Shakespeare, My Butt

I've always said that the most pleasant surprises are the unexpected ones. Not unexpected as in out of the blue, but rather the sort of you didn't think would happen in a million years through reason of circumstance.

My girlfriend is as much a music fan as I am and we share pretty similar tastes. Which is a fairly good thing, as I'm an intolerant Music Nazi at times. When she studied out in Buffalo, NY for a year, one of her college friends introduced her to a fairly obscure Toronto band called Lowest Of The Low. They had been quietly building a following in Toronto and surroundings with a independent LP with the wonderful title of "Shakespeare My Butt". I'm not going to try and describe their music - try here as I'm rubbish at it - but when she played me the album and its follow up "Hallucogenia", I was converted to their mix of rock guitar and well-written lyrics.

The Lows split up in 1994, apparently the band hated the sight of each other at the time. And that, so we thought, was that.

Fast forward six or so years and the band got back together for a few live shows, a feat in itself as the split was so serious that apparently the various band members hadn't talked to each for six years. On re-discovering their vibe together, they released a live album "Nothing Short of a Bullet" recorded in Toronto and Buffalo in 2001. And today they release a third album, "Sordid Fiction" in Canada.

So, a fairly obscure-ish band in their native Canada, unknown in the US outside of upstate NY and, in this country, couldn't get arrested. But Caroline and I liked them, and we made a note of buying the new album when we could get around to it.

Their website got updated about a month or so ago and Caroline kept an eye on the tour dates, presumably wanting to spot a few old Buffalo haunts. When suddenly she called me in. New tour dates on the site... "Fleetwood, London, Warrington, Blackburn, Manchester".

Manchester? In the UK? What on earth are they doing here?

Turns out that as part of the In The City music convention, Canadian Music Week had put together about six different acts for a little mini-tour, culminating in a showcase night at the Walkabout. And The Lowest of the Low were selected as the headliners. Once we'd found this out, plans were made to head to the Walkabout.

In true rockstar style, the band were to be found, er... manning the merchandise desk. Minor dieties they may be in Toronto, but here they were mucking in like any band. They were a little surprised when I headed straight for the LotL stuff and asked about the new album - chatted happily to the bassist, and a bit later to the keyboardist. Caroline headed over a while later and came back with "...Bullet" and "Sordid Fiction" and a replacement copy of "Shakespeare My Butt", her tape having worn out over the years. And she chatted to the band to get it all autographed, to a man they were friendly and genuinely happy to discover some fans over here.

The late night was rounded off by the Lows, only a half-hour set but enough to convince me that at a "proper" gig, i.e. not one past midnight in a half-empty bar after seven other bands, but on home ground they could be a really quite awesome live act.

So there you go. Not an earth-shattering story, I admit. But that's how my girlfriend and I got to see one of her favourite bands, despite internal arguments, the width of the Atlantic Ocean and about a decade of time.