So in addition to granting me admission to the seminars and awards ceremonies of Canadian Music Week, my very own delegate’s pass also gave me line-bypass status to all of the gigs and concerts that make up the accompanying Canadian Music Festival. I was almost as stoked for this pass as I was for the Crystal Awards. As you may recall from my foray to NXNE last summer, I do enjoy a free passport into all of the music events I can handle.

And man oh man, was there a lot going on in Toronto last week. Sammy Hagar was here, Melissa Etheridge, Janet Jackson…it was out of the park. Of course, I wasn’t interested in any of those people. I was interested in one name : JD Samson.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Little Queer Station That Could kicked off Canadian Music Week with a queer showcase at the Gladstone. I was a bit late, so I missed out on Kevin Wong, although I heard he put on a fantastic show.

I did make it in time to catch Chris Velan, and I was thankful I did. If you like indie folk rock in the vein of Wilco, Ryan Adams, or Sufjan Stevens, you’re gonna dig this guy. I was really into him.

It was a bit odd that Creature was the act to follow; their music really didn’t fit into the more acoustic indie sound of some of the other bands of the night. But who am I kidding? I didn’t care—they were the band I came out to see. And they were well worth it. They have just enough sass and attitude on stage to keep things entertaining without becoming a stereotype of queer camp. So much fun! I think I danced three inches of my ass off. I would have danced the entire ass off, but they had just the one-hour set, and I had to save some of it for JD Samson. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Brigitte Bardot

I was going to have to get up early the next morning for those Crystal Awards, so I just couldn’t stay for Gentleman Reg. I have seen him numerous times before; he’s kind of that indie-guy-about-town—he’s everywhere. And for good reason. As my buddy Acey Rowe said about it, “If you haven’t seen Gentlemen Reg live, chances are you’re not a real Torontonian. Kind of like if you haven’t killed a cockroach with your bare hand or had a heart attack at Yonge and Dundas induced by the ‘BELIEVE IN THE LORD!’ guy… Seeing a Gentlemen Reg show is the best and most enjoyable way to confirm your Torontonian status.”

The next day, of course, I won that Crystal Award—you know, no big whoop—so I spent the rest of the day celebrating with my co-winner, other staff from our radio group, and pretty much anyone who would raise a toast with me, and consequently I didn’t actually make it out to any gigs. Oops.

And after all of that celebrating, I had to get up even earlier on Friday morning for the Trailblazers’ Breakfast, celebrating women in radio. It took about everything I had to put on my best networking face and schmooze with some very intelligent women in the business. I was pretty much dead set on going home after work and skipping out on the gigs I had planned to see that night. They were with bands I had never heard of before, and as much as I like to discover new music, I like catching up on my sleep even more.

But then that thing happened. You know the thing where a friend updates Facebook with plans to see a gig you hadn’t been aware was going to be going on, and it’s a band you checked out for the first time at last year’s NXNE and you really loved them and no amount of hungover sleep-deprivation is going to stop you from seeing them again? That thing.

In this case the band in question was The Pack A.D.—Vancouver’s dykey answer to the White Stripes and the Black Keys. As soon as we heard they were playing, Michelle and I switched gears from tired and lazy to awesome and fantastic and excited. We got our gear on and headed down to meet some friends at the Bovine, a Queen Street institution that has been around for about 20 years now. Its façade is decorated with a mass of rusted bicycles, hub caps, and various assorted yard tools in a bizarre sculpture. You can’t miss it.

Interesting as it is to look at, it’s a narrow and dank space inside, and it’s always inevitably filled with punk and metal boys, which can be a pain in the butt—literally. We managed to get to the front of the stage for The Pack, but we were so wedged in that I could practically feel the bulge of the fella behind me wedging itself into my…well, my behind. It wasn’t pleasant.

Nonetheless, the show was awesome. There wasn’t much room to dance, but I did my best to rock out. The hotness of Becky Black makes up for a lot of discomfort. We stuck around for their set and then headed out to other, roomier bars in which to find libations.
Cobra Matte

And Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to from the moment I looked at the CMW lineup. I have finally caught up with myself! Saturday was all about JD SAMSON. Specifically, MEN was going to be playing at Sneaky Dee’s. My love for JD stems from my love for Le Tigre, which itself stemmed from my love for Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hanna. There was a time in my life when I believed that Bikini Kill was the best band ever to have existed in history. That time was last week. It comes and goes, actually. From time to time I really need to scream out all of my feminist rage.

