Secrets and Highways
Freaking out on the interstate
Hello friends, foes, and love interests,
It’s a brand new year and I am still fighting old habits.
I was very excited to give myself a grounded schedule for Fan Behaviour posts, not only to keep myself accountable but to make sure that posts wouldn’t hang over my head as part of an interminable to-do list. However, after seeing one of (if not THE) best concerts of my life, I got sick. I didn’t catch a cold or anything logical like that, my body just decided it was time for a cosmic punishment (or maybe a break?). This is all to say that I am working on catching up to my workload in my classes and that has left me very little time to do the thing I love most: write.
Not all of my classes take me away from you through. In one of my courses, I am developing the framework for a sustainability project that I am very excited to implement through Fan Behaviour. Feel free to post your deranged fan theories in the comments about what it could be, but if you ask me in person I will probably talk your ear off about it – be warned.
This month I am still living in Waterloo, just in one of the smallest apartments I have ever had. I am finishing the final term of my degree in Environmental Studies, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had time to see any live music. Not only was I invited along to a secret show at one of my favourite bars in Kitchener, but I was also allowed to photograph one of my favourite bands of all time. This was a month of realizing that people actually value me being at shows and taking a step back from my life to realize how unimaginable my reality would have been to fourteen-year-old me. Now, let’s get into it.
Sworn to Secrecy
When I moved into my current apartment, I found not only a broken oven, but a broken shower, sink, front door, heater, and fridge - I love renting! All of those have since been fixed, but I didn't discover the broken oven until I had already prepared a homemade (vegetarian) lasagna.
After a walk of shame to, friend of the blog, Maddy’s apartment building, I was able to commandeer her oven. While I was sprawled out on her couch, one of our other friends came over to ask about our plans for the night.
Two days prior, I had been invited to Good Company Production's "Secret Show" in Kitchener and they had done something revolutionary: they gave me a plus one. That is to say, me and the oven supplier were headed into Kitchener to hunt down the secret venue (AOK Arcade Bar).
Upon hearing this, our friend warned us about the rooftop patio at AOK, theorizing that GoodCo would host their event up there. Let's just say, the weather didn't make this a thrilling idea.
This is how I ended up inside AOK tucked behind one of the pinball machines, shedding the many layers I wore in fear of an outdoor event. I was incredibly relieved, if sweaty. The line for drinks and snacks wrapped around the room, with much of the non-arcade machine floor space being covered in soft seating and bar stools clustering around a tightly packed stage.
Likely because of the price, chill vibe, and day of the week (Sunday), the audience was full of "real adults," as I often like to say. AKA: people older than me, likely with a career and some stability on their life.
Promptly at 7:30 pm, the doors were shut and no one else was allowed into the venue - the exclusivity heightens. We were then told that there would be two performers that night, both coming from outside the KWC area. Much like Sofar shows, the expectation is that the audience will be silent during sets, allowing for a listening party ambiance. Maddy would later complain to me that a group of women behind her continuously spoke during the performance, but my earplugs filtered them right out.
Speaking of these earplugs, I will do a full review of them at some point. Maybe I will do a full “Earplugs Episode” . . .
The first performer was Amanda Movio, who performed with her backing band of Miguel on drums and Nate on keys. This London-based jazz artist shattered all my dreams of having a jazz-free night.
I only say this because as we were on the train to the venue, Maddy and I were hypothesizing if we would know the artists and trying to see if we could guess the genres in advance. We eventually realized we had no clues, so I stated that I would be happy as long as there was no jazz.
Unfortunately for me and my anti-jazz bias, Amanda was phenomenal. I might have to switch sides and be pro-jazz. We shall see.
The vibe of the secret show gave her the chance to explain her music in a way she might not have been able to otherwise. We were able to get a very honest look into the inspiration behind each song. While singing Amanda was able to play with her voice so effortlessly. She switched between different effects and styles as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Amanda was wearing an ear-to-ear smile all night, eventually saying, “Sorry I’m just so full of joy I keep giggling” when she was laughing between songs. Clearly, this experience was as powerful for her as it was for me.
I will say, unfortunately, that I think 45 minutes was too long of a set. Maybe I just struggle with sitting still though. It’s too bad that through my blog posts, I have continuously outed myself as impatient.
