Then, from April 9 - 16 I will be in France for a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Fanzinothèque in Poitiers. I will be presenting a bit of all the things I do: the old Fish Piss magazine (still on hiatus), the Distroboto and Expozine projects and a large selection of zines from Québec from the 60s to today, drawn from the archives of Archive Montreal.

In the meantime,  March 31 marks the closing of the nearly 100 year old Montreal Poolroom hot dog restaurant, the oldest operating restaurant in Montreal (and possibly Canada?), shut down by the city for a “revitalization” of the block it sits on that has since fallen apart. I was interviewed on this matter in last Sunday’s Montreal Gazette, the article can be found here. Watch for more updates on the botched “revitalization” of this historic quarter on my blog in the months to come.

You can also find out more about this situation on the website of the Save the Main Coalition. There will also be an evening of ideas and presentations about the future of this district in May, details available here.

This Tuesday (Dec. 1) I will be spinning a number of rare African psychedelic rock records throughout the night, and prepared this mix online for anyone who wants a taste. It’s a 5 hour DJ set, so there will also be lots of rock/ punk/ post-punk/ new wave etc. from the 70s to today, dashes of soul and rnb, hard-rocking funk and blues, proto-punk/ metal and top-notch 60s-70s psychedelia– in short, a lot of music you’ve never ever heard of but will want to hear MORE of afterwards!!

If I don’t see you tonight, I’ll be back at it on Tuesday, January 5, 2010.

Don’t be shy to come up and introduce yourself! See you there.

Here’s a link to the slideshow on Youtube.

Here are some of the photos (click image for full-size view):

 http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/052809/news2.html

If it weren’t for all the empty lots surrounding the block, and if they weren’t violating the zoning (and neighboring scale) to put up an office building, it might be worth considering the idea. Much of the block could use a makeover — but the trend these days is to level everything first (see the Griffintown project, the hole in the ground where Le Spectrum or where Ben’s was etc.)

At least there will be public consultations and time for people to send in written opinions (info, forms on doing so and all documentation about this project are available here)

I guess if it weren’t for Club Soda having set up shop across the street a decade ago they would have demolished that too.

Here’s the NEW corner of St. Laurent and Ste. Catherine St.:

Here’s the street level on Ste. Catherine St. (keep in mind that you can’t see the top 8 floors or so of the office tower, and that most of those old facades are just stuck to the base of the tower):

It’s interesting to note that since this illustration was presented to the public on May 26, they airbrushed the Q out of most of the documents you can find on the weblink posted above, except for this image:

Here’s the Clark St. side:

And here’s the floor plan, with portions of the current interior volumes of the spaces that are there now preserved (and highlighted in red). Note that less than half of the current interior space of, say, Montreal Poolroom are preserved. These will be VERY tiny retail spaces (at the presentation they were described as the minimum needed for a small commerce to be viable). They want Clark St. to come alive with teeny tiny stores too. (My guess is they’ll end up going with an interior food court, for all the same reasons such office buildings usually go with them).

In any case, they mentioned they will not rent to bars or concert halls so aside perhaps from a couple of tiny restaurants, there will only be daytime business anyway (so why not a food court?) This raises probably the most important heritage issue, one that isn’t mentioned whatsoever in the heritage studies made by the city or the promoter — that for 200 years or more, that block was very much a NIGHTTIME block, with lots of activity at night. This goes back to when Montreal was a walled city through the 1700s and early 1800s and Saint-Laurent Boulevard was the street that led to the main gate of the walled city (hence its shortened nickname “The Main”). Being just outside the main city made it a perfect place for such sinful businesses as bars, strip clubs, brothels and opium dens. Much later, during the glory days of the city’s jazz and burlesque scene when Montreal was Canada’s “Sin City”, the block was still central to the action, with Lily St-Cyr and other burlesque legends performing on or around that block. Putting an office complex that is completely closed at night would put an end to 200 years of night life.

