A NIGHT ON THE TOWN WITH BLACK MIDI
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There are burn marks about head-height on the inside of the grey shower curtain of this shabby Toronto hotel. Someone smoked in here is my guess, and the water pressure is low - more a damp, warm drizzle than the righteous downpour I was looking for after my late night and early morning. A man grizzled and tired had a smoke in there, I reckon, and made like it was just another grey day out on the moors, a blur of sheep at the horizon.
Afterwards, I watched some football beamed in from England. The room smelled stale and sad and I felt like I shouldn’t have taken off my shoes, and the match was pretty agricultural too. I wandered next door to the Whole Foods at halftime and came back with some eggs and potatoes that cost about as much as a hardcover book. The view out the window was of an endless brick wall with a thick slash of tarmac at its bottom. There was the sound of a truck backing up down that lane and finally the thump of a couple of bodies being dumped out the back.
I was there because the British prog-punk band black midi played at Lee’s Palace the night before. I like their debut album very much and I’ve always enjoyed the room they were appearing in. A few months back, black midi played a much-talked-about electric live set at an Icelandic radio station that made me think it might be a special sort of gig and anyway it was a good excuse to get out of Kingston for 24 hours, and to recharge was the hope, to wake up gloriously tired and watch soccer while just putzing around. I accomplished a good half of that.
The lead singer had walked past me on Bloor St while I was lining up in the dark. He wore a tall Russian-seeming hat with ear flaps (at least I remember ear flaps) and a large beige overcoat. He was blowing his nose extravagantly into half an acre of cotton handkerchief. With his sharp pale face he was distinctly at odds with his surroundings. Bowie fallen to earth was what I thought at the time. It turns out that was the most entertaining thing he’d do the whole evening.
They appeared onstage sometime after eleven, nearly an hour after the unannounced Texas rapper, Fat Tom, had done a smart appealing job of working the crowd up with his laptop and control board, his performance part rap, part punk, and part karaoke.
There was no acknowledging the crowd from the headliners, at least not in the 70 minutes I stuck it out. The performance felt as if it might have been something court-ordered, a contractual obligation. The sound was muddy and the band appeared only vaguely connected to the event and endlessly lethargic. Only the drummer had his heart in it, but he was inexplicably left in nearly complete darkness even though he’d been pulled to the front right of the stage. It all felt so damn slapdash and a bit demoralizing; a quick run through the setlist by a band who’d just had a punch-up in the green room.
They were probably aiming for inscrutable, I get that, some Frippian diffidence to complement their impressive chops, but instead they came across as insolent, and eventually disrespectful. I spent decent money on a train and that shit hotel room to make it to the show and I realise I’m not the intended demographic (though I clearly wasn’t the only grizzled King Crimson fan in the audience) but all the same this didn’t feel like a positive way to expand the fan base.
Even the merch seemed unconcerned with the Toronto fans’ feelings. The concert dates listed on the back of the T-shirts, including Toronto and Montreal, were piled up under the headline “United States 2019”. I can do lazy and bored on my own. My family tells me to get a grip when that happens. Black midi sells tickets instead.
