For breakfast, I was really intent on eating, well… doughnuts. The shop I wanted to try had amazing reviews and was supposed to be open, but when I actually went there, I couldn’t get in. The door was locked. I couldn’t even find the backup café I’d been intent on getting a rainbow latte from. So I turned around and headed the opposite way up the street, towards the café I had intended to go to later in the afternoon.
Yeah, my brilliant plan had been to hang out in cafés until mid-afternoon, sample treats, translate ALICE NINE. lyrics, and do some edits to my mom’s memoir.
I did that… well, um, kind of.
More on that later.
On the way early to my intended afternoon café, I picked up some cookies from a bakery to make up for the missed doughnut opportunity earlier, and with a bag of cookies in-hand (practicing a herculean amount of self-control in not eating them immediately), I took the long way to my destination. The scenic route.
Rooster Coffee was all incredibly tall windows and beautiful industrial design on the inside, with quirky little details to pull it all together. The sign in front of the order counter implores you to believe in magic. To the right is a bowl of kibble to treat the four-legged friends that must wait outside. A pride flag hangs from the second floor railing, and the lids for coffee mugs come in an assortment of colours.
I ordered a mocha and a savoury scone, then climbed the sunlit steps to the second level, where an entire section of seats lay empty. I settled in, munched, sipped… all the while, checking the new photos and information my mom had sent me for her memoir. I was astonished, faced with photos of her I’d never seen before, back when she had worked for radio stations and hosted morning shows. It’s one thing to read her recollections of such or to hear them growing up, but quite another to see photos. She’d sent a photo of her and my grandparents together when she’d graduated from nursing school too. I’d seen her class portrait, but never the photo of her with my grandparents.
The mocha was almost done by the time I switched to translating, getting GRADATION done, as well as some kousai STRIPE, and then I got it into my head that I wanted to see if I could get a compact wireless keyboard ahead of my trip to Japan in mid-November. I researched and found a keyboard that fit what I needed, and the store it seemed to be in stock at was a fair walk, but close enough on foot. So I gathered my things and set out.
What I didn’t realize until I got there was that it would take me right past the Eaton Centre, which was the first place my Aunt JG took my mom and I when we went to visit her together for the first time. She took us on the subway from Scarborough, and then brought us up to a restaurant that might have been Milestones, and we had lunch before going into the mall to window shop.
This time, I was excited and rather surprised to notice that a full size MUJI shop had sprung up in the square, a well-known store which originated in Japan. If I hadn’t already had my trip to Japan planned, I would have been hanging out in all the Japanese shops and restaurants I kept seeing… there certainly weren’t nearly that many when last I’d visited! It was a rather comforting sight.
The keyboard, by the way? Somehow the site had glitched or shown be the wrong page, because when I arrived I found out that the keyboard was completely sold out. Still, the walk itself was interesting so I wasn’t too upset in the end.
I headed back to my room, cookies still safely in my purse, and given that I’d have to head over to the concert rather soon after, I decided to pick up a bit of pizza for supper. Yep. Pizza and cookies. Quite the indulgence!
I scurried all over my room trying to put together the right outfit for the concert after I finished eating and washing up. I must have re-done my lip makeup three times… which was extra silly considering I wouod be wearing a mask the whole time (with the Japan trip coming up in November, I have no interest in taking unnecessary chances!). Finally, I arrived at a style that felt pretty good, cuddled into a favourite cardigan, and a cool, visual Saga t-shirt.
It was painless to get to the venue via the subway, and I strolled around the entire circumference of the area before going to get settled into my seat. I had an incredibly clear view of the stage.
Before long, Poppy made her entrance and warmed up the crowd with a high-energy set, playing guitar for some of her songs. I’d only heard a few of them before the concert, so I went in not knowing quite what to expect. I loved her shrieks and screams, that was the main thing that stuck out to me!
What I hadn’t known beforehand was that Jane’s Addiction had had to cancel the Toronto tour date (along with a few others) due to injury to allow for recovery, so Our Lady Peace, from right here in Toronto, had stepped up to the plate in their stead.
It took me a good minute to catch on to what had happened, but then I started recognizing the songs they were playing and, man… that took me back. It took me back to when I’d spend weekends tuned in to MTV to get caught up on the latest music, Our Lady Peace’s song among the music video mixes and countdowns. They put on a great set.
Somewhere in the middle, the frontman explained that when he’d been a teen (definitely too young to be going into some of the venues), he’d gone in to see Jane’s Addiction and the music had blown his mind. Thus, as a tribute to their recovering fellows, they played a cover of a Jane’s Addiction song.
