Miniskirt mob

>> Toronto’s Kaleidoscope night gives Montreal the once-over

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

For one night only, Montreal and Toronto’s most prominent ’60s beat revivalists join forces for a freaked-out Technicolor extravaganza called Kaleidoscope, a weekly club night at Toronto’s Rancho Relaxo magically transported to our own Sala Rossa. Yéyé stompers les Séquelles and DJ Mimi la Twisteuse represent our local French phantasmagoria, while expatriate DJ Flipped Out—once of CKUT’s Subterranean Jungle—flips off the 401 with a few go-go dancers and liquid lights in tow, as well as Kaleidoscope DJ and hostess Christian Hamilton.
Hamilton’s soft spot for the ’60s sprouted from the record collections of her three older brothers and stuck in the same groove most of her life. Even a rebellious pre-teen foray into ’80s pop eventually led back to psychedelic sounds.

“Once you listen to experimental, German, psych-art-rock from the late ’60s, like Can, you can’t go back to the Thompson Twins. It’s sort of game over,” says Hamilton, who learned of Can from a T-Twins interview (much to her embarrassment).

Treating Toronto to her purist tastes for nearly a decade, Hamilton jumped at the chance to bring Kaleidoscope to the more studious record collectors of la belle province. “The people I know in Montreal know their music very well, but there’s not a huge ’60s trend. It’s completely the opposite in Toronto, to be perfectly honest. I see an awful lot of people who are very into the fashion of the ’60s but really don’t understand the music at all.”
Rival Toronto soirées like the ever-popular Blow Up boast a steady stream of (so-called?) ’60s-savvy mods with their scooters, parkas and pills, but Hamilton sees a fly in the ointment. “I can see the psychedelic link to the early Manchester scene, but calling your night purist mod while playing Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s just not right.”

With Kaleidoscope, her Dementia 13 radio program and her full-time ’60s aesthetic, Hamilton knows the other side of finger-pointing but chooses to keep on swingin’. “My friends and I kinda get called first-on-the-block psychedelic elitists. People think it’s a bit weird that we’re so into it, but it’s simply a fun hobby that makes life interesting.” :

At la Sala Rossa on Saturday, Feb. 16, 9pm, $7