like a living room, but way huger

friday night was the long anticipated welcome to our living room extravaganza, a fundraiser for the toronto public space committee held at the bloor cinema. if you live in toronto & care about preserving our urban landscape (ie. if the thought of 7-foot tall garbage cans scares the bejesus out of you), you should check out their site. and besides trying to prevent advertisements from taking over toronto, they also happened to put on one hell of a musical program featuring gentleman reg, andre ethier, bob wiseman, jason collett, sarah harmer, megali meagher, and andrew whiteman.

i'm not really sure why gentleman reg was first on the bill (i thought that should've been the least well-known performer, magali meagher) but he opened the show beautifully with 4 songs. i do enjoy him more with a full band, but he sings like an angel regardless. plus he was wearing a killer studded belt that i could see even from way back in the cheap seats. sexxxy.

magali meagher (of the phoenemes, if that helps you out at all) followed reg. i have to say that i don't really enjoy that type of music (ballady, folky girl-rock), and i found it pretty uninspiring. she brought out an accordion for her last song, so that made things a bit more exciting. jason collett (broken social scene) and then andre ethier (the deadly snakes) followed. both were good, but neither really got me amped up. i have to contribute it (at least partly) to my fatigue & the people blocking my view at that point. both sets were mellow and really enjoyable.

now, i've been hearing about bob wiseman for quite some time now (like at the memphis show in october when they had a papier maché headstone reading "bob wiseman is dead" on the stage for their set), but friday was my first experience. as it turns out, he's a fun artist/musician who supports his quirky songs with some pretty creative visual art. my favorite on friday was a video of a puppet show acting out the words to a song about a sock puppet who moves away from toronto, finds true love, and who sadly dies of cancer. in summary, good times.

when i learned that apostle of hustle was playing not one, but TWO sold out shows at the drake on friday night, i couldn't figure out how andrew whiteman would even have the time to play the fundraiser. but thank god he did, because he was truly the highlight of the entire night. his first song was a cover of 'time can never kill the true heart' by stars (which took a while to figure out). he stuck with the covers for one more song, somehow performing an acoustic version of 'hustle rose' by metric that was terrific! he finished up his four song set with two original songs, one of which was a brand spanking new apostle of hustle track.

the evening was capped off by a looong performance by sarah harmer that (no joke) put me to sleep. keep in mind though, i've already mentioned that ballady/folky/girl rock is not my cup of tea. rob enjoyed her though, so if you check out his blog, i'm sure he'll elaborate on her set. the only really negative comment about the night was the guy who came & sat next to me during bob wiseman's set who REEKED of garlic. attention you stinker: if you sat in the second tier of the balcony and left a few songs into sarah harmer's set, i was sitting next to you, and i LITERALLY had to shower when i got home to get your stink off. i'm serious. it's called soap. buy some.

the only other musical mention of the weekend was hearing that the diskettes (you may remember them from such bands as parka 3 and la guerre des toques) were playing a show at the gladstone hotel, just a few short steps from my house, on sunday. since we obviously hate ourselves, we planned to check it out (and i have to say, we were pretty excited). the doubt started to creep in when we found out that it was a launch party for a teen girl magazine. when we showed up to find the room packed with 13-year old girls & draped in streamers, we decided we didn't hate ourselves that much. oh well, i'm sure we'll stalk them... umm, i mean see them... some other time at a more age appropriate event.

update! here are some links to some terrific pics of gentleman reg & sarah harmer, courtesy of photojunkie.