I’m not saying they should build a brothel and opium den there instead — all that stuff is pretty much gone from that block already. Aside from Café Cléopatra which is considered one of the safest and least dingy strip clubs downtown, pretty much all the drugs and prostitution that were on that block have moved further east on Ste. Catherine St. Basically, the argument that the Hydro-Québec tower will finally “clean up the area” is completely false. In fact, because they would be vacating the Place Dupuis office tower near Berri Métro to move employees to this block, this project will have a very negative effect on that area which is far more populated with homeless people and drugs than the corner of St. Laurent. Some might say that just moving the “undesirables” a bit further east, out of the way of Jazz Festival tourists, is part of the plan– either way, it doesn’t jibe with the notion that this project will be a net positive for the area.

If you want to know more about the history of the area, I wrote a long piece about that specific block some years back. Here’s an excerpt (click to go to the full piece):

For Montrealers, the intersection of St. Lawrence Boulevard and Ste. Catherine St. downtown has always been a special place. St. Lawrence (or St. Laurent) is of course the main street of the city, usually called simply The Main (or “La Main.” This habit goes back to when the street passed through “the main gate” of the city walls when Montreal was a walled city—roughly between 1650 and 1800. One assumes that the habit of saying “The main gate” was shortened to just “The main,” and the habit persists to this day.) For its part, Ste. Catherine St. has been a major shopping artery since the 1840s. Ever since then, for some reason, the intersection of these two streets has been the colourful heart of Montreal’s “red light” district.
The term “red light” arose around 1865, when public officials tried to restrict prostitution to specific houses where doctors could certify that the women had no VD. A red lantern in the window of a house was supposed to tell customers they could have a relatively safe good time.
The area by the end of the 1800’s was also home to many opium dens (run by the fledgling Chinese community), gambling houses, booze cans and more. There have literally been dozens of initiatives proposed to clean up the area “for good” in the past 150 years, but to this day you can still go there and buy hard drugs or cheap hookers; you can still eat the same greasy food that was served there 100 years back; you can still gaze at the same run-down buildings and run-down people who hang out there. The area is home to sex shops, live peep shows, arcades, drag cabarets, male and female strip bars, and hotels with hourly rates only. Unlike the so-called “Old Montreal” district, where old facades cover up buildings long gutted of their interiors and their character, this intersection preserves not just buildings but the people, businesses and general atmosphere of a past era.

The piece is illustrated by Jean-Pierre Chansigaud (who also illustrated my novel). I am extremely happy I paid him whatever it was to go do some sketches of that block and that old man bar, now that the bar was closed (on purpose to add to the decrepitude that justifies razing the block).  Here’s a couple of the illustrations:

Despite what some readers thought, I think of my first novel, A Fine Ending, as a work of fiction. It certainly has a “non-fiction” aspect to it, in that a real time and place serves as the background to the story, and real people inspire many of the characters. However, the story and the major themes came first, and the events and characters served them. If I’d meant to write a non-fiction chronicle of that time and place, or some sort of autobiography, I would have done the opposite.

I’ve written a lot more non-fiction than fiction and always aim to be as thorough and comprehensive with my research as I can. I didn’t think the subject matter of my book would have been well served by a scholarly treatment, however. Approaching it as a work of fiction allowed me to focus more on the mood and gist of the era than just the facts, and helped make the story arc and cast of characters more universal. (Not to mention, this approach afforded me and a number of people who have characters based on them a certain degree of privacy!) I very much wanted the book to not only be “about the Montreal scene in the 1990s” but also about the end of the 20th century and the lives of 20-somethings in general.

In any case, I assume most novelists draw from personal experience for their writing: jotting down memorable lines and anecdotes for possible future use, remembering remarkable acquaintances to base characters on, etc. Myself, I spent a month before writing the book going through my journals as well as letters and emails to and from friends from the 90s. I compiled a lot of stuff that could be useful, mainly funny lines and dialogue and some longer episodes that could be worked into the book.

