Crosswires in May ... so far!

There will be additions to this list, but here is what we have confirmed & in store for you in May:

May 6:
Fitness, The Wizard of Rock, Logan Rathbone
http://www.facebook.com/events/313816765354272/

May 13:
Love Explosion Orchestra, Hollowphonic, Les Expulses
http://www.facebook.com/events/274179166004846/

May 20:
Childs, Hi Fi Phantom, Most People
http://www.facebook.com/events/343547632377130/

May 27:
Nicola Ratti, Arman Bazarian, Joey Molinaro
http://www.facebook.com/events/309574369115877/

I will perform, live, in person, a living, breathing, singing, show, this Sunday at Crosswires

 

http://www.facebook.com/events/213490175425872/  

Friends! I'm not sorry I have not finished up booking May's Crosswires shows, be patient they'll be announced next week. To tell you the truth I've had something else on my mind while waiting for Mars to slip out of retrograde: I'm playing a show in the lounge of the Garrison this Sunday. My first Crosswires! I'm playing with a very good musician named Allister Thompson, who you will enjoy. With Steam Whistle beer.

Many years ago when I started putting on shows for people and bands I liked, my main motivation for doing so was because I could empathize with the performers I liked playing to rooms without people in them. It didn't seem fair that I was the only one who got to see these bands. So the simple connect-the-dots reason why I want you to join me for these shows is because I think these performers need to be seen.

The last time Mars reached the end of its retrograde I was laid off at Sony Music from a job I fought hard to get. It was an unpleasant lesson from the universe: don't pick a fight and make yourself a mark when the red planet's going backwards. Just wait for the trouble to come to you, and submit to it for now, confident that it will blow away like fog in dry desert air.

When I book myself it's a different story. I'm not able to ramp up the hyperbole when it comes to my own shows, and unless you're Dan W at Rancho Relaxo, nobody bothers asking me if I'd like to play. I am accustomed to hearing a preponderance of "what can you do for me?" and I've gotten used to never expecting to hear somebody say "what can I do for you?" because that's just the human condition. It doesn't bum me out though that I've been earnestly and joyfully plugging away for 20 years and nobody seems to care, because I don't care that nobody cares. I care when people don't care in general, but there's no reason for me to expect the olds to stay out past 8pm, and the youngs to even know who I am. At least I have my ghosts.

I'll get back to the exciting world of making things happen for everybody else on Monday, but from now until Sunday at 9pm I'm going into deep radio silence and working on bringing some songs to life. I'll get back to the rest of the world's important problems on Monday, once Mars is out of retrograde.

Here are some songs and audiozines I've done over the years. 

XO.

http://www.facebook.com/events/213490175425872/

A. live recording of A. David MacKinnon

Big thanks to Mechanical Forest Sound for recording A. David MacKinnon's beautiful (one night only!) show at last weekend's Crosswires. I have noticed Crosswires has had a lot of one time only performances. This upcoming one will feature m'self! Another blog post on that show to follow.

Dave's set really was something else, mixed up with a Minotaur, some members of Canaille, he played what he promises is his one and only show to support his simple and sophisticated and well received new album "The Past is a Foreign Country". Perhaps it was the one-time-onliness of it that made it beautiful. After the show was done, Canaille packed up the horns for the last time, and many of us lingered, listening to Gobble Gobble, as played by DJ Grant Factor.

I know most of my friends older than 30 are too creaky and tired to do things on Sunday night, I felt that way when I was 30, and that's all right, but here's a word of encouragement: it gets harder and harder to do things (and conversely for some of us it will get softer and softer) and one day you'll wish you were as young and vital as you are today, and wish you'd done something other than park yourself in front of the Junos / Simpson's / monoculture brain candy device, wasting the best remaining days of life away and playing out the clock, and a part of you will wish you'd attended a metaphorical, or literal, Crosswires show.

You might have missed your chance to see the A. David MacKinnon show but life outside the living room is spontaneous and beautiful, and beautiful things are bound to happen when you least expect it. As long as you can haul yourself outside. I know it's hard. Trust me, it's worth it, it's always worth it, even when it's not.


http://mechanicalforestsound.blogspot.ca/2012/04/recording-david-mackinnon.html

Hey Doc, why did you call your showcase Crosswires?

Why Crosswires?

A few people have asked why I chose Crosswires for the name of the series.

