still can't quibble much when a guy has a catalogue as rich as this.

I made my exit, hopped on a couple of streetcars and arrived at  the Horseshoe Tavern just in time for the start of Pierced Arrows, a band I knew nothing about but that had been recommended to me by club booker Craig Laskey and Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows,  The Minus 5,  The Baseball Project, R.E.M.) when he was in town to play the same club a few weeks ago. 

Pierced Arrows are guitarist/singer Fred Cole and his wife of 42 years, Toodie, who sings and plays bass. They're joined right at the front of the stage by drummer Kelly Haliburton, who looks to be about 20 years younger and is a monster on the kit.
The Coles are probably best known for being in Dead Moon, but Fred's been playing professionally for even longer than he's been married. The happy couple are longtime mainstays of the Portland, Oregon music scene. 
Pierced Arrows play a passionate blend of acid punk and garage rock and do it very loudly since Fred is essentially deaf from all his years of playing. The band attracted an audience of about 50 people — including C'Mon's Ian Blurton, the Constantines' Dallas Wehrle and Gord Cumming (The Woods Are Full Of Cuckoos, The Lawn, Possum) — but almost everyone there seemed to know and love the material.
Toodie saw the Horseshoe sign on the wall at the back of the stage that said it was founded in 1947 and cracked, "I love it when we play a bar that's older than we are. 1947, that's got me beaten by a fricken year."

Pierced Arrows covered Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" early in the hour-long set, which got better as it went on. New song "Let It Rain," which will be included on the group's forthcoming Vice Records album, reminded me of The Pixies' "Gouge Away" in parts. "Ain't Life Strange" was great and "Paranoia," which is on the other side of a seven-inch single released last year, sounded like vintage Black Sabbath (but not "Paranoid"). Fred played harmonica at the beginning of "Shades." "The Wait" was another highlight of the main set, as were "Frankenstein" and another ass-kicker whose title I don't know in the first encore. 
The members of the small but enthusiastically faithful crowd called Pierced Arrows out for a second encore and totally lost themselves when the band played Dead Moon's anthemic "54/40 Or Fight."
"It's like if Hawkwind was a soul band," Cumming said, which was an apt description for some of Pierced Arrows' repertoire.
If you're as ignorant of Pierced Arrows and the Coles' history as I was, or if you just want a great read, check out this recent article on them from Portland Monthly Magazine.

Nuit Blanche In Words And Photos
Toronto's fourth Nuit Blanche, billed as the city's "free all-night contemporary art thing," started at 6:55 p.m. Saturday and went  until dawn on Sunday. Though I spent more than seven hours taking things in, I wasn't overly impressed with what I saw, and the lineups were too long for a lot of the installations I was curious about and I couldn't be bothered to wait to get inside.

I left the house at 9:30 and made my first stop at the arts and office complex at 401 Richmond St. W., which featured a number of galleries. The most interesting exhibit was a black- curtained box where people could enter to have a conversation with a naked Muslim woman. But I most enjoyed the Scopitones, 16 mm films from the '60s that were the forerunners of today's music videos. I first discovered them in the early '80s when they were shown on The All Night Show on CFMT-TV. I've maintained a fondness for them and it was appropriate that they were shown during Nuit Blanche. A couple of French tunes and Nancy Sinatra's classic "These Boots Were Made For Walking" were among the Scopitones I saw last night.
I headed down to King Street to see Monopoly played with real money by local celebrities. But participants (including rapper K-OS, who was the only one I recognized) were just standing around and spectators were kept behind windows, so I quickly moved on down to Bay Street to see Witches' Cradles, where people were invited to the sensory deprivation experience of being blindfolded and strapped into cradles suspended a few feet off the floor from the Brookfield Place ceiling.
I threw a coin as high as I could and made a wish as it splashed down in Vodka Pool, a reflecting pool of liquor placed on the floor of Commerce Court, whose meaning seemed to be lost on most people — including me. This became a recurring theme throughout the night.
Bay Street was closed and took on a carnival atmosphere for a block for Wild Ride, where recently downsized businesspeople staffed the Avalanche and Fun Slide midway rides for those looking for a free thrill.
The word "NO" in giant-sized letters sat on the bed of a transport truck trailer on Temperance Street.
The lineups outside As Could Be at the old Bank of Toronto building on Yonge just north of Queen and Space Becomes The Instrument at Massey Hall were too long, so I skipped them and headed northwest through swarms of people to Dundas and Bay via The Sonic Fun House, an audio installation featuring the Element Choir & Orchestra. 
I briefly looked at The Reflecting Pool video projected on the corner and walked across the street to the Coach Terminal for Battle Royal, where 20 blindfolded wrestlers were supposed to skirmish inside a 17-foot steel cage. The crowd was too big to get inside, but I could see through the window. Since there was a lot of standing around and little grappling, I headed south down Bay again.
After watching Flicker — a documentary about a stroboscopic machine capable of inducing hallucinatory visions to those who sat near it, earlier in the week — I was interested in trying it in person at The Blinking Eyes Of Everything at Church of the Holy Trinity. I was foiled by another long lineup and instead ducked into the Eaton Centre to see Jeff Koons' giant inflatable silver rabbit.
Ghost Chorus — Dirge For Dead Slang featured a circle of people wearing sheets over their heads reciting things from photocopied booklets in Larry Sefton Park. 
I climbed the steps of Old City Hall to watch people talk to artist Dave Clarke as part of his Hey Dave! installation, and then watched Beautiful Light: 4 Letter Word Machine, a series of four-letter words illuminated high in the air above City Hall's council chambers.
One of my favourite installations was Bouncing Bride: What Goes Down Must Go Up at The Music Gallery, where people were invited to bounce on a giant faux wedding cake topped with a trampoline with women dressed as brides. A DJ played music and the venue was licensed, so it took on the aura of a surreal wedding reception.