Before even agreeing to write the book (which, incidentally, only came about because I was offered a contract to write it), I had drawn up an outline for it, and I kept adding possible scenes to this outline as I scanned through my old writing.

Early on, I decided to use some short stories I’d published in the 90s as chapters, thinking that would make my job a bit easier. (I also only had about six months to write the entire thing!) But the longer stories I decided to insert (“Mush” from Fish Piss Vol. 1 no. 3 and my chapbook “Fly vs. Kitten”, to be precise, plus parts of “Beatrice” and “Clinic” from my “Five Stories (Montreal) chapbook) had their own self-contained world of characters and events, all of which had to be broken apart, re-inserted into the appropriate places in the novel, re-written using the novel’s characters and edited down to remove redundancies. Most importantly, nearly every line had to be modified to reflect the tense, tone and pacing of the rest of the novel. In hindsight, it took a lot longer than if I’d just written those chapters fresh to begin with, but this roundabout approach did help me solidify the right narrative voice. It was very important to me that the novel sound like it was written by a 20-something DURING the 1990s, with the story (and the decade) gradually unfolding through the narrator’s eyes. After working those short stories into the early chapters of the book, I felt had properly “gotten into character” and managed to stick with that voice through the rest of the first draft.

Writing the novel was fun – it basically felt like me pretending to be 25 again — but by the time I finished that first draft, I was anxious to start editing it. I’d written all the stuff I meant to and then some, but just as film footage only becomes a film in the editing room, I knew that it would be the editing that would really pull the novel together.

Before this, I’d mostly edited non-fiction, which is all about clearly explaining things to the reader; with fiction, I discovered, it’s as much about what ISN’T being told to the reader. I would sometimes choose vagueness or mystery over clarity, or try to convey intangibles and moods, instead of facts and background. I much enjoyed this intuitive aspect, using my gut instinct to help turn the assortment of events and characters I’d written into something bigger. There’s something almost magical about fine-tuning a text so it gradually changes tone, or subtly arranging minor scenes so that they amount to a parallel story readers may or may not notice (but can enjoy regardless.) Fiction can be multi-dimensional in a way that most non-fiction can never be. I could have tried to explain the various “messages” of the novel in an essay, but they wouldn’t have had the depth they gained by being gradually revealed over the course of the book. Some “messages” might best be communicated in other ways, and I guess that’s why we have art in all its forms.

Reaching the last pages of the book in the editing phase was even more satisfying than finishing the first draft. Only about half of the first draft survived, and much of what was left was moved around within the story. Many minor characters and scenes were either eliminated or combined together so as to help move the story along more quickly. (God knows how I could have done that if it was supposed to be non-fiction!) A surprising number of pages were cut just by scrupulously removing extraneous words in each line and extraneous lines in each paragraph. My editor and I went through the entire text at least twice before it was christened “the final draft.” It then went through three close edits with the copy editor.

The time spent not thinking about the book in between these phases helped make the remaining necessary changes seem more obvious to me. Some new writing was actually added in the very final stages to flesh out a few scenes and characters that were scarred from all the previous cuts. This being my first novel and all, I worried I’d want to keep changing it until the publisher yanked it from my scribbling hands, but by the time we were proofreading it, only typos and minor grammatical corrections jumped out at me. When it was all done, I was surprised at how closely the novel ended up following the loose outline I’d sketched for it at the very beginning, and thought, “I guess that’s how you do that.”

My editor (Anne Stone) and I were satisfied with the length, the pacing, the ending (which felt extremely important to get right, given the title and all the themes I wanted to wrap up), but we were still too close to the text to guess whether an average reader would enjoy it. The first encouraging sign was when the copy editor, who’d never set foot in Montreal, read it and said that he felt he could now comfortably walk around the city. That made me feel like I’d accomplished one of the many balancing acts, namely making the story be very deeply set in Montreal without making it necessary to know (or care) about which city the story takes place in.

