Cool Cherry Cream

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at Kool Haus in Toronto, Ontario | Photos

As I was reminiscing about the good old times in Toronto last night when I got home, I wondered what I should write about. After all, the title of this post is “Mika Concert”, but then again, the people, the atmosphere, is important too. And while sure, any old person can write about the Mika concert, only *I* can write about my exact experience. So, shall we call this… (am I gonna say it? really?)… “My Interpretation” of the Mika concert? Oh, BWHAHA!

Jennifer, Jada, and Stephen picked me up and off we drove to Toronto to the Kool Haus with little incident (well, except for the whole “no sneakers allowed” fiasco). Jada has an amazing ability to make friends with anyone, anywhere, and while waiting in line I found her suddenly taking a picture with the guy behind us. During the concert, she made friends with some people in front of us, and even signed the guy’s arm with her Sharpie. We also met up with the famous Steve after a rousing game of Marco Polo.

And that brings us to the Kool Haus. We were fairly close to the stage, about ten people back or so, so that was — wait for it — pretty kool! The one thing that pissed me off though was for some reason, my camera was having a terrible time taking any non-blurry pictures. Now, at Bayfest I was a bit closer and got some really nice clear shots (unfortunately, I didn’t quite understand the concept of “overexposure” at the time, and thus my golden opportunity to get some awesome concert photography and thus be invited to tour with them as their official tour photographer was wasted). At Van Halen, I was about as far back as I’ve ever been and got some really clear (but otherwise terrible) shots. At Mika, nothing. At all.

Anyway, we’ll start with the opening band, as that makes much more sense. They were called Creature and they reminded me a bit of Mindless Self Indulgence, but I haven’t really heard much of their stuff other than what my friends have played. They were alright, but not really my style right now.

I’ve realized that saying “not my style” doesn’t make much sense, because in future, it’s very possible that it will be exactly my style, and thus, I’ll look back and say “ho ho ho, Jenny, what a silly little girl”. So “not my style right now” it is.

There was quite a long wait between the opening act and Mika. Apparently Creature was only on for half an hour or so, and I think they came on at 8:00? But then, I want to say Mika came on at 9:00, and it seemed like much longer than that we had to wait. And I mean, I know what a long wait feels like, after Aero –

I do that a lot, don’t I? Namedropping, ish? Maybe only when talking about concerts, which I guess is okay. But right, I’ll stop now.

Anyway, as expected, there were times that I couldn’t really see anything, since I’m not exactly the tallest person in the room. For awhile at the beginning, once Mika came on, I couldn’t see anything except through other people’s camera screens. Which, by the way, made me super jealous, because pretty much everyone else was getting these nice, close pictures when they were only two or three feet in front of me! But there was one woman whose camera’s auto focus sucked, so that made me feel better, as bad as that sounds.

Once I finally could see Mika, my first involuntary thought was: “my god, he’s so young!”.

I’ve always been told “if they sound like they do on the record, then they’re good”. And Mika… didn’t sound quite like the record. He was good of course, but his voice just didn’t have that, that something. I want to say it sounds “sweeter” on the record, but I have no idea what I mean by that.

But then I think, well, who have I seen that sounded just like the record? But then I think, who have I seen that recorded the record less than twenty years ago?

During “Stuck In The Middle”, I think it was, Mika was playing the piano and suddenly stopped after the first line. Which I was like, okay, people do that sometimes. But then… nothing… Mika said something like “I can’t believe it… I’ve got the hiccups!”. I’ve always wondered what would happen if that happened, so I guess now I know. He just laughed and apparently got over the hiccups and started again. So, that was quite a special moment for our crowd.

Speaking of the crowd, wow! I read a review that said that Mika has really loyal fans, but really, they were great, singing along with everything. But I don’t know, maybe that’s just a young people thing. Mika really can’t be judged against anything else I’ve seen.

I thought I would know all the songs, but since this is a new leg of the tour, or a new tour, or something, they changed it up and played I think two different songs, one from the new album which I don’t remember and “Missionary Man” which is apparently a Eurythmics cover. I don’t know the original song, but I liked how they did it.

After “Love Today” I believe, they left the stage for what seemed like a rather short time and then came back to do the encore. When the encore started, suddenly everyone ran up like ten feet. I think someone said they moved the barriers, but I don’t know why they’d do that.They put up a white screen on the stage and suddenly there were bear silhouettes behind it, doing some rather violent things and singing “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”, and I didn’t quite understand it all, but apparently Mika and the rest of the band were in the bear costumes. Which I mean, man, it was hot in there for us, but for him to be running around a big heavy bear costume? Crazy.

Which brings me to two more points. Mika was super energetic, and while I usually can’t tell, it looked like he was really, truly enjoying himself, which makes for awesomeness. Also, during the band introductions, maybe it was just me, but I thought the female drummer seemed to get louder applause than the others. Which, if it was a male drummer with the same skills, would that have happened? I mean, it’s nice that people appreciate and encourage female drummers, it shouldn’t be because they’re female.

I’ve always been so non-feminist, but I always seem to bring these things up — like in yearbook class when I commented that the grade nine day page had no girls on it — because I like being stereotypical, I guess. It amuses me, but other people probably think I’m serious. I actually can’t say much about the drummer, because I didn’t really notice her, which was odd. Maybe that’s a good thing, because it is “Mika” the person and not “Mika” the band, and thus, it should be all about Mika, and the band should just be tight and present, but not really interfering with the reason we’re all there, y’know?

During the last song, “Lollipop”, they had confetti and giant balloons and Stephen managed to get a pink one and gave it to Jennifer. So, we just hung out afterwards, doing not much, and I eventually found myself arm in arm with Steve and Jada, strolling confidently into the room with all the roadies and equipment with no care from anyone, but then turned around and came back out. Steve, Stephen, and Jada went back in later, but Jennifer didn’t want to go in, so us Jens stayed outside and waited. Eventually we saw the other three apparently being escorted out by one of the roadies.

Speaking of roadies, this crowd particularly loved them, and started screaming every time they came near the stage. I just wanted to scream out — “I can’t believe I’ve found a whole group of people that have the same love for roadies as *I*!”.

While loitering around, we also met Cowbella, who was in Creature, and talked with her for a bit. She mentioned their new album and shooting a video (I think, but my hearing wasn’t too good) and that they might get sued because there’s another band named Creature, so they might have to become “I Would Never Name My Band Creature” or something like that. So that was pretty cool, I mean, she was just walking around the crowd and then, hey, she’s talking to us! We never did manage to get backstage or on the green shirt guy’s video camera though. Oh well.

I’ve decided I’m not writing a conclusion, because if I did it would be “All in all, it was fun and yeah” and that’s what I write every time because I feel I need a conclusion, but maybe we can just pretend it never ended and thus I can’t write a conclusion yet. Yeah, that’s it.