And at other times, I just really need to dance. Saturday was one of the latter times. Let me tell you, MEN provided everything I needed to do just that. Great beats, great energy, and great lyrics—the whole package. In fact, they even covered a Bikini Kill song! My brain would have exploded if I hadn’t been busy dancing the remaining inches of my ass off. It was fan-freaking-tastic!

After the show, I made my way up to the front, where JD was striking the stage in preparation for the next act. I screwed up all of my courage to squeak out that I worked in radio and would really like it if she would like to contact us whenever she was in town. She nodded, took my card, and said, “Thanks, I will.” I turned into a thirteen-year-old fangirl and *died*.
Off Our Backs

I pulled myself together and made my way over to El Mocambo, where Acey’s derby team was having a fundraising dance party. If there was anything left of my ass to dance off, I did so there. My friends arm-wrestled derby girls with varying levels of success, and we spent about four hours on that dance floor. It was the perfect way to cap off the festival.

I don’t know if it was because it was past four in the morning when I got home, if it was the beer I drank, or if it was the fact that I had danced parts of my body into oblivion, but on my way back to my humble abode at last, I managed to fall up the stairs. What I can tell you about that is that it sure beats falling down.

It was time to call it a night, and you know, I’ll also call it one of the best weeks I have enjoyed in a good long time.

I went to see Florence + the Machine live at the Sound Academy here in Toronto. A year or so ago, Michelle and another friend and I went to see Regina Spektor at that venue and swore we would never return. Not only is it on the Polson Pier, in the middle of an industrial wasteland, but it is badly designed and the sound is shit. We ended up behind a planter at the back of the room.

However, for some reason, that shitty Sound Academy seems to rope in some of my favourite performers, and there are some gigs to which I just cannot say no. For example, there was just no way I was going to miss seeing Hole perform. I missed them the first time around and I certainly wasn’t going to repeat that mistake. And the Hole concert ended up being so great, mosh pit black eyes and all, that for a moment I forgot my resolution and began to believe that the Sound Academy wasn’t so bad after all.

So when my friend in the promo department at work re-appropriated a couple of tickets to the Florence show, I was all over it. Michelle got a cheap ticket through the beat-the-box-office deal so she could join us. I booked the company vehicle, because transit to get to the Polson Pier is sketchy at best. Parking ended up costing almost as much as Michelle’s ticket. Strike one, Sound Academy.

Remembering our earlier experience with the Regina concert, we left early enough to ensure a spot in the crowd close enough to see the band. This also meant that we had to spend some time in line outside in the freezing rain before the doors opened, but no problem; we were still excited. We got in, checked our coats (another 3 bucks—strike two!), and made our way into the crowd, securing a decent spot.

During the hour between doors and the opening act, the crowds thickened, but we held our ground. It was an all-ages event, so the high-schoolers were cramming in and trying to find ways to slip through to the front. Some kids behind us made excuses about how they had been up front already and just went to the bathroom, and I was like, too bad, kiddos; if you want to hold your spots, you have to hold your water. Some other girl was like, “Seriously? You’re like, too tall.” And I was like, girly, it’s general admission. Get used to it. Am I cruel? Whatever. If I had let every shorty in front of me, I would have been at the back again, and I was not about to relive the Regina Spektor debacle, dammit!

So anyway, finally the first act started. They were terrible. Just a singer/guitarist and a drummer, and a song about the city being made of garbage. This garbage city was also gendered (female, of course) and the singer’s lover. What a tool. They droned on for awhile, and then the singer said that they had to go to another gig. Michelle remarked that their other gig was in his mom’s basement. Truth.

We awaited Florence with much anticipation. Roadies came and went; the crowd was abuzz. We had already been standing in our spots being crowded and pushed by teenagers for two hours. Then my promo friend noticed that there were two drum sets on the stage—one in back that said “Florence + the Machine” on it, and another set in front of it. With great disappointment we came to the realization that there would be a second opening act.

These kids seemed at first like they were going to be better than the first act, but upon longer reflection (and they played for nearly an hour, so there was a lot of time to spend reflecting), it became clear that they were actually worse. They were teenage shoegazers, the singer so young that he still looked like a pretty little girl. He clearly got by on his looks, because his voice was awful. You could hear from the progression of the backing music what the song was *supposed* to sound like, but what came out of his throat was something else entirely. They ripped all of their riffs from the Beatles, and the kid’s falsetto was just a hot mess of tone-deafness.

