Friday, December 21, 2018

Redemption Won't Be Mine

I'm currently reading Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991. Reading a book like this, which tells the biographies of 13 bands who were (in some cases are) varying levels of punk , can feel like a copout because it's mostly an author telling me that things I already think are important are, in fact, important, but I'll be damned if I still don't get caught up in it.


I don't know what I was expecting when I started the book, but there was a part of me that hoped that the author would devote time to knocking the bands down a peg for a little bit. Even though I love the Replacements and Minor Threat, there's a weird part of me that wants to read a differing opinion and see a take other than "Minor Threat were an amazing influential band and all of their copycats struggle to replicate them". That's not exactly what I got, but my thoughts on the thing changed in the process too.

I think that that desire to see a dissenting point of view comes from my, I don't want to say disillusionment with punk, but I can't think of a better word. I'm not, and never will be, done or over punk music, but as I grow older I find that it's not as consistently inspiring to me as it was when a 13-year-old and first discovering it. The first time I heard "The Decline" by NoFX, I immediately felt like I had tell everyone I knew about and earnestly believed that if everyone heard it, they would feel like I would and we would change the world.

Now, after listening to punk for so long, and going to shows, being a part of different scenes in different cities, playing in a band, helping to put on shows, that feeling has changed. You grow up and realize that not everyone has the same experience in punk as you and most people don't care as much. A lot of bands care about drinking and playing fast, but not so many care about the politics. And I don't even mean the left-wing stuff that most good bands espouse, I mean the personal politics baked into the genre from the very beginning: doing things yourself as a collective, respecting your peers and welcoming others and weirdos, giving everyone a shot and breaking down the barrier between the stage and the audience. It's disheartening to see a rejection of those things in contemporary punk and seeing more and more bands caring more about the plastic lanyard on their waste than the message in their music. It makes it almost impossible to not become jaded about punk and wonder why you even care when everyone else seems to think that the concept of caring is lame.

I say all this though, because what I think is important is that, like many other things, punk can still be perfect in small moments, which is echoed in Our Band Could Be Your Life's introduction and throughout the stories of the bands represented. I think that, in theory, punk is perfect, but people fuck that theory up all the time because they don't understand it. It's hard to watch it happen, but then when you're watching Wayfarer open for the Sidekicks and this band you've been watching grow for ten years, but never break out of Southern Ontario, debut new material that is somehow better than their past stuff and you are instantly floating on the floor because you're reminded that punk matters.

I hate to sound like I'm unrealistically idealistic, but I notice that I gravitate towards things like this, which don't ever work out in the long run consistently, but give you a glimpse into a utopia where people work together and respect each other and good things happen as a result. Is that why most punks tend towards the left politically? Because we're all hanging onto that dream?

There are three bands in particular who drum up this feeling in me, who stayed punk for their whole existence, no matter how long it was or is, and proved that it is possible to stick to your moral and not have your art ruined by business or jaded assholes who don't care anymore. They always remind that punk does still matter and that we should always keep pushing and dreaming on making it work. Unsurprisingly, they all lean a little lefty loosey too. It's so comforting to me to know that no matter how overwhelmed with stupid scene politics, or bad bands getting big, or shitty stories about shitty band dudes, there is still that small perfect nugget of punk buried in there somewhere.

So let's all take a moment for ourselves and be inspired.






 The funny thing is that I'm not even what you would call a huge Minutemen fan. I don't know all the lyrics off by heart and, relative to other bands I like, I don't spend tonnes of time with their music, but damn if jamming econo doesn't fill me with so much joy. They're approach to punk and being in a band is so inspiring and I really do think that everyone should strive towards what they laid out during their perfect career. In my mind, that is what the general understanding of punk should be.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Episodes From a Struggle Against Capitalism in 2018

One of my biggest vices is buying T-shirts. I can't get enough of them. Even though I have two deep drawers that are overflowing with them, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a bug zapper and just keep buying them anyways. It also doesn't help that most of my main interests have turned into glorified T-shirt factories. Punk bands set up a mini-mall in the venue and the Jays have a store the size of an Olympic swimming pool designed to sell things with their logo on it.

Beyond the utilitarian aspect of having a shirt to wear each day, I like T-shirts as a sort of artifact. I think it's cool that when I wear a band's shirt it's indicative of my enjoyment of them, but is also a physical manifestation of my memory of seeing that band on that night. I love my Lifetime shirt because it reminds me of the one time that I'll have gotten to see one of my favourite bands. More than that, it's also an artifact from that specific iteration of the band. I love my Sidekicks shirt because it was from their tour right after Awkward Breeds came out and is a nice reminder of when all of my friends and I were mesmerized by what the band was doing and excited to see them play the legion in Guelph.

This all being said, I am drowning in T-shirts and I am constantly trying to consume less in my life, so I made a pledge to myself in January 2018 that I would not buy any T-shirts (or clothes, really) for the whole year. I know that it's a silly project, but I also think that its non-essentialness and stupidity is part of what makes it fun.

Episodes From a Struggle Against Capitalism in 2018

1. The 2018 Toronto Blue Jays Season

The mighty king of the sports T-shirt world is undoubtedly the "shirsey", a T-shirt with a print of the front of a sports team's uniform on the front and a player's name and number on the back. Since I'm far too poor to chase my dream of a walk-in closet filled with different jerseys to wear each day, shirseys area fun and economical secondary option. Since they are so much cheaper than an actual jersey, you don't have to put as much thought into which player's shirt you purchase, as you won't be saddled with an expensive monstrosity you hate to wear if the guy's production falls off a cliff, or worse, right after you purchase it. As such, getting obscure or silly shirseys is a fun thing to do if you like sports.

As I've already covered on IMU, the 2018 Jays were fucking awful, so names that you would be proud to wear on your back were slim. But what the team lacked in star power, they made up for in spades with "that guy?" options. Curtis Granderson? Steve Pearce? Aledmys Diaz? These all would have been elite additions to my collection of heroes past, but thanks to my extreme will power and personal sacrifice, those shirts will go to someone more in need.

2. Power Trip, w/ Sheer Mag, Fury, and Red Death

Thanks to the rise of large-scale music festivals in North America, the days of elite package tours that travel all over Canada and the United States are a thing of the past. Mid-level bands still come through Toronto regularly, but I long for my youth when it seemed like a band at the height of their powers with several other signed acts were a regular occurrence. I am by no means hating on watching local bands, but it's just not the same as when you would go to a show and see four really good bands who were all extremely tight from playing each night on tour and were diverse musically.

That longing for package tours was a huge part of why I was so excited for Power Trip coming through Toronto in May with Sheer Mag and Fury. The show was rammed inside and each band had an elite merch set up that was as diverse as their sounds. Power Trip do great pastiches of 80's thrash shirts, whereas Sheer Mag's simple logo shirts seem like a classic design from when the "band shirt" was still in its infancy in the 70's. This show was my hardest test. Both bands' shirts would instantly enter into my primary rotation and get a lot of reps during the summer, but I persevered and out-lasted my desire to get one.

Also, at this show I saw a huge hesher metalhead in a battle vest puke on a couple while they were making out.

3. Joyce Manor, w/ Vundabar, and Big Eyes

Joyce Manor has been a favourite of mine for the better part of a decade now, ever since I heard their self-titled first record. Despite my long-standing love and appreciation of their music, I somehow only managed to see them for the first time this year, touring on Million Dollars to Kill Me.

Sidenote: This long streak of missing them included a 2011 show featuring their first trip to Canada, Lemuria touring Get Better. What a show.

