Friday, May 25, 2018

Gotta Do What You Can Just to Keep Your Love Alive



It's funny the way that a song can be to resonate with you, seemingly out of nowhere and in a new way. You've heard the song upwards of a hundred times in your mom's car, in your own head phones, in the shitty computer speakers you had in your room four years ago, but all of a sudden it comes out in a new way.

Sometimes the subject matter doesn't even pertain to you and a song about living as a touring musician somehow sums up your feelings about a completely different thing. There's an area in between subjects where we all live and it feels like I'm reveling in that now. For some reason the space between "riding a tour bus in the 1970's" and "ending my job" feels particularly relevant right now.

P.S. The ad-libbed "Ooooo-ooh!" in the second verse!

P.P.S. It always gets me when they kick into the main riff for the outro. Goddamn.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Cobra Noir

Whenever I am having trouble thinking of something worthwhile to write, I go to one of two wells. 1) An anecdote I still think about. 2) A draft on my blogger dashboard. This happens to be both.

Since the age of 12, the only thing I've thought about has been being in a band. First came the daydreams of me playing Urethra Chronicles II-style pranks with my friends, then came the red Squire P-Bass starter pack, then came learning "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Then the Chinese Fingertraps, then the Pragmatics. I had a gap in bands where the desire to play was stronger than ever, until Mark asked me to join the "new" version of Beat Noir. We played together for a couple of years and it was really fun until it wasn't.

I still think about Beat Noir a fair amount. I try to be careful to not veer into embarrassing wistful nostalgia about playing in an unsuccessful punk band for five years, but at the same time the band was a big part of my life and it's hard to not think about it. I remember a friend of Colin's reminiscing on their old hardcore band and talking about it like they were paradigm-shifting. I don't want to be that. I'm aware that we were just a fairly run-of-the-mill band and that's okay.

Along the way, we had a couple of experiences that I think are part of a larger, shared experience of "being in a band". There's the corny, well-worn examples of sitting together and getting the first copies of your first album or getting your first van, but I think it's the shittier times that do more to bond you to your bandmates and others you meet. Those shit circumstances are also a lot funnier in hindsight and more entertaining to others, even if it doesn't seem that way when it's happening.

With all this being said, I'm going to dive into a story from Beat Noir. I don't mean to glamorize our existence or try to make it sound like we were super cool. Just the opposite, we were pretty pathetic most of the time and it was amazing how much money we threw away in this endeavor. I think most musicians will agree that being in a band is frustrating most of the time 

When Duff and I talk about the band, the consensus worst time we ever had in it was a show we played in Hamilton.

During one summer, we were particularly hard up for shows. Our first album was almost a year old and we were finding that it was getting hard to convince people to listen to us and even harder to find good shows to play. We had played with a couple of great bands around the release of Ecotone, but that pool dried up quickly and all of a sudden we were playing parties in Burlington. People always preach that you "just need to keep grinding", but that's hard you're not getting paid and a crowd of people are even giving you the "standing about 10 feet away from the stage" courtesy. Out of everyone in the band, I leaned most towards "I'll play anywhere", but that has its limits too.

A friend of ours told us that a friend of theirs was putting together a show in Hamilton with the band Brutal Youth, who we came up with in Kitchener and who we liked a lot and two others, Dry Socket and Dirty Kills. On top of that, the show was at The Doors Pub, which is a great rock bar where we had played one of our best shows earlier in the year. Thinking that this would be a good way to interrupt our run of terrible shows, I convinced the rest of the guys to go along with it. Then Brutal Youth dropped off the show. We in a shitty position where we all didn't want to play the show anymore, since the only band we liked and knew wasn't doing it anymore, but were also desperate to play and didn't want to look like we were unreliable. We decided we would stick with it, just because. It was at The Doors, so even if it was a shit show, it would be fine.

On the way to the venue, we stopped to get food. Colin brought a pack of cigarillos and for some reason he, Mark, and I smoked one on the way to a burrito place. It was grape flavour.

We got to the venue about a half hour before doors and were surprised to find that the only people there were the other opener, Dry Socket. We weren't familiar with the band, but were happy to find out that it was made up of acquaintances and friends-of-friends. They said that the promoter hadn't been at the venue at all and nobody at the venue knew what was going on. Both of us talked about giving up on the show and bailing, but ultimately decided that we would just both play and see what happened. While I figured that the show would turn out fine, I also wasn't surprised to see something stupid like this happen.

While we were loading our gear in, my stomach started to feel upset. I laid my bass down in the back room of The Doors (it has a pool table, a full bookcase, a high-back chair, and an Ozzy Osbourne poster) and then rushed downstairs to the washroom. The washroom walls were covered with old Marvel comics covers from floor to ceiling. I had the worst diarrhea that I've ever had in my life. Liquid was streaming out of me. The guy who made my burrito must have cooked the meat on a radiator it was so bad. I eventually had to go back down a couple of other times to fully clear myself out.

