Soul Plane

MYSPACE TAKEOVER!!

2009-01-03T21:59:00.002-05:00

ATTENTION ALL SOUL PLANE FANS AND BLOG READERS: SOULPLANEMUSIC.COM HAS BEEN RE-DIRECTED TO OUR MYSPACE. CLICK HERE TO READ BLOGS FROM 2009 ONWARDS (JUST FIND THE BLOG SECTION ON OUR MYSPACE PAGE). STAY UP!!

MUCH Chronicles Pt. IX

2008-12-16T19:15:00.002-05:00

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...

The Voiceover Sessions

Location: MuchMusic Headquarters

Saying formal goodbyes to MuchMusic after our final performance like everyone else in Soul Plane did was, for me, an absolutely inappropriate thing to do. In fact, the weeks that followed the success that was our show at Much saw me getting busier than I ever was during the actual filming process.

You may have noticed that throughout our “Disband” episode that there’s a dude that keeps talking off-camera and why won’t he just shut the hell up and let me watch this damn show. That’s because MuchMusic decided that reality-TV fans cannot get enough of a first-person narrative of what’s going on – merely seeing us get chewed up, swallowed, and projectile-thrown-up in a back alley by music industry bigwigs for 17-or-so minutes (until the judges miraculously got high or something and somehow and decided that we had what it takes, despite all contrary appearances, to make it in the music biz) wasn’t enough, they had to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Except on the show I looked more like an ass than a horse.

When Hector called me to tell me that I’d be doing the voiceover sessions for our episodes, I was less than excited. I knew immediately that they would have a script prepared for me, and I knew that the script was going to be cornier than a bag of nachos. Obviously this is no reflection on the writers of the show; this is more a reflection on their target audience’s shitty sense of humour. I don’t care how much you want to blame the writing, because the numbers don’t lie: somebody out there is tuning in and sending these ratings through the roof, which gives the head honchos at Much Headquarters the impression (and rightly so) that the mainstream masses are eating it up (because you are), which leads to a pat on the back and a letter of encouragement for the writers, which now backfires in my face hard because I have to read this in a way that convinces everyone that this is really how I would talk. I was going to have to either stand up for myself once the script fell into my hands, or sit down to pee on national television.

From the sounds of it, I definitely chose the latter.

But even how gay I sounded narrating our two months of camera-time with Much couldn’t take away from the experience of actually recording the voiceovers for a reality show. Each session I was called down for (and there were several because I suck and I’m no good at making other people’s shit my personality), Hector was in Super-Host God Mode. He gave me a tour of the entire building, I got to meet a lot of the Much TV personalities – they’re all just as cool as they seem on TV. Hannah Simone and I got to kick it and that’s where I found out she wasn’t even that offended that I dropped “faggot” in my freestyle against Bishop, she just had to play it up for the purposes of the episode. Nevertheless, she took the opportunity to warn me that part of her job description when interviewing bands/celebrities is to find out where they “fucked up and expose them accordingly,” so if I wanted to avoid that kind of grilling from other media personalities, I needed first and foremost to watch my mouth and my actions. I in turn reassured her that I wasn’t looking to put gays on blast… just Bishop. And that didn't work out so well either.

During our down time, interspersed with smoke breaks and meeting and kicking it with TV personalities at Much, we went over how these voiceovers were supposed to go down: I was supposed to sound like I truly meant everything I was reading off that script. I got a lot of heat from my friends at how corny some of those voiceover lines were – I’d like to take this time to clear the air: I did not write my own shit, nor did I see any of the footage that my voiceovers were supposed to be segmented into. If I had, it would NOT have come out sounding cornier than a bag of Tostitos chips. Not that it sounded shitty or anything, but if they just let me talk as I was watching the final cut of the episode, they would have gotten a fully authentic commentary on everything that was happening on the screen. It would have been much more entertaining: for example, during the scene where Soul Plane goes into group-hug mode after Sarah Taylor announced the verdict, I woulda been like: Yeah, here’s where I hump Gideon’s leg. See? Much better already – no pun intended.

And then there were just some things I flat-out refused to say. One of the writers tried to get me saying something like, “…and when Greig said that we shouldn’t play ‘Life is Beautiful’ for the judges, it kinda put a pickle in our steeze.” Are you serious? What the fuck is a pickle? I put pickles in my sandwich. Who says “pickle” for ANY OTHER REASON? What kind of assclown was this writer trying to make me look like? When I got to the line I calmly looked at Kelly, the studio engineer at the time, through the glass pane and then the writer who was, at the time, supervising the voiceover session, and the following conversation ensued:

Yui: I’m not saying “pickle.”
Writer: What?
Yui: This line here… “…a bit of a pickle of a situation?” What the fuck does that even mean?
Writer: It means that Greig telling you not to play that song was pitching a curveball at your plans.
Yui: Couldn’t you have just written THAT?

Writer: …

Yui: Seriously, I’m not saying this.
Writer: Well, just give it a shot, man. It might come out good.
Yui: Impossible.

Kelly: Yeah, I think it sounds stupid too.
Writer: Oh.

Another thing I refused to say was the word “finangle.” I don’t know what that means either, and I certainly didn’t care about context. It just sounds dumb no matter where, when or how you say it.

Most of you have seen our episode. What did you think of the voiceovers? Email your thoughts to fanmail@soulplanemusic.com. I’ll pretend to care as soon as I remember the password to get into that email account.

Party Of None

2008-11-29T20:54:00.005-05:00

Date: November 26^th, 2008
Venue: The Kathedral
Series: n/a

You know it’s all about the music when Mel drives all the way back from London, Ontario, to Toronto on a Wednesday to play a gig on a dingy-ass stage in front of literally four people. But we knew what we were getting ourselves into: we knew three weeks ago when we booked this show that after having done the Opera House on Friday night that we’d be too promotionally exhausted to drag out numbers for tonight.

