Kiss my Cabaret and Friendship Cove - Tonight has 2 Great Shows

Tonight, a typical Friday in Montreal, has plenty of options for sampling the sweetness of the city. You could roam and happen upon good shows and vibes or you could head straight into 2 Scenes for a direct sampling of the kinds of community building that have helped make the city a buzz, a flutter, a “hotbed,” or what have you in recent memory.

Friendship Cove is having it’s 2nd Birthday tonight. Friendship Cove is a happy seedy hotbed art home, mid-industrial drone, down in Griffintown. Many of the show posters around here were designed in the Cove by Jack Dylan who came from Stratford with a deep sense of performing art theatrics, self-reference and caricature in his drawings; and (let’s be honest) more then a little indie playboy in his personal style (heads up!) Some of his pictures are also deeply beautiful - I have a King Lear poster by Jack Dylan over my desk, designed for a fictional Shakespeare collection, I think. And my 17 year old sister has the poster he designed for Arcade Fire over her bed. Both of these mix comics with a medieval sort of pattern work and nostalgic shades of blue and I think they’re gorgeous. But anyhoo.

Miracle Fortress and Think About Life hatched from the Cove, as Graham Van Pelt is a fellow founder, and Arcade Fire used to gig with Jack and Graham at the venue’s previous incarnation, Electric Tractor; in other words, they know how to mix mess and lovely to create a brilliant cozy, crazy place to see and throw shows, as we know from the love we got doing our first Assembly there. (And our Assembly was one of Miracle Fortress’s first ever shows with a band, now that I think about it, right before SXSW, aw.)

Tonight’s Friendship Cove show features Japanther, Telefauna without Tyler but with Graham Van Pelt sitting in, and Secrets of Mana. 10$ at the door. 215A Murray Street. [Map]

Another longstanding hotbed of artism de Montreal is kicking dust and pasties up tonight at a venue closer to the Plateau/Mile End bubble - Kiss My Cabaret is at Sala Rosa ce soir. Kiss my Cabaret has been rocking for over 5 years, always hosted by founder and Arterie owner Danette Mackay mixing burlesque, spoken word, crazy funk, and general mayhem on a semi-regular basis. Tonight’s Kiss my Cabaret show features members of the Maha Choir (who will also be doing something very special with industrial sound art from Griffintown at our Indyish Mess in November, woo!) and a 10 piece funk act with costumes from Toronto called Elastocitizens. This show is 20$, which is steep for our broke arty scene, but it’s 10 bones if you’re in costume.

And knowing you, you’re in costume right now, aren’t you?