A week in the life: NXNE, Luminato

If you live in Toronto and claim to be a music fan, last weekend hosted an embarrassment of riches, many of them free—including outdoor shows by the Flaming Lips, Kathleen Edwards, Balkan beatmaster Shantel, our own Eastern European party machine the Lemon Bucket Orchestra, the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, “Sugar Sugar” pop legend Andy Kim performing at a children’s festival, and finally the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

I wanted to do it all. I did very little. Sometimes it’s far too easy to take this city for granted. And more often than not, spending time with one’s own family as a mature adult trumps the twentysomething desire to do it all, all the time. 

My week of music began at the Luminato festival, with a Wednesday noon-hour interview that Richard Flohil conducted with producer Joe Boyd, who made amazing records with Nick Drake, Mary Margaret O’Hara, the McGarrigles and R.E.M., among others, and wrote the excellent memoir White Bicycles. He’s not only a great producer, but, as one can tell from his book, he’s a wonderful raconteur, sharing stories about everybody from Muddy Waters and Duke Ellington to Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention, and how he was part of the reason why “world music” exists as a marketing genre at all. If you’re wondering what kind of record collection this guy must have, he’s happy to walk you through it here.

Two days later, it was my turn to do the interviewing. It was a thrill to be drafted by NXNE to grill iconic Canadian music manager Bernie Finkelstein on stage during the conference’s daytime proceedings. Finkelstein has just released his memoir, which shares a title with his pioneering record company, True North. It’s an entertaining read, especially his accounts of the rollicking Yorkville years that still seem incredulous to non-baby-boomer Torontonians like myself. I will, though, join other reviewers in saying that Finkelstein is too nice a guy to write his own book—he told some stories on stage that would have helped enliven his written words (I’m glad I asked him about his antithesis, Bruce Allen).

When I started listening to pop radio in the early ’80s, I was enraptured by Bruce Cockburn and Rough Trade, both Finkelstein clients, and I’ve long had major respect for the paths Finkelstein helped carve into Canadian culture: as a lobbyist for CanCon regulations in the early ’70s, as someone who wanted to give Canadian musicians a reason not to leave home yet was always thinking globally, as a key figure in the founding of funding bodies FACTOR and VideoFACT—and as a mensch who commanded the respect of most everyone he encountered. Stay tuned for a transcript of our conversation.

Most of my musical NXNE experiences were decidedly underwhelming, including one hot buzz band riding the wake of the announcement of the Polaris Prize long list. The less said, the better. Which brings us to the last refuge of the aging hipster: the reunion show. 

I was a big Archers of Loaf fan in the ’90s—and make no mistake about it, everything about the Archers is dipped in that decade, right down to the reductive comparison points: they really do sound like a 50/50 mix of Sonic Youth and Pavement, stealing only the best bits from each. But it was Eric Bachmann’s side project, Barry Black, that I loved even more, and his continuing career as Crooked Fingers has been a consistently rewarding soundtrack to the last 12 years of my life. I’ve never been disappointed by a Crooked Fingers record, right up to 2011’s Breaks in the Armor. And while I adore certain Archers songs, I never, ever put on their records, not even after the recent reissues put out by Merge Records, which necessitated the reunion and random appearances over the past year.

I wasn’t going to go to the Archers show at the Phoenix last Saturday; I didn’t feel like I needed to see it. I’d much rather see Crooked Fingers deliver a performance as fine as they did at the much smaller Drake Hotel last year—or sit at home and grumble about why Crooked Fingers can’t fill the Phoenix, feeling like the inverse of the typical music geek: “Sure, I like his earlier work, but his new, more obscure stuff is fantastic.” But my special ladyfriend was in bad need of a loud, visceral rock’n’roll experience, so we went. I’m glad we did.

