My most harrowing Pop Montreal experience? Well there was that time I got into an intense Sergio Leone style stare down with a bearded bespectacled puma aficionado in front of the Divan Orange because I brushed up against his expensive though none-the-less ugly sneakers. Then there was the time I had to run across the Mile End (which betrays its name by being far longer than a mile) to get to an Islands show only to find out it was behind schedule and I could have taken a leisurely stroll down Park-Avenue instead of a beer-fueled Olympian dash. And I could never forget going with a date to see Devin the Dude. I enjoyed the show tremendously but it turns out the object of my affections was really more of the Sage Francis type. Ouch.
But none of those moments compare to the cursed night where I ran face to face with dreaded Time Pope.
Waitaminute…what in John-Blazes is a Time Pope?
Well, he has nothing to do with Catholicism for one thing. All I know is that he sits on a throne in a huge room filled with golden light and watches…errr…time. But he’s very scary about it and…well maybe I should start from the beginning.
It was October 2007 and a friend and I had decided to go see Pop Levi’s live show at one of the many fine venues littering St-Laurent. I had randomly stumbled on the guy’s music a few months earlier and was hyped to see how his whole electronica-based-glam-revival would play out on stage. Plus I had nothing better to do and the tickets were reasonably priced. Now my usual concert preparation is rather tame: a few beers, maybe half a joint and I’m good for the night. Far from being the guy getting himself kicked out of a show, I usually play the wall or (if the mood is right) flail around the dance floor like a most peculiar marine animal suddenly thrown out of its natural habitat and performing a new step called “where the oxygen at?”. But there would be none of that tonight: no drinking and certainly no flailing. Instead, seeing as the Liverpudlian’s music was vaguely psychedelic I decided to make use of a 3 month old bag of mushrooms passed on to me by a friend who had suddenly skipped town for a 6 month long Indian escape.
Now, the thing about 3 month old bags of shrooms passed on through about 20 people is that it’s difficult to certify their origins whether or not they were tampered with along the way. I wasn’t worried about it at the time, but I certainly would have been if I knew they’d cause me to go face-to-face with the angriest Temporal-religious leader this side of the the Clock-devil.
Ironically enough, this could have all been avoided if I had been timelier, which in Montreal terms means “had I showed up a few hours late”. Naively taking said Mushrooms at 8:00 an hour before the doors to the Green Room opened, I forgot to take into account the innumerable opening acts that would grace the “stage” (more on that later) before Pop Levi did his thing. So as I walked up Laurier from my Residence towards the Ubi Soft building, I didn’t realize that there would be no “Skip Ghetto” for several hours. On the plus side, the walk was tremendously entertaining: all flashing lights, a colorful shapes and what not. The friend who was accompanying me to the show was somewhat miffed at his state of sobriety but fuck it, spontaneous fungi consumption doesn’t lend itself to adequate supply management. In other words I had nothing for him.
Problems began to occur when we arrived at the venue: it was empty. In my current state of mind, this was a dramatic problem, one that was exacerbated as I became increasingly paranoid. A darkened room with minimal music playing was not the proper atmosphere for my current mind state, so was hastily got our wrists stamped and retreated to the open safety of the street. Now for some reason, my friend was singing a dorky country song that night: we were starting to look like Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy what with my mumbling and staring and the ground Rizzo Ratso like and his “garsh-shucks” yodeling. It was at this point that I met the Time Pope.
He was sitting down, staring into the void, focusing at me and I could clearly make out his shape through the cracks in the city’s potholed concrete. Threatening me, he began ranting about time, space and everything collapsing on itself which thoroughly freaked me out. Even in my dilapidated state, I knew that I’d disturbed something that did NOT want to be disturbed. Ruby red eyes flashed, fire came out of nostrils and epic Hanz-Zimmer inspired choirs sang menacing themes from rejected movie scripts. I tried to explain all of this to my friend but he was getting more than slightly annoyed at my delusions and dragged me back inside the Green Room in an attempt to knock some sense back into me.
This was the final nail in the coffin, as the room was now full of figures dashing in and out of shadows. My paranoia had hit its apex and I could see assassins lurking and darting in and out of the gloom like a bad Wu-Tang Clan video. As I huddled in a corner staring at this strange scene and demanding to be returned to the comforts of home and sanity, one of the opening acts began to perform…in the middle of the room. Whatever happened to a clearly defined stage area? Now, I was assured by many sober and objective people in attendance that night (most of whom I didn’t bump into thankfully) that this was a terrible example of experimental dance/theater/spoken word, no matter what substances you were on.
But I’ll tell you something, it was a hell of a lot worse given the substances I was on. Particularly when I stared into the performers eyes and saw the same face as I had on the Time Pope!
The combination of weird electronic bloops, a dancing Time Pope with a microphone demanding crowd participation and the hallucinogenics proved too much as I ran out with the quickness and didn’t stop until I’d reached the safety of my apartment. Thankfully, the delirium subsided soon after though I couldn’t properly piece everything together until the next day. My friend (who’d managed to get past the opening acts) said that Pop Levi was quite entertaining and he was totally baffled at why I’d had been so terrified and ran out. I still don’t have a good answer for him.
