Instead of just complaining about the state of the all-ages scene, NOW is handing over our Lounge for a special No Shame show No Shame All-Ages March 26, NOW Lounge featuring: Ruby Coast, Modern Superstitions, Army Girls and more tba. Watch NOW for more details.
On a recent wintry Saturday afternoon, in an almost pitch-black basement beneath a Kensington Market vintage store, five young guys and one girl sweat, smile and spaz their way through a set of twisted soul rock. The wiry singer – Nicholas Doubleyou – yelps and hops and, in between songs, gets help tuning his guitar from bandmate Brock Dale, who can play saxophone and clarinet at the same time. A Chinese radio station loudly hums through an amplifier.
Only the dimmest light trickles from the stage, but once your eyes adjust to the darkness, the shadowy outlines of about 30 teenagers become visible. Some dance, others sit cross-legged all intently take in the performance. It’s an all-ages show in Toronto, and that’s a rare occurrence these days.
“There aren’t very many,” says 16-year-old Abbey Gleason once the Kapisanan Philippine Centre becomes quiet enough to talk. “Except for at Sound Academy, which is in the middle of nowhere.”
“And it’s really expensive and corporate,” adds her friend Abbey Jackson, also 16.
They mention the Drake, the Gladstone and the Horseshoe as places where they’d love to see shows. “But I guess it’s not worth it for venues that size if nobody’s drinking,” Gleason laments. “The only hope for underagers is getting fake IDs.”
To my surprise, Gleason brings up the awesomeness of the Pavilion, a long-running all-ages venue in Halifax, where her stepfather lives and where I grew up. Prior to the Pavilion, we had Café Ole, another long-running dedicated space for teens and their bands. Only when I moved to Toronto did I realize how lucky I was.
Why can’t a city of 2.7 million sustain an all-ages venue when a city of less than 400,000 can?
Well, Toronto did until last year. That’s when the Big Bop, the hulking purple building at the corner of Bathurst and Queen, shut its doors to make way for a furniture store.
On many nights since 1996, two of its three levels, namely the Kathedral and Reverb, held punk, rave and metal all-ages events. Adrift Clubhouse, a now-defunct indoor skate park on Spadina, held secret shows and DJ gigs for parts of 2008 and 09, hosting bands like No Age and Cancer Bats. In the late 90s, Who’s Emma, a punk collective and volunteer-run book and record store, held all-ages shows in its tiny Kensington locale.
Zach Slootsky
So what’s left? Sprinklings of all-ages shows at the Shop at Parts & Labour, Sneaky Dee’s, the Opera House, Velvet Underground, Poor Alex, Bread & Circus. There’s an alternative space, Siesta Nouveaux on Sherbourne, as well as random warehouses, someone’s Chinatown garage, secret outdoor locales where kids can hook up a generator and go nuts. Growing numbers of in-store performances at record shops like Sonic Boom and Soundscapes help fill the void, but there’s nothing steady enough to foster a real community.
Former Big Bop owner Dominic Tassielli is trying to pick up the slack. He opened the all-ages-all-the-time Rockpile last April, but with its classic-rock tribute acts and Etobicoke location, it’s not a desirable or viable option for most downtown kids. It is, however, helpful to young bands, especially with full-time booker Steve Hoeg, who books under S&S Promotions, at the wheel.
“What I’ll do is bring in the big acts and I’ll put young bands behind them,” he explains. “I’ll find out who the young bands really want to play with and bring that band in. Some agents won’t take these little locals. And if they’re not going to do that, I won’t do the show. If it’s not going to help these kids, what’s the sense in doing it?”
He cites last October’s Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses keyboardist) and upcoming Paul Di’Anno (ex-singer of Iron Maiden) shows as examples. Young bands playing with their idols, Hoeg says, freak out with glee and gain the confidence to keep going. It also builds up their resumés, assisting them to secure out-of-town shows and industry buzz.
Hoeg does, however, employ a pay-to-play system at the Rockpile (see sidebar, page 49.). This was the case at the Big Bop, too, where he also booked shows. Basically, bands are required to sell a certain number of tickets in advance of their gig. That guarantees bodies during the opening slots – Hoeg calls them “friend bases” since young bands are usually too new to have fan bases – and the under-agers get braceleted at the door.