By the end of the second opening act, I wanted to leave. My legs hurt, my mood had been sullied, and I was ready to tear the intestines out of the teenyboppers jamming their purses and beers into my back. The roadies returned to the stage for an exaggeratedly long intermission between the acts, and Michelle turned to me and said, “Who does this Florence think she is—Madonna?” We were all feeling pretty peevish about the whole affair.

But then she appeared. Oh my. Oh my my my my my. Florence Welch is sooooooo prettttty. When she started to dance, suddenly all of our anger melted away. Even my gay promo boy was in lust with her. And she really did put on a great show.

Florence + the Machine really has a different sort of sound, somewhere between pop and goth and something just kind of weird. The lyrics to some songs make me feel kind of dirty for liking them, like “Girl with One Eye” (my favourite) or “Kiss with a Fist” (Michelle’s favourite). Others just have a really cool flow. It is clear that “The Machine” really is a collaboration of musicians working to enhance the sound and theatrics of her voice.

The teenagers were all about the Twilight connection, though. Apparently the Eclipse soundtrack includes a Florence tune, and she is pretty gothy with her black lace onesie and midnight-ballerina dance moves, so the live-free-or-Twi-hard crew just lurrrrve her. Plus, another song mentions being stuck “always in this twilight”—yeah, they totally screamed every time she sang that line.

Further into the show she started to play the songs for which she is better known, the dance-infused tunes that I can’t exactly call hits, but you might know them if you heard them.

All in all, I would say that the Florence + the Machine portion of the night got an easy 9/10 for performance and fun, but with the two crap openers and the absurd amount of time spent tuning instruments (strike three, Sound Academy!) in between acts, I would only give the entire night as a whole a 6. I might go see her play again, but never again at the Sound Academy. Consider me re-resolved.

I have had a tendency from time to time to complain about my job. Most people do it, right? We’re all underpaid and overworked and don’t get the respect we deserve, yadda yadda. But for all of my complaining, I do get to enjoy some pretty nifty perks. Such as, for example, my Priority Pass to the North by Northeast (NXNE) festival. It’s no SXSW, but it’s what we’ve got.

A Priority Pass is just fancy talk for a pass that let me skip the lineups, but it did get me into all of the gigs I wanted, and it just kinda looks fancy. I am all about looking fancy.

I would like to say that I was awarded this pass because I am a highly honoured and respected member of the radio station for which I work, but the truth is there was only one pass and I was the only person who was both interested in NXNE and flying solo this weekend, as my partner left town for the week. Thank you, Michelle, for going to New York without me. No, really! My weekend of bachelorhood was every bit as much fun as I imagine I would have had had I joined you.

So the first place I went to was the Dakota Tavern, a little basement country and blues bar that I have never seen before. I missed the first band, but the second one, First Rate People, really was first rate–boppy and fun, with a nice mix of male and female vocals. The girl on drums was really banging it out.

Then there was some really loud band from Alberta called Ghostkeeper, and they looked like Alberta, complete with farmer caps and hipster beards. The lead singer was hot, though. He was Métis and said he was putting the “Indian” in Indie rock. They also had a female drummer. I thought maybe this was a female drummer night, but the first band was comprised only of men, so I guess it was just a coincidence. This drummer also sang some of the songs, but here is the problem with coed singing bands at small music festivals: the sound checks are all done by the guys and the bass levels are so high that you can barely hear the women’s voices. So I didn’t really like Ghostkeeper much. They weren’t horrible, but their MySpace page sounds nicer than they do live in a tiny bar. Let me be old for a moment: they were too loud.

Then came the band I was waiting to see, The Pack A.D., comprised of drummer Maya Miller and guitarist/singer Becky Black. These chicks really rock out. Seriously, I had such an awesome time, I was losing my shit. I found myself dancing and cheering like a tween fangirl. I think I may have swooned. Day 1: success!

Day 2 was significantly less thrilling. I went to the Velvet Underground, a once-popular and now kind of divey goth bar. Who knew goth bars could still fly in Toronto? The first two bands were regrettable.

The lead singer of The Scarlet Fever wished really hard that he could have been some sort of cross between David Bowie and Siouxsie Sioux. I thought he was a girl until he stopped singing and began to speak in a faux-Brit accent (he’s from Toronto). He liked to drape himself over the speakers in his leather corset and feathers, looking dramatically heavenward, before leaping into the near-empty dance floor to fondle the faces of the two or three women who stood listening to him there. His singing was atrocious but he was nonetheless entertaining in a wholly unintentional way. I laughed out loud, but genuinely enjoyed the floor show. Amazing.

