BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition February 2019

photo by Danny Kresnyak
Colter Wall
Commodore Ballroom
January 19, 2019
Colter Wall’s knife edged baritone-voice cut
through the sold-out Commodore Ballroom like a
prairie wind blows white across the yellow grass of
the Qu’appelle Valley.
The 23-year old ginger bearded son of
Saskatchewan’s 14th Premier took the stage in
a pork-pie Stetson, denim shirt, blue wranglers,
black silk scarf and worn brown cutter-toe cowboy
boots. The first four songs of his set was a solo
performance, just Wall and his Martin acoustic,
strumming chords to the legend of Wild Bill
Hickok and the delight of a hard drinkin’, boot
stompin’ crowd of yahoos, hipsters and hell raisers.
Let’s get this out of the way, due to Wall’s
political lineage some have called the credibility
of his “Outlaw Plainsmen” image into question,
but these people have never seen his show. While
Colter may not have been born on a dirt farm
like Johnny Cash, or raised in a train car like Merle
Haggard, neither were Townes Van Zandt, Gram
Parsons or several other privileged martyrs of
country music’s mythological past.
LIVE
Once his band, the Scary Prairie Boys, joined
him — a group of hairy Nashville impresarios
under wide brimmed hats — the show took
on a livelier tone. Wall’s music is riddled with
the scars of classical country influences. The
guttural emotive vocals on his first hit, “Sleeping
on the Blacktop” has appeared in the films Hell
or High Water and Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri, reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s
posthumous holy war anthem “God’s Gonna Cut
You Down.” The song “Calgary Stampede” off his
recently released Songs of the Plains got the crowd,
many of who had crushed up against the stage
barricade, to open up and several small two-step
dance floors became visible amongst the monolith
of sweat and flesh.
Wall performed a slow-tempo version of Billy
Joe Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train” that brought
the crowd back down to impassioned focus,
before the raucous Wild Dogs. For an encore,
Wall brought out his own rendition of a classic
written by legendary Texas songwriter Ray Wylie
Hubbard, and popularized by original outlaw Jerry
Jeff Walker, a popular honky tonk sing along, “Up
Against the wall, Redneck Mother.”
• Danny Kresnyak
Travis Scott
Rogers Arena
January 25, 2019
A theory: Travis Scott is the distant scion of Willy Wonka,
Astroworld is his chocolate factory, Kylie Jenner is his darling
Oompa Loompa, and you’d be lucky to snatch a golden ticket.
Astroworld swept across the world with the velocity of
the miniskirt in the ’60s, or the Black Death in the 1340s. The
second leg of the eulogized tour was kicked off at Vancouver’s
very own Rogers Arena, as rabid masses swarmed to worship
at the sold out altar of La Flame.
Living in the Western Hemisphere, you would have to be
deaf and blind to not have caught a whiff of rap superstar
Travis Scott; amid his near airwave monopoly, upcoming
Superbowl performance, and babymamadrama, sensory
deficit seems like the only plausible explanation.
Devastation hit Houston, in 2005 with the demolition of Six
Flags AstroWorld. “They tore down AstroWorld to build more
apartment space,” come the eternal words from Scott himself
(GQ), who was 12 year old Jacques Berman Webster II at the
time. Ironically, it was the existence, but more importantly the
death of AstroWorld that turned Webster to music, to cope
with the day-to-day humdrum previously assuaged by the
amusement park. And so began the steady metamorphosis.
Little Jacques met Kanye, dropped the “$”, and the rest is
history; yet no lackluster mixtape could’ve prepared the world
for the genius of Rodeo — the widely recognized rebirth of
trap music — and later its (true) successor Astroworld
The opener was none other than Cactus Jack Records
signee Sheck Wes, whose sleeper hit Mo Bamba erupted mid-
2018 and has been overplayed at house parties ever since.
Love it or hate it, when else would you hear 20,000 voices
scream “Fuck! Shit! Bitch!” in perfect unison?
The elaborate reconstruction of the stage took at least
30 minutes. The space was in constant motion throughout
the night, with the giant Scott-head, trippy graphics, and a
functional roller coaster spanning across the arena; your eyes
would not know where to look.
Scott held the crowd on an energical plateau despite
the ebb and flow of the tempo, with high intensity tracks,
like “No Bystanders” and “Butterfly Effect”, rousing as much
enthusiasm as slower songs, like “Drugs You Should Try It”
and “Love Galore”. Then came “Sicko Mode” and it was over,
and just :(
When it comes to the spectacle itself, Scott’s show is like
no other; it pushes and shatters all limits of the performative
paradigm, transcends into uncharted territory and teeters at
the very precipice of reality.
• Maryam Azizli
photo by Zee Khan
photo by Kira Clavell
KISS
Rogers Arena
January 31, 2019
An electricity emitted off the skin of the fans that
filled a nearly sold out Rogers Arena. Nothing could
sour the mood of the kids in KISS makeup rolling
around the hallway floor, nor the parents who
watched over them while holding nine dollar cups
of Budweiser.
Before the show had even begun, I had seen
or bumped into forms of “The Demon” and “The
Starchild” a hundred times over. Some fans simply
donned the classic KISS facepaint, while others
embodied the characters in full costume. One
Gene Simmons look-alike slithered his tongue out
salaciously at me while crossing paths down a hall.
Compared to the real Gene, he was a bit inadequate.
KISS exploded onto the stage with “Detroit Rock
City,” igniting flames complemented by fireworks
and sparklers, engulfing the arena with the smell of
sulfur. This was a common thread throughout the
show.
Other standout moments were Gene Simmons
being elevated high above the stage, shrouded
by mist and thunder, spewing blood as the band
prepared for “God of Thunder.” Paul Stanley ziplined
from one stage to another platform at the other end
of the arena for “Love Gun,” and the disco-classic “I
Was Made for Lovin’ You.”
Perhaps most impressive was, beneath all the glitz
and glamour of the production, were four talented
musicians who could still play their instruments
raw and well after all these years. I was in awe
witnessing some of the greatest minds in music
business perform. The band ended their set with the
megahit, “Rock And Roll All Nite.”
• Johnny Papan
February 2019 41