Much Chronicles Pt. VIII

Over the summer, MuchMusic contacted Soul Plane and informed us that they would be invading our lives for a good couple months to film our band's debauchery and give us some national television exposure and to put us through rockstar training to see if we have what it takes to make it somewhere in the music industry. If you haven't seen the episode or heard the verdict yet, catch it online now at http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/soulplane.asp (full-screen the window for the optimal in-yo'-face experience). These are my memoirs from our time on set with Much...

Day 8 – August 9^th, 2008

Location: MuchMusic Headquarters
Time: 9 30am

Read the blogs. If there’s anything the track record of this band can tell you, it’s that everything that could ever go wrong will. So, naturally, you can understand my worry about how today was going to unfold. A lot of factors had to come together and fall in line perfectly for the main event to go smoothly, a lot more factors than most events of any sort involve (just think – it’s MUCHMUSIC).

Let’s put it this way: we’re usually the only factors at most of our other events, and that rarely goes well. This could be the ultimate worst.

Today was the day Soul Plane was to stand under intense scrutiny by a panel of Canadian music industry professionals who each had the role of judging whether or not we had what it takes to make it somewhere in the industry. Harrison Hennick, owner of Reservoir Recordings and Soul Plane merchandise sponsor, was to arrive by 10am with t-shirts and demos along with Louis Saturnino, Soul Plane’s in-house cameraman who was to come in and snap away for a photoshoot inside the Much environment. The band itself has six members and a manager, as well as a promo team to bring together at what is generally considered an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning, with heavy-ass instruments and amps the size of bar fridges to carry, load, and unload. Let’s not forget the drive downtown Toronto from Thornhill.

Side note: 8:50am, Kevin calls me as I’m on the road on my way to Aaron’s, where we were to meet before we headed down together: “Yui, we have a slight problem, buddy. One of the Long and McQuade amps is fucked. It like, refuses to play.” Okay, I’m not an expert on amps or anything, but I’m pretty sure that if an amp DOESN’T MAKE SOUND, this problem is anything but “slight,” Kevin.

And so it begins.

After nearly swerving into the police cruiser in the adjacent lane, I slowly regained my composure and we managed to confirm after a series of calls that Steve’s Music on Queen St. would have a Marshall stack available for us for pick-up well before soundcheck was to happen.

Your move, Fate.

Call time was 10am. We were there by 9 30. Hector had told us to arrive as early as possible and to call him when we arrived at the front of the Much building so that he could have a crew come out to film us unload and set up for soundcheck. Imagine the kind of burn-out we were in for: we weren’t supposed to be playing until 1pm, and our fans had been told to stay away from premises until at least 12 30pm. The day was set to be longer than most university convocations. And it was raining. How gay.

Whatever, the show will go on no matter how many death threats I have to make and carry out. We have worked our asses off for two solid months on this ONE song. And I swear if I have to hear this song ONE more time after today I’m going to punch my next door neighbour in the mouth. “Impossible.” I don’t even like that word anymore. I’m so sick of my verse – these two months have made me lock down my material so hard I can rap it backwards mid-coitus. We had consulted the best in the business: Greig Nori was our main go-to guy for the whole thing – he was the man behind the complete re-vamping of the song. Over the months, “Impossible” had evolved into a mainstream-able single under Greig’s supervision, and the hope was that the judges would think so as well. Bishop, legend of Toronto emcee, had been enlisted by Much producers to work with me on my flow and delivery for my verse on “Impossible.” Saukrates, Canadian rapper extraordinaire who’s toured world stages with Nelly Furtado, crashed one of our rehearsals to give us advice on how to put our best foot forward in terms of visual presentation. July and August saw us going through rockstar boot camp – don’t let the episode fool you, they only want you to THINK we did it in a week.

By 10 30am, Louis walks in and immediately gets to work. Before long I’m posing in all corners of the Much environment and definitely getting in the way of everybody doing way more important things. I started to worry, though, when Harrison was still a no-show by 11am – our fans needed shirts for national TV and for the judges – we had to absolutely make sure that it looked like people liked us. If you saw the episode, you’ll know that for just one day, we had the entire world fooled: when Harrison finally showed up by 11 40am with a boatload of cargo on him, I immediately worried much less – everything was coming together to help us A-town stomp Fate in the scrotum. The only thing that could ruin us now was the judges, or someone calling in a bomb threat to MuchMusic.