This approach points to the underlying challenge of throwing all-ages shows: how to generate revenue without bar sales. Hoeg says business at the Rockpile is thriving its tribute acts draw an older suburban beer-drinking crowd (and often their kids), while the young openers bring out friends, hordes of them if they happen to be popular at school or have large families. There’s talk of eventually opening a downtown location.
But not everyone agrees with pay-to-play. Mark Pesci has booked half a dozen all-ages shows at Parkdale’s Parts & Labour since it opened last June. Shows happen on Sundays and Mondays when the upstairs restaurant is closed. He says he’d never go that route – “there seems to be something underhanded about it” – but he understands why some companies depend on it.
“As a promoter, whether it’s direct pay-to-play or not, I still expect my support acts to draw a certain number of people if they want to continue playing shows. To that extent I understand it.
“Generating revenue is absolutely one of the key problems. I was just at the Best Coast show at the Phoenix, which was a big show like the ones at the Opera House, with about 1,200 people. The attendance is so high that you can afford to hire extra security, pay the rental fees and whatnot to make it all-ages.
“It’s when you get into the 400-person-and-under attendance levels that [generating revenue] becomes a real issue.”
But Pesci says it’s doable. Currently he’s working with Wrongbar on an all-ages show for April. It means hiring more security, compensating for the lack of bar sales with ticket sales and convincing the owner of the long-term benefits, which isn’t always easy.
He credits Parts & Labour owner/head chef Matty Matheson for sticking with the idea, even when, as at a recent show, the bar made next to nothing but over 150 people attended. Pesci says his shows are “artist-focused,” attracting people who are there to see bands and not party.
Zach Slootsky
“Club owners and promoters need to understand the necessity of doing all-ages shows. In the long term, these people know about the venue and will continue to frequent it. And once they turn 19 and start drinking, they’ll come see some of our 19-plus shows.”
If any part of the all-ages scene is thriving, it’s hardcore and punk – genres with a built-in DIY value system. It’s hardcore and punk that Pesci books, as do Greg Benedetto from the Stuck in the City collective and members of bands like School Jerks. Nineteen-year-old Alican Koc drums for Total Trash, one of the scene’s youngest bands. He describes the scene as hard to find but inviting once you do. He was into hardcore for about a year before he discovered it.
“It’s sort of kept that way on purpose,” Koc says, “and that’s a really good thing. It hasn’t been commodified. It still stands as an underground hardcore scene, which is beautiful.”
But sustaining venues, once again, is the chief issue, although in this case the raucous nature of the shows, while thrilling, adds another challenge.
“Things just always mess up,” Koc says. “House shows or shows in someone’s space can be really difficult because often people become frustrated if things get destroyed. Everyone has really good intentions and a lot of respect, but it’s still crazy music and people do crazy things. As a result, we’ve lost a lot of venues.
“Unfortunately, the majority of shows that are happening now are at bars. That’s always a disappointment, because we have good friends who are underage and can’t get in. But at this stage we can’t do too much about it. Fake IDs are pretty much essential in Toronto music right now. The whole 19-plus thing is generally stupid in the first place because there’s drinking at both types of shows. Having a show be 19-plus doesn’t really change anything.”
If there are few options for underage hardcore fans and bands, there are even fewer for those in other genres. Although local promoters (Dan Burke, Lauren Schreiber and Eric Warner come to mind) occasionally organize indie rock and pop shows, Daps Duo is the only one that makes a point of it. April Aliermo and Dan Lee, who play in Hooded Fang and other bands, have thrown six in the last two years, featuring acts, including high school bands, from a wide range of genres.
“Teenagers we knew were saying, ‘We have to sneak into shows to see bands, and we don’t even want to drink,'” Aliermo says. “Dan was like, ‘Oh, that’s too bad. When we were younger you could see a lot of good Toronto bands for, like, $5 bucks and a can of soup.'”
Lee recalls weekend afternoon all-ages shows at Lee’s Palace in the 90s that inspired him to play music. As a Grade 7 student, he got to see Spooky Ruben, Grasshopper, Treble Charger and other big local bands. “They were bananas. Tons of kids would show up, and none of them were drinking or anything. There was lots of moshing.”