I would love to have a Joyce Manor shirt and proudly display my appreciation for a band who's put out 5 good records in a row, but instead they had the misfortune of scheduling this show while I was on my T-shirt exodus. It seemed like there were many good options from afar, but I opted to not put myself through torture and didn't approach the table.

4. Algernon Cadwallader annouce a reissue of their discography

One of the saddest experiences you can have as a music fan is getting heavily into an artist shortly after they break up. Me checking out Television for the first time this week certainly has an air of "I can't believe they were this good the whole time!", but it's not nearly as bitter as realizing Algernon Cadwallader were emo gods only a year or two after they broke up. To make matters worse, there were times I could have seen them, but opted not to! What an idiot I was!

I scoured the internet to see if any record labels or online stores still had stock of Algernon merch, but the band's staunch DIY stance, a huge part of why I love them so much, meant their post-career online presence was next to nothing. I was haunted my image of a t-shirt, long since sold out, in online stores that no longer shipped.

Then, in the fall of 2018, the band announced that they would be reissuing all of their music through Asian Man Records. Cool! On top of that, the band would be reprinting their first t-shirt design and selling that as well. WHAT. ON TOP OF THAT, they would also be printing that design on my other apparel weakness, a black pullover hoodie. It was like Algernon had reached into my mind and plucked out what I wanted most.

But this wasn't about what I wanted. It was about what I had promised myself. And that was to buy no T-shirts during the 2018 calendar year. Mody Dick ate my harpoon and swam away. The marlin decomposed while tied to the side of my boat. I lay on my couch thinking of an alternate world where I would have an Algernon Cadwallader T-shirt.

5. The Sidekicks, w/Gladie, Found Objects, and Wayfarer

Like all good dramas, my quest to buy no new T-shirts was expertly paced. After the climax of the T-shirt I had dreamed of slipping away, the plot resolved with a lesser event. Like how the big death always happens in the second last episode of a season in The Wire. I saw one of my favourite Ontario bands, Wayfarer, play with one of my favourite active bands, the Sidekicks. The Sidekicks came on strong with a white long-sleeve that said "America's Greatest Living Rock 'n Roll Band" on the front and "POWER POP" down the sleeves, but I had already won my war. No shirts would enter my closet this year.

Friday, December 14, 2018

The 2018 I, Musical Genius Musical Revue

Even though I've spent a lot of this year focusing on building up my portfolio on my Wordpress site, it's very important to me that I keep my year-end list write up on I, Musical Genius. When I first started writing here, these lists were my first forays into long-form writing and I think they were instrumental in me finding my voice as a writer. Though I may be other places, these lists will only ever belong on I, Musical Genius. Let's rip, these are in no order.

The Sidekicks - Happiness Hours




When I saw The Sidekicks touring Happiness Hours earlier this year, I was convinced that this was the best album of the year while I watching them. I'm not sure about that now, but I also have no idea what the best was anyways. This is up and is a huge return to form for them. Really great power-pop songs with huge bass parts and vocal hooks and it takes you on a wonderful journey from start to finish.


I eagerly anticipated this album after reading a great interview with Damian in the Canadian music magazine Exclaim! It delivered on my expectations and I think that this is their best work since Hidden World and The Chemistry of Common Life.  It's a drugged out British version of David Comes to Life that, I think, gives a more interesting and nuanced interpretation of that story. Has a hardcore band ever been on Fucked Up's level? Is Fucked Up the best band to ever come out of Toronto. This album makes me believe so.

Bonus content: Here's the Exclaim! article I mentioned. Also, Fucked Up's Damian Abraham and Mike Haliechuk, who are noted for clashing creatively in the band, did an episode on Damian's podcast Turned Out a Punk and it makes for a great companion piece to the album.

Turnstile - Time & Space



On the other hand, I love that recently everyone has stopped being afraid to love breakdowns and heavy chug parts in hardcore and I think that Turnstile has been a huge part of that. Heavy and groovy, but also channelling a lot of Give-esque counter culture influence. Great stuff and I love the direction they're taking as a band. Plus they got Atiba Jefferson to shoot a video! Worlds colliding!

The thing that interests me most about this record is how difficult it is to pigeonhole it. So often now, I find that band are purposefully working through a specific interest, or purposefully using a genre trope or sound. Fiddlehead is kind of hardcore, kind of punk, kind of post-punk, kind of poppy, but the songs never really sit in any of those categories, and I think that's what makes this record really interesting.


Culture Abuse - Bay Dream


Culture Abuse did the most difficult thing a band can do on Bay Dream, trimming off all superfluous parts in their sound and making a tight, succinct album that defines their identity as a band. Each song moves naturally through its construction and has great hooky guitars and choruses that gives the pieces character. The band sounds like their recognizing their influences and purposefully nodding to past artists, but do it in a way that seems natural and never hackneyed. On top of that, the lyrics are simple and to the point, but do a wonderful job of world building and drawing you into the life that Culture Abuse lives. As perfect an album as CA will make.


Out of all the albums I knew would be released in 2018, Tony Molina's was the one I was most anxious to hear. I would have liked a little more stoner fuzz on it, but I also appreciate that he's pushing himself to write 60's-style folk pop and allowing his vocals to carry the melody, which seems like a strip down to bare parts, but is very hard to pull off. One of my very favourite artists producing music right now.



The first time I listened to Ordinary Corrupt Human Love was while skateboarding to a park to hangout with my brother on a hot night in the summer. It was the perfect soundtrack for that.

Dan P and the Bricks - When We Were Fearless



Few things disappoint me as much as the fact that I continue going to bat for ska, but so few actually good ska releases are put out anymore. Dan P bucks that trend and makes up for everyone else dropping the ball by writing big band ska songs that still rely on pop song structure.


I'm pretty over shoegaze because I feel like most bands lean to heavily on having the right gear to make their guitar sound huge and atmospheric while forgetting to write a good song first. I don't care that you have a Twin Reverb. I care about your songs. On Dance on the Blacktop Nothing write wonderful Britpop songs and and then blow them up into huge dreamy gaze numbers. That's an important distinction to make and it's also why Nothing is the only shoegaze band I still listen to.


I was very shocked to receive a new Shook Ones album in 2018, as I was pretty certain they had broken up. But they had not! Body Feel builds on the moves the band started to make with The Unquoteable A.M.H,, establishing that they're more than a Kid Dynamite clone and have a depth to their music that most contemporary punk is sorely lacking. I always appreciated the personal/political bent of their stuff and that continues here. Happy to have you back.

Vince Staples - FM!


A downside of punk is that your mind gets used to every album being under 30 minutes and it becomes difficult to remain focused on things with longer run times. Specifically with rap, whose albums often hold 20-ish tracks, I always catch myself wondering why they don't trim the fat and sketches on longer releases. Fortunately for me, Vince Staples is here to deliver exciting and dense rap albums that don't give you time to get bored.


Yes, only a two-song single, but Oso Oso is my favourite band currently making music and these both fucking bang like a shotgun. Can't wait for the next release.

Other things I was into:

Buddy - Harlan and Alondra, Joyce Manor - Million Dollars to Kill Me, Lifted Bells - Minor Tantrums, Doe - Grow Into It, Drug Church - Cheer, Lil Wayne - The Carter V

Also, Daniel Romano released three albums this year. While none of them resonated with me the way that Modern Pressure did, you have to respect his insane drive and artistic vision. Three albums! All good! That alone mentions merit here, though it also helps that he's constantly evolving his sound and low-key turning into alternative music's equivalent of the Coen Brothers.


