B.A. Johnston came back to the Slice, but unlike his last show, he had it going on, though, as always, he didn’t think so, telling the laughing audience “not to applaud, and to have some self respect.”
While he isn’t going to be playing Carnegie Hall anytime soon, he has no aspirations to do so. He isn’t an opera singer and is no Beethoven or Eddie Van Halen, but he is a lot of fun if you have a sense of humour.
He sported his trademark sailor’s hat, stripped off several layers of sweaters, danced on chairs, jumped on tables, rolled around on the floor, got the grinning crowd to sing along and rushed around with manic energy playing a battered acoustic guitar and two keyboards which didn’t seem to work for him as he took good natured shots at local bands the Scallywags and the Moby Dicks.
He joked, “this show is like the movie Groundhog Day — the hobo always dies in the end,” he chuckled, checking his iPhone .
“Mom just texted me, she said you’re going to fail. LOL” he giggled.
“You’re going to hear all the hits today,” he laughed, playing crowd favourites like “Jesus Christ is From Hamilton,” “Deep Fryer in my Bedroom,” and newer songs about a girl’s room mate not going to sleep, while he was trying to make it on “Your Roommate is a Couche-tard.”
He does appeal to the lonely slacker in all of us with no money, no money and no future. If he sang song parodies, he would be Hamilton’s equivalent to Weird Al Yankovic. Though he did end his show by singing the Littlest Hobo theme and a few bars of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” while standing on one of the tables.
He knows how to put on a show, jumping off the stage, doing the splits, getting audience members to sing along with his songs about couche-tards, douchebags, stealing from work by putting steaks down his pants and deep fryers in his bedroom all the while cursing at his malfunctioning keyboards.
He wandered out into the street again and stood on a chair he placed in the middle of the street singing his last song as the good-natured crowd surrounded him and almost got hit by a car, whose driver probably wondered what the hell was going on.
He told the people to stick around for the Ketamines, “a great new young band who are tour toned and ready.”
They sure were.
They’ve definitely picked up their game. They’ve spent three weeks on the road, stopped home to play incendiary show, and will be gone for another three weeks.
They played a loud, ear-achingly loud set of tight , energetic garage rock and punk, sounding like the bastard child of the Stooges and the Gruesomes from the first note of “Teenage Rebellion Time” from their new CD “Spaced Out.”
They had waves of delay on their voices and guitars. Paul Lawton sang lead while thrashing our barre chords on the guitar while bassist Martine Menard sang ghostly, echoing harmonies. Drummer Ryan Grieve thrashed away at his drums.
It was mostly a set of original music other than a punkish cover of “Jet Boy Jet Girl.”