All right, full disclosure. I didn't see the whole show. I am a social butterfly you know, I had to get outside and chat kids up too. I got street cred to maintain, yo!

This charity event, put on by Jesse and Anthony at DGBD on December 8, was a kick-fucking-ass event. Pretty simple idea: get a whole bunch of great bands together from a variety of genres, ask people to bring toys or money, get them liquored up and make them dance! Oh yeah, and donate the toys to orphanages.

The show started at 6:00, I arrived around 9:00, at which point the joint was already packed. I missed seeing Invisible Man, St. John the Gambler, and Popstore. Groupie was playing when I arrived, and what I saw of their set was pretty good. I hadn't seen them before, so it was cool to hear some new music. The Moonshiners were up next, and as always they put on a fantastic show, they definitely had people out on the dance floor. Rockabilly is definitely one of my favourite styles of music, how can people not dance to it? At this point, I'd say there were about 250-300 people getting down in there.

The 40 Days came on, which gave me the chance to drink some tequila and get the fuck outside. I needed air, and really, these guys don't do it for me at all. They do Brit-indie pop, originals and covers, not really my scene. Other people were digging it though, and the dance floor was never empty.

I caught part of BBLT's set, not a lot of it, but enough to know that it was a hell of a lot of fun. I think this is when House's glasses exploded off his face. That's how good the music was! This is when the serious stage-diving and crowd-surfing really started happening. I am always astounded by stage-diving in small crowds, I have this image of the crowd opening up just as someone jumps. Splat.

The Rocktigers were up next, and they brought the rockabilly back. Regardless of your take on them, these guys can shake a party up. It's so hard to stay still when they take the stage. They have such great energy when they perform, and pretty damn cool-looking clothes too!

Galaxy Express!!! Oh, I love these guys. Showing my bias here, Galaxy Express is, hands down, my favourite Korean band. Having been to their CD release show the night before (Ramble Around, get it, it's good), I thought I might not need to see them for a third time in two nights. But I was wrong. As usual, they kicked my ass all over the place. I finally got to see their cover of Led Zeppelin's ˇ°Immigrant Songˇ±, which I somehow always missed before. They played some of their new songs as well, which are great, as well as their usual stuff. Man, I love that shit. They just fucking rawk. And of course, they closed out with ˇ°Kick out the Jams,ˇ± cuz that's what they do.

Another absolutely amazing Korean band, Kingston Rudieska, took the stage and tore the house down. People were crazed, skanking away, just reveling in the joy that is Kingston Rudieska. All over the stage, all over the club, people were just getting down and loving the music. If it wasn't a full house at this point, it sure felt like it was.

Closing out the night was Johnny Royal, again another band I hadn't seen before. I'm not a huge hardcore fan, but these guys are good. The mosh pit was still going strong, the band had a lot of good energy and there were lots of happy people in the crowd.

What a good fucking night. Overall, six 40L bags of toys were collected at the door, and close to 2 million won was brought in. Spending all that cash netted a whole shitload of toys, in total over 300 toys were donated to the Toys For Tots program.

Jesse and Anthony put this amazing event together, but they weren't alone in doing all the work. Aaron took care of toy management during the show, Yumi ran the door and made sure the bands got all their food and drinks, Jon promoted the hell out of the show, despite not being able to go, and Lorne made it all sound good. Of course the bands all deserve huge props, they volunteered their Saturday night for this event. Oh yeah, cheers and thanks to all the people who went and donated new toys or money for a very worthy cause. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported this show, a lot of kids are going to have a better Xmas this year than they might have otherwise.

Yeah! Drinking, dancing, and partying it up can be the socially responsible thing to do!