by Doc Pickles

WL508: In Montreal, Cabaret Playhouse. I arrived at 5656 Park avenue and purposefully strode into a serious minded sushi restaurant, marched into the back and followed a small maze of unsigned hallway, reached an unlit washroom before realizing I was in the wrong building.

Upstairs. The left side of the venue appears to have been replaced with a wall. There is 9 feet of space between the stage and the wall. Video lottery kiosks glow an ominous orange in the dead zone in back of the room. A riser leads up to the bar, where the special of the night seems to be beer mixed with lysol.

Secretary City couldn't play. Which is a shame because I was most looking forward to reacquainting myself with them. They had been replaced in a bright idea by Pop Montreal. My heart sank, if my experience with the tastes of NXNE/CMW selected bands is any indication, things are about to take a turn for the worse. Pop had already suggested we add rap duo Vertual Vertico to the bill, or rather after our bill, and I was already concerned with watering the curatorial wine, another unvetted band could be a disaster, "Who are they?" I asked the room in general, I expected the worst. The first slot is where organizers often stick their nephew's band, often a hottboxx of tepid ambition wrapped in barre chords and emoting immature testosterone. "They're kind of friends of ours," apologized one of the Polydactyl Hearts Collective. This is getting better, if wavelength couldn't pick the pieces it's better if one of the bands on the bill picks, or at least approves. "What's their name" I pressed. I hadn't taken my coat off yet, refusing to sit down until I had heard the bad news. "They're called The Autumn Loves" "Do you mean Olenka and the Autumn Lovers?" I half hoped. "Yes," he replied. "Yes!" I relieved, everything was going to work out all right.

Olenka has a nice understated Imogen Heap vibe with a world-wiseness and a flair for the big outro. Life was going to be okay. I met the fellow from Pop Montreal, and was happy to hear that he was going to be paid by the organizers - a very different approach than the get what you pay for approach I'd become accustomed to, the well intentioned but sadly misguided Devry volunteers of my home fests crossing and uncrossing names who would never materialize on and off guestlists, clutching clipboards and arbitrary authority like drunks against lampposts. This organizer was a top notch kid named Jonah, happy to be taking part in a good showcase and sincerely interested in the show going well since he was going to be paid money. He and I went over set times and setups with the sound tech, Polydactyl were breaking their gear down just as Rat Tail and Olenka & the Autumn Lovers were loading in. Doldrums is a solo contraption that we'd figure out later. There was only one last piece of chaos that could derail the whole vibe:

"Have Vertual Vertigo soundchecked yet?" "I think so, they're gone now." I scanned the room, I wondered who they were, all we had was a promo photo on our website, I'd never met them before.

Olenka had been fighting fate to get her tour into gear, one van after another catastrophe had intervened and prevented her from playing a showcase the previous Thursday so they were apprehensive but relieved to be playing at any show, it was a nice plus that it was a Wavelength, they've played WL before and I have shared a bill with Olenka at Rancho Relaxo too. The set got stronger as the set went on and the room began to fill up, it's a shame they only had 30 minutes of set time, her songs are unpretentious pop songs with layers of slide guitars and horns, and her thing is to elaborate and build the endings to really exploit the memes in her songs, she needs a good three minutes a song to really construct an outro, so none of her tunes are short.  But we wouldn't want to run too far overtime.

Doldrums was hilarious noise and canned ham, the ultimate breath mint against earnestness that can creep into serious music nights, and a setup that just invited audience participation. He didn't bother selling merch to the people dancing in the pit, directing it to the seated patrons on the north side of the bar "because you're sitting down so you probably have a lot of money." He sampled my post-intro voice "Who owns you? Media companies own you!" and later in the set I swung his microphone around the pit and he sampled and re-noised individual voices from those in attendance. Most of them seemed to be from Toronto.

