October 17 2005: The Mountain Goats, The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers – Lee’s Palace, Toronto ON

Great show, great audience, and great people. And I talked the girl at the door into letting me in for free. I had never been to Toronto, and Toronto did not disappoint. The venue was of top-notch design. The stage towered a good four or five feet over the main floor making the show optimal for viewing from the back of the room, where I chose to sit for the show. And the back of the room was a good couple of feet raised from the floor as well, so there was no problem with heads in my line-of-sight. “Nine Black Poppies” was played for the sole time all tour, and with a wonderfully polite audience who did not feel the need to heckle or talk or sing or do anything but listen. During the Mountain Goats’ set, that is, for the Prayers and Tears were heckled relentlessly all night by a drunk 17-year-old with a fake ID who was talking to me before the show. When he found out that I was from Portland he started bemoaning the fact that he’d never seen Elliott Smith, so I told him about the times that I had. Then he started talking about Neutral Milk Hotel and how sad it was that he never got to see them either and some random dude on the street piped up and started talking about how great they were live. Sometimes it can be fun to make the obnoxiously drunk 17-year-old jealous. And to his credit, he remains one of the best hecklers I’ve ever heard.

But the real crazy Toronto shit didn’t start until after the show when I went upstairs to brush my teeth. Lee’s has a pretty small bathroom, and a guy taking a piss looks at me and says, “Wow, times must be pretty rough, eh?” “What,” I counter, “You never seen a guy brushing his teeth at the rock club?” And he offers to buy me a beer when I’m done and that is not the type of offer I am in the habit of turning down. So he buys me a beer and we get to talking and then he buys me a few more and we head out to another bar where he buys approximately five pitchers for himself and his friends, of whom I am now a part. We run into the singer and guitarist for a local band (Therefore Peter John, they call themselves), and they take the opportunity to drunkenly run through a few of their numbers. To our drunken minds they are fabulous. And to their credit, I still get their song “One Way Ticket to London” stuck in my head despite only having heard it that one time. And when they finish up a nice young woman asks if she can play one, and we are drunk and she is a girl and so of course we oblige, and she plays one of the most beautiful tunes we have collectively ever heard. And when the bar closes the guy lets me sleep on his sofa, and it is a good night in Toronto.