Throw Your Arms Around A Rainbow
I really felt like kicking it last night. Not the bucket, just a good old fashioned shaking of the ass.
I had been doing some research into new dance spots in Toronto lately. Though I generally like the music they play at The Dance Cave, the upstairs dance area of one of the best spots to see live music - Lee's Palace, they've lately been hit or miss.
The last time I'd been to the Cave was post crushing-blow of the Interpol concert. After receiving emotive distain from the bass player during his post-show DJ foray there, he'd assaulted us by use of one of my Top 20: Spandau Ballet's True. I was offended. I nostalgically remember this song as a sweet little spot in high school, not in a dingy dance bar infested with Kraft Dinner eating college kids born in the 80's. He was mocking us. That was the second time that night.
I did a search on one of the local entertainment rags, NOW magazine, with the parameters set to Indie Rock and discovered The Labyrinth Lounge.
It has 2 adjoining rooms, one long, very skinny mosaic bar, cheap (relative) drinks - a pint of Stella and a vodka shot requires $8.75 of my hard earned money. The room was decidedly Sausage Fest. There were a couple of relatively hot numbers, but I was not interested in that. I was interested in...
The Sound.
The DJ was set up in the adjacent room, center-stage. He spun from CD's, which is still kind of weird for me to see. But he was spinning Postal Service, New Order, Interpol, The Police, Pulp and something else I didn't recognise.
So I asked.
He leaned over to the table next to the booth and had a mini conversation with a very arty looking fella with shoulder length hair and a winter scarf on. As it was too *deliciously* loud to be coherent, the DJ simply pointed and yelled, "Ask him." Arty.
Okay.
"Do you know anything about this band," I asked.
"It's me," he replied.
"What do you mean," I asked, as I'm very stupid sometimes.
"This is my music; I'm playing; it's me."
Then I gushed.
It started with a slow and delicious bassline, simple, matching drum in offset rhythm. Flanged guitar. Sweet, sweet vocals... haunting. A little like Interpol, a little like New Order, a little like Jarvis. Alright, alright, decidedly a little derivative, but still sweet in the chambers of this mind and body.
His name was Rainbow(?). I repeated it with a serious question mark across my face. He nodded. Rainbow.
I think I grabbed a tuft of his hair at the nape of his neck and began scratching softly with my knuckles as I was telling him what he was doing was both beautiful and important. I asked him if he had any CDs to sell, because I was in the market to buy.
He hadn't. Damn.
I think I bitched him out for that. Can't really remember as the vodka had kicked in. I thanked him again and left to go back to my party.
The shitty thing about Toronto is there are very few places to actually dance. There's music played everywhere, but if you just want to kick it, old school, and enjoy the anonymity of dancing like a fiend, surrounded by other fiends and not get noticed, they are very few and far between. That's why the Dance Cave is so appealing. It's really dark and everyone just dances for the sake of dancing and no one looks at you. It's not a meat market. It's simply a mode of exorcising whatever needs expelling at the moment. Everyone silently acknowledges that and leaves everyone else alone. The Lounge, where we were last night, was not dark; no one was dancing and if someone, say me, started shaking anything there was notice taken.
I love dancing. I love everything about dancing, except being looked at. It makes me too aware of myself, too self-conscious, where I don't want to be. I just want to *be*. I think that was the deciding factor for leaving the Lounge and making a stab at the Dance Cave, just for the anonymity. So we left.
Luckily there was no cover there. The music was shit in comparison and the place, save 3 souls, was barren.
So we went back to the Lounge, said "fuck it", with the full promise of dancing, for real! The good thing about vodka is it enables you to block out other people. So I'm blocking and dancing and dancing and blocking and then... Rainbow comes up to me.
With a disk.
He wanted me to have his single!
I think I yelped and spontaneously threw my arms around his neck and thanked him profusely. The rest of the evening was spent uttering broken sentences that contained "disk", "Rainbow's" "me!". Ad infinitum.