Rat Tail were excellent but I felt they had the hardest time getting their point across, they are one of the best sounding lo-tech bands in Toronto right now, all rumble and vinegar, and are adept at performing for the back row, they're sluggers like Jose Batista. However the back row was less than 10 feet away so the low end dropped out of their sound leaving us with nothing but the top half of the sound. I liked it a lot but I'd seen them before in a few different environments and I think the quality of their sound is inversely proportional to the distance from the nearest wall. My favorite Rat Tail show was during a Pedestrian Sunday outside in Kensington Market, where there are no walls or even fences.

Polydactyl Hearts Collective (or as I mispronounced more than once, Pterydactyl Hearts) needed a brief explaination before their beautiful set hence the need for an emcee. It is very important to realize that their visuals aren't just a lazy DVD popped into a machine, but a hand-coded video game commandeered for their own art, and once the audience was clear that the visuals are another living breathing member of the band it was easy for the room to hit its stride, which happened about two minutes into their set. I sat cross legged on the floor just south of the stage and looked back over the room, many people had stopped what they were doing and were as mesmerized with the performance as I was with the room. Moments like this are made for losing track of time. After a half an hour I remembered the voice of the Pop Montreal person, there is a strict rule of exactly thirty minutes per set, and I wondered if I should intervene. It would be such a disservice to the Vertual Vertigo guys, what if this cut into their set time? What if the bar decided to close at precisely 130am? What if it was my own fault for not meddling, what if that inaction ruined the promising careers of Canada's next great hip hop duo? (First great hip hop duo?)

On the other hand we were perfectly on time and had been all night, not one band was more than 5 minutes overtime so far, and there seemed to be no reason to worry, but although it was a Wavelength it was a Wavelength in somebody else's abode and it would have been wrong to willingly bend their rules just because the audience was getting off on Polydactyl Hearts. But it had been 30 minutes and there was no end in sight, and there was still Vertual Vertigo to come, who may or may not be the nephews of the organizers. I thought of giving Polydactyl a one song warning but when I heard their violin player say "We have a few more songs to go" I made like the Bhudda and practiced inaction. Vertual Vertigo would have to wait, I decided to drop the ball. I furtively scanned the room to make sure there was nobody in hearing distance who would disagree with three more songs, rose to my feet, and quietly crossed the room to sit with Olenka at the merch table, where it would be impossible for me to intervene.

They just shone. Three songs of shining. I had been asking the audience to sound out a random tone for each act, and the tone they finally settled on after Polydactyl was the most harmonized and sophisticated audience tone I've heard since we made barnyard noises for Professor Fingers at WL500. We were way over-time by music fest standards, but not too far overtime according to the Wavelength playbook, and it was certainly a manageable puzzle to get an iPod and 2 mics to the stage and maybe break down Polydactyl's gear during the next act. It felt so much better for all of us that this band had meandered and were able to do so, and besides, at the end of the Wavelength part of the set, Vertual Vertigo were nowhere to be found.

They may have never even showed up for all I know. I wondered if the Pop Montreal person had mistaken Doldrums for Vertual Vertigo during sound check. Different sounds but photographically speaking a similar setup. I wonder if Vertual Vertigo also decided, in mid flight, that the best way to make this show perfect was to practice their own brand of inaction, and when we called out their name from the front of the stage, they remained silent back by the windows next to the bar, in mute tribute to a great show, another Wavelength in the books, the five hundred and eighth. The beer keg containing the lysol flavoured beer special had run dry and all that was left were premium drinks, which is a good omen for how well the bar did.

Later that night I: got lost on my way to the silver door afterparty featuring Hallelujah. Got lost on my way to the other afterparty featuring Deerhoof. Climbed Mount Royal the hard way to catch the sunrise. Threw stones in the river. I've only ever visited Montreal in darkness and Wavelength 508 was no exception, like having an affair with a mysterious near divorcee, leaving town through the back window at first light of dawn before her husband returns from his hunting trip. Despite my own deep mistrust of any music festival - or any other happening - larger than, say, Wavelength, I came away from Pop Montreal with the feeling that I had been part of a real mom and "pop" operation, run honestly by honest people whose agenda seems to begin and end with pretty good music and a pretty optimistic vibe. I didn't come away with a sense of Montreal envy, but with the afterglow of a nice no strings attached one-night-stand.