You’ve seen (actually, likely not) the fruits of our labour when we give half of a damn about pulling a crowd out. They’re meandering, to say the least. In fact, if they were real fruit, it would be the Department of Agriculture’s top priority to put a product recall on them.

Tonight, our land was plagued with locusts. No fruit for anyone.

It’s cuz the farmers are retarded.

This became apparent when everyone in the band and then some came over to my downtown residence to session and get smashed before getting on stage. It is, at this point, worthy to note that we have never collectively gotten this degenerated as a band. Not even for MuchMusic. And that was ridiculous, even by our standards. We were barely coherent by 9pm, and when we arrived at the venue around 10 15pm, most of our cognitive abilities were a cause more lost than feminism. Mel was so destroyed that she forgot her lyrics as she was rehearsing them to herself in the car, and she started begging me to ask the promoters to see if they could pull our set... 15 minutes before our set was to begin. It was hilarious.

The worst part of tonight was that I almost chopped off my crotch, thanks to Soul Plane drummer Aaron Mellet. Literally 5 minutes before showtime, this guy realizes that he forgot the noise-cancelling headphones he needs to hear the metronome he needs to keep the band together in Kevin’s car, parked at least 10 minutes’ walk away from the Kathedral. It was unanimously decided that I should go fetch – their reasoning was that I had no equipment to set up. For definitely not the first time ever, I hated rapping in a live band. After some obscure and ambiguously babbled directions from a very distracted Kevin, I smelled like team spirit and bolted out the door. Down Queen St. I flew, past at least two parking lots that were closed down – just my luck. I duck right on a street that looks like lots of people get raped on every day, and somehow, I see his silver Passat station wagon just sitting there under a streetlight.

You know how when you’re in a rush, and you’re running, and you see your objective destination from afar, you start picking up speed towards it, right? Right. So I’m probably running a healthy 15km/h by now towards the car when suddenly I get this sharp and rapidly increasing pain in my scrotum, as well as the wind knocked out of my chest. But who gives a shit about wind when your balls are getting cut off. I look down to see this thin-ass chain-wire barricade that these low-rent lots use to seal off their property wedged into my legs and dick. I had run nuts-first into this thing and not seen it in the dark. It hurt a lot. My skin, the cotton fabric of my boxers, and Rocawear denim have never gotten to know each other so intimately. Seriously, I almost cried. I was, in all honestly, way too terrified to do a feel-check. But who cares about never being able to have sex again, because we had a show to do.

When I made it back into the Kathedral 45 seconds to show time, I was in pain, out of breath, and sweaty. Usually I save the “just-had-a-miscarriage” look for after the show.

When we got on stage, for the four bars of the intro to “Soul Playin’,” the first song of our set, I actually managed to do a headcount: our crowd consisted EXACTLY of two bouncers, one bartender, all seven people on the promotion team from the high school we were supposedly fundraising for but really just losing money on behalf of because we brought no one, our (potential) new bassist Alex Lam and one of his buddies, one of my roommates, and Jade.

Our set saw more debauchery than I’ve ever been associated with in my life. Mel was forgetting lyrics, Luke was playing the wrong bass riffs for songs we didn’t write, and everyone just plain sucked. It hardly mattered, though, because we kept it gangster and played our hearts out. We had the time of our lives.

Along with gangster, the other thing we keep it is real. This MSN conversation between Gideon and I sums up the evening comprehensively:

- www.soulplanemusic.com [UPDATED] says:

Yo we are so bad

Golden Giddle says:

yea i knowwww

- www.soulplanemusic.com [UPDATED] says:

How did we even make it through that gig

- www.soulplanemusic.com [UPDATED] says:

Without having something thrown at us

Golden Giddle says:

there weren’t even people there to throw something

I don’t give a shit about anything but our Spring Break Tour in Panama City, FL. right now. None of us do. Let me make this real easy: if you’ve made plans with Melanie Goldman, Gideon Litvin, Kevin Nanni, Luke Rust, or Aaron Mellet between now and Feb 21^st, you are wrong. They will be learning songs up the yinyang and having exactly not enough time to see you. They are to officially reappear in the public eye on Feb 21^st, on the tour bus. Find out how to join us – see UPCOMING EVENTS section for details!

Garbage Times Band

2008-11-26T11:45:00.001-05:00

Date: Nov 21^st, 2008.

Venue: The Opera House

Series: S&S

Shortly after our MuchMusic episode aired early on around mid-September, a local promotion called S&S got in touch with us and asked if we were interested in playing at the Opera House on Friday, November 21^st. Thinking that our success on TV would help us draw out numbers to fill the Opera House and given the amount of time between now and show night, we went for it and within a week, we had tickets in our hands to sell to our fans.

In mid-October, Mel found out that she would have to represent the University of Western Ontario’s hip hop team in a province-wide dance competition in Hamilton on Saturday, November 22^nd. The event was a huge deal and there was no way she would be able to miss it. We understood, and, after talking amongst ourselves, we decided that we’d go ahead with it since we still had a long time to promote the gig, and because of this grace period we would also have time to practice with Conor, who would have to fill in as DJ and scratch over most of Mel’s parts. It would be a different sound, a more gritty sound, a less practiced sound… but a sound we definitely had heard before when our former vocalist Blythe got sick the day of a show we were performing at the El Mocambo (see In One Ear Throwdown Showdown blog – Sept 7, 2007). The result of this spontaneous experiment was rather stellar, given that we had rehearsed an astounding total of 0 times before throwing it together on the El Mo’s first floor stage. In any case, it worked out before with no prep time so there was no reason why, logically, it wouldn’t work out BETTER with SOME prep time and ALL this month and some change left to sell tickets.

False. We still blow chunks like fellating fatties.