Another balancing act involved making sure that the people who had characters closely based on them would be happy with how they and the episodes in the book were portrayed. It turned out that keeping the characters somewhat vaguely defined (I used very few physical descriptions of them, for example) helped provide some privacy while also making the characters feel more universal. (Your average reader seems to be pretty good at filling out the details with their own imaginations, and I’m not much of a fan of overly florid or descriptive fiction myself.)

Shortly after the launch, I was very happy to hear some readers in their early 20s say things like “that’s exactly like me and my friends!” The fact that some people said they were compelled to stay up all night finishing the book was also encouraging – one worry I had was that the book was too much of a collection of episodes, but I guess they were tied tightly enough together to make people want to know what was going to happen next. (Many of the friends who were around during the era covered by the book told me they wished I had included this or that crazy party or character or episode, but I think that keeping the book short and tight was crucial to avoid excess repetitiveness.)

The most satisfying feedback I received from readers was in the form of comments or emails saying they got what I was getting at with the main themes about personal and social responsibility (or lack thereof) and the “gradually darkening” feeling (as one reviewer put it) that marked the fin-de-siècle.

In the end, there is not much I would have done differently: my take on the 90s in Montreal and the end of the century from a personal perspective is done. I’m looking forward to using this experience to write some very different fiction in the future.

I’ve also begun posting a bit more material to this site — see new posts on the video-photos and blog sections. I’ll also be posting a couple more times to the Broken Pencil blog (see links in the previous news post) until I pass the reins of resident blogger to someone else in mid-July.

Lastly, another review of my novel A Fine Ending appeared in the May 7 issue of the Suburban newspaper in Montreal, although the review is not available online.

