Recording: K.C. Accidental

Artist: K.C. Accidental

Song: I Can't Find My Car

Recorded at 159 Manning ("NXNE: M for 159 Manning"), June 20, 2014.

K.C. Accidental - I Can't Find My Car

You can read my quick notes for this set here.

Recording: Kevin Drew

Artist: Kevin Drew

Song: Good Sex

Recorded at The Great Hall ("Jason Collett's Basement Revue"), December 20, 2012.

Kevin Drew - Good Sex

Full review to follow. Bringing the revue out of the basement coziness of the Dakota Tavern and into the much larger confines of the Great Hall, Jason Collett still managed to convince the audience to act as if they were in a small, intimate space, keeping quiet to listen to poets and gentle songs. Scaling things up meant that this would be less of a night to shine a light on some emerging artists and more of an opportunity for old friends to get together.

Y'know those stories about punk shows where the band's repertoire is so small that they simply play their set twice? Well, Broken Social Scene mainman Kevin Drew and co. had just one song rehearsed as they debuted some new material, and as it finished, Drew seemed to be having enough fun that he led the band through it for a second time. "Was that egotistical?" he asked afterward. Just like that incident, this song has his familiar fingerprints all over it, and was presented by a crew of longtime friends and collaborators including Ohad Benchetrit, Dave Hamelin, Dean Stone and Charles Spearin. Drew mentioned that they've been recording, so there should be more like this to come.

Download: Broken Social Scene

Ten years ago today — October 15, 2002 — Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People was released. This is a slightly more practical celebration of that fact than the essay that I wrote for the occasion. It is, admittedly, not entirely period-correct to YFIIP. Rather, it comes from the long couple years after when I was keenly awaiting its follow-up, and decided to go through all of the live recordings I had collected to put as many new songs together as possible in one place. Think of this as the sprawling double live album that BSS never released. And to replicate the vintage BSS concert experience, it's packed full of technical difficulties and stage banter.

It was originally designed to fill up two CD's, so I have simply boiled those down to two sets of MP3's that you can grab with these links:

BSS - Egregore (part 1)

BSS - Egregore (part 2)

Alternate links in the comments. Do let me know if you have any problems with these files.

[Caveat: Besides being filled with my art-obsessions of the time, this was assembled when I was just starting to play around with audio editing software, so some of the clunky transitions here make me cringe a little. To the extent that I was aiming for a smoothly-edited montage from song to song, I missed badly. If I had more time at my disposal, I would go back and re-edit this whole thing to flow more smoothly, but I don't — so it's being presented "as is".]

None of these are my own recordings. Many thanks are due to the original tapers. Special thanks are also due to longtime BSS fan Nippleholic, who approached me with a different idea for a 10th anniversary celebration. That project didn't come together — yet — but it definitely planted the seed for this.

Essay: You Forgot It In Yourself

You Forgot It Yourself

[Caveat: This is, no doubt, a variation on the theme of my Nevermind essay, but I suppose I remain intrigued by the disjunction between the neatness of these noteworthy anniversaries and the ambling randomness of our actual lived experience. Like most albums that are important to me, I don't listen to this that often. So, if nothing else, it's nice to have a reason to revisit it, and you probably should too, today.

Ten years ago today — October 15, 2002 — Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People was released. I did not know this at the time.

I

As it turned out, I did head downtown to buy a new release from a revered local group that day, but it was The Sadies' Stories Often Told. But in a sign of where my head was at in those days, I was more excited with an impulse (or, Impulse!) buy, a John Coltrane box set — that was a big deal to me.¹

Anyway, I know I first heard of BSS not long after the album came out, as YFIIP did garner good reviews in the local press. But it wasn't 'til I saw it I saw it popping up on year-end lists that I resolved to buy it. In fact, I purchased my copy on January 22, 2003 — which implies it was probably fresh in mind from seeing it in the Eye Weekly critics poll, where it placed a respectable 15th, not bad for a local indie album.

