LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (Garden of Bedlam) And My Sykotyk Rampage/Tyler Yuke Memorial Review!!

How's everyone doing on this Sunday afternoon? I was at The Tyler Yuke Memorial Night at The Outback yesterday for Sykotyk Rampage's headlining performance, so I have a review of that coming up, along with a couple of assorted stories! But first, a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT!!

We still don't have a rescheduled date for their fundraiser show in Garden River, but Garden of Bedlam do have another show on the horizon! On April 2nd, it will indeed be a Good Friday as Garden of Bedlam perform at The Canadian Nightclub! This show will be a launch party for their official website, which is now online at www.gardenofbedlam.com! It was created by Melissa McMaster at 3Design Elements, and it looks pretty good! Lots of pictures, bio info, nice page design, and their first E.P. is streamable there too! It may already be online, but the official launch party will be on Good Friday, so save your celebrations until then! This concert will have an opening band to be announced, with Crank Sound Distribution handling the sound and The Rad Zone will also be on hand to sell band merchandise! A cover charge has yet to be announced, and a start time of 11:00 PM is given. The Facebook event page says that this will be their last show in Sault Ste. Marie before hitting the studio, so you'll wanna be out for this one! Confirm your attendance at this location!

Pencil me in for this show, I missed their last concert at Foggy's, I need my Garden of Bedlam fix! I'll keep you posted with any updates I have on this show, and if I find anything out about the rescheduling for their fundraiser in Garden River, I'll have that as well!

And now, here's my review of The Tyler Yuke Memorial Night featuring Sykotyk Rampage! As you may know, these are held yearly at The Outback at Sault College in memory of former Sault College student Tyler Yuke, who tragically died in 2002. Luckily there was little hassle to get in compared to other Outback shows I've been to, and when I arrived, there was a huge crowd, the largest I've seen there since the Gob concert! Now prior to my arrival, internet ads for this show had it starting at 8:00 PM with Sykotyk Rampage playing at 10:00 PM. I arrived a little before 10:00, and Sykotyk Rampage didn't play until closer to 1:30 AM! That's not the band's fault though, I'll get into that. When I got there, Sault College teacher Jerry Zuchlinski led a huge group of many of the night's performers in a group tribute song, which went over well. Jerry became the night's MC, introducing us to acts, talking about Tyler, and even telling a dirty joke!

I knew going in that there would be tons of open mic performers before Sykotyk Rampage stepped on stage, but there was a LOT more than I expected! And with no internet announcements of a performer lineup, I had no clue what to expect (I never did before either, Sault College have never announced performers for the Tyler Yuke memorials.) That being said, I couldn't tell you the names of the majority of the musicians who performed. My apologies if I mis-state anything here!

After the group song, there was a bagpipe player, followed by a solo performance from Tyler Yuke's dad, which was cool! Then there was sort of a drum circle kind of deal with some college students (my buddy Mike among them), followed by two separate solo singer/guitarists. Most of the acts performing had a sort of indie/acoustic sound to them, which definitely isn't my cup of tea, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it! I could tell that things were running overtime, other people were remarking that it was long and some performers said on stage that they had to cut down their sets. After the two solo performers, I got a surprise in the form of former Quite Frankly frontwoman Jacky Alisat! She and guitarist Adam Bertrand player three songs, none "metal", but I really enjoyed their set! I never saw Quite Frankly when Jacky sang, but I saw online videos and was very impressed! She's got a hell of a voice, and she shown it last night, even on an Animals song! Hopefully she gets back into a band again soon!

Then it went back to the indie-folksy stuff, with a trio of students with some guests performing more of that kind of stuff. The crowd, again, did seem to be having fun, but this stuff isn't something I'd typically see on a normal day. Following them was two singer/guitarists, one of which had a Zakk Wylde custom Gibson Les Paul! And being a Zakk Wylde fan, that got my attention! They covered the Ozzy Osbourne song "Mama I'm Coming Home", and to be completely honest, they were better than the sound guys had it sound. I don't know what the deal was, but there was feedback on the guitar and the tone of it sounded off and slightly muffled. And I can tell it wasn't their fault cause the guy with the Zakk Wylde guitar pretty much nailed it, he deserved better! The singer had kind of a softer voice, I don't think it matched as well for that kind of song. I liked them, but the sound was an impairment. They followed that with another song, after which another guitarist joined them to play some softer stuff, which I wasn't feeling as much.

