November 2, Barfly, A Hectic Night with Scream For Morphine, Duplah Pootch, 2Pwels, He Lies In Ruins and Skroch

 

   It's November 2nd, I'm in Montreal and I desperately wanna go see a show instead of going back home, I write to my friends and one says, 'Go to Barfly I'll be there soon!' The lineup is He Lies In Ruin, Scream For Morphine, Duplah Pootch/Hanichan Gasoline, 2pwels and Shrock. So I run over there and by nine thirty, my friend and I are inside. We are waiting and we notice a huge stack of amps, a thing we rarely see now a days. Not even Traxide handle such heigth of combos and amps. After smoking a gazillion smokes, the show finally starts and we are announced half the bands can't be there and the singer of Duplah Pootch won't be there. Having never seen any of these bands I think to myself that this'll be another wasted night just drinking beer and losing my earsight. Scream for Morphine, a three-piece Jazz noize band who have a rythm guitarist/bassist, a drummer and a pianist start. They are very prog, heavy ass Yes type of prog, and despite all the stacks and impressive gear, the pianist has his piano on the floor which makes me wonder if I'm too high to understand shit or is everything normal. Defintely a great band to watch, although lacking a bit of stage presence, their songs still kept me on the edge of my seat especially the muffin man song which is a must see in show if you ever go.

Afterwards, Duplah Pootch came over, and despite missing their singer, they did not lack in intensity nor in stage presence. Having never seen them before, what I saw was the least to say disturbing. Equipped of a slide rythm playing guitarist, a reversed head Jazzmaster lead guitarist and a drummer the band started playing after what seemed a stressful preparation of the drummer. He kept getting apples out of his bag and placing em' on the top of the stack of heads and cabs and kept looking all around seeming on the edge of busting his brain out. To me, he seemed like a speedball freak who was either going to O.D. or simply bash anyone around him including his drummer incessantly. But altough seeming off, he did play very well and quite timed even. But through out the show he kept getting up and the two others just keep on playing as if nothing was happening. I kept looking at my friend as if to say, man we got to stop this show, I have known what it was to be on too much cocaine and having my brain go insane, and I think this drummer is about to lose it. The bartender eventually almost got pissed because the drummer even got toilet paper from the washrooms and kept rubbing off the sweet and simply tossing it over his drum kit. But others around me seemed to know it was allright. By the end of their set, I was bitting my nails so hard hoping the drummer makes it till the end without losing control. Their noisy, hectic yet very demanding and riffy set ended and the drummer was back to normal packing things up and my friend and I went outside for a smoke. I came out and exhaled after what seemed such a long time without taking a proper breath, I said, 'Shit I thought he was about to lose it, a bit like me back then when I would ingest too much drugs and my body couldn't concentrate nor more or times where I'd taken too many speed and I started twitching and constantly replacing things.'' My freind replied, ''Yeah, I thought too that he was about to lose it but I kept telling myself let it be, but hey thanks for being there, I couldn't have seen such weird set with anyone else.'' I laughed so hard and smoked. Once on my way back, I thought wow they nailed it, without a singer, just noisy ass guitars and bad sounding room, they succeeding in having look at every detail of their performance. So after the nerve wrecking set of Duplah Pootch, I was drained and ended up going back home with a great memory of the night. I you want to see any of these bands, you'll have to follow them closely on their pages, since none of the bands have announced any upcoming shows yet.