While a spry looking Andy Cairns and his lively Therapy? crew were showing the packed El Mocambo crowd that they could still rock like men in their 30s, outside the club the rag-tag Friday night posse of Urge Overkill’s swankly chapeaued Nash Kato, Teenage Head’s Gordie Lewis and Ramones producer Daniel Rey were making idle conversation about Hamilton high school rivalries before heading over to the Silver Dollar for the Soundtrack Of Our Lives.
Pushing through the enormous crowd gathered at the club’s front door, I was shocked to be greeted by the mischievously grinning Soundtrack singer Ebbot Lundberg already decked out in his stagewear (a custom-cut black tunic emblazoned with twin white racing stripes down the front) who shook my hand with his left because in his right he was tightly clutching a bunch of recent singles on Davy Love’s Magnifcent Sevens label.
Although it was just a short time to the scheduled 1 am lift-off but it would be another 20 minutes before Lundberg and crew would make their grand entrance. Unbeknownst to the fidgety shoulder-to-shoulder assembly, there were still some adjustments to be made to the gear set up on stage. As we stood by and watched in amazement, a hairy mad-scientist of drum tech took a seat behind the kit, took out a tape measure and fastidiously checked and corrected the height of each cymbal, presumably to meet the exacting specifications of Soundtrack flailer Fredrik Sandsten. Hilarious right? Well, the punch line is that when the group finally appears, the first thing that Sandsten does after taking his seat on the drum stool is re-adjust the height of all the cymbals!
