Friday, January 29th - R.I.P. Big Bop
The Big Bop will be closing at the end of this month and thats extremely sad news for anyone who loves to go to shows in downtown Toronto. A lot of my favorite concert moments from Toronto took place at The Big Bop. It was three amazing venues in one bulding. On the main floor you had The Kathedral. The second floor was The Reverb, and past that up a little set of stairs on the third floor was Holy Joes.
I saw some really amazing bands play there, as well as some extremely terrible ones. Some nights you would show up and it would be you and 22 other people, other nights it would be so full that if you stepped outside you would have to wait until someone else left till you could go back in.
Here are a few of my favorite memories of The Big Bop in no particular order.
1.) I saw Chris Colohan from Cursed fall through the hole in the stage. I also saw Dee Prescott from I Hate Sally fall through the same hole while sporting a cast on her already broken foot. I didnt understand why they never bothered to put a piece of wood over it to stop that from happening, but it did make it exciting.
2.) I saw This Is Hell play at Holy Joes. The venue is very small and they packed the room with all their closest friends from Toronto and played harder than I had ever seen. I remember they did a cover of Bulls on Parade by Rage Against The Machine and Liam from Cancer Bats did vocals because Travis didnt actually know the words.
3.) I saw Strike Anywhere play at The Kathedral and someone jumped into the crowd and kicked my flash so hard the battery door popped open and I lost all my batteries. Luckily my good friend Russ Myers was also shooting and had some extra batteries to lend me so I could keep shooting.
4.) I saw AFI Play at The Reverb to a crowd of less than 200 people for a pre release party they had before Decemberunderground was released. That show was really great because I had just moved to Toronto and it was one of the first shows I was able to photograph while living here. I have one of the photos from that show in my portfolio still.
Im sure I could go on forever with memories from the many shows I saw there, but instead I will leave you with a photo I took in December for Toronto Life Magazine.
Leave a comment and tell me your favorite memory at The Big Bop.
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Thursday, January 28th - Flashpoint
They are filming an episode of Flashpoint across the street from my house right now so I stopped by and took a few photos. Im pretty stoked to see the episode now. I love that show. Go watch it if you havent seen it yet.
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Tuesday, January 26th - The Envy’s Bus
This is The Envy’s tour bus. Its school bus number three for them as a band. Once upon a time I went on tour with them in their first bus, as well as their second one. This one looks identical though, so it brought back some good memories getting on it the other day.
I also took this photo with my new Yashica T4 that I just got the other day. Now I have way too many cameras to know what to do with them.
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Monday, January 25th - Lights
Here are a couple outtakes from my photoshoot with Lights I did back in December.
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Monday, January 25th - The Artist Life in Hamilton
Here are some photos I took this past Friday in Hamilton ON of my friends band called The Artist Life. Ian told me he didnt want to wait another two weeks to see the photos, and Jake just told me that his computer will explode in 10 minutes if I dont get them up on my site. I wouldnt want anyones computers to explode, so I am making sure I get them done right now!
Check out more photos from the show HERE.
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Friday, January 22nd - The Midway State
Tonight I went to Hamilton with my friends in The Envy to shoot the show they played with The Midway State, The Artist Life, and Stereos. It was a great night and I had a lot of fun seeing all my friends that I havent seen in a while now.
Here is a photo of The Midway State during sound check. I will post more soon.
