- Entire Cities
I first saw Entire Cities open for some friends from high school’s now-defunct band, a couple years back, and one of my friends asked if I’d come to the show to see Entire Cities, which I might as well have (Not that my friends’ band was bad. But they’re broken up, and I can’t remember what their new band is called to check them out). The chronically late high school friend who I was supposed to meet up with before the show came in between sets and I kept waxing poetic about the great band she’d just missed.
They decked themselves out in streamers and tinsel for the show and created a great party atmosphere to a completely packed Gus’s. I think this might actually take the prize for being the most full I’ve seen the place. Entire Cities’ shows are always a bit of a party, like a kitchen party or square dance.
- Yeah!
Afterward I biked down to the Seahorse at lightning speed and made it for about half of Japanther’s set, at another at or past capacity venue. The crowd was nuts, with a zillion flash bulbs going off per second and some videographer hovering his camera about two inches above my friend’s head, and apparently a lot of heckling from the bouncers which I mostly missed. “We’re not a band, we never signed any paper to be in a band…we’re what happens when graffiti comes alive!” they shouted through their telephone-mics.
The crowd mashed its way down Argyle to the Toothy Moose for New York band Pterodactyl. The venue was a bizarre mix of drunk girls in stilettos and skimpy dresses and their baseball-capped boyfriends hanging out in the back, music fans in front. I suspect some people who couldn’t get in trying shortly after I got there may have had a better chance in spikier heels. Coast front desk manager Ashley LeBlanc posted this overhead quote online: “Apparently it’s indie night…but don’t worry, all these hippies are leaving at 2!” The two crowds seemed to be able to ignore each other without incident, though.
- Pterodactyl: far from extinct.
Arty with a psychedelic edge, they played an upbeat, seamless set to the group that hadn’t come for schmoozing and vodka coolers. Things were late and crazy, though, and I want to check out this band more in a less chaotic setting.
I managed to grab a few words with Entire Cities about their tour over coffee on Friday morning (and they like coffee; just check out their song about it on Myspace).
“This is such a good festival,” banjo player Tamara Lindeman said. “At NXNE (in their hometown, Toronto) you get paid $100, or you get festival wristbands, and you get no support, here you get paid proportionally, you get wristbands, you get billeted, you get food vouchers.”
“The band we played with [Thursday] night (as Lindeman’s solo project, The Weather Station), The Magnificent Sevens, their van exploded in Truro, the engine blew, and they called the festival organizers, someone came to pick them up at 3am, and [the Pop Explosion] is organizing a benefit show for them at the Seahorse on Sunday.”
(That’s from 8pm-midnight tomorrow, friend.)
The band was been selling bear-shaped honey jars with a download code for an EP they put together with some live tracks and older material, with honey from singer and guitarist Simon Borer’s family’s apiary near Ottawa. They stayed there with tour mates Bruce Peninsula, and, “We’ve been eating a lot of honey,” flute player/ saxophonist Ruhee Dewji said. “It’s pretty good honey.”
“We played a house show in Saint John with Bruce Peninsula and Olenka and the Autumn Lovers and it got shut down by the cops,” Lindeman said, “but this being Saint John, the cop knew the guy who lived there, so he said we had to stop, but then came in and sat down.”
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.