Monday, December 3, 2018

To Get Lost in the Romantic, What We All Want

While watching The Sidekicks play this week, I was thinking to myself about how great 'deep cuts' are. Given that I am a 29-year-old white rock music fan, I know this is not the most surprising opinion, we're divin' in anyways!



I find that there's something alluring about an artist's songs that aren't the ones that everybody likes. It makes the song feel a little more precious and a little more like it's yours. I've always found a lot of pleasure in liking things that not everybody else likes. It's not that I think that makes me more special, but it makes the thing more special to me.

Deep cuts usually have a few shared qualities. They're usually in the back half of the album (though I find track 2's are often great deep cuts) and stand out amidst longer or more experimental tracks. They're never as poppy as the album's singles, but poppier than the songs around them. I find that my favourite deep cuts are often simple love songs or creeds about personal politics that have great vocal melodies.

Deep cuts can extend to other media as well, like an obscure quote from a TV show or a movie that isn't the first check on an actor's resume. Liking 'the obscure thing' can feel stupid sometimes, like it seems like I'm trying aggressively hard to be an individual, like maybe popular things are popular because they're good, but really isn't it great to encourage people to investigate things and discover passions they don't know about yet? I think that my love of deep cuts is a byproduct of my curiosity. As soon as I find something I'm interested in, I always try to do an investigation to learn about the context it was created in and see if there was anything I was missing at first. Yes, that is why I love the song "Together".

The ultimate joy related to deep cuts is when you see a band play them live. In fact, I think there are few things more exciting than when a band plays a song you weren't expecting. It immediately forces you to be present because you know it's something you won't see regularly and the duration of the performance of the song is its own tiny existence while it's happening. You immediately start to anticipate your favourite parts of the song and that light anxiety makes watching the song even better. As a music fan, you invest a lot of time and energy into absorbing someone else's art, so when a band plays a deep cut live, it shows you that they are thinking of that too. They wouldn't play it if they didn't think that some people wanted to hear it.

This was spurred by The Sidekicks playing "Incandescent Days" from their album Awkward Breeds. I put the song on the first mix I made for Rebecca when we first started dating and it makes me remember her apartment in Guelph. That's what I thought of when they played it.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Never Move Your Back Row

In addition to feeling guilty about not writing on IMU enough lately, I've also felt guilty that I've barely written about baseball lately. While I was moving the posts I'm most proud of over to my very professional Wordpress site, I noticed that a lot of them were older and I hadn't written  much about the Jays during the 2017 and 18 seasons. Was my love baseball starting to peter out? Was my zeal tied to the team's success in 2015 and 16?

No, of course not.

But it's harder to write about the team now because not nearly as much is happening and the games don't even approach the same level of excitement. There's still small moments that capture your imagination and remind you why you love baseball, like Steve Pearce hitting two walk off grand slams within a week of each other, or Justin Smoak capping off a 7-run comeback win in the bottom of the 9th inning, but for the most part the games are ugly and, worse, in consequential.
The Blue Jays are currently stuck between two eras and can't really commit to either one. On one hand, they regularly look back on and celebrate the two playoff runs because that is probably the best way to engage with the sizable number of casual fans. On the other, the team is biding its time until a crop of younger talented players emerge to hopefully carry the team to success again. As a fan, you're stuck looking only backwards or forwards because there's not a tonne going on in the present.

So if there's not a lot going in the present, what do I write about?

It's hard to write about players because most of the exciting ones are gone. Price signed with the fuckin' Red Sox. Edwin went to Cleveland. We fêted José for a whole year to distract ourselves from how quickly his age caught up with him. Josh got hurt, disappeared for a whole season and then got traded for spare parts. Russ got bad. Strochez broke up and then both got hurt. Tulo turned into something you have to chuckle about to keep yourself from crying. The core that was the most exciting team in baseball evaporated in record time and were replaced with, well, replacements.

Anyone could tell that the team wasn't supposed to contend the last two years. "Raising the floor" was our "trust the process", and that's fine! The team was old and a reboot was absolutely necessary, so that's what happened. Rebuilding the team doesn't mean you all of a sudden have young players who will be superstars in two years. It means you sign serviceable veterans, trade them for young players, eventually package those young players for something, and hope to God it works out okay. It's an ugly process and people often forget that the Cubs and Astros were buried in decades of mostly mediocre baseball before things clicked, to say nothing of perpetual rebuilders like the Reds and Padres.

Those replacements could be exciting at times, as I mentioned above, and you also got to have a taste of great personalities like Curtis Granderson* as they finish their careers, but I can't write out a whole post on them like I could about Josh, José, or Edwin. It's just not the same.

*While watching the Jays play at Comerica Park in Detroit this past summer, a very drunk Tigers fan sighed to himself and said "Granderson has an amazing ass." It's all I can think about whenever his name comes up. Even more so than Slammiversary 2018.

2018 was different than past "bad Jays seasons" because there wasn't one player who stood out as a beacon while everyone sucked. 2018 didn't have Carlos Delgado, or Roy Halladay. In fact, you'd have to go back to the early 80s to find a Jays team as devoid of impactful players as the 2018 version. The team started out bad, with bad players, and wound up bad. Who would've thought?

It's also hard to write about these replacement players when it's a foregone conclusion that they'll be traded before the season's over. The front office signed veterans to short deals so they could trade them and improve the team in the long run and that's exactly what happened. Granderson, Pearce, Happ, Axford, Oh, Loup, and Diaz are all gone now. In times of flux like this, it's hard to get attached to a player to the degree that you can write about them.

So if the team is bad and will continue being bad, and the players aren't engaging, who do I write about? The front office? Though I'm beginning to falter in my faith, I'm not enough of a zombie to do that. The ballpark? Fuck, I don't know man.

All that's left is the Blue Jays and baseball still being a "thing" in my life, so that'll have to play until May and that's alright.

Monday, November 26, 2018

You're Dreaming if You Think That I Care

I had the initial idea for this blog post waiting for the subway to go to work one morning, but then the St. Mike's news broke and that became my main talking point for a couple of weeks. I'm the one person that all my friends know that went to St. Mike's, so for many people, I was the one person they asked about it. From my end, that meant one new person asking me about it each day. It weighed on me a lot to have a group sexual assault, and the problematic institutional attitudes that led to it, on my mind each day. The issue has slowly begun to be resolved and many of the important developments, like arrests of the perpetrators and authority figures stepping down, have already happened. I hope that steps to right the issues at the school continue and work, but a big part of me believes that won't be the case. I still hope it happens though.

What I was going to say before this happened, is that I've felt mostly comfortable in my life lately. I'm diligently working towards school applications and work isn't so overbearing. Something about taking a quiet Sunday morning subway ride from Bathurst Station to a job I wasn't dreading made me feel something resembling inner peace. I wanted to commemorate that with a post here for posterity. I like that I can return to this blog and look at the posts like they're moments in time. I can usually remember who I was when I wrote them and what inspired them. It feels good to access those things inside of me.

I wanted this post to fall into a specific type of IMU post that's hard for me to describe. They usually are about a lot of things, but nothing in particular, which leaves me writing about my life and existence, I guess, and I feel like that's when my real and worthwhile observations come out. I feel like in between retrospectives of bands and moments associated with them and things I'm interested in at the moment, there's these medium length posts that are just me conveying a calm state of mind. I have a "life in general" label that roughly translates to this, but it's not universal. They're my favourite ones.