And so goes the tale of my epic battle with destiny. Ironically, I still haven’t been back to the Green Room: I was supposed to see the Apples in Stereo there last winter but they canceled at the last minute. So yeah. I don’t know if this story warrants a free pass: I mean, everything that happened is no one’s fault but my own. But I really could use the pass: see, I’m saving up for a trip to Thailand this winter and I hear they have some wicked plant life there…
My most harrowing Pop Montreal experience? Well there was that time I got into an intense Sergio Leone style stare down with a bearded bespectacled puma aficionado in front of the Divan Orange because I brushed up against his expensive though none-the-less ugly sneakers. Then there was the time I had to run across the Mile End (which betrays its name by being far longer than a mile) to get to an Islands show only to find out it was behind schedule and I could have taken a leisurely stroll down Park-Avenue instead of a beer-fueled Olympian dash. And I could never forget going with a date to see Devin the Dude. I enjoyed the show tremendously but it turns out the object of my affections was really more of the Sage Francis type. Ouch.
But none of those moments compare to the cursed night where I ran face to face with dreaded Time Pope.
Waitaminute…what in John-Blazes is a Time Pope?
Well, he has nothing to do with Catholicism for one thing. All I know is that he sits on a throne in a huge room filled with golden light and watches…errr…time. But he’s very scary about it and…well maybe I should start from the beginning.
It was October 2007 and a friend and I had decided to go see Pop Levi’s live show at one of the many fine venues littering St-Laurent. I had randomly stumbled on the guy’s music a few months earlier and was hyped to see how his whole electronica-based-glam-revival would play out on stage. Plus I had nothing better to do and the tickets were reasonably priced. Now my usual concert preparation is rather tame: a few beers, maybe half a joint and I’m good for the night. Far from being the guy getting himself kicked out of a show, I usually play the wall or (if the mood is right) flail around the dance floor like a most peculiar marine animal suddenly thrown out of its natural habitat and performing a new step called “where the oxygen at?”. But there would be none of that tonight: no drinking and certainly no flailing. Instead, seeing as the Liverpudlian’s music was vaguely psychedelic I decided to make use of a 3 month old bag of mushrooms passed on to me by a friend who had suddenly skipped town for a 6 month long Indian escape.
Now, the thing about 3 month old bags of shrooms passed on through about 20 people is that it’s difficult to certify their origins whether or not they were tampered with along the way. I wasn’t worried about it at the time, but I certainly would have been if I knew they’d cause me to go face-to-face with the angriest Temporal-religious leader this side of the the Clock-devil.
Ironically enough, this could have all been avoided if I had been timelier, which in Montreal terms means “had I showed up a few hours late”. Naively taking said Mushrooms at 8:00 an hour before the doors to the Green Room opened, I forgot to take into account the innumerable opening acts that would grace the “stage” (more on that later) before Pop Levi did his thing. So as I walked up Laurier from my Residence towards the Ubi Soft building, I didn’t realize that there would be no “Skip Ghetto” for several hours. On the plus side, the walk was tremendously entertaining: all flashing lights, a colorful shapes and what not. The friend who was accompanying me to the show was somewhat miffed at his state of sobriety but fuck it, spontaneous fungi consumption doesn’t lend itself to adequate supply management. In other words I had nothing for him.
Problems began to occur when we arrived at the venue: it was empty. In my current state of mind, this was a dramatic problem, one that was exacerbated as I became increasingly paranoid. A darkened room with minimal music playing was not the proper atmosphere for my current mind state, so was hastily got our wrists stamped and retreated to the open safety of the street. Now for some reason, my friend was singing a dorky country song that night: we were starting to look like Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy what with my mumbling and staring and the ground Rizzo Ratso like and his “garsh-shucks” yodeling. It was at this point that I met the Time Pope.
He was sitting down, staring into the void, focusing at me and I could clearly make out his shape through the cracks in the city’s potholed concrete. Threatening me, he began ranting about time, space and everything collapsing on itself which thoroughly freaked me out. Even in my dilapidated state, I knew that I’d disturbed something that did NOT want to be disturbed. Ruby red eyes flashed, fire came out of nostrils and epic Hanz-Zimmer inspired choirs sang menacing themes from rejected movie scripts. I tried to explain all of this to my friend but he was getting more than slightly annoyed at my delusions and dragged me back inside the Green Room in an attempt to knock some sense back into me.
This was the final nail in the coffin, as the room was now full of figures dashing in and out of shadows. My paranoia had hit its apex and I could see assassins lurking and darting in and out of the gloom like a bad Wu-Tang Clan video. As I huddled in a corner staring at this strange scene and demanding to be returned to the comforts of home and sanity, one of the opening acts began to perform…in the middle of the room. Whatever happened to a clearly defined stage area? Now, I was assured by many sober and objective people in attendance that night (most of whom I didn’t bump into thankfully) that this was a terrible example of experimental dance/theater/spoken word, no matter what substances you were on.
But I’ll tell you something, it was a hell of a lot worse given the substances I was on. Particularly when I stared into the performers eyes and saw the same face as I had on the Time Pope!
The combination of weird electronic bloops, a dancing Time Pope with a microphone demanding crowd participation and the hallucinogenics proved too much as I ran out with the quickness and didn’t stop until I’d reached the safety of my apartment. Thankfully, the delirium subsided soon after though I couldn’t properly piece everything together until the next day. My friend (who’d managed to get past the opening acts) said that Pop Levi was quite entertaining and he was totally baffled at why I’d had been so terrified and ran out. I still don’t have a good answer for him.
And so goes the tale of my epic battle with destiny. Ironically, I still haven’t been back to the Green Room: I was supposed to see the Apples in Stereo there last winter but they canceled at the last minute. So yeah. I don’t know if this story warrants a free pass: I mean, everything that happened is no one’s fault but my own. But I really could use the pass: see, I’m saving up for a trip to Thailand this winter and I hear they have some wicked plant life there…