In fact, by that point, word-of-mouth was already building enough that the album was getting to be hard to find. After looking in a couple stores, I managed to snag the last copy from (the now-defunct) Edward's Record World at Yonge and Eglinton.² After that, the album was hard to come by until the original Paper Bag edition was supplanted by the Arts & Crafts re-release. And soon there would be a lot of demand as the famous Pitchfork Review came out just a few weeks later.³

But to be honest, on my first listens, I wasn't all that blown away by it. In my journals at the time — and oh my, yes, I had journals at the time: in the parts of our lives where the least amount is happening to us, we have the most time to think about things — I would usually include some commentary on whatever I was listening to, and in that regard, the absence of any mention of YFIIP is striking.⁴ I do remember the first time I listened to the album, out for my walk on a bitterly cold winter morning. "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl", a song for which I had no point of comparison, struck me as I was trudging past the sort of well-tended inner-suburban homes where such dramas were almost certainly taking place. I did dig "Cause = Time", which reminded me of Dinosaur Jr.: that was striking as — hard as it is to believe today — Dino Jr. was pretty-much unhip and not-particularly-all-that-much a part of the cultural conversation.

But otherwise, I filed the album away and didn't really think about it all that much for a couple months. It was only when, in the face of a mounting swell of acclaim, that my friend and co-worker J. asked to borrow the disc from me that I had another run at it... and suddenly it started to interest me.

II

Actually, another kind of music was occupying much more.

One morning, some months before any of this, I was walking from the bus stop to my office. I was listening to "Memphis, Egypt" — the first song on Mekons' Rock N' Roll, and one of the top twenty rock songs of all time. It's a cautionary tale, but like a lot of cautionary tales, it also makes a fairly salacious case for the very thing it's warning against. In fact, that thesis/antithesis is covered in the song's first two lines, where the invitation is followed headlong by the warning:

destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late

the battles we fought were long and hard, just not to be consumed... by rock n' roll!

I decided I was going to buy a guitar.

I was too old for this. I was hurtling towards thirty, starting far too late to ever really master it, and all the unschooled fumblings that would be endearing in a younger novice would not look so good on me. But still, the deed was done a few weeks later with the help of J., who played a bit himself.

I found a Squire Strat in cool metallic green, and we made grand plans to play together, to "jam out". In that idle, pass-the-work-day style, discussions ensued of preferable stage names and band names.⁵

We'd need songs, of course. J. was not only a generally competent player already, but he'd once been an English major, who would someday, maybe, finish off that novel he denied he was writing. It seemed logical that those were adequate qualifications for him to become the songwriter. And yet, nothing was forthcoming.

In a rare burst of assertive un-self-consciousness, I took matters into my own hands, more to prime the pump than anything else: I figured that once I made the point that it wasn't so tough that J. would take over. I combed through my notepads for bon mots and trenchant turns of phrase, grouping them together into lists. And on another morning that I was making that walk from the bus to the office, I started humming something, stopped in place, and wrote out my first-ever verse. The rest followed in a rush:

A few more tunes followed relatively quickly, but there were diminishing returns. I was working from the "write what you know" school but I quickly realized no-one wanted to hear that many laments about how I wanted to get laid — nor did I particularly want to ruin the particularly scant façade of worldly sophistication that I could muster at the best of times.

Still, as time went on, my fingers learned enough to propel me to the basest level of competence. Although the topic of "original material" was largely shelved, J. and I would get together and play songs back and forth every once in a while, and the way that could expose one's technical shortcomings couldn't quite overpower the delight of electrical alchemy.

Our copious theoretical discussion about having a band could have gone on forever. I can't quite say who dared whom, but in the end, I took the plunge, presenting J. with the text for a "musician wanted" ad. He made a couple adjustments, and we sent it off:

I vividly remember pulling my copy of NOW from the box on the following Thursday, and waiting 'til I got down to the subway platform to flip to the classified pages — at which point I nearly shouted in anger at whoever substituted "or" for "of".⁶ But, still, we nailed it otherwise.

Somewhat to my surprise, we got a handful of responses to the ad. A few of them were from guys who were clearly too competent for the likes of us, and between my efforts at lowering their expectations and dispatching my mini-manifesto⁷ we managed to chase most of them off.

III

As it turned out, there was one guy who seemed to be on the right wavelength, so J. & I arranged to meet him for a drink before heading into a show. Which would be, by chance, June 13, 2003 — the very same night that I saw Broken Social Scene live for the first time.

Their set included the songs from YFIIP blown up, magnified and re-assembled alongside a whole slew of newer songs that we'd have to wait for years to hear on album, ending with the sprawl of the band's self-proclaimed theme song, which sort of blurred and combined their best and worst traits — they seemed to have no clue and no interest in how to finish the damned thing.