Archers of Loaf opened with “Audio Whore”—a track not found on one of their four albums, and an interesting choice for a band that is clearly cashing in. Let’s get that out in the open, they seemed to say, and then let’s enjoy the rest of the night. From that point on, the Archers sounded as good—if not better—than they ever did. I honestly have no idea what the other ¾ of the band has been up to, but it sounds like they have a lot of pent-up rocking to get out of their system. And Bachmann had almost given up on music entirely—moving to Taiwan to become a teacher—before returning to reform the Archers and put out another Crooked Fingers record, and it’s obvious from his grin he’s pleased as punch anyone still gives a fuck.

Up until about the third Crooked Fingers record, every time I saw Bachmann perform he had to fend off some lughead hecklers who kept calling out for Archers song. Every time, he sternly but politely addressed it from the stage: “That’s a different band, a whole other thing. I’m doing something else right now.” That’s why when, at the 2004 Mergefest in Carrborro, North Carolina, he suddenly launched into “Web in Front” at the end of a Crooked Fingers set, the resulting roar was the most visceral fanboy release I’ve ever heard. As my special ladyfriend put it, all she saw were a bunch of bobbing bald 35-year-old heads flipping out for three minutes straight.

The scene was similar at the Phoenix on Saturday, although without the surprise element. It was obvious we were going to hear “Web in Front” at some point—no point getting worked up about it. This crowd was just as excited, if not more excited, to bellow “The Greatest of All Time” at the top of their lungs. It was funny hearing fortysomething men sing songs they wrote as self-conscious, self-loathing university students: “It’s a waste of my time to pursue this / it’s so self-indulgent to think that you might like this song” (“Might”), or the inner dialogue of inferiority-superiority complexes articulated in “Wrong.” The second-last song of the regular set was, appropriately enough, a fierce run-through of “Nostalgia.”

Who came to the Archers of Loaf show? University of Western Ontario alumni, judging by the response of at least half the room when bassist Matt Gentling asked, “Who here is from London?” It was because of the campus radio program director there that I first heard the band back in 1995; he told me the whole town was going apeshit for all things Loaf, and invited me down to see them play the Embassy Hotel when Vee Vee came out. (“Party at the Whippet Lounge!” were Gentling’s parting words on Saturday, referring to the Embassy’s adjacent bar.) I’ve since been thankful to that radio man for a lot of lovely things in my life, including the love of Loaf.

I have mixed feelings about reunions. My own ’90s band did one a few years back, in front of thousands of people, and it was simultaneously the best and worst gig of our career, for a variety of very personal reasons. I was snarky about the Pavement reunion a couple of years ago, until I ended up at the show because of other bands on the bill and wound up enjoying the band more than I ever did in the ’90s. The gig I’m most excited about this entire summer is the Shadowy Men reunion on July 14 at Lee’s Palace. (See my article and Q&A with Don Pyle in Maclean’s). Maybe because the Archers of Loaf were never anyone’s #1 favourite band, there’s less at stake and audiences are free to go with modest expectations and be blown away, as opposed to setting themselves up for disenchantment.

Eric Bachmann gave a great interview to Stereogum last summer about the reasons for the reunion and the reissues. He’s a classy guy. Read what he has to say here. 

After a week of reading NXNE blurbs describing bands as “blog-friendly”—I have no idea what that’s supposed to tell me about their music, other than it’s probably lame—I ended the week with most blog-unfriendly group in Toronto: the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Isn’t it high time the TSO got some blog love? Here it is: conductor Peter Oundjian is a phenomenal and playful performer, a charming guy, a charismatic salesman, and the reason I want to go to the symphony. My lady and I subscribed for a couple of years (at her urging) before kiddo came along, and we didn’t pick any shows he wasn’t conducting. We’ve seen him duet with Itzhak Perlman, joke with Daniel Handler, and light a match under Stravinsky’s Firebird. I also want to go disco dancing with him.