The promotion for this show was riddled with tell-tale signs of our usual “too little too late” approach. Vlad, Conor, and I ran around the Eaton Centre handing out tickets to the gig to people who generally just forced a smile and tried to seem as genuine as possible while bold-faced lying to us through their teeth: we heard everything from “Sorry, bro, I got a thing,” to “Oh… yeah, sure, I’ll see what’s up with my friends and maybe we’ll come check you guys…” to “Soul Plane? I love Soul Plane! I’m coming for sure!” No, are you not, you’re full of shit and I can smell it from here. Wipe your mouth; you’re starting to skidmark a bit under your lower lip. Aside from this and the usual website/MySpace/Facebook post/text-blast, we didn’t give a shit and it showed. It was a shitshow.

The fact that Mel wasn’t at the gig hurt more than just our performance; only when our set started did I realize that we had completely overlooked the fact that the Opera House stage was like a fucking football stadium compared to the cubicle that was the El Mocambo. With Mel, it would have been at least two bodies moving about constantly onstage to the rhythm to get the crowd going. How the hell was Conor supposed to help with stage presence with two big-ass turntables and a mixer on a stationary banquet table in front of him? I’m not Jay-Z… filling a stage the size of the one at the Opera House by myself was something I was not accustomed to having to do. Whatever, I did my best to get the crowd going, but the effort seemed more like putting a wet blanket over a pile of puke and hoping that no one notices the smell – hardly anybody moved during our entire set. This almost NEVER happens. Usually people are hopping after our first song, but this time, the complete change (or lack) of dynamics was not suitable for our audience. It seemed like I was rapping to a bunch of nursing home residents. It was the slowest suicide ever without actually getting to die. My girl Jade swears that there were some loud-ass cheers coming from the section where the 19+ concert attendees were quarantined with their alcohol, but I don’t remember hearing anything. I would have remembered a cheer, since there were so few of them at such small volumes that night. Instead the only memories I have are of me wishing the set would hurry up and end so that I could get off stage. But I digress, because a dead crowd is still better than no crowd. A dead crowd means that we fell off for that one particular night. No crowd means we’ve sucked forever and now even less people care to notice.

Mel not being at our show ruined our entire turn out. You have to understand something: look up Melanie Goldman on Facebook. Go on, just do it. When she adds you, look at how many friends she has in her list. She’ll tell you she doesn’t talk to all of them all the time, but I’ve seen her on her Blackberry and I know much better. Before Soul Plane got on national TV, during my promotion runs for the band, I’d tell random people on buses and in malls around Toronto that I rapped for a local band called Soul Plane and one out of every 15-20 people I talked to would be like: “SOUL PLANE?? DO YOU KNOW MEL G??” In short, all the girl has to do to bring 20 people to ANY EVENT SHE IS AT is send out a couple messages on Facebook – I mean, she’s the reason we can even call our crowd a “fanbase.” Needless to say, her absence at the show translated into a crowd of maybe 20 people. Luckily it was a Friday night and there were some people at the Opera House. Otherwise I would have left.

To the fans: seriously, more of you guys gotta start making an effort to come out to these things. You’re all we got. Without you our music falls on no ears (we’d be grateful even for deaf ones – Vlad actually gave a ticket to a deaf guy at the Eaton Centre on Friday afternoon before the gig), and really, you guys are almost the whole reason we do this. If you want to see Soul Plane blow up, this is your chance to become part of the solution. If you love us you will show up to our next gig.

For the love of God.

Anyway, I don’t know whether I’m getting more bored or more depressed as I’m writing this, but I’ve decided to just stop because I hate dwelling on garbage. Bottom line: the band will never be playing another gig without some sort of female vocalist/counterpart for me to play off of on stage. Not to say Conor didn’t pull his weight on the wheels of steel because he did and then some, but he shouldn’t have had to. It was a shitty night and no one should have to hear any more about it. In conclusion, Soul Plane learned a hard lesson: prepping for important gigs is like having unprotected sex; you gotta know when to pull out.

Much Chronicles Pt. VIII

2008-11-24T11:47:00.003-05:00

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?

Much Chronicles Pt. VII

2008-11-16T17:50:00.002-05:00

Day 7 – August 1^st, 2008

Location: Senior’s home across from Much building
Time: 3pm

They had warned us that today’s interview was going to be the toughest one of our lives. We were ready, though – we had spent several weeks dodging questions on camera with answers that would inevitably lead to drama, or something that looked like drama, or something that could be edited way out of context to be used as something that resembled drama. Much VJ Hannah Simone would have to do her worst.

And boy, did she ever.

After some general warm-up questions, Hannah started talking about the fact that she checked out the tapes of my freestyle battle with Bishop and noticed with much distaste that I had used an “f-word that rhymes with ‘maggot’” at the very beginning of my verse. Just to put things in context, the minute Greig Nori gave me the go-ahead to start freestyling against Bishop, I rhymed: “You fucking faggot, you couldn’t get it up at the Playboy Mansion/ but you were halfway there when you saw Hanson.” Or something like that.

She commented on how saying words like that on camera would immediately offend an entire population group and how it could, in a situation where we were established, ruin the image and credibility of the whole band as a group that was trying to promote clean music. I think she expected some kind of overreaction, or maybe a show of remorse and regret; hopefully not, because she got neither from me. I casually explained to her that several factors contributed to my having uttered it: first of all, it was a freestyle battle. Nothing is off-limits in this arena – all the lyrics used in a battle like this are fresh off the dome – spontaneous (at least they’re supposed to be). In that context, the point is for one emcee to degrade the other as badly as possible, and whether it’s acceptable or not socially, in the hip hop world it is considered a blistering insult to question an emcee’s heterosexuality, especially if it’s done cleverly. “Faggot” helped emphasize the Playboy and Hanson references – the word itself was a set-up for the two lines that followed. Secondly, I noted that the battle was, in effect, pulling me out of a four-year retirement from the scene; I was rusty, and they were forcing me into a war of unpremeditated words I never asked to fight, but that if I declined, it would make my entire band look weak on national TV – what did you expect? Eloquent poetry? Please.

