(EP 12, no.4) The Jam w/The Dwight Twilley Band: This Is the Modern World, Rex Danforth Theatre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Tuesday April 10, 1979
10/27/20 • 40 min
This was a seriously thrilling gig from UK Mod-Punks The Jam, six months after the Elvis Costello show in November 1978 (EP8: This Year’s Model).
It also coincided with a fresh tray of live concert firsts (A gig outside of London! In Toronto! At a tiny theatre! With an authentic ***punk*** audience!).
The Jam’s debut LP “In The City” was the first punk rock album I purchased, on a visit to the UK in 1977, and I became an instant fan. Between 1978-82, Weller & Co. shared the “My Favourite Band” mantle along with The Clash (Joy Division made it threesome by 1980), and so I was almost verklempt at getting to see my fave raves in Toronto. The trio were still fairly obscure over here while they were full-blown stars in the UK.
And boy did they deliver!
Tune in for winklepickers, opening act confusion, and ... the magic returns.
NEXT PODCAST: My last live show of the 1970s was an even smaller and more intimate gig than The Jam, featuring a trio of the city’s then most-prominent punk bands: NFG, The Regulators, and Sinners.
I’ll be discussing how important our local scene --- but also local music scenes in general --- were and are, especially to and for marginalized people and communities.
1979 was the year I started seeing local live music in bars such as The Cedar Lounge and The York, something that would become akin to “breathing” in my life during the 80s and early 90s. These nights out and this show pointed to where things in my life were going to be going on a more personal level.
Stay tuned for underage drinking, musical lifelines, and escaping before the police turned up.
EP 13 (no.005) What’s In The City: NFG’s Second Annual Halloween Bash with The Regulators and Sinners, The Polish Hall, London, Ontario, Canada, Friday November 2, 1979
(Get a sneak preview by reading the original 2011 blog entry here.)
Coming in November
mylifeinconcert.com
This was a seriously thrilling gig from UK Mod-Punks The Jam, six months after the Elvis Costello show in November 1978 (EP8: This Year’s Model).
It also coincided with a fresh tray of live concert firsts (A gig outside of London! In Toronto! At a tiny theatre! With an authentic ***punk*** audience!).
The Jam’s debut LP “In The City” was the first punk rock album I purchased, on a visit to the UK in 1977, and I became an instant fan. Between 1978-82, Weller & Co. shared the “My Favourite Band” mantle along with The Clash (Joy Division made it threesome by 1980), and so I was almost verklempt at getting to see my fave raves in Toronto. The trio were still fairly obscure over here while they were full-blown stars in the UK.
And boy did they deliver!
Tune in for winklepickers, opening act confusion, and ... the magic returns.
NEXT PODCAST: My last live show of the 1970s was an even smaller and more intimate gig than The Jam, featuring a trio of the city’s then most-prominent punk bands: NFG, The Regulators, and Sinners.
I’ll be discussing how important our local scene --- but also local music scenes in general --- were and are, especially to and for marginalized people and communities.
1979 was the year I started seeing local live music in bars such as The Cedar Lounge and The York, something that would become akin to “breathing” in my life during the 80s and early 90s. These nights out and this show pointed to where things in my life were going to be going on a more personal level.
Stay tuned for underage drinking, musical lifelines, and escaping before the police turned up.
EP 13 (no.005) What’s In The City: NFG’s Second Annual Halloween Bash with The Regulators and Sinners, The Polish Hall, London, Ontario, Canada, Friday November 2, 1979
(Get a sneak preview by reading the original 2011 blog entry here.)
Coming in November
mylifeinconcert.com
Previous Episode
(EP 11, no.20a) You Won’t See Me: 20 Acts I Wish I’d Seen (1920s-1980) featuring Billie Holiday, The Sex Pistols, Fela Kuti, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, and more.
Since this was Covid Summer of 2020—The Summer Without Live Music—I have paused my story and am presenting the second of two podcast episodes devoted to performances that were missed rather than remembering those I attended.
In this episode, I pick the 20 artists from the past who I would most like to have seen between the 1920s and 1980 but have now sadly missed forever.
