Hentucky Breaks & BU Presents – Brighton Beach
Saturday February 16th 2007 @ The Hideout – Toronto
Why Canada ey?! Why not? Probably not an answer with much insight however my whole time living in Canada was a bit like that. No real thought behind why I was going apart from needing to get away. One thing that did stick out was the emerging music scene which was dominating my musical play list. Bands like Broken Social Scene, The Arcade Fire, Stars and Death from Above 1979 where dominating my stereo a good couple of years before I went to Canada, and the creativity and high levels of musicianship and production without being too art school and accessible was inspiring.
So after moving to Toronto from living in Vancouver and randomly stumbling into an ‘Irish pub’ (I know I’m living the ex-pat dream…. Awful business), it was a nice and subtle place to put on a venue. After speaking to my flatmate I decided to go with it, and working with BU which was run by Josh, another person living the 1 year Visa dream from Norwich, we decided to go in together and really work at putting on this event.
After sorting the venue, we decided to work with a charity on promoting a local Toronto cause. One charity stood out from the rest, and after Josh reading the papers and thinking about how tough it must be to live on the streets during winter time in Toronto we decided to go for some sort of hunger charity. The Meal Exchange (MX) where the immediate choice going through various charities. Meeting with Dave Kranenburg and Amanda Ono was a good insight into what they did and what we wanted from the evening. Speaking about how the charity was functioning as a band-aid solution but looking forward for more foundation based changes really made sense that this charity was something we wanted to support. Not using overly idealistic/liberal sentiments but without being too corporate doing it for the reduction in tax liability, it was set.
Working with friends of friends trying to source bands we managed to blag “What the Thunder Said” to headline, with “Kae Sun” doing a MCing with the band. They where a bit of a proggy band, but with Kae Sun it worked well. The second band we managed to get was “Faith in 11,” a local acoustic band who would set up the evening nicely.
We initially had it planned for a Christmas event, but due to the bar changing ownership and some sort of dodgy previous bar owner and lack of communication, the new owners didn’t know nothing of our original agreement. It was tough, but the owners honoured our arrangement to put on the night for February. It was a set back but we had to get up and work with it in the end.
The bands where supportive as well, local press would chip in with their support for advertising our event… basically we managed to turn it around and keep the “putting a gig in Toronto dream alive.” Though another set back happened, Josh’s father was ill and unfortunately Josh had to fly back to England to see how he was doing, but basically couldn’t return back to the UK as a result. That was a big blow, but we’re glad to say his dad is doing great.
So with so much against it, we still went on to put a great show. With the help of all the bands, friends of the bands contributing in their own way it turned out to be a superb but stressful evening. The Hideout probably saw about 3-400 people go through their doors on the evening and over $300 was raised for the MX. I would have thought this amount would have been bigger, but still raising awareness for the charity without ramming information down peoples throats was hopefully a by product from this. I took to the decks after the bands where finished to play a Hentucky set, however our final setback came. The owners wanted “Rock & Roll” (said in a vicious Colin Farrell accent). It was already discussed that we where playing a party set which included a mixture of everything, but the bar was adamant we played that type of music. It was a case of play what they wanted or fuck off, so I took one for the team and played one of the most soul destroying sets of my life. Not to sound to melo-dramatic of course, but Djing for money is not something I would want to do, and happily earn my money in an office than being a DJ whore playing shit I couldn’t really care for. REGARDLESS, the people in the venue managed to have a good time, and people danced, and it wasn’t that bad reflecting on it. All things considering the odds where against us pulling this off but it worked and MX got some money and awareness out of it, which was the most important thing.
Written by Ivan Madeira
