Fuck Christmas, North by Northeast is the most wonderful time of the year! Whereas there's always a scarcity of concerts around Christmastime, there ain't no shortage of bands during NXNE weekend--to say nothing of the movie screenings. While it can't compare to Toronto Film Fest in that department, I'd much rather listen to live music than sit in a movie theatre, anyways!
THURSDAY
For me, the festival all began with the Canadian premiere of Global Metal, the new film from Sam Dunn of Headbanger's Journey fame. While the movie offered great insight on Asian metal, in particular, (in fact, the only non-Asian country Dunn visited was Brazil) it didn't captivate me the way its predecessor did. Especially since pretty much every band interviewed played black metal, thrash, or some combination of the two. Do they not have stoner rock or doom metal in any of these countries!? If I were in Japan to shoot a documentary on metal, I would try to interview Boris, Eternal Elysium and/or Church of Misery, but the Burn to Black bassist clearly had other ideas. Other than Israel's Orphaned Land, none of the bands interviewed seemed to encorporate elements of their traditional music and/or culture into their sound. Well, unless you count Sepultura, but everybody knows their story by now, right?
Speaking of stoner rock (and global metal, for that matter) Spirits of the Dead got the musical portion of the fest started on a HIGH note for me with their performance upstairs at the El Mocambo. Hailing from Oslo, Norway, they played a brand of heavy psych not unlike their countrymen Sahg, as the band's white-jumpsuit-clad singer banged away on a tambourine when not wailing over some heavy grooves. To my disappointment, they didn't have a CD for sale, as I would've bought one if they did.
For a little while, it seemed like Thursday was to be the Nite of the Tambourine. Swedish band Oholics had their very own tambourine man, who also played sitar and fiddled with the keyboard effects while on stage. Meanwhile, The Brown Hornets tossed several tambourines into the crowd during their set at the Bovine Sex Club in a clever attempt to get a notoriously apathetic clientele to participate. While it seemed to work, their set almost felt as if it was cut short. And after they left the stage, confusion reigned supreme at the BSC...
According to the NXNE website, both Drunkula and LA Guns were scheduled to play the Bovine at 1 am, and the latter had even posted it up on their Myspace page. However, when I realized that Tracii and co. were nowhere to be seen, I booked it down Queen St. to the Black Bull Tavern to catch Oshawa blues-rockers The Micronite Filters. They put on an entertainingly drunken set, the kind you'd expect from a band going on so late. My evening didn't end there, however...
At NXNE 2007, the very first band I caught was a glam rock act called Diemonds, who were playing an early set at the Bovine. They were on the festival lineup again this year, with a large photo and writeup in NOW Magazine, and a 2 am set at The Silver Dollar Room. By this time, the Room was rather rowdy, and I couldn't move without stepping in spilt beer. But just as they kicked things off last year, they ended opening nite '08 with a bang--and a cover of David Bowie's Suffragette City. Who needs the LA Guns, anyways?
FRIDAY
After watching The Brown Hornets and Spanish band We Are Balboa play on the outdoor stage at Yonge-Dundas Square, I made my way to the NFB Cinema to check out a documentary about The Monks. Now, I always knew The Monks as the band who wrote the punk rock classic "Nice Legs, Shame 'Bout Ya Face," but it turns out they weren't the first band with that name, and the documentary was about the group that had it first, a buncha American GIs living in Germany in the early 60's. Their sound was certainly ahead of its time, as it was a slightly poppier and less bluesy take on the acid rock that would come along a few years later. Some Germans even credit their Monks as inventing heavy metal, but come on, there's no way that Black Sabbath had ever heard of these guys, since their records were never available outside of Germany.
Musically, I began the evening by catching a 50's throwback band called Bird Week, whose frontman bears a strange resemblance to Rick Astley. Then scheduling problems struck again. I don't know why a venue would switch the order of two bands when people plan their festival around the set times given on the NXNE schedule, but that's exactly what Club Neutral decided to do. However, I was able to make the best of the situation once again, by catching a Calgarian band from my youth instead of some band I had never heard of before.
The last time I saw Hot Little Rocket was in the summer of 2004 at a carpenter's union hall that no longer hosts live music, so I'm told. Needless to say, the band has aged a bit since then, as have I. To be honest, I didn't have many distinctive musical memories of them, though I used to think they were pretty good. Hot Little Rocket has a distinctive indie rock sound, and that's not really my thing anymore, but seeing them at Rancho Relaxo sure brought back memories of my past as I tried to recall the other bands that played that day in '04.
After reminiscing for a while, I headed back to the Neutral to check out Perla, a six-piece prog band from Iceland, the home country of (some of) my ancestors. Since I don't speak Icelandic, I couldn't understand a word of any of their songs, but the musicianship was top-notch. They were followed by HotKid, a two-piece garage rock band from Cambridge, and I really noticed the difference between having a six-piece and a two-piece band on stage. But HotKid's killer guitar tone made up for their lack of a bassist. Well, almost.
I was fortunate not to be caught in the rain too long on Friday since the first four venues I went to were all within a block of each other. I was also fortunate to have a media pass, otherwise I would've been standing outside in the rain since the El Mocambo had not one, but two long lineups going with Bedouin Soundclash upstairs and Brank Bjork and the Bros playing the main room. If I had to pick one hilite from the three-day fest, it would hafta be Brant Bjork's set.
