This was Social Play's first local concert since August 2008 at The Canadian Nightclub for the Rock 2 Roll skatepark benefit, when they were known as Browbeat, so it's been a very long time coming! Soundwise, not much has changed with the band, but that's a good thing! They started at around 10:00 PM, and played for a solid four hours with breaks, leaving everyone with a nice big shot of music! Attendance was slow at first, maybe a dozen people in the first hour, but after 11:00, the crowd started filling up! There was even some girls dancing, which was fun to see! Social Play's set consisted of about even levels of originals and covers, with a mix of both new originals and Browbeat classics like "The Pessimist" and "No Vacancy"! Covers-wise, Social Play had a very wide variety of bands to play songs from, everyone from Pantera and Megadeth to The Cars and Loverboy! More wide-ranging than I remember, but it's all good!
Frontman Dutch Vanderploeg has a unique voice for hard rock, I can't really place what makes it different, but it works, especially on their originals! Some of the covers didn't match up well vocally, like "Man In The Box", but he was never off key, and always sounded good! Guitar work was great too, he was hitting some good solos and had some nice melodies and riffs to throw around! The guitar was a bit washed out at times though, some pinch harmonics didn't come through on the speakers. Bassist Tiffany Emmerson was really good too, the bass was nice and clear, and she had some good grooves going on some songs! Chris Smith was solid all night on drums, he supplied much of the band's on-stage energy, and gave some good backing vocals as well! I also was lucky enough to get one of his broken drumsticks, no one else ran to get it after he thrown it to the crowd, so yay me! And of course, nice gargoyle out in front of the stage!
I had to leave earlier than I'd have liked, but I had fun overall! It was fun hearing some of those songs again after 16 months, and the band looked like they were having fun back on stage after such a long wait! They're neither the heaviest or most technical band out there, but they are a very fun hard rock trio, and hopefully we won't have to wait a year plus to see Social Play live again! Also, and this is just a personal like here, I liked the on-stage interaction between Dutch & Chris and me, that was cool! That's one plus you'll get out of concerts with low attendances, the band will get more personable with the people that are there! Here's hoping they'll be back real soon! Yes, I took photos, 30 to be exact, you can check them out by clicking here or visiting our official Facebook page! And thanks to my new 2 GB SD card, I can now take as many photos as I want and still have room for videos longer than 3 minutes! With that said, check out this clip of Social Play performing their original song "Walk Away" last night!On a side note, I've noticed that The Rockstar Bar were still advertising Lion Ride as playing there on February 6th in paper ads, the LED marquee board there, and on their Facebook group, even though the band pulled the concert from their listings. Can anyone clear this up for me? Lion Ride must have pulled it for a reason, but you'd think The Rockstar Bar would remove it from the listings if it wasn't on anymore.
Finally for today, I have uploaded another new video to YouTube that should interest those of you that miss Gates of Winter! You may remember that Gates of Winter were working on a second studio album in 2008, but then they went on hiatus. Well one demo from those sessions is online! It is the song "From Nothingness", which they played a handful of times in their last concerts in 2008. Very heavy song, Lee Maines never sounded better vocally, I'd have liked it to have been longer though, with a guitar solo too. David Gold drummed on this song, his only appearance on a released studio Gates song, and he's awesome on it! Great keyboards from Brian Holmes too! It's too bad they broke up, this could have been better than "Lux Aeterna" if they'd finished this record! Check it out below, all credit for the song and image go to Lee Maines' MySpace page! NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED!!That's all for now, more news and updates are on the horizon, so stay tuned for lots more!
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