We had an anticipated 100+ or so people who had confirmed that they would be at the show, but track record told us that maybe 65% of them would actually come out. It’s never as good as it sounds where crowd size is concerned. As the boys plugged shit in left and right, Mel and I hung around outside trying to lure people into the Much building, in the same way that repeated sex offenders try to lure hot women into dark alleys.

Most notably, two gorgeous girls happened to be walking around Queen St., totally oblivious to our predatory instincts at work as they stopped in front of the Much building and started taking pictures. I jumped right on it: “Hey, if you come back around noon, the view will be much nicer…” She looked at me like I just asked her to wash my asshole. “I mean, my band’s going to be playing here, and if you wanna come in for the party and be on MuchMusic, all you have to do is show up back here at 12 30pm.” Look at me, shamelessly baiting the hook like a pro.

We struck up conversation, and I discovered that the pair was friends from Halifax who were in Toronto for a vacation. I also discovered that getting on MuchMusic was like, the second most exciting thing ever to people from Halifax next to eating delicious lobster, so needless to say, they agreed to return. Glad I could help, ladies. Since the airing of our episode, Jamie and Alex have emailed us to thank us for a memorable Toronto experience, as well as to let us know that we kick ass and to not stop making music. Well, thanks for all the love, and I’ll holler at you both if the Plane ever makes it out of Toronto.

This means we’ll never see each other again – you have nothing to worry about.

As we set up and ran soundcheck, the realization that we could be told to shut the hell up and get the hell out on a nationally-televised program in the form of a “thumbs down” from the judges set in. As I went outside shortly before 1pm to greet our fans lined up screaming outside the Much building with signs waving (Katherine actually had glitter all up in her shit. Glitter. She’s 24. Also my favourite), I was overwhelmed by the amount of people that had come out to support us and show us love on national television. They were all wearing Soul Plane shirts (Shain, Conor, and Harrison ran around outside the Much building handing them out, we had most of downtown Toronto clad in Soul Plane apparel), holding copies of our demo. People I had never met, people off the streets, people I grew up with, friends, family, acquaintances… everyone was excited to absolute shit for us. They had come out on this fine Saturday afternoon (even though it was raining) to stand behind us, in front of a firing squad of judges. I sighed as the thought of the possibility of letting all these people down crossed my mind, but thought better of it and immediately wiped my mental board clean to focus on what was to come. Nothing else in this world mattered right now other than the people in this building… it was time to take it down.

As we gathered in the green room before they brought in the panel of judges, Hector was quick to pull the camera out to get in on our conversation. He asked us what we would do if we were told to disband today after our performance. I told him that if the judges said “no” to us, they’d also be saying “no” to Greig Nori, to Saukrates, to Bishop, to everyone who had put in effort or contributed in some way to make today happen. The general attitude in the green room was that we had done our very best for these two months, and that it was damn near impossible to do more. This was us at our maximum potential; by now you guys have seen the episode – “if they tell us to disband, fuck them.” I meant it entirely. They introduced the judges: Jen Hirst, an A&R from EMI Music Canada who signed Billy Talent; Colin Lewis, a booking agent for The Agency Group; Matt Wells, host of MuchMoreMusic; Hannah Simone, the Much VJ who tore us apart in the interview; and, just for me, JDiggz – one of Canada’s most well-known rappers. This oughta be good.

This was about when Greig Nori dropped what I consider to be the quote of the entire Much experience on us, a byte which was incidentally on record and aired with the episode: “If today goes well, and you get the thumbs up from the judges, and everybody is loving it, and seeing how well we worked with each other over the last little while, would I be able to get first crack at producing Soul Plane?” Again, you guys saw the episode; we were floored. Please believe we are in the process of following up on this…

And performing… don’t even get me started. Clad in grey, black, and pink (yes, pink), we looked nothing short of majestic as we took the stage. The lights in the environment matched the colour scheme we were running, and as Aaron tapped the band in, you could feel slabs of momentum just get stacked one on top of the next. Honestly, I could write a whole ‘nother blog about the three minutes during which we played live at Much. It was easily the best three minutes of my life – I loved the challenge of trying to decide which cameras to make eye-contact with out of the 15 or so moving around us simultaneously. I rapped my heart out, and for the first time in my entire career, forgot about my fans (in my defense, they were behind me and thus out of sight). For the entire show, I could see nothing in that room but the judges, as if rather than performing at MuchMusic I was conversing with each one of them individually. Like, damn… how many musicians or bands actually get to do this shit, get this level of exposure on Canada’s most wide-spread entertainment network, and how many of them aspire to taste this just once in their decade-long slow-grinding careers? Trust me, I know exactly where they come from – I’m that same starving artist who just happened to get a lucky break here. If you still can’t understand how much this moment meant to me and how much I cherished it, then I can’t help you because you don’t understand English, homeboy.