I was listening to The Decay while trying to get work done today, and took a little look back into IMU to see if I could find a post I remember when I discovered the band. I couldn't, but looking through the blog is what reminded me of the types of posts I described above. Also, going forward "Empty Frames" should be considered the urtext on Kitchener. I don't think anything describes living in the city like that song does.



It's nice to look back at the blog and see that I'm still mostly the same person, at least personality-wise, but have also grown up in important ways. There's things I find embarrassing on here, but that's okay. No middle-class white kid born with a perfect conscience. Growth means that I'm trying at least.

I also find comfort in the couple of things that haven't changed. Still put off writing by writing. Still am embarrassed to tell people how I feel. Still find a lust for life in punk.

Friday, November 23, 2018

Great, but That's Not Me

In lieu of Liberties this week, I've made a playlist to accompany my most recent zine I, Musical Genius, Vol 11: Toronto Ska, 2004-2007. It has songs from all of the bands I talk about in the zine. Fun!


Monday, November 19, 2018

Liberties, Vol 11

"Orgcore" is a name for a niche type of punk music that rose in popularity in the mid-00's and is now starting dwindle in popularity. It's name comes from the website where it's popularity originated, Punknews.org. It's a term that only means something for a small group of people online, but it's been omnipresent in my life as a music fan so far.

I used to use my first period spare in high school to read Punknews and learn about as many different bands as I could. At first, anything that wasn't ska and NoFX seemed daunting to me, but eventually I started find myself gravitating the punk bands I was reading about, which is a process I think made me more open to new types of music later on in my life.

Like many music genres, orgcore is hard to pin down and more of a "know it when you see it" type of deal. Punknews beat the Propagandhi drum harder than anyone else, but they are not orgcore. Banner Pilot are a common example of orgcore's tropes being commodified and "jumping the shark". I would describe it as mid-up tempo poppy punk music with gruff vocals and lyrical themes of depression, self-doubt, drinking, and uncertainty.

Eventually, I started to care less and less about the genre because I found that too few bands were finding new and exciting ways to play it. I still look back upon it fondly because of how invested I was in it during my youth. It felt like there was a whole sea of exciting bands at my fingertips, but it also carried an exotic feel of secrecy.

My theme for Liberties this week is orgcore that has stuck with me and still stirs things inside me. A playlist to carry me through this dark, wet, dead, and cold time during the winter known as the baseball off-season.


Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes

I went into this blog post planning to do the "IMU Special" in which I write a post about nothing to try and get my creative juices flowing again, but instead I was sent this news by my older brother:



My response to my brother, who also went to the school, was "I wish I could say I was surprised".

I have a complicated relationship with my high school and always feel awkward talking about it. I feel like every time that I mention it, I immediately get labelled as an extremely privileged upper class private school kid, which isn't the case and far from the truth. But if I went to the school, I am clearly privileged to have gone and I don't want to come off like I'm pretending to be lower class, which would be despicable. My mother was a high school history teacher and my father owned his own small landscaping company. Both made extreme sacrifices and went into a lot of debt to send me to one of Toronto's oldest private schools because they both placed an immense amount of importance on education and wanted me to receive the best one they thought that I could. My parents are also both Catholic (my mother brought up this way and my father as an adult convert) and this also undoubtedly played a role in their openness to me attending St. Mike's. Not everyone in Toronto is afforded the opportunity to go to a private school and I am immensely fortunate that I got to.

But I was also far from the average St. Mike's boy. Even though my parents were *gasp!* middle class, I was near the bottom of the St. Mike's economic scale. Other students often poked fun at "how poor" I was or how I couldn't afford things. I was reminded several times that I was the "poor kid" in my grade. When I entered the school, Father Daniel Zorzi was the school's president, and though I have nothing to base this off of other than hearsay from the time, I understood that he was behind a major push for St. Mike's to expand into richer suburbs around Toronto, especially the wealthier parts of Mississauga and Vaughn, to bring more money into the school. That worked, I guess, as the school had loads of new facilities while I was there, but it also brought in wave upon wave of entitled, asshole kids.

With entitlement comes mistreatment of others. Though the school loves to act as though its students' academics and values are what it places the most emphasis on, that's a sham and athletics are really all they care about. Look at their Wikipedia entry and pay attention to how much of it focuses on hockey. Football was a close second while I was there. How many intelligent, low-income students have been turned down in favour of meathead hockey players over the school's history? I can't tell you how many truly moronic people I was in classes with during my time there. If students have to write an entrance exam to get in and academics are so important to the school, how did these students get there?

Easy answer.


The rich, entitled, macho jock attitude was readily encouraged by most of the school's faculty. Teachers would reprimand Filipino students and tell them to tighten their ties and then playfully slap white hockey players with no uniform on a moment later. Loud, braggadocios jocks could do whatever they wanted and never faced repercussions. The school often tried to encourage its students to be a "St. Michael's Man", someone who studied hard, stayed Catholic, and participated in extra curriculars, but I feel like the true "St. Michael's Man" was a dickhead who thought he was better than everyone and rarely stopped dropping casual racism and homophobia. The school constantly turned a blind eye to this behaviour.

I didn't fit in well at the school and hard time there. My bullying experiences weren't nearly as bad as some of the other students there, but they were still there. If you didn't conform to some strange crossover between Wooderson and Tie Domi, you were, of course, "a pussy". Being quiet and skinny made me feel out of place at all times. I made a few friends while there, but didn't continue talking to anyone from the school after I graduated.

For what it's worth, I found the students at my local high school much friendlier and hung with them instead. Even the jocks there were welcoming. Crazy what class entitlement does to a person.

The problem with the school's treatment of its students is that they have ignored it for so long. This type of assault is, unfortunately, the logical endpoint of the toxic masculinity that is allowed to fester in the institution. Again, I wish I could say I'm surprised. Things similar to this assault have almost certainly already happened, but been either ignored or swept under the rug. I don't even know what to say other than that I hope this school dies the swift death it should have a long time ago.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Liberties, Vol 10

You know how you can tell that both Liberties and IMU are in a sad state? I've had this edition of the plyalist cued up for more than a week, but have only just gotten around to posting it. More music, playlists and writing coming soon, I promise.


Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Liberties, Vol 9

When you are worried about something dying, like I am with Liberties, you have to turn to that which cannot die. In music, the only thing that can't die are riffs.

Friday, October 5, 2018

Hammers

Skateboarder Jim Greco, a founder and member of one my favourite teams Deathwish, recently released his newest short film Jobs? Never!!



I guess that it is technically still a skate part/video, but I also find it interesting that he chooses to call it a short film instead of a "skate part", but it's also evident why he does that. Rather than the tried and true method of pairing a skateboarder's footage with popular music the skater in question enjoys, Greco takes a more narrative-based approach.

On one hand, it's a stark contrast to basically every skate video that every company puts out and Jobs? Never!!, shot on 16 and 35 mm film, seems like an Italian movie from the 70's in comparison. This is further emphasized when you compare Greco's white collared shirt and jacket outfit with the uber-hip current skate fashion that almost everyone under 30 wears today. On the other though, the shots of Greco casually skating through Los Angeles remind me a lot of Lance Mountain's solo scenes in Powell-Peralta's first-ever video from 1984, The Bones Brigade Video Show, so at once Greco is diverging himself from the norm while also firmly rooting himself in the history of his discipline.

I really appreciate that Greco is trying hard to innovate a medium that, while immensely enjoyable, hasn't really evolved that much stylistically since the early 90's (Spike Jonze's contributions notwithstanding). Also always have to show love when somebody puts Tom Penny in a video in the 10's.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

In the City There's a Thousand Things I Wanna Say to You

One of the few benefits of working a desk job in an office is that it allowed me ample time to check out music, whether it be new releases that friends are hyping up or old things that I haven't gotten around to yet. It was nice to let my interests wander and devote full days to checking out things I wouldn't have guessed that I would like, like as well as giving things a chance and knowing that it's not for me, like Todd Rundgren.

