Scissor Sisters cut up Toronto

Date published: March 10, 2007

It finally happened. After months of waiting, I finally got to see Scissor Sisters in concert this Wednesday. Some of you may recall how I was previously supposed to see the Sisters in October, but the date was canceled.

It took me about 2 hours and 45 minutes to make it up to Toronto from Rochester. My friends Derek and Rick were with me so time passed a bit faster than if I had driven alone. After we made it to our hotel and checked in, I gave my friend George a call so we could figure out dinner plans (we had about 3 hours to kill before the doors to the venue opened). We ended up going to Astoria Shish Kebob House on Danforth Ave. Great Greek food was consumed.

We headed over to George's for a little bit after that, where I called Lew and John (two other Rochester friends) to see where they were at. After George's we stopped by a bar for a bit and finally ended up going to Koolhaus, the venue, at about 8, which is when the doors opened.

There was a short wait to get in but nothing more than about 8 minutes. The bigger wait was actually the coat check line. We could hear music playing as we got there, it was the opening band, Small Sins. They were pretty good, something I'd definitely listen to again. Of course, I wasn't there to hear them though, bring on the Sisters!

After Small Sins finished a DJ can on. He sat at his little table and played music for what must have been about half an hour... so it was a little after 9 at this point. After the DJ finished, I thought "Okay, here they come!" The stagehands brought out three wooden sticks with wigs on them. Wait, what is this now? What followed was about 40 minutes of prerecorded songs that the wigs were "performing" even though they didn't move. In between songs, one of the wigs would "speaking" to the crowd for just a minute. The first 10 minutes or so was funny, especially when one of them said "You guys are great, we just love this town... this town that we're in right now." I noticed in between songs that each of the sticks had a distinct voice. After half an hour of this, it was getting a bit ridiculous, what a crowd killer. No one wants to sit and look at inanimate objects when they are getting all excited to see a band. They did 6 songs, but by the 5th song people were annoyed and you could hear faint booing. Apparently Scissor Sisters know that the band, Wigs on Sticks, isn't liked a whole lot because near the end of the Scissor Sisters set, Ana said that they sold literally 4 Wigs on Sticks t-shirts. :)

So the wigs were finally taken off stage. Here come the Sisters! Nope, wrong again. The DJ came back for another 30 minutes. Scissor Sisters didn't come on until about 10:15. BUT, once they finally came on, it was awesome!

I stood stage left right near where Babydaddy usually stands. Rick and Derek each being about 6 inches taller than me had a better view but my view was good enough. I actually felt bad a couple times for the short women around me and would swap places with them so they could see better. I started out about 6 people back from the front row, but by the end of the night I was only one person away from the front. There were no seats or anything; it was just standing area, so it was easy to shimmy closer to the front over time.

Anyway, the concert once they finally came on was great, they were on for about an hour and a half, saving their two most famous songs (Take Your Mama and I Don't Feel Like Dancin') for the encores. It was awesome to see them in person, and I'm still glad I got there when I did because it would have been much harder to get so close to the stage. Don't forget to check out some of my photos from the trip.

Oh yeah, just to finish up talking about the trip, Thursday consisted of walking around Toronto for a bit, and then finally heading back to Rochester, where we totally got lost when I had to exit to get gas, which extended the trip back by 45 minutes.