The TSO closed Luminato with a free outdoor performance of Tchaikovsky’s War of 1812 Overture to celebrate the bicentennial of the North American conflict (though the piece is actually about a French-Russian war). It was Father’s Day and I wanted to take my dad—who always cranked that track when I was a kid, conducting in the living room—and my 18-month-old boy. My parents backed out at the last minute, so my special ladyfriend and I brought buddy boy to his first classical concert, which included the debut of a Philip Glass piece, the last movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and John Williams’ E.T. theme (which conductor Peter Oundjian dedicated to “all the cyclists who fly around Toronto”).

The Glass piece was, well, Glassy-eyed. No surprises there, but it did make nice accompaniment to the choreographed wind installation by Mitchell Chan and Diamond/Schmitt. The Dvorak was exquisite. The E.T. was fun. In the spirit of the evening, the evening began with both national anthems, and I’ll confess I was verklempt hearing my fellow citizens sing both with such spirit and affection (led by Kevin Fox). This wasn’t the rote beginning of a ball game; this was Toronto as a community remembering a time when the ground on which we were standing was lakeshore under invasion. This was singing a song about a legendary battle in the war we were commemorating, a song later adopted as our former enemy’s national anthem. We sang together thinking of the tribulations our two nations overcame to be the partners we are today. Yes, our relationship is still complicated. And yes, I still take a perverse glee in the fact we burned down the White House once. But there are few things more beautiful than two warring parties acknowledging the journey from the pain of the past to the pleasure of the present through art and community.

And then there was Tchaikovsky. War of 1812 Overture is an obvious crowd pleaser, from its triumphant, galloping theme to the tense, brooding build-up to the cascading woodwinds in the midst of the final flurry to the pyrotechnics that make it somewhat like the Nickelback of its day. For all its cliché, it’s still a stirring, powerful piece of music. Thankfully, baby boy thought so too, (mostly) enraptured through the entire piece and suitably impressed by the fireworks at the end. After the show was over and the musicians had left, he kept walking around, pointing at the stage and saying, “Boom!”

That one-word review, along with the wide-eyed wonder I witnessed in his eyes, was worth more to me than not just anything else I saw or heard that week, but at least the last 18 months.

Men Without Hats NXNE

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Men Without Hats “reunion” show, but I definitely didn’t expect Ivan Doroschuk to open with a techno cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and conclude with an Erasure-worthy cover of ABBA’s “SOS.”

I also didn’t expect him to have the body of an 18-year-old, or to be every bit the rock star he was almost 30 years ago at the height of his fame. Or to be specific, what his friend John Kastner of the Doughboys described as a “gay pop star”: Ivan prances about like a fey hippie on ecstasy, and frankly it doesn’t look like an act. One wonders if the impish frontman leaps around his house like this while performing menial chores (“Where did I put those keys? Oh, over here!”).

And yet Ivan is nothing if not charming; you can’t help but like the guy. The fact that he has an arsenal of pop hooks in a surprisingly strong catalogue helps a lot; contrary to common misperception, this was not a one-hit-wonder band. Even the one new song in the set wasn’t a buzzkill—that slot was reserved for the clunky relic “Living in China,” with lyrics that rhyme “Ping-Pong” with “egg foo young.” All the hits from 1982-1987 were here: “Moonbeam,” “I Got the Message,” “I Like,” “Antarctica,” and of course the set-closing “Safety Dance.” (The female keyboardist who spells out the song’s title vocally seemed to be studying her laptop a bit too closely, prompting my friend to comment, “Is she reading the lyrics?” “S-S-S-S-A-A-A-A-F-F-F-F…”) Double-barrelled non-sequitur intro of the night: “But enough political songs. Here's a song about mescaline,” said Ivan, introducing “Pop Goes the World.”

One song was dedicated to long-time Toronto supporters Michael Hollett and Alice Klein of Now magazine, which was the only publication to claim that Ivan was a serious songwriter in the late ’80s: in 1989 they picked The Adventures of Women and Men Without Hate in the 21st Century—an album title that could have been brainstormed during a Now editorial board meeting—as the #3 album of the year, after Lou Reed’s New York and Blue Rodeo’s Diamond Mine, and ahead of Sarah McLachlan, Daniel Lanois, Kate Bush, Neville Brothers, and The Tragically Hip. Alas, Ivan didn’t think the album was important enough to play anything from it anymore.

