Tuesday, I went to see So You Think You Can Dance Canada—live, at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. The friends and I were expecting that it would be us (the cougars?) and thousands of screaming teenage girls, but it was  remarkably diverse audience. Lots of little kids, older people—all ages, really. And though it definitely skewed female, it wasn’t really so hard to “spot the dude”.

The show itself was a lot of fun. They redid many of the favourite dances from the season, broken up with some video montages from the show, some introductions by the dancers themselves (there was no MC). Now, some numbers didn’t come off quite as well as they did on TV; you could see the strain more, somehow. But other performances looked even better, even more impressive, in person. My faves Vincent and Lisa were particularly awe-inspiring, but I was also newly impressed with Danny in his solo, Izaak and Caitlan acquitted themselves very well in their “Breaking dishes” number, and the second half was packed with favourites—the mirror number (Lisa and Miles), the angel number (Nico and Arassay), Nico and Natalli’s quick step.

And these are pretty people! We had good seats—not right in the floor area, where views may have been blocked, but close enough to see well. Still, I did bring the binoculars, and did whip them out at times, maybe particularly when “Canada’s favorite dancer” was in the spotlight. (Lady beside me also had binoculars, and I became amused at our nearly synchronized moves to raise them at each “Nico time”.) Very nice. Very fit—everyone very fit. (I should really get off the computer and work out.)

Next evening, I headed out to the Galaxy cinema for a showing of The Who Live at the Isle of Wight. Given my recent obsession (somewhat abated, but not exactly gone), I felt I couldn’t miss this one, presented in honour of the film’s release on DVD Blu-Ray.

Unlike the packed Copps Coliseum, very small crowd for this one… Not that it really mattered.

I have excerpts from this concert on some of my DVDs, but I’d never seen the whole thing. It’s from a 1970 show, and features a similar line-up to the Live at Leeds album: Starts off with “Heaven and Hell” (which I somehow hadn’t realized featured John on lead vocals); includes “Can’t Explain”, “My Generation,” “Magic Bus”; and includes ones of those awesome “remixed live” things that they did then, this one built off the little-known song “Water” [or “Wa-da”, as they say in Philadelphia, as Daltrey deadpanned].

And, as on Leeds, a run-through of Tommy, though not in its entirety.

I felt very Who fan-ish through the first song and a bit, as I couldn’t stop thinking, “It’s just not loud enough. We’re losing all the harmonics!” Then, indeed, the sounds became much louder and fuller—clearly, the thing had started on the wrong sound setting. From that point on, it did sound very good.

It looked… Well, the camera-work was weird. All these little close-ups. Pete’s head. Moon’s back. Entwistle’s fingers. You’re left kind of craving an overview, a panorama. I was thinking maybe that was the limitations of 1970’s film techology, but I read a review at the time that suggested it was just bad camerawork. And was correcting in saying that we did see too much of the audience. Though it was somewhat amusing how they cut to drinkin’, tokin’ audience members during the “Hey you getting drunk / Hey you smokin’ mother nature” parts of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

Overall, very worth seeing on the big screen, especially since I don’t have a Blu-Ray, nor even a big-screen TV.

Finally, some fashion notes.

Continue reading “Two days of eye candy” →