Opening this show was locals Random Recipe. I believe I only heard of them through Pop Montreal, and only heard a couple of tracks through their MySpace page. They are composed of vocalist and guitarist Frannie Holder, rapper and singer Fab, guitarist, keyboardist, and bassist Vincent Legault, and percussionist Liu-Kong Ha.
As a whole they are hip hop and orientated with live drumming, and MCing and singing. Frannie seems to have a good voice, perhaps even classically trained, as it sounded almost operatic at times. As a whole, they play well together, and was fairly agreeable, they seem to need to work a little on songwriting, and putting a song together, as I enjoyed them, and their style, but I did not feel it too much. “Shipwreck” (on their MySpace page) is quite a catchy hip hoppy/folky song. Given time, and persistence they could definitely get quite good.
They recently released their debut LP, Fold it! Mold it!
Macy Gray of course was what everyone was waiting for. She attracted quite a diverse crowd, from youngsters to middle agers.
She had one backup singer, and all the musicians one would expect from a fairly high-profile R&B artist. Love and sexy people (the crowd of course) seemed to be a major theme, not really a surprise given her lyrical content! She had quite a stage presence, getting the crowd really into the show. She gave her band their full credit with introductions to each member, and their own brief solo on their respective instruments. Her backup singer was even given the chance to sing a couple of numbers all on her own. One being Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”. After this, Macy returned from a wardrobe change to perform Radiohead’s “Creep”.
Along with her stage presence, she told a few stories that segued into the start of the next song nicely. A two song encore was played, beginning with Queen’s “We Are the Champions”. It stated with just the guitarist playing only and eventually everyone was involved, including the audience.
I am not a huge Macy Gray fan, however I left knowing it was a good show, and those that are fans definitely enjoyed themselves.
Too Much Music (is a good thing) 