In Have Not Been the Same, Ivan provides what I always thought was one of the book’s most bizarre quotes. When trying to align himself with Montreal’s punk scene, he says, “I always thought of Men Without Hats as an electronic hardcore band with a hit single.” And while I still don’t think there’s anything “hardcore” about Men Without Hats, one could argue that the relentless eighth-note assault, delivered here by a loud electric guitarist as well as two keyboards, owes more than a bit to the Ramones. Indeed, I’ve seen more than a few reunion shows in my time; the vast majority of them have been at least somewhat limp and nowhere near as loud or aggressive as Men Without Hats were. Who knew?

Ivan is the only old Hat in the band. He and brother Stefan had a major falling out (there are lawsuits involved), and brother Colin showed up at this show (in a doo-rag?!) just for “Where Do the Boys Go.” But no offense to the original band: anyone could play these songs, and people only ever remember Ivan, the man who advised us all that “You can act real rude and totally removed and I can act like an imbecile.” Except that this wasn’t a rude, arms-crossed convention crowd; everyone at this intimate show was ready to “surprise ’em with the victory cry.”

Men Without Hats play a free outdoor show in Yonge-Dundas Square—presumably to considerably more people than the 150 at this show, and with kids in tow—on Saturday night at 8 p.m., opening up for Devo.

NXNE 2007

Twelve has always been a lucky number for me, and maybe it is for NXNE as well. I’ve attended nearly every festival since its inception in 1995, as both performer and press. Some years I only made it out one night of the three; a couple of years I’m quite sure I didn’t bother going at all. And I’ve studiously avoided the conference centre during the day for most of the last 10 years—the mechanics of the biz always soured my taste for the new music I was supposed to be excited about, making Queen Street seem like a boulevard of soon-to-be-broken dreams.

This year was different. The evening line-up was predictably solid, though because I made a conscious decision to avoid the tried and true, my own picks often came up a bit short. But for Joe and Jane Concertgoer, there were a lot more high-ticket events that let wristbands in, so it was undoubtedly better for the consumer.

The difference was in the daytime. The conference actually had panels I was interested in, some of them even in conflicting timeslots. Some turned out to be duds, some were surprisingly effective and informative. One of the ones I didn’t go to sounded unintentionally hilarious: my new Australian friend Ned Collette writes about it on his blog here (scroll down to the Toronto entry).

The other difference was the afternoon parties. Kelp Records and Saved By Radio teamed up for a smashing shindig on Friday afternoon, the highlight of which was Kelp mainman Jon Bartlett resurrecting Rhume, his rock tour-de-force that left everyone flummoxed. Bartlett is a true believer who throws everything he has (literally) into his performance, which came as quite a shock for those who know him only as the mild-mannered frontman of Greenfield Main or as the guy who puts out Jim Bryson and Acorn records.

Saturday’s place to be was the Six Shooter Records back lot party out in my neck of the woods, the east end. Normally it’s impossible to get Torotonians to cross the RubiDon River, but much as Bloodshot Records’ BBQ convinced CMJ’s NYC patrons that Brooklyn was as happenin’ as Manhattan, Six Shooter threw quite a do that actually moved the shakers onto a streetcar. The irony is that it was such a good party, that I don’t actually remember much of the music performed, with the exception of the unavoidably compelling and well-dressed Ford Pier. Hopefully some newcomers did take notice, and perhaps they browsed the beautiful boutique storefront that the label runs, with one of the best-stocked Canadian music shelves in the city.