Just as Dry Socket were set up and were getting ready to start, Dirty Kills and the promoter, who was friend of theirs, showed up. To my immense surprise, the promoter who decided to go incognito and not show up until after doors was a crusty. Predictably, pretty much no one had come to the show. The rest of the band and I were incensed that this promoter was being so lazy about the show and the fact that it was the capper on a terrible summer as a band was the cherry on the sundae. We decided that we would finish our set and then get the fuck out of Hamilton. Out of solidarity, we all made sure to watch Dry Socket's set at the front.

Once they finished, we went and started to bring our gear to the front of the venue when the promoter stopped us halfway and told us that we would be headlining instead. Great. Plans of heading home early were dashed and we would be stuck watching Dirty Kills to boot. Why wait until right before we thought we were playing to tell us?

Mark was over it all and went to use our drink tickets downstairs. Duff and Colin were both straight edge and I didn't feel like drinking because I was mad and my stomach was upset, so Mark got the lot of them.

It all was a very defeating feeling. We were playing a show we didn't want to play to no one and most likely wouldn't be getting paid for it. It wasn't fun to play shows like this. All of us were frustrated and having a bad time. We spent a lot of time loading up and driving to the show and our van was gas guzzler, so we were essentially paying to play it. It was the exact opposite of the way you hope a show goes. And on top of all that I had bad diarrhea.

After showing up like two hours late and changing our set time at the last minute, the promoter hung out in the back of the venue drinking with her friends for the entire show. We were steaming mad and were still entertaining the thought of bailing on the show and just driving home. A couple of us said "I'm down if you are", but we had already driven all the way to Hamilton and figured that we would try to treat it like a band practice in front of 3 people. The four of us were over it and decided that our silly petty way to get back at the promoter would be to play for as long as possible.

A funny, self-defeating thing about Beat Noir was that we always played our best when we were mad. More often than not, this was because we were stuck on a bad show. We'd be so pissed that we were stuck on a bad show doing nothing for ourselves as a band and that, more often than not, we had driven out of town to the show, that the anger would translate into us playing tightly. We would end end up playing great sets on bad shows and sloppier sets on good shows. We were bad at being a band.

We decided to play every song off of our LP that we could play live. We also threw in an older song from our truly terrible EP. Halfway through the set one of us, I can't remember who, suggested that we play a cover of "The Good in Everyone" by Sloan, which we had played live regularly for about a year, but hadn't practiced in about as long. We pulled it off well. Spontaneously whipping an old cover out without practicing it felt like the coolest thing we had done as a band.

"Well, I played that set drunk as fuck." Mark said.

As soon as we finished we tore down and loaded out as quickly as possible. At bare minimum, it was August and warm out. Loading out your gear in the winter is one of the least fun things about being in a band, so I'll never complain about getting roll amps down the sidewalk instead of the snow. The Doors Pub is at the top of Hess Street in Hamilton, which is most of the city's student bars are. Since it was warm out and late, there were many people out drinking. While the four of us stopped to take stock of everything and make sure that we hadn't forgotten anything, three 30-ish drunk bros who looked like they spent a lot of time in Barrie came up to talk to me.

They asked me if the four of us were the band that had just played upstairs, as they had been outside on the patio and heard our surely muffled set from there. They complimented us and said that I in particular was talented. They were drunk and obnoxious and looked like they hung out in Barrie a lot. One of them told me that he sang and played guitar in a band and asked if I like Avenged Sevenfold. He also told me that one day he was going to steal me away from my band to play in his band. He asked what our name was.

"Beat Noir."

He smacked his forehead, smirked and half-turned away.

"You won't believe this." one of his friends said. They were all very excited to tell me.

"What?"

"One of our songs is called 'Cobra Noir'."

This was the point in my night when I crossed the Rubicon and the night became so dumb and annoying that it was funny to me. I had nothing left to do but laugh. All we needed now was the van to break down on us.

I told the bros that we had we to finish loading our gear and get going, went back to the guys and told them what had just happened. They were all at a similar point in their evening to me.

I asked everyone else if we should go and ask the promoter for money. Mark and Colin didn't care and weren't going to do it and I was at a point where I didn't care what happened, so I said I would do it and Duff said he'd come with me.

I asked the promoter if she could give us anything for gas and she said "Sorry, all the door money is going to the touring band." That pissed me off a lot. I had a lot of things that I wanted to say. How is it fair that we drive almost as far as the touring band and don't get anything? How is it fair that there's barely any door money because you did a shit job as a promoter? Don't you have any responsibility in this scenario? Why do you get to spend money drinking at the show instead of saving that for us? Even $10 would have been appreciated. The way that bands are often expected to just play for nothing because it's the "punk" thing to do is stupid. It's really just you taking advantage of us. As a promoter, you should be prepared to pay the bands that are playing your show. If you are uncomfortable being forced to draw a crowd in order to ensure you'll make out okay financially on the gig, don't be a promoter.

