Headstones are the Picture of Health in Ottawa

The Headstones tour came rolling through the town on Friday night for the highly anticipated reissue of their debut platinum album release ‘Picture of Health’. The Bronson Centre stop comes month and a half after the band started the tour stretching across Canada, including a single U.S date in Buffalo, NY.

The tour openers, Matchstick Skeletons ,started the night off with the lead vocalist/guitar player Neu Mannas covering the first few bars of Cher’s 1966 hit ‘Bang Bang’. As Mannas faded out the song, the rest of the band made their way on stage, and off they went into their crunchy funky melodic Queens of the Stone Age–esque riffs. Halfway through the set, the band busted into a badass version of David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ with a bit of Prince’s ‘When the Doves Cry’ in the middle, which put Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo’s full version of the Prince hit to shame. As the band’s set came to an end, the atmosphere at the Bronson Centre was getting rowdy in anticipation for the night’s headliners. 

During 1999’s and 2000’s, I worked as guitar tech and tour manager for my good friends Scratching Post, and over the course of that time they opened for Headstones on some select dates. Having seen the the band back in the hay day when it was still legal to smoke at venues and on stage, and when Headstones were one of Canada’s biggest rock bands, I was very intrigued to see what Dillon, Carr and White were going to bring to the stage. Along with the three original members, the band had added Jesse Labovitz of Canadian hardcore legends No Warning on drums, and Rickferd Van Dyk of the only “sanctioned” Metallica cover band ‘Sandman’ on rhythm guitar.   

Being the ‘Picture of Health’ album re-release tour, every fan knew what to expect from the setlist, as the band were playing the album in its entirety from start to finish.  Coming out to ‘Its All Over’ the crowd was rowdy and ready to party. Dillon jumped into the pit to party along with his fans, but if you were in the seated part of the theatre, you would have not been able to really see what was going on. The band brought their own blinder lights, which were set up at the back of the stage pointing directly at the audience making it impossible to see what was happening on the stage.This would have been fine for a minute or two, but it went on throughout the night making it difficult to see anything.

 After the first couple of songs Dillon asked the crowd to put their cell phones away, as he wanted to tell some stories which in his own words “he didn’t want his mother to see on the World Wide Web”. When some fans didn’t do as Dillon requested, he started to get more irate about the issue, and pointed out the individual fans and persisted to make them put their phones away, even taking a phone out of one fan’s hand and tossing it to his road manager telling the fan they would get it back at the end of the show. The phone issue seemed to be the topic of the night taking away from the energy of the band’s set.

As the album set came to an end, the band walked off the stage leaving the audience beg for more, and quickly turned around and came back for an encore with Dillon saying they weren’t going to make everyone wait. The band busted into a cover of Don Shiltz’s ‘Gambler’, followed by their infamous track ‘Fuck You’. During the song, Dillon was again pointing out a fan on the balcony who had a phone out, and when the fan didn’t put it down, Dillon directed his middle finger and lyrics at them.

At the same time it was very apparent the crowd was feeling no pain, as they sang along as loud as they could making the walls at the Bronson Centre rumble. The second last song was ‘Longwaytoneverland’, and as it ended, Dillon gave the fan’s phone back he had taken earlier in the show, and then proceeded everyone in the crowd to put up their phones and turn the flash lights on so that he himself could take a picture of the crowd. With one song left, it was very obvious what the band would would play. And with that, Dillon thanked the crowd, waved goodbye and the band broke into ‘Smile and Wave’.  

By Brian Vince.