FME Day 1

Ever since he returned from last year’s FME (Festival de Musique Émergeante) in Rouyn-Noranda last year, my roommates Max and Ashlyne haven’t stopped gushing about how amazing the experience was. For about a month after they came back, I’d hear stories about impromptu concerts in poutineries, sculptures made with palettes, and generally the kind of wild, imaginative, whimsical shit I can’t get enough of. It’s a multi-venue festival in a remote mining town in Northern Quebec and the majority of the lineup is bands most people have never heard of. I knew I had to check it out.

Using my highly dubious journalistic credentials, I was able to wrangle a media pass to the festival, including accommodations. I’m continually surprised at the opportunities I’m granted due to my shitty radio show that no one listens to and the puff pieces I write for our community newspaper.

Getting to FME was pretty fatiguing, as Rhombus had a gig in Hamilton on Wednesday, which meant we had to drive 6 hours back to Sudbury after it was over. I slept for 3 hours before meeting up with Christian Pelletier, who was my ride to FME. I rolled us a terrible joint which took me about 45 minutes, then I passed out in the passenger seat for the second half of the trip (about 5 hours from Sudbury altogether). All in all, I think I make a pretty good co-pilot.

Christian is probably the best possible person I could have hitched a ride to the festival with, as he has been attending for the past 6 years and seems to know half the people here. He introduced me to a bunch of important people whose names and functions I forgot immediately.

As it is located in Northern Quebec, Rouyn-Noranda is filled with French people. Christian tells me it’s a mining town (Copper smelting), and was once two separate cities. I saw two lakes here. One you can swim in, the other you can’t.

FME is a big event here. The whole city is decorated for it. This year, the theme is centered on a cool oil painting of a skyscraper-sized brass robot with steam billowing out of it. References to robots and children’s toys are scattered throughout the festival. A robot’s head is the entrance to the main stage area, where they have put down patches of sod for people to lounge. There are benches fashioned to look like giant Legos, rows of multi-coloured umbrellas hanging overhead to provide shade, a 10-foot tall lite-brite on the wall opposite to the entrance that spells “FME” (at least it used to spell FME before some local kids started moving the pegs around). The side stage is surrounded by about 50 CRT televisions, some of which were showing a loop of the film Metropolis, some of which were showing old Transformers cartoons, and some of which were simply static. This place is awesome.

Pretty much as soon as I arrived, the opening dinner was starting. The fellas from Shoeclack radio were near the front of the line and didn’t seem too upset when I butted in front of them. The festival roasted enough pork and beef to feed what looked like the whole town, lined up in a queue that horseshoed it’s way around the entirety of the main stage area.

One of my favourite things to do is watch bands I’ve never seen before, which is the whole point of FME. The first act I caught was Jimmy Hunt, who was performing in a church that, according to Christian, is owned by the local arts community and has been transformed into a concert space. There were a lot of keyboards on stage for Hunt’s set, which was a mix of dance tunes and laid-back rock that built to some big psychedelic freak-outs.

The real star of the show was Hunt’s lead guitar player, whose licks provided as much of the melody for the songs as Hunt’s voice. The band looked mysterious on stage, backlit by robotic lights and bathed in smoke.

As cool as it is to see a band in a church, I don’t think it was the best venue for this particular band sonically. It seemed that a lot of the keyboard textures were washed away in the reverb, and the drums seemed distant where I would have liked them to be more present, especially on the more rhythmically driving songs.

After Hunt’s set, I met up with Marie-Claire Cronier (singer-songwriter from Sudbury, now living in Montréal, in town volunteering for FME), Christian, Felix Hallé-Thériault from Shoeclack, and their friend whose name I can’t recall and we got stoned just in time for Rich Aucoin’s set.

This is the second time I’ve seen Aucoin perform, and both times his set had the same ecstatic effect on me. Despite the fact that I had just finished watching a band in a church, I truly felt part of a congregation at the Rich Aucoin show. The only way to experience his live show is to immerse yourself in it.

Honestly, you could stand in the back with your arms crossed and watch him perform but why would you do that when you can get down on one knee with 300 other people and jump up at the exact same time, or run underneath a giant parachute and shout his lyrical slogans till you’re hoarse?

Musically, I thought he sounded fantastic. The backing track was as full-sounding and nuanced as any live band, and his drummer was very tight to the beat. I’m pretty excited to hear Aucoin’s new record, which seems like it’s going to focus more on spiritual dance floor bangers if the live show is any indication.

After Aucoin finished, I wandered over to the late-night poutine place Chez Morasse, where I ordered a large chicken curry poutine. When it came out, I realized I couldn’t be seen in public eating it, despite the fact that no one here knows who I am. The sheer girth of the poutine meant that the only way it was getting finished was to dig down deep into the depths of my weed-induced hunger and just get totally filthy. I knew I would finish soaked in gravy and smell like the inside of a deep fryer. So, I left the restaurant and wandered down the nearest dark alley, planning on eating alone slumped against a wall like a heroin addict.

As it turns out, there was a metal band playing an impromptu set in that very alleyway beside a Winnebago with an Iron Maiden flag in the window. I took to the shadows and watched them while I tried to eat enough food for a family of five as discreetly as possible. A cute girl came up and asked me “ques-ce que tu manges?” I answered, “une poutine”, which is true only in the technical sense that it came in one container.

That was the end of our conversation; anyone who has just finished a pound of fries, gravy, chicken and cheese and is lustily and remorselessly tearing into the second pound is clearly unfit for mating and quite obviously only has room in their life for poutine anyway. Not once did it occur to me to save the rest for later.

After that, I caught a really cool band called Deux Pouillesen Cavale at a bar called Cabaret De La Dernière Chance. The bar was decorated with ornate wooden fixtures, hardwood floors, paintings of anthropomorphized apes on the walls, and had a large back patio area. Behind the stage, “FME” was spelled out with Hot Wheels cars, the outline of each letter surrounded by a rope light. There was a poster there for an upcoming Strange Attractor show in September.

Many people told me that it was OK to walk around with open alcohol and carry it into any bar, but I still feel like I was getting the stink eye from the waiter while I sipped the beer I had carried in the right chest pocket of my jean jacket.

The sound in the venue was spot-on. The 3-piece band used backing tracks for the intros to their songs, which mixed garage, metal, prog, and a great sense of humour. Everything sounded very balanced and dry, which perfectly suited the room (although I did find that their Farfisa organ was basically inaudible). I really liked this goofy band, and their songs were so short and weird that the audience didn’t seem to know when the songs were over (me included).

By the time their set was over, I hadn’t had a conversation with anyone for hours, despite the fact that I’d been surrounded by people, and the fatigue from lack of sleep, dope and poutine was starting to settle in. None of the cute French girls were approaching me even though I was leaning against a wall as nonchalantly as possible, and I was literally falling asleep on my feet. So, I watched 3 songs of Dany Placard’s set of franco alt-country tunes (sounded good!) before heading off into the night, where I got lost for 40 minutes while trying to locate my hotel.

I’ll be in Rouyn-Noranda for one more night and I promised Christian I would party like an animal. I wish I could stay, but Rhombus has a gig in Burlington with our friends Big Lonely, OL’CD, Oh Geronimo and the Penske File on Saturday.