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June 26th, 2003 was the Montréal leg of a two-night stint I spent following instrumental jam/jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood from jazzfest to jazzfest. I was managing a band at the time and in an effort to seize upon MMW’s very respectable fanbase I had booked nero into aftershow gigs in both Toronto and Montréal.
I seem to recall the Toronto jazzfest people kicking down free tickets for us…somewhere deep in my mind there’s a rattle of a memory of a bit of a mixup that had me on the guestlist but left the guys in the band off, or was it the other way around? Anyway, the same fuzzy memory reminds me that we enjoyed no such courtesy in Montréal and actually had to shell out our own hard-won cash for tickets to the MMW show at Metropolis.
I’m sure I considered it a band expense. After all, we had flyers to hand out. Never mind that we probably didn’t actually hand them out when we were inside the venue.
Much like the Toronto show I don’t remember where the aftershow took place or anything about it at all besides the fact that it was why we were in Montréal in the first place, but unlike Toronto I don’t remember much about the MMW show either. I do know I enjoyed it because I’ve never not enjoyed Medeski Martin & Wood. They are just too talented and too into the music to deliver a subpar show. I just can’t imagine a scenario where any of the three master musicians would just phone it in; they clearly take music too seriously for that.
And though I don’t remember at all I will insist that we left the MMW show before it was done, probably as the audience started calling for an encore. The trick to hosting an aftershow is to start playing as soon as the first wave of customers walks through the door, so you have to beat them to the aftershow venue. The band has to be ready to walk on stage and I have to be parked at the door ready to take in the gate and stamp hands so there’s little room for lolligagging.
I can’t believe it’s taken me almost 300 entries to finally use the word “lolligagging”.
Todd Man Out 