Our Recap Of Mike Haggith's November 2021 Live-Streamed Concert, Including Din Album Updates!!

After way too long of a delay, let's give a proper full-post recap to local/Thompson, Manitoba alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith's newest live-streamed concert, which took place on his Facebook page on Saturday, November 13th! This is another long one, running for over two hours & twenty minutes, so seats back, and tray tables must be in the upright position before takeoff! First thing I'll note is that this live-stream starts with very noisy background hiss through his new microphone, which is very unfortunate, and he gives up on it after 3 minutes. The episode proper is themed around Mike's old local power pop/hard rock band The Din to commemorate the recent release of the deluxe edition of their 2016 debut album "Give In To The Din", from which Mike planned to play the original nine-song album front to back, and he started with "In Search Of The Perfect Moment" (6:50).

After interacting with live viewers in the comment section, Mike next plays "Flux" (14:30), complete with a "drum solo" by Din drummer Brandan Glew in the comments section (how else would he play his solo from the studio track given the setup?). Mike calls up Brandan afterwards for a phone interview during the live-stream, which was a replacement option after attempts to have him pop up in a separate webcam feed didn't work out. Amidst lots of self-deprecation, joking remarks, and irreverence, Mike & Brandan reminisce on The Din's local run, including their original live album "The Din Does Laundry", why "Differences" didn't originally make the cut for "Give In...", and their release party for that album, which you'll be able to hear on the upcoming posthumous live album "Technically Live", and Mike even shows off a physical copy of it on camera, so is there anything to break from that?

While the video is mirrored, he shows the back cover on camera long enough for us to get the full tracklist for the CD, which confirms that every original song played that night will make the cut, except Mike's solo song "Of Cars & Criminals" for unannounced reasons, but you can hear that very performance of it on Shaw TV's OnStage episode of this concert, plus The Din's acoustic version from "The Din Does Laundry". In it's place, four outside covers that Shaw did not include for copyright reasons ("Learn To Fly", "The Old Apartment", "Times Like These", and "With A Little Help From My Friends") will surprisingly make the cut, while the spoken word intro to "75" ("Leamington, Ontario") is included as a separate track to lead off the album. Afterwards, they discuss the fire alarm that went off at the release concert, before Mike plays his next Din song.

The track in question is "Alleyways & Apartments" (37:10), after which Mike & Brandan discuss recording that song at Mission Control Studios, a possible lost take that they could have put on the new deluxe edition CD, and this week's share contest to determine a cover song Mike has to cover next month. His next song is "Out Of My League" (47:30), followed by Mike shouting out The Din's primary studio producer Daniel Schmidt, and then playing "75" (1:01:05) after some lengthy discussion with Brandan about it's lifespan before The Din & "Leamington, Ontario". Kicking off the second half, Brandan helps set up the next song that he wrote, "Remember" (1:14:05), followed by the renamed "Potato (Should've Known Better)" (1:27:25) and "The Rose" (1:30:55) played in short succession. Next, Mike plugs his new album "Bridges" and conducts the draw for the winner of his other test pressing of it.

Ironically, the winner of the test pressing was Obsession frontwoman Valerie Powley, who also won the share contest to pick Mike's mandatory cover during this live-stream (more on that in a bit). After both guys promote Mike's recent and upcoming albums and teased some possible further unreleased content, they gave a tentative release date of December 26th (yes, Boxing Day) for "Technically Live", so keep that date in mind! Brandan signs off before Mike ends the "Give In To The Din" playthrough with an abbreviated version closer "A Drive Through The Peninsula" (2:04:20), and afterwards, Mike moves on to the share contest to pick his mandatory cover for this month, and the aforementioned Valerie Powley had the most engaged share of the October video, so she got to pick Mike's cover. Rather than a joke or troll song, she nominated Bryan Adams's "Cuts Like A Knife" (2:10:45).

I'm not a Bryan Adams fan, but Mike's unplugged take went over well! The last 6 minutes features Mike talking to commenters, promoting his current activities and new/upcoming albums, including his "Morning Jam" series of daily Facebook song recommendations and his still-yet-to-debut YouTube album review series. Entertaining (if very long) watch, especially for fans of The Din and Brandan's usual comment section input from Mike's prior live-streams, so definitely give the whole thing a watch below, and stay tuned for more from Mike when it rolls in! Thanks everyone!