I don’t know. What I do know is that I made myself a small selection of New Year’s resolutions in hopes of spending more of my time productively and less of my time scrolling through social media slop. Writing more is part of that. And here’s a thing I can write about.
Other resolutions involve watching more movies, reading more books, keeping up with my Latin Duolingo lessons, and switching to black coffee. The latter doesn’t have anything to do with time management or my mental wellbeing, but they say it’s good for your liver and I’ll save tens of dollars a year on Splenda.
Anyway. I’ve seen Sloan eight and a half times now; I can’t fully count that Bengough show where they only got to play four songs before lightning ended their set and, indeed, the entire festival. There isn’t much left to say and you know what I care about. Will they play Underwhelmed? (yes) Will they play The Other Man (yes) and if so, will I exaggerate my love of the song for Aaron’s benefit (not this time)?
But I’d never seen them in Moose Jaw before. Until the last minute, I wasn’t sure this would change; between bad weather and bus mishaps, Sloan canceled the first date of their tour the night before in Brandon. Luckily for us, the weather went on to cooperate. I believe the band had to get a replacement bus but that worked out too. We got to the theatre around 7:30 for a scheduled 8:00 start. The band beat us there by about 15 minutes.
Some of the folks I regularly see at concerts (and, occasionally, terrible movies) - Mark, Carver, Charlene, and Rob - also made the trek down. We caught up with them, said hi, and Mika got us two of Moose Jaw’s finest bottled waters before we took our seats.
We’d never been to the Mae Wilson Theatre before and it was a delightful surprise. It’s a really nice place to see a show - it’s nice looking, there was an attached art gallery, the seats were comfortable. I’ll have to keep watch on who else is performing there as I’d be happy to go back and Moose Jaw isn’t that far. There was a bit of distortion in the sound but nothing too bad and I can easily attribute that to the band having to rush their setup. It got better as the night went on.
The show started about a half hour late, which isn’t that bad by normal concert standards and was especially understandable given the challenges they had in making it at all. There was one person behind me who was really bent out of shape about it though. And I’m not talking about Mark, who was further back to where I couldn’t hear him, but he WAS able to take a great picture of the back of my head where my hair used to be. I bemoaned this - he was, and I get it, not particularly sympathetic - and then I posted the picture on my Instagram. Everything is content, even my decay.
I took setlist notes. Sloan recently put out a boxset for the album Smeared, and had done a few shows playing the whole album, so more of those songs made appearances than usual. Aside from that, we got most of the hits - I think If It Feels Good, Do It was the most notable omission.
Penpals Dream it All Over Again Scratch the Surface Take it In Amped 500 Up People of the Sky Fading Into Obscurity Everything You’ve Done Wrong Who Taught You to Live Like That? Ready For You —intermission— Coax Me Losing California Don’t You Believe a Word Underwhelmed Something’s Wrong Sensory Deprivation Sugartune The Lines You Amend The Rest of My Life Money City Maniacs —encore— The Other Man The Good in Everyone
At intermission, Mark came over and said that his companions described the show as “it’s a Sloan show.” I think he would have appreciated more enthusiasm. But I get it, and like I said, that’s the issue with writing these things; namely, by now, a lot of the time, we know what we’re getting. We got a Sloan show. That’s not a negative! It was good! I like Sloan! If I didn’t, I’d have stayed home and put AEW on in the background while I did phone things. This was more fun.
I spent the twenty-teens switching to black coffee after being a strictly "flat-white" man. I relapsed a few times, the final one being 2017. That time I didn't enjoy it so knew I wasn't coming back.
It was definitely one of the things I've done in my life.
Hey, how's it going. Please tune into WNYC 93.9FM at 2pm today (12/15) to hear me do an interview and perform my smash dancehall megahit Internet Treasure Quest. You can also stream online right here: http://www.wnyc.