by JOHNSON CUMMINS

I have always avoided Crescent Street like the plague, and no doubt, if you are a reader of this column, you do too. It’s not that I hate rich, 40-something cokeheads who think listening to house music makes them hip. It’s just that they scare me. This past weekend, it seems Crescent Street was just too small for legions of humps that pounced on the city for Grand Prix weekend, so the spillover had to make it into my neck of the woods.

St-Laurent was blocked off from Pine to Sherbrooke during this fest o’ douchebags and transformed into a South Beach strip (with a slight peppering of crackheads). George Hamilton-esque Eurotrash dudes paraded around their trophy blondes whose faces were as tight as snare drums, while sound systems pumped out the best that the Euro-dance industry had to offer. What started as a good ol’ experiment to see how the Joneses are living quickly blew up in my face. I could feel the two-dollar chow mein hit my throat with every exaggerated kick-drum beat. Not that this section of town is any less then utterly putrid on a good night, but this was just too much for my RC Cola-loving little mind to handle.

Knowing full well that the Barfly is like kryptonite to the supertanned set, I made a bee-line for the place with no knowledge of who was playing, but knowing full well that there, I could finally return to my people. As soon as I got through the doors, I was blown away by a relatively unknown band called Trigger Effect, who pretty much made me forget all about hummers, car races and bad-leather Euro sneakers. Coming off like a rocked-out Dwarves or a punked-up Hellacopters, these guys just destroyed. With 15 songs squeezed into their 20-minute set, you couldn’t slide a rolling paper into the downtime between songs. Go see this band the next chance you get, because these guys are punk as fuck.

Tonight, DJ Tranpleasantexpress gives up half his psych night, Come Together at Zoobizarre, to Dandi Wind, AIDS Wolf side project Hamborghini, Halifax’s Be Bad and Gilbert Switzer. The big ticket this week would have to be Blue Cheer and the Sabbath- y stonerism of Witch (with J Mascis on the traps) at la Sala Rossa, but really making this an absolute not-miss is the debut performance of the Mongrels, featuring members of Tricky Woo, Blood Sausage, Bionic and Soft Canyon, in the opening slot. All I’m allowed to say is two—count ’em, two—drummers.

Barfly hosts Ottawa’s Four’N’Giv’r (ex-Resin Scraper) and the Solid Senders, with locals Glamorous Maggots, on Friday. Saturday, Crackpot promise a Patsy Cline cover when they play with a singer/songwriter who doesn’t actually suck, Norm Dionne, at Casa del Popolo. Sunday, Religious Knives (Double Leopards peeps) and Zodiac Mountain play at Friendship Cove, while the Brains, Toronto’s the Creepshow and Hellbound Hellcats dig up some rip-roarin’ psychobilly at l’Hémisphère Gauche.

R.I.P., TENNESSEE JOHN. jonathan.cummins@gmail.com

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