Every once in a while—if you're lucky—there will be that moment where you realize that the band has gone completely off the setlist. For the most part, this doesn't really happen. As much as you want to believe that you really are part of the rockingest crowd they've seen all tour, chances are it's just another night for (insert band name here). They've played all these songs for at least a month in practice, and that awesome, one-of-a-kind solo? Yeah, it's happened before, probably last night and the night before and maybe the night before that.
The thing that changes it up, the thing that makes the evening fresh even for the road weary, is usually little. In the case of this show—full title: KCRW Presents: Broken Social Scene plays Kevin Drew: Spirit If…—it was the seats. The stage was mostly barren, at least in the sense that a BSS show is normally a jumble of amps, pedals, multiple drum kits and keyboards and what can only be called a herd of microphones, not to mention the risers for the inevitable scads of people that will eventually show up on stage. Instead, there was only one (one!) set of drums, four mic stands, two keyboards and a few small amps. But the seats, the seats that stretched all the way to the back walls on both upper and lower levels, they were something different. The entire crowd was seated as the band came out, and as they broke into “Lucky Ones,”…well, everyone stayed seated.
“Maybe I'll jump around more,” Drew remarked. “Just tell us if it's too loud, and we'll adjust.”
“Cause=Time” followed, and still the entire crowed was seated. So Drew bent down, poured some Patron into a red Solo cup at his feet, and said “I guess it's like a play. This Act One.”
And he was right.
All of a sudden, there was the rising action that your high school Shakespeare teacher shoved down your throat. “Fucked-Up Kid” saw two girls in the bottom front row stand up. Brendan Canning's purple jeans and silver shoes started flailing as he jumped around with a bass strapped on his hip. Metric's Jimmy Shaw twitched his way through guitar acrobatics, and Drew crouched in a spotlight playing a line that would eventually lead into “Safety Bricks.”
As they switched back and forth between cuts off of Spirit If…and the previous two full band albums, Drew started to announce “we weren't going to play this tonight” once or twice, and the awkwardness of playing in a theater seemed to melt away. “Backed Out On The” got much of the crowd up, and “Superconnected” ended Act Two. Andrew Kenny from American Analog Set got out from behind the keys to sing a song of his own, and a few minutes later, Drew announced Act Four. Out from the wings came Emily Haines to sing “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl,” “Shoreline” and “Almost Crime.”
With the crowd in a frenzy as Haines left the stage, the band played the fast version of “Major Label Debut” and the dam broke. The aisles began to fill with bouncing kids, and Drew—following a Guns 'n' Roses interlude— announced that Act Five would be an all request Act, then ignored the overwhelming screams for “It's All Gonna Break” and played “Lover's Spit” instead.
As everyone—Haines, the trombone player, the overly eager guitar tech, Drew's brother from the upper level, spouses and friends—joined the band on stage for a sing-along version of “When It Begins,” it was obvious that the night had turned around. Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw would go back to Metric, the rest of the band would continue on tour, and everyone standing from the beginning at the subsequent shows would miss out on the rise and fall of the evening. Maybe it was the old curtains, the intricate ironwork or the golden cherubs on the proscenium, but no matter what, it was pretty damn magical.
For more information, visit www.arts-crafts.ca/kevindrew or myspace.com/kevindrewspiritif