But equally noteworthy was how the whole of the night was like a gateway to this surprisingly robust pre-existing world, where all the component parts of BSS had their own exciting things going on — the night opening with a series of mini-sets from Apostle of Hustle and Jason Collett and Leslie Feist, generally all of whom were rather more obscure at the time.

But seeing BSS was merely the third most astonishing thing to happen to me that day. The second most astonishing thing were Stars, who I didn't really know that well, but who totally knocked my socks off and outplayed the headliners. BSS "were also pretty good," my journal notes. "Given the gushing praise they've been getting, this could be one of those I-was-there gigs to brag about in the future."

But the show was just a show — the thing that really elated me and capped off my summary was, "we met our drummer!"

As it turned out, with life (as usual) trumping an elegant storyline, although we all seemed to get on well we never heard from the guy again. So nothing came of it, except for having taken the step.

Eventually, though, J. & I did connect with some other prospects to get out and play, renting a rehearsal space (in the far reaches of Etobicoke of all places) in Sunday-afternoon three-hour blocks. It was a bit like a succession of first dates, meeting up with strangers to check up on basic compatibility. And like first dates, only a couple seemed promising enough to bother with a second. And though it could be frustrating to try and fall into a shared headspace with strangers, it was rewarding, too, to be able to live out my Metal Box rockstar fantasies; to be actually jamming:

It was all good fun, though as time went on, I actually did less of that rather than more. Even when I was still playing a lot, I became more interested in playing by — and for — myself. I got an acoustic guitar and devoted myself to trying bang out as many songs from my holy trinity of Tom T. Hall, Lucinda Williams and Paul Westerberg as I could muster from my technical limits.

IV

But still, I didn't really appreciate at the time how these were the first fruits of a process that I was undertaking to deliberately complicate my life a little bit, by putting me in the way of other people.

In retrospect, it was really at that point that things started changing. I wouldn't have been able to recognize it at the time, but all of this was happening just as things were shifting for me in my own life. After a few Dark Years, I was slowly starting to transform into a more social version of myself. And if I never started a band, in time I turned into someone who'd go to a lot of shows rather than someone who went to a few — an indirect result of how that first BSS show had suddenly announced that there were all these local bands, this whole local musical ecosystem. This was something I vaguely knew about but wasn't involved with — but suddenly it became something to explore, something I could really dig into.

And the fact that all of this — the album, that first live experience — was celebratory but based in the murk of doubt and confusion also fit in with the spirit I was feeling with the looming road of angst over turning thirty stretching out before me.⁸ To re-listen to the album now, I can hear this, hear all of this — the layers of hope, insecurity and yearning; mawkish sentimentality mixed with braggadocio; our fears about other people constantly rubbing up against our hopes about other people.⁹

As such, the mess-music of YFIIP — overlapping, opaque but self-situated in a hazy interpersonal web — was an apt soundtrack for the times I'd been waiting for. Part of its art was the self-invocation of its milieu, and I was waiting for something like that, too. In slow steps over the next few years, I'd move myself a little bit closer to finding my own broken social scene.

---

¹ For the record, there is just so much beautiful stuff on this. Everyone should have this, or at least some of its component albums.

² I must have also done a troll through the used bins while I was there, as my other purchases that day were Death in Vegas' The Contino Sessions, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's How I Long to Feel that Summer in my Heart and New Wave by The Auteurs, who I was really into at the time.

³ One thing that the Pitchfork review gets very wrong is that Broken Social Scene is, in fact, an uncommonly excellent band name, capturing in one phrase a truism about the human condition — when you mix together a collection of persons, it's going to get complicated and awkward and be on the verge of falling apart all the time. The ars vitae is in how you navigate that.

⁴ By contrast, there's copious evidence on my near-obsession with the Nikki Sudden reissues that were coming out right around then.

⁵ There were great stacks of band names considered, with preferences changing every day; but by contrast, I quickly established that my punkrock stage name would be Heraclitus Akimbo.

⁶ I was less angry that they also misspelled "unacknowledged" — and by this point I'm not even sure if I simply submitted it like that myself.

⁷ Fortunately, whatever was in the screed detailing what we were trying to achieve is lost to the mists of time. I quoted myself to my journal as saying something like "we want to decommodify our relationship to rock'n'roll by taking part in the conversation", so I can only imagine how embarrassing it would've been once I really got going.