A HISTORY OF THE LONG-PLAYING RECORD, copyright 2008 by Louis Rastelli

Although the 33 RPM LP came out in June, 1948, a number of record companies had experimented with longer-playing formats during the 1920s. The first functional 33 RPM records were 20 inches in diameter and were used to provide sound in movie theatres. In 1930, RCA Victor tried to market a 16-inch version of these records for consumers, but they could only be played so many times before they wore out. This wasn’t an issue with radio stations, who rarely repeated a record on-air more than once. By 1932, three-quarters of all radio stations used these transcription discs some of the time for such things as sound effects or to record certain shows for future re-broadcasting. Some shady companies soon began using the technology to bootleg shows off the air and re-selling them to small radio stations. (These bootlegs now make up most of the existing recordings we have of early radio.)
The long-playing 33 RPM record we know today was invented by Colombia Records. The head of the Colombia team that developed it was Peter Goldmark, a noted smart guy who also invented colour television. His boss, Ed Wallerstein, had been at RCA Victor in the early 1930s when they invented the 33 RPM radio transcription disks. Wallerstein claimed that Columbia planned to develop the LP in the 30s but was interrupted by the war.
Goldmark used a “total engineering” approach that analyzed every component of the sound reproduction system, considering all possibilities and materials for everything from the needle and tone-arm to the speakers and amplifiers to the record itself. He decided to focus on where the needle sat in the groove and work outwards from that point, arranging every other part to function smoothly without causing the needle to wear out.
During the process, Goldmark’s team ended up inventing the condenser microphone to exploit the full range of the new record (although it turns out the Germans had also developed one during the war). Colombia also invented the modern speaker while they were at it, using elastically suspended cones and vented cabinets for the first time.
The LP length was fixed at about 45 minutes in order to corner the classical market; Wallerstein listened to hundreds of operas and symphonies and concluded 95% were no longer than 45 minutes.
Once the inventions were perfected, Colombia wisely gave major manufacturers all the plans they needed to start making players for the new speed. They also developed and sold (at cost) an adapter that let people play the new LPs on their old record players. Finally, Columbia completely redesigned their pressing plants so as to mass-produce the new records.
Considering the years of preparation that went into all of this, it’s surprising that when the president of Columbia met with the president of RCA Victor to tell him about the LP that the RCA president had no clue something was in the works. Remembering how earlier, heavily-patented long-player ideas by Edison never took off, Columbia decided not to patent the LP and asked RCA Victor to adopt the format. The head of RCA was reportedly outraged that “little Columbia” would even suggest that RCA Victor, the very inventors of radio and 78s, encourage its competitor’s inventions.
But Columbia wasn’t going to let RCA Victor’s rejection derail the unveiling of the LP. They officially released it on June 18, 1948 with a press conference that saw Wallerstein standing beside a 10-foot-high stack of 78s, holding a foot-high stack of LPs which he said contained just as much music. He then played a scratchy 78 followed by the same selection on LP, and the crowd applauded the vastly clearer sound. Columbia’s ads soon claimed that “the LP’s advantages will eventually make it the only way to play music in the home.”
RCA Victor began trying to prove that claim wrong the minute they found out about the LP. They started by digging through their archives for failed experiments, and came across an automatic record-changing device conceived in 1938. RCA thought they could one-up the LP by creating a record-changer fast enough to essentially allow people to create their own long-playing experiences (much as digital files or CD-ripping allow users to eliminate the songs they don’t care for on full CDs.)
The record-changer design included specifications for a new type of record, which RCA Victor also revived, knowing that they would also have to improve on the sound of 78s. The new record would be 7 inches in diameter, just like the original Victor 78s from the 1890s, and they’d have a bigger center hole so as to fall into place on the changer without wobbling on the way down. Also, the outer edge of the record and the record label were a tad thicker than the rest of the record, so that the grooves wouldn’t rub together when records were stacked on top of each other. Some claim that the speed of 45 RPM was arrived at by subtracting 33 from 78, just so RCA could spite Columbia, but in fact, the speed was a function of the groove size and record diameter. RCA hesitated at first to call their new record 45s, since Columbia had been hyping the 45-minute length of their new LPs all year. But after LPs came out, people began calling 78s 78s (they were just called “records” before that), so it seemed inevitable that 45s would get called 45s.
RCA spent $2 million in the first 6 months promoting their new format. They also spent huge amounts converting equipment at pressing plants, and setting up speedier distribution systems to take advantage of the lighter weight of the new records. They promoted the format to stores by promising the ability to ship records almost overnight in order to stock shelves within days of a record becoming a surprise hit. This meant that the 45 not only replaced the 78, but also made regional hits and novelty songs easier to turn into national hits, and increased the importance of “hit singles” in general to record company profits.
The price of 45s was first set at 65 cents but fell to 49 cents after initial sales were disappointing. By comparison, pop 78s had long cost 50 cents or less by then, and Columbia’s first LPs were priced at $1.25.
Although it was obvious the market viewed 45s as a newfangled version of the 78, RCA still contorted themselves trying to convince people they were also better than LPs and perfect for classical music and soundtracks. They sold small cardboard box-set “albums” of 45s that you could stack in a certain order on your record changer to listen to an LP’s worth of material, and touted the space savings with claims that “more than 150 singles or 18 symphonies fit on one foot of bookshelf space.” However, for most classical works and some soundtracks, the sound of the music fading out every three minutes or so and fading back in after a bunch of mechanical noises just couldn’t compare with the seamless play of LPs.
RCA didn’t take long to give up on these box-sets and start producing LPs themselves. However, they didn’t exactly lose the “battle of the speeds,” either, since Columbia began making 45s themselves by 1950. (For a brief while, they tried to compete with the 45 by issuing 7-inch records that played at 33 RPM.) But if there was a clear winner by 1950, it was actually the 78, which in that year outsold both 45s and LPs combined.
Sales of LPs by 1950 were strong enough to convince most that it was here to stay; by 1951 it seemed obvious the 45 would at least eventually replace the 78. But if it weren’t for the US market and RCA’s stubbornness, the 45 may never have lasted, because internationally it only appeared later, if at all. (The first LPs in Europe appeared in 1952 and in some places, the late 50s, with 45s taking even longer. The Soviet Union never adopted 45s at all: their 7-inch singles were all 33 RPM, unwittingly following Columbia’s 1949 motto that “one speed is all you need!”)
Manufacturers of record players helped ensure the multi-speed universe by selling models that played at 33, 45 or 78 RPM by 1950. Aside from soundtracks and operas, LPs were used as collections of hit singles aimed mainly at adults, while young people were assumed to want only 45s. The LP format helped spur the be-bop and post-bop jazz movement, allowing musicians to stretch out on long jams and solos. But listeners still seemed more comfortable with just two songs per record: in 1952, sales of 45s were more than double that of LPs.
Although it was a short transition when compared with the ongoing multiplicity of digital formats today, the format confusion of the “war of the speeds” saw most listeners wait to see who won before taking sides. Record sales dropped during both years that new formats came out, and took five years to recover to 1947 levels.
But the drop in sales was also due to the fact that most top executives at the majors were growing old and conservative in their musical tastes, refusing to try new things to attract young buyers and sticking to a “they’ll like what we tell them to like” mentality. People had a limited appetite, though, for bland pop songs, light classics and disposable novelty hits, and in 1949 only one out of every 25 songs released by the majors turned a profit at all.
By the mid-50s, all of this had changed: a huge boom in independent labels and new styles of music was underway, and a new generation of record buyers were buying millions of records in both new formats. The 78 was fading fast: 45s surpassed them in sales in 1955, and most North American companies stopped making them entirely in 1959.
By 2008, both 45s and LPs have been reduced to a small fraction of the recorded music market, but there are signs that this is beginning to change: 2007 saw double-digit growth of vinyl for the first time in nearly twenty years, and LPs are beginning to reappear in the larger music chains and even some department stores. Record players can be found in most home electronics shops, and the many billions of records manufactured in the 20th century continue to trade hands on eBay, in charity shops and in a growing number of used record stores. It’s a testament to the industrial design capabilities of Colombia and RCA that the formats they invented roughly 60 years after the birth of the record industry are still in use 60 years later. And unlike the plethora of other audio formats that have since come and gone, vinyl records are not likely to disappear anytime soon.

