by RAF KATIGBAK

What’s going on over there? I leave town for a couple of weeks and you guys pull an ice storm and Stephen Harper gets elected?! Damn! Can’t leave y’all alone for a minute.

But why even leave Canada when all they got over in New York are damned Canadian bands anyway? It seems like, from every flyer and poster I see, there are a curiously large number of Canucks invading this city. Indeed just last weekend, Musique Risquée’s Vincent Lemieux was in town playing to a bumping crowd at Subtonic, and Bell Orchestre hit the Bowery Ballroom for a politely packed, Sunday-evening hushed-up rock-out. Yours truly joined them for the raucous poolhall after-party, which was a whirlwind of humus plates and strange margarita/caipirinha hybrids that, if they were looking to name this concoction, should be dubbed “instant hangover.”

Of course, last Saturday, if one were feeling particularly debauched, one of their infamous Rubulad parties was happening in Brooklyn. Born out of frustration over turn-of-the-millennium cabaret laws and harkening back to the mish-mash art/music/performance days of Danceteria and the Mudd Club, the Rubulad parties (so named using the letters of the space’s phone number) quickly garnered a reputation as the place to see new bands, great DJs, puppet shows and performance art, and to basically lose your shit and dance your ass off to the wee hours. The strictly word-of-mouth shindig quickly grew into a local institution. The always-packed art-dance orgy continued last Saturday at their new space near Park Slope, where attendees could opt to rock out to any of the four DJs playing throughout the space (all of whom, at one point, were playing ’80s jams), or checking out a myriad of mysterious bands (including a marching band playing versions of tracks by Beyonce and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), or witnessing the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan tear up the dancefloor (I shit you not). Overall, an inspiring event concept that Montrealers would do well to borrow... especially the ambassador part.

But Montreal is no stranger to a good party, and this weekend we’ve got several that would show these New Yorkers a thing or two about how we do things in the 514. Sunday, Vancouver duo (well, Surrey duo, really) Stink Mitt will be bursting onto the scene (and most likely out of their spandex unitards) at Parking’s Electruck night with some nasty, white-trash electro rap. Friday night, the Midwest-born minimalist (now residing in Berlin) Troy Pierce (aka Louderbach from Richie Hawtin’s M-nus/Underline label) will join MightyKat at Circus, while yours truly makes his triumphant return to the wondrous Wunderbar’s weekly throwdown Riff Raff Disko, with all the fresh tracks that are killin’ New York City right now. Why not come by and say hi?

LEAVE BROOKLYN? Diskoakimbo@sympatico.ca

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