When I insert a disk in iTunes, it automatically searches the online database and names the track and artist. It did so, but it didn't make any sense. What the database came up with was:
Jimmy Dean (title), Molotov Cocktail, Inc (artist). I spent some time googling the thing. I'm sure it's not named properly, as Molotov Cocktail, Inc is a Buffalo, NY band that has reggae roots. Rainbow is decidedly "white" in sound. Admittedly I panicked a bit. I don't know who this person is! How can I really talk about him to others? How can I really help with his career? How can I get his sound out? No one will know who he is. All I have is Rainbow and blogger's not letting me upload mp3's to this site.
Shit.
Sometimes I feel so responsible for people.
And then I thought about the series of events.
I'd never been to this new place. The music was wonderful and the DJ was exemplary. He had to tell us to "g'wan" when we gave him too many props. It was just a steady stream of "niiiicce" from me. Because no one was dancing we left the first time in search of a better place. Because there was virtually no one at the Cave and the music was shit, we left there and went back to the Lounge. Had we not gone back to the Lounge, Rainbow wouldn't have given me his disk. If Rainbow hadn't have given me his disk, I wouldn't have thrown my arms around his neck. If I hadn't thrown my arms around Rainbow's neck he wouldn't have left with a smile on his face, one CD lighter. Had we not stayed until the end, when the chairs were being stacked on top of tables, Death Cab's Transatlanticism wouldn't have been the last song played.
But it was.
And I find myself with an enormous amount of gratitude today.
I had been doing some research into new dance spots in Toronto lately. Though I generally like the music they play at The Dance Cave, the upstairs dance area of one of the best spots to see live music - Lee's Palace, they've lately been hit or miss.
The last time I'd been to the Cave was post crushing-blow of the Interpol concert. After receiving emotive distain from the bass player during his post-show DJ foray there, he'd assaulted us by use of one of my Top 20: Spandau Ballet's True. I was offended. I nostalgically remember this song as a sweet little spot in high school, not in a dingy dance bar infested with Kraft Dinner eating college kids born in the 80's. He was mocking us. That was the second time that night.
I did a search on one of the local entertainment rags, NOW magazine, with the parameters set to Indie Rock and discovered The Labyrinth Lounge.
It has 2 adjoining rooms, one long, very skinny mosaic bar, cheap (relative) drinks - a pint of Stella and a vodka shot requires $8.75 of my hard earned money. The room was decidedly Sausage Fest. There were a couple of relatively hot numbers, but I was not interested in that. I was interested in...
The Sound.
The DJ was set up in the adjacent room, center-stage. He spun from CD's, which is still kind of weird for me to see. But he was spinning Postal Service, New Order, Interpol, The Police, Pulp and something else I didn't recognise.
So I asked.
He leaned over to the table next to the booth and had a mini conversation with a very arty looking fella with shoulder length hair and a winter scarf on. As it was too *deliciously* loud to be coherent, the DJ simply pointed and yelled, "Ask him." Arty.
Okay.
"Do you know anything about this band," I asked.
"It's me," he replied.
"What do you mean," I asked, as I'm very stupid sometimes.
"This is my music; I'm playing; it's me."
Then I gushed.
It started with a slow and delicious bassline, simple, matching drum in offset rhythm. Flanged guitar. Sweet, sweet vocals... haunting. A little like Interpol, a little like New Order, a little like Jarvis. Alright, alright, decidedly a little derivative, but still sweet in the chambers of this mind and body.
His name was Rainbow(?). I repeated it with a serious question mark across my face. He nodded. Rainbow.
I think I grabbed a tuft of his hair at the nape of his neck and began scratching softly with my knuckles as I was telling him what he was doing was both beautiful and important. I asked him if he had any CDs to sell, because I was in the market to buy.
He hadn't. Damn.
I think I bitched him out for that. Can't really remember as the vodka had kicked in. I thanked him again and left to go back to my party.
