©1982, 2002-2011
No Cause for Concern? Issue #5 | September 1982 | Page 8 | Dead Kennedys in Toronto
Dead Kennedys
In Toronto
On Wednesday, July 28th, 1982, the Dead Kennedys played their only Canadian show this tour to 13-14 hundred people on Toronto's Concert Hall. A lot of people had waited a long time to see the DKs live and they certainly weren't let down. It was a great show.
It started at 9:30 with the YOUNG LIONS finally coming on stage and opening with "Royal Killers". They played a powerful and energetic set going from one song right into the next. For the most part the sound was good and loud except for their 6th (or was it the 7th) song where they were plagues with an incredible amount of feedback. They picked right back up though for "Freedom Fighter" a great song, and finished the rest of the set off without a hitch.
After the break YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH came on sans lead singer, Brian, who never showed up. Their replacement was Mike McCurdy from the Young Lions who, with little advance notice, did a pretty good job. I would never have noticed his ad-libbing had I not recognized some Youth Lions lyrics thrown in. Never having seen YYY before I couldn't tell you how it compared to the real thing but besides my initial reaction ("what is going on here?"), I wasn't let down.
One thing that I really noticed though was the amount of spitting that went on during YYY's performance. Thank God it's not something you see very often in Ottawa. (Well, Mugger really got it during the Black Flag/Saccharin Trust show but he ASKED for it.) These guys up at the front were really going for it (after the set, I half expected a little janitor to come out with a mop) and it just made me cringe. Why an audience would spit on a band is beyond me and I think it sucks the big one.
But back to the show. Youth Youth Youth also played a good set (shorter though) then came the long wait for the DKs to come on.
Now this is the hard part. The Dead Kennedys are one of my favorite bands and they could have come on and played the lamest show imaginable and I'd probably have still liked it. But they didn't. They played tight and fast and Jello had complete control of the audience at all times. Even when the stage divers were getting a little careless of the equipment on stage, Jello managed to diplomatically restricted them to a certain area then let the diving continue for the rest of the show.
[I'm skipping the rest of the review. It sucked. The review I mean. The show was amazing, I just did a lousy job of writing about it at the time...]