The El MocamboToronto, Ontario
September 23, 1999
Should I stay or should I go?
I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to leave Thursday for Toronto after class and see 4-Star Movie or leave Friday. I decided the more shows, the merrier and left Thursday after buying a large coffee (triple, triple) to make sure I didn't fall asleep at the wheel during the 5 hour drive. Chrissy had given me very detailed directions on how to get to her new house, and I still managed to miss the turn off and get lost. Somehow, I ended up on the right road and called her, I was only 10 minutes away. I was to meet Davina at her subway stop at 9, but Chrissy forced me to eat pizza so I thought I was going to be late. I saw Mike and Jay Meligrove at one of the subway stops and waved. The old man sitting across from me was delighted to see Jay running after the subway and also waved. Davina turned out to be late, so (of course) we were late getting to the El Mocambo.
We always meet interesting people when we're with the Meligrove Punks and Dylan
4-Star Movie (Poster Girl Records!!! Yeah!) were to be on stage at 11:20pm, and we showed up around 10. The very moment we were showing our ID to the big Bouncer guys, Jay and Mike Meligrove were exiting the Elmo. And Dylan too! It is a well known fact that he day is never boring when Dylan is around. As we loitered infront of the door, a drunk guy came along & informed us that he's going to swim across Lake Ontario (or was it the Atlantic?) and he had thick enough skin to do it! It's 6" thick, really! We wished him luck and he stumbled off.
Paid
The El Mocambo has fancy handstamps. At least, they did on this occasion. The door guy drew a smily face on each of our hands with a Crayola marker. "Wow," I commented, "These are pretty high-tech. Aren't you worried there will be forgeries?" And he said "No. These are rarities. Everyone's is different. Yours may one day be worth $15 million dollars. And hers [pointing to Davina] might be worth $5 million. Or, maybe hers will be worth $10 million and yours $2 million. You never really know." Unfortunately they washed off the next day - next time he should use permanent marker instead. We were also given black and red 4-Star Movie stickers with a yellow star. I already had one because Mike Meligrove was trying to woo me and gave me one when we were waiting outside.
The Co-operators
The Co-operators were on as we walked in. The bassist had the coolest moves, rocking back and forth, back and forth... Mike Meligrove promised that he'd copy them on Saturday when the Meligrove Punks opened for the Pansy Division. The drummer had poofy curly blond hair & rock glasses, and was spotted at the Guided By Voices show the next night. He is the only one who can claim to jump the stage and get spanked by Bob Pollard. The lead singer had on a lilac dress & matching lilac nylons (I was not aware they came in these colours) with red & black shoes. I think Davina wanted to dress like that from now on. Or not. That's all I can really remember about them.
Peaches is the best band EVER!
Peaches was on next. Peaches is one girl with a sound board. (We don't know the exact technical name for the board, so that'll have to do. It had all sorts of dials on it) She was very interesting actually. The songs were Techno and, um, awful. I'm just not into Techno, I guess. A sample lyric: "That dog is mine (click ooom chhh) that dog is mine..." Yes, that's all I have to say about Peaches. I think it was around this point that Jay Meligrove was panicking because he had twisted my mini slinky all up and was trying to untwist it - which was more interesting then Peaches.
4-Star Movie
Finally, the band we came to see. Both Jay Meligrove & Dylan asked if I thought the lead singer resembled Mike O'Neill. I agreed, he sort of did, same hair or something. Definitely not the same voice though - it reminded us of Ben of the Local Rabbits - we kept expecting him to sing "When I say 'Sally' you say 'ANN' ". There's only 3 guys in 4-Star, and the sort-of-Mike-look-a-like switched with bassist for a few songs. Part way through their wanted anyone who knew Spanish to say something. Jay Meligrove yelled out "Yo tengo un gato en mis pantalones!" "What's that mean?" they asked. "I've got a cat in my pants!" says Jay - they approved. I wasn't very familiar with 4-Star Movie, but heard many good things about them, and they're on Poster Girl so I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. Dylan said they played a lot of new stuff, Jay was dissatisfied and kept yelling for them to play "Macarena". I almost bought the cd the next day.
Spotted:
1) 2 members of By Divine Right (Dylan spotted them)
2) Jen AND Davina of jendavina fame