I have been going to free NXNE shows for about five years
now and I went to my first ticketed event last year with Natalie Angilletta when we went to see FLAG, but
this year was my first all-out, NXNE experience with a wristband, a bicycle and
the incomparable Francine Dibacco
as a shaman of sorts getting me into the right state of mind for four straight
days of shows and drinking (the Canadian dream)! Since I have a compulsive need
to get everything in writing, I considered a variety of ways that I could get
this in words and decided that it would work best to just pick out the
best shows as recommendations of sorts.
THURSDAY
Tobacco: Just kidding, but can I complain for a second
before the good stuff? I have nothing against electronic music; some of my good
friends are electronic musicians! However, 1) who the fuck puts an electronic
musician between Weaves and tUnE-yArDs (that hurt to write), 2) who the fuck
goes to a show to see a performer who is ENTIRELY obscured by a screen for the whole
performance and 3) who the fuck schedules an electronic show in a sit-down
venue? Isn't the whole point of electronic music to make people dance? Why did
it take so long for all the dudebros to get up and start dancing? We didn't
make it far into this one!
The Pizza Underground: This Velvet Underground "cover
band" really should not have worked and many will argue that it doesn't,
but there is definitely something to be said for a ridiculous band which takes
itself seriously. Coming out with a pizza box and whatever other instruments
they had and refusing to break character takes some work and their stupid puns
just sweetened the deal. Walking a tightrope between brilliance and utter
garbage, this band manages to stay on the right side.
Odonis Odonis: HOLY SHIT! This was a real surprise. At 1 AM,
after going all over town and being extremely tired, we decided to go to the
Garrison and have a drink. Luckily, that was when this band was about to go on.
This is a great time for really heavy, but not mindless music (so much of that
at this year's festival) and this band exemplifies that, with a guttural and
yet melodic sound that you can't not headbang to.
FRIDAY
Swans/St. Vincent: There's not much else you can say about
these two performers. It would be a better write-up if they were uninteresting,
but Swans' earth-shattering attack (the floor was seriously vibrating), filling
up YDS with what sounds like the battlecry of a murderous extraterrestrial
race, followed by the amazing voice and brilliant stage antics of St. Vincent
was destined to be great and that's what it was. On another note, Annie, we all
love you, but no one walks out of a Tim Horton feeling guilty because they
think you're stealing. That statement made no sense, but I'm sure we all
forgive you!
Courtney Barnett: One of the highlights of the festival!
Being at the Silver Dollar, I was within a metre of her, when she started
performing. Listening to her music and seeing her videos convinced me this
would be a stoic, peaceful performance. That idea was quashed the second she
went into her first guitar solo, looking and sounding less like Bob Dylan and
more like Jay Reatard! Since her catalogue is so small, consisting of twelve
released tracks, it meant that she played every song, including a
heavier-than-usual version of Avant Gardener which automatically made me
realize that I was in love. I talked to her after the show, but forgot to
propose, so that's something for next time.
SATURDAY
Weaves/HSY/Perfect Pussy: This was just a really unusual
combo, which is why I really dug it. First, Weaves, who I saw on Thursday,
played a thirty minute set with a strange sort-of psychedelic music followed by
HSY's heavy (flashbacks to Odonis Odonis), jumbled sound followed by the total sensual
assault of Perfect Pussy. This tiny room had been set up with two gigantic
speakers on the sides of the stage which made the whole room shake and was in a
constant state of knocking me over (this may not be true, but I was in an
entirely different world by this point; I had a mental situation going on at
the time and mixed with my penchant for self-destruction and heroic alcohol
intake, I'm not certain how true some of these events were). I also saw the
horrors of the all-ages moshpit; seeing a bunch of pre-pubescent kids moshing
made me wonder if an adult could be charged with child endangerment for jumping
in. One final note on Perfect Pussy: I really hated their recorded music, but,
in a rare case, this is one band that only works live; recorded music can be
altered, quieted, silenced. This is a band that needs to be heard at FULL
VOLUME!