I don't have as much of a chance to do that anymore, now that I'm not on a computer for the entire day. As a result, it feels like my 2018 listening is starting to lighten (it's not, really), but there's been a bunch of newer releases that I've been into that I thought I would share.

Nothing, Dance on the Blacktop



I don't really have time for most gaze anymore, but since I loved Tired of Tomorrow so much, I figured I would be into this as well. I was right and am returning to this one regularly lately. I like that the band's interest in early British stuff isn't just limited to My Bloody Valentine; the volume, layers, and space is there, but so are Britpop hooks and a big Factory Records vibe too.

Doe, Grow into It




Punk and emo's obsession with grunge blindsided me when it happened. Doesn't everyone else realize that Pearl Jam and Soundgarden suck? That being said, I do appreciate that it made some bands centre their songs around big overdriven guitar riffs. Most make that boring, but this band Doe does it great. Nice, tight package of poppy rock songs.

Joyce Manor, Million Dollars to Kill Me




Yet again, Joyce Manor releases another gem and move further up my list of all-time favourite bands. As much poppier as Cody was than Never Hungover Again, this one is that much poppier than Cody. I purposely didn't listen to any of the songs they released ahead of the album, to save the surprise, but they announced on Instagram that they had been working with Rory Phillips (who played in two big-time Timbo favourites The Impossibles and The Stereo) as a songwriter and produced, I was bursting with anticipation. I really feel the Rory vibe on the album and love it so much. Just keep cranking 'em out boys, and I will keep loving them.

Living With Lions, Island




The older I get, the harder it is to listen to pop-punk. I find I can still return to old favourites like blink, Fireworks, or Set Your Goals, but find that most of the stuff I was an ardent supporter of in 2009-ish, I just can't get into at all anymore. Every now and then though, I get an itch that only big production, catchy pop-punk can scratch. When that comes, I like returning to a band who were once my favourite. LWL are back with, yet again, a new singer, but it still works.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, one of the best parts of having time to check out music is not just staying up to date on new things, but also getting around to old stuff that has been deemed significant in hindsight. The latest case: The Jam! Lifetime recently posted a live video of them playing "In the City" and since then, I've been on a kick, with In the City and All Mod Cons getting the spins.

Monday, October 1, 2018

I, Musical Genius, Vol 2: Tales from Toronto Ska, 2004-2007

As I intimated (I chose that verb because Lil' Wayne just used in "Demon" on Tha Carter V, my current listen) in my last post, I just finished my second zine, named the same as this post. When I started to work on zines in the summer of 2015 (boy, was the first one a long time coming), I thought of them as tangible versions of the writing I do on I, Musical Genius, which is why I've kept the name on them. This site is a timeline of my life and of my progression as a writer and creative person, so it feels great to channel all of that into neatly folded blue paper booklets.

Like the first volume of the zine, this one is a collection of short memoirs dealing with one of my principle interests. This time around the theme is ska music, specifically Toronto ska in the mid-00's. There's two old IMU stories that I've spiffed up here, but also two new entries that you won't find anywhere else. I'm proud of the stories and hope that readers get some nostalgic pangs while they go through them and think about different things that meant as much to you.

As with last time, you can click on the image in the right side bar to read about getting a copy.

-Timmy

Liberties, Vol 8

As Liberties enters its 8th week of existence, Timmy's mind skips a beat while he works every day of a weekend. As he focuses on a current exhibition ending and printing and assembling zines, Liberties falls back in his mind's queue. Timmy is reminded of this on a Sunday afternoon at the gallery and immediately starts to brainstorm ideas for a possible theme for the 8th edition. Thinking of the songs "9/10" on Jeff Rosenstock's album POST-, he immediately relates it to the Antartico Vespucci song "Losing My Mind" on their debut album Leavin' La Vida Loca, thinking of "spacey, synthy songs". The rest falls into place and Liberties survives for another week, hanging on by its fingertips. But will Liberties make it out of this one alive? Make sure to tune in next week on I, Musical Genius.


Monday, September 24, 2018

Liberties, Vol 7

I just got a new phone, my first smartphone since the days of Blackberries being popular, and something that immediately excited me was the ability to use music as my alarm in the morning again. No more shrill flipphone tones! I chose four songs to upload to my phone for use as an alarm in the next couple of weeks. The thought process behind picking a song you won't be annoyed to hear every day for the near future was interesting to me and the four I chose made up the basis of this playlist, while the rest was filled out by songs I've used to wake up in the past. Behold, 10 songs that make me excited to take on the day.


Friday, September 14, 2018

Liberties, Vol 6

To go along with the essay about blink-182 that I wrote this week, I've also devoted this week's edition of Liberties to what I feel are the band's best deep cuts, though Spotify doesn't have They Came to Conquer... Uranus, so I couldn't include "Wrecked Him". Also, why does that release have an ellipsis in it? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

It may seem silly to include "Carousel" as a deep cut, as it's one of the band's most beloved songs, but am I to assume that you all are blasting Cheshire Cat on the regular? Also, I make the rules around here, so too bad. Blink are a band that deals in hits and most of the singles bang, to be sure, but I think what sets them apart is how great most of their output is, so here you go.

A whole lot of blink-182 content this week. If you aren't into that, all I can say is that you have absolutely come to the wrong place.


Thursday, September 13, 2018

We Take the Road Less Traveled On

The band We Are The Union recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their forthcoming album Self Care. I was incredibly invested in this band's music when I was a little younger, so I though I would take the opportunity to promote their efforts in putting out some new music.

We Are The Union was my entire world for a couple of years during my undergrad degree. I discovered the band through MySpace just as I started school and immediately took to them, specifically their album Who We Are (available as a free download at the time), which dominated my listening that year and was my "Album of the Year" in a time before IMU existed. The music was a synthesis of things that were new and exciting to me at the time, like Mutiny!-era Set Your Goals and Self-Titled-era Lifetime, with the ska-punk I was already familiar with and will love for the rest of my life. It took me many babysteps to get into hardcore and those examples of SYG and Lifetime were the first of those. Finding a band that happened to be combining the things I was just getting into with what I was already comfortable with seemed too good to be true.

The lyrics on that record were also a huge part of why it resonated so much. There were angsty breakup songs that I loved because I was just starting to wade into the dating world and was extremely confused about that process, but what really stuck with me was the album's overall themes of self-reliance and anti-conformity. At a time of transition and self-discovery, that being 1st year university, those ideas felt empowering.

A quick sidenote: Being a good ska-punk band is a delicate balance. Every member needs to be:

  • A good and capable musician. Moreso than most punk or rock band members.
  • A true appreciator of ska music in all its forms. Even if you mostly like newer stuff and want to play 3rd wave, your band will mostly likely suck if you don't have an understanding of 1st and 2nd wave.
  • A fuckin' punk. That level of energy and aggression and defiance needs to be there or everything will fall flat.
It's a hard thing to maintain. Even bands who absolutely nail it for an album or two don't maintain it for a whole career. We Are The Union nailed all of these.

