Concerts of 2018

Interestingly, 2018 is marked more by the concerts I didn't go to rather than the ones I did.  Looking over the calendar, I think the only pop/rock concert I saw was David Byrne in August.  I ended up passing on They Might Be Giants (because I would have had to stand the whole time).  Indeed Lowest of the Low is playing Lee's Palace (I think the opening act is starting right about now).  While this was vaguely temping (and I probably would have gone had my friend been in town to make the gig), I just don't like standing at a concert and almost never consider it worth doing.  I probably could have gone to see 54-40 again at the Horseshoe, but thought it would be pretty much a repeat of the last time I saw them.

I couldn't find any tickets in a reasonable price range for Simple Minds, and Collective Soul was playing way out in the boonies (and it would have been all but impossible to see them and get back at night*).  I went back and forth a bit on Nick Cave but decided that since he was being such an obnoxious jerk about artists who are boycotting Israel that I would boycott him.

I think I only saw Tafelmusik once (at one of their free summer shows) and Amici once.  I didn't see Scaramella at all.  I think I had planned to see them once, but it either fell through because I forgot the date or I had gotten sick.  I pretty much stuck to the TSO for my classic music fix, though in Dec. I did see an organ recital of Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur at St. James on Bloor.

For classical music with a modern twist, I did see the Kronos Quartet in May, and I saw TorQ several times in 2018, including once up at York University.  I did take my son to the York University concert, as well as to a performance of Dvorak's 9th Symphony by the TSO. 

All that said, I still saw vastly more music than movies (either in at the cinema or at home).  I basically only saw movies if I was taking the kids (Incredibles 2, Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War).  I was pretty sure I was going to take my daughter to see Ralph Breaks the Internet, but that fell through for a variety of reasons including one movie theatre couldn't be bothered to keep their listings straight in terms of whether the movie was 2-D or 3-D!  I'm leaning towards seeing Alfonso Cuarón's Roma tomorrow in the theatre, but that might well be the only serious movie** I've seen on the big screen for all of 2018!  Movies just aren't really a big part of my life anymore.

* Of course, I find sometimes even local transit is so terrible that it makes it impossible to see in-town concerts, and I gave up on a Skye Wallace show when the TTC let me down badly.

** Not entirely sure if I should count Hotel Artemis, starring Jodie Foster, though I did see this in 2018, and I saw Brown Girl Begins just a week or two prior to that.