Dwayne Gretzky's Halloween Party (Horseshoe, Oct 31/12)

Dwayne Gretzky threw a helluva costume party on Halloween night in Toronto. The vast majority of concert-goers were decked out from giraffes to zombie doctors to Cats in Hats and oh-so-much more. Regardless of dress people danced hard (and seemingly, to sober me anyhow, drank hard too) to Dwayne's beloved mix of oldies and semi-oldies covered live. Included in the oldies were Chain Gang (Sam Cooke), Let Me Roll It (Wings), Be My Baby (Ronettes) and personal favourite Pump It Up (Costello), while relatively more recent releases were Just a Girl (No Doubt) and No Diggity (Blackstreet). The beauty of the band is that they cover a wide variety and have a lot of fun with it while maintaining the songs' integrity. Further diversifying the set were some themed songs including Psycho Killer (Talking Heads) and Thriller (MJ) to bookend the first set, and the inescapable Monster Mash (by whoever.. one of the dumbest songs ever recorded according to Elvis). With about seven on-stage members and a handful of guest vocalists they went all-out and partied all night long.

Nicholas Double You and the B Squad got to open the Halloween festivities. A fairly run-of-the-mill 5-piece indie rock band with a seemingly blindfolded female drummer they went through the motions of doing everything right but just couldn't translate. Even their guest female singer didn't pick it up much. At one point the crowd, who were there for a fun time, played along by all going down to a knee as requested, but there was no Pop to bring us up. The Halloween balloons popped some entertainment into the crowd momentarily too but overall they couldn't quite get it going.

Elwins, Dwayne Gretzky (Lee's Palace July 6/12)

The Elwins secured the opening slot for the evening. They played a pretty standard set of music from their initial LP And I Thank You. Tyler, primary Dwayne Gretzky singer, has been playing with them for the past few shows (though not at Zeus) and filled in fine starting on guitar and swapping to bass when Feurd was needed for keys and the like. They did their semi-famous Beyonce cover, Countdown,  and it was the first time I'd seen it live (not overly impressive - granted I've never heard the original and it was sans Luke Lalonde). Actually I've heard so much positive about The Elwins and their work ethic but this set didn't super impress. Maybe I was just disappointed and confused that they didn't do the Fox song and dance (see the Zeus link above).


Dwayne Gretzky did what they do best - playing amazing throwback cover tunes that are not necessarily spot-on but pretty darn close and fun regardless. Dan Griffin (ex?-)Arkell joined them for much of the set and Feurd, from the Elwins, was unmistakable on stage much of the time as well. In addition to their classic set list of Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, The Beatles and Jackson 5 they also added some Queen (Under Pressure), Elton John (Bennie & the Jets) and a surprise, yet personal fave, Cardigans (Love Fool). Plus 80's blast Take on Me and Allie Hughes did a fine representation on Heart's Barracuda. Fun fun!