The Automatik

Kids on TV/Meligrove Band/A bunch of other bands we didn’t see
Streetsville Masonic Lodge, Mississauga
June 3, 2005

All-ages shows take me back to my wanna-be punk youth: grade school gymnasiums converted into crossroads of teenage rebellion, when Merry Go Round was for posers and Hot Topic didn’t even exist yet. I once suffered some jaded scenester who was turning his nose at the idea of sharing a slam pit with a fourteen-year-old, and then I immediately rallied to the defense of the kids who just love music and want to have a good time. Who do you think started it, anyway?

Rock and roll, true rock and roll-not the kind you can buy at the mall-isn’t always deep, either. Such is the case with Kids on TV. Described by New Music Canada as being formed from a Toronto bathhouse in the Spring of 2003, they’re like a nascent Rocky Horror Picture Show, with smoke machines, Mohawks, and a laptop instead of show tunes, Meat Loaf, and fishnets. They smash computer keyboards, not guitars.

Their songs are beat-heavy and clever, with a knack for post-modern pop culture riffing. “Coco Chanel is rolling in her grave” goes the chant of one song, while another features the drummer, looking like your older sister’s queer New Wave friend from 1984, deadpanning Jermaine Stewart’s “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off” over a prefab synth groove. Surely no one can deny the brilliant confluence of ideas that emerge from rapping the Nightmare on Elm Street nursery rhyme over Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Kids on TV’s aggressive performance art works best when they don’t try to play guitar, but instead stick to the video screen, smoke machines, ad-hoc costumes, and choreographed dancing that make up most of their repertoire. As one song even makes quite clear, “we’re gonna rock out without a guitar riff.” And rock out they do, if that means shedding inhibitions and getting in the audience’s face. Literally.

In “Breakdance Hunx,” John Caffery strips down to his skull and crossbones skivvies, and break dances his way into becoming the choice rent boy for his bandmate’s rich friends. “A little blonde boy, who break dances and sucks cock?” I’d seen them perform this song at Lee’s Palace in February, but it was better this time when Caffery literally parted the crowd to centipede down the length of the floor. The addition of a conga line of sweaty, grinding teens filling the stage pushed this show into heretofore-unseen territories of hormonal rock angst.

Really, then, how could the Meligrove Band follow up such a spectacle? If you can’t answer that, you’ve obviously never seen them play. After an interim band (The Lava Witch) who we missed because we needed fresh oxygen after all that smoke machine action, the boys took the “stage” (really just a raised platform), but not before handing out a milk crate full of pink and green plastic tambourines (who knew they were Lemon Pipers fans?) so the crowd could rock out along with them.

This is the third time I’ve seen the lads perform their new stuff and it made me more anxious than ever to hear the album when it comes out (in August, according to drummer Darcy Rego). The talent and energy of this band continues to amaze me. The addition of multi-instrumentalist and spazz-dancer Andrew Scott (not THAT Andrew Scott) has definitely pushed them into a class of their own. Jay Nunes’ vocals are so plaintive it hurts, but don’t think accuse them of being emo or anything. Mike Small’s bass playing is impressive, throwing a muscled groove into one new song that provokes dancing, not pogoing.

No Meligrove Band show review would be complete without describing the antics of band clown Darcy, who always has a joke at the ready and who plays the drums so hard and fast it still makes me tired just to watch him. We were all sweating from just dancing, so no one should have been surprised to see him whip off his shirt (and drape it over Jay’s head). What I wasn’t prepared for was the striptease to his undies, complete with a display of his bare bum cheeks. And the duct-taping of his chest (ouch!). When he headed into the crowd, I knew he was making a beeline for Shaun and me, but Shaun got the brunt of the sweaty bear hug.

Since this was an all-ages show and not a downtown club, the vibe was phenomenal, and that’s without including the smashing of the drum kit at the end. Everyone was dancing, banging the hell out of their tambourines, and generally having an incredible time. So to that jackass who once scoffed at the idea of kids having any right to watch live music, please don’t spread around the rumor that rock and roll is only for grown-ups. Major media machines have already auto-tuned it towards an early grave. Don’t let them wield that last nail without putting up a fight.