Last night at Lee’s Palace, The Super Friendz reunited and brought the house down. Holy shit. That was truly one of the best shows I have seen in a long time. I had never seen The Super Friendz in the ’90s, or during their first reunion tour in 2003 or 2004. When they announced they would be playing Halifax Pop Explosion in October, I debated going… all the way to Halifax… for a single band. Fortunately they announced a Toronto date, and those two shows were the entirety of this tour. I’m very happy they decided to come to Toronto.
While I had never seen The Super Friendz, this is the closest as you can see because Adam decided to film me halfway through the song. I have seen The Flashing Lights at least four times, but I suspect that my list is not complete. When Matt Murphy fronted The Flashing Lights, he controlled the stage like no other. He was the frontman’s frontman. When he played in City Field, he just stood in the background, when he played a few solo shows, again he barely had any presence. The last time I saw him own the stage was at the Guy Terrifico CD release show.
Last night, last night, Matt Murphy was back into his form. He was the showman I knew him to be, he even tried to get up on the drum kit, but that failed. He didn’t hump the drum, though.
I was super-excited to see them perform Drew Yamada’s Undertow and Charles Austin’s Rescue Us From Boredom. Yes, I’m not only in it for Matt Murphy… but he really had the best Super Friendz songs.
The set list wasn’t perfect, but it was damn good, and they avoided much of the terrible reunion album Love Energy.
- When They Paid Me
- Undertow
- One Day
- Come Clean [Listen here]
- Rescue Us From Boredom [Listen here]
- Restricted
- Better Call
- Karate Man
- Fireflies
- Little Things
- Let You Go Cold
- Just Say So
- The World’s Most Embarrasing Moment
- Down In Flames
- 10 Lbs. [Listen here]
- Girls And Their Boys (encore)
- Absurd Without It (encore)
- Up & Running (encore)
There were some obviously missing items like Stop-Start and Forever A Day and Prattle On, but I guess it couldn’t be 100% Matt Murphy.