Around the corner, mastering engineer Joao Carvalho opened up his lovely new studio to a swarm of ravenous and thirsty partygoers who invaded every corner and spilled out into the backyard. There, an open stage featured unknowns alongside Ron Sexsmith, Danny Michel and Serena Ryder, everyone sticking to a quick three-song set. As with the other two afternoon parties, the informality was a welcome contrast to the schmoozefest happening downtown.

I didn’t make it out Thursday night at all, and bicycle issues foiled many of my Friday night plans. Quickly, then, some things I saw at official showcases.

Said the Whale: Pop band from Vancouver. Potential, but a bit green. Very Shins-y. And, not that this really matters in the least, but bad comic timing on the banter!

Metermaids: Nerdcore hip-hop duo from New York City. Not bad, but the sound system at new venue Rockwood was insanely loud—especially for the sparse crowd and small room.

Memphis: Side project for Torquil Campbell of Stars. My lord, don’t quit your day job. I had to flee during my least favourite song of the past year, the god-awful “Incredibly Drunk on Whiskey.”

Scotty Hard: The Vancouverite behind the boards for Wu-Tang Clan, New Kingdom, and plenty of WordSound and Bill Laswell productions brought a three-piece band with him (drums, percussion, MC) from NYC to flesh out his solo material, but the live approach didn’t improve material that’s probably better at home with headphones. And for some reason, I expected this rather standard instrumental hip-hop show to be more experimental than it was.

Ned Collette: Charming Australian man who schooled me on the differences between Triple J and the much-worthier Triple R radio in Melbourne. His solo electric guitar performance draws heavily from English folk idioms (a topic that hung over the festival thanks to the presence of Nick Drake/Fairport Convention producer Joe Boyd), as filtered through his own post-rock instrumental past and a flair for the epic. His use of a looping pedal was thankfully sparse, allowing him just enough space to employ some very subtle fingerboard wizardry that always erred on the tasteful side. Hypnotic and entrancing, you can see why he’s a favourite of All Tomorrow’s Parties.

The Old Ceremony: Helen Spitzer took me to this, based mostly on the fact that they hail from the perpetually fertile scene in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Not much of a gamble, but it paid off: great songs, great fashion, great instrumentation (guitar/bass/drums augmented by piano, violin, and organ/vibraphone.) A fair bit of Tindersticks/National noir-ish drama, a dash of Squeeze-y pop, and a whole lot of charisma—which, when your parents name you Django, is inevitable. Thoroughly satisfying, and a most pleasant surprise. They have two albums out; don’t let the fact that they opened for Cake sway you.

Bonjay: Top Toronto DJ Denise Benson has been hyping this Ottawa duo, and with good reason. Vocalist Alanna Stuart has a soulful, sexy voice and commanding stage presence (not to mention a fantastic ‘fro), while DJ Pho has production skills that could find him challenging Ghislain Poirier in a couple of years. So far they’re known for their covers (electro soul makeovers of TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and their own material is a bit green, but Stuart has unmistakable star appeal.

Thunderheist: This is another act to benefit from the Benson boost: see her cover story in Eye here. Toronto MC Isis and Montreal beatmaker Grahmzilla concoct a fiery electro-hip-hop party mix that’s hotter than hell, as anyone at this ecstatic Drake performance can attest. Isis is a 21-year old Nigerian-Canadian hoser with mad mic skills, boundless energy, and oodles of sex appeal. Grahmzilla: not so much—he humbly looks lucky to share the stage with such a goddess, but it’s his powerful beats that set the crowd off, before Isis pushes them even further into delirium.

Things I meant to see but missed for a variety of reasons, mostly geographic, fatigue-related, or the fact that I skipped Thursday: Mother Mother (caught a bit of an in-store they were doing, which was enough to make me reconsider my dismissal of their album), Camouflage Nights, Wordburglar, Woodpigeon, Abdominal, Parkas, The Old Soul, The Blood Lines, No Luck Club, Motion, Think Twice, Ghettosocks, King Sunshine, SoulJazz Orchestra, Yo Majesty, Track Dirtyaz, No Dynamics.