Daps is unique for holding low-cost shows in the afternoon, including the one described at the start of this article. The early start time makes their shows truly all-ages, bringing out toddlers, young mothers with babies, teenagers, 20-somethings. But, they say, it’s not always easy getting kids or the word out. They’d like to bring in big-name headliners – they tried for GZA when he was in town in 2009 – but expensive guaranteed fees make that near-impossible.
“Nobody’s throwing all-ages shows because there’s no money in it,” Aliermo says.
Zach Slootsky
For Daps, it’s a labour of love. They make nothing off the shows once the bands, venue and sound person are paid, and that prevents them from expanding. They’ve applied for funding through the Ontario Arts Council, but without success. Aliermo was disheartened when she saw the list of funded organizations. “All the money went to big symphonies and stuff like that.”
Lee likes the idea of a dedicated venue but is pessimistic about its survival chances. “I think it would be cool but I wouldn’t want to do it. It takes too much time. You’d need someone with a lot of patience and longevity.”
“And a way to make money,” Aliermo adds.
“You can’t have a place like that that’s going to make money,” Lee says, “so you have to find someone who’s willing to do it as a passion project – someone who’s in the clouds a little bit, not totally realistic, who’s going to do it and then have it sink. Which is what’s going to happen. But it will spawn something amazing in the process.”
Pesci is similarly daunted. Two summers ago, he and some friends looked into warehouse spaces that could host all-ages shows. But just coming up with first and last month’s rent was off-putting. “Promoting is a thankless job as it is,” he laughs. “I’m trying to fathom the amount of preparation, determination and work required to get that up and running. You’d almost have to be independently wealthy. Once it was up, I think it could sustain itself.”
So let’s recap. Toronto teens are fortunate to have access to a number of big-name shows at large-capacity venues like Sound Academy, the Phoenix and the Opera House. Unfortunately, those do little to build community, since very few include young local opening acts, prices can be prohibitive, and drinkers are often awkwardly kept from non-drinkers behind roped-off areas. As Pesci says, it’s a bit of a “faceless enterprise.”
The few promoters willing to throw smaller shows can only do so sporadically and often at a loss. There’s no targeted government funding for all-ages venues and promoters. A dedicated venue would be nice but is a huge time commitment and financial risk. Successful ones tend to be not-for-profit and run by volunteers or collectives, like the legendary 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley or the Ford Plant in Brantford, which closed last October after eight years. Millard’s in Sudbury is thriving because it’s in a kid’s garage, which means zero overhead Toronto’s exorbitant rents, after all, are a large part of the problem.
So is it worth doing? Clearly not, from a business standpoint. But from a community-building standpoint? That’s a no-brainer.
It goes without saying that fledgling bands evolve into the musicians whose music fills our lives. They carve out the scenes that audiences enjoy for years to come. All-ages shows give teenagers something healthy to engage in, new skills to master, a creative outlet, a chance to develop socially and artistically, a passion for the arts. Some become professional musicians, promoters, sound engineers, talent agents and managers, record store and label owners. Some even go on to win Grammys, as we’ve recently seen. In a nutshell, young people regenerate a city’s creative lifeblood.
“A strong all-ages scene,” says Pesci, “is what the future of the arts scene in a city is built on. As a promoter, I’ve seen how periods of low all-ages activity are usually followed by a drought in bands and people attending shows. And even if the creativity is there, we don’t see it or know how to access it.
“Over the last decade I’ve lived in Toronto, the scene has ebbed and flowed, especially on a smaller scale. Right now, with the closing of the Kathedral and other warehouse spaces, it seems dark. But something tells me that by summer, places will be popping up. They always do.”
Back at the Kapisanan Philippine Centre, night is coming on and the venue’s emptying out. Eighteen-year-old Sally Robbins shyly offers me some of her chocolate bar. She’s been to four or five all-ages shows and wishes there were more. I ask her if they inspire her. She doesn’t spend a second considering this.
“Definitely,” she says, emphatically, twisting a strand of her hair. “And not just on a musical level. They inspire me in all areas of my life.”
music@nowtoronto.com