It took a while to navigate my way through the crowds west on Queen Street to my stomping grounds in Trinity Bellwoods Park, where a large illuminated wall similar to a Lite Brite game was set up and people were invited to create different patterns by inserting coloured, recycled plastic water bottles into holes.
I ducked into all of the Queen West galleries that stayed open late, as well as into Coupe Bizarre, where people were invited to sketch pictures of nude female models. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health also had an installation titled inSANITY that told stories of local artists who've lived in and around what used to be known as the lunatic asylum.

The Drake, The Gladstone and The Rhino all participated in Nuit Blanche and had their liquor licenses extended to 4 a.m., but they were all packed and had lineups at 3 a.m. and I continued to move on. I didn't really need a drink anyway since I had filled a water bottle with gin and tonic to keep me satiated before I embarked on my journey.
I headed south to Liberty Village and took about 10 seconds to look at the The End Is Near Here Is Near The End text installation. I spent a slightly longer time at Rescue Bubble, where hundreds of glowing traffic pylons were assembled together and people were invited to speak through the holes in their tips to the people inside.

A number of Fire And Sausage: Small Mercies stations, where people could sit around fires and eat free sausages on twigs and drink free organic hot chocolate (mine tasted very bitter and was uncomfortably thick), were set up in the area. I was given a blanket and told to keep the tin cup my hot chocolate came in.
The Apology Project consisted of a large group of people wearing large paper bags over their bodies saying "Sorry" as you walked past them through a corridor that led to Surrounded In Tears, a sound installation where 100 individual cries were emitted over speakers suspended from the ceiling.
Even at 3:30 a.m. there was a 75-minute wait for A Sultry World, where people were invited to crawl under a massive red skirt worn by a woman standing on a 10-foot platform and discover a sensory chamber created underneath it. I didn't wait around and headed back north to Bicitycle, where people attempted to ride bikes towing goods salvaged from the streets — similar to what many homeless people use as their lifeblood.
Take Shelter, where participants were invited to build shelters out of cardboard boxes and canned food, sounded interesting. But by the time I arrived, it had degenerated into several people kicking around and jumping on the boxes in the Metro grocery store parking lot. I went into Metro to view Invade, where the shadow of a plane was projected on the ceiling as the sound of an engine was piped through the store. It was underwhelming.
Dance Of The Cranes, a 13-minute choreographed routine featuring two high-rise construction cranes, shut down at 3 a.m., so I missed it.
My last stop was the Liberty Towers Presentation Centre for Catastrophe Theory, a multimedia installation featuring videos and a large number of concrete letters that people could make into words and messages.
Since art is open to the interpretation of the individual, I'm not going to bore you with mine of all of the things I saw at Nuit Blanche. Besides, the biggest thrill of this event for me is always seeing the city streets still filled with people at an hour when I'm often one of the only people walking around. This was the case when I arrived home at 4:50 a.m. 
As an avowed night owl, I wish Toronto could be this alive more than one night a year.
Feel free to have a look at some of my crappy Nuit Blanche photos:

 

Teenage Bottlerocket — They Came From The Shadows

I fell in love with this midwestern U.S. punk band's infectious "Radio" when I first heard it in early 2008 and checked the group out at last year's South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
I wasn't blown away, but enjoyed the performance enough to make me happy to see this new album — the group's third, but first for Fat Wreck — arrive in the mail.
The title track and "Not OK" remind me of The Misfits. I can also hear elements of The Ramones and Chixdiggit, but with more aggression and better guitar-playing, in several tracks. Lead single/video "Skate Or Die" seems to have a mission to make skateboarding seem rebellious and dangerous again. The tongue-in-cheek "Bigger Than KISS" name-checks other bands and songs, too, and is harder than most of the melodic punk found in these 14 tracks. "Fatso Goes Nutzoid" isn't as crass as the title suggests and instead sends a message about body image that young fans should take note of.
I'll give this a 7/10 and will likely go see Teenage Bottlerocket again when it plays Toronto's Kathedral on Oct. 27.
You can find out more at www.teenagebottlerocket.com.