⁸ All of my insecurities about turning thirty were way, way worse than the actual fact of turning thirty. I offer this as an instructional comment to those younger folks who are on their way there as much as I am now using it as an instructive mantra for myself ten years later and hurtling toward that next dreaded milestone.

⁹ And, by the way, Justin Peroff's drums on the album, as recorded by David Newfeld, remain fucking fantastic.

Sunday Playlist #30

Sunday Playlist #30

Epigram - The Strangers We Are Becoming

Ruzan Orkestar - For Calvin

Bell Orchestre - Icicles/Bicycles

Powerhouse Sound - Broken Numbers

Broken Social Scene - Meet Me in the Basement

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Sunday Playlist is a semi-regular feature that brings back some of this blog's previously-posted original live recordings for an encore. You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

1000 Songs: Richard Trapunski

1000 Songs: Richard Trapunski

I have now posted one thousand songs from my live recordings to this blog. My introductory thoughts on that landmark can be found here, but long story short: I asked some folks to pick some of their favourites to help me celebrate.

Today's list comes from local music scribe Rich Trapunski, who manages to get a lot of cool bands some exposure in NOW magazine, but can also investigate a trend when the situation calls for it. He's making a valiant effort to add a layer of scuzz and confusion to CMW in helping put together this Resonancity showcase, co-presented with Dan Burke.

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Congrats on the milestone, Joe!

Constantines - Dirty Business

This is from the Constantines’ secret show at the Garrison in 2009 as part of their 10^th anniversary celebrations (otherwise centred entirely at Lee's Palace). It was cool to see the now-defunct IndieCanRock institution in such a small room – likely the first, last and only time I’ll ever see them – but this was back when the Garrison was the loudest venue in the city, so it's nice to hear a recorded version that won’t give me tinnitus.

I wrote a review of the show for my blog, Resonancity (in my pre-NOW days) and posted it on Stillepost, where the one of the late forum’s lovable curmudgeons predicted something along the lines of this: "the writer seems destined to churn out infotainment pieces for Eye Weekly." Close, but no cigar.

Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill

This was the "legendary" free Broken Social Scene gig at the Harbourfront Centre, a makeup gig for their cancelled Olympic Island Gig in 2009 (depending on who you asked, it was either due to the garbage strike, noise from the Molson Indy or low ticket sales). Having failed to get there before the masses, I ended up stuck behind a couple of older patrons who spent the entire concert standing on their seats. Despite my seething annoyance, I was still seduced by the love-in vibe at this two and a half hour marathon, complete with all the "special guests" that now garner their own marquees (i.e. Feist, Metric, etc), but the only way that I’d ever be able to actually see the gig would be to rent Bruce MacDonald's This Movie Is Broken.

Fucked Up - Year of the Ox

Fucked Up's epic "Year Of..." songs rarely get played live, so I’m lucky to have witnessed "Year of the Ox" twice. Having caught the band's soundcheck earlier in the evening (I interviewed Ben Cook about one of his many other bands, the Bitters, before the show), I knew we'd be in for the whole strings/guest female vocalist treatment, but it sounded even more incongruous in front of a wild – but strangely civilized – all ages crowd... at the Toronto Reference Library, of all places.

Four Corners II - Losing Touch With My Mind

If you haven't been to a Four Corners show at the United Steelworkers Hall, here’s the concept in a nutshell: four bands each set up in a corner of the room and alternate playing songs, while the crowd stands in the centre of the action. The song captured here is all four bands – Rituals, Sun Ra Ra Ra, Quest For Fire and Lullabye Arkestra – all playing together on a chaotic, Zaireeka-style cover of Spaceman 3's "Losing Touch With My Mind". It's a "chaosbomb", to quote Joe himself, but this recording is an apt reconstruction of the maelstrom of barely coherent noise that was the grand finale. Bonus: I’m pretty sure that’s my voice asking "do you know what song this is?" at the 2:48 mark.

Ty Segall - Standing at the Station + Girlfriend

Ty Segall's Toronto shows tend to be louder, sweatier, more bruise-inducing shows than his melodic garage-pop nuggets would have you believe, and this CMW performance at Wrongbar was certainly no exception. After being knocked around and distracted by the energetic, beer-swilling crowd, Joe's recording is a helpful reminder that there were actual songs under the madness... and damn good ones, too.