The second group of the night was Sunshine Express from St. Catherines. I have never been to St. Catherines, so I was surprised to hear that the area has a prominent hardcore music scene. I will have to put them on my list of cities to visit and explore. If anyone knows of any good shows upcoming there, let me know!
The biggest takeaway I have from this band is their phenomenal on-stage banter. I will try to keep the quotes to a minimum but I wrote so many down. Sunshine Express introduced themselves by saying, “This is basically like Imagine Dragons acoustic.” It was decidedly not.
This performance was a stripped-down version of what Sunshine Express usually performs, performing as a trio. Opening their set by queuing up some Minecraft music on the beatpad, eventually blending that into their original music.
The band used a variety of well-placed samples in their music. I liked that they were manually added, as opposed to having a full backing track pre-prepared. However, along with many diverse electronic sounds, the band’s singer, MattUU, used autotune throughout his entire performance. Thankfully he switched it off to speak, even making a joke about him being T-Pain (it was kind of giving T-Pain) . . .
I am very much not a fan of vocal effects. Regardless of how heavy or obvious they are, regardless of what kind of vocal effect it is, I can’t get behind it. I’m sure one day I will see something I like from an artist using a vocal effect, but that day is yet to come.
One of their closing songs spoke to me. To the best of my understanding, it is currently unreleased. The song is called Punk Enough and it is about how, as alt musicians in St. Catherines, they often watch other artists and newcomers be actively excluded from the city’s prolific hardcore scene for not being “punk enough.”
Since their guitarist was playing the baritone guitar, their music was filled with rich low tones that were very well suited to the cave-like room we were in.
I never know how to feel about secret shows as they never end up being an environment I feel comfortable in. I like that they happen and I think it is important to,
1. Be exposed to artists you never would have previously connected with
2. Let artists have spaces that exist purely to showcase their musical talent, not to create a crowd atmosphere.
That being said, I don’t do well with sitting still. I also have yet to be to a secret show where the artists are in my preferred genres of rock and hardcore. While I have never been to a show like this where I hated my experience, I think I have simply learned that they aren’t environments conducive to what I want from live music, and that’s okay.
Life’s a Risk
I arrived in Toronto two hours before the doors, but I hadn’t plugged the venue into my GPS. Instead, I pulled into the parking lot outside of Rorschach, a brewery 500 odd meters away. This was all part of my master plan to avoid traffic and get a nice dinner before the show.
I will say I was disappointed to learn that they were not serving pizza that evening, as I had been dreaming about their fig pizza my whole ride down. Guess I have to go back – oh no!
The staff were nice and I sat at the bar to read and munch. I sampled a couple of beers and ended up deciding on their sour called “Afterglow.” I really enjoyed it, which I was surprised by as I am not the biggest beer drinker. It was definitely better and cheaper than anything I would have been able to pick up at the venue.
I picked two options from their starter menu, a house salad and perogie bites since their sandwich section was void of vegetarian options.
Their food was really good and came quite fast. When I was talking to the bartender, Anthony, he was telling me that a lot of people come to Rorschach before attending a show at HISTORY, which is why they were so busy on Monday night. It's so interesting to think about the ecosystems that music venues create in different cities.
After I paid my tab and went to the venue, they weren't ready to let me in. Even though doors were open, and I was on the list to get a pass, they asked me to wait outside I don't know if you remember the weather from Monday, January 15th, but that was not a small ask. It was extremely cold.
I was just gonna walk next door to the Cineplex and loiter in their doorway, claiming that I was waiting for a friend, but I didn't have to because I accidentally walked into a casino by accident. It was one of those horse betting casinos, I don't know how else to describe them, but it was full of octogenarians actively smoking inside and staring at screens full of running horses.
I stood in their vestibule for so long that a man came up to me and decided that it was an appropriate time to sing Rolling Stone lyrics at me, to which my response was that I hate The Rolling Stones. He laughed and told me about all the cool concerts he had seen growing up in Toronto, correctly guessing that I was waiting for entry to the venue next door.
Finally, I walked back over and had to talk to a variety of different people, because I got sent in the wrong direction a handful of times period eventually I walked around to the back of the venue, was let in through a separate metal detector, and led to the photography pit to await the opening act.
I have been listening to Jasiah’s heavier music since high school. I would be surprised if no one remembers me blaring Shenanigans while driving my mom’s car with all the windows down.
