by JOHNSON CUMMINS

If you really want to see what's making the

Montreal live music scene so vital right now, don't forget to look to the sidelines. You can't swing a cat without hitting a young promoter these days, and with more people bringing in out-of-town bands and more venues off the beaten path, we are seeing well-attended shows happening almost every night of the week. Along with stalwarts like Greenland, 2HQD and others, Blue Skies Turn Black's Meyer Billurcu and Brian Neuman have been successfully shaking up the Montreal scene, giving a stage to local bands while making Montreal a priority stop for touring bands. On March 19 at la Sala Rossa, they'll be celebrating their fifth year of whiny English bands, brown M&Ms excision, immigration lawyers etc., and hopefully they'll be around for at least five more years of headaches.

Mirror: Did you think you would still be doing this five years down the road?

Meyer Billurcu: The funny thing is, we were more interested in having a label. We really never thought we would be doing this five years down the road. We just started bringing in bands that we wanted to see and that nobody else would do in Montreal. The big difference since we started is that we used to say yes to every person who wanted us to do a show and now that's just impossible.

M: What were some of your most memorable shows?

Brian Neuman: One of my favourites was Three Penny Opera, ex-members of Shotmaker, at the Barfly. Shotmaker was one of my favourite bands, and I thought we would never be able to do a show with them. This was the closest we could come. We only had a week's notice, so we got posters up really late, and it ended up that tons of people showed up and the show went off amazing.

M: Is there room in Montreal for all of these new promoters?

MB: Obviously, if none of the shows were working, it would be ridiculous to have all these promoters. But that's not the case. It might change in a year, but right now no one is stepping on anyone's toes.

M: Is there a misconception about promoters being money-grubbing cheats?

MB: There are definitely people who are only at our sold-out shows who think it's like that all the time. They aren't there when the room is empty and we need to cover our costs and lose tons of money. When you do a show, you're taking a risk - no matter how well you think a band will draw, you really never know what's going to happen.

BOOK 'EM, DANO! jonathan.cummins@gmail.com

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