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You can always click on the tags below to read more about the shows these songs came from. Have there been four or five songs posted here that made an impact on you? If you'd like to get in on the action and make a list, feel free to send me an email: mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com.

Sunday Playlist #24

Sunday Playlist #24

Holy Fuck - Red Lights

Lioness - You're My Heart

Broken Social Scene - All to All

The Two Koreas - Cloth Coat Revolution

Katie Stelmanis - The Villian

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Sunday Playlist is a semi-regular feature that brings back some of this blog's previously-posted original live recordings for an encore. You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

Sunday Playlist #20

Sunday Playlist #20

Nightwood - unknown

Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches

Love is All - False Pretense

RatTail - George Mounsey

Best Coast - When I'm With You

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Sunday Playlist is a semi-regular feature that brings back some of this blog's previously-posted original live recordings for an encore. You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

Recording: Broken Social Scene

Artist: Broken Social Scene

Song: All to All / Meet Me in the Basement

Recorded at Soundscapes / Sonic Boom Records, May 9, 2010.

Broken Social Scene - All to All

Broken Social Scene - Meet Me in the Basement

My notes for these sets can be found here.

In-store: Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene

Soundscapes / Sonic Boom Records. Sunday, May 9, 2010.

As a special hometown celebration for the release of their new album, Forgiveness Rock Record, word came out that Broken Social Scene were going to play a day-long mini-tour with four sets at four of Toronto's premiere independent record stores, with free tickets given out in advance with purchase of the album. Though I'm not particularly in the loop, I managed to hear about this in time to get tickets to the last two of the days' shows.¹

Figuring this'd be the sort of thing people would be eager to get into, I wandered by Soundscapes early, and indeed, there was a queue already forming outside the store, a varied mix of older and younger folks.² There was a bit of confusion in all the hurly-burly, with a coterie of the ticketless trying to decide if they would have a chance to get in, but on the whole, it was a very well-organized affair. Soundscapes even went all-out in bringing in some risers to make a small stage — a literal step up from their usual in-store arrangements.

As soon as the door was opened and people started filing in, the band — fully set up and on the stage — began playing an instrumental entry groove, and once everyone was mostly settled in they segued into "World Sick", the new album's lead-off track. A quick glance across the stage revealed the basic current core lineup was on the stage³, rocking acoustic guitars with indoor sunglasses the order of the day. The slow and gentle arrangement set the tone for this performance and hit the right emotional tone — world-weary but guardedly optimistic, which is BSS' stock-in-trade, really.

The vibe was pretty relaxed, with the band taking time in between songs to chat with each other and the crowd. The interaction included one of those Kevin Drew curveballs, where he threw in a singalong chorus from "Money Changes Everything"⁴ at the end of a slowed-down "Superconnected". Suddenly I was remembering why I love this band.

Claiming a cold, Drew asked afterwards if anyone had a tissue. "I just had an erotic thought," he joked.

"Me and My Hand!" shouted someone in the audience, referring to the onanistic closing track of the new album.

"I can't sing 'Me and My Hand' with my mom here on Mother's Day," Drew replied — though while the band tuned, he did try out a few lines of a rewritten version, now called "Me and My Mom".

Meanwhile, the other bandmembers stepped up as well. Andrew Whiteman sang on "Art House Director", the sprightliest thing yet in the set, and while introducing "Stars and Sons", Brendan Canning talked about having last played Soundscapes in 2002⁵, taking care to send a shoutout to BSS alum and former Soundscapes employee John Crossingham. before a clap-along run through the song.

"Fucked Up Kid" from Kevin Drew's "solo" album Spirit If... was a slightly less-expected addition to the set, and perfectly suited for the stripped-down instrumentation. The band was especially unhurried on this one, letting the relaxed instrumental portion slowly unfurl, stretching the song out even longer than its album version. Then, in a true goofball left turn, Canning lead a song dedicated to a friend's late dog, which was treated with as much seriousness by the band as any of the other songs, with chords being explained before it started and Spearin throwing in a nifty melodica solo.

Looking back and forth at each other to figure out what to play as a final song, someone in the crowd shouted "All to All", and the band took up the challenge. "Well, we'd be winging it on the spot," Drew warned, but they quickly worked out an acoustic arrangement of the synth-heavy number. "I'm looking forward to this," Canning said as the others behind him argued over what key the song should be in. As Whiteman held the riff at the start, it almost felt it was going to fall apart, but keeping things going, Lisa Lobsinger plunged into the vocal. It turned to out to work pretty well, with the band excitedly rushing the tempo but holding it together.