Two more indie bands followed, and I don't know if it was just my metalhead nature, the length the open mic bands took, or both, but I wasn't feeling either band too much. Don't get me wrong, they were good for their style, they really were! The second band had the singer also playing a violin, which was unexpected, and they had some good covers going! But I dunno, it just started really dragging by this point for me. The bands played a song, then spent a few minutes fiddling with their instruments and talking to the crowd casually. This was well after midnight at this point, and the crowd had slowly been clearing out all night, it just went on and on and on. When the second band finished, the crowd that was left cheered enthusiastically and asked for an encore. This was around 1:00 AM at this point, and I think the organizers said they couldn't, what with the bar closing at 2:00 AM and all.

Finally, things started to pick up when Sykotyk Rampage bassist Brian Cattapan and former Time of Ruin guitarist Rich Moreland took the stage as "7th Edition" for a two song set (which, as they pointed out to me, would have been longer had things not been behind schedule.) They're one and the same as the previously announced "6th Edition" in a sense. Brian's in both bands, but Rich stepped in for the other half of the band, who just moved to London yesterday. They covered Alice In Chains' "Your Decision" and Pantera's "Cemetery Gates", with Rich and Brian both on guitar, and Brian on vocals. "Your Decision" worked pretty well, Brian has a decent singing voice, it's a wonder he never gets a singing part on a Sykotyk Rampage album! And it really is cool seeing Rich on stage again, it feels like forever since I last saw him with a guitar in hand! "Cemetery Gates" didn't work as well for me, it felt like they changed the arrangement too much to have it suit the acoustic instruments and Brian's vocal range. It wasn't bad though, but if I was picking a Pantera song for them to do, I think "Planet Caravan" might have worked better. Still, I enjoyed their two songs, it was a welcome break from the mostly indie stuff we'd heard until then!

And then, finally, after 3 1/2 hours of waiting, Sykotyk Rampage finally took the stage, and by this point, the crowd was just awful in size. Had the show ran on schedule with Sykotyk Rampage playing at 10:00 like previously announced (hell, even at midnight), they'd have had a huge receptive crowd! Now it was just the devoted fans who didn't mind staying up til 2 in the morning. At least they delivered a fun half hour of harsh music for harsh minds for the remainder of us! They played a handful of their classics, like "Treating You Bad", "Drinking On The Weekend", and "Red Ball Jet", with their typical high energy! Paul Becker still sounded as uniquely good as ever on vocals, Brian Cattapan jumped around on-stage with lots of energy and enthusiasm, and the whole band just seemed to be having as much fun as they could with the time the other bands left for them! Given the circumstances, I can't criticize Sykotyk Rampage at all, they performed as well as I would expect them given the time and set length!

So how about my overall thoughts? Well, let me start by saying this: I hate being too critical. I never want to outright say that something sucks or I hated this or wanted to leave during that, that's unfair to the performers and organizers and their talent. But I have to be honest, I wasn't having a lot of fun at parts of this show. This is NOT the bands' fault, they all had visible talent, some were quite impressive! But for a guy who doesn't listen to much indie, folk, or acoustic music, it just got draining after a while. We were under the impression that it all started at 8:00 with open mic stuff, then Sykotyk Rampage would play at 10:00 PM like Facebook said. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be watching open mic for 3 1/2 hours before the headliners got on stage. I was remarking to people I knew that it felt like being at Hempfest without the hemp. Again, this isn't the bands' fault, remember, this isn't my style of music or my typical crowd. It's more the organization of it all. I've never been terribly impressed with how the college handle concerts. Often, the sound needs work (at points last night, it was bad), I had sound complaints at Sykotyk Rampage's show there in October. And I don't know why the show ran behind schedule so much, but they should have been on top of that to give each band their proper times and proper lengths. At least this time, they weren't so restrictive on the entry of non-students!

But above all else, this show accomplished what it set out to, to pay tribute to Tyler Yuke's memory and have some fun showcasing college talent, and it did just that! The crowd that came out enjoyed it, well, what they saw, and when it comes down to it, it'd have been more enjoyable without changing the performers if they'd just managed the schedule and band performances better so that nothing ran later than it should have. Yeah, I admit the bands were mostly not my cup of tea, but this wasn't advertised as a metal show, and I fully expected stuff I wouldn't typically listen to. It just was worse because it dragged on and on into the night. There were some great acts, like the duo who covered Ozzy, and Jacky Alisat's set, and of course, 7th Edition and Sykotyk Rampage, who completely made the wait worth it at the end! It was all in all, a good and effective memorial show, it accomplished what it wanted, but it just ran way too long and needed better organization.

To close today's post, videos! I got two videos last night, of 7th Edition covering "Cemetery Gates" and Sykotyk Rampage paying tribute to Johnny Cash with their original "Called In Dead"! Check them out below!





This post has ran longer than I thought, so I'll leave it there for now, but I have lots of news coming soon, so stay tuned! Thanks everyone! And no offense meant for any negative comments!