Thursday, February 25, 2016

Moments From Toronto Ska, 2004-2010: The Last Makeshift Heroes Show

The more I listen to Damian Abraham's podcast Turned Out a Punk, the more it makes me think about the specific music scenes that I've been a part of. These communities are constantly changing, as one scene slowly morphs into another, but certain instances of a few of them are well-defined in my mind and really important to me because of the role they played in turning me into the person I am. While listening to the podcast, I always think about what I would talk about on it if I were a guest and what my favourite memories of going to shows are. Something that would figure into this in a big way is my involvement in the Toronto ska scene during high school, because that is basically the main thing I did.

Through this, I came up with the idea for a series in which I would describe specific shows or events or nights that were significant to me while I was a part of the scene.

So yeah, Moments From Toronto Ska, 2004-2010: Episode 1

There was an obvious first choice for this series, because few things stick out to me as significant to Toronto ska like the break-up of the Makeshift Heroes. "Makeshift" were a really big deal for my friends and I during the later part of high school and were accepted by pretty much every person I knew in the scene as the best local ska band. They were vindicating as a teen-aged ska fan because they were young and poppy ska band, but were clearly in-tune with ska's first wave, which lent them a ton of credibility with genre purists who deride the genre for what it became in the 1990's. They basically played first-wave or "trad" ska, but were great at fitting all the great parts of the genres, complex rhythms, extended horn solos, parts for everybody in a 7 or 8 person band, into a recognizable song structure. Being a bass player, I loved the way that bass parts would sometimes stay constant for the entire song, making them almost like a dub-influenced drone. The baritone saxophone is like a fucking bazooka in this band. They also had a very good lyricist, which isn't the most common in 60's or 70's ska music. Rather than drawing their influence from bands like Reel Big Fish or Operation Ivy like most of their contemporaries, they looked so much further back than that, which was extremely uncommon at the time and really set them apart from almost every band in the scene. It also made for much better music

What is odd about this though, is the band very rarely opened bigger shows, despite headlining loads of local shows. I remember them opening for the seminal first-wave ska band The Skatalites when I was in grade 9 and another time opening for the Planet Smashers, but most tours that came through favoured bands like The Flatliners (remember when The Flatliners were a ska band? To the point that they were in an Expos video?) opening, because they fit better with the sounds of the other bands on the bill.

While together, the band put out two absolutely excellent EPs, Not So Fast! and Last Call, which I would really recommend checking out. You can find them here:

THE MAKESHIFT HEROES- NOT SO FAST! AND LAST CALL

During high school, there was a Toronto ska message board that all of my friends and I posted on called 4thWave.ca that was the nucleus of the southern Ontario ska scene during that time. Man, remember when posting on message boards was one of the most important parts of your day? I feel like in the grand scheme of things, they'll be forgotten because they were so quickly eclipsed by Myspace and then Facebook, but they were so important to my development as a music fan. 4thWave was my lifeblood in terms finding out about bands and show listings. Almost every show I went to in high school, I found out about through 4thWave. Just like every online community, there were a few bands that were almost universally endorsed on the board. It could just be hindsight, but I think that Makeshift was the definitive 4thWave band. Everyone loved them and eagerly anticipated the next thing they would do.

They were mostly known around Toronto for doing a cover of "Mad World" by Tears for Fears, which is well-known for being covered and included in the movie Donnie Darko. Now that movie is what is, and I feel like a lot of people might look down on it for being a self-important male teenager experiencing existential thoughts for the first time, and Gyllenhal can be a little too much in it, but when I saw it for the first time in high school, it certainly had a profound effect on me and after watching it, it gave me a feeling I hadn't gotten from a movie before. (Honestly, I could certainly do an entire post on Donnie Darko, because it oddly was a huge thing for me at one point in my life. My brother was obsessed with it in university and basically forced me to watch it.)

The Makeshift Heroes covered "Mad World" very shortly after I saw the movie for the first time and I was like "Yo."

The Makeshift Heroes broke up like all bands do. I'm not entirely sure why. University maybe? It didn't seem like there could have been any personal conflicts in the band, but there was no way I could have known. They certainly ended too soon though. On 4thWave, the break-up of the Makeshift Heroes was a pretty major event. It was bittersweet, as up to this point the band had only released one EP, Not So Fast!, and they announced they would release the EP they had been working at their final show. Everyone was pretty bummed about it and in the months leading up their final show, the anticipation got so huge that it essentially became impossible for the show to not be a pivotal event in the scene at the time. The only way to get the new EP, which was eagerly anticipated by fucking EVERYONE at the time was to go to the show. As a ska fan in the city at the time, you felt like it was imperative that you were there. My friend Erik, who drummed in both of my high school bands, asked me in advance to pick him up a copy of the EP because he knew he wouldn't be able to make.

The final show took place near the end of August of 2006 at The Funhaus, which was an amazing all-ages punk venue in Toronto that isn't active anymore. I know that Buda Funk Munk and the Cheap Suits opened, but I can't remember what other bands from the local Toronto scene played this show. Added bonus, before this show was the first time that I had Taco Bell, starting a lifelong romance.

The show had a weird energy, as all farewell shows do, because nobody really wanted it to happen. Everybody there is at the same time very excited because they know that they're at a show of some social importance, that in the future you'll be able to say "I was at the last ____ show", but at the same time, you know that it means the end of something you really like. Every band who played shared stories about how much the band meant to them and how much they would miss them.

I think that both Makeshift Heroes EPs do an excellent job of showcasing the amazing musicianship that went on in their music. Everyone there knew that they would play a long set and Makeshift absolutely delivered. I'm fairly sure that they played all of the songs off each release, as well as a myriad of old ska covers, including "Shame and Scandal" by and "Confucius" by the Skatalites and, of course, "Mad World". The set was everything that everyone had hoped it would be and by the end of the show the venue was a sweaty mess from everybody dancing.

When the band's set ended, all of the kids spilled out on to the street in a emotional mob. As Pat, Parks, Haleigh and I (I think that's who I was with? I can't be sure) were getting ready to leave a kid near us said

"The ska scene died tonight."

At the time, we all dismissed as hyperbole that was tied up in the emotion of the moment, but in hindsight he kind of bang-on. Not so much that the scene is dead, as I'm sure it still exists in some form, but it was certainly the death of the specific scene that I was involved in.

When that school year started, some friends and I started a band called The Pragmatics that heavily indebted to the Makeshift Heroes, to the point that we threw around the idea of including a Makeshift cover in our set, like four months after the band had broken up.

The last Makeshift Heroes show is a huge deal for me because it closes a specific time in my life where I was a teenager in Toronto and really involved with ska music. It happened near the end of high school, so not long after I was moving away to Guelph. It's not as if I stopped listening to ska and going to shows after it happened, but I started to listen to a lot of different music, got into hardcore and metal.

I can still remember the way the street looked that night, how my sweaty shirt felt sticking to my skin and the weird ethereal "that just happened" feeling all of my friends and I felt taking the subway east that night.

I guess that the cool thing about being into ska or punk or metal or rap or house or whatever the fuck you're into is that something as small as a local band breaking up can bring up these huge ideas in your mind and that is where the importance being involved in and caring about things lies. I guess my final, overblown sentiment that I'll leave you with is:

Give yourself over to something. Make something. Do something.

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