They formed the core of the El Mocambo baseball team, which played for years against the ad hoc team I was on in what we called The Wine and Vinyl Workers League.
Generally though, the El Mo heavyweights were a far more civilized lot than could found elsewhere. Sure, sometimes a rowdy patron might find him or herself hustled briskly from the top floor stairs to the bottom, courtesy of the bouncers. Reggae buffs found their groove there.Īnd what about a club with a published poet as head bouncer? This was the late Reggie Bovaird, likewise a connoisseur of conceptual art who could talk the anger out of just about anybody. A blues collector I know crafted his taste by hearing the likes of Howlin’ Wolf at the club. The El Mo was the early ’70s FM radio of clubs, home to just about anything and everything. Musically, Yonge and Yorkville saw the 1950 meet the ’60s. The El Mo became an outpost for University of Toronto students.” But the El Mo arrived just as there was a change in 1971 of the drinking age from 21 to 18. “In the Village you had (Gordon) Lightfoot. “Before the El Mocambo there was a battle in the city in the ’60s between the (Yorkville) Village and Yonge St.,” says Bob Mackowycz Sr., former Q107 program director and an established Toronto cultural historian. What the El Mo did bring on - starting in 1972 when the building was bought by high school buddies Tom Kristenbrun and Mike Baird - was an entirely new atmosphere for a Toronto club. “But it wasn’t the greatest place to play.” “It was always the place to play,” remembers Bruce Good of The Good Brothers, the de facto house band for years. A steep flight of stairs leads between the two.
Two stages against two walls are found in two claustrophobic rooms, one above the other, both with low ceilings. Inside, the El Mo has long been just as ersatz-looking. Structurally self-effacing, it appears to back away from the street, easily missed if not for its tropical neon signage. Alas, the El Mo has never looked the part. They are adult versions of a child’s magic castle. They are a necessary part of any era’s dreamscape. It adds up to a gas, a record that belongs alongside Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! and Brussels Affair as among the best official live Stones albums.Famous nightclubs always look like famous nightclubs whether as watering holes for high society or low-life criminality. The Stones often sound as if they're enjoying hunkering down on a smaller stage, giving enthusiastic performances that avoid sloppiness. This means Live at the El Mocambo presents the Stones as something between a hard-working club band and conquering heroes hawking their latest ware the set list is very much of its time, lacking such warhorses as "Satisfaction" and "Street Fighting Man," and it's better for it.
Rolling stones el macombo club toronto plus#
Wood encouraged the group to play a bunch of blues standards and they agreed, balancing these chestnuts with some of their own oldies ("Let's Spend the Night Together," "Brown Sugar," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Honky Tonk Women"), a good chunk of Black and Blue and It's Only Rock N Roll, plus "Worried About You," a ballad that sat on the shelf until Tattoo You. Such an exhaustive portrait is welcome as Live at the El Mocambo does represent a bit of an odd moment for the Stones: it captures them caught between the over-sized jam session Black and Blue and the audacious revitalization of Some Girls, a period where Ron Wood was just getting his sea legs.
Rolling stones el macombo club toronto full#
A full album's worth of El Mocambo recordings circulated as a bootleg for years, but the overdue 2022 official release contains the entirety of the second night's show along with three bonus tracks from the first night, amounting to a whopping 23 tracks. Only four tracks from the El Mocambo performances showed up on Love You Live, amounting to a side of blues covers on that double-LP.
The purpose of the gigs, the only concerts they played in 1977, was to generate source material for a live album that turned out to be Love You Live. Early in March 1977, the Rolling Stones played a pair of surprise shows at the El Mocambo, a 300-seat club in Toronto.
0 kommentar(er)