1. Well of course there’s this XTC song called XWires and I do love my XTC.
2. The Garrison is named after an invisible buried creek that intersects most of the neighbourhood
3. It’s a commonly assumed myth that Toronto comes from a Huron word for “meeting place” (or it could also mean place of pointy fish catching sticks)
4. Hermes likes hanging out at the crossroads, you might consider this series to be a Herm.
5. When I couldn’t sleep as a kid in Kenora  I fell asleep to the sound of freight trains passing through town from one place in the outside world to the other, and I lay in bed dreaming of getting the funk out of town one way of the other. Railway crossing signs are the North American version of the Herm. The X is called a crossbuck.
6. I think if I couldn’t do music, I would be a hermit, which is what slowly began to happen to me once Wavelength migrated to Friday and Saturday nights. On Sunday I can be the holy fool.
7. In time, everybody will cross through here on their way from one spiritual endeavor to the other, like Philip Michael Thomas’ partner says in the Wizard of Speed and Time, the greatest no-budget D.I.Y. film of all time, “if you stay in one place long enough, the whole world passes you by.”
8. Electric guitars and casio keyboards and live music venues in general use a lot of wires
9. Crazy things happen when you cross wires, often your hair stands on end.
10. The big life choices that make all the difference in the world happen at the crossroads. You make choices while ambling down the path, but you don’t choose where to go until you’re at the crossroad. Eventually you learn to choose to make your own crossroads whenever you want to, and you can transcend the straight lines and cut through the hedge whenever you choose. But that's a series for another decade.

The Past is a Foreign Country release by Fembot A. David MacKinnon is this Sunday

At Crosswires this Sunday, sadness at watching Canaille leave the stage will be mixed with joy at seeing one of our two favorite Fembots, Dave MacKinnon's (or A. David MacKinnon to his friends) triumphant return to it! He's braving the inconvenience of hauling and re-tuning a thousand pound pianoish instrument to launch his new album: The Past is a Foreign Country.

Ironically when I introduced Fembots at Wavelength 500 I mis-introduced their set as a reunion. They looked puzzled for a moment, but when you check the annals of history (ie Wikipedia) the set was chronicled as "Although never breaking up, FemBots were less active following that album. They played a "reunion" show at the Wavelength 500 festival on February 11, 2010" Whoever made that entry used a link to a 2005 Wavelength article called Rock & Roll Cooking Show but hey who's counting, after all if it's on the Internetz, it's true.

In a little piece about Dave's upcoming album release this Sunday at Crosswires, BlogTO indicated that the Fembots did, in fact, retire from performing, although the hunger is deeply embedded in the bones of those two Fembots, and I hope they keep playing at some point. The good news is we will get to ask Dave in person. So between tears of farewell to Canaille let's also look forward to uncorking this new jazzicaledelicpastiche to the working world! I am really looking forward to cheering on the return of another artist to the stage, and am fully prepared for my jaw to gape.

Oh and at last report opener Ben Veneer has neither broken up nor reunited. Looking forward to seeing him in a big room instead of a little one. He has an old soul voice.

Here's the bit from BlogTO:

A. David Mackinnon is a Toronto based songwriter, producer and recording engineer. From the late 90s till the late 00s he was one half of the band FemBots. In the years since the last Fembots record David retired from live performance, put the guitars away and abandoned singing to focus on instrumental, piano based music.

MacKinnon's first solo record The Past is A Foreign Country might best be described as the imaginary soundtrack to a film that doesn't exist. Backed by some of the best support players in the country, MacKinnon creates a sound that draws on 50's jazz, 70's action film soundtracks, soul and gospel music.

The Past is a Foreign Country will be launched April 8th in Toronto with a concert as part of the Crosswires music series at the Garrison. The record is available for immediate download from iTunes, Zunior, Bandcamp, & CD Baby. It can be previewed at http://adavidmackinnon.bandcamp.com/
http://www.blogto.com/events/54968

Canaille's last toot this Sunday at Crosswires?

Canaille just posted on their facebook page that this Sunday's Crosswires show will be their last, or at least the beginning of an extremely long hiatus, the exact wording was:

"Friends, Canaille plays its last show in the foreseeable future on April 8th at the Garrison. Come bid us farewell as we move on to new things and new lands."

Not a lot of lines to read between.

There must be something in the air, first it was the much loved / unfairly maligned breakup of formalist / unknown wave trio AIDS Wolf, now this?! The folks who play in Canaille all have bright music futures ahead of them, but parting is such sweet sorrow. I'm going to listen and watch extra carefully. On a positive note, since this is a band breakup, the good folks at exclaim might take the time to get away from the internet and make the effort to cover a live funeral show, since that seems to be the only thing they cover lately, aside from the occasional occasion when they cover the odd reunion of bands that have already broken up.

