Broken Social Scene

Alright Chad you want a blog? You get a blog. I'll have you know however, you don't get the extremely modifiable wooden life-size model of Steve McQueen that I was going to whittle out of the tree in my backyard during these exact 10 minutes that I will now use to write this blog. Your loss.

Last Thursday a couple of friends and I jumped in the car and headed to Boulder, CO for what I expected to be an extremely memorable Broken Social Scene show at the Fox Theater. I can sum up the show by simply saying that it was worth the drive.

Needless to say, they were awesome. I'm not going to waste your time by talking about how awesome they are, or were, etc... If you don't already know, then just trust me they're awesome. Instead, I'm going to give you some reasons why I totally dig them, cause that's totally different (sarcasm, gotta love it).


First and foremost, Justin Peroff, their drummer, is incredible. His drum beats aren't incredibly difficult, and it's not like he's trying to take over the song, but he so clearly does in so many ways. In almost every one I find myself shaking and bobbing my head like no one's business. He drives the songs in so many ways, and in my opinion are essential to the Broken Social Scene "style", if they actually have one.

Second, and this is something that I absolutely love about BSS, they're so open to collaboration. It's almost as if BSS is it's own entity, as if the band will continue on forever, constantly making incredible music and it doesn't matter what musicians you throw in there. If you're not following me, let me explain. For this particular show we had the pleasure to listen to Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, Andrew Kenny (from American Analog Set), and a couple other guys who's names I can't remember play the lovely sounds of BSS. However, the next time around half of those guys probably won't even be there, or they will, but there will be 4 more people on stage helping out. Just run a goog-shot on BSS members and you'll see people from bands like Do Make Say Think, Apostle of Hustle, Feist (Leslie herself), Stars, The Weakerthans, and tons of others. The massive amounts of musical talent that runs through the creative process of this band truly is a beautiful thing, and I don't care how corny that sounds. The nice thing is, whoever is playing on stage, you know the show and music is going to be good, they're like a super band, that can't be stopped.

The Fox Theater is a cool venue, very old-school bricks-esque, but without the the balcony. Kevin Drew was recovering from a cold but still sounded great. They played a lot of old songs, which pleased me a great a deal, and they also played for over two hours, which was very much appreciated as I had just driven 8 hours. The opening band was sort of boring, and I can't even remember their name. They closed the show with a good old-fashioned crowd sing-along.

So yeah, it was awesome.