Here are some links to recent news articles talking about the current resurgence of vinyl:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/10/vinyl.records.ap/index.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/20947918/vinyl_returns_in_the_age_of_mp3
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/06/02/vinyl_goes_from_throwback_to_comeback?mode=PF
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/366103_vinyl07.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/10/sunday/main3813468.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tggLYE87Ed0&feature=related

Here is a website that links to articles about vinyl and the record industry:

http://www.musicsun.com/search.php?query=vinyl&quelle=news&language=en 

And lastly, here are links to some of the full version of the articles I’ve written about the history of the record industry:

http://www.fishpiss.com/archives/46
http://www.fishpiss.com/archives/47
http://www.fishpiss.com/archives/128
http://www.fishpiss.com/archives/187

I also DJed on CKUT earlier this week (Tuesday May 27, 2008), and you can click here to download the one-hour show. I was filling in for the Reverend Randy on the Harvey Christ Radio Hour, a bi-weekly mix of sermons, fables, hymns and music related to the Church of Harvey Christ and also satirical jabs at some of the wackier God pushers out there. I just spun records myself, mainly gospel songs done by rockin’ funk and soul artists from the 60s and 70s.

For those who want to hear more (but in a very different style), I will be DJing next Tuesday at Casa del Popolo for their weekly rock and roll night. You can check their calendar for the dates of my DJ gigs there over the next few months. Don’t hesitate to come up and say hi or make a request.

Lastly, my novel A Fine Ending will be released in the US and UK/EU on June 1, which means people there will be able to order it in bookstores or from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk .

The envelope had stayed in the back of a drawer where I’d thrown it right after moving into my apartment ten years ago, one of those things I never looked at but never threw out. The Butthole Surfers show from 1987 ended up being one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. I’m sure most of the two hundred people or so who saw it have never forgotten it, either. I still have a couple of posters for this, and actually put up posters for this show when I was 17 and DJ-ing at CRSG, which produced it.

