When I discovered the bands Catch-22 and Streetlight Manifesto in grade 10, it was an illuminating experience. I was diving head-first into ska music and it seemed like every band I found was even better than the last one. These two bands, who I group together because they shared a substantial amount of members, maybe stood out the most at that time and both Keasbey Nights and Everything Goes Numb didn't leave my walkman too much.
I came across Catch-22 first. The first thing I liked was that they played really fast. Even today, the faster it is, the more I like it. If you play in a punk band, don't be a wiener. Up the tempo. I was also still learning bass guitar at this time and I was starting to get a lot better at the instrument, so I really took to anything that had a difficult or interesting bassline in it. Pretty much every Catch song had that and I learned almost every song on Keasbey, passing most of my alone time by playing the album front to back.
I also thought the lyrics were really good. In hindsight, they weren't anything that special, but at the time it certainly seemed like they were just phenomenal.
The first time I heard Streetlight Manifesto, it seemed like everything that I liked about Catch-22 had been amplified in this new band. The songs were longer, but not slower, the songwriting more complex, more intricate hornlines, and better lyrics. The basslines, in my expert opinion, having played both albums all the way through a significant amount of times, are "about the same" in terms of difficulty.
Re-listening now, the musicianship is still pretty astounding. I mean, the intro of "Failing, Flailing"? That's some big time horn work. The songs are also really long, with most hovering five minutes, but they really don't feel like it. Somehow, with 7 members who are all doing a lot on every song, nobody manages to play over each either. It doesn't sound busy. The record is kind of soured by the band's current place in music, but man is there so much good stuff on here. Damien and I used to talk about all the covers we wanted to play in our first band, Chinese Fingertraps, but we knew that we couldn't go near Streetlight. The songs were just light years beyond us. Something we could only dream about one day being able to play.
Streetlight also seemed a lot more interesting to me because they were still a band, whereas Catch-22 had gone through a huge member change, which greatly impacted the sound and dynamic of the band, then put out Alone in a Crowd, which, in my 15 year-old eyes, rendered them dead to me.
For Damien and I, seeing Streetlight Manifesto live immediately became a top priority, but they seemed to skip Canada on every tour. According to my research at the time, they had only been to Canada once before. That is, until they announced a show at The Kathedral (R.I. fuckin' P.) in June of 10th grade. In hindsight, I didn't really wait that long to see them at all, but it seemed like a fucking eternity back then.
There was only one hitch about the show: It was on a weeknight. Since I was 15, my parents still weren't keen on me going out on a school night. Convincing them to let me go to a show on a school night would take some effort on my part. But this was no ordinary schoolday, no. I happened to have an English final the next morning. When I saw the date, my heart sank because I knew the chances of me actually getting to go to this show would be slim.
The show sold out pretty quickly, before I even had an opportunity to get tickets. It took a little sting out of missing Streetlight Manifesto, but it still tore me apart. How was I missing this momentous event? How would I live with it? What if they did the live thing where they play "Keasbey Nights" in the middle of "Point/Counterpoint"? The regret was destroying me.
In a stroke of luck, a batch of new tickets got released for the show. I now knew that this was meant to be. Somehow, I was seeing Streetlight Manifesto. Missing the show was not an option.
I went on the offensive on my parents: I NEED to go to this show. I can't really study that much for this English exam because it's one essay question. I'll study all day when I get home from my previous exam. I already read To Kill a Mockingbird, the book we were covering, in grade 8. This is the most important thing in my life right now.
I managed to win them over and get permission to go the day before the show. I was ecstatic and couldn't believe it.
The next order business was getting some of this new batch of tickets. Damien skipped school for the first part of the day so that he could go to the Sunrise Music at Scarborough Town Centre and get them. This felt really scandalous at the time. Streetlight Manifesto meant so much to us that we would put it before our education! We pictured a huge line of kids and us getting the last pair, narrowly securing our place at the show and, by extension, Toronto ska history.
In reality, Damien was in the store by himself and described the process as "The least required thing ever". But hey, it seemed like a big deal at the time!
This was one of the first shows of the summer and that really excited me. The school year was almost over and that meant that I had a whole summer full of going to shows and having no responsibilities ahead of me. This show felt like the first part of a huge great thing that I was going to do this summer. The scene of looking at Queen Street, the setting sun shining across it, from the south side of the intersection, a line of ska kids in front of me, remains in mind. It also always felt so much better to be standing in the sun in a t-shirt and shorts instead of fighting off the cold outside of a venue.
It seemed like everyone in the line shared our excitement about what was coming. This increased exponentially when we all heard the band sound-checking "A Moment of Violence" from outside the venue.