But the thing is, Jasiah was pretty far off my radar. I never ended up keeping up with him as an artist, unless I stumbled upon one of his new releases. I probably started listening to him around the time I stopped paying attention to individual artist’s actions in general – that has obviously since changed.
“When I take my hat off, scream so it looks like a big deal.”
Since I was at HISTORY as a photographer, I was able to experience his entire set from the photography pit, along with those of the other two opening acts. When it came to the headliner, I was expected to walk away after three songs. Although I spent a lot of time upfront, I reveled in the ability to move around the crowd without having to fight my way back to the front.
I didn’t know much about Jasiah, outside of his voice, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his stage performance. Jasiah was hilarious. Even though he has 1.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, his crowd work was that of a smaller act. He was engaging with everyone he could see in the venue lights, telling jokes, and giving me so many quotes to jot down for later.
Jasiah also told us that his on-stage DJ for the night was his younger cousin, who was DJing for the first time. They had a very sweet moment on stage together.
"Y'all thought I was gonna kiss my lil cousin, passionately?”
Jasiah’s performance was also fairly bashful. He was genuinely unsure if anyone in the crowd knew who he was. Sure, he was the first of four acts, but he still had a LOT of the crowd moving with him the whole time.
When he finally worked up the courage to ask who knew who he was he said, “That’s cooooool!” when about a fifth of the crowd yelled back at him.
There are a lot of other different little narratives I could tell about his set, like when he brought a young kid from the barricade on stage with him, his desire for a “light meadow,” or asking his girlfriend to be his valentine as he was actively being kicked off stage for going over time.
I had a lot of fun during his set and rediscovered my love for his music.
Up next was the American surf-punk band, FIDLAR. This was the band that I was here to see, this was the band that invited me to come take photos of them. I was beyond excited.
They had such great energy on stage and the band’s singer, Zac, sounded exactly like he did on his recordings. I was curious how his voice sounded in real life, as he has such a distinct sound. Zac also had a skateboard as a pedal board and the band was selling key chains made out of pieces from old skateboards.
When I walked over to the side of the stage where the band's lead guitarist, Elvis, was standing, I was overwhelmed with the scent of incense. It wasn't bad, it's just that I didn't smell incense for the rest of the night. Only when FIDLAR was playing did I smell incense.
I've been known to say that certain celebrities look alike when they decidedly don't. It's become a fun little joke within me and my friends, but I was standing in the pit for FIDLAR’s set and I couldn't help but stare at the drummer. The question running through my mind? “Does Brandon Schwartzel [the band’s drummer] look like British comedian James Acaster, or is he just ginger?”
At the end of my school term last year I did a project on FIDLAR; I used one of their songs to highlight the idea of political ecologies, which is the scientific study of ecology is inherently political because everything humans do is inherently political. I laughed about it with my boyfriend because it's so pretentious to use a punk song and dissect it in an academic setting, but it was one of the funnest projects I ever did.
For those who aren't super into punk, I think that FIDLAR is an approachable band to start with. Their music is aggressive but understandable, and because of their roots in the skateboarding and surfing punk scenes, they use a lot of really neat sounds to pepper into their music.
The crowd seemed to be enjoying FIDLAR’s set just as much as me as a mosh pit broke out and people were screaming on stage to request songs. The band played one of these requested songs, but I don't actually know if that song was supposed to be next in the set list or not. Not to ruin the movie magic, but I think there's a high chance it was.
By the end of the night, I had fully decided that this concert was probably the best one I had been to in my entire life, but by three songs into FIDLAR’s set, I was already pretty sure that it was going to take the cake.
I still don't know what to say about the third band of the night. I took very minimal notes on them, and not a lot of photos either. Called Super Computer, the duo seem to have a pretty nebulous past, in that nobody really knows where they came from or who they are. That doesn't matter much to me, they were two figures on stage with massive computer monitors on their heads.
Aside from their really cool visuals and a light show, I enjoyed the music. I'm not the biggest fan of EDM, but much like when I saw Amanda perform her jazz set, I was immediately taken with what they were performing. I will say that I kind of wish I knew more lore about this band while I was watching their performance because their visuals were so cool and I wanted to know whether or not their visuals were part of a larger story. I guess I'll never know.
