(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)
Artist: The Box
When: September 27th, 2024
Where: Bronson Centre Music Theatre, Ottawa
Context: I hummed and hawed about attending this show but am glad I decided to go in the end because The Bedouin Soundclash show that I had a ticket for in December got pushed to March and I had to sell my ticket for a January Slowdive show due to my ongoing health issues. So this was the last live show that I’ve seen for some time and what a doozy it was. Put on as part of local station, Boom 99.7’s Legends Weekend, the bill included 80s New Wave ‘legends’ Strange Advance, Images in Vogue, and these guys, Montreal’s The Box. I had always loved their tune “L’affaire dumoutier (say to me)” from back when I was a pre-teen and my AM radio-listening days. However, at some point during the pandemic, I decided to give the rest of their catalogue a listen after seeing a poster advertising a show by the band and found that I knew a lot more of their tunes than I realized. The only remaining original member from back in the day is frontman and driving force, Jean-Marc Pisapia but the rest of band is a gaggle of fantastic musicians that he put together when he decided to re-start performing as The Box back in the early 2000s. Given the length of the bill and the average age of the audience members, each act was only allotted a short set but The Box made the most of their time, blasting eight of their greatest and well-known hits, including the song already mentioned, “My dreams of you”, “Closer together”, and Cold War classic, “Ordinary people” (see below). Jean-Marc and his band were pure performers and crowd pleasers all the way through. And I found myself smiling and singing along with the rest of the crowd.
Point of reference song: “Ordinary people”
My (life in) music lists 