Following the release of Who We Are, the band quickly became "my guys" and I hyped them up at every opportunity (here's a real bad post from the archives doing just that). I followed all of the members on Twitter and eagerly watched updates from their tours. In particular, I remember watching a livestream of one of their shows from Memphis, I think? Some small punk market. When they announced a follow-up record in 2009, my excitement was at a fever pitch. I was all over their studio updates and was trying to piece together what the album would sound like from brief unmixed clips playing in the background. In my mind, they were the best band working and the album would be the best thing put out that year.

Ultimately, I remember being a little disappointed by Great Leaps Forward. Not that it was bad, but that it didn't live up to the monumental expectations I had for it. In the years after that, my listening to the band gradually slowed. I still loved them and eagerly checked out new releases, but my investment wasn't nearly what it was when I was in 1st and 2nd year university. In the last couple of years especially, I haven't paid much attention at all.

When they started promoting the new Kickstarter campaign, I went back and dug out my vinyl copies of Who We Are and Great Leaps Forward, as my record player was serendipitously repaired for this listening. WWA still has a special place in my heart for how much it meant at one time, but I found that it didn't quite resonate as much as it used to. To my surprise though, I found Great Leaps Forward much more palatable now. It's fast and it doesn't let up for the whole play through. Maybe I've relaxed a bit about getting dumped. I'd like to think that I still care just as much about being who I am though. I don't think that will ever leave me, even if I've found different ways to say it now.

While I was re-listening to the records, I dug through my t-shirts to see if I still had my old "I'm Like John Cusack"-themed one. I still do, sort of, in that I cut the front out of it to include in a quilt of old band t-shirts I'm going to make. I guess that symbolizes a lot of the music I was into at that time: Maybe I've moved on a little bit from some of it and maybe I like some different things now, but I'll never let go of what this stuff meant at one time and the fire it lit inside of me.


Monday, September 10, 2018

Blink

I've been neglecting IMU here and only giving you short Liberties posts. For this, I apologize. It's because I've been working on a couple of other writing projects, one of which I just finished. Over on the "serious" site, I just posted an essay about blink-182 and masculinity. Give 'er a go.

I Wanted Everything, I've Got and Now I'm Gonna Throw It Away

Saturday, September 8, 2018

Liberties, Vol 5

This week's edition of Liberties follows a pretty simple premise: I was listening to Deafheaven's new album Ordinary Corrupt Human Love recently and decided that the opening track would make a great score to a skate part. What followed was the full soundtrack for the skate movie that I will never make.


Friday, August 31, 2018

Liberties, Vol 4

I decided to use my dad as inspiration for this edition of Liberties. I got some surprising news about him last week and since then he's been on my mind a lot.

I was lucky to grow up with a father who encouraged me to check out music from an early age and more importantly to not be afraid to love it. This has probably affected me more than anything else. Once you realize you how truly important it is to see the value and beauty in art of any kind, it becomes shocking that not everyone lives that way. When I started to listen to rock music in 6th and 7th grade, my dad was eager to show me lots of things that he liked. Some stuck (like Elvis Costello, who he thought I would like because I was interested in punk), others not as much (Cream never did it for me). Below is a playlist of things that my dad loves and has shown me. The last song is the one time I tried to get him into music I was listening to, but that didn't work at all.


Friday, August 24, 2018

Liberties, Vol 3

The idea for this edition of Liberties started when Rebecca and I were listening to an all-80's radio station earlier this week. They played Blondie's cover of "The Tide is High" and it made me think about how so many people associate that song and "Hanging on the Telephone" with them despite the fact that both are covers. I figured I would put both of those in the playlist and the rest grew from there.


Friday, August 17, 2018

Liberties, Vol 2

Behold: I have kept up with this series for at least one week!

For the second edition of Liberties I decided to do no punk songs. Becks and I just our speakers fixed by their older brother and we put on Reach Out  by the Four Tops. For whatever reason, "I'll Turn to Stone" really hit me and I was surprised that I hadn't heard it more. The rest of the playlist fell into place from there with things we listened to at the cottage and with friends. Enjoy!


Friday, August 10, 2018

Liberties

Since its first episode, I have been a devoted listener of the Blink 155 podcast (yes, I am Original Nation, baby). I was already familiar with Sam through his time in Junior Battles, and vaguely knew Josiah through reading the excellent magazine Exclaim!, so coupling that with my lifelong obsession with blink-182, it was an easy sell.

Let's take this opportunity to segue into some related listening:



My weird, intense obsession with the podcast will be a topic for another time, but it did lead to me checking the episodes of the Myage podcast that both hosts guested on. I think that Myage is a very cool idea for a podcast: The guest goes through a sort of musical autobiography, explaining why certain interests started and how they impacted later listening while giving sonic examples along the way. It's a lot like that scene in High Fidelity. It's perfect for dumb, lame music nerds like me. An example of the format would be the guest playing a song their parents played in the house, then one from the first thing they bought, one from their teenage years, etc.

In the episode above, Sam mentions how grateful he was to grow up in a time when there was so much good music programming, like The Punk Show on MuchMusic (also a favourite of mine) or the glory days of 102.1 The Edge in Toronto. I completely agreed! Before the giant chasm of the internet truly opened up, finding stuff you could relate to through media like TV and FM radio was so exciting. It was private, but also made you feel like you were part of something bigger.

This also made me think. I'm starting to realize that though we are familiar with one iteration of this feeling, it comes in different ways to each generation. I'm sure that my parents got a similar feeling from listening to a particularly talents DJ in the 70's who played new and niche music amidst a landscape otherwise dominated by the products of major labels. Kids younger than me got the same feeling through frequently checking and reading music blogs to find obscure music, which I also participated in, but feel like I missed the glory days of.

I started to wonder if today's equivalent would be someone who puts a lot of effort into curating Spotify (or any other streaming platform) playlists. I'm sure someone out there can't wait for a new playlist from a particular user to come out to discover new things. The entire world of music is truly open to us now and collections are becoming obsolete. Streaming is a raw deal for artists, but if this is the future, let's at least make sure we keep our sense of adventure as music fans.

Through all this, I've decided to start a weekly playlist series called Liberties (I was having trouble thinking of a name, so I scanned iTunes, first checking Bomb the Music Industry!, then Big Star, then !ATTENTION!, before settling on an Attack in Black reference). I'm going to make short playlists, with the cap at 10 songs, and try to release them weekly. Maybe there will be a theme, maybe it will be new stuff I'm into, who knows? I'm just going to place the focus on doing one each week. First though, best thought.

This is the first one, based loosely on the idea for Myage. Starting with a song my mom always played, one from the first CD I bought, a song from my ska phase, from when Bomb the Music Industry! took over my life, from when I started listening to hardcore, from when I only listened to shiny pop-punk for 3 years, from when I moved into emo. I probably could have put many different songs in, but like I said, first thought, best thought.


Thursday, August 2, 2018

Make It Up as We Go Along

A funny thing happened at work today: David Byrne came in to see our exhibitions.

I didn't actually recognize him in the moment and just registered him in my head as "cool looking old guy with loafers". I realized after the fact that I hadn't ever seen an older version of him than the one in Stop Making Sense, so I guess it made sense that I didn't start waving my arms up and down when he walked past me. I was a little sad that I didn't capitalize on the opportunity to meet him, though I don't know what I would have said anyways. It's fine!

It was a little serendipitous, as the Talking Heads have become a fixture in my life over the last year and a bit. Last year, Rebecca and I went to go see a screening of Stop Making Sense at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema near our apartment. I had listened to a couple of the band's albums and seen most of the film already, so I knew the general vibe of it and Rebecca had been meaning to listen to the band for ages. I figured it would be a fun date and a good way to introduce us to the band.

