01.05.2010 Tegan and Sara / An Horse / Astronautalis

Astronautalis was a late added opener to the show. He's a one man laptop "rapper" from Seattle, who's toured with Tegan and Sara in the past. He calls himself a rapper, but he wouldn't be out of place in the spoken word genre. The large Orpheum stage did not appear to faze the lone wordsmith on stage as he was all over the place. On some songs he would be on roaming around the stage, on others he'd be in the crowd and on one he climbed the speaker stack to do a song for the people in the balcony. Pretty entertaining overall.

As Astronautalis left the stage, An Horse entered. I thought they would be doing their own sound check, but nope they started playing. In their own words, it was a "seamless change-over". I'd actually like to see more of these kinds of change overs. An Horse were pretty talkative during their set of songs from their only full length album "Re-arranged Beds." I don't remember them talking that much the last time I saw them. They played a new song which youtube is calling "Dress Sharply." Crowd loved them, not really a surprise.

During their 3rd or 4th song, Tegan and Sara both had the same Gretsch guitars. Tegan's was black while Sara's was blue. Speaking of guitar gear, I'm jealous of Ted Gowan's starcaster (original not re-brand) and also their Dr Z amps for that matter. Their set was comprised of all of their new album and A LOT of songs from their last 3 albums. In fact the song total was around 27, roughly 2 hours. WOW... As with all T+S shows, half the fun is the banter. Today there was a lot of it. One of the notable stories was Sara recounting her days in junior high and not getting any valentine candy/flower-grams. A (more) popular girl named Tara would get some and similarity of the names would always make her more disappointed than just not having her name called. After coming back from the encore break, the twins came back alone to do some acoustic songs. One of them being a stripped down version of "Feel It In My Bones", a tune that they recently wrote in collaboration with Tiesto. "Call it Off", which was also done stripped down, was a mess, as it was started and restarted a couple of times. The girls however took it in stride and eventually got the crowd to sing along as well after telling a humourous tale of how in Germany an interviewer kept referring to them as 'partners'. I think Sunny Dhak (ex-3 inches of Blood/Pride Tiger) was doing monitors for T+S as his first name was mentioned on stage at this point. Yeah, no one cares about this little tidbit. The show ended with crowd favourite "Living Room". I think a lot of people would feel ripped off it it wasn't played.



$50/$50

08.10.2008 Tegan and Sara / Declan de Barra Under The Volcano Festival

Under the Volcano is one of Vancouver's gem annual festivals. It's a grass-roots festival focusing on social change with live performances, workshops and all sorts of socio-political information booths. It's run mainly by volunteers and the price of admission is on a sliding scale ($10-$20, students and people with jobs respectively). In my opinion, best of all, it's held in Cates Park, surrounded by trees and a waterfront, an absolutely beautiful location.

I arrived to catch the tail end of Flores de Alegria's set. They're an all female mariachi band from Vancouver. I think that's what they said they were from. Crowd seemed to enjoy it. Then again some people in the crowd seemed to enjoy just about anything.



Declan de Barra was the lead singer of an Australian band called Clann Zu. They actually played this very same festival in 2004. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was also their final show ever. This time around, Declan would play without the accompaniment of a backing band. Almost fittingly, he started his set with a Clann Zu song, from Bethlehem to Jenin, a song he did not play during the 2004 show. He played mostly songs from his solo album plus a few traditional Irish songs. I chatted with him for a bit after his gig. He said that he was working on a second solo album and was thinking of going back to recording maybe in September. I asked if he could play "One Bedroom Apartment" (a Clann Zu song) during his next set. He said he would if he could remember the words. I wasn't trying to be "one of those guys", but i was running out of conversation material, plus I have seen youtube videos of him performing it post-CZ.

On my way to see Declan's second set, I took in a bit of Sherman Austin's set. He sort of resembles a Ice-T in a way. He rapped about police brutality and social oppression on top of beats and even while playing bass at the same time. Impressive.

De Barra's second set was by the Waterfront and was brought about by the cancellation of another act. De Barra performed a completely different set with sailboats and blue skies in the background. Toward the end of his set, he played a request from the first set, Apple Tree, which is on his myspace page right now. True to his word, he obliged me by closing out his set with an acapella version of "One Bedroom Apartment."


Declan Singing "One Bedroom Apartment"




Hometown favourites, Tegan and Sara, started their set while Declan was ending his. Yep, the applause in the middle of that video was for Tegan and Sara, playing about 200 meters away. They started with "Dark Come Soon" but stopped about 20 seconds in order to adjust their monitors. This pretty much set the tone for their entire 40 min set. There were actually a couple of songs which were stopped abruptly due mostly to the relaxed vibe. I've said this before, but half the fun of a Tegan and Sara show is the onstage banter and interaction (bickering) between the two sisters. It makes them very relatable if you've ever had a sibling. Although, the set was billed as "acoustic", it was in fact pretty much just a regular show, just without a drummer. Their setlist was typical of their previous tour, but was everything you could ask for in a non-headlining slot.