Hannah Simone was relentless, however – she continued to insist that the general public would judge my usage of the word “faggot” as inappropriate. She said in the best battles that she had witnessed, even if they involved usage of that term, the emcees implemented it creatively into ripping punchlines that made you go “whoa.” But apparently, the way I used it would make everyone hate me and bring about an ugly reflection on the rest of Soul Plane. I coolly stated that anything could be taken out of context and be spun to sound terrible, but in the rap battle context and environment we were in, I could make no apologies for anything other than maybe for being too unprepared to think of a different word to question his sexual orientation with. In the battle-rap world, you don’t make apologies for lines you spit (no matter how obscene) because these are battles – supposedly full of exaggeration and hyperbole in its degrading nature, never meant to be taken in any other way other than with a grain of salt. You’ve all seen 8 Mile by now...

Besides, it’s not like the person who I directed the insult to, Bishop, took it personal, so why should anyone else? I was clearly not looking to offend ALL homosexuals of the past, present, and future – this was not the intention. It’s a battle – I’m rapping before I’m thinking here – there’s no need to read deeper than that. People taking things said in battles way out of context and way too seriously are the very reasons I left the scene behind. I’m no longer a battle emcee by trade, and as far as MuchMusic was concerned, they had no idea that I had ever even taken part in any type of lyrical spat in my life. They threw me into the ring without thinking that I’d be bringing a certain level of experience with me. They had expected me to back out, or at the very least stutter through most of a shitty excuse for a battle verse – both of which would have made for excellent, embarrassing drama to be aired on national television. Surprise, assholes!

On the real, though, you wanted a battle, right? This was a reality show, right? Well, this is the grimy reality of the battle scene, and part of why I bounced from it so long ago in the first place. I said that our real fans would know how out-of-my-element I was and they would take that into consideration (along with the fact that it’s a F-R-E-E-S-T-Y-L-E where, again, you’re rapping before you’re thinking) before condemning me – if they’re smart enough to appreciate our music in the first place, then they’re smart enough to realize that a freestyle battle is night-and-day of a world’s difference from a written, musical composition. Furthermore, one of the major selling points of Soul Plane’s music has always been that it’s uplifting in spirit. With the Bishop battle, MuchMusic had driven me all the way over to the other end of the spectrum with one mission statement to bear in mind: defame Bishop’s character and demoralize him as heavily as possible – the worse I could make him feel the better it would look on me. So, whether you judge me for the clean, positive music I make voluntarily, or whether you judge me based on a word I used (in context, might I add) during a freestyle battle that I was virtually forced into by MuchMusic against one of the world’s most formidable opponents in the domain of battle rap, the decision is ultimately yours.

Mel interjected here and said that people should not judge us based on my usage of that word because I was by no means representing the mentalities of anyone in the group during that battle, and probably not even my own. It was strictly between me and Bishop, and that in any setting we must allow for slip-ups and mistakes. Mel went on to assure Hannah that she personally loved the gay community and had a lot of gay friends so obviously she didn’t condone any use of that word in any context, but that on behalf of the band she apologized for my mistake. However, Mel did acknowledge that it was a freestyle, along with the possibility that I might have been initially overwhelmed by such a formidable opponent as Bishop which made me throw caution to the wind, to paraphrase. I was later questioned during my confessional on how I felt about Mel stepping in and offering up the apology despite the fact that I had said myself that I was not remorseful, and I said: “I think that Mel is definitely entitled to her opinion, and if she honestly feels that an apology is due, and that’s her true belief, then who am I to argue? I firmly encourage her to voice her opinion.” This is 100% true, and I agree with the fact that “faggot” is a word that implies hate towards a whole community, but let’s be honest, no one who knows how to look at the big picture and the context of things here would take offense. And if you did, I apologize now – I thought better of your judgement than to assume you were petty and oversensitive about a word that has literally zero meaning when used in the context of a rap battle. NOTHING has meaning in a rap battle – anyone who thinks otherwise needs a serious reality check.

As for Gideon, he displayed remarkable indifference when he was asked about how he felt about my saying “faggot.” If a 16-year-old kid who sits around picking his asshole all day and doesn’t even listen to hip hop can understand the context, then so can just about anyone else. Life is not that serious.

After thoroughly exhausting the topic, Hannah finally shifted gears off the topic of demeaning gays and asked about band dynamics. She tried to imply that because Mel was the only female in the band, one of the guys was bound to start liking her as more than a friend. I playfully said that I already did. Mel handled this one quite well: “Soul Plane is too much like a family... Yui’s like, the dad, I’m the band mom, Gideon and Aaron are the two kids, Kevin’s the grandpa, and Luke’s the crazy uncle... there’s a lot of love in this band, but not anything like that. Never anything like that. It would just jeopardize everything we’ve worked so hard to build up.” Hannah persisted: “Well, you never know, these things do happen.” Trust me, lady, not over here they don’t, because if they did, that would definitely get in the way of making music in too many ways to bother noting, and this would be illegally unacceptable. We have no time for trivial matters like emotions and feelings in this band.

Hannah eventually gave up trying to find out about (and create) band dynamics and moved forward to putting us on the spot about how we would handle getting famous down the line and the cliché path of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” (she actually said this) we could end up walking. I fielded this question by explaining that our goals at the moment involved none of the above, and that the path we were pursuing was leaning more towards ensuring that as many people as possible get a chance to hear our music. All we would have to do to avoid deviating from this objective is focus our energy on passing around our product by any means necessary without getting caught up with all the bells and whistles and unnecessary extras.

Finally, Hannah dropped the most ridiculous question of the hour in my opinion. She asked us which band member we would drop if a label told us that six of us were too many to promote properly. At first Hannah wanted to hear it from Mel, but Mel told Hannah that she didn’t feel obliged to answer the question. So I did: “Wait, it doesn’t really make sense that a label would express interest in us based on the strength of our music, and then come back around to tell us that someone needs to be cut. Any label would realize that the loss of any single one of us would take our music in a completely different direction, that it would irrevocably change the very concept they were digging in the first place.” Obviously, the chances of this scenario ever unfolding in real life are slim to none. Good try, though, Hannah.