The theatre was way more packed than either of us anticipated and we had to take our seats in the balcony. There was a solid buzz of noise in the theatre and everyone seemed to be buzzing with anticipation for what was about to happen. "Psycho Killer" elicited passionate singalongs in seats and everyone around us seemed to be bopping up and down, but it was the beginning of "Burning Down the House" where half the theatre jumped up and started dancing in the aisles. The sound was cranked, we were tipsy, and everything was wonderful. "Life During Wartime" had the audience running in circles around the theatre's seating while Byrne did his laps of the stage on screen. The energy of our crowd never stopped for the entire film and it seemed like the closest you could come to seeing prime Talking Heads play live now. We became instant fans and it was the most fun I've ever had in a theatre.

After that, I made sure to get their entire discography to listen to immediately. They became our go-to music around the house and many of their songs slotted into my life seamlessly. I learned 4 or 5 songs on bass and couldn't believe I hadn't been learning them for my whole life.

One song in particular really stuck with me, and has since become one of "my songs". It immediately calms me down and I feel like I'm floating in still water as soon as it starts. It reminds of being in love and living with Rebecca. I would listen to it on hard days at work and when I got nervous before leaving the apartment to go a party with new people.

I guess I would have talked to David about that song.

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Scream "All Aboard!" If I Could

I, like most adults, think about death. I wouldn't say that it always on mind or anything (my two watches of Six Feet Under and the time around Ecotone notwithstanding) , but over the course of my adolescence and adulthood, I've thought about it a lot. When I'll go. How I want to go. What "going" means. Is there dignity in death? Is it even sad?

I'm a little bit of an anomaly among my social group because all of my grandparents died when I was very young. My paternal grandfather well before I was born, both my grandmothers when I was too young to remember the circumstance, and my maternal grandfather when I was around 12 years old. I find that with most friends, a grandparent's death is the first time they come to terms with the fact that death is an inevitability that everyone faces and how they start to work through dealing with. I skipped that and instead my initial introductions to death as a concept were when my mom was going through cancer treatment in high school, when a friend's mother died around the same time, and when my dog Jack died last year. None of these felt like "proper" introductions of death into my life, but maybe that's the way it is for everyone.

I started thinking about this post because throughout my life I've thought of the song that I would like to have as the soundtrack to my funeral. That may sound morbid, but I soundtrack every single part of my life, so of course my own death must be included in that, right?

While I was a teenager and going a deep and intense hair metal phase, I decided that the song I would like to have played when my casket came out during my funeral was "Kickstart My Heart" by Mötley Crüe. This was mostly because I was also heavy into 80's coming-of-age and actions movies at the time (that phase didn't end like the hair metal one did), and I thought the over-the-topness of scoring scenes with cock rock was hilarious. I also thought a song about being brought back to life playing at a funeral would be pretty rich.



I also thought it would be essential to have a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon at my funeral to ensure that my funeral would be a celebration and party instead of a sombre wake. I was happy when I saw that Jeff Rosenstock echoed this in a great Bomb the Music Industry! song. I think this view of death was made possible by the fact that I hadn't had to deal with it yet. I saw death as a party not because I was nihilistic, but because I was stupid and young and had barely any life experience yet.

Inside that rosy view of my funeral was also some insecurity. I desperately hoped that my funeral would be well-attended. I hoped that everyone there would have liked me enough to fill up a cup and happy toast my memory. I wanted to be remembered as a fun person.

I started thinking about this a couple of months ago when Rebecca and I were driving back from Ottawa and listening to The Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me along an empty stretch of the 416 highway. When it got to the last track, "Can't Hardly Wait", one of my very favourite songs, I mentioned in the spur of the moment that I would like this song to be played at my funeral. Not the Pleased to Meet Me version though, the Tim electric b-side, though both are equally great.



I think the difference in the two songs illustrates the difference in my outlook on life and death now and also how much I've grown up since I was watching the Power Hour on MuchMoreMusic. "Can't Hardly Wait" is an irreverent, realistic look at facing death (in this case, suicide) straight on. As hard as you try, death is something you do by yourself and I think there's some real beauty in that. The more I think about it, the more relevant the song seems to the circumstance, beyond any lyrical or musical parallels. It just feels right and I'm sure that the song's enduring presence in my listening has something to do with that.

I also like the fact that it's from the Tim sessions would be a joke for the occasion too. I guess that hasn't changed.

Monday, July 30, 2018

I Just Can't Believe that I'm Smoking PCP



What a fuckin' song.

I discovered Tony Molina's old band Ovens after a guy on an old messageboard I posted on gushed about them. He circulated a triple LP of theirs that was 44 songs, with most being under a minute and a half. It was a lot to take in at first. I didn't listen to it much, but I also rarely delete things from my music library, so the album just in there for a couple of years.

I eventually got really into the album while I lived by myself in Guelph during the summer of 2015 writing my thesis. I have no idea why, but suddenly their ultra minimalist and lo-fi approach to power-pop really took hold of me and was go-to listening while I skateboarded around the city. One memory of the album that stands out in particular was listening to it on the bus ride home from the Bookshelf theatre downtown, where I had just gone to see Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, which was the first time I went to a movie alone. I was mostly by myself that summer and the Ovens seemed like a good soundtrack to the modest amount of self-discovery I did during that time.

Also during that summer I went to go see Ceremony and Pity Sex play in Toronto. I've always liked Ceremony okay and was very excited to Pity Sex. Tony Molina was supposed to open that show, but ended up not being able to get over the border. I had no idea that he was the frontman of Ovens, which I found out after the show, and I was bummed to miss it.

After I found this out, I started to dig into his solo material and found that I enjoyed it even more than Ovens. The short songs, huge hooks, and guitar solos were still there, but the package was more focused. Rather than a sprawling 44-song collection, the pieces were delivered in short, tight packages anywhere from 6 to 14 songs. Before you know it, the song is over and you just want to put it on again.

Molina's music has been one of my favourite things to listen to over the last 3-ish years especially. He put a new album called Kill the Lights last week and I highly recommend that you give it listen.

Friday, July 27, 2018

I Wish I Wasn't So Cobain

Dedicated IMU readers may have noticed that there has been a significant drop off in baseball-related writing this year (in addition to the massive drop off in general). That is because the Jays are once again bad. Josh Donaldson has barely played and the general mood of the season can be described by the fact that I've gone from hating Kendrys Morales because he was one of the principle factors in halting the team's success (and had replaced a lovable slugger who is flabbergasted by toilets) to loving him because he wears transition lenses sometimes and I just don't care anymore.

The Jays are by no means a cellar dweller in the American League, but they're not anywhere near contention due to both the Red Sox and Yankees returning to form in the same year. Hello 1996-2013! Since the Jays are well out of the playoff race and have a plethora of veterans on their roster, we've gotten back to what was once the most exciting part of being a Jays fan during the dark ages: The Non-Waiver Trade Deadline. Three players have already been shipped off, with Toronto sports fans chiming in that the trades were terrible, like clockwork, and there are several more to go still. When you are looking forward to the future of the team, rather than the present, as the Jays are now, this time is the most exciting because it represents an influx of hope with new young players and a way to ignore the truly forgettable baseball being played by *checks notes* Justin Smoak and Jaime Garcia?!. Most will not work out, but some might!

For many years as fan, this was mostly what I had to look forward to. It was always that if we could send off either Troy Glaus or Bengie Molina or even sadly Scott Rolen to get someone to pair with Lunchbox, Arencibia, and Mr. Intensity, we'd be sure to be in the playoffs in no time. We're back to that now and just like watching them start to lose again last year, it sucks, but is also a little sweet and comfortable.

