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On September 23rd, 2000 I joined a gaggle of great friends on a musical boat cruise featuring a trio of acts: Neil Leyton, Declan Nine, and ’69 Duster.
I had tickets to see Ravi Shankar at Roy Thompson Hall the following night and I strongly suspect that I had asked my best-friend-who’s-a-girl Anne-Marie for couchspace for the night. She shared an amazing studio apartment in an old warehouse at Queen and Dundas with her not-yet-husband Jay McBride, a long-time musical frontman who had just started a new band called ’69 Duster with his friend (and Juno award winner) Dale Martin Martindale.
No doubt Anne-Marie had undertaken the very easy task of convincing me (and Doug and Eric and Genny) to come to Toronto a day early so we could join them on the boat. No problem, I was always happy to spend time with Anne-Marie (and Jay for that matter). Still am.
And so we went early and had a great time pre-hanging out at their place (we always had a great time hanging out at their old apartment…so many interesting people had nifty apartments in that building and everyone seemed to have an fairly open-door policy, so it was very social). Eventually we were joined by some more awesome friends, like Tracy and Suzanne, Stephanie, Karen, Marek, and on and on. Finally push came to shove and we somehow extracted ourselves so we could make our way downtown, where the boat was docked directly behind the CN Tower.
This was my first-ever musical boat cruise and I must say that I was a little surprised that the vessel simply tracked back-and-forth along the Toronto waterfront for the entire evening. I don’t know what I had expected – that we would sail across to Buffalo or something? – but I hadn’t expected that. Sure, it made for a consistently pleasant view, but it was the same view over and over again. Ah well, all the more reason to belly up to the bar inside and listen to some live rock and roll.
I don’t recall much about the two opening bands but I looked them up and am pleased to see that they both maintain an online presence. At the time Neil Leyton had just gone solo from his band The Conscience Pilate and he was still a few years away from working with Scandinavian garage rockers The Hellacopters, whom I saw in Finland in 2006. Unfortunately Declan Nine offers up significantly less online info, though I can report that they did make it onto a couple of Toronto compilation albums back in the early 00’s (pronounced: “the early ooze”).
I do, however, vividly remember watching ’69 Duster and really enjoying them. Some of you might recognize singer Dale Martindale as the frontman from Images in Vogue* (though I wouldn’t have), and one of the bands guitarists (Jay was the other) Sean Kelly currently plays with Nelly Furtado, Coney Hatch, and Lee Aaron, so these were no slouches, to be sure. And like I say, they rocked. Though I still found myself bouncing outside to re-enjoy the view again and again…it was a boat cruise after all, and I wanted to feel like I was on a boat.
And with boating being a drinking activity, I spent a fair amount of time and money at the bar too. But overall this was indeed a swashbuckling pile of floating live rock and roll, just as the $15 ticket promised.
*I must admit that I was rather chuffed to sit down and co-write a quick little song with Dale at Jay and Anne-Marie’s wedding. It was a pretty lousy song but it was my first collab with a Juno winner.
Todd Man Out 