Mess Success

Just a quick rambly risa note now with many pics and such coming soon - but man, the first Mess was a big ole bounty of cool stuff.

DJ G Blott’s mix was the perfect vibe for the start of the night - it sampled folk and hip hop and kept us shaking our heads at his sound smarts. The films, curated by Maryanna Hardy and Jonathan Stewart, were beautiful, funny and haunting, and visually connected with the DIY vibe of the venue.. And we were lucky in that we managed to borrow a beautiful and enormous true silver screen from the kind friends at Mainline for the videos to be projected onto. It had this kind of magic transparency that allowed it to simultaneously reflect gorgeous images and show a bit of what was moving behind, which was particularly cool when Tino Scafidi and Rick Contrino performed added layers of soundtrack to the video Tino had made with his sister, Sam. This video was accelerated backwards footage of Sam painting. With Tino on electric guitar and Rick on tamtams sort of shadowy behind the painting the effect was cumulatively cool. Jason Auger’s skate video (re)public was beautiful too, and alongside Lela Quesney’s Always Awake there was a lovley, sad quiet sunlit statement about the joy of movement and travel and public space. Matt Pollard’s Destination Success was a hilarious rip on tourism videos everywhere and especially in Halifax, and Jordan Coulombe’s blank et noir 10% looked so cool on the silver screen it was a great way to kick of the evening.

Jeff Gandell read a piece about halfway through the films that was legitimately funny and thoughtful about Freud and the sometimes wanking weirdness of philosopher friends and analysists. I write and love stories, but still cringe when there are readings at shows because they’re so often awkward, but Jeff and Morgan Murray and the surprise reader from Total Bummer were all pretty enjoyable I thought, flipping words on themselves quickly to reveal other sides of things and making us laugh. I also thought it was funny when Tristan, Indyish event manager extraordinaire, jumped in to pull the plug from what most people thought was a mistake - the rumbling hiss of other people’s words and thoughts that started to swell under the last reader. Fortunately Ryan from Total Bummer, who was performing the audio layers as a teasing compliment to his friend, is also a man who gets a kick out of the glitches and assumptions and mistakes that tech play can elicit. He grinned and plugged himself back in and kept right on, and once you relaxed into it, you got that it was funny and cool. The true spirit of the Monthly Mess.

Other folks who you’d call the spirit of the Mess - Daryl Rasmussen who Josh met on Monday (that’s 2 days before the show), right after someone had to drop out, and willingly jumped onboard; Dave Schultz who tried out some new comedy material on a non-comedy but totally nice and receptive audience; Angele Desjardins who sang her lovely folk songs with Julia from Is That the Sound of My Voice? on clarinet and backup vocals. It was Angele’s first show in Montreal and she was awesomely into the idea of performing her country folk in what’s usually a metal/punk venue with skeletons in the walls. Jon and Maryanna, Indyish community developers and Mess curators, both pulled their own contributions to the night willingly and with chivalrous self-sacrifice because we’d crammed sooo much into the night we were running pretty long; and Josh, who’d been at the forefront of coordinating the thing, and was the man giving out the free beer tickets for performers, quietly started paying for his own drinks when he realized that the bar was probably not rolling in money. Classssy, kids.

And the standout performance and ballsyness of the night goes to Erik Virtanen and the Darling Demaes. They were a band member short because of a serious medical issue but didn’t let it phase them or stress us for a second. Consumate pros, they just pulled together other musicians to play with and did a special set and it was awesome. Here’s a video, which some cool masked man captured when none of us were looking and put up on Youtube for sharing. Hifives to annonymous art lurkers everywhere - if you send us notes that you’re coming to record Indyish shows we’ll give your a secret code to whisper at the door for free entry, alright? And we promise not to blow your cover.

ps… I’m not saying this first Mess was all candy and poseys and perfection. It was pretty stressful only finding out from the venue on the day of the show that there actually wasn’t a screen or a beer sponsor when we’d been told several weeks before that both were confirmed. We ran late on sound check, in part because we brought some of new instruments into the smart sound man Christian’s life, and in part because we didn’t have a printed up set list to pass around and stick to, which is something to remedy for next time. As we kept reminding ourselves though, it’s called the Mess and it was our very first one, and I think it was all joyful and jivey and just right. I think everyone did a wicked job and thank you all tons, esp Mainline theatre who lent us the bitchin screen about 2 hours before go time, and Tristan who ran up and got it and carried it down St.Laurent on his back like a Santa sack.