Saves The Day, Moneen, Choke – Live (April 24th, 2006)

Red’s is closing in a few months, and while not a lot of people are incredibly sad about it because the venue was never loved, most people are wondering what’s going to happen for the shows of that size, because there’s no other venue with that spec capacity in Edmonton yet. Nevertheless, we don’t need to worry about that for a few more months, and in that time, Red’s is trying to pack in as many concert as they can – and they have a few good ones scheduled. This was one of those: Saves The Day, Moneen and Circa Survive.

The first band stepped out decked out in Oilers gear for the playoffs, and people were surprised to see that they weren’t Circa Survive, but rather Edmonton’s own Choke. Turns out Circa couldn’t get pass the border into the country, so Choke was filling in for them for a few shows. This was disappointing for a lot of people, because many of the fans were there just to see Circa. Me, I was happy because I hateCirca, and even though I’m not a huge fan of Choke, they were a pleasant surprise and put on a solid sounding set. The highlight was by far their closer, Slow Fade, which, just as on the album, they played a great instrumental to cap it all off with.

Next was everyone’s favorite alt-rockers Moneen, and like always, they put on a very energetic set. I started out with their sound man/keyboardist doing a few blistering guitar solos to entertain the crowd before the band stepped on the stage, from then on, Moneen put everything into their show. Kenny Bridges jumped around everywhere, sprinting around the stage and jumping into the crowd. No Moneenshow would be complete without having Hughes’ dreads failing from side to side. They played a selection of songs from both albums including Are We Really Happy With Who We Are Right Now? andStart Angry… End Mad. On their second last song, Bridges gave his guitar to a lucky fan to finish the song off while he sang more freely with only the mic. They stepped off the stage to a great cheer and people patiently started to wait for the headliner, Saves The Day.

I’ll get this out of the way right away: I don’t really know much by Saves the Day. Other then a few songs here and there, and their new album, Sound The Alarm, I don’t know anything by them. So I barely knew any of the song they played (although a few were familiar), but Saves The Day were able to make up for that just by putting on a solid set. They didn’t do anything spectacular, they didn’t fly around the stage, or jump wildly – they just played their songs and that was it. Of course, there was some in-between banter, sometimes even with the crowd like: “I want your babies!” “Oh really, well what would we name them?” “Dude, she’s like 14” “Well, that sounds pretty illegal” “Not in Canada!” “Oh really? Canada’s awesome!” and so forth. They even stripped it down to the bare necessities for a nice acoustic song, before leaving the stage and returning for an encore after a rousing chant of “STD! STD!”

So really, it was fun evening. Nothing spectacular or incredibly memorable, just some good bands putting on a good, solid set.