The Nine Years’ War
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Elevation - 9th Anniversary Show
Just got back from a great weekend in Toronto to see Elevation’s 9th Anniversary show on Friday, April 8. They are a wonderful Canadian U2 Tribute Band that I’ve mentioned before in this blog and will continue to mention – if you ever have the chance to see them, you must! Even though I just saw them in Calgary last month, the appeal of them playing both Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree in their entirety for this show was too good to miss, and we flew out from Regina on Friday morning for the weekend. My husband and I met up with my friend Tracey (AKA Bonogirl) who drove up for the weekend – we just couldn’t wait until the first 360 shows so we let this tide us over for now and had a great time of it.
Met up with a bunch of the usual Toronto suspects, these will be the same folks we’ll be sharing a GA line with come the morning of July 11th. It’s always good to see a few of our favourite U2 friends out at a tribute band show no matter what city it’s in, it’s a great way to meet fellow fans so I strongly suggest that if you ever get the chance to see a U2 Tribute band of any caliber, you will almost always assure yourself a great night and meet some new friends along the way.
The band was spot on, and the only hitch was that they had to survive a bit of an equipment malfunction; John’s (Larry) kick pedal actually broke in half during “Even Better Than The Real Thing”. As Shawn (Bono) told the crowd, they’d never had that happen in 9 years and they made a quick recovery, but not before I was rewarded with a bonus rendition of “Van Diemen’s Land” while they fixed the problem. I wasn’t the one that yelled for it… honest
Hearing “Love Is Blindness” and “Red Hill Mining Town” were definite highlights, as was an always beautiful version of “One Tree Hill”. However, the best part of the night was hearing “Acrobat” – it’s a song that U2 will probably never play live, and Elevation performs it handily. You really can close your eyes and dream out loud.
I also took the opportunity to do a bit of testing for live feed technologies to bring you audio of the Canadian shows this summer. More to come on that, but I sent “Zoo Station”, “Even Better Than The Real Thing” and “Van Diemen’s Land” live across the universe to some of my beta testers in Ohio, Florida and South Carolina who heard us loud and fairly clear – clear as can be from a cellphone thousands of miles away.
(You know who you are, thanks ladies!)
It’s always a great night when you are surrounded by U2 fans, and I had so much fun that I will admit parts of the evening were a bit foggy during the third set. I always manage to drink a bit too much whenever I go to The Hideout On Queen. It’s the kind of bar where everyone is your friend by the end of the night, including the bartenders and the coat check guy, and the Hideout is a unique venue that draws a very unique crowd. Not to mention Dan Good, who owns the bar, is a real honest-to-goodness partyin’ Irishman who tends to bring out free shots of Jameson before the encore – how can one say no?
So, needless to say, I think by the end of the night everyone in the bar had seen my Edge Gibson Explorer tattoo (probably many of them more than once), and I think I’ve assured myself a reputation as “the Edgegirl with the hat and the tat”. I also imagine there were a few bruised toes come Saturday morning, as I tend to stomp around and play a bit of air guitar – so goes the rumour, anyway
Now, Toronto, how many sleeps until July 11? Be sure to watch those toes!