Overall, quite exceptional.

I'd previously put up a track from this set here, but you can also hear another one here.

With some time to spare before the next round, plenty of time for a relaxed walk up to Bloor and check out the line situation at Sonic Boom, where, indeed there was already a queue forming. Or, rather, two — one for ticketholders, and a much-longer one of unticketed hopefuls trying to snatch a spot. Ran into J., and we stepped in fairly close to the start of the ticketholders' line, with some time to kill examining the racks of DVD's we were standing beside.

Eventually, we moved downstairs, managing to catch a spot close up as the entire basement got crammed full, the staff apparently trying to get in as many of the folks in the non-ticketholders' line as possible. This time the band took the stage in the more traditional way, and with a stronger sense of purpose, probably attributable to the fact that this was more like the band's regular rocktastic set-up with less adjustments to be made on the fly. Leading off with the You Forgot It In People pairing of "Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries" and "Shampoo Suicide", an oldie-but-goodie indeed (as Drew suggested) with all the overlapping sprawl hinted at in BSS' best work still intact.

At the outset more focused and less banter-y than at the Soundscapes, the band moved straight into "7/4 (Shoreline)". Lisa Lobsinger handled the vocal part ably, and it was gratifying to see her approach it in her own way and not merely try to imitate someone else's singing. After finally pausing to chat and pass instruments around⁶, the next segment focused on the new album, represented by the trio of "Forced to Love", "Texico Bitches" and "Water in Hell". All of these were pretty convincing, with a couple possibly surpassing their album versions — in the case of "Water in Hell" perhaps as much for the go-for-gusto slight sloppiness as anything.

Kevin Drew, as is often the case, was filled with a fuck-the-practicalities enthusiasm, willing to turn all the amps as high as they'd go — with Peroff being the sober second thought in this case. Meanwhile, having fun in these environs, everyone wanted to raise the top of their guitar necks to the low basement ceiling. Drew again solicited a round of applause for his mom — and this time he even sang a song to her. It was more than just an improvised riff, too, and seemed like something the band had worked out in advance. Goofy and sweet while being slightly awkward in its earnestness, it fit in quite well with the rest of the material.

"That was the closer right there," Drew concluded after that. But quickly moving on to the "encore", there was an open discussion between band and crowd over what to do next ("'Romance to the Grave?'," Drew responded to one suggestion. "No, I can't do that right after 'Mommy I Love You'!") And sadly, Drew didn't think he could pull off "Sweetest Kill", which I was hoping for.

But instead, in a cool sort of twist, Drew called Julie Doiron, who'd been hanging around in the "backstage" area to add her voice to "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl". Cool and unexpected, though it didn't have quite as much lift as I've seen the song get in the past. But that might capture the essence of this performance the best — at a technical and even emotional level, I've seen the band reach higher heights, but given the premium that I place of proximity and honest raggedness, this was pretty awesome. And in terms of seeing the band these days, given that I was at such close quarters made this a pretty big deal. Even if their big Island show spectacular might have been, y'know, more and bigger and longer, I chose to forgo that, as any of the additional goodness that they might have brought would have been mostly obviated by the alienation of being further away, in a giant crowd, etc. etc. In other words, utterly unlike meeting them in the basement.

And then, "Meet Me In The Basement", a perfect closer, which hit just right. For all the talk of how instrumental songs can be emotionally ambiguous, this one's joyful triumph seemed obvious here, for audience and band alike — as the song hit the false ending, before the horns punched back in, Drew said, "this is what it sounds like to us when we see all of you!"

And just like in real life where any sort of perfect moment is usually marred by some sort of awkward reality, in the best BSS tradition, there was that sense that the band didn't know how to end the song, as the emotional bombast eased off into a slow, kinda noodly, guitar outro.⁷

A little more than an hour — not bad for a freebie, and pretty good for a band on their fourth show of the day. An excellent time, and a nice reminder that no matter how big they get, Broken Social Scene aren't too big to get up close and personal. I didn't stick around after to wait and hug Kevin Drew, but one gets the impression that that he would have found that totally all right if I had.

Listen to a couple tracks from this set here and here.

