Everyone’s gotta start somewhere. While the hugest touring acts began as bored kids trying to figure out riffs in their parents’ basements, the roots of my own obsessive musical tendencies took shape in the North York Central Library. I was an uptown kid who lived for Sonic Unyon’s all-ages matinees at the Opera House and Lee’s, and my shitty allowance definitely wouldn’t have paid for the library of albums I feverishly cribbed from the pages of Sassy and Details or listed while listening to Brave New Waves and CFNY.
The library was a surprise goldmine — it’s where, shoved between Luba and Prairie Oyster albums, I discovered Liz Phair, Sebadoh, jale and Sloan. Don’t tell me downloading was the advent of kids snagging tunes for free — every week I’d bike home with piles of cassettes and CDs to dub and turn into mixtapes.
With that in mind, there’s something beautiful about the fact that my inaugural Street Spirit column coincided with last Saturday’s terrific Toronto Tunes show at North York Central. There’s already been a decent amount of ink devoted to the Toronto Public Library’s ingenious initiative to expand its local music collection, but watching 50-something parents and exuberant underage kids unselfconsciously dancing like fools to The Bicycles, More or Les, Republic of Safety (playing one of their final gigs) and Ohbijou in a weird auditorium in darkest suburbia held a kind of magic missing from so many standard rock shows.
Despite the youth volunteers’ palpable excitement at introducing local indie bands, this show wasn’t about empty hero worship or artists-as-icons; it was about community and interaction. You had adolescents falling over each other to shout their answers to Maggie MacDonald’s improvised trivia questions about Ezra Pound and Chairman Mao in the hopes of winning a Great Lake Swimmers CD or a TPL mug. Most importantly, you had a clear sense of expanding the purposes of a public social space, creating concrete links between the library as a distribution ground for consumable products and a destination for shared communal experiences. And on the Torontopian front, the TPL’s partnership with Soundscapes feels like a rad way of tipping suburbanites off to the fact that they should throw their support (and cash) at local independent retailers instead of beastly megastores.
SEA CHANGE
Republic of Safety’s MacDonald was also a guest at last Monday’s Eyes On Toronto (www.eyesontoronto.ca), twisted impresario Stephen Eyes’ pseudo-talk show, taped live and rebroadcast on his website. This month’s edition also marked the debut of Mermaids, the new project from ex-Organ frontwoman Katie Sketch. Mermaids is best described as an all-girl supergroup with Tobey Black and Maija Martin (formerly of VanCity Mint Records popsters The Gay) on drums and accordion respectively, as well as Lullabye Arkestra’s Katia Taylor on powerhouse bass. It’s still in the rudimentary stages, but their overall sound is mournful, lush art-pop, with ragged folk edges that stem from Martin’s aching accordion and a guest violinist. First impression: better and much more ambitious than The Organ. The layered arrangements create a nicely contrasting framework for Sketch’s haunting vocals, and the songwriting is substantially stronger. Rumour has it she’s set to record some demos with Mike Olsen, so keep an ear out.