respect and adoration

This past weekend was like one of those dreams in which you wake up and you’re still inside but it’s different etc etc, it’s wonderful and horrible and surreal and there are always stairs with no walls and no infrastructure and broken elevators and smells from when you were 2. much of this had to do with still being in another time zone spiritually and also physically, some drugs, and being very busy to the point of upsetting others with blatant flakiness and write-off attitude (mine, i mean, not theirs). and my version of the story is trivial as compared to the people who put on the “real” shows, the logistics experts, social handlers and also somehow finding time to come and get lifted with plebs, who are mostly plebs in some capacity themselves, the Pop Montreal staff.

these people give away a piece of their body each year to this shit, selflessly. i myself had done it several years in a row before i realized it conflicted with my plan A;  12-16 hour days of delivering really heavy shit/screaming/being screamed at/bartering/peeing in alleys/borrowing traffic signs/trying to please everybody/saving someone’s day with a fucking capo/and so on, for enough money to buy the amount of food you need to stay functional. the kind of things that would stall you in your tracks if you envisioned explaining to someone that at 25, this is why you were raised. finding stools for burt bacharach’s band that are ‘classy’ but ‘not antique’, djing from 1-6am five successive nights on a ‘borrowed’ sound system for 400 out-of-towners seeking the ‘montreal feeling’ via shitty, fatty, sugar foods and complex chemical drugs, sleeping for an hour and a half before ‘reporting in’ at the Pop office only to be told that all the times you thought you were getting away with looking the way you do have been obliterated by this one instance of you looking like you just got off a plane that came from where your friends force at you crushed up orange and white things and little tiny pieces of blotter (“its cool it’s super weak bro dont get mad…”) and then play remixes of popcorn/yingyang and genesis at halfspeed before someone throws an (actual) flaming pumpkin into the dancefloor and punches a volunteer lady-bouncer (hi didi) in the jaw.

HIGHLITES OF THIS YEAR are almost n/a because i almost saw nothing. Postcards and Tonetta got jammed by the cops halfway into the headliner’s 2nd song. I made selections on the thursday night with Cadence Weapon (roughshape) at the Eastern Bloc and we confirmed that 25 years later, nabisco still sucks. GRIMES pushed herself further up the echelons of distinction at the Arbutus Showcase, which was ‘classy’ but not ‘antique’, unless you count the fucking waterfall coming down at the back of the stage which sent the techs scrambling to put all the high-voltage lighting on chairs and other innovative life-saving non-show-stopping solutions. One of them told me “the roof is leaking”. I was accused of being unprofessional and banned from the soundboard.

Here is a new single from Sean Nicholas Savage’s new record, which has got some of the tightest musicans in the neighbourhood (think nyc 1978 fusion), two of the most sincere producers (dv carrier of silly kissers/s cowan), and a team of generally weird youngsters who are all committed to doing things from time to time. It’ll be out November – his homecoming show (dudes been awol for months, rumoured to be in europe somewhere, not alone) is at Club Lambi w/Silly Kissers & D’eon on Nov. 5th. So start saving your tips, my bro.

karn

Sean Nicholas Savage – Misery Mountain

Tonetta – 777 – My Bro