Then the dapper looking Grapes Of Wrath hit the stage. Formed in Vancouver in 1983 (and later shattered by bad feelings and lawsuits) they’ve either been practicing hard or they haven’t lost a step, because Tom Hooper’s bass work was balls-to-the-wall blistering and Kevin Kane was technically flawless. The band strolled onto the canvas ready to fight, and they’d shaken off any ring rust within the first three songs. Kane absolutely wailed on his spiffy looking Rickenbacher before switching to a Firebird. With the assistance of new drummer Adam Drake (replacing the absent Chris Hooper) the GOW had an amazingly rich and three dimensional sound for a three piece band.

With rock and pop, unlike most other genres of music, the heat is generated not just by the music, but also the buried lyrical gems. If you listen closely enough, Kane and Hooper have several ounces of gold buried in them there riffs. Every song hit yu so hard, it could have killed your whole family. They did a bang on version of ‘You May be Right’, and (to use the most gargantuan cliché I can muster) Drake never missed a beat. Kane and Hooper balanced dueling vocal duties nicely. When Kane broke a string and discarded his Telecaster, Hooper filled in the bass line from Led Zep’s ‘Moby Dick’ until Kane could continue. All of the feuds and lawsuits that shattered this relationship have obviously been settled, because the GOW were in rare, almost symbiotic form. They did brilliant encore versions of ‘Tell Me All The Things I Wasn’t’ and ‘What was Going Through My Head’, then ended the second encore with a passionate and punchy version of ‘Hey Jude’. Afterwards Kane sipped beer mingled with the crowd. It was quite appropriate that the GOW had Trebilcock open for them – both use off kilter chords and tell honestly interesting musical stories. Though they were off stage and packed up by 12:30am, it was the kind of show that befitted a couple of Canadian alt-rock legends most.