Rockstar

Brent had two performances this week in Toronto. On Thursday they were booked to perform at The Opera House and on Friday they played at Reverb.

The band that Brent is in is called "Made By A Virus". They are a rock band with a hip-hop influence. They mostly play rock venues and we've had a lot of fun accompanying him when he plays. I like to go partly to make sure that everything is ok in these places, and partly because I really like to see and hear him play. There are no drugs or alcohol going on in this band. Brent is the youngest band member and the older guys are good about watching out for him. I know it sounds weird, but this band has been a good influence on him. It's been good for him to have a focus and something to keep his mind off of his legal troubles.

Thursday's show was a hip-hop festival - about a dozen acts were performing. Made By A Virus was the only band performing; everybody else were "MC" acts, ie. they MC to a pre-recorded track.

Call me naive, but I was not aware of the dangers of the hip-hop culture. You could immediately sense there was tension between some of these performers. I guess its a pretty competitive industry and rivalries develop. Anyways, I'll make a long story short here: the band never got to perform because just before it was their turn to go on, a fight broke out between two of the hip-hop crews and two people got stabbed. We witnessed the fight, but thankfully we did not see the stabbings. The police arrived very quickly, shut down the show and locked down the building so no one could enter or leave. Everybody had to give their name and contact information and describe what they saw, if anything. Brent and I saw who did it and were able to identify the performers involved so we had to stay quite a while giving the police the details. The two young men who were stabbed know there attackers, and the attackers gave their names and addresses earlier to the promoters, so there is no doubt that they will be found and arrested. At the end of the ordeal, I was VERY glad I had decided to accompany Brent.

Friday's event was pretty subdued. I think everybody was still thinking of the events of the night before. They performed early in the evening and there weren't too many people in the hall at that point. I have to give them credit, they did their best to create as much energy as they could for their performance. I must have been discouraging to come all that way to perform for a handful of people

I got some pictures from the Reverb performance...