Nightlife 2000

>> Experimental jet-set trash and new stars Deconstructing the Mile-End "scene"

by ALI RAHMAN and LORRAINE CARPENTER

The long, flat stretch of St-Laurent between Hotel2Tango and Casa Del Popolo is speckled with convenience stores, decaying warehouses and a handful of utilitarian drinking holes. Occasional pockets of posh restaurants or cafés interrupt the quiet of the primarily residential district known as Mile-End. Bordered by the tracks in the slightly-more-desolate north, and enclosed on the south side by elevated Plateau rents, Mile-End has long been a low-key, low-rent urban mosaic of Portuguese and Italian immigrants. Ten years ago, few would have anticipated this area would garner an international mystique as the bleak and apocalyptic epicentre of Montreal's unique avant-garde music scene.

"This paper from Singapore asked us about the great Mile-End scene," says Fluffy, percussionist for the slow-tempo country band Molasses, with a laugh. "The scene is nothing more than a bunch of people living in one area and having a really cheap and convenient place to practice. It's not like there's a manifesto saying, 'Okay, we're gonna send this one band out on the road, we're going to have Alien8 do this one show.' We don't have weekly meetings or anything!"

"Yeah, it's not a conspiracy," adds Alien8 Records co-founder Sean O'Hara, "but there is a scene that's blossomed over the last three years, I guess. If you go to enough shows, you'll see the same people and get to know the cast of characters."

Mauro Pezzente, co-owner of Casa and one-ninth of godspeed you black emperor!, is wary about the word "scene" because of its exclusive connotations, but reluctantly agrees there is a growing musical community in which he and his club play a modest role.

So how did it all begin? Memories seem dim amongst the interviewees today, but any conversation about their early involvement with music invariably involves Hotel2Tango.

Room service

Hotel2Tango is a spacious institution that has served as a home, practice space, studio and venue to a number of different musicians. Pezzente and his girlfriend/business partner Kiva Stimac were the first residents of the Hotel.

"We moved there in 1995," recalls Pezzente, "and we thought it'd be a really great place to put on shows. So we started playing maybe one show a month and called the place Gallery Quiva. We'd sell beer and make a little money but after about six months, we couldn't handle living there anymore because of the constant exhaust and carbon monoxide from the garage below. So we left, and Effrim [another ninth of godspeed!] moved in, and renamed it Hotel2Tango."

The Hotel became synonymous with godspeed! as it became their defacto home-base, the place where they recorded their album, the place where they played all the time. Legend has it that all nine members of this elusive, epic rock band were squatting in a loft in a post-industrial, toxic part of town just off the tracks.

Contemporary folklore aside, the Hotel has truly served as multifaceted launch pad for a load of DIY bands who now represent the ever-growing Mile-End scene.

"There was a core group of bands practicing there," says Fluffy. "Exhaust, Fly Pan Am, Molasses and godspeed! It was a good space and it was affordable, there were a lot of bands sharing equipment and sharing members so it was convenient, especially if someone had two practices happening in the same day, which was often the case."

Fluffy now shares the place with Thierry, yet another ninth of godspeed! and bassist for Molasses and A Silver Mt. Zion. He recalls how he came to live there:

"I had a sideline job as a professional housesitter for three years when I was homeless. I took care of the cats there many times and I eventually decided I should settle down and live somewhere, and the Hotel was the cheapest place. It's a strange place to live because it's a public space that's used for many different things, so on any given morning there'll be 10 people around by the time I wake up. There's a lot of bands practicing and recording, the Bloodsisters do silk-screening there, and there used to be a carpenter who was up in the morning doing handiwork."

"The Hotel is getting a lot quieter these days," says Pezzente. The reason? Its large capacity and remote location versus the smaller, more central Casa Del Popolo, with which it shares a P.A. system.

"And they sell beer," adds O'Hara. "It's a more legit kind of enterprise and it's a nice little place, but if there's more than 50 people in there it's not comfortable at all."

So the Hotel will continue to play the larger shows and, according to Pezzente, "more emphasis will be put on the studio side of things."

Alien nation

Along with Constellation Records, Alien8 is the hub of "the studio side of things" for local extreme, experimental noise. Alien8 houses acts such as Molasses, David Kristian, Tomas Jirku, the Shalabi Effect and Japan's Merzbow, their first signing in 1996.

"No one really knew those artists at the time," says Fluffy. "Alien8 is responsible for a lot of recognition and opening up of people's ears towards experimental music."

The Alien8 ball got rolling when Dawson College and its student paper The Plant brought together O'Hara and Gary Worsley (whom you may know as the longhair from Cheap Thrills). The pair covered shows together and Worsley's job at the now-defunct Cargo Records--where Fluffy worked as well--opened the door to the business side of daring sounds.

"Cargo was always bringing in experimental music," says Fluffy. "It wasn't a big seller for sure but working in that environment you always had that opportunity to be exposed to new things. It was definitely good fodder."

"Gary said he thought he should do something with is life so he decided to start a record label and asked me if I wanted to help him," says O'Hara. "I didn't have much going on in my life either so I figured, why the hell not?

"We definitely don't have a manifesto. We're way more freeform than other labels. It sounds really trite to say, but the only thing all the music has to have in common is that we're into it at the time. We wouldn't release something that's completely vocal-oriented because we don't think that needs to be done by us, so there's definitely a focus on experimental music."

Being pioneers in their field in Canada, it's no surprise that O'Hara and Worsley have inspired others to follow in their footsteps, namely their longtime friend and "client" Fluffy:

"Our new label, Fancy, was definitely an inspiration from Alien8 in terms of realizing that it was a possibility, that you don't need a hell of a lot of money to start a record label."

Casa Del Godspeed!?

"Casa wasn't opened by godspeed!, it isn't godspeed! and it has no relation to godspeed!" says a slightly frustrated Pezzente. Considering he and Stimac put 16 hours a day into the place, his exasperation is justified. "Anyway, we really just wanted a place that was open to everybody. There aren't many vegetarian restaurants in this city, and not everyone can afford them. We were really worried at first that it would be this 20-something-only place, but no."

"We get older Portuguese guys coming in at lunch for espresso and brandy," adds Stimac, "or francophone couples for wine and soup."

Casa Del Popolo (meaning "house of the people") sprang from the ashes of the equally ambitious, albeit decrepit Artishow, and was not originally intended to be a venue. When Artishow dissolved, Pezzente and Stimac snagged the space, based on the strange condition that they ride out the remaining Artishow calendar. With that precedent set, and access to a vast network of talent, Casa has become Montreal's equivalent to NYC's Tonic, a place to see a variety of local and out-of-town experimental acts, spoken word perfor-mances and one-off collaborations adding more limbs to this incestuous body of music. It seems Casa Del Popolo is a fitting home for a musical force that's bold without being grand and humble without being slack. For the people, by the people. Q

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