Last night I saw the most rocking concert. Too bad I went alone. Emily is out of town and she had originally agreed to go, so I forgive her. Shannon would have loved to come, but had volunteer commitments. Daniel had tickets to see the BC Lions tick some Ti-cat butt. And Dylan’s back was bothering him too much to stand and listen to bands he’s never heard of. Fair enough. But you all missed out.

I love listening to music, but I don’t consider myself a big band buff. Unlike or , I don’t attend many concerts and I don’t even know who the members of favourite bands are. I just like good music, so pardon my ignorance as I relate all the musical trivia I discovered last night.

The first band last night was Novillero. The name was slightly familiar, but I didn’t think I had ever heard any of their songs before. There set was rocking and I loved them more because they were introduced as being a band from Winnipeg. The best part of the band was the big beefy guy, who seemed to be the front man, but only sang backup vocals and played the tambourine extremely energetically. The last song of their set was The Hypothesist, which I found on a SXSW sampler and I’ve been rocking out to on my iPod for months.

After Novillero, the crowd started to build and was a lot more enthusiastic to see Immaculate Machine, a Victoria indie band that I saw back in July. There set was good, but I preferred them in back in July – maybe it was the smaller venue or maybe it was Emily’s oozing enthusiasm for them.

The biggest shock of the night for me was when Kathryn Calder from Immaculate Machine sang all the female vocals for The New Pornographers. I was dumbfounded. Was she always a member of the band? I’m infatuated with her voice, so maybe that’s why I always loved The New Pornographers. According to Wikipedia, Neko Case was the female vocalist for The New Pornographers but Kathryn’s pretty much taken over for her, and both of the ladies sang on the latest album, Twin Cinemas, which I have only recently started to listen to. Hearing Kathryn sing for like 2 hours was a highlight, especially All Swinging Around for You.

The most amusing moment of the night was during a slow mellow New Pornographers song, when someone lifted up a lighter and started waving it. Then someone about 3 people behind him lit up his cellphone and started waving it.

I was really surprised by the range of ages watching the show. There were a lot of people around my age and some younger, but there were also a significant number of 30-40 year olds and quite a few graying heads in the crowd.