Tom Robinson: This may have been the best show of the whole
festival! I ended up getting semi-lost on the way to this show at the Drake
Hotel and arrived a few minutes late. I walked into a mostly empty room, maybe
twenty people altogether, to see an aged man on the stage with a guitar in his
hand and a microphone in front of him, singing Up Against the Wall (side note:
Up Against the Wall and similar iterations of it is one of the most popular
titles for really amazing songs). The rest of the hour at this show, which can
truly be called an "intimate show", consisted of Robinson, a man who
hasn't released an album in seventeen years and who hasn't toured regularly for
twelve years, singing his greatest songs (an a cappella version of Martin, a
brand-new, unreleased song about bankers and, of course, a singalong version of
Glad to be Gay) and accompanying each one with a story (how Glad to be Gay
points out the closeted gay men in the bar, how a scary-looking bartender
complained about it being too catchy, how he was looking for a Canadian
musician to do backing vocals and guitars at the show and he found one in the
form of his assigned driver (whose name I wish I remembered)). Tom Robinson's
wit, charm and generally pleasant personality made for a wonderful show that
very few people saw!
Simon Amstell: Yeah, I guess Saturday was generally a good
day. I skipped out on seeing The Last of England to see this show, so Amstell
has better be funny! And he delivered, in the form of most self-serving,
narcissistic, Alan Partridge-esque version of Simon Amstell imaginable. He
basically told large segments of his life story, riffing on the Nelson Mandela
situation, his love life, his relationship with his father and his strange god
complex. He also occasionally stopped to admonish certain audience members,
including one woman who was texting in the front row ("you can see why
that would be a problem for me with you sitting in the front row, right? I know
it's good when you get a text, because you think 'oh, I'm popular', but when
you get a lot of texts, that's the number of people who don't want to talk to
you!") and another woman, this time more jokingly, who dared to speak to
him ("I'm very important, you know, right?" "Right."
"Don't talk to me!") He also frequently commented on his own jokes:
which ones work, which ones don't, which ones don't translate well, Overall, I
spent about an hour laughing. I also later realized that this was the first
comedy show I had ever been to!
METZ: I had no time to reminisce about Simon Amstell. I had
to get my ass to Lee's Palace before midnight. I ended up getting to a long
line, not knowing for certain if I would get in or not. I wanted to end this
festival with a bang, which would consist of almost total self-destruction at
worst and my imminent death at best! Luckily, I got in, got a beer, drank it up
and stepped into the middle of pit area in front of the stage. These three guys
came out (I have to admit, I didn't expect Metz to look like that) and the patented
Metz sound began! And the floor came to life. This show kind of showed me the
difference between two types of brilliant show: Courtney Barnett and Tom
Robinson kind of exemplify one version ("I heard this song and this song
and it was great") and Metz exemplifies the second ("there was music
involved...I think"). While the Metz sound blared, I got stepped on,
slammed into the stage, punched in the face, gut and crotch and headbutted in
the jaw; it was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had! This show was
total brutality and I wouldn't have it any other way. Funny moment: at one
point, after getting slammed into stage, I turned around and in my daze,
screamed something, which probably didn't make a sound anyways. This resulted
in one woman running up to me and punching me in the stomach. My adrenaline and
endorphin levels were so high that I felt nothing and just gave her a sick
grin, to which she responded with a smile and a thumbs up, before disappearing
back under a heap of bodies. This is the sort of thing that only happens in a
pit! I left that show wet with sweat, some of it mine, after getting hugged by
pretty much everyone that I bumped into, picked up off the floor or otherwise contacted.
Not to get into morality here, but the moshpit is the most incredible form of
therapy and the least damaging form of violence imaginable.
There it is. My overlong retelling of about eighty hours of my
life, hours which consisted of very little sleep, too much alcohol, a mental
semi-breakdown and a quest for total self-destruction. I enjoyed the hell out
of it and would totally do it again, but...maybe not until next year!
