So we played an "all ages" show at this place called the studio last weekend in Edmonton. We hadn't heard of it before and our buddy Jebus, who's been booking shows in Edmonton forever, set it all up so we didn't really know what to expect. All we had was an address and a time to show up.

I was driving and followed Matt's directions through to what seemed to be the old China town and little Italy on the North side of river. We knew we were getting close when we started driving by porno shops advertising 25 cent peep shows and crappy taverns advertising black label beer in their windows. One of the stranger things we passed was a three cart pile-up (yes I mean shopping-cart) in the middle of the road surrounded by about two dozen loaves of bread. Maybe someone robbed a bakery truck. 

I followed Matt's directions right to a shitty old bottle depot at the address we were given. The building was located across from a make-shift scrap yard in one of those run-down light industrial areas with the odd block of residences scattered throughout a bunch of old warehouses and stuff. At first we thought we had the wrong address but upon closer inspection noticed the 4 by 8 sheet of plywood leaning up against the south wall with "The Studio -->" spray painted on it. What a bad spot for a good sign.

So we parked the van and entered what appeared to be the main doors which led to an old marble stairwell similar to the ones you find in schools built in the 50's. We climbed three flights of stairs to find a top floor that had been divided into two large rooms. One room was pretty much empty except for a bunch of band equipment set up sporadically throughout, and the other room was this kick-ass space with a massive stage, rock posters all over the walls and old arcade games surrounding the entry. The only downside to the room (particularly for the girls) was the single bathroom whith no lock on the door and what appeared to be a constantly overflowing toilet. Yes this was a very punk rock and very gross place. This brings us to the punk rock corollary to the age old question of what came first, the chicken or the egg. I have no idea whether bathrooms in punk rock clubs are gross because they are in punk rock clubs or whether punk rock clubs are punk rock because they are clubs with gross bathrooms.

Anyway, it turns out this place has been a practice studio for local bands for a number of years and they just started putting on shows in the last six months. The space is run as a collective with all volunteers and a few street kids who work and then get to sleep in the space at night. Unfortunately the landlord isn't at all cool with this and served them with an eviction notice in the last couple of months. In response, they decided to put on as many shows as they can in the time they have left and will be dragging the whole thing out through the courts if possible. After seeing the place, I was totally excited to play, but still figured that the turnout wouldn't be too great since we were playing an all ages show in some obscure place in the middle of nowhere that hadn't been around too long. Either way it would be fun.

After seeing the space and meeting the collective staff, we loaded our gear (including Matt's larger-than-reasonable base cabinet) up all three flights of stairs and left to get some pizza and beer. When we got back we figured we'd bring a few beers into the band room (the big empty one on the other side of the building) and drink them discretely while at the same time checking out the bands playing in the stage room. I should not that we had the pleasure of playing with The Johnsons, Brother Voodoo, Down the Hatch and Bastard Son that night. Well apparently we were wrong. This wasn't so much an all ages show as it was a house party in a bottle depot with punk rock bands where everybody is expected to bring thier own beer. Cool! To top things off about two hundred people managed to find thier way into the space and we all had a rad time.

Due to the house party atmosphere most of the guys in the band wound up having more beers than needed. Matt even wound up negotiating the purchase of an old Tron arcade game from the crazy banger dude with big mirrored glasses that collects them and stores them at the space. I guess we can't blame Matty, he's been a Tron fan since he was 8 and he was pretty loaded at the end of the night. Jimmy continued his practice of paying hommage to his hip-hop idols (sorry to all you kids who think Jimmy just got way less cool but you need to know the truth) by finishing most (not all) of a colt 45, and Clay somehow managed to get way more discombobulated (spelling?) than the rest of us but still stay coherent the whole night and as usual be the first one up the next morning. The drive home sucked.

Thanks Edmonton. I hope we get a chance to play the Studio again before it's shut down by the "man" for good.

KH