The ElMo was full of stoners who were there to see Brant, and they all left immediately afterwards. Don't ask me where all these people were on 4/20, although I'm guessing they were smoking up in each other's basements. Anyways, the band was really tight, and everything sounded heavy and groovy as fuck. Drunkula had a tough task going on afterwards, and played to a much smaller crowd, but put on a solid set of much faster music.
Now, we all know that Jagermeister is a good friend to metal heads, and sponsors many metal bands around the world. But really, somebody needed to tell the organizers of the Jagermeister showcase that they needed to play by the unwritten rules of North by Northeast. Instead of having bands play on the hour, like every other venue in town, the Jager bands took the stage on the half or even three-quarters of an hour, creating conflicts for anyone who wanted to see them. In order to make it to the Republik on time for White Cowbell Oklahoma, I had to skip Bionic at the ElMo, since White Cowbell's set was starting just as theirs would've ended. As a result, I caught half of Robin Black's performance, which was a truly forgettable experience. But despite the unfamiliar territory (rock bands in the front, dance party in the back!?) Cowbell put on a typically rowdy show, with chainsaws, male transvestite(!?) strippers and a giant, styrofoam-shooting penis cannon. Note to self: singing Put the South in Your Mouth while being showered with styrofoam is a potential choking hazard! It was an enjoyable, if somewhat abbreviated end to the evening, and I don't think I'll ever end up at the Republik again.
SATURDAY
On Saturday afternoon, I witnessed the wildest band this side of GG Allin, and I don't think anybody can come close to Isreal's The Monotonix after that scumbag killed himself. Musically, the Israeli exports weren't terrible, but were certainly nothing to write home about. But they made up for it with their on-stage antics, particularily those of their homeless-looking (and homeless-smelling!) lead singer. In no particular order, he stole people's hats, grabbed small girls out of the audience, emptied a garbage can on his drummer's head and rubbed his bare ass against people that were brave enough to stand up front. The wildly entertaining performance began in the basement of Sonic Boom and ended up in the middle of Bloor Street, where the singer and drummer stopped traffic and frightened passersby for about five minutes. While I would never buy a Monotonix CD, I wouldn't mind seeing them live again, as long as I'm as far away from their singer as possible.
Chicago's Mannequin Men had the unenviable task of following the Monotonix madness, and they put on a solid punk rock set to a much smaller audience, albeit one that included vinyl fanatic Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks and formerly of Black Flag. Apparently, he was just shopping for records.
The evening's festivities began on a much tamer note with instrumental psych/ambient rock band Holoscene at the Velvet Underground. For an 8 pm set, they got a pretty decent-sized crowd out, which was likely due to the holographic posters they put up in the windows of many Queen Street shops. A few steps down the street, the Heavy Metal Association of Canada had booked the Funhaus for a metal showcase, and I stopped in to check out Dame, a trio of high school girls that sounded like Kittie without the cookie monster vocals. George Snuffleuffagus apparently loves these girls, so chances are they'll go far in this country.
The Black Bull was the site of one of my fondest memories of NXNE 2007, when an upstart young trio from Cleveland called The Suede Brothers blew veteran Arizona stoner rockers Love Mound off the stage. Well, make that off the rug, since the place doesn't have a stage to speak of. Never the less, it was packed on Saturday for Brother Howe, a Michigan-based husband/wife/brother outfit with no relation to Gordie. They covered Johnny Cash and brought to mind Hank Williams III, which is as good as it gets when it comes to country music.
The Kathedral always seems to be home to one hidden gem at NXNE, and this year was no exception. Like Ottawa duo Muffler Crunch the year before, a Chicago trio called Scout's Honor brought me to the run-down punk rock bar, and captured my attention with their brand of heavy, bluesy, semi-stoner rock. One of the few bands that seemed to be selling merch, I grabbed their latest CD for my personal collection, and will be on the lookout for more from these guys in the future.
I ended the evening at the Funhaus, where Redeemer and Salem Saints, two of the bigger draws from the Sunday Stoner Rock Spectacular, were putting the finishing touches on the HMAC showcase. Taking the stage at 1 and 2am, respectively, I don't think either band had as big a crowd as they did on 4/20, but both put on great performances again. I gotta say, I always thought that Uncle D the Canadian Ass Man was a big, buff guy, but when he introduced the Saints, I realized that he's not very tall...
SUNDAY
It only seemed fitting to end NXNE with a screening of The Last Pogo, a short documentary about the iconic concert/riot at The Horseshoe Tavern in 1978. Many Pogo concert-goers and musicians who played that evening were in attendance for the screening at a packed NFB Theatre. Along with The Diodes' reunion performance last year, this was another event which proved that the punks of the 70's are currently in mid-life crisis stage. Still, when people are still applauding your short-lived garage band 30 years later, that's definitely gotta bring about strong feelings of pride and accomplishment to former members of The Scenics and Cardboard Brains. Unfortunately, the documentary cameras got shut off during the riot that occurred when Teenage Head were shut down by the cops--after just one song--and only showcased the aftermath of The Last Pogo, missing out on most of the action.
Getting to and from the NFB Cinema was quite a challenge, as large groups of people lined Queen, Richmond and John streets in order to catch a glimpse of the red-carpet celebrities in town for the Much Music Video Awards that evening. Fortunately, I made it home before the rain started to pour, and it really came down for most of the nite. That's what you get for listening to mainstream corporate trash music, suckers!!!!