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¹ The two shows earlier in the day were at Criminal Records and Rotate This.

² Amusingly, a MuchMusic interviewer working the lineup marched past me (y'know — way out of the demographic) to talk to the teenagers behind me in line and pick their brains about the importance of record stores and so on — a topic that, as they laughed amongst themselves after, they hadn't really put much thought into.

³ That'd be Whiteman, Canning, Drew, Goldberg, Spearin, Peroff and Lobsinger for those with a scorecard. They were augmented on horns by Julia Hamilton and David French.

⁴ Showing he's a man of the people, Drew referred to it as a "Cyndi Lauper song", whereas a true rock snob, of course, would have made a shout out to The Brains.

⁵ The band was obviously enjoying themselves in this environment, including Sam Goldberg, who was flipping through CD's on a shelf behind the stage during the songs he wasn't playing on.

⁶ With the band fully filling up the stage, their guitar rack was stashed on the floor right in front of them, and Drew drafted the nearest fan in the front row as a temporary roadie to pass guitars up between songs.

⁷ And a tip of the hat here to Pete Nema, who in describing the ending of the BSS set at The Island show, nailed the description of this phenomena just right: "Every time I see them, it seems as though they may have an internal competition between band members to see who can leave the stage last. I'm thinking the last person to pack it in wins."

Recording: Broken Social Scene

Artist: Broken Social Scene

Song: Texico Bitches

Recorded at Soundscapes, May 9, 2010.

Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches

My notes for this set can now be found here.

Recording: Broken Social Scene

Artist: Broken Social Scene

Song: Superconnected

Recorded at Soundscapes, May 9, 2010.

Broken Social Scene - Superconnected

Review to follow, though let's give a special shout-out to all the good folks at Soundscapes who were spotted hoisting around the risers that the band used for the stage.

Update: My notes for this set can now be found here.

Recording: Broken Social Scene

Artist: Broken Social Scene

Song: Sweetest Kill^*

Recorded at Harbourfront Centre, July 11, 2009.

Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill

My notes from this gig can be found here.

^* This was generally still being referred to as "MTV Jam" at the time of this show, but I have updated the title.

Gig: Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene / Rattlesnake Choir

Harbourfront Centre. July 11, 2009.

As I left the love vibe of Afrofest and climbed on the subway to get down to Harbourfront, I had this vague worry that I was leaving Woodstock to go to Altamont — to what would surely be an overcrowded, pushy cauldron of gatecrashers. Best to get there super early, then, and get a seat. Even if that meant standing for the length of the show, having a demarked bit of space would hopefully at least make things tolerable. Got to Union and walked down, and while I was making my way over on the boardwalk, I could hear that music playing. It was soundcheck, and there was a semi-full house already as I found a spot and settled in. J. found me a few minutes later as we listened to the band run through "Fire Eye'd Boy" and an couple more songs. Caught sight of Feist and Amy Millan amongst the whole crowd, the sense building that was going to be the full Broken Social Scene experience.

Then there was some time to kill. I talked about my Woodstock/Altamont theory and we discussed Lester bangs at Altamont while we watched the young crowd, seemingly fresh from the pages of Vice magazine, fill in the last remaining seats and begin to congregate in the aisles. In terms of time fillers, there was also an opening act, local crew Rattlesnake Choir, who played a competent set of perfectly fungible country-rock. "Didn't the Flying Burrito Brothers play first at Altamont?" asked J.¹ I wasn't terribly excited by the act — not so much that I was going to stand up to watch — so instead I figured this might be the last best opportunity to get to the bathroom. Made my way through the crowd, by now pretty thick outside the seating area, and blinked my eyes a couple times when I thought I saw the Angels brandishing their weighted pool cues. Made it there and back without incident, not feeling so eager to have to do that twice. Meanwhile, Rattlesnake Choir were still playing. By and large, there was nothing wrong with them, and they'd probably sound fine in their native environment down in the Dakota. But at this show, in front of this crowd, if didn't sit right, and I was sorta looking at my watch, thinking of that curfew and how every minute this lot played meant one less for BSS.

Oh — did I mention the cameras? There were at least three big camera rigs on site, including a pair on the stage and one at the back of the seating area, plus guys all over with movie cameras. Turns out the event was being filmed by Bruce McDonald, who came out to speak to the crowd briefly. My mind was immediately flashing on the scene with Drew and Canning with McDonald in the editing room, going through the footage frame-by-frame to find where you could first spot the guy pulling the gun.

