NXNE: Night Three
Million Dollar Marxists, The Diodes, The Vibrants, Domenica, and Beth in Battle Mode.

By Sam Linton

Posted June 25th, 2007.

Day 3

9 PM @ Rancho Relaxo
Beth in Battle Mode
Saturday! The home stretch! Man, did it feel good to be going into the final night! Not that I was tired of the music (I wasn't,) but do you have any idea how difficult it can be to be this opinionated? I feel bad about criticizing restaurant staff if my food is served with a bandage in it, for Chrissakes. Anyhoo, the evening started a bit later than usual (fewer 8 PM shows on Saturday) in the sweltering heat of Rancho Relaxo, a venue that I have no trouble criticizing (what's a good shape for a sit-down music venue? Not long and thin!) Nonetheless, I can say that Beth in Battle Mode started my evening right with a cheerful brand of spacey-ness I couldn't help but enjoy. Featuring guitar, drums and a keyboard rigged up for all kinds of laser, organ and silvery sound effects, BiBM made up for in attitude and can-do spirit what they may have lacked in actual talent. Not to say that they were untalented, they just didn't have the proficient chops of many of the bands I had seen previously, although they seemed to be heading on the right track. I'd like to see how this band develops after a year or so, when they've had some more time to develop their sound, because I like what I hear so far. With song moods ranging from peppy to vaguely eerie and always enthusiastic and already sporting an impressive local fan base, I would chalk BiBM up as a band to look out for in the future. Here's their Myspace! In the meantime, enjoyable as they were, I knew I had to get out of Ranch Relaxo as soon as BiBM's set was over. That place was sweltering.

10 PM @ The Bovine Sex Club
Domenica
The cruel reviewer in me wants to just say "Domenica? More like Generica!" and move on to the next act, but that wouldn't be very fair. And besides, that would be misrepresenting my own time. Another fairly talented but not in any way special band, Domenica failed to capture my imagination but did not otherwise fail to deliver the goods; "the goods" in this case simply did not happen to be anything I was really interested in. With two guitars, bass, drums and a vocalist sounding surprisingly like a No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani, Domenica delivers a hard rock to light metal sound grounded in the solid drums and bass lines of the "jugga jugga jugga" school. They also deliver some of the most clearly enunciated vocals I've heard all festival, usually about being disaffected. I guess that has something to do with being Manitoban. I must admit, the band's generic style did grow on me throughout their set, except for their last song, in which the bass seemed to stop backing everything up and all the sounds of the instruments clashed together unpleasantly. Then they played Opeth on the overhead, reminding me of other, better metal & hard rock acts. Sorry, Domenica. Better luck next time.

Domenica's website and Myspace are the same thing.

11 PM @ Sneaky Dee's
The Vibrants
Shuttling up from The Bovine to Sneaky Dee's is always a grueling experience, and I arrived just as The Vibrants were beginning their set, giving me little to no time to collect my bearings before rocking commenced. Which turned out to be fine, as The Vibrants' is not a brand of music that rewards bearings, it rewards feelings. Looking dapper in matching vests or at least button up shirts, the British gents of The Vibrants almost immediately (from my late-arriving perspective) rocketed to cacophonous levels, launching guitar, bass, drums and keyboards into a musical blitzkrieg while the lead singer prepared to make love to his microphone. Listening to The Vibrants is in many ways like listening to two different bands at once; the melodies of the guitar and shrieking, demented church-organ sound of the keyboards meet to ring treble in your ears, while the rhythm of the drums and bass operates on an entirely different level, circumventing the ears completely and going right for the feet, knees and the base of the gut. The only thing seeming to unite these disparate elements is the wailing of the singer, unifying in the mind what is experienced variously throughout the body. Oh, occasionally the melody and rhythm would briefly touch base with one another, but then they were quickly off on their respective ways, off to melt your ears and rock your socks off, respectively. All in all, the band's live performance was, well, vibrant: played with the desperate intensity of life knowing that death awaits us all. Now, whether or not that intensity could possibly be matched on a studio album is another question altogether. Both website and Myspace are familiar to the Vibrants.

12 PM @ Sneaky Dee's
The Diodes
I decided then and there that Sneaky Dee's would be my home for the night, and what a decision that turned out to be! Next on the set list: formative Toronto punk band The Diodes, reuniting after 30 years apart! (Barring a brief 1999 promotional segment on Mike Bullard, of all shows) Looking around me, I noticed that the crowd's median age seemed to have advanced a good five years at least, with many of the new recruits wearing Black Flag jackets or similar apparel. Clearly, this was an anticipated show in certain circles of people come of age in the 1970's. For someone like me, it was a museum piece (I like museums), the stripped down punk aesthetic of 1977 Toronto transplanted to today. I couldn't treat it like any other review because I lack the proper context, but I could certainly compare and contrast. Much more lyrically focused than most of the other bands seen at NXNE, The Diodes always made sure that the words came through, with the music to support the lyrics, rather than the other way around. Not to say that the band wasn't loud, only that the intensity of the loudness was placed in different area than in most of the other (modern) music at NXNE. It was actually kind of surreal to see these 4 and 50-somethings shedding 30 years onstage as they dived into their 70's repertoire of songs like "Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come", "Tired of Waking Up Tired" and, most tellingly, "That Was the Way it Was". It may have been stretching it at times, but there was a genuine sense of catharsis from a lot of the older punks in the room as, after THIRTY FUCKING YEARS, one of the bands that helped shape the state of music in Toronto today finally got it together again. The Diodes' third album will finally be seeing CD release within the year, and their next gig is planned for Rome. Screw Myspace, The Diodes have a Wikipedia entry.

1 AM @ Sneaky Dee's
Million Dollar Marxists
The crowd in Sneaky Dee's had thinned out somewhat by one AM, as oldsters who came to see the Diodes decided that they had gotten what they paid for and had to get home for church tomorrow (I'm extrapolating). Their loss, because The Million Dollar Marxists were some way to end the night! In many ways functioning as a recap of the earlier Vibrants set, albeit with an extra guitar replacing the keyboard, MDM was another high intensity energy rush, the main difference between them and The Vibrants being that every sound produced by MDM was in direct competition for your earspace and your kneespace at the same time. Ploughing through their set and into their instruments like they bore them a grudge, I heard at least three times when they literally hit speaker capacity and broke through to the realm of pure feedback. While not a metal band, MDM's treatment of music as a frontal assault bears remarkable similarities to that genre. Soon, the band's energy infected the audience, and what began as a few indie kids slammin' to the beat turned into a full on, organically formed mosh pit (which usually seem forced to me). For once, I wasn't "alienated" from the mosh pit's "means of production!" (Marxism jokes? Anyone?) All in all, The Million Dollar Marxists provided the perfect conclusion to my North by Northeast experience, cementing Rock and Roll as the true "Opiate of the Masses".

And that's wonderful.

Million Dollar Marxists have a Myspace, too.

I have been, your faithful and rocking servant,
Sam Linton