“Mick Thomas” Concert

Railway Club - Vancouver, BC
Seymour at Dunsmuir - upstairs
579 Dunsmuir
Friday, July 25, 2003

Parking: Across the street at Impark - $4 for evening. It’ll look like you got shut-in - the gate will be down, and doors Looked - but buzz the BCIT guard to get let into parking. Gate rises When you trip the metal thing in the pavement.

Photo from Mick Thomas Website of Mick Thomas.

No disability access to club.

Posted as start time of 9pm - start: 10:30pm

Mick’s website: http://www.mickthomas.com

Reviewed by: Caesi Bevis and Paige Garnett

We’ll chalk this evening up to an experience…

The Railway Club: The concert was billed at starting at 9pm, so we got there about 8:15pm in order to get a great seat in the small cozy wood floor and walled club, with the train and track hanging from the ceiling. After climbing a steep flight of wide stairs, we arrived at the top, and came in and found seats fairly near the front at tiny round tables, joining to other late 20 something women, who both seemed quite nice. The place is small, with a smoking patio out on a deck outside the place, and inside has a bar that runs long-ways toward the back - over the stairs we just hiked up - and then in the back area by the “foot” of the bar, there is a small window where you can order pub munchies, like potato skins, wontons, popcorns, etc. at very reasonable prices. Having not had dinner, we opted to order some food. So, we placed and paid for food orders of potato skins and wontons, and were told to return in 10 minutes. About 10 minutes later we had the potato skins after waiting a few minutes, but the wontons were easily another 10 minutes later, due to food order back-ups. The potato skins weren’t bad at $6.95 for two potatoes worth, but the wontons weren’t edible, although the quantity was fine. Trying to get back to our tables carrying food and drink was difficult to say the least, as people crowd the narrow passage between the bar and the wall - the only way to get back to tables at the front of the club.

As a side note, not impressed with the kitchen condition or the cook who would put her fingers in her mouth while presumably thinking…only to moments later handle food with the same unwashed fingers. Not cool. Had I not been really really hungry, with no noticeable open restaurants down that mountain of stairs, I would have asked for my money back.

A Funny Moment …there is a window… Where we were sitting, we hadn’t really paid much attention to the window, which we were facing, that looked out on to the smoker’s patio. But, while we were bored waiting for the concert to start, and casually talking, at one point we happened to look up exactly at the moment to be eye -to-eye, with a young 20-something cute male in a backwards ballcap about to “go down” on his shish-kabob he was having for his dinner. It probably wouldn’t have been so funny, except he must’ve been thinking ‘what this looked like’ - as he turned absolutely beet red! To us, it was just ‘a guy eating dinner’ - but once he blushed purple -red and couldn’t even look at us to the point of turning his head away, he ‘gave it away’ - the non-verbal queues were pretty clear where his mind was. He ended up presumably telling the women he was with, as they then strained their necks to realize there was a window there and where we were. So after some teasing waving back and forth, the guy finally turned his back to us to finish eating his shish-kabobs. You take the highlights of the evening where you can find them - but this was funny! This party -of -three was also a party which bailed about 45 minutes into Mick’s playing - we heard them tell someone else they were going some place to “have fun and dance.”

The Concert: Although Mick Thomas was there when we got there, and warmed- up around a more reasonable - forgivable 9:15-9:20pm, he then left the stage not to return to 10:30pm!!! This had us already throwing invisible daggers his way at his rudeness - maybe he was running on Australia time? We were in an awkward spot, as we had come to review him as a favour to The Town Pants, who would be performing after Mick. One of “our” (The Town Pants is our “house” band - with international recognition for their accomplishments in the Celtic rock arena) band’s members had mentioned Mick was / is his idol and inspiration - equating him to “like a Jimmi Hendrix or something.” So - we made a special point of scheduling to cover him. Unfortunately, we don’t share his level of enthusiasm for Mick. I think we might learn more about what our band sees in him from his CDs.

Mick’s warm-up was impressive. He has a sultry voice - we thought sort of a cross between like a Bob Dillon at times, and maybe an early Donovan. This was a “wow”…
However, once the show began, it was like - ‘what did you do with the guy who was tuning up a little over an hour ago’? Mick’s style changed, and so did his voice quality. He also must have assumed he was playing to a room that really new his music well, as he put in so many stories between each song, it was hard to tell whether he thought he’d been hired to be a storyteller, or a singer. Most of the banter was incredibly
b o r i n g….not so much for Mick’s fault - but combine a bad mike with an Aussie accent, and it was very hard to follow his stories. People around our table were constantly frowning, or leaning forward to say “did you catch ‘that’ - what was ‘that’? It was a real strain and a pain.

He did have some cute song ‘hooks’. One was a song written about 100 Goths who had been left behind on a film shoot at a quarry in Australia located next to a cesspool after the last bus had left. Another song, equally great, was “Someone Else’s Suit”, about a mix-up on the purchase of a used pin-striped suit - supposedly a true story experienced by Mick - where he reached in his pocket only to find a receipt from 1951. After getting upset and contacting the seller, who admitted that the suit probably hadn’t been cleaned, he thought - “well, it is probably good for at least a song”. So, he wrote one.

As for the evening, Mick appeared without his band, so in all fairness maybe he is better with them, without the storytelling, and maybe better in a studio with editing, than on a live stage. We thought most of his songs sounded way to similar - to the point a hungry (bad unedible wontons!) Paige commented, “He should just go back to Australia.”

The definite highlight of his performance was when Aaron Chapman of The Town Pants joined him on a tune, playing the recorder, and French harp.

We bailed at around midnight. We have no idea when our favourite band The Town Pants went on to play. For us, an early start on Saturday to cover Indy and an hour drive back to the office tonight, was good enough reason to leave the club of boring, and go get some sleep. After saying our goodbyes, we planned to see The Town Pants at one of their upcoming events. [Hell's Kitchen Party - Park Royal Pub - 540 Clyde Ave
West Vancouver - July 28th - 9pm]

Good luck, Mick, we wish you well - but you lost your audience that night. A lot of people were leaving, if you noticed. Way too much storytelling with a garbling mike. Only one person knew your music well enough to sing along - that we noticed. You did come off as humble, though, maybe just work on reading your crowd better - and have a better mike for talking. Probably Mick was just out of his element. He is playing Calgary next at a larger venue, and maybe to a crowd that contains more of his fans.

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