So my friend Edith wangled tickets to the Alice Lounge concert featuring Erasure. I had already been thinking about trying to see them; my English-but-now-Canadian friend Richard had talked excitedly about seeing them in Toronto; he's a long-time fan from his teenage years. "Be sure to ask Andy Bell if he remembers the balding bloke in the front row with the pregnant wife. Oh, and tell him that I went and saw Erasure in concert in 1987. I used to change my hairstyle each time to match the band's; now I can't do it anymore because I don't have any hair." Well, perhaps he'll be comforted to know that Andy Bell now also sports a close-cropped 'do with the slightest suggestion of a receding hairline. He also apparently has a preference for flowery Hawaiian shirts (though at the tasteful end of the spectrum). Anyway, the show was terrific, though brief (the band did "Alien", "Solisbury Hill", "Oh L'Amour", "Love's Young Dream", "A Little Respect", and... I forget the other one. Darn. Anyway, afterwards, I went up to the band and delivered Richard's message; I think they were taking the piss, but they did ask if the baby was born and "will they call the baby Andy?" Heh. Oh, and we all got to line up with the band in small groups and get our photos taken with them; I asked Andy Bell if his smile was worn out yet. ("Almost.") Anyway, it was a good distraction from the events of the day, though from the W hotel, we did get a good view of Howard Street and the many police motorcycles racing up the street.
Which leads me to how my boyfriend spent the evening: he joined one of the street action protests and helped block traffic. Unfortunately, he got to witness a woman doing a hit-and-run. Luckily, it sounds like the man she hit will be all right, but he did bleed a lot. She picked the wrong group to mess with; several of them got her license plate number. Maybe he was foolish to try to prevent her from getting through the intersection — frankly, I think he was foolish — but that's no excuse to run someone down. Pretty appalling.
On another note, Michael had a conversation with an older woman there (in her fifties, I think) who exclaimed at one point, "I never should have voted for Bush." Think about it. In the span of two years, this woman went from voting for Dubya to participating in civil disobedience on a street corner.
That's truly surreal.
By the way, all Erasure lyrics can be found here:
