NXNE Thursday Report #1

Anythingıs possible when you drink during the day.

Standing on the rooftop patio at EMI Publishingıs annual summer throwdown, an adult beverage in hand, it was hard to imagine a nicer start for NXNE. Hot weather, Lee Perry on the turntables and cell phone-toting music industry geeks all around. Yes, music festival time is here again.

Thursday was actually the lightest night of the NXNE fest in terms of must-see bands, which meant that you could walk from club to club and enjoy the warm night rather than spend all your time in cabs and smoky clubs.

Some folks chose not to go in at all, and instead stood out on the street between the Rivoli and the Horseshoe watching a pair of one-man-band musicians strum through some odd folk. "Thatıs so Toronto," someone heckled to no response whatsoever.

Not from Toronto were Cambridge glam pop band The Candidates. Each member seemed to be lifted from another band ­ the Mick Ronson guy, the beefy drummer, the comedian bassist and the anonymous singer. So did their songs. It takes balls to rip off the New York Dollsı Rock & Roll Nurse riff for riff and pass it off as your own song. An inauspicious start to the fest.

More entertaining were London nobodies the Golden Seals, who played charming soft pop broken up with a running stand-up comedy act by the singer. They even got notorious festival crasher Beatle Bob shaking his ass up at the front, so you know big things are on the horizon.

Up at the El Mo, the women in Nice Cat had a room full of guys staring at the stage politely at their impossibly heavy stoner thud. The noise filled the room, unlike, say, the amateurish punk noise of Sticky Rice which emptied the room.

Down at Tedıs Wrecking Yard, Montrealıs Local Rabbits were midway through their comedy pop set by the time we arrived. These days, the Rabbits are an Ed Roberts away from being the Barenaked Ladies. This, if you were in doubt, is not a good thing.