Apparently this bar charged an extra $2 at the door, none of which went to the bands,  unless you presented this coupon they would use as flyers for their shows. I managed to get the two bucks off and see the Devices for probably the thirtieth time by then (and for the first of probably thirty times by now, opening band Nutsak.) This was in 1995.

I was a little bit underwhelmed by this show, her first after ditching the loud rock trio that she cut her great first albums with. I still regret not catching her with that trio at Club Soda on her previous visit, but I’m happy I at least caught Jeff Buckley there around the same time. The opener for this show was Tricky, who was really weak and all shy and awkward onstage.

I was surprised at how many times I went to baseball games, judging by the ticket stubs. All I really remember now is drinking smuggled six-packs up in the empty stands with the guys.

It would have been a better show if it weren’t for Bootsy only getting onstage at about one-thirty, and after a several-hour wait. But hey, it was Bootsy!

I based a scene in my novel at this show, almost surely the only time that My Dog Popper played a show that you could buy tickets at Admission for. There was an unexpected intermission with free beer courtesy of former premier Pierre-Marc Johnson, who just wanted some quiet while finishing a speech next door.

This was actually the first-ever show at the Cabaret Music Hall. The opening band, Fearless Freep, was a duo that I jammed with regularly for a little while in the jamspace that my by-then defunct band Sex Aquarium had practiced in. George Agetees was the drummer for both bands. I have no idea if The For Carnation are still making music or not, but I never heard much of them again after that show.

This was one hell of a show, one of the best I’ve seen, the Cramps at the absolute top of their game. I remember I was very impressed by what seemed like every band member from every punk or alternative band in town being at this show. The opening act, Screaming Blue Messiahs, was a lot less impressive, though.

Fugazi played very well, I wish they’d come to town more times since then (or once, even.) I do remember being annoyed when they stopped playing music for several minutes, insisting that the mosh pit calm down because someone might get hurt. It sort of changed the atmosphere of the show. The openers were Shotmaker and Bliss (who quite possibly never played another live show after that. They broke up after their guitarist moved to the US.)

I think the Ripcordz and Slaves on Dope headlined this multi-band affair. It’s really a shame the Rialto stopped doing rock shows like that. It’s one of those places that would have been a fixture on today’s huge concert circuit if it had stuck around.

Ah, Lollapalooza, the second one. Highlights: Ministry, Porno for Pyros, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers. I think Lush might have played, also. Jesus and Mary Chain definitely competed with Ice Cube for the worst set of the day, though.

This was an amazing show, really a shame this outfit broke up so quickly.

I wish I could get a ticket for the Habs for $16.50 today.

This was an excellent show. Beck was riding the success of Loser and apparently refused to play it at shows because he resented that people were showing up not interested in hearing anything else. However, the crowd was so into his songs and crowd participation and singalongs that he did end with it. I saw him a couple years back at the Bell Centre and it was a million miles away from this first show, where there was no light show or costumes and he played most of the instruments.

We were all excited to see this show, me and my bandmates in Sex Aquarium, because bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur had lent our bassist his amp, and it made us feel special to have that amp in the band. We didn’t get to meet Courtney Love, though.

Time was not kind to Lux Interior between the two Cramps shows these ticket stubs are for. Still one of the best rock shows I’ve seen, and that time I was impressed by how what seemed like every single friend of mine in the music scene was there. Demolition Doll Rods and Guitar Wolf were also excellent opening up.

$16.50 to see U2 at the Forum. I was a big fan for awhile up til then, loved the show, sang the last encore (40) along with the crowd all the way into the metros, and never really listened to them again. By the time their next album, their biggest, came out I didn’t even notice. They didn’t have any coloured lights or lasers or screens whatsoever, and I don’t even think they dimmed the lights throughout the show, which was very impressive (and ironic given their later tours.)