Get the R. Kelly tape and see how we piss on you

sitting around a campfire folksy songs

The day did not start off well. After sucking back 2 large coffees and settling on an unfortunate choice for lunch, I began to feel really sick. Like, in the library washroom stall, ready to yak sick. Not nice. Then I was confronted with a moment that just totally crystallized my experiences at the University of Toronto in a nut shell. I thought there was class but it was rescheduled. I went to the graduate secretary to confirm the news and to learn the new time. She tells me the information and then says, "I didn't know there were any out of department students in this class." And, she knows completely everyone down to their name, face, school of entry, etc. I felt like Ellison's invisible man, so unknown and unwanted in this department (which makes Melbourne's treatment of me so far to be so refreshing).

While I was sick, I still had made arrangements to split a pitcher and grab a bite to eat with my friend Adam at the Green Room in the Annex. I wasted a few sick hours on campus by reading William Johnson's Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada and pointlessly surfing the web. I began to feel somewhat OK and then did a bit of a roundabout walk around downtown before heading to the bar. Adam's usually always on time and I've known him for years upon years, going back to when I was um 12 or so years old (maybe younger) in the E-hole. Unfortunately though, he no-showed! Work held him up, and his cell phone was dead, so he couldn't relay the news. I had ordered a pitcher as soon as I arrived and was nursing the first pint for the entire time I was waiting. With an entire pitcher on the table and the Stephen Harper biography no longer really holding my attention, I made the rash decision to head down to the Great Hall and attempt to get into the shit-hot Over the Top Festival Launch party. I heard there were going to be maybe 50 tickets available at the door.

I threw down the pitcher on an empty stomach in a few minutes and then - TRASHED - I took the streetcar from Bloor to Queen where I had an entertaining and pissed as a newt conversation with an old Italian woman about federal politics (I was wearing my ironic Svend Robinson pin). I then ran over to 1087 Queen West from Bathurst, arriving at about 7:30 or so and there appeared to be no hope. I'd been told to be there by 7 if I wanted to get in and by the time that I arrived there was a huge lineup. According to someone's count, I was about 81st person in line and there were whispers of now 50 to 100 tickets available. It looked bleak but I decided to wait it out and see if I could get in. 2 hours pass and the lineup party that people were staging had reached its insurgency like last throes. I considered making up fake Vancouver media credentials (I guess Ravensbergen has asked me to write for Discorder so I could have made it work?) to get in. When usual small talk faltered, we read an extremely scary evangelical newspaper that some dude was selling to the lineup (street entrepreneurialism?) out loud to the line. The paper gave Stephen Harper a C as party leader and every other leader an F for not conforming to family values. They also lambasted Narnia for not being Christian enough. Scary! But, and then, the line moved! And moved! And moved! And, after about 2 hours and 5 minutes of waiting, I got in.

The Great Lake Swimmmers were already halfway or more through their set. Tony Dekker and crew sounded quite positively beautiful. This was my first time seeing them live and they seemed to be even better live than their recorded output might have it. The band played in a way that actively sought out to highlight Dekker's vocals. Just sumptuous shit. They ended with my favourite GLS tune, "I will never see the sun," which has been my personal Toronto anthem this school year because, and I don't know how exactly to put this in a way that doesn't make me sound like a flake, it sounds like the Toronto that I have begun to know and like (at times). This city will never be as bright and fashionable as a Vancouver or a Montreal. They (we?) drink Coffee Time and Tim Horton's here, and not Starbucks, by the bucket. The ganj will never be as potent and not nearly enough people smoke it here. The city is butt-fucking ugly. But, it is a city. It is the city of "Spadina, St. George, Bay and Yonge" as Dekker sings. T.O. though it should be noted is definitely not a "Torontopia" or a "uTOpia" (if you need to write books or make documentaries to assert it, it isn't true) but a city nevertheless where we/they will never see the sun...



Anyways, after a pretty quick set break, motherfucking AKRON/FAMILY were on next. Unfortunately they are not actually from Akron, Ohio nor do they even nod back to the Akron Sound of the 1980s (Devo, CHI-PIG, etc.). Nevertheless, they owned the stage and played one of the best sets I've seen in months. Their sound went from noise-ish rockouts to better-than-Animal-Collective sitting around a campfire folksy songs and then through the alleys of a free/freak/psych folk sound world and back again. Their jams never seemed forced and boring; they were always leading somewhere new, exciting and engrossing. These four dirty, smelly hippies banged the shit out of their instruments, sang their lungs out, sweated buckets and captured an entire room through their sheer enthusiasm and technical chops. The second last song, for example, seemed to end with 3 of the 4 band members all banging out interlocking patterns on the drum set while the bassist blew on an harp that was connected directly into an amp. And then, when it seemed like it was all over, the band grabbed a banjo, guitar and a tambourine and jumped into the crowd and led the entire room in a moving mic-less singalong. Incredible!

Nothing that Final Fantasy could do would have topped Akron/Family and Owen Pallett certainly knew it. He seemed quite blown away by Akron/Family and acknowledged this to the crowd ("How can you top getting the crowd to sing and clap for 20 minutes?"). He did his best though, playing some old favourites (the CN Tower Belongs to the Dead) and also playing some new tunes. He was accompanied by the St. Kitts String Quartet and he also had his harpsichord on stage with him, which, due to the heat in the room, went out of tune (flat). It was all very nice and beautiful but coming after Akron/Family it almost seemed like an anticlimax. This is not to say tht he was bad (far from it) but the delicateness of his music was made even more apparent after the beautiful racket of the Family. That said, I did love the lineup in that we had 3 very diverse yet related bands play; I've always been a proponent of having unlike bands/artists playing with each other. At the end, he came on for an encore which included Laura Barrett joining in to sing "Robot Ponies" with Owen on harpsichord, before ending with the crowd-requested and amazing cover of Bloc Party's "This Modern Love."

All in all, a pretty great only in Toronto night. If the rest of this semester is this awesome, I might miss T.O. next year. (Well, maybe not.) I should also say that I really loved the Great Hall as a venue. There should be more shows there. It's just the right size and layout, I think. Certainly, it's 18 billion times better than the horrible Lee's Palace or some other comparable-size venue in town. Akron/Family are back in town in March at the Music Gallery with Laura Barrett in support. Book it.

(Akron/Family live ridiculum photo borrowed from suckingalemon on stillepost...)

Listening to: Cam'ron - Dip-Set Forever (Produced by Kanye West)