Hugh Dillon Works Well With Others 
I'm interviewing Hugh Dillon, the former Headstones frontman and now successful actor, tomorrow. He has an album called Works Well With Others coming out on Oct. 13 through Warner Music Canada, and I've had a few listens this morning to become acquainted with it.
I like it. It's not the hard-edged rock of The Headstones, but it has more bite than the Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir's 2005 album, The High Cost Of Low Living.
Lead single/video "Friends Of Mine" opens the album and begins acoustically before picking up the pace and volume later on.  The swampy "Ten Feet Tall" is the most traditionally rock and roll song on the disc and ends with a harmonica. "Surface Of The Sun" features piano and acoustic guitar, but it's far from a ballad. The keyboards in the first part of "Reel To Reel" had me thinking it was going to be a dance song. Luckily, it isn't. A section of "Lost At Sea" is vaguely Leonard Cohen-like.
There are no stinkers on here and I'll give it an 8/10 rating. Works Well With Others will also be going in my pile of CDs to consider for next year's Polaris Music Prize.
You can listen to the album now on Dillon's website.

Calling All Punks

Los Angeles' BYO Records is celebrating its 25th anniversary with last week's release of a 31-song CD compilation and DVD titled Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records, which features artists who've graced the roster at some point over the years. 
I haven't had a chance to check out the 88-minute documentary yet, but the CD has some prime punk material. As you'd expect from 31 tracks, the quality can be up and down, but my personal favourites are Off With Their Heads' "Headlights...ditch!," Youth Brigade's "Misfortune," Lagwagon's "S.O.S.," Blue Collar Special's "Believe In Something," American Steel's "Dead And Broken," Complete Control's "Victoria," Old Man Markley's "We're In!," The Ignorant's "Keep On," Ch3's cover of The Nils' classic "Scratches & Needles" and 7 Seconds' "Sink With California." 
Other contributors include Bouncing Souls, NOFX, The Cute Lepers, Pennywise, Dropkick Murphys, Anti-Flag and Subhumans.
If you've followed American punk rock over the past 25 years, there's probably something here for you.

The Kinks Choral Collection

The Kinks Choral Collection, featuring Ray Davies and the 65-member Crouch End Festival Chorus, will be released on Nov. 10 via Decca. Lots of familiar favourites are included with the new arrangements, including "Days," "Waterloo Sunset," "You Really Got Me," "Victoria,' "All Day And All Of The Night" and a six-song suite from 1968's The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. You can hear samples on Amazon and, while I prefer the original versions, this should still be of interest to Kinks completists.

Ox — Burnout

The follow-up to 2006's American Lo Fi is a seven-song EP of the same sort of rootsy pop we've come to expect from the former Vancouver band that now calls Sudbury, Ont. home. "Burnout" is a rock and roll road song that gets the disc off to a strong start. "Prom Queen" and "Ojibway Diner" are also standouts and "Miss Idaho Redux," a slightly different version of my favourite Ox song, "Miss Idaho," closes things out.

You can find out more at www.oxmusic.ws and www.myspace.com/oxmusic

The Warped 45s — 10 Day Poem For Saskatchewan

This Toronto quintet's manager, Tina Cooper, gave me this CD at last week's Polaris Music Prize gala. Just like the group's self-titled debut EP, it was produced by her boyfriend John Critchley (13 Engines, Elliott Brood). It's been licensed to Kim Cooke's Pheromone Recordings label and it's a step up from the EP. If you like The Band, you should give 10 Day Poem For Saskatchewan a listen. 

You can find out more at www.thewarped45s.com or www.myspace.com/thewarped45s

Jamaican Food In Stratford, Ontario

Stratford, Ont. now has a Jamaican restaurant named Olive's. It has a great location less than a block from the Avon Theatre, but, when my mom and I went there at the normally busy pre-show time of 5:30 on Friday, we were the only customers in the restaurant. Two other people came in, looked at the menu, and then left. That was the extent of business during our dinner.

