when i first heard pb was playing montreal on a weekend, i was immediately interested in going, as i\'d never been to montreal before and heard nothing but good things about the city. i started planning and getting a group together, and after a few people backing out, a group of 4 of us (me, lisa, mike, and joe) decided to trek up into the subzero temperature territory and make a long weekend of it.
not so fast..
at tim\'s solo gig on the wednesday before the show, josh informed me that they may have a small problem playing the montreal show. legally, the band needs a work permit to play over the border, which the band doesn\'t have. apparently this wasn\'t seen as a worthwhile investment, and instead, it was thought that a better idea would be to go to customs with a 15-passenger van + trailer full of instruments, and lie to them about where they were off to. immediately i thought to myself \'pb is NOT playing montreal\', as the theme to the mickey mouse club played in the back of my mind, but we had our hotel booked and were set to leave on thursday afternoon, so there was no turning back now.
i\'ll get to the rest of our trip later, but fast-forward to saturday afternoon for now.. we were grabbing a bite at the hard rock cafe in montreal when i got the call from ron.. he told me they did exactly what i described above, and got caught in it. customs looked up the band on the internet, and saw that they were scheduled to play a gig in montreal that night. they were sent home, and told not to try it again or they would be banned from canada for a year.. at first i thought he was breaking my balls, but he assured me that it was the truth.
we weren\'t going to check out nero at first. we toyed around with other things to do, such as going to the canadians/maple leafs game that night.. we finally decided that we would go check out nero at least for a little while, and headed to the club around 10pm...
le swimming - wow! what a great place! prime location as well. saint-laurent is loaded with tons of bars/restaurants/clubs, and from the amount of people on the street, you\'d never know it was about -10° outside. i talked to the girl at the door and got our cover reduced from $8 to $6 because we travelled over 700 miles to see the band that wasn\'t playing. there were already a lot of people there, and nero hadn\'t started yet.. the place is great inside. big place, 2 bars, small stage, 10 (12?) pool tables, seating/standing room, etc.. this place had it all.. we sat down and got some drinks and waited for nero to come on...
over the next 45 minutes or so, the place really started filling up.. soon there were no tables left, and people everywhere.. tons of drink specials - shooters 4/$5... fun stuff.. nero took the stage and a lot of people were up off their ass getting down.. there was a steady flow of people coming in throughout nero\'s first set.. pb got a mention during nero\'s first break in the music, saying they had \'border issues\'.. we just shook our heads as we looked around at the packed room.. i called ron to tell him what they were missing out on, but he didn\'t believe me.
at setbreak, i went and talked to dave, nero\'s guitar player, and told him who i was.. he said they\'ve never done as well at le swimming as they were doing that night.. he was surprised at how many people were there and said it sucked that pb was missing out.. i couldn\'t agree more..
if that all wasn\'t depressing enough, we decided to leave at setbreak to go check out our 2nd strip club of the trip.. on the way out the door, there was a line of people to get into the club, and people kept coming in as we went down the stairs and out..
i left the place with a feeling of disgust. not because we drove all the way up to montreal and weren\'t able to see pb - i couldn\'t care less about that; we had an amazing weekend. but i want nothing more than for these guys to do well, and it makes me sick to think that they missed out on an opportunity to play in front of 250-300 people in a market they\'ve never been exposed to because of an idiotic decision like this one. there\'s just no excuse for it. it\'s depressing, it really is.
i\'ve got pictures of nero, the club, and pb on the marquee, which i\'ll post when i get home.. i\'ll also post more about our great weekend in montreal.
the Breakfast? meh. i saw freddie throw out a last-minute band name nomination, so here\'s mine: Managed By Mickey.
now go vote for the jammys. later.
