The promoter fits so neatly into the rock'n'roll cast of characters. Peeling bills off a stack. Hands for shaking, pointing, and when necessary punching --- but never playing. Providing uppers for the down, downers for the up, half gangster, half teamster, and all business --- right?

I am to meet Amy at the Rivoli, and through a porthole I can see her talking to two tall men at the back bar. I open the door, and walk in. I'm eyed suspiciously by all three of them. Hey, rightfully so. I'm walking into a concert three hours too early, and I have a shoulder bag. It could contain flyers or demo CD's. Maybe they just don't like shoulder bags. I introduce myself.

"Just need to get this set up," she says to me, waving her hands around to indicate either the stage, a halo, something involving ambient lighting, check one two, roll off the 20k -- "this" means set-up. "Ten minutes, no more." She's firm on this point; and for a reason, evidently.

Ten minutes later, no more. I'm trotting to catch up, and she is walking a well-worn path between the Rivoli and the Horseshoe, along Queen Street. It's a gorgeous day, it's April, she's apprehensive.

"It's not so much the other concerts; it's the goddamn Toronto Maple Leafs..."

She stops, mid-sentence -- a small, impossibly fluffy terrier puppy is ambling along the sidewalk.

"Puppy", she coos. "Aww."

Passion tempered with pragmatism --- two forces you can see kept (mostly) in delicate balance within Amy Hersenhoren and the work she does. There's a good reason that Amy has a reputation for being outspoken and assertive -- some would even say abrasive. She is not without her opinions -- and they're espoused passionately. In discussing the touchy subject of music and commerce overlapping, Amy fires off a couple of bullets. "Indie credibility? It's elitism. Plain and simple. Why would anyone want to see a band they like struggling?"

She's run two record labels; Lunamoth, in the early '90s, putting out early King Cobb Steelie records, among others, and Bingo (co-run with Ui's Sasha Frere-Jones), releasing work including such luminaries as Jim O'Rourke, Tied And Tickled Trio, and even a Stereolab side project. She's managed bands such as Change of Heart and the Wooden Stars. She managed musician/producer Bill Laswell's studio in New York. She's put on a lot of shows that you've probably been to. She's brought, in recent memory, such acts as The Notwist, Autechre, Pan Sonic, Interpol, to Toronto, and has been the booker of Lee's Palace for the last three years. You or someone you know has undoubtedly given her a demo CD with the hopes of opening for one of the steady streams of world-class bands she brings through our city.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't begin with Amy -- music is a Hersenhoren legacy. Her grandfather, Samuel Hersenhoren, was an active member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the 1930s, and a conductor in his own right. Her father, a jazz musician who played with some early Toronto greats. Yet Amy was drawn, almost immediately to the logistics of performance. "I think I sort of always knew I would be the person behind the scenes," she says --- without a hint of the bitterness that might be expected of someone working in the background. "The level that I work at; it's not Massey Hall --- and that's not something I aspire to. I realize what I'm good at, and it's the smaller, the underground things. Mostly because of my taste."

It doesn't always go smoothly. Rock'n'roll is at its best when just barely staying on the rails; when it is raw, visceral, and even unsettling. Naturally, this makes work for anyone trying to fit it into the narrow margins of schedules and promises. So is there a contradiction in trying to impose order upon, and to organize events around, an art form founded in rebellion, hedonism, and raw expression of emotion? "No. Ultimately, there are some rules that have to be followed, and some things that are honestly just common sense. Sometimes I do get pissed off at stuff like people hanging from one-ton speakers. That falls over, someone dies. That's not rock'n'roll, that's just stupid."

The first rule of rock'n'roll is that there are no rules. The second rule is no hanging off of one-ton speakers.