Well, I’m finished with school for good this year, and it’s about time. I have a lot to catch up on here — I still worked quite a few evenings at Massey Hall over the last month, so I have a bit of a backlog of reviews for you. Before that, though, quick news: Phoenix’s new record Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is in stores today. All right! Check them out here. I’ll review it as soon as I get it.

Also in the news, the Calgary Folk Music Festival has revealed its full 2009 lineup! Highlights include The Decemberists, Bell Orchestre, Steven Page, Alejandro Escovedo, Sarah Harmer, Chad VanGaalen, and so many more … the list is fantastic. And of course, you’ll see reviews of all four days here.

So like I said, I’ve seen a fair number of shows that haven’t been reviewed here yet, so I think I’ll just condense them into this post — they’re all belated anyway and I’d rather not put them off any further. Going in reverse: I was a patron for the first time at Massey Hall (after seeing nearly fifty artists there since September) on Saturday, where Joel Plaskett made his seated venue debut accompanied by the Emergency, his father Bill, and songstresses Rose Cousins and the palindromic Ana Egge. The first set, a brief 45 minutes, was just the Plasketts and the two women, mostly acoustic — slightly twangy and very intimate. Ana and Rose both treated us to one of their own songs as well, and some tunes featured Joel and Bill by themselves in a father/son duet (like Ashtray Rock’s “Nothing More to Say”). We also got a bunch of great versions of songs from Three: particular highlights of the first set were “Deny, Deny, Deny”, “Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’,” and the incredibly John Prine-ish “Pine, Pine, Pine”.

The second set kicked off with the Emergency (Joel, Chris Pennell and Dave Marsh)’s one-two punch of “Work out Fine” and “Extraordinary,” both from 2003’s Truthfully Truthfully. After that it was just one big party. Peter Elkas joined the Emergency’s ranks and Bill, Rose and Ana returned to beef up the stage and sound. Lots of tunes from Three — including a fabulous second-set finish with “Wishful Thinking” — and old favourites too, sometimes in interesting new versions. The encore started off with Joel playing solo versions of the Hermit classic “Before You Leave” and his own “Love This Town,” whose lyrics he had changed a little after a good show in Kelowna … glad to see that city’s not taking too much Plaskett abuse these days!

If the crowd was any indicator — getting up and dancing, singing along with all of “Love This Town” (Joel left the mic and sang it from the edge of the stage, a testament both to Massey’s great acoustics and the attentiveness of the crowd), cheering for everything — the Joel Plaskett Emergency’s Massey Hall debut was a resounding success. And I have a feeling that “Wishful Thinking” might be prophetic — “Thank you, good night, we’ll be back in the fall”.

Also recently featured at the Hall were Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer on the Unwigged & Unplugged Tour — you may remember them as the men behind This Is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman. This tour saw the three guys tossing aside costumes and assumed identities and playing their material mostly acoustic. I think they did everything from the Spinal Tap film: “Big Bottom” (walking bass, lounge style), “Sex Farm” (I don’t even know how to describe that one — McKean did a bit of a rap in the middle!), and, yes, “Stonehenge”, complete with Nigel Tufnel intro from Guest and a video of trolls dancing around a miniature Stonehenge piece projected onto the screen behind them. Hysterical. They also did a great deal of Folksmen material including the theme from A Mighty Wind (“It’s blowing peace and freedom, it’s blowing you and me!”) and the Folksmen cover of the Stones’ “Start Me Up”.

While it was hilarious to hear these acoustic versions of Tap songs (“The Majesty of Rock” on acoustic guitars?), even more fun were the between-song banter and the other segments of the show, including the “audience participation,” where they gave one man 3D glasses and made him stand in front of them for an entire song, promising that the song was written in 3D and it would “blow your mind”. They also told stories about the making of various films, including the fiasco when NBC wanted to show This Is Spinal Tap on television shortly after its theatrical run (Shearer: “Well, it wasn’t so much a run as a power walk.” McKean: “Ah, those were the day!”). The head of whatever department they were dealing with watched the film and made a list of everything he wanted to censor, which was pretty much the whole movie. Lines included things like “The lyrics to ‘Sex Farm’ are unacceptable.” “Hand on girl’s breast.” “‘Shit sandwich’.” Yup — totally unacceptable!

And of course, I can’t forget to mention the Tragically Hip’s six-night run at the Old Lady of Shuter Street: May 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 19. I wasn’t there for all of them (thank goodness) but I experienced rather enough as it was. They did put on solid shows, although they were obscenely loud — I get it, you’re a rock band, but at least play to the hall a little! Downie was up to his usual madcap stage adventures, and while I’m not sure what the final mic stand casualty count was, there were certainly a few sent to their graves during the week. Their setlist changed around a fair amount from night to night, which was great for those of us who had to see more than one show; highlights included “Fireworks”, “Fiddler’s Green”, “The Bear” (apparently they’ve only played that one live a few times), “Yer Not The Ocean” and so on. The new album is okay — it’s no World Container, but the songs translated a bit better live than they did on record, I think.

In Hall news, recent announcements for summer shows include Sonic Youth (June 30), Steve Earle (July 11), Neko Case (July 14), Fleet Foxes (August 4), Tori Amos (August 10), John Prine (August 14), and Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes (August 28). It’s going to be a good run! See you all soon — more posts on the way.