The shitty thing about Toronto is there are very few places to actually dance. There's music played everywhere, but if you just want to kick it, old school, and enjoy the anonymity of dancing like a fiend, surrounded by other fiends and not get noticed, they are very few and far between. That's why the Dance Cave is so appealing. It's really dark and everyone just dances for the sake of dancing and no one looks at you. It's not a meat market. It's simply a mode of exorcising whatever needs expelling at the moment. Everyone silently acknowledges that and leaves everyone else alone. The Lounge, where we were last night, was not dark; no one was dancing and if someone, say me, started shaking anything there was notice taken.
I love dancing. I love everything about dancing, except being looked at. It makes me too aware of myself, too self-conscious, where I don't want to be. I just want to *be*. I think that was the deciding factor for leaving the Lounge and making a stab at the Dance Cave, just for the anonymity. So we left.
Luckily there was no cover there. The music was shit in comparison and the place, save 3 souls, was barren.
So we went back to the Lounge, said "fuck it", with the full promise of dancing, for real! The good thing about vodka is it enables you to block out other people. So I'm blocking and dancing and dancing and blocking and then... Rainbow comes up to me.
With a disk.
He wanted me to have his single!
I think I yelped and spontaneously threw my arms around his neck and thanked him profusely. The rest of the evening was spent uttering broken sentences that contained "disk", "Rainbow's" "me!". Ad infinitum.
When I insert a disk in iTunes, it automatically searches the online database and names the track and artist. It did so, but it didn't make any sense. What the database came up with was:
Jimmy Dean (title), Molotov Cocktail, Inc (artist). I spent some time googling the thing. I'm sure it's not named properly, as Molotov Cocktail, Inc is a Buffalo, NY band that has reggae roots. Rainbow is decidedly "white" in sound. Admittedly I panicked a bit. I don't know who this person is! How can I really talk about him to others? How can I really help with his career? How can I get his sound out? No one will know who he is. All I have is Rainbow and blogger's not letting me upload mp3's to this site.
Shit.
Sometimes I feel so responsible for people.
And then I thought about the series of events.
I'd never been to this new place. The music was wonderful and the DJ was exemplary. He had to tell us to "g'wan" when we gave him too many props. It was just a steady stream of "niiiicce" from me. Because no one was dancing we left the first time in search of a better place. Because there was virtually no one at the Cave and the music was shit, we left there and went back to the Lounge. Had we not gone back to the Lounge, Rainbow wouldn't have given me his disk. If Rainbow hadn't have given me his disk, I wouldn't have thrown my arms around his neck. If I hadn't thrown my arms around Rainbow's neck he wouldn't have left with a smile on his face, one CD lighter. Had we not stayed until the end, when the chairs were being stacked on top of tables, Death Cab's Transatlanticism wouldn't have been the last song played.
But it was.
And I find myself with an enormous amount of gratitude today.
posted by Comrade Chicken at
1:37 p.m.
4 Comments:
a carlos d. sighting is a running joke around these parts. you can't walk two blocks in the east village without a sighting, glare through the goth bangs guaranteed. i hear he has a thing for gothy big girls, not that there's anything wrong with that. the thing about his djing is that he always plays the same stuff, in the same order, every time. i dj at bars sometimes and i do have my favorites, to be sure, but i'm not a fucking robot! i just find that highly annoying.
By
whatever, at 3:08 p.m.
Hey, so was this a burned disk? Is it possible that what your ipod searched out was erneous information. It could simply match up wish a song that is a CD that can be re-written. Perhaps a bunch of songs match this profile. Look ups usually occur against the CD profile, not simply a burned CD, this is why I ask.
By
Anonymous, at 9:00 p.m.
I'm not sure! Sob. Thank you. Your suggestion seems likely, but doesn't help my plight. I liken this to a bet I lost in the summer over thinking that She Don't Use Jelly was by The Flaming Lips. I was downloading it and whomever was naming it cut and pasted the wrong artist.
Hence The Comrade's Top 20 was born.
By
Comrade Chicken, at 10:48 a.m.
sorry... I keep posting annonymously, I have to remember to sign Zontar after my posts....
By
Anonymous, at 2:49 p.m.
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