One of the last questions of the interview was, “What was it about Greig Nori that annoyed you the most?” I don’t think Hannah thought out the question clearly before she asked it. Between Mel, Gideon and myself, we couldn’t think of a single thing about Greig that pissed us off, other than us not having more time to work with him and get his feedback before the big show. I don’t get how anyone could get annoyed at someone of Greig’s status in the music industry offering his help and support to cut a smash hit single for your band. Next question please.

Hannah Simone concluded the interview by asking if we felt we were ready for the performance in front of the judges. We acknowledged that there was a lot of work to be done in the visual presentation department but that we were confident about being able to muck through it and come out on top, and that musically we were good to go. She thanked us for our time, we thanked her for hers. She wished us good luck, and we parted ways.

I can’t wait ‘til they air me saying “faggot” (albeit censored) on national television. It’s gonna be funny.

Much Chronicles Pt. VI

2008-11-10T20:39:00.003-05:00

Day 6 – July 24^th, 2008

Location: Rehearsal Factory

Time: 3pm

All we knew about today was that Greig Nori was supposed to come in and check on the progress we had made on fixing up “Impossible” according to his suggestions. We left nothing to chance – no one else I know has ever written a hit single that circulated the nation’s airwaves and music channels; this alone explains why Soul Plane decided ultimately to play sponge to every piece of Greig’s advice. Try to follow me here:

We had taken measures to cut the song into a manageable 3:45 in length. I took out my first verse completely and replaced it with last verse I spit, which was incidentally 12 bars long, as opposed to the tedious 16 I was rapping before. The new version also included a shorter chorus of eight bars, cut in half from what it was previously, and the chorus’ melody line was re-written by Greig to give it a more attention-grabbing vibe. After the first chorus, Greg suggested we kick right into the “reggaefied” riff that I used to rap over, except now Mel would be singing her verse on it instead. It would then go back into the revised chorus, followed by Gideon’s solo for 12 bars. After Gideon gets done showing off, I come back in and do a call-and-response exchange with his guitar for 8 bars. Finally, it was to end on a bang that is the new chorus. Get it? Good. Explain it to me.

Once we got set up and tuned, we started practicing. Before long, Greig Nori strolled into our rehearsal space and took over our lives. We played our song for him and he was immediately positive about the changes we had made in his absence. He made a few more suggestions to bring the song’s catchiness up another notch: Gideon’s solo would have to be shortened even more, Mel’s verse could use some trimming as well, the chorus ended a bit too abruptly, and the chorus still lacked something despite already having undergone re-writing. It’s okay, he assured us, there was still time to keep working on the track.

Greig then told us that making good music as a band was all about musically playing off the different band members and finding a consistent, common groove between each of us. This would happen only if we were actively listening to each other as we were playing. Bearing this in mind, he told us that our next exercise would entail switching instruments/roles with another Soul Plane member – Kevin was then put on the drums, Gideon picked up the bass, Luke grabbed Kevin’s guitar, and I took Gideon’s. Initially, Mel refused to do anything but sing, but Greig eventually convinced her to try rapping. Aaron was then made lead vocalist. Greig then instructed Kevin to start banging out a rhythm, and whenever the rest of us caught onto the groove, we should join in.

The results of the experiment could only be described as “reasonable.” We didn’t sound like complete ass, but it wasn’t worthy of replay, either. What we did get from it was a lesson on a concept that has, until now, eluded us as a band: in order for you to really listen to the sounds of your musical counterparts, you must first put yourself in their shoes. After the exercise, I was able to feel the music from (in my case) Gideon’s perspective, and now I appreciate his contribution to the song that much more. Everyone else’s reaction to the exercise was along the same lines – Gideon suggested over dinner later that night that we should trade instruments more often to get a more comprehensive picture of how we sound with each other. Man, does this Greig Nori guy ever know his shit.

After the exercise we got back to the drawing board with “Impossible.” There was still work to be done. But, of course, MuchMusic isn’t here to film Soul Plane arguing over how a chorus should sound (well, they are, but they have better shit to do with us right now). As we were innocently minding our own business and figuring guitar lines out, the door to our rehearsal space busts open and Saukrates comes running through wearing a whole lot of red. For those who haven’t heard of him (and you should be ashamed of yourselves), Saukrates is a Juno-nominated rapper from Toronto who has teamed up with the likes of Redman and Methodman, produced for Nas, and toured internationally with Nelly Furtado. What the fuck have you done lately?

Anyway, after we came out of celebrity shell shock, Saukrates told us he was here to help us on our performance value, to help us look good as we played in front of the judges. He illustrated the importance of looking cohesive, as a unit, on stage by telling us that even when a music video is on his television screen and his TV’s muted, he can decide whether or not he even cares to hear their music based on their visual presentation. I was so relieved that this guy had come to save our lives in this department: we had been complaining about our visual value forever and had done nothing about it for even longer.

Needless to say, we were more than receptive to Saukrates’ ideas. He told us that when I was rapping, I was to stand up at the top of the stage and do a simple two-step. The physical movement was to be kept to a pleasant minimum so that it wouldn’t take away from the actual rapping. Mel was to do more of the same when she was singing her parts. During our exchanges we were to stand together and find a movement to the rhythm that would make us look more synchronized, and during our off-time, we had to find a way to look like we’re interacting and having fun – Saukrates suggested that while Gideon was solo-ing, for example, Mel and I could come together behind him and provide a visual support, along with the rest of the band – he told us that even if the rest of us were doing something as plain and straightforward as bobbing our heads or bodies collectively in a single direction, it would do wonders for our performance. Greig interjected here and made a very valid point: if it looks like we’ve found that common groove he spoke of when we all traded instruments earlier and it looks like we’re having fun doing what we do, then the audience will have fun regardless of whether or not they fully appreciate the music. I, for one, agree wholeheartedly – at any given show, they see you before they hear you, and if they’re turned off at first sight, they won’t even want to bother with the rest of it. True story.