Anyways, just before nine, the waiting was over, and Broken Social Scene took the stage. Leading off with an instrumental, everything suddenly felt okay. After "Fire Eye'd Boy", Kevin said, "we got all your hometown heroes here tonight!" As Feist came on stage and the crowd shrieked with girlish glee, the band broke into "Shoreline".² A couple solo numbers from Kevin and Brendan's solo/BSS albs followed.

Meanwhile, the non-annoying people that'd been sitting in front of us bailed, and the space was filled by a less-welcome crew of young dudes, sniggering at each other, lighting cigarettes, and yapping away between pouring shots from their concealed liquor bottle. They fell into that class of people who didn't give much consideration to those around them — if everyone in the place is standing up in the seats, does it really seem like a wise idea to sit on the back of a seat and lean back right up to the person standing there? This was the less fun part of the show, leaving J. muttering under his breath that he was going to unleash his inner Altamont on the young suburbanites.

But that notwithstanding, the show was getting on in cracking fashion. Divided into three acts, the middle segment was devoted to songs from members whose success has mostly led them away from the BSS circle. We got a new one from Amy Millan, which sounded nice, but was a little sedate for this situation, followed by a duet between Kevin and Feist, who mashed up the former's "Safety Bricks" with the latter's "Past In Present", plus some "I Feel It All" tacked on at the end. This was followed by Emily Haines fronting a slowed-down and BSS-ed up version of "Gimme Sympathy", which was very well done. Then, in a nice nod to the '04 Harbourfront show, Jason Collett did "I'll Bring the Sun", merging into a snippet of GBV's "Glad Girls" at the end.³ The middle part ended with Andrew Whiteman (joined by Apostle of Hustle's Dean Stone on drums) leading the band in a raucous take of "Soul Unwind" that used the horn section to good effect.

Listen to this version of "Gimme Sympathy" here.

The final act mixed old and new material, with "Almost Crimes" and an amazing "Anthems For a 17 Year Old Girl" bookending "New Country"⁴ and a new song known around the internet as "MTV Jam", presumably because of a video clip in circulation with them performing it on MTV — although I vividly recall the song from the BSS jam at Jason Collett's Dakota residency in December '07. Kevin seemed impressed with the speed at which the band had got through the setlist, and lapsed, for the only time during the show, into his new-age Primal Scream guru persona: "Everyone say 'I'm Sorry'!" He instructed the crowd. "Everyone say 'I Still Fuckin' Love You!'" For a brief second it seemed like the band was going to do the setlist and that's it, which confused me — I'd expected the band to fill every second up to that curfew. But normality soon re-asserted itself, and the band launched into a fiery version of "Pacific Theme", and seemingly everyone climbed up to stand on their seats. A couple more songs and that was it, again — except for an uptempo jaunt through "Major Label Debut".

Getting out wasn't terribly bad — people had started trickling away after 10:30 and after a small, dense knot of people in the standing area it was pretty navigable. Certainly one to remember, it felt like a summation of everything that's come so far. It'll be interesting to see when so many of the clan are assembled on one stage again, but at least it does seem like there's still some viable forward momentum in the old Scene yet. And while there were some moments where I was feeling less-than-charitable towards my fellow concert-goers, no-one ended up stabbed, so success on many levels.

Listen to another track from this gig here.

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¹ So as to not besmirch his rep as a rock'n'roll historian, I must note that J. subsequently corrected himself by noting that Santana actually played first that day.

² Wherein she made one slight alteration to the lyrics — instead of saying "If you try to steal the beat / the beat will steal you", she said "If you try to steal the scene / the scene will steal you". Or you could capitalize that to The Scene for some interesting self-referential fun.

³ To complete the tribute to that '04 show, I was kinda hoping Canning would wear a towel on his head again, but no luck there.

⁴ A song that dates back to the You Forgot It In People era, but was never recorded, and has been recently revived — perhaps this has been tackled at the band's recent recording sessions?

Recording: Broken Social Scene (ft. Emily Haines)

Artist: Broken Social Scene (ft. Emily Haines)

Song: Gimme Sympathy

Recorded at Harbourfront Centre, July 11, 2009.

Broken Social Scene (ft. Emily Haines) - Gimme Sympathy

My notes from this gig can be found here.