That's a shame because the home-style food was tasty and reasonably priced and the portions were very large. Appetizer patties were two dollars. We then got complimentary salads. My mom ordered jerk pork with rice and beans, and I ordered boneless jerk chicken with rice and beans. You can tell the server how spicy you want it (we like it hot), and Olive came out of the kitchen with some scotch bonnet sauce that we used to liven up the rice.

All of this came to less than $32, and there was enough food left over that I'll be enjoying it again tonight.

The recently opened restaurant is clean and neat, if not classy, and there was a mix of gospel and Bob Marley playing over the speakers. Food can be ordered to take out. One drawback to some may be the lack of a liquor licence.

Olive was very gracious and I'd like to see her succeed. Since I'm sure you can probably count the number of Jamaicans in Stratford on one hand, I'm not sure if it can survive the winter once the tourists leave. And if tourists aren't going now, the outlook isn't good.

So if you like Jamaican food and you're in the Festival City, please pay Olive a visit.

Rancid — Let The Dominoes Fall

Rancid may head my list of top punk bands from the past 15 years, and Indestructible was my favourite album of 2003, but it's been a six-year wait for this follow-up. Let The Dominoes Fall came out in June and I'm almost embarassed to say I didn't get a copy of it until last week. It doesn't quite match its predecessor, but it's a strong 8/10 album that features the type of melodic punk with hints of ska (and even a bit of rockabilly on a couple of these cuts) that I've come to know and love. The most notable track is probably "Up To No Good," which features a ska rhythm, horns and keyboards by the legendary Booker T. Jones. "Civilian Ways" offers a rootsy change of pace and throws in some mandolin. "Skull City" sounds like it could have been from one of Iggy's Pop's more recent albums. There are lots of other highlights, but you'll have to get the album and discover them for yourself.

Hugh Cornwell brought his Hooverdam tour to Toronto's Mod Club on Thursday night, and the man proved he's not mellowing with age.

The show lasted 85 minutes and by and large featured a mix of material from last year's Hooverdam (which I'd rate as a very solid 7/10) and vintage material from The Stranglers, the brilliant art-punk band Cornwell formed 35 years ago and left after 1990's 10.
Cornwell was accompanied by Chris Bell, an accomplished drummer who previously played with the Thompson Twins and Gene Loves Jezebel, and rock-solid bassist Christine "Chaz" Campbell. They both played on Hooverdam and have been working with Cornwell — a very underrated guitarist, intriguing songwriter, precise singer and an unfailingly polite man when you talk to him — for a few years. Their ease with each other is evident on stage and creates a power trio in every sense of the term.
Dave Greenfield's keyboard flourishes, which made The Stranglers sound so distinctive compared to many of their early contemporaries, are definitely missed — particularly on "Duchess." But Cornwell's solos sometimes made you forget about them and got you thinking about old songs in whole new ways. The bass-heavy "Golden Brown" was an excellent example of that on Thursday.
I was disappointed in a crowd of what I estimated to be about 125 people, but there was stiff competition with U2 and Marilyn Manson having gigs around town and Toronto still caught up film festival fever. But what Cornwell lacked in spectacle, which those other options were full of, he made up for with songs — and that will almost always take precedence for me.
The Hooverdam material included the powerful "Going To The City" and the ominous-sounding "Delightful Nightmare" as well as "Rain On The River," "Within You Or Without You," "Please Don't Put Me On A Slow Boat To Trowbridge" and, in the encore, the excellent "Beat Of My Heart."
But it was the Stranglers material that drew the biggest responses, and there's no arguing that it deserved them. The main set featured "Nice N' Sleazy" (which featured a great bass line from Campbell), "Walk On By" (which was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, but covered by The Stranglers), the aforementioned "Duchess" and "Golden Brown," and "No More Heroes," which  may have elicited the most dancing of the night.
After a brief trip to the dressing room, Cornwell returned and addressed someone in the front who'd been taking pictures earlier.
"I don't mind photos, but no flash," he said. "You should be outside of a girl's primary school."
Appropriately, after that comment, he launched into "Peaches." It somehow sounds creepier coming from a 60-year-old than it did when it was released when Cornwell was 28, but it's still a great song.
The amazing "Hanging Around" again featured a blistering Cornwell guitar solo in place of the keyboards from the original version. It got people dancing again and set the stage for an extended "Down In The Sewer." 
Cornwell had earlier invited me to join him for drinks at a neighbouring Italian restaurant, but I decided that by the time he left the stage and graciously signed autographs at the merch table that I was probably better advised to go home and make a late dinner. If I hadn't made the opposite decision when put in a very similar situation with a member of a different band just four nights earlier, I almost would have thought I was finally maturing.