After the fans rocked out with us and cheered us on louder than we’ve ever been cheered on. I waved to the judges (especially Hannah, just to let her know I deep down still love her even though she ruined my shit on national TV), introduced them to our fans, and went back into the green room while the judges were to deliberate amongst themselves (in front of our fans) over whether or not we had what it takes to make it in the music industry. Except instead of deliberate, they decided deliberHATE. I am not ashamed to say that several of my friends were text-messaging me with various summaries of what the judges were saying. JDiggz wasn’t down with my swagger. Several judges on the panel thought Mel should leave Soul Plane and do her own thing. They hated the band name because of the negative associations that automatically come to mind linking us with that flop of a Snoop Dogg flick. They picked apart Aaron’s pink scarf and the hated all month long on Luke’s tie. Jen Hirst loved Mel’s voice and stage presence but ripped on her looks. Colin Lewis thought we needed much more practice, and that we still sounded like a basement band. Hannah Simone brought back the “f-word-that-rhymes-with-‘maggot’” issue and used that to illustrate the point that we weren’t ready for the industry’s hardships. I don’t remember getting any positive feedback relayed to me in any of the text messages I read; obviously I wasn’t telling any of my bandmates about these messages I was getting, either. I silently prepared myself for the worst.

I could hear Much VJ Sarah Taylor’s voice announcing our return into the environment for the pronouncement of the verdict. Again, our fans were cued to roar until their lungs got sore. I was numb on the inside, no lie – our careers, our livelihoods, the life of this band… depended on this verdict. I knew what I was hoping for, but I had no idea what to expect. I also knew that no matter how much we try to fool ourselves into adopting that “no matter what, we should be proud of ourselves because we did our best” attitude, a “disband” verdict would likely be career-ending. At least for me – how the hell would I live that one down? The judges now sat in a row in front of us, smiling like cannibals do after eating an elaborate feast of roast human. They looked like they all just knocked back double shots of sheep’s blood and chased it with a bag of gunpowder. Everything pointed to the fact that this was about to suck a lot.

After we settled around the mic stand, Sarah gave us the goods without too much delay. To paraphrase her: “Okay. So. The judges love your guys’ sound, and they thought that Mel G was great.” Pause for cheers. “BUT… but, the judges also thought that your image wasn’t authentic, and that you guys may not be ready for how tough the industry can get.” Pause for acknowledgement. “Bearing all this in mind, and considering that there are countless bands out there trying to make it, the judges have agreed that Soul Plane…”

I could have made coffee in the time Sarah paused here. Like, picked the fucking beans and roasted them and all. I almost had an aneurysm.

“…HAS WHAT IT TAKES!!!”

The fans erupted in a roar that probably caused an earthquake in Australia, but I barely heard them. Mel, Kevin, Gideon, Aaron, Luke, and I folded into each other in what was perhaps our first group hug ever as a band – it was long overdue, and no other occasion would have been more appropriate. By now, you guys should have seen the episode – homegirl broke down, and I don’t blame her, we had really given this single moment everything we had. Don’t let TV fool you – during the two months we filmed, we experienced hardships that would not suit the PG rating MuchMusic gave to the show – this victory was nothing short of hard-fought. We held each other, and obviously it was a huge frenzy between the six of us as we each burst with elation, but one clear moment amidst all the blur was when Gideon and I grabbed each other and came within make-out distance of each others’ faces only to yell “OH MY FUCKING GOD GREIG NORI’S GOING TO PRODUCE US!! HE’S GOING TO!! HE HAS TO!! HE SAID SO ON CAMERA!! HOLY FUCK, WE’RE ON THE WAY!! LET’S TOUCH EACH OTHERS’ BALLS!!” We deserved it, no doubt. I ran over to Conor, Shain and Harrison standing in the shadows off to the side and hugged them harder than I’ve ever hugged my own mother. This must be what it feels like to win the World Cup, to win gold at an Olympics event, to have sex with a porn star, to be on top of the world, to be Barack Obama. I don’t even remember what happened later that night – I don’t think any of us do. All that mattered was that we had been tried, tested, and proven true by MuchMusic, in front of all our closest friends and family members, in front of our fans, and, perhaps best of all, on national television.

What more can I say?