Little Foot Long Foot, Diemonds, White Cowbell Oklahoma Concert Review

Sep 30 2012 – The mother of all bar concerts shook downtown Toronto like a rock and roll tsunami on Friday night. Lee’s Palace was the epicenter as three of Toronto’s best and commercially viable indie bands took the stage for a night of loud music. The night featured over 3 hours of music, 1 CD release party for 2 CD releases, 2 burlesque dancers, cut off jean jackets, lotsa long hair, 2 gorgeous female lead singers, and even a couple of chainsaws. The night even had 2 big corporate sponsors out, and you know when the big companies throw in their weight you get the hype machine going loud and strong. I personally hate seeing corporate brands at rock concerts but its a sad reality that these bands need the financial sponsorship as CD sales certainly arent going to pay their bills (the worst ever was that big bloated U2 nonsense that felt like one big Blackberry infomercial). 

As the night progressed each band featured more and more people on stage – Little Foot Long Foot had 3 people, Diemonds had 5 and White Cowbell Oklahoma had as many as 10 people on stage at any given time, but more on that later.

Little Foot Long Foot, version 3.0, kicked off the night and as is often the case the early timeslot did not provide them with a large audience that they fully deserved. Their set was by far the most pure of the night and relied 100% on the music and not on gimmicks or style. Substance was the word that can best describe their hard rocking 45 minute set. Lead singer/guitarist Joan Smith notified the audience that the band had a new keyboardist (Jeff Heisholt) and this was just his second show. [Ed. Note – we broke that story first last week here] 

Little Foot Long Foot 2.0 played their last gig at Comfort Zone on July 12th as part of a great bill with Biblical and Radio Moscow. A residency was planned at Bovine for every Wednesday in August with some really cool bands planned to share the bill.

For those that don’t know, Little Foot Long Foot 1.0 was the duo of Joan Smith on guitar and vocals and guitar and Isaac Klein on drums. Their debut album “Harsh Words” was released in May 2009. Later they were joined by Caitlin Dacey and producer  Ian Blurton and released the powerhouse CD “Oh, Hell” in June 2011.

When Dacey quit the band to focus on her other band Bella Clava, LFLF 2.0 had been a roll. They were playing incredible live shows. But the good news is a band of LFLF’s stature attracts strong replacement candidates and that’s exactly what they got in Jeff Heisholt, a pro musician. Heisholt surely will never replace the sultry eye candy that is Caitlin Dacey but the organ parts were perfect and the songs didn’t suffer at all. Naturally the backing vocals can’t be in Dacey’s vocal range and were at times were a bit off, but they will mesh with the songs better with time.

Little Foot Long Foot is still about Smith’s powerful vocals and Isaac Klein’s drums. Klein is simply the best drummer on the local scene. Not content to simply keep the beat with the snare and hi-hat, Klein is just as likely to pound it out on the floor tom, his drums are a critical element to the melody of the song in songs like Nothing, Missing The Point and, well, most of them.

The show opened with Half Man Half Mule from Harsh Words and covered most of the songs from “Oh, Hell” including Kickface, Sensual Pounding, Missing the Point, Sell Out While You Can, Nothing, Neko Case Hate Fucks Kurt Cobain. They closed the show with She Looks To You with Joan switching to a Fender Jazzmaster guitar to play slide.

If you have not heard Little Foot Long Foot we strongly recommend you catch their next show in Toronto and be prepared to join Smith on a classic rock journey of the highest magnitude. We give their performance a 9 out of 10.

Diemonds took the stage next and delivered a 40 minute power rock set right out of the late 80’s. This band has thoroughly captured the image and sound of a past generation and are thundering the tunes in the tradition of Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, KISS, and Black Sabbath. This was also an occasion to celebrate the release of their CD named Bad Pack and the rockers headbanged their way through their set.

Continuing the trend, this band also featured a female lead singer named Priya Panda whose voice and sultry charisma made many in the audience take notice. Dual guitars from C.C. Diemond and Daniel DeKay showed that this band is far more than a cool image. Aiden Tranquada on the drums and Tommy Carvalho on the bass gave a booming rhythm to the night that kept it loud. Diemonds have the image and the music to make it huge, they just need to get the right record executive in the room on the right night and they are on their way to arenas.

We interviewed this band recently (you can read it here) and Tranquada told us that Snoop Dogg was an influence but we didnt hear no Shiznit beats on this particular night ;-) We also have a contest to win their upcoming CD entitled Bad Pack autographed by all 5 members of the band ‘(details in the interview article). 

Ah shoot why not repeat what we said for Little Foot, Long Foot. If you have not heard Diemonds we strongly recommend you catch their next show in Toronto and be prepared to join Panda on a power metal rock journey of the highest magnitude. We give their performance a 9 out of 10. 

White Cowbell Oklahoma were the headliners tonight as this was their CD release party for Beunas Nachas. The band consisted of 7 people but they often had other people on stage for various theatrical reasons. White Cowbell Oklahoma were incredible musically the whole night, but if that was not enough, their on stage antics were a visual feast for the partyers tonight. Clem C Clemson, Joan Smith and the rest of the gang sported cowboy hats and out-Texased many bands we have seen in Texas. The set lasted a staggering 110 minutes and the combination of the surreal visuals with the sweet riff groove music put the audience into a higher place.

Sparks flew from cowbells. Burlesque dancers shook their booty to the groove. A chainsaw helped toilet paper fly into the audience and carve up an ice sculpture. A South American drug lord blew white powder on the crowd. The band dispensed many shots to the audience as well as themselves. Get the idea? The theatrics were simply spectacular so much so, that I often forgot to focus on the amazing music being played. 

A certain alcohol brand was mentioned so many times that it seemed that band was offered 100 bucks each time they mentioned the brand – and they said lets screw this corporation out of 100 grand. What seemed annoying quickly turned into amusement because it was so over the top and ridiculous that it certainly was intentional. In fact a WW1 German soldier character came on during the set and delivered an infomercial about the alcohol. Pure marketing genius – if you sell out you may as well make fun of yourself in the process. All good fun.

Let’s be consistent and repeat what we said for Little Foot, Long Foot and Diemonds. If you have not heard White Cowbell Oklahoma we strongly recommend you catch their next show in Toronto and be prepared to join Clemson on a southern bluesy jam rock journey of the highest magnitude. We give their performance a 9 out of 10.

Verdict: 9.5 out of 10. Tonight was a rock and roll party – plain and simple. This is a rare case of the whole outperforming the sum of its parts. If you notice we gave each band’s performance a 9 out of 10, but the overall magic of the night and the combination of 3 incredible bands easily provided T-Mak World with one of the best bar concert experiences for all four of our editors in attendance. Kudos to whomever decided to put these 3 powerhouses on the same bill. We even saw a few members of our other favorite Toronto hard rock band TimeGiant in attendance – next time we can only hope its a foursome and TimeGiant is on the same bill. As it stands what we saw on Friday September 28th goes down as T-Mak World’s Best Bar Show Of All Time (lets just carry the “over the top” theme of the night and go big oureselves ;-) …. all in good fun of course). We leave you with some YouTube footage of the mayhem below.

Additional photos from the show here.

Review by Terry Makedon | Photos by Terry Makedon and Michael Litt
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