Face To Face
with gob, Saves The Day, Chronic Future
Tues. Nov. 7th 2000 @ The Warehouse, Toronto

Back in high school, I remember having a cassette tape that I listened to in my walkman almost every day on the way to and from school. On one side it had Face to Face – Big Choice, and on the other side it had gob – Too Late.. No Friends. So I guess in a way this was a show I had been waiting like 5 or 6 years to see. Adding Saves The Day to the bill definitely sweetened the deal as well.

Tickets sold really well in advance for this show. So well, in fact, that they had to relocate it from The Guvernment to The Warehouse in order to accomodate everyone. I guess that wasn’t really a surprise. The thing I was wondering was, what band were the majority of kids going to see?

Well, I can tell you who they definitely didn’t come to see. The opening band, Chronic Future. Despite what I consider to be a pretty horrible name, I didn’t think that these guys were all that bad. They did a pretty good job of warming up the stage with their hip hop/hardcore mixture. Comparisons with bands like 311 and The Ernies came to mind as I watched them jump around the stage.

Unfortunately, the crowd really didn’t show them any respect at all. This seems to be a growing trend that I find quite disconcerting. At first, people just stood and watched and waited to see what their friends would say about the band. Then at some point, I guess one of the cool kids decided they weren’t “punk” so the heckling began.

Chronic Future were good sports about the whole thing though, and they somehow managed to keep smiles on their faces despite the circumstances. I’m sure they’ll have the last laugh at some point when they get a song on a future Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, and then all the braindead kids will realize that they’re supposed to like them.

Saves The Day were up next, and you know all the young girls were pushing their way up to the front for this band. They were all waving and giggling and talking amongst themselves about who the cutest member of the band was. (I’m not joking!)

Saves The Day put on a good show and the crowd reacted very well to all their material with a lot of finger pointing and singing along. I thought the sound for them was great, especially the guitar sound which came across sounding exactly like it does on their recordings. There wasn’t a lot of on-stage banter; they just made the most of their allotted time and churned out song after song. The set list included a brand new song, and also a non-acoustic version of one of the songs from their acoustic EP. They ended with Holly Hox Forget Me Nots, which is supposedly their favourite song to play live. Or so I’ve heard.

Then it was gob’s turn to rock the house. It seemed to me at this point that most of the audience was there just to see gob. From the moment they delivered the opening note of “Fuck Them”, the place just exploded with bodies flying everywhere. Meanwhile, I was standing amongst the fray trying to protect my camera and get some good pictures. (None of which turned out.) gob steered clear of their new material for the most part, which I think was probably a wise decision. It always makes me wonder though, when a band puts out an album that gets bad reviews and they shy away from the material, it’s like they are admitting that the critics are right.

gob’s entire set was a lot of fun, but there were 2 highlights for me. The first came early on, when I looked back during one of their songs and I noticed some old dude with grey hair and a long ponytail right in the middle of the mosh pit going crazy. It just goes to show that gob are fun for people of all ages.

The second highlight came during one of the many breaks between songs, when the drummer actually told Tom that he was going to “skullfuck him” after the show. That rules.

Of course, gob also threw in some amusing bits of humour to keep people entertained, including a spot on take of Eminem in the middle of the song Extra Extra. They also had a brief interlude with some Bon Jovi material too.

gob never look or feel out of place at a bigger show. I suppose that may be because they are used to playing larger venues nowadays. They have wireless guitar patch boxes, so they can just run and jump all over the stage unrestricted. They were a lot of fun to watch.

The headliners for this show were Face To Face, and honestly, I was feeling that their set would be somewhat anti-climactic. It would be tough to follow up gob, and it seemed like a lot of people were getting ready to leave.

Wow, was I ever wrong. Face To Face walked up on stage and blew me away. They opened with 2 songs off the new album, which sounded great, but it wasn’t until they followed those with 3 songs from the self-titled album that I realized that the majority of people were indeed there to see Face To Face. The place went berzerk.

They cleverly avoided playing songs from Ignorance Is Bliss, and gave the crowd exactly what they wanted by playing tons of older songs. Of course, they also threw in a good mix of songs from the new album. In some ways it seemed like the show was just a chance for them to advertise for the new album, and Trevor was just a salesman up there, constantly reminding people to go out and buy it, and quizzing them on the title. I have to admit though, if Face To Face’s live show is just a marketing tool to sell their albums, then it’s definitely one hell of a sales pitch.

Face to Face have been touring as a 3 piece band for the past few months because the second guitarist picked up and left in the middle of the tour. It didn’t sound like anything was missing though. The band seemed to be really enjoying themselves on stage, and it translated to the crowd. They were tight, and sounded great. There was one problem with the sound at the Warehouse though, because on certain songs the vocals were way too loud and completely pierced my eardrums. My ears were still ringing a day or two after the show.

One thing I have to mention is that Trevor kept doing this funny chicken dance thing with his leg where he’d spin around in circles while flailing his leg around. It looked ridiculous, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I’m surprised the punk rock kids didn’t label him a sell out for such wackness.

I must say that this was a really good show, I was very impressed. I didn’t expect it to be anything special, but I ended up having a great time. I had never seen Face To Face before, and I had kind of lost interest in them over the years. It was really cool to hear a lot of songs that I hadn’t listened to in a long time. Of course, the other bands on the bill were great as well. Although the tickets for the show were somewhat pricey, I came away feeling like it was worth the money, and worth the drive to T dot. — Sean