People romanticize being a die-hard fan of a losing team a lot, but that's mostly done when that team eventually starts winning. You can easily smile while looking back on the harder times because you can now see what it all led to. It's easy to forget that it's mostly just bad baseball played by middling players while you wait for trades and the future.

I still wouldn't have it any other way though.

In other news: Music!

I came across Buddy's new album Harlan and Alondra by way of an excellent article on The Ringer. They describe it as "a sweltering piece of R&B that beads on the skin and paints a necessarily unfinished picture of Buddy and the city he’s from." That works! The whole album is great and is for sure my favourite rap album of the year so far. I think that I could get real deep into more stuff with this vibe.



Also getting pumped regularly is Marshall Crenshaw's self-titled first album. Duff suggested it to me because he knows that I will blare any and all power-pop and also that I love 80's-style production. Those two things combine flawlessly here and as soon as the bassline on "There She Goes Again" took off, I knew I would be super into this for the rest of the summer. Big hooks and perfectly corny longing lyrics that I flip for every time.



We now move on to the third section of the blog post: Books!




I'm currently reading The Great American Novel™️ for the first time, as I had designated it my "challenge" book of the year. It also wound up being a primary influence on the current show of the gallery, so I'm really going all-in on our summer programming. Given the book's high standing, length, and the fact that it was written in 1851, I thought it would be a tough read, but I've found it really easy going so far. The story is one of those that you immediately recognize as archetypal as soon as you start it and there are multiple long stretches of explaining that whales are fish because The Bible says so. It's also surprisingly anti-racist.

Initially, I was fretting about needing to write a post, but having no inspiration to write anything. I then rationalized that I could just start with baseball, music, and books and see where we got from there. Those three things make up a pretty big part of my identity, so why not ruminate on those? Way better than working through two or three "I have nothing to write about" paragraphs before getting to the point, right?

Thursday, July 19, 2018

No Mercy

Last week, I finished a two-year contract at work. This position was a good get for me, was the first thing I did out of grad school, and will surely lead to more things down the road, but for now, I have time to myself.

Leading up to the end of the contract was a very busy time, we had to get our new exhibition in order, as well as all of the programs that went with it. Artists were hard to deal with and poets even more so and then before I knew it I was training my replacement. It was kind of a whirlwind month in which I experienced everything I loved about the job, everything that made it worthwhile, and everything I hated in rapid-fire succession, with each change not lasting long but making up for that in intensity. People said goodbye and thanked me and the machine of the gallery kept moving on at its usual boulder falling down a mountain pace.

Now I'm working part-time at that same gallery, but in a reduced role and with much more say over what and when I do things. I'm taking a bunch of time off for myself so that I can, hopefully, for fuck sakes, finally finish my second zine (which is in the final stages of editing) and then move on to the third one I'm currently planning.

I'm still figuring what I want to say and where I'll send up saying it. Here? In a zine? In a story? Hopefully all of them.

I don't have much else to say, so I thought I would leave you with two albums I really enjoyed listening to this morning.

First up is Dan P and the Bricks' second record When We Were Fearless. I adored the first one and played the shit out if it, so I was shocked to find out that I missed the release of this one this past February. Almost all ska that has come out this decade has been either a lazy effort from a washed up old band or a similarly lazy effort from a new band aping an old band. I say almost, because every now and then a record like this one comes out and reminds exactly why I love this genre so much. A huge band that gives the songs a trad feel without really dipping into that category and really great songwriting by Dan. Asian Man Records is lowkey in the pantheon of best ever labels. Love this one.



Secondly, I revisited Young Guv's album from 2015 Ripe 4 Luv and it holds up so damn well. So dreamy and dancy, with great guitar hooks too. Imagine if all dreampop was this good?

Thursday, June 28, 2018

It Comes Down to Me in the End

One morning, I got on the southbound subway at Spadina Station, as I do every morning on my way to work.. I got on the car at about 8:40 AM, the peak of rush hour. The subway was crowded, with no seats available and many people standing. A thin older black man in a fedora was walking down the middle of the car in my direction and speaking loudly to everyone around me. Having lived in a big city for most of my life, I am used to meeting people like this on public transit regularly.

As me got closer, I realized that the man was preaching to anybody near him. A few of the commuters were visibly uncomfortable, but the man wasn't getting particularly close to any person. He was loud, to be sure, but he also wasn't stopping to talk to anyone in particular. In situations like these, I recognize that nothing I do or say can stop this person from doing what they are doing, so I try to take them in as passively as I can. Around this time, the subway stalled in the tunnel.

As the preacher passed by me spreading the word of God, a young man spoke up and said "Nobody here wants to hear this." The man looked like a caricature of internet-obsessed nerd atheists. The preacher took the man's criticisms in stride and was more than game to engage in a debate, retorting with things like "It's okay my brother, I will pray for you." The young man didn't want to give it up though, saying "Nobody wants to hear this, especially from a shlep like you."

That last response almost made me laugh out loud. A man is confident and shame-free enough to walk through a crowded, confined space speaking to strangers and your gameplan is to come at him with "shlep"? Bro, you gotta rethink your strategy.

The young man was visibly upset with the preacher and they got into a brief argument with each other. The preacher was steadfast in his position that he would pray for the man and would keep spreading his beliefs, while the young man wouldn't budge on telling the guy to shut up. It never got to the point where I thought there would be a confrontation, but it was a little awkward.

The next point is entirely speculation, so please do not take it as fact,but I got the vibe that the young man's attitude was racially motivated. Would he have approached the situation the same if it was an elderly white guy doing this? Given that the rise of the alt-right has been explicitly linked to men just like this guy, I was wagering the answer would be no.

At the height of the argument, the man said that faith would find the young man eventually. A Jamaican woman spoke up saying "Born again! Wash in the blood of Jesus!"

The subway pulled in St. George Station and the young man stormed off to change lines while the old man continued down the car.

Shortly after leaving St. George, the car stopped again and the voice over the P.A. informed riders that there had been a trespasser at track level.

This news made me wonder which of the two people in that argument would care that a person committed suicide that morning. Neckbeard, from my brief impression of him, was probably more concerned about his commute being interrupted. I'm sure the preacher said a prayer for the person. Both actions are empty, but at least one is considerate.

That being said, we're not required to feel empathy when a person we don't know dies. It's nice if we do, but it doesn't solve anything. Really, it makes us feel better about ourselves more than anything else. Is putting yourself first in that scenario selfish? I don't know.

This whole situation was brief, but it's stuck with me since then. It kind of reminds me of the Party Down episode where they cater a Young Republicans party. The other person may be an asshole in some ways, but it's also easy to turn yourself into an even bigger asshole pretty quickly. Just try hard to understand people and context, I guess. That's not easy, but I think it's important.

Friday, June 15, 2018

Sometimes It's Just You and Me, Getting High in Your Car

Allow to begin this post by saying that it's been a year and a half since this album was released and the whole thing (but especially this song) (but also especially all of the songs) manages to transform into a floating smile for as long as it's on. No matter what.





More importantly (SIREN EMOJI, SIREN EMOJI), The Yunahon Mixtape is being re-released by Oso Oso''s new label Triple Crown Records soon and to commemorate the release, the band put out a new single. It's been a while since a band has captured my interest like this, where every move they make induces pure joy and it's nice to return to that state of excitement. Let me tell ya folks, THE SONG BANGS. LORD DOES IT BANG!




That's all! Just really excited about this band and the big stupid smile that spreads across my face as soon as I press play.