Good excuses

by by JACK OATMON

My best advice to you this week is to start looking at advance tickets for stuff in March right now. If you play your cards right, you stand to see, among many others, Digitalism, Bloc Party, Justice, TV on the Radio, Of Montreal, the Presets and Lo-Fi-Fnk, all in one month. That stuff sells out fast, and for you students, there’s the added expense of bribing people to do all the homework you’re going to botch in the name of concerts this spring.

While March is probably going to completely ruin us all, February still has a few last shindigs to dish out. Check it out:

Something about the line-up seems like a portent for an audience of disaffected teenagers wearing hoodies and black mascara, but if you’re in the mood for some danceable rock, synth-pop and other such assorted new wave derivatives, check out Mobile, Uberko and the Mission District at le Spectrum on Friday.

On Saturday, masher-upper DJ C returns to Ghislain Poirier’s Bounce le Gros at Main Hall for some groovy dub, synth-reggae and jungle beats. Riddim Wise Sound System will be alongside, vibrating your teeth right from the floor up through your skeleton with 1.21 gigawatts of bass.

Word is that there are 150 tickets floating around town for TTC’s low-key Monday-night album launch at la Sala Rossa. Check for tickets (fast) at Off the Hook on Ste-Catherine and Peel, or call Admissions. Don’t worry, though, they’ll be back for a real party before long. I pray to the clubbing gods that the promoters bring in a few extra speakers for the show. While I love la Sala Rossa, it has to have one of the worst sound systems on the Plateau, which is baffling when you consider the amount of amazing acts that appear there in a month.

Lastly, after just over a year as Montreal’s seediest Sunday-night dance-off (barring perhaps Central Station’s

longstanding Sunday-night No-neck Yeyo-hork Marathon), Bender and Sean Kosa’s No Excuse night throws in the towel at Stereobar this Sunday. With no harm meant, I’m a little bemused to see that the fine line-up, which features Marinelli, Clifford Brown, Bender and Vega, doesn’t include Sean himself. Perhaps it’s personal, but for me, No Excuse was always about going to Balroom on Sunday night and getting rat-arsed with Sean and then stumbling to a friend’s place at 4:30 a.m. in a panic to find a computer and pound out the rest of the week’s writing for my Monday-morning deadlines. It was always vaguely humanizing to see I wasn’t the only one around who still wanted to slurp down Jägermeister and listen to techno on Sunday night. So, No Excuse, for your esoteric musical leanings, your easy morals and your freaky, perhaps even frightening, clientele, Disco Volante salutes you! Adios, amigos.

Washed-up revival acts, screw off…jack.oatmon@gmail.com