Saukrates carried on with more words of wisdom about figuring out how we wanted to look as a band. He told us that looking ‘together’ was as simple as picking a colour scheme and sticking to it. He cited his love for the colour red as an example – it stands right out, and if everyone on stage wore an identical colour or pattern, we would look much more like a group with some sort of uniformity to it rather than a bunch of sloppily-dressed friends playing music on stage. He said that although we each looked fine individually, it was much trickier to coordinate something that fits everyone’s sense of fashion and style all the while bringing the group together on stage aesthetically. However, he also stressed the importance of not completely compromising a personal style to fit in, because when it comes to the way we dress individually, being out of our own elements will have a big (negative) impact on our levels of comfort, and thus would inevitably affect our performance.

For the cameras, Greig asked Saukrates if he thought we’d stand a chance facing the judges in “two days.” Saukrates looked thoughtful for a moment, and then surprised us all by telling us that he thought we definitely had what it took as long as we continued to be open-minded about taking advice from people who had done and been through what we were trying to do and go through – in short, he said, if Soul Plane stays relevant in our subject matter and open to (qualified) constructive criticism, our success won’t stop at pleasing the judges. I repeat: Saukrates, in his professional opinion, has gone on record and stated that we, Soul Plane, have what it takes to make it. He also said that he loved the music, that it was “infectious” and “catchy,” and that if we managed to pull ourselves together to make Soul Plane look united and collectively presentable on stage in time for these judges, then we’d be giving the band an extra edge on everything else that’s out there. That’s Saukrates saying it, not me. Our job is to prove him right.

After Saukrates left, Greig continued to work with us on “Impossible.” Towards the end of his stay, he actually offered Soul Plane his time off-camera. We were stunned speechless, bewildered at the fact that Greig Nori, someone who had worked with the likes of Sum 41, Iggy Pop and Ludacris, believed in us and our music enough to want to genuinely contribute to it as opposed to just give off the impression of doing so for the cameras. He told us to get at him anytime we wanted some quick feedback on our progress. I then asked him the obvious question: how did he want us to get in touch with him when we needed to? He thought about it for a second, as most high-profile industry people would, and then told me to take down his cell phone number. Everyone was immediately alert – hold up, you really mean Greig fucking Nori was going to hand us his personal contact information so that we could harass him with questions about how to write a guitar line? Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Hector was instantly on cockblock mode: “Hey, you know, Greig, there’s an easier way to do this. They can email us, and then we can just forward it…” Greig cut him off and dismissed the idea with an impatient wave: “That shit takes too fucking long, by the time I get around to checking that email these kids’ll be in front of the judges.”

After I took down his number, he told us to call it anytime anything came to mind. After he left, Julie came right up to me and warned me not to abuse it. Thanks, Julie, I was just about to text-message Greig Nori to see if he wanted to go catch a movie and then have dinner. Obviously, due to the status he has achieved in his line of work, Greig isn’t the type of guy who can afford to just hand his personal information to every aspiring artist – he clearly only gave it to Soul Plane for one or several of the following reasons: 1) he likes our music and truly believes in the fact that we can make it in this dog-eat-dog music industry, and thus wants to be able to actively contribute his professionally adjusted ideas to the foundations we’ve built, 2) we’ve impressed him with our maturity and our ability to execute on his advice, and he trusts that with this maturity comes discretion in terms of how we plan on putting his phone number to good use, 3) we need a lot more work than we think and the time MuchMusic allotted for him to work with us is simply insufficient for us to hammer out anything worth performing, or 4) it was a fake phone number and we’ll never hear from him again.

Thankfully, it’s not reason 3 or 4 in any combination. I know this because Hector came up to us afterwards and told us how excited Greig was to be working with Soul Plane and how optimistic he was about this “Impossible” song being a smash hit radio single (and let’s not make jokes, the boy does know a thing or two about smash hit radio singles) as long as we kept all his tips and pointers in mind. Offering this kind of off-camera, behind-the-scenes help was something Greig had yet to do with other bands he’s been working with that Much has been filming for the reality series. I speak on behalf of Soul Plane when I say we cherish the privilege.

I want to have a romantic affair with Greig Nori.

Much Chronicles Pt. V

2008-11-02T22:33:00.007-05:00

Day 5 – July 22^nd, 2008

Location: Orange Lounge Recordings

Time: 12 30pm

Based on the “clue” (a Polaroid photograph of the front entrance of Orange Lounge Recordings) given to me by Greig Nori the day before, it didn’t seem like it would require too much intellect to figure where we were supposed to be today. The “clue” was supposed to lead to a challenge that was mainly meant for me – I had no idea what it could be; trust me, I spent most of last night harassing everyone in Soul Plane to help me think of the possibilities (Kevin’s theory was that they were going to try to take me out of my element by making me dance, and Luke’s guess was that they were going to make me sing – either way I would have pulled pistols). By morning, as we made our way down to MuchMusic, I had stopped caring almost entirely and decided to just let them bring it on.

We were met by Julie and Chris (the same cameraman who filmed us yesterday, but not the one who was at Machinehead Studio) when we arrived at Orange Lounge. We were directed into the lounge seating area to wait for further instructions. During this time, Hector went around the members of the band asking them if they had any idea what today had in store for me and how everyone felt having been granted access to one of Canada’s most prestigious recording studios. We were all hoping we’d be able to record a track here or something, but obviously this wasn’t in the plans. Before long, Julie came to get us and told us to make our way down to Studio A.

