Obstacle 1

concert review: Interpol w/ The Secret Machines @ The Docks (Toronto, Ontario), Wednesday October 13, 2004

I saw Interpol yesterday at The Docks nightclub in Toronto yesterday, and despite thinking that the venue is the WORST live music venue in the city, I managed to enjoy Interpol's set. It was the first time I ever went to The Docks. I drove down to the venue after my night class around 9pm. The location of The Docks sucks if you have to get their by public transit. On the other hand, if you drove down like me, you would have found yourself paying a horrendous $15 parking fee. However, with no other parking options and not knowing the area that well, I was forced to pay the $15. The worst thing about The Docks is the sightlines to the stage. As opposed to say Kool Haus, whose standing area in front of the stage is positioned rectangular lengthwise, The Docks' standing area in front of the stage is rectangular but narrow. So unless you got to The Docks yesterday early and staked out a spot in front of the stage for the entire evening, coming in to the venue after 9 pm, like I did, almost guaranteed you a crappy viewing spot. That wasn't a good way to start the evening. The Secret Machines came on and I didn't really care(although my interest in their set came around later on). My time during the first half of The Secret Machines' set was spent getting a beer, checking out the merch table(and buying the black Interpol 'Antics' tour t-shirt), and roaming the floor for a good spot to watch Interpol's set from. I ended up near the right side near the bar but I couldn't really make it any closer to the stage than that. I just about gave up when some tall dude stood right in front of me. At that point, I just said screw it, and I stood there drinking my beer, and tried to enjoy The Secret Machines' set. It's really a just a blur, but I remember liking a song or two. My impression of their music was that it had rock and pop music conventions with slight art-punk(or is that post-punk?) overtones. Ah screw it...go check out their site and hear for yourself. I thought their last song was pretty good and the crowd seemed to appreciate them. I'll probably check out their album sometime.

After The Secret Machines' set, I managed to grab a semi-decent spot at the center of the club, about 10 feet in front of the sound engineer's cordoned-off area. It still wasn't that great but at least I didn't have any tall people blocking my view. When Interpol finally came on(I think they played "No Exit" "Next Exit" first), all the shit from the evening melted away and I settled into a comfort zone for Interpol's set. I'll still maintain that most of it is a blur. I couldn't really see the stage that well, and I only caught infrequent glimpses of the band members through their set. The band's presence on stage was draped in a spectrum of various colour light effects and smoke machine effects throughout their set. I liked the lighting and smoke machine effects, but I couldn't really take any good digital camera photos from the distance I was from the stage. A girl standing behind me saw my attempts to take some photos and said my flash wouldn't do any good from my distance and at another point, when the stage lights brightened, she tapped me on the shoulder and encouraged me to take my photos while the stage lights were bright. That was cute of her. :-) [I think the dude beside her was her boyfriend. ;-)] So just call these photos my abstract phase :-) ...yes that is Interpol in those photos, if you'd couldn't tell. Interpol played "Slow Hands", "PDA"(that extended passage of silence in one point of the song was really cool)...oh heck, I don't even know all the song names yet, 'cause I'm still trying to absorb their new album "Antics", and even though I've had their first CD "Turn On The Bright Lights" for about a year I haven't really listed to it that much. Am I a bandwagon jumper? Maybe, in some respects I am, but I care to think of it as having too many CD's and too little time to listen to all of 'em. Oh well. Interpol played their hearts out and gave us an encore. I must give 'em credit for putting on a good show despite the crappy venue. (Nothing personal to The Docks; I'm sure it's a perfectly suitable dance club, but it sucks as a live music venue.)