The Things That Set Us Apart

A big part of what keeps me so invested in music (in my case punk music specifically) is that seeing live performances can seem magical. The performer and their equipment mix together and during that time, they are more than what either contributes. The feeling that I get from watching a performer truly kill it is my equivalent of a religious experience. For that brief time, the world makes sense and I understand why we exist. You could say that this fleeting nature is frustrating, but for me it's part of the appeal. I have to be present because I know it will be done soon. It's special.

Equally special as that type of performance is when you see a band who you've never listened to and they blow you away. The feeling of their music taking you in and you realizing that you've found something new you love is hard to describe. It's joy, but you feel it physically.

I can think of a couple examples of this happening to me. Videos from the actual shows I was at are scarce, but I can find stuff from those eras. Sounds like a good IMU feature, right? Let's rock.



The first example I always think of of being won over is when I saw The Sidekicks open for Bomb the Music Industry! in 2011. I had been at a friend's going-away party the night before and was in a little bit of a rush back into the city on a GO bus so that I could make to the show on time. It wound up being one of the best, if the the best, shows I've seen. I had heard the Sidekicks mentioned on then-venerable punk music site Punknews.org, but their live show was a better introduction than anything else I could have done. They were touring on Weight of Air and were so tight and dance-y and their soul-influenced power-pop was way different than all the 'org stuff from that time and has aged way better than all of it as a result. I've never stopped listening to the band since and have loved all their material (well, Runners in the Nerved World is just okay) since.



Once I went away to university, I almost immediately become interested in hardcore music, which I formerly scorned in the name of my love of ska. The aggression and heaviness of the genre started to make a lot more sense to me and I waded into the genre, as many other Canadians did, by listening to Comeback Kid's Wake the Dead. Comeback Kid then announced a big Canadian tour package with five other bands and I decided that this would be my first hardcore show. Would I throw down? Stagedive? Would there be a fight? I didn't know what to expect. Rather than Comeback Kid though, it Bane who awed me that night. They were hyped and charismatic and exactly what I hoped a live hardcore show would be like. I bought a classic plain shirt from the Bane t-shirt factory after and couldn't have been happier about it.



I was really excited to see The Aquabats in 2006. I had just finished my final exams for the year and the show was the day before my birthday. The Aquabats were amazing and exciting and everything I hoped they would be. A different type of exciting was seeing the Aggrolites play material from their first two records. Before seeing the Aggrolites, I had never seen a good reggae band before. I loved listening to the genre, but my exposure to it in a live setting had been subpar local bands. The Aggrolites showed how dynamic, energetic, and heavy reggae could be. Their Beatles cover was one of the craziest things I've seen.



Just like the Sidekicks, I heard a lot about the Menzingers before I saw them tour on Chamberlain Waits with the Flatliners and Fake Problems in 2010. I expected a lot from the show, since all three bands had recent albums and were on an upward trajectory, and it was a great night. As soon as the band started, I could tell that they would occupy a lot of my listening for the foreseeable future. A lot of my friends kept mentioning that "Time Tables" was their favourite song they had heard in ages and I was convinced of the same when I saw it live. I've fallen off the band recently and haven't been a huge fan of their last two records, but they were such an exciting band in the early teens and it felt special to have all of my friends be captivated by them.


I've been working on a longer feature for the Wordpress on Oso Oso and that is what got me thinking about this specific thing happening. I was introduced to Oso Oso when I saw them open for the Hotelier in the fall of 2015. As the band set up, I asked a friend what they were like and he said "Super poppy. Like Third Eye Blind." It felt like under a minute later the band was into "Track 1, Side 1" and I was all the way in. They were really tight, with a big-time drummer, and I felt like I lived an entire life during song. That performance and Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters made them one of my favourite active bands and me seeing them the next fall and the yunahon mixtape convinced me that they are the best band in the world.