Last night I went to the 5440 concert in a local venue. It was a different kind of concert as it was billed as an 'unplugged' event.
I was more than a little wary of how I would enjoy the show. I first saw 5440 in 1999, I believe, at the Arts County Fair at Thunderbird Stadium at UBC. A group of fantastic student teachers at my school (including the famous Shoeless Tam) invited their grizzled veteran sponsor teachers to the concert which featured a number of bands. By far, the best group was 5440 and, at the tender age of 39, I entered my first mosh pit. It was a very memorable concert!
Since then I have seen 5440 in a number of different venues but usually the same kind of loud, rocking' show with screaming guitars, pounding drums and lead singer Neil Osborne's awesome voice melding with the sound. Last night's concert would be a definite change.
But first, some friends came over and we did the appy and wine thing. As my friend, Dale, commented, we don't just do Ripple Chips and French Onion Dip any more. There was salad, tartine with sautéed mushrooms, crab balls with a heavenly green coloured dip, baked chicken thighs, a bread, cheese and nut appy that was to die for, and a spinach salad with homemade raspberry dressing.
The wine that we cracked to have with this was a Tinhorn Creek 2 Bench White ($19.95). My wife needed a splash of white wine to cook the tartine so I thought, why not serve the rest of the white! Tinhorn Creek is one of the wineries that we are a member of and get a shipment of 12 every year.
It was a perfect appy wine - very light in colour, leaning towards gold. It was a very crisp. clean wine which was just a bit sweet (off dry?) and I could taste fruit such as pear and peach. We all enjoyed it!
After finishing our appy meal, we walked down to the theatre and took our seats for the concert. We were all very impressed with the stripped down arrangements of 5440's songs. They were not simply unplugged but completely re-arranged with a variety of instruments including piano, banjo and some sort of mouth instrument that had piano keys on it. Dominating the evening, though, was Neil Osborne's, dare I say, sweet voice. His voice hasn't changed over the past twenty years - it is still clear and unstrained - even by the end of the concert.
At the end of the two and a half hours of playing time, I bought a slick 5440 t-shirt and a CD (what's a CD?) of some of their unplugged songs (La Difference). We bid goodnight to our friends and headed home where my daughter joined us, having driven down from the Okanagan for Easter.
To celebrate her arrival, we decided to open up another bottle of wine. We had a bottle of Narrative 2015 Syrah ($29.90) that we had bought at Okanagan Crush Pad the previous month.
The wine had a ruby colour so it was probably a bit too young - when we visited the winery, they may even have told us that it would benefit from a bit of aging. This would probably explain the slightly astringent taste. After several sips and swirls, my daughter and I came up with cranberry, cherry, tannins, stewed fruit and barnyard as the things we could taste. A good long finish, as well.
I am glad I had purchased another bottle of this and will put it away in the cellar.; it probably has some good aging potential.
After killing the bottle, I retired for the evening, with the sounds of 5440 still reverberating in my head.