Billy Corgan, Toronto

Wed Jul 6 10:36:29 2005 EDT (-0400 GMT)

Billy Corgan

I saw Billy Corgan at the Carlu in Toronto on Saturday. What can I say, the man can do no wrong. I’ll admit the sound isn’t that great in the Carlu, the two opening acts were OK (the sound didn’t help) and he never introduced his backing band (which are on his website). But when it’s time to Rock, Billy delivers.

The set list was basically his new album, with an AC/DC cover for an encore. The album sounds even better live, largely because the driving synth drums make the experience more like a club than a performance. The stage show was impressive with metal work art used for the instrument stands and an iTunes visualization style background presented on a wall of light cells, 200 by 700 – ish, that could project about 256 colours each. Speaking of Apple projects, out of one of those sculpted steal instrument stands sprung a iMac G5 which keyboarder Brian Liesegang worked with. Matt Walker is back touring with Billy and the final piece of Billy’s backing band was Linda Strawberry lindastrawberry.com who keeps a very interesting tour blog (“David Bowie told us to listen to the Arcade Fire” — “lunch with Robert Smith was cool”).

I’m not sure that I can give a review so much as I can just say it was a very postive experience: exciting, exhilarating and comfortably familiar. Billy is on my list with Neil Young of artists I have to see whenever I can, and he won over Neil’s appearance in Barrie at Live 8 Canada, so to offer a review of a show that I’d unconditionally attend is a little disingenuous. All I can say is it was an amazing show and you should catch it when it comes to your town (or at least the David Letterman performance on BillyCorgan.com).

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