I didn't say any of those things. Instead, I rolled my eyes, exhaled and stormed off. I said "Thanks for nothing" as I walked away, but I'm unsure if she heard it or not.

It was a less than fun drive home. I sat shotgun while Duff drove, with Colin and Mark both passed out in the row behind us. This was our usual set up on the way home. Duff put on You Are Beneath Me by End of a Year. The intro felt great to listen to. We stopped at a gas station about halfway home so that Mark could rock a piss.

While Mark and Colin were inside, Duff confessed that he didn't want to play shows like this anymore. He would rather play no shows than play shows like this, I agreed. For a second it felt like Duff was starting the "We Shouldn't Be a Band Anymore" conversation. He assured me that he still wanted to play together, but we would have to take a different approach to things.

You couldn't fault him for thinking that way.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Sometimes, Every Once in A While

Given how much I write about the Blue Jays on IMU, one would assume that Toronto's baseball team occupies such a huge space in my mind that it takes up all of the brain power I have to give to sports. That is not true though, as I love to spend my winters watching Toronto Raptors basketball. I don't nearly the same relationship with the Raptors that I do with the Jays, but they have been a part of my life since my childhood.

I first became interested with the Raptors during the heyday of Vince Carter and Antonio Davis, as was the case with almost every other basketball fan close to my age, and my earliest memory of watching the team is seeing Vince miss the shot that would have beaten the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.


Since then, I went all in on the Bosh/Bargnani playoff teams, stuck with them during the ebb of the "just Bargs" after Bosh left to join LeBron, and then my fandom hit a fever pitch with the team's current Lowry/DeRoza incarnation. The team has been superbly run by Masai Ujiri and built into perennial playoff presence. They're young and mostly homegrown, so its been an exciting time to follow the team.

2017/18 has been, to this point, the culmination of the Raptor's building process. They have a great young core and they ended up winning a franchise-high 59 games (!) to pace the Eastern Conference. This season was, without a doubt, the most fun I've had watching the team and I think that most fans would agree with me on that.

The Raptors are also a little maddening to watch sometimes. They're always great in the regular season, but are choke artists, as much as I hate to admit it. They consistently lose to worse teams once the games that actually matter come around and seemingly forget everything they've done and learned along the way. It makes them easy targets for the rest of the NBA and it can be exhausting to defend them and assure everyone that "no, they're actually good".

This year seemed different and a lot of factors that that the Raptors have no control over (LeBron's teammates, injuries to other players) rolled in their favour. They still weren't favoured to win, or even be in the NBA Championship, but this was without a doubt their best opportunity and one like it wouldn't come around again for many years. I had a lot of hope.

Instead, by the second game of their second round match up against the Cleveland Cavaliers, it became apparent that the Raps were definitely going to lose, if not be swept, which is exactly what happened.

In the 4th game of the series, which ended up being the last one, they were getting blown out and it was obvious that there was no way they were going to mount a come back and that their 2018 season would end that night.

I thought about turning the game off, because who really wants to watch their favourite team get meticulously picked apart by one of the greatest players of all-time? It's frustrating and deflating. Then, I had a moment of clarity and decided to instead tick with the team and watch through to the end of the game. I felt pretty that Toronto's best opportunity at playing for the championship had once-again slipped away, but I also realized that it can be good and healthy to sit in that feeling for a little bit. Just because you initially feel sad about what the eventual outcome will be, doesn't mean that there is no beauty in the moment. 2017/18 was by a wide margin the most basketball I had ever watched in my life, so instead of trying to block this Raptors loss out of my mind, I figured that since I had come on this season-long ride with the team, I should stay on the boat and see it through to the end.

Watching the team go through the motions of playing a game, and season, really, that was already decided forced me to be present in the moment. This coloured the sadness with a bit of joy, making for a weird combination of feelings. I was sad and couldn't believe that they had choked yet again, but also felt strangely glad to be in situation.

I'm not sure how to describe the situation anymore or make my point any better. Describing ethereal emotions is hard. Basically, what I want to say is that when things seem annoying, frustrating, or shitty, sometimes it can be fruitful to take a moment and revel in the situation. Being present is hard and it's counter-intuitive, but that doesn't mean it's something we need to work towards.

On the other side of the coin, a similar thing happened at work this week. My workplace can be very frustrating and though I haven't been particularly bummed at work recently, it still wears me down. This week our youth outreach program had their end-of-year show and it never ceases to remind me that art can be very good sometimes. While everyone was making their speeches about how proud they were of the kids for making all that they did, I took a moment to sit in the elation I felt. Even a small inner victory like that can carry you for a couple of days.

It's beautiful, I would say. I wouldn't have it any other way.