Cool Times in the City

So I was cool last night. Sort of… Well, I was certainly cold. It was sub-zero as we ventured downtown to see our friends play live for the first time in years.

This is a new formation (I’m pretty sure they’ve all played together before) with a new EP (title: Free with Purchase) and a new name: twenty6hundred. They were playing second at The Kathedral (formerly the Big Bop for those of us who remember the Bop). Those of you who have seen / heard my friend Michael (lead singer) perform know that he is a great entertainer. He has a great voice and a natural seeming ease onstage. Their new songs are good; still somewhat raw but with a bit more depth. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen any of the other guys perform live before, so I have no point of reference to compare them to, but they looked and sounded good.

That’s the background. I got to be cool. I knew the band. It's been a while. I don't remember the last time I went downtown to a bar to see a band play on a school night! Okay, so maybe I'm not so cool... the sidewalk outside the place was crawling with kids (smoking). These kids looked younger than the ones I'm in school with. Or maybe I am cool again. They all looked interchangeable.

When I was an angst-filled teen, I expressed some of my anger and flouted some authority through my choice of dress, multiple piercings, some crazy hair (including shaving parts of it off) and extreme makeup and accessories. I mostly listened to music that was not on the top 40 and was usually best listened to at a loud volume. I was not really a 'punk' in the true sense for several reasons, but the average suburban mom might have easily mistaken me for a punk at times. My mom took me for a punk at times. Either way, I wore a lot of black and had dark red lipstick at a time when girls my age were trying to be 'valley girls' and were wearing 'jelly shoes' or were busy being preps wearing Tretorns and penny loafers (I actually admit to owning both of these, but I was conflicted).

I digress slightly. When I was a kid, it took some effort to look anti-establishment and still look cool; or at least what we thought was cool. Other people didn't really agree with us. Other people thought it was morbid to wear black all the time. Other people said that I was so pale that I didn't look healthy (turns out I was anaemic). Around the time that the punk rock movement started, people in mainstream (North American) society didn't get their ears pierced more than once, let alone get their noses pierced (or their eyebrows, lips, navels, tongues... etc.).

So these kids at this place all had the same type of fake hair (or over-processed hair), they were all wearing clothes that seemed to have come from trendy shops on Queen West (trendy area in Toronto), they all had facial piercings and 'gothic' like make up. They were predominantly wearing dark colours and looked like a group of extras hanging around between scenes at a film shoot. They didn't really remind me of my younger, more angst-ridden days.

I call them kids because they looked so young. They might have been in their early twenties, but our legal drinking age is 19, so they were probably at least that. Another indicator that they were young is that they were standing outside without jackets on (in sub-zero temperatures), because wearing a warm coat is not cool, especially if it doesn't go with your outfit.

So our crowd was pretty much all in our thirties (predominantly mid-thirties). We were kind of an eclectic bunch. We were also mostly dressed in dark colours, but we were wearing warm coats. We did not have matching hair colours and the only matching hairsytles among us were the shaved heads (no, they're not skinheads). I doubt that any of us were 'the cool kids' in high school. We were not the jocks, nor the most popular. Some of us were undoubtedly 'rebels' and some labelled as nerds. Some of us may have even had an encounter or two with the local constabulary (but that might be an urban myth and I don't have any details or eyewitness reports). So here we are, all growed up, in the prime of our lives, watching our friends play live for the first time in years. We all had day jobs to go to the next morning, but we made it out, despite the freezing cold weather. Some people came a long way for an hour's gig. But what are friends for?

I think that one of the things that friends are for is to help you with your angst, and support your dreams. It's nice to see that so many people turned up to support twenty6hundred. The kids band that played after them only had about a half dozen people watching them. And they all looked like the same person with a few variations (who all needed a comb).

They say that there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and that many great artists (writers, composers, painters, etc.) cross that line often. It is not an easy life to be truly creative, but with friends, perhaps a little less angst-filled.

Sorry for having meandered so much today folks.

Drive safe peeps,