Each time I’ve seen Kim Mitchell in concert, it’s been unique, and I’ve seen him nearly a dozen times over the years.
From sod wars to corn comments to man-buns, hipsters and butt cracks, I’ve seen it all. And the latter three came together Saturday night here in Chatham.
Kim Mitchell is the performer I have by far seen the most over my lifetime. His music resonates with me – rock & roll with down-to-earth lyrics.
And he’s a darned good showman. Plus his longtime music buddy Peter Fredette has incredible vocals.
When the Capitol Theatre management announced back in the summer Kim and company were coming to Chatham to play the Capitol, I booked three tickets for the family. Our daughter, Brenna, saw Kim play at Chatham Ribfest a number of years back, and can recall a bunch of his songs that she enjoyed, and even had for a while on her hip-hip crammed iPod. To me, that’s cool.
So I scored us great tickets and we attended Saturday night. Kim and his band rocked the place.
It was loud, but not too loud. You felt the drums hit you in the chest, but your ears didn’t ring after the show.
About five or six young men seemed to “enjoy” the show, however, a little differently than the rest of us. They really wanted to get up and rock out to Kim, popping out of their front-row seats early on to get right up to the stage, adult beverages in hand.
No problem. Been there, done that. Except that every time these guys got up, one dude with a man bun and another with a hipster knitted cap, nearly left their jeans behind in their seats. People sitting behind them had too clear a view of their butt cracks every time.
Umm, belts rock too, people.
These guys were having so much fun that theatre manager Heather Slater visited with one of them during the intermission, explaining how their antics were interfering with the enjoyment of the show for other patrons. He countered that if the band encouraged people to come up to the stage during the performance of some of Kim’s biggest hits, he’d be getting back up.
There’s no stopping that. As I said, Kim rocks.
So, towards the end of the night, as the band kicked into “I Am a Wild Party,” the guys got up again, but only after other folks went up to the stage first. A couple of dozen people politely excused themselves from their seats (we’re Canadian, eh?) and went up front to dance and sing.
Ironically as Kim belted out “Go For a Soda,” another young fella with a man-bun lit up a joint right up at the stage. I saw the puff of smoke roll upwards and then caught the familiar whiff.
Not a rare sight at many concerts, especially outdoors, but I was very surprised to see it inside the Capitol.
Thirty years ago, I may very well have been one of those people up front. Only, I’d have been at an arena, outdoor venue, or bar. Sit-down theatres such as the Capitol aren’t really the places for such, ahem, a combination of beverages, herbal medication and music enjoyment.
As I mentioned, this butt crack incident is just one of the odd experiences I’ve had seeing Kim. I nearly passed out from heat exhaustion one summer night at The Kee to Bala (an incredible venue in the heart of the Muskokas), where I had the good fortune of seeing Kim play several times. I had spent the day in the sun at a friend’s cottage, got sunburned and dehydrated.
It was hard to focus on the band. Plus, I was at a bar in cottage country, in my early 20s, with someone else as the designated driver, and was drinking water. Water!
But the strangest occurrence seeing Kim Mitchell took place just north of Toronto, at Kingswood Music Theatre, the outdoor venue at Canada’s Wonderland that seated about 15,000 people. It was perhaps the mid-to-late 1980s, and I loved the venue. We were only about 10 rows from the stage, so we had great seats. But what we didn’t have was great sod.
The folks sitting back on the grass, however, did. They ripped that sod up in large chunks and fired it forward. At one point, I got hit on the back of the neck with about a two-foot section of sod. I looked around and fired it forward.
The power of social media
On Friday morning, a review of Facebook unearthed an image of a wind turbine twisted over on itself on 16th Line in South Kent. Chances are you read our story on it already.
We were one of the first media outlets to post a photo to Facebook and Twitter, and I must say, it quickly spread, and continued doing so through the weekend. By Monday at noon, that image, taken on my cell phone, had a reach on Facebook of nearly 654,000 people. It had been shared nearly 6,400 times.
That showcases the reach of social media, and for us, it was humbling. But it also illustrates the shallowness of social media, as hundreds of people commented on the picture without reading our story.
Still, our article received thousands upon thousands of views over the weekend as people took the time to learn more than what the photo said.
Hello, or goodbye, kitty
OK, after a recent letter to the editor, I should come clean. I no longer call our cat “Satan.” He’s not really evil.
But he is a nincompoop. And stubborn as hell.
He loves to slip out of the house and into the cold. Generally, he’ll hang outside for a few minutes at most and meow and claw at the door until someone lets him back indoors.
But on one cold night recently, he got out as my wife and daughter came home. Little did I know that they all forgot to let him back indoors, thinking the other had done so.
He was outside for more than two hours. When I found out, I sent the teen out to track him down, thinking he’d be cowered under one of our vehicles, shivering his butt off.
Nope. He couldn’t be found at first, but when Brenna finally spotted him, he was sprinting across our front yard – AWAY from the door. He was having a blast running around in the snow.
He wouldn’t come to her, but when I opened the side door, he flew inside, none the worse for the wear.
Of course, I thought I had the power to bring the little guy indoors simply be calling his name. Wrong.
My next attempt to get him indoors came on a warmer evening. I opened the door and he was right there on the side porch, stretching out and relaxing. No amount of coaxing could get him to get up and come inside. And when I set foot on the porch to pick him up, off he went.
Silly feline (or should I say, silly human, for thinking I had some form of control over a cat?).
Perhaps the maniac will wind up as an outdoor cat after all. I’m not opposed to the idea, although I wonder how well he’ll interact with some of the other cats of the neighbourhood.
And then there’s our pond. Will he go fishing? Or will he, the clumsy lout, fall in?
