Day 19: Montreal, QC
Welcome
Yesterday we played in Montreal, Quebec.
I found Montreal to be a pleasant city to explore on foot yesterday morning. Placid Thunder was parked on a back street opposite a colourful mural in the neighbourhood of Quartier des Spectacles, the city’s cultural district, north of downtown. My breakfast recommendation took me several kilometres north, a walk mostly along suburban streets lined with colourfully painted townhouses and the explosions of summer gardens that were taking over the footpaths. I steered my route to pass through La Fontaine Park, Saturday joggers and dog walkers taking over the footpaths and squirrels controlling the grass.
I emerged onto Ave Mont-Royal, a pedestrianised thoroughfare that was enjoying the population of bicycle tourists and Saturday strollers browsing the stores and restaurants. I found my spot easily because there was a line stretching along the footpath right to the end of the block; my breakfast recommendation must have been leaked to the media and now St-Viateur Bagel & Café was awash with visitors. Queuing for a popular food spot is one of my least favourite things to do but since I had already walked for forty-five minutes I decided to stick it out. It was another forty-five minutes in the queue and then I was allowed inside to place my order, a decision that had now become stressful after all the time I had invested to obtain this meal. I chose recklessly going with the WOW! - spicy marinated eggplant, lettuce, goat cheese, sun-dried tomato, and pesto, served on a sesame bagel.
At 2pm the venue was opened for us and we dropped trailer, meaning that we opened the rear door of the trailer. This was one of the tougher pushes (when we push our equipment from the trailer to the stage) as we had to climb a tall flight of stairs that had been made treacherous by the drizzly weather. Strong hands came from the Princess Chelsea band, young bucks who sacrificed their young bodies and hoisted the heavy cases without complaint.
We found ourselves inside a tall brick room, a former factory or warehouse that felt very industrial. This was Les Foufounes Électriques, (The Electric Buttocks), an iconic Montreal venue and a home for Quebec alternative music since 1983. I’m sure it has been scrubbed up somewhat since the early 80’s but it still felt pleasantly rough compared to some of the places we have visited on this tour. Gabe had his work cut out for him getting a tired old PA system to sparkle and there are many technical tricks that he employed that are well above my level of understanding. Here are some words about how this feat was achieved straight from the horse’s mouth.
The PA at this venue was back was rigged through homemade boxes and extra parts of JBL speakers found over years of scavenging. The two main speakers were spread wide enough to pass a British bowel movement, and there were two more speakers spread just the same upstairs in the balcony. Midway through soundtrack we realised that the upstairs half of the PA was not working due to a dead processor, so we found a new method of creating new sense internally in the console and manually designing crossovers for mid and tweeter. This was then checked by sending analog lines to specific amps that fed these bam homemade boxes and adjusted via a process of yelling. Once the speakers were set to a appropriate level to pass for acceptable we made our peace and called it wonderful and hoped nothing happened before we had to begin the set.
Midway through the side after noticing some very odd residence I was tapped by the resident sound engineer Mr Guy as he appropriately said oh yeah that happens. There is a popular note in music called D, which is heavily used in a wonderful and harmonious matter in the Beths Music. Within the harmonic octaves of this note there is a residence inside the homemade back roots boxes supplied to us that would occasionally go whoiigng. This is not ideal for live music in general. Finding no way to remove this I decided to accept the sonic stain and mixed into the stain to cover anything inappropriate throughout the rest of the night. I would have been more frustrated but as I said Mr Guy said this happens.
The stage was small so we pushed the amps and drums right back to the wall. Bird couldn’t fit, and even if they had they would have been burned to death by the searing wall of tungsten lights that hung overhead. Instead we fenced off a corner of the floor space and our inflatable Kingi got to spend some quality time with the audience.
We watched from the balcony as Princess Chelsea played their set. Tambourinist and vocalist Kate was out with a bruised rib. These guys play hard. The seven were now six and they gave it everything for the thirty-eight minutes they occupied the stage, attacking their instruments both playfully and and forcefully and putting on a beautiful show for the six hundred odd Québécois that were crammed into the standing room or enjoying a bird’s eye view.
It was surprising how good the stage sounded in this battered, old venue. I was squashed in right next to Tristan and that is my favourite spot on the stage, feeling the vibrations of the drums through my body and doing my best not to bash my instrument into anything. Jon and Liz held up their end of the stage with fiery solos and an immaculate lead vocal performance from end to end. It was another best show of the tour that we got to enjoy together and it was sad when we came to the end of the set and had to say goodbye to a wonderful audience.
The stairs had thankfully dried by time we loaded out and we carefully walked everything down and out to the trailer, holding onto the handrails and not taking any unnecessary risks, being watchful and careful, making safety our number one priority, and giving danger the big middle finger. We said goodbye to Princess Chelsea who were to spend an extra day in Montreal, and boarded Placid Thunder to await our early morning departure.
Before we left the confederation I was planning to do a review of all Canadian money but I seem to have misplaced most of my denominations save for a single Loonie and Toonie. I was impressed with both of these coins. The Toonie (pictured on the left) felt good between the fingers and flipped very nicely as long as you applied a generous thumb force. The bimetallic design makes visual identification easy and the nickel-plated steel of the outer ring ensures a durable coin with a long service life. The Loonie is an interesting shape - an eleven sided Reuleaux polygon - and is slightly smaller, lighter, and thinner than the Toonie. Its gold appearance is timeless and it handles well with basic tasks like spinning and scratchies. Admittedly I didn’t get a chance to put it through its paces with any coin slot-fed machines or self checkouts but I think that it would fare just fine. Both coins are tastefully illustrated and interesting enough that I didn’t get bored from looking at them for several minutes at a time.
The two designs: Polar Bear in early summer on an ice flow (left) and Common Loon in Water (right).