Hindsight is 20/20, or so the saying goes. So, for my Concert no.020 entry in the original blog series, I published a two-part tribute looking back and honouring what DIDN’T happen: one entry (Episodes 9A & 9B; concert no. 020B) remembering 20 specific performances/concerts I was slated to or wanted to see—but didn’t or couldn’t—from 1980 onward, and another listing for the 20 Acts I Wish I’d Seen, which I discuss in this episode.
Join me as I time travel back to the 1920s and then take a chronological journey through decades and genres (jazz, pop, r&b, rock, reggae, psychedelia, afrobeat, glam, punk, and post-punk), revealing the artists I’d most like to have seen perform live, such as Billie Holiday, The Sex Pistols, Fela Kuti, The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and more.
I also talk about why I am picking each of my choices and what their music has meant to me along with where and when I would most liked to have seen them. For some of the artists, I have selected specific concert dates.
Get your party favours in order and come with me on a musical ride, revisiting some of the most interesting and iconoclastic live performers and performances of the mid-20th Century.
So, who would you most like to have seen?
NEXT PODCAST: I’ll pick where I left off after the Elvis Costello show in November 1978 (EP8: This Year’s Model), with this thrilling gig from UK Mod-Punks The Jam. It also coincided with a fresh tray of live concert firsts (A gig outside of London! In Toronto! At a tiny theatre! With an authentic ***punk*** audience!).
Between 1978-82, Weller & Co. shared the “My Favourite Band” mantle along with The Clash (Joy Division made it threesome by 1980), and so I was almost verklempt at getting to see my fave raves, who were so obscure over here while they were stars in the UK, in Toronto.
And boy did they deliver!
Tune in for winklepickers, opening act confusion, and ... the magic returns.
EP 12 (no.004) This Is the Modern World: The Jam with The Dwight Twilley Band, Rex Danforth Theatre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Tuesday April 10, 1979 (Get a sneak preview by reading the original 2011 blog entry here.)
Next Episode
(EP 13, no.5) NFG’s Second Annual Halloween Bash with The Regulators and Sinners: What’s In The City, Polish Hall, London, Ontario, Canada, Friday November 2, 1979
My last live show of the 1970s was an even smaller and more intimate gig than The Jam’s Toronto concert seven months earlier, featuring a trio of the city’s then most-prominent punk bands: NFG, The Regulators, and Sinners.
I’ll be discussing how important our local scene—but also local music scenes in general—were and are, especially to and for marginalized people and communities.
1979 was the year I started seeing local live music in bars such as The Cedar Lounge and The York, something that would become akin to “breathing” in my life during the 80s and early 90s. These counterpoints to a local conservative milieu were an inspiration and creative oxygen for many outsiders within and around the municipality, not to mention providing an essential social service and network.
These nights out and this show pointed to where things in my life were going to be going.
Stay tuned for underage drinking, musical lifelines, and escaping before the police turned up.
NEXT PODCAST: Dublin’s Boomtown Rats surfaced at the London Gardens in March of 1980: my first live show of the new decade.
They had been an obsession of mine over the previous 2.5 years since I had picked up their debut 45, the charging and furious “Lookin’ After No. 1,” on a trip to the UK in ’77. At this point, they were three albums in, superstars in the UK, and just coming off an international smash (except in the US), “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which went Top 10 here in Canada.
I kicked off a boatload of ‘80s gig-going in this freezing arena on a bitterly cold night (the bolt opposite of the Bob Seger steambath at this venue in 1978... so much for insulation), warmed up by an engaged and energetic Rats fronted by an animated Bob Geldof (the “Sir” and Live Aid were years in the future).
My pal “Special Guests”—then of London, Ontario, now of Leeds, UK—who you first met in Episode 3 on The Ramones, returns with his recollections and reflections on the evening.
Stay tuned for onstage pyjamas, photo awkwardness, and how our present shapes the memories of our past.
(EP 14, no.6) The Fine Art of Surfacing: The Boomtown Rats with B.B. Gabor, London Gardens, London, Ontario, Canada, Wednesday March 19, 1980 + A Meditation on the Amorphous Nature of Memory & Why the Present Is Always in the Past
(Get a sneak preview by reading the original 2010 blog entry here .)
Coming in December
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