A few weeks ago I was reminded of just how much my life is ruled by musical passions. I came back from a fantasy weekend at Osheaga music festival, where I got to reunite with my one and only Montreal posse and am still on a high from seeing so many amazing musicians, all in the comfort of VIP treatment! It was horrible adjusting to regular life again. That whole weekend made me grow extremely nostalgic in many directions, but especially towards the 90s. Not that I ever need any help reminiscing about the 90s…
I came towards the epiphany that this year’s lineup made me excited because it was a demographic-specific line-up: while there were plenty of bands to please all crowds, the more I looked around me the more I realized it was a festival for the aging ahem hep adult between their late twenties to thirties. This was not a place where 18 year olds fans would want to fork out 65 bucks a day to see PAVEMENT! Jon Spencer Blues Explosion!!, Snoop Dogg, Sonic Youth, Weezer, Devo, Jimmy Cliff, I think even the Black Keys and Major Lazor have the wink and nod for older music nerds. Yo did I say Pavement! That was my unexpected whammy, had no idea they were playing shows again. All the people I knew there were in some way blessed with artists passes that allowed us free entry, special toilets, golf cart rides to free drinks and fancy foods, bypassing lines and being able to see shows from the side of the stages. I was lucky enough to be with all my friends, and watch from a ¾ profile a still bitchy and floppy Steven Malkmus flouncing around and realized that he’s been the silhouette of my dream boyfriend from the age of 15 to present. Thought I had grown up, whatever, Pavement are cool! When the show ended my friend Fred Casia and I were strolling/following Stevie and I was completely busted for walking ‘oogly’, as Freddie put it.
The reason I get in for free is that my art collective has been developing projects their Salon des Arts the past five years, from the beginning. Back in 2003 I was one of 14 friends in Montreal who founded an informal art collective called the YPF, or the Young People’s Foundation (we chose a decidedly innocent title in the hopes of scoring grants…we were also younger at the time) of which our mandate was to celebrate ourselves as a creative community over any individual talent, and also as diverse practitioners in various cultural fields as a way to take a break from our usual practices. For me now, being an artist who must consider painting as ‘work’, it is so wonderful to drop all the conceptual bullshit for a time and just make a project for the fun of doing it with friends I love. This year we each designed psychedelic canvas corpses for a campfire installation.
Reminiscing, I remember when I used to live in Montreal how I would see like 2 shows a week (music not art), and hating this shitty little band that people talked about called Arcade Fire (they were so horrible, and that first ep sucked). Just before I made my move from Montreal to Amsterdam, this shitty band released their first album called Funeral and it blew my socks off. I remember seeing them play a show at the Salvation Army church as I was preparing my goodbyes in 2004, and it was such an amazing experience that it completely converted me. Now, 6 years later, this was the second time I’ve seen them, and I even came close to tearing up, standing there backstage like a proud parent...a band that started out so bad and turned out so good!
Photo: Dessa Harhay