We applauded as they ended their set and left the stage, and then the lights brightened again so that the stage could be configured one final time for headliner The Smashing Pumpkins.
We waited, shifting with anticipation, some concert-goers dashing off to get last-minute drinks.
At last, the lights dimmed again, and the room sparked with the excitement of everyone in the audience, me included, of course. Before the band took to the stage, the stylized image of a moth hovered on an LED screen as an instrumental began to play, and we all waited, entranced.
I’ve been listening to the podcast Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan since it began airing alongside the tour, and hearing all of the details that have gone into each song on the new album, the story that it tells, the way that the songs tie in to past songs and albums, and all of the topics that he discusses with fellow hosts and the guest they welcome on to the podcast each week really heightened the anticipation I felt going in to the concert.
As to why I wore a shirt with Saga on it to the performance, aside from quite simply loving Saga, he’s also the reason why I became a fan of The Smashing Pumpkins in the first place. Though I’d been familiar with and liked 1979 and their cover of Landslide by Fleetwood Mac growing up, I hadn’t ever gone further than that. After all, these were the days before streaming, when you could possibly find the songs to sample online, but it was tricky. You had to be lucky to catch a song on the radio, catch a music video on TV, or just bite the bullet and buy a CD without knowing what it was like. It was slow-going for music videos to get uploaded on Youtube, and before that, you’d have to find them here and there in pockets of the internet. In its own way, it was fun.
So I didn’t take a chance until I came across a translated interview of Saga’s that cited The Smashing Pumpkins both as a favourite band and as an influence. And indeed, you can hear that influence in some of Saga’s compositions! Given the fact that I already knew some of their songs and had faith in Saga’s taste in music, in December of 2007, I got a copy of the Pumpkins’ greatest hits.
That, and a copy of ALICE NINE.’s newest album at the time, Alpha (whose first track was inspired by a track from Zeitgeist!)
That December, we were headed out east to visit family for Christmas in the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, to be exact) so I ripped both my new CDs, loaded them onto my trusty old MP3 player at the time, and took those with me. Those CDs got me through the holidays. And beyond — I wrote SO much while listening to those CDs, and of course CDs of theirs that I bought later, too.
I was glad to bring Saga with me to the concert, even in that small way.
Once the moth had blinked out of existence, we were treated to an utterly psychedelic starburst of a display on the LED screen. It felt surreal. There was a playful lilt to the concert that I hadn’t at all expected going into it, and that I really enjoyed… not that it took away any of the gravitas from the more serious songs they performed. The setlist was a mix of older classics and their newest fare, and though I truly enjoyed the concert in its entirety, a few songs did stick out in my memory in particular.
I lost my mind a little bit when they started playing Bullet With Butterfly Wings, and then even more for Ava Adore. There’s something about that song that has always pulled me in, and to hear it live was such a pleasure.
The dual-accoustic version of Tonight, Tonight, prefaced by some really warmhearted banter between Billy and James, was probably the prettiest performance of the night. Pretty is the word that comes to mind, with the way the LED screens twinkled behind them with stars. Of course, with scarecrow-like props behind them, the performance also had a slightly absurd, even spooky tinge to it, which seems very on-point for them. I certainly appreciated the contrast and the end of the song left me in a beatific state of mind.
Stand Inside Your Love is a song I have a deep attachment to, and hearing it live was so much different than listening to it through my headphones. There was a power to it, standing in the audience, that I hadn’t expected. The sound filled the room and it felt grounded, the way the words and the music sank into my consciousness.
I of the Mourning is another favourite — something about the music and the lyrics just captures all those times in my life that I’ve felt weighed down by depression, but still go out into the world anyway, holding close the things that still tether me and make the next step feel possible.
I can’t recall which song Jimmy’s drum solo was in, but it was awesome.
Zero is another song I have always had a particular attachment to (like many listeners) and it packed a hell of a punch. A song with bite. But even so, Billy made room for a bit of levity, if I remember properly, to interject “WPC — that’s me!” at some point, which gave me a good chuckle.
But Disarm was the song that really made me feel emotional. It was cathartic to hear that song fill the room and I cried, glad to be in that moment, experiencing it.
It was an amazing (weird, psychedelic, surreal, romantic) night, and I’m glad I got to be a small part of it, off in the stands.
I made my way back to my room, feeling at once lighthearted, at once pensive.