From would-be Siouxsie Bowie, the show continued with the Wannabe-Henry-Rollins-Band, a.k.a. The Torrent. Let me share with you a sample of their lyrics:

There’s a taste in my mouth and it tastes like you.
There’s a taste in my mouth and it tastes like you.
There’s a taste in my mouth and it tastes like you.
I wanna spit it out and find someone new.
What’s new, pussycat?

No joke. I think that pretty much says it all. Thank goodness there was a city-wide power outage in the middle of their set.

The power came back on, and finally it was time for the act I had come to see: People You Know. One of the former interns at my radio station is the drummer. Apparently hot chick drummers have really been a theme of my NXNE experience this year. Anyway, these girls really made the night worthwhile. The lead singer/guitarist, Aimee Bessada, and the bassist, Devon Clarke, have some serious rockstar moves—I think they practice in the mirror. They really use the medium; they roll and jump all over the stage, and they splay themselves over the speakers. They really have invested some time in cultivating a stage presence. Totally entertaining. I had a great time.

At the end of the show, they gave me a free demo—old school, just some little burned disc with the band name scrawled on it with a Sharpie. It’s the 2000s version of a mixtape. There are only three songs on it, but they are three solid songs. I look forward to a real release from these girls.

I deliberated over what to do Saturday, whether I should check out some more indie bands or go to Dundas Square to see Iggy and the Stooges play before they finally wasted away. I do love Iggy Pop, but I thought maybe he might better be left to my imagination. I remembered how I had longed to see Bowie my entire life, and then I finally got the chance to do so about five or six years ago and he was a great disappointment. In the end, however, I decided to risk it and headed down to the square with a couple of friends.

What a bad idea! The square was open and free to the public, with no set capacity, so the place ended up getting so crowded that my friends and I had to get the fuck out of the sardine tin. There were douchebags all around, guys ripping their shirts off and drinking Jack Daniels out of–get this–a can. Who knew that even existed? It would be one thing if this were a mosh pit full of punks, but most of the people around us had never actually heard of Iggy Pop.

I did get to see the Raveonettes, whose feedback addiction actually sounds much better in a live, outdoor setting. However, their stage show was incredibly boring. I really find it annoying when a band has a whole entire stage but they just stand there and play their instruments without so much as a bob of the head. Take a lesson from People You Know, folks!

I also survived the suffocating crowd long enough to see old Iggy rock out to “Raw Power” before violence breaking out right in front of us forced us to get the fuck out of dodge before we got trampled. Getting out of the crowd was almost as difficult as it would have been to try to get in. Iggy was still full of energy and looking really awesome, when I could peek at him through the ever-thickening crowd of taller people than I. He was pretty funny, too. He said, “We are what remains of the Stooges. And you get to see us before we die!” I was happy he said that because then I didn’t feel so bad about having thought the same thing all day.

Let me tell you, I practically grew up in a mosh pit, but this was insane. First, it was clear that most of the people crowding the stage weren’t even into punk, or Iggy Pop, for that matter. They didn’t recognize the music or even seem to be enjoying themselves. What they were doing was acting the way I guess they thought one should act at a punk concert: drinking too much and starting fights. It was a real disappointment.

When finally we made it back to the thinner area at the back of the square, we saw the real punks, not fighting, just slam-dancing and having a grand old time even though there was nothing you could see from back there. Having bruised ourselves enough for one night, we all decided to head back to my friend’s place a few blocks away and drink beer on the balcony. Which was more fun than watching Iggy Pop.

All in all, though, I had a great time at NXNE this year. I got to see some new bands, appreciate some old ones I already liked, and even got a bunch of free swag—and bruises—out of the weekend. I do love free stuff.

Let’s see, we’ve got a couple of CDs, a download card for some music site, a foldable pocket map of Toronto, some earbuds, 3D glasses, the swag bag itself, which is pretty nifty looking, some ear plugs, stickers that I can put on my seldom-used-anymore guitar case, a button, a CN Tower coupon, a guitar pick that says “Rock Shrink” (my dream job…or possibly nightmare job), some bathroom reading, and a gift certificate of some sort to a sticker/t-shirt/paraphernalia store I would probably really love if I were a rockstar.

I would say I made out like a bandit. Not a bad way to spend a bachelor’s weekend in Toronto.