March 21, 2002 - Back Alley, Calgary, AB Posted By Dementia Well, I just had the opportunity to see Big Wreck live for the first time. Wow! What a wicked show. Man does that boy Ian have soul. They are one solid band. I missed them on 2 previous occasions when they came through here. I can see why I was so dissapointed when I did. I'll never miss another show of theirs that's in the same city as me again, that's for damn sure! Forrest got a leg cramp during Blown Wide Open, so they actually had to stop. Ian made a big production out of it and made everyone scream WAAAH at him. hehe. Good stuff. It was by no means a capacity crowd, but the crowd was loud and extremely enthusiastic. I did my fair share of screaming and applauding. Anyways, just thought I'd share that with you all. Well, their set lasted pretty close to 2 hours. They took the stage at about 11:10 and played to about 12:55 I'd wager. They opened with Undersold. The set included the aforementioned as well as Head in the Girl, How would You Know, Look What I Found, That Song, Under the Lighthouse, Kneedeep, Ladylike, Breakthrough, Inhale, Oh My, Everything is Fine, Blown Wide Open...that's all I can remember at the moment and these songs are not in the set list order that they played. They did 1 encore that consisted of Mistake followed by The Oaf to close the show. As far as improvisation went, they started one song off by playing Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2. Damn, I can't remember which song of theirs they broke into after that. They also broke into 2 other songs that were both unfamiliar to me that weren't theirs. It should be noted that I was quite stoned for this performance so my short term memory kinda took a vacation, hehe. Their attitude was great. Apparently this was their first time playing live in awhile so Ian joked about us having to "bust their cherries". Ian wasn't all that talkative at first but seemed to open up after That Song. During the courses of That Song the entire place was singing, and singing quite loudly I might add, so Ian let the crowd sing the Second Course. This seemed to set the tone for the rest of the show. The applause was quite loud after every song they played considering the size of the crowd that I hesitate to estimate. Ian made a few jokes about the whole Pamela Anderson Hepatitis C incident and the fact that Tommy Lee is clean when she pointed him out as being the one that gave it to her. He followed that by saying "one too many dicks I think". I think they liked to be up there again after their respite. Band interaction was jovial and relaxed. They all seemed to be in good moods. Ian's vocals and guitar playing were incredibly good last night. The whole damn band sounded good. I'm glad I had the chance to see them in a small venue. The sound in the club I went to generally sounds pretty good. It helps that they have a pretty kick ass sound guy. Lots of delay and reverb when needed on the vocals making Ian sound pretty juicy. The mic fed back on him a number of times due to where he was resting his hand on it. He kept forgetting I guess. That's about all the little tidbits I can think of at the moment. It was an awesome show! Hope this paints at least somekind of an ambience for ya. Dementia