As I opened the door to the recording room, I saw Greig Nori standing there with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. Beside him was somebody anyone who lived in Toronto and listened to hip hop would recognize: it was Bishop, one of the few rappers from Toronto who had made managed to make a name for himself beyond the boundaries of the city (the country, even – the boy’s worked with Snoop Dogg). Most people who know him do so because they follow the underground battle-rap scene in Toronto, and without a doubt, in these circles, Bishop was a force to be avoided as often as possible. He had bumped heads with the best of them all over North America and had lived to tell the story. I knew exactly what was about to happen.

Greig, still smiling like an asshole, turns to the cameras and goes, “Yui, welcome to Orange Lounge Recordings, I’m happy to see that the clue wasn’t too tough for you guys to follow. This is Bishop, one of the fiercest battle rappers in the world. Today your challenge is going to be to enter a freestyle battle with this guy right here. Do you think you’re up to it?”

Did I have a choice? I fought every instinct to run away screaming. I wasn’t about to pussy out in front of my band. I kept my composure and told him I was definitely up to it. I’m never scared to get my ass handed to me in a battle, especially by someone of Bishop’s caliber; my only regret was that I had removed myself from the battle-rap scene almost completely several years ago and had vowed not to go back. I had left because the concept of battling itself (where two emcees stand face-to-face and do their best to creatively degrade each other as much as possible in spontaneous rhyme and rhythm – see 8 Mile for more details) had gotten played out, the scene was dead, the competitors were generic, and almost every battle ended up in fisticuffs or bloodshed or death threats because someone couldn’t take a joke. Borrrrrrrrrring.

That was like, two or three years ago. Now Bishop was about to bring me out of retirement, and I would have come back for no less worthy an opponent.

Greig then asked me how I felt about having to battle Bishop on MuchMusic cameras. He asked me if I was nervous. To be honest, I wasn’t even nervous – I think I’m beyond the point of being shook over anything rap-related, I’m pretty confident in my ability to perform no matter who I’m being judged by. But now wasn’t the time to think, now was the time to freestyle. I looked Greig in the eye and said that I was just looking forward to being ripped apart by one of the game’s greats, and that although I’ve obviously heard of Bishop and have an immense amount of respect for his rep, I wasn’t too starstruck to bring my best. The battle emcee in me was ready to fuck some shit up despite knowing already what the outcome was going to be (come on, it’s Bishop… this guy could out-rap me in his sleep). Greig laughed, wished me good luck, then told me I had to go first, and acapella (that is, without a beat to help me keep my flow). I didn’t even wait for them to tell me “go.”

I did my best to hit him in the weak spots with my verse – I talked about how no one in Scarborough wanted him repping the city despite the fact that he had a “Scartown” t-shirt on; I questioned his sexual orientation, and his sense of fashion (I told him he looked more like he should be working on a golf course with the plaid shorts he had on, and that his rhymes were as played out as his all-white Air Force Ones). I even questioned his credibility, telling him that before his battles against Jin (internationally-renowned Asian freestyle battle-rapper), I hadn’t even heard of him. At one point I gestured swiftly to the camera and accidentally dropped the sunglasses I had clipped onto my polo – I made reference to this in my verse and told Bishop that if he kept “frontin’, he’d get ‘dropped’ like my glasses,” just to prove to everyone watching that my rhymes were a genuine freestyle and truly not premeditated. As I was rapping, I paid close attention to Bishop’s body language. He seemed taken aback at my ability to handle myself on the mic, and his eyes got real big at some of my lines, but at the end of the day, he still looked completely unfazed.

When Bishop picked up on his turn, it was made real clear, in living colour, why this man is not to be fucked with in the battle-rap division. His flow was smoother than most conmen, his delivery a hail of rapid-fire machine-gun bullets – it was like a perfectly executed mob hit: some of the shit he said, you just didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t so much that his verse was better than mine – in fact, he didn’t pick my visual presentation apart like I did to him; there was almost nothing personal about his attack. However, he blindsided me by tackling the battle from a completely different perspective, combining some hard lines with a consistent flow and delivery, and by maintaining that powerful and dominant tone in his voice and holding a steady rhythm, there was no way you could stay unimpressed. He came at me with lines like, “I ain’t talkin’ about drivin’ when I’m ‘poppin’ a Yui,” and “your name remind me of something gross… ‘ewwyyy’…” and that was pretty much the end of me.

I may not have won the battle, but everyone who was watching was at least impressed by my performance. Much cameras were able to capture everybody’s reactions (Soul Plane’s, Greig Nori’s, and Bishop’s), and the producers told me more of the same: they were not expecting to bring my business to Bishop’s front gates. Based on the lyrics I write for Soul Plane’s music, I seem like a pretty soft, reflective dude (and that’s how I’d like to come off – the alternative has been done and done again in the realm of rap music these days – it’s not cute anymore). There’s nothing aggressive in my verses, nothing that would indicate that battle-rapping was such a major part of my career history (it’s how I began rapping in the first place). As a result, they thought I would either choke or back down – on MuchMusic cameras for the entire nation to see? Bitch, please. Their thoughts:

“I definitely didn’t expect you to do as well as you did. I didn’t really think you were gonna choke or anything, but I was hoping you would struggle through your rap a lot more than you did.”

- Hector, MuchMusic field producer

“I don’t know too much about this battle-rap shit, but from based on what I heard, I’m not even sure I can just name a winner.”

- Greig Nori, Canadian music industry professional

“Yo, for real I got mad respect for this kid Yui. He came at me real hard… I mean, he really went in. I didn’t think he was going to get that deep, but yo, he really went in on me. I can size up most emcees just based on this… you know, this cocky-ass, arrogant vibe they give off but Yui wasn’t doing none of that. He just stood his ground and did his thing and he wasn’t scared to fuck with me. That’s what it takes to be a good emcee. That’s big, man, that’s big, so mad respect for that, though, for real.”

- Bishop, legendary battle emcee

“Bishop obviously won that battle... like, c’mon, he didn’t even stop [his verse] to breathe. It was just line after line. But Yui did a really good job holding his own.”

- Gideon, Soul Plane lead guitarist

“I don’t know how Yui did that. I was more nervous about it than he was.”