Look for more horniness from Jeremy Strachan in the future, he's been horny with The Constantines, Sea Snakes, Sunparlour Players, and Sandro Perri, and of course Rockets Red Glare. And I'm sure he'll be hornily tooting away with other projects in the future, including current roles in the Big Sound, Muskox, Minotaurs, the Swyves, occasionally in Steamboat, but the special something about Canaille was that this was his own, beautiful, project. Canaille can be proud of themselves for going out on a high note. Please do try to get to the Garrison this weekend to celebrate a great run. 

Now I'm going to go listen to Canaille's version of the Sun Ra classic Love In Outer Space on repeat for the rest of the day.

April, Fools! Your Crosswires April 2012 listings & lineup

April, Fools! Crosswires in April 2012

Join our facebook group because there's always awesome late breaking news! http://www.facebook.com/CrosswiresToronto

• Crosswires#6 April 1: Suicider, This Mess, The Dark Age
• Crosswires#7 April 8: Dave MacKinnon (Fembots) album release, Canaille, Ben Veneer
• Crosswires#8 April 15: Doc Pickles, Alastair Thompson (front room)
• Crosswires #9 April 22: Henri Fabergé, lightsweetcrude, The Bawdy Electric, Ambisonic
• Crosswires #10 April 29: Man Made Hill, Nick Storring, Pants & Tie, The Lost Babies

All shows @ the Garrison 1197 Dundas Street W, in Toronto Canada, 9pm, PWYC

 

April lineups finalized, and yes my punk has been showing lately, and there is a lot of "Ready Set GO GO GO!" music this month, but Crosswires also promises to inject some downbeat buzzkill and some clever pop to the April mix, I'm looking forward to each show in different ways. April Fool's Day is my chance - and the whole world's chance - to see Suicider for the first time, a band built on the rippling strength of the Bagel circa Bad Bands Revolution, which has become good. Later on in the month a Fembot is releasing a solo album, the face of the Adorables Henri Fabergé, a great slow chud from Brooklyn, youth nonviolence and enthusiasm, and candy, in every part of the mighty Sunday night. One of the shows will be in the lounge instead of the backroom. Your job is to amble over to take in a show whenever the feeling strikes, at your leisure, at your convenience. Kick back and enjoy the only pocket of the week that hasn't yet been colonized by the monoculture, under the swirling pastiche of General Chaos Visuals.

Crosswires is a Sunday night PWYC live music night at the Garrison curated by Wavelength’s Doc Pickles and organized with massive help from Dorice Tepley and Brandon deGroote, with DJ’s selected by Acacia “Don’t Touch That Dial” Christensen and visuals by General Chaos. Here’s what we have in store for you this April in the year of our crossed wires 2012:

Links:

April 1: Suicider, This Mess, The Dark Age

This Mess http://thismessband.bandcamp.com/

Suicider (Suicider features ex-members of Secret Handsnakes, Pinko Kronkite and Real Cops)
http://suicider.bandcamp.com/

The Dark Age http://www.myspace.com/thedarkagemd
facebook for April 1: http://www.facebook.com/events/383292988355914/

April 8: Dave MacKinnon (Fembots) album release, Canaille, Ben Veneer

Dave MacKinnon (Fembots) album release adavidmackinnon.blogspot.com  

Canaille http://www.canaillemusic.com/

Ben Veneer http://benveneer.com/
facebook for April 8: http://www.facebook.com/events/370379959650051/

April 15: front room show

Doc Pickles  http://www.docpickles.bandcamp.com
Allister Thompson http://allisterthompson.bandcamp.com/
facebook for April 15: http://www.facebook.com/events/213490175425872/

April 22: Henri Fabergé, the Bawdy Electric, Ambisonic, lightsweetcrude

Henri Fabergé http://henrifaberge.com/

lightsweetcrude http://www.facebook.com/lightsweetcrude

The Bawdy Electric myspace.com/thebawdyelectric

Ambisonic  ambisonic.ca
facebook for April 22: http://www.facebook.com/events/355459951163268/

April 29:Nick Storring, Pants & Tie, Man Made Hill, The Lost Babies

Nick Storring http://nickstorring.ca/ http://nickstorring.bandcamp.com/
Pants & Tie http://www.pantsandtie.com/
Man Made Hill  http://www.myspace.com/llihedamnam
The Lost Babies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CckgtSn_6Pg
facebook for April 29: http://www.facebook.com/events/366950946673240/