Our one and so-far only appearance in London, Ontario takes place 17 years ago today (native Justin Bieber’s third birthday). But first it’s a matinee at the Toronto HMV. Honestly, what I remember best about the day is purchasing the Velvet Underground box set Peel Slowly and See (shrewdly waiting for the deep discount of an in-store and taking advantage of the then-favorable exchange rate). But looking over the setlist in London, it’s clear we’re taking advantage of it being a Sunday night in what we in the industry refer to as a “secondary market”: as many covers as there are songs from our new record, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (and even one of those is “Spec Bebop,” a band favorite though not exactly one of the album’s emphasis tracks). Having approached much of the set like it was an encore, the encore is more like the end of a regular set–for the only time all year (and I wonder how often this has happened, period) we play no covers, choosing instead a guitar version of “Sudden Organ” and “I Heard You Looking.”