They really did turn me into a fan within two songs, which made the hypnosis they attempted to perform on the crowd later in their set feel a bit redundant. I already felt hypnotized by them.
Their music included a lot of low tones, which I thought fit the cavernous space of HISTORY very well.
I'm not going to get into it now, but there was a very short period (70 minutes) during which I was a DJ. I was genuinely using a mixture and everything, and i was objectively really bad at it. However, I could definitely get on stage and dance around to flashing lights with a TV on my head, so maybe if they're hiring I should submit my resume.
My only regret to being in the photography pit was that later on in the night, during the beginning of the headliner, I watched someone carry the decapitated head of one of these supercomputers. Upon further reflection, maybe I don't want that job if they are terminated after each performance.
Speaking of the headliner, what an experience! I came in with only a faint memory of Oliver Tree’s vines, but quickly my brain was flooded with memories of his music. I knew a fair few of his songs but had never known who to attribute them to.
At first, I thought his setlist was massive. He had around ten printed pages taped to the front of the stage. After a sneaky peek, I realized that he actually taped facts about Toronto to the stage, allowing him to later claim that he was born in Toronto General Hospital.
A fair few of his fans were dressed up as him, to the point that I was wondering if one of them were secretly the real Oliver Tree – what a good bit that would have been.
His performance was essentially a massive stage show, incorporating changing costumes, stage dressing, props, and breaks where Oliver would turn around and watch the “TV” behind him, which contained pre-recorded content and segways between “acts”. It was a really cool concept and felt like it belonged on a larger stage – which made it doubly cool that we got to watch it from a more intimate venue.
At the very least, the movie playing behind the performance was a great way to distract from the fact that the stage mostly just had one guy that most people couldn’t see from their seats.
I eventually decided to leave during the last handful of songs. It had reached about 10:45 PM and I still had to drive back to Waterloo, to make it to make 8:30 AM class the next day. It was a good choice to, because I avoided all of the traffic of people leaving the venue and was able to slip out of the doors with ease.
While leaving, I definitely giggled while walking past the little casino place I mentioned previously. I noticed that in their front window is a massive sign in 72-point font that said, “No loitering in or on the premises.” Oops.
Can she fix it? Yes, she can!
It was so nice to write this blog post on my laptop now that I have installed a new battery. You may have seen the Instagram reel I posted about heading to Toronto for the FIDLAR show. You may also have been confused as to why there was a clip of me hunched over my desk fighting with an incorrectly sized screwdriver. That is because my laptop battery was in such poor health that it couldn’t function unless it was plugged into the wall. And even then, it was still terminally slow.
The whole situation had gotten so bad that my computer was constantly giving me alerts about its low battery capacity.
Then I received my class schedule for this term and realized that there is one day each week where I have six straight hours of class, with a single ten-minute break in between to run across campus and secure a seat in the second lecture hall. That doesn’t spell success for my almost five-year-old HP Pavillion (not sponsored).
The final straw, however, was when I showed up on the first day of class and neither room had any outlets. Both courses were being taught in rooms that had yet to have been modernized, and so they were distinctly lacking. That first day, my laptop turned into a brick within 40 minutes of limited use. How motivating for me to finish the term strong.
Getting the battery into my computer was a whole other fiasco, considering the screwdrivers that came with the battery were not the right size. Luckily, I have one of the biggest tool kits ever (I’m being serious) and have every size and shape of screwdriver I could possibly dream of.
Now, my computer lasts all day, it doesn’t scream for mercy when I try and run Lightroom, and I can operate it without hearing the fan running as if I have opened my laptop in a sauna.
It really is the little things.
Next month for Fan Behaviour I don’t think I will be doing any travelling, but I am open to going for a joyride if there are any good shows lurking around Southern Ontario. I have an interview lined up with some of the best performers I have ever seen (a young group out from Nova Scotia), so make sure you subscribe to keep an eye on when that will come out. A little birdy told me that it is scheduled for February 23rd, but who knows . . .
Later in the week, paid subscribers should expect to get a bonus post about my interview with Max Trepanier from The New Hires. I haven't sunk my teeth into working through it yet, but I know that a lot of things will have to be redacted because Max and I spent the majority of our two hours together just talking and catching up.
Okay, I think I’ve given away too much.
Talk soon!
E