Lithium Magazine

Review & photos by Mike Bax

www.myspace.com/jessemalin
www.myspace.com/clothesmaketheman
www.myspace.com/thehotshowers

“Ew. Why does he have to get so sweaty?”
The female Springsteen fan beside me, after shoving her way up to the stage towards the end of Jesse Malin’s performance.

Preface:
With the Toronto Film Festival in full swing, rumours were running rampant that Bruce Springsteen was going to grace the stage with Jesse Malin for a song or two at this show. This fabrication was exactly that – a falsehood. It didn’t stop the venue from selling out, having a bunch of music fans clamouring for rush tickets as the venue opened at 8:30pm, or the occasional news van and camera crew staking out their roost in front of the Horseshoe on the odd chance that The Boss might make a token appearance.

So, while it sullied the experience a bit for the die-hard Jesse Malin fans in attendance (I’m including myself among them), the additional attendance of rubber-neckers and lookers-on did wedge the venue to beyond capacity last night. These Springsteen hopefuls got to behold a bonafide Jesse Malin rock show, and I’m sure a few of these people otherwise not schooled in the musical stylings of Mr. Malin walked away impressed with his bands musical prowess – even if they didn’t get to glean a TIFF story staring The Boss at the Horseshoe.

Here’s the jist of the show:
Malin’s touring openers, Money Brother, had some equipment stolen in Washington, and didn’t come into Canada for the Montreal or Toronto shows. Montreal band The Hot Showers made the lengthy trek into Toronto to play the opening slot at the Horseshoe at Malin’s request. Their half hour set was energetic, with the band playing a musical set of music in-line with a sound one would expect at a Malin performance. Props to the bassist in the bad-ass Jello Biafra tour shirt for rocking some old-school punk apparel as The Hot Showers performed.

Local four-piece Clothes Make The Man took up the direct support slot for Malin, announcing that their drive in from Dufferin & Dupont took them about 15 minutes. They also played a lively set of original music that fit right in line with the evening's urban / punk expectations. They wound up inspiring an older gentleman and a younger woman to dance around with reckless abandon throughout their set – the older fellow shimmying along as the woman flailed her arms about like the music she was hearing was music everyone else at the Horseshoe weren’t privy to.

The minute Clothes Make The Man wrapped up their performance, the crowd literally surged forward and wedged in the front portion of the Horseshoe so tight, breathing was a challenge.

After 45 minutes or so, Jesse Malin took the stage with the St. Marks Social and bombarded the capacity crowd in attendance with a full volume live version of ‘Burning The Bowery’, the lead song on the St. Marks Social’s new album Love It To Life.

Malin is a musician who knows what he wants when it comes to the way he presents his music. I watched him sound check a few hours earlier, and he worked his way around the instruments and sounds coming from every aspect of the bands’ stage gear like a neurosurgeon might work on a patient. The evening’s performance  was peppered with mild requests like “gimme more monitors” and “vocals up” as the band steered their way through a veritable treasure trove of Malin’s finest material.

During ‘Wendy’, Malin asked that the song be broken down, and the band stripped out an extended bass/guitar/drum solo allowing Malin to address the audience and let them know they were in for a long night of music. During his stellar live rendition of "Bastards Of Young" (by the Replacements) he asked that the crowd sing along. There was a moment during the first few choruses that had me wondering if we’d be able to pull it off, but as the sound crested the half way mark, the Horseshoe was showing off it’s fair share of Westerberg fans during what was one of many magical moments during the show.

During ‘Mona Lisa’, Malin worked his way into the center of the crowd and had everyone in the venue sit down on the floor with him – something he said he started doing after 9-11 – and performed a wonderful version of the song in a circle of Torontonians. Malin wrapped up the initial set of this evening’s show with ‘All The Way from Moscow, a song he told everyone in the venue that he wrote abroad while on tour with Gogol Bordello over the holiday season.,

Four songs into this evening's show, the venue was sweltering hot. The closer to the stage lights everyone was, the more sweaty everyone became. I can’t imagine how hot it must have been under the direct gel lighting on stage for the 100 minutes Malin and his band performed. To their credit, the band never let up.

Before the eight song encore, Malin talked at length about his childhood, regaling us all with a rather humorous tale about pulling his penis out in a Spanish class and slamming it onto the desk right in front of a girl who had been ridiculing him as a young teen. He got expelled from school for two weeks, and his grounding at home wound up being quickly lifted when his mom told her boyfriend why he was expelled, causing the boyfriend to burst out in hysterical laughter. Malin wound up dedicating ‘Almost Grown’ to his mom’s boyfriend.

I’m omitting a lot of what I consider to be one of the finest club shows I have seen this year in this review. It felt we were all witnessing something really special the entire evening at the Horseshoe during this show. In my opinion, an appearance by Springsteen would have been TOO MUCH for me.

I do have one more little moment to share however, and that's the band ripping out a bang-on cover of the Bad Brains ‘Pay To Cum’ four songs into the encore. It felt like a bit of a middle finger to all of the Springsteen fans who kept looking to their left all evening during Jesse’s performance (towards the rear stage door) hoping for something that was never going to happen. While the song only lasted a hundred and five seconds or so, it was a wicked send back to Malin’s punk roots, and a welcome addition to an otherwise flawless performance.

Setlist:
Burning The Bowery
Hotel Columbia
Prisoners Of Paradise
Black Haired Girl
Downliner
Wendy
Queen
Burn The Bridge
Bastards Of Young (Replacements)
Mona Lisa
Black Boombox
All The Way From Moscow

Encore:
Almost Grown
Revelations
Modern World
Pay To Cum (Bad Brains)
Cigarettes and Violets
Solitaire
St. Marks Sunset
Brooklyn