Hey 2008, it’s been great….

My fondest Torontonian musical memory of you, dear year, involves slow-dancing. If I had to choose one standout moment in the last 12 months, it’d be a blurry snapshot of an awkward waltz at the Horseshoe. It’s the middle of July, One Hundred Dollars’ Simone Schmidt is drawling her way through their bittersweet ballad “Nothing’s Alright,” and there are whisky dregs in the collection of rocks glasses lined up beside me on the bar rail. Big Rawk Spectacles are great, but the best shows this year were all about a return to intimacy and audience interaction: the folksy banter at last spring’s Final Fantasy/Jens Lekman/Katie Stelmanis hat-trick at the Great Hall; a cozy showcase for then-rising Brit soul belter Adele at the Rivoli another.

Slow-dancing factored into most of my 2008 highlights, come to think of it. I got caught up in the sheepish middle-school swaying that occasionally erupted at the Gladstone on Wednesday nights, when each week’s Granny Boots wound down in a womb-like sigh of awesomely cheesy classics from the womyn-troubadour vaults. Good on you, 2008, for shifting back toward bringing (sexy) back live entertainment/crowd-pleasing DJ combo platters — along with Granny Boots, you unleashed Loving In The Name Of on our unsuspecting city. These hybrid events tended to have a tighter, punchier pace and an energy that’s been lacking in so many standard weekly and monthly events.

Even further on the up-close-and-personal tip: the re-emergence of living-room shows. Shit, remember those things from the ‘90s? I sorta do. This year, in addition to folks like Neutral Milk Hotel’s Julian Koster leading his singing saw–playing miscreants through Parkdale homes in a pre-holiday wassailing extravaganza, local singer/songwriters and pared-down indie-rock bands performed with rickety lo-fi set-ups in the homes of hospitable hosts. And on one memorable fall night, ex-Galaxy singer/guitarist Emma McKenna howled songs at the moon on a rooftop on College Street. That was fucking rad. Not to jump on that recession bandwagon, but I wouldn’t be too upset if the market crash led to increasingly creative uses of music fans’ personal spaces — if more guerrilla promoters started throwing modest shows, we could avoid corporate concert monopolies becoming a reality.

What am I talking about, 2008? One of this year’s most craptastic developments had to be the absorption of indie promoter Emerge into the monolith that is Live Nation. I know it’s not the biggest deal, but every time a small(er) scale impresario takes a bow, that Mechazilla-like beast gains the power to slap concertgoers with escalating ticket prices and service charges and impose batshit-crazy rules at their shows. I worry about independent promoters — the folks like Rootmeansquare’s Amy Hersenhoren, Against The Grain’s Craig Laskey and Yvonne Matsell, who have been crucial in building this city’s music community. And I worry that, as international conglomerates become touring acts’ only options, the risky business of experimenting with unconventional venues will become but a distant watercolour memory, and we’ll be forced to trek across the endless steppe to the land of Sound Academy, possibly the city’s most user-unfriendly venue.

But hey, 2008: can you relay a message to those responsible for keeping 2009 two-thousand-and-fine? Let them know that we here at Street Spirit would appreciate a continued commitment to community-oriented initiatives, which maybe means splitting a major event into a number of smaller (but just as exciting!) parts, like the dudes in Fucked Up did when they organized their multi-day CD launch parties with different (but just as exciting!) line-ups at every show.

Thanks muchly,
Sarah