The venue was really hot. I think the show was sold-out and if it wasn't, then it was certainly close. It was also about 30 degrees outside. A day of extreme heat like, coupled with a capacity crowd, made for a very hot and sweaty show. The only people we knew at the show were a group of girls we used to refer to as the "3-6 Gypsy Crew" because they would wear quasi-gypsy-ish clothes,basically meaning those baggy skirts that were popular for a few years when I was in high school (c. 2004-2007). We thought that this name was HILARIOUS. Like, we considered it one of our greatest inventions. One of them was my first girlfriend, named Klara. I asked her out on MSN messenger, we hung out one time, and then we broke up because I ditched her to play Sega with my friend Vito one time. I used to see her at shows all the time and I would act like it was awkward, but it really wasn't. She was nice. Damien dated one of them too. It was funny to Damien and I that the 36GC were the only people we hung out with at this show though.
In hindsight, that name is... still very funny to me. You just had to be there, I guess. My friends and I are hilarious.
The first band that played was The Knockouts. They were a local Toronto band used to play a lot of ska shows and had a really bad song called "Peanut Buddha". I remember absolutely nothing about their set.
The band Whole Wheat Bread were supposed to play the show, but didn't get over the border. I liked that band in high school, but realize now that they were one of the most embarrassing things I was ever genuinely into.
The second band who played was a pre-mainstream breakout Gym Class Heroes. They were still mainly a hip-hop group with live instruments and were mainly known for their song "Taxi Driver", in which most of the rhymes are emo band names. I will say that they put on a really good live show. There were next to no kids who knew them there and they completely won over the crowd. This is one of the funnier "saw them before they were big" stories that I have for sure.
The anticipation for Streetlight Manifesto killed me. Something that oddly sticks with me from this show is a kid behind me yelling "AW, IT'S THE T-BONE!" as the trombone player was getting his stuff ready.
The band ended up playing pretty much all of Everything Goes Numb, because that was the only release they had at the time, and man, that was all I wanted. They did indeed play "Keasbey Nights" in the middle of "Point/Counterpoint", as well as "9MM and a 3-Piece Suit" in the middle of "Failing, Flailing" (I think) and this seemed like the craziest thing in the world to me. The Kathedral (my favourite venue ever in a landslide victory) got so hot that the mirrors behind the bar fogged up and I had never seen that before. I took that to be a testament to my, and the crowd's, undying love for the band. Nothing, not even the extreme heat and dehydration, would stop us from skanking!
I was in awe of the show after it happened. All of my clothes were soaked through in sweat and it felt like I had just experienced something truly special.
I told my friends at school, my friends at Damien's school, my friends in the scene, anyone who would listen, that they had missed a momentous occasion that would never happen again. No Streetlight show would ever be like this one! It would be recorded and referenced forever and ever. Every ska fan in Toronto would forever be unbelievably jealous that Damien and I had been at this show.
Obviously my teenaged self was prone to hyperbole about ska bands (hey, still am), but I was also right in a lot of ways too. The next time I saw Streetlight, they played the biggest-capacity concert hall in Toronto, the Kool Haus, while opening for Reel Big Fish. They never played a venue as small as the Kathedral again and definitely never will. This was a singular occasion in being a fan of Streetlight Manifesto in Toronto. Though it is a little high-and-mighty of me to say it, it really wasn't the same seeing them again after this. I mean, of course it wasn't. Seeing a band in a small, intimate setting is better than seeing them in a giant cave of a venue every time.
It's also special because I saw the band at a specific point in time too. They put out their second album in 2007 and while it was good, it didn't carry the same "holy fuck, this thing is a masterpiece" feeling that came with Everything Goes Numb being the band's only piece of music. Being a ska fan in the mid-2000's basically meant having your heart and imagination being captured by Streetlight Manifesto's Everything Goes Numb, so for me, this show is my experience in a giant phenomenon that was very special to a lot of people.
Don't get me started on how Streetlight Manifesto aren't a ska band though, that's an argument for another time.
Another way that hyperbole is relevant is that Streetlight Manifesto kind of sucks now. They're now one of those bands who play a "Last Tour Ever!" tour every fucking year, and that makes me really sad. They've put a lot of music since I saw them in 2005; a 2006 re-recording of Keasbey Nights, 2007's Somewhere in the Between, a 2010 collection of covers 99 Songs of the Revolution, Volume 1, 2013's The Hands that Thieve; and while those vary from "still pretty good!" to "meh", none of them meant as much as that debut album. They've gone through a ton of member changes and while all the new guys are just as excellent as the ones they replaced, it's not the same seeing someone play someone else's music. The version of the band I saw playing Everything Goes Numb had this special, ethereal "the best band at this, doing this at the top of their game" quality to it that only comes with discovering music that is truly special to you and getting the experience the way it was originally conceived and performed. It's a special feeling that's hard to describe, but you know when you're experiencing it.
Nothing gold can stay.
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