Montréal Part 3: Sleeping In The Midday Sun, Don't

28 October 2006
I met Marc-O's girlfriend, Marie, who makes fantastic coffee on top of being as nice as our esteemed hipster. The afternoon's events are kind of hazy now, and I do think we left the apartment for some reason. Not to get the Love Is All tickets, those we had gotten at Atom Heart. If I'm keen, I may edit these posts so this fact is reflected in the previous one instead of this, but I'm sketchy on so many details that I'll let my stream-of-consciousness approach guide me through the rest of this recap.

We all went for dinner at a great Vietnamese place, where I had some kickass soup, some wickedass rolls, and I taught myself to use chop sticks adequately. Marc-O's concert hopping friend Seb met us at the end of our meal, and we proceeded through the streets of Montréal in the rain and wind, a trek where umbrellas were recommended but useless. We ducked under an overpass and finally made it to the venue, but the doors weren't open to the public yet so holed away at an adjacent bar where we watched the Canadiens assault the Leafs and got a headstart on drinking.

When we got into the concert hall, there were few people with whom to compete for tables, so we secured some of the few available seats and continued to sample some locally brewed ales. I investigated the merch table, which had a few CD singles, some vinyl, and a bunch of too-pink t-shirts. The guy manning the table didn't have a price list, but he spoke to me briefly. I told him I was from Nova Scotia and had traveled a long ways to meet some friends and see the Fiery Furnaces. He thought that was cool and said he was Love Is All's tour manager. He then ushered me to the centre of the room to ask what I thought of the the merch area. I told him it wasn't aesthetically displeasing and that the few red bulbs that hummed down on the (again) pinkesh products was nice and subtle. A few strangers approached him, at which point I joined the fellas at the table.

I forget the opening acts' names, but the first band reminded me of an industrial We Are Wolves; a poor man's WAW, if you will. The second act was a James Bluntian fiasco, some guy who supposedly drums for another band. Marc-O remarked that he was a fairly competent drummer to which I replied Phil Collins was the same. I also sang a line from that horrid James Blunt song, the equivalent of me going on stage and kicking the guy's ass (in terms of indie insult). Anyway, this fucker had a strummy song during which he repeated the phrase sleeping in the midday sun way too much. This tag line is destined to become an inside joke with me. I apologize in advance to those of you who will be subjected to it. Just pray you never hear the music that inspired it.

Love Is All were fantastic. They don't play very tight, but that free-spiritedness is what makes them and their music kind of special. Marc-O and I were head-boppin' it up at the table, and fun was had by all. I bought the CD singles alluded to above, and we took it to the streets. We were half in the bag at this point, and Seb stumbled into a Petro Canada station to return with cheap cigars that might as well have been obsconded from Castro's lips after that much booze. Well, I guess they did taste pretty awful. I even bit the end off of mine, thinking it was necessary, but they had already been clipped. Yep, cheap. Marc-O managed to cleave his, and I don't remember exactly how. He also purchased a bunch of bagels for us to share, but I wouldn't try any until the following morning.

We found another watering hole where we ought to have ordered water, but it was beer and foozeball for us. In a calamity of errors, Marc-O approached the staff to ask whether Bleu Nuit always played on a Saturday night, not the least bit offended by naked female bodies onscreen, but the channel was then shifted to a badminton match against my will. Fast forward to me hugging the bowl of Marc-O's toilet, puking twice, and passing out on the mattress that would be more and more of a warm blanket as the week progressed. Sleeping. In the midday. Sun.