CD RELEASE PARTY
April 15th, 2004, Hard Rock Cafe, Toronto
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photos by Steve Briggs
photos by Harold Staats
It started out normally enough, if you consider Toronto's best night club, CLUB 279 and the expectant hush of the crowd waiting for the first new Wild 'T' & The Spirit album in years normal...
The band needed no warm up tonight - they were plenty hot and ready to rock...
By the time they were reaching the conclusion of their blisteringly intense two hour rock show, they were positively molten...
Show Review by Eryn Rene Vogn
original article here
Full House, High Energy and Great Expectations! Tony and his band have managed to come out with a fine package of tracks. Varying from classic rock to blues and funky grooves to mad wanking. TRUE BLISS is a combination of all of the above. It's noticeable that he has been focusing wholeheartedly on the songwriting. All of the tunes are lyrically engaging, and of course he hit us immediately with probably the strongest of the tracks, "Dangerous" - honest hard driving rock n' roll. Among my favourites is "All the Kings Horses". Tony gave us his brief political statement early in the show with this one. It's an easy grooving slightly funky rock tune with a clear message - "lay your weapons down" and onward he moved to more fun topics. All The Kings Horses has a pretty catchy hook line too, that's easy to remember, as great hooks should be.
"Jungle Love" is fun and spookily vibed. He scats a strong intro to guitar noodling that gives it sweet jazz flavouring. Some elaborately arranged shots to bring in the chorus melt into Tony's jungle voice - nice touch. Various arrangements in this song - some hammer-ons, a strong solo and chord twangs between lyrics. "Hard to Believe", a more upbeat tune, nice changes and another clean catchy hook line.
Wild T's love song to ex-girlfriend "Jenny" is like a blues mantra in her name. He calls her name about 40 times in the song . Terrific organ on this track from Rob Angelow. Then Tony introduced High School Confidential "for all the lesbians" in the house and everyone had nostalgic fun with that one.
"Can't Get You Outa My Mind" is a soft cool organ-based tune featuring Jeff Healey. No he was not present tonight. Tony added in a bit of humour about Healey driving to the gig - all in good humour! You can definitely recognize Healey's stylings on the CD, mixed between vocal tracks.
A few more tunes with some hard driving rhythm section, scatting, funky licks and strong solos. Then another fave of mine "Happy Song" with a funky organ background played with slightly different stylings from the CD. And happy it is with Guenther Kapelle and Julie Long adding in unison vocals to 'I wanna see you get down'- total feel-good tune in ole' skool funk style.
For the finale we got "Midnight Lady" with a complete jam down between guitar and bass. We know the show's come full circle. Guenther and Tony go full throttle on this one, and the Tony we all know in intricate guitar wanking out to the max, no holding back had the audience screaming appreciation!
His encore was our unexpected treat, Neil Young's "Down By the River". It was completely Tony's unique version with his own melody diversions - very intriguing. Great night of Wild T guitar magic. Get the CD. Check out his site www.wildt.ca for tour info. What can I say, TRUE BLISS is all up and up from here ! Thanx Tony, you've given us more worthy tuneage once again...
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