Probably My Favourite Part of T+S's Set. (User: Nataliex33)


$20/$10

[BT] Tegan and Sara 09.22.2007

Tegan and Sara
2007-09-22
Afternoon Show
Commodore Ballroom
Vancouver, BC, CA

The ZOMB Taping Project

titles in quotation marks are banter tracks, titled after my favourite line in the banter

1. Intro
2. Call It Off
3. Dark Come Soon
4. "Hire a different Tegan and Sara"
5. Like O, Like h
6. "Like you love me"
7. Floorplan
8. Nineteen
9. "This has nothing to do with this song"
10. Burn Your Life Down
11. Speak Slow (false start) "You're fired to teach Sara a lesson"
12. Speak Slow
13. Walking With A Ghost
14. "Lots of uses for cell phones"
15. So Jealous
16. Monday, Monday, Monday (slow)
17. "This is the part of the show we screw up"
18. Divided
19. When I Get Up
20. Where Does the Good Go
21. "Sorry, I only played that song 3000 times"
22. Hop A Plane*
23. Back In Your Head (beginning cut 10 seconds to bad MD change)
24. Are you Ten Years Ago
25. The Con
26. Relief Next To Me
27. "I was married story"
28. I Was Married
29. "Prom dress"
30. I Know I Know I Know

encore break (cut)

31. You Wouldn't Like Me
32. Umbrella [Rhianna]
33. "We really appreciate it"
34. Living Room

*two skips due to being bumped

I taped both shows this date, this is probably the better recording of the two, much less crowd noise (screaming between songs present in both though)

Sharp MD-MT15 > MM-CBM-Mini > Ecm 719 (in hat)

Taped, transferred, tracked, tagged and seeded by: smashing0
Originally seeded to the-zomb.com on 2007-09-23

.flac torrent
mp3s



Tegan and Sara
09.22.2007 (Late Show)
Commodore Ballroom
Vancouver, BC

source: DPA 4061>DIYBB>IHP-H140
transfer: WAV-M>FLAC
editing: lowered right channel 10%, slight bass cut, normalize, fade in/out

01) Intro
02) Call it Off
03) Dark Come Soon
04) Like O, Like H
05) Floorplan
06) Nineteen
07) Burn Your Life Down
08) Speak Slow
09) Walking With a Ghost
10) [banter]
11) So Jealous
12) Monday, Monday, Monday
13) [T+S talking about early days of band]
14) Divided
15) I've Got You
16) Where Does the Good Go
17) Hop a Plane
18) Back in Your Head
19) Are You Ten Years Old
20) [T talking about living in strathcona]
21) The Con
22) [S making fun of T]
23) Relief Next to Me
24) [S talking about being "married"]
25) I Was Married
26) [band introductions]
27) Take Me Anywhere
28) [T talking about the opener Northern State]
29) I Know, I Know, I Know
===
30) You Wouldn't Like Me
31) Umbrella [Rhianna Cover]
32) Living Room

.flac torrent
mp3s

i nicked the mp3 links from the saraandtegan forums

09.22.2007 Tegan and Sara/Northern State

As expected the girl to guy ratio was somewhere around 4:1. Suprisingly though, I saw a large concentration of dudes in the front row. Vancouver's alternative lifestyle population was also well represented at this show. And since it was the Commodore, the amount of chatterboxes in the crowd was ..well not suprising.

Imagine if one of the Beastie Boys had a sister, and she formed a 'crew' of like minded 'sistas'. There, I just described what the openers, Northern State sound like. They didn't exactly blow my mind. But it did blow my mind later when I read they've had production support from ?uestlove, one of the beastie boys, Muggs from Cypress Hill and others who take them more seriously than I do. I couldn't tell if people were entertained because they genuinely enjoyed them or the irony.

I've known of T+S since about 2003 when I heard "Living Room" off a live recording that was floating around. I even considered seeing their "birthday bash" show at the Mesa Luna, a while ago, but could never really justify it because I didn't think their albums at the time were really that strong overall. 4-5 years later, T+S are putting out better (IMO) albums and with that playing larger venues. I figure I might as well see them now rather than gamble with the seated venues.

T+S played about 1h45 of pretty much all the songs off 'The Con' with older songs/favourites like Speak Slow, Walking with a Ghost, Monday x3, Take me Anywhere, and Living Room mixed in. And when they weren't doing that, they were telling stories of their life in general, which was quite funny and endearing. One such story recalled a period in their life after high school where T+S had decided to play music for a living and then shortly afterwards Sara decided to she wanted time away from T+S. After having seen them live, I realized how much I found Tegan to be a way better songwriter than her sister. I could actually do without a lot of Sara's songs, but I guess that's personal preference. 'Back in your Head' is an awesome song though. There was one song that they played near the end which I didn't recognize and at first wrote it off as an older song that I didn't care for. But then they kept repeating the word "umbrella". It took a little while before I figured out it was Rhianna's Umbrella song. It was alright I guess. As expected T+S encored with Living Room leaving many in the crowd satiated.

$32/$35