Buck 65, live at the Opera House (Toronto day 3)

I love how my cell phone turns low-light photos into impressionist art.

Two weeks ago in Halifax I lucked out and got into the "secret" sold-out warm-up show for the current Buck 65 tour; Friday night in T.O. afforded me the opportunity of a second helping. Rich's new backing band "The Beef Medallions" consists of Laura Peek on keyboards and backing vocals (and flute and xylophone), Michael Catano on guitar and drums (simultaneously, on one song), and, on a couple of songs, his partner Claire Berest.

Random notes:

• Opening act Kinnie Starr pretty much killed any interest that I would have been able to take in her music by using WAY too much reverb.
• A young woman spotted my T-shirt and asked me to explain who Julie Doiron is. Namedropping Eric's Trip and the Wooden Stars didn't seem to help.
  
• Having now heard "Drawing Curtains" twice, once with Laura doing the female vocals part, and once with Claire, I have to be a little objective and state that I much prefer Laura's version.
• On this tour Buck has been showing off a song for which he spits at high speed over a piece by Górecki — it blew my mind at the Halifax show and I loved it again in Toronto. The simple fact that he is forced to raise and lower his volume level to accomodate the instrumental track adds a dimension of nuance that one rarely hears in hiphop — dynamics.
• Just when you think he can't rap any faster, along comes an encore treat — "Wicked and Weird" at warp speed over a Neu! song.
• There's at least a couple of songs where the live instrumentation sounds unmistakably like Yo La Tengo (deliberately so, I've been told); I was time-warping back to my only previous Opera House visit which, oddly enough, was a Yo La Tengo gig, in May 1997. 9 years ago! Gah!