- Mel G, Soul Plane lead vocalist

Greig then told Bishop and I to adjourn to the control room of Studio A, where he was to give me feedback and work with me on my verse for the Soul Plane song “Impossible,” the track we had chosen to play in front of the panel of judges that would be evaluating us on August 9^th. When we got into the recording room I had a chance to kick it with Bishop before the cameras started rolling – he asked me the average “get-to-know-you” questions like how long I’ve been rapping, where I’ve performed, what my aspirations as a recording artist were, etc. I learned quite a bit about him, too – he was slowly shying away from music and gradually making his way into acting; he had been in “Narc” with Ray Liotta and Busta Rhymes back in ‘02, and he played Alex de Large in a theatre production of “Clockwork Orange” recently. I was thoroughly impressed at his credentials and how humble he was about honing his crafts and balancing his passions all the while slowly turning everything into a moneymaking career move.

When the cameras were on, we worked on my lyrics. After I rapped my verse out loud for Bishop, he looked up at Julie and Hector with a quizzical expression on his face: “What am I supposed to do to this right now?” Julie told him that he was supposed to hit me with some feedback, some pointers on how I could improve my verse and make it ready for the judges I would be facing “in a few days.” Bishop laughed and replied, “But yo, real talk, I ain’t even mad at this verse. It’s hot. I don’t know what else to tell this kid.” I took immediate advantage – I looked into the cameras and said “Ladies and gentlemen, I just want you all to know that this is coming from Bishop, Toronto’s most-feared emcee.” I wasn’t lying, and I’m sure he appreciated the compliment. Honestly, though, it wasn’t that my verse was flawless or anything – far from it. It’s just that it’s hard to critique a rapper’s flow, delivery and overall performance of a verse unless you hear the instrumental that is supposed to serve as a backdrop to the verse, and this was apparently something we couldn’t accommodate (the rest of Soul Plane had been dismissed after the battle and were out getting lunch).

Finally, for the cameras, Bishop pushed himself to find something to tell me to improve on in my verse: “Uh… if I were you, I’d try to go deeper into the topic, the concept. Like, you did a real good job here, but you could go further into the situation and really bring out ‘doin’ the impossible.’” You could almost tell he was saying it just to say it. I agreed, and I said I’d look into it and fix things up in time for our live gig in front of the judges. He then found more advice to throw my way: “When you spit a verse like this, it’s gotta make an impact. You’re the first thing in after the intro, right? You gotta punch them right in the face with it, dawg. It’s gotta come killer the first word you say – you gotta have conviction. The flow’s nice, I like it, and I wish I could hear the beat it’s on, but from what I can tell here, you gotta bring that energy.” I nodded and thanked him graciously for these tips, and told him I would re-work the questionable parts as soon as I got a minute to recover from the battle wounds he had inflicted on me about an hour ago. He laughed, wished me good luck, shook my hand, promoted the both of us on MuchMusic tape, and we walked out of the studio together. How touching.

What a best day of my life.

Mambo El Mocambo

2008-10-28T11:20:00.001-04:00

Date: October 23^rd 2008
Venue: El Mocambo, 2^nd fl.
Series: Sophomore Productions Presents...

Sometime shortly after our “Disband” episode was aired on MuchMusic, a show promoting company got in touch with us to see if we were interested in being part of an event that would feature some of the bands from the “Disband” series. Andrew, our contact for the show, called me about a month ago to confirm the details of the show: it was going to go down on the 2^nd floor of the El Mocambo. I was immediately alert – anything being held on the 2^nd floor of the El Mocambo is 140% of the time a Supernova show, and I’d rather smash my face against Courtney Love’s vagina than play a show for those hacks again. Incidentally, I had also dealt with an “Andrew” from Supernova before. Upon doing my research and finding out that it wasn’t just Supernova pretending to be someone else trying to lure us into helping them capitalize on our recent success on MuchMusic, I decided (albeit cautiously) to open the lines of communication with Sophomore. Andrew informed us that we would be guaranteed a good set-time (9pm), and that we wouldn’t be responsible for promoting the event all by ourselves beyond bringing out our regular following – they had a team distributing flyers for the show all over Toronto’s downtown core. Seeing the potential promotional value in a show with bands that have had exposure on national TV on the bill, we immediately agreed to do it.

And so it was that Soul Plane’s fall comeback came to be. For some reason, we decided that we didn’t really have to promote it – it could have been that whole MuchMusic factor (I’m not saying we’re rock stars, but being on national TV definitely doesn’t hurt as far as getting exposure and bringing crowds is concerned), maybe it was the fact that we were assured a competent promo team was already on the job, or it might have been that it was just impossible to care about any show going down on the 2^nd floor of the El Mocambo since like, EVERY night is pretty much open-mic night there anyway... I don’t know. Whatever, in any case, we just assumed, as usual, that life would work itself out and that a good turn-out would just fall into our laps. We always do this, and the strategy has proven to be effective none of the time.

It wasn’t looking promising when we walked in, I can tell you that. I had told only a few people that we were putting on a gig, and I’m not even sure an official Facebook event was created for it. As far as I knew, only two significant groups of people were going to contribute to the crowd size for the night: being that it was an all-ages event, Aaron and Gideon’s friends were going to be able to come through and show their support (these 15/16-year-olds get the wildest in the crowd – the great thing about kids is that they have inherently no shame), and my girl Jade had made a “girls-night-out” thing out of our show and invited a flock of her girls from Richmond Hill to attend. Despite this guarantee, it still only accounted for maybe 20 people in total. Oh well, at least only 20 people are going to hate us by the end of the night. Could be worse.

As we got on stage, the crowd still seemed sparse. I was pretty buzzed, but I recall jumping on stage before the band that went on before us finished cleaning up and addressing the crowd. Let me say right now I meant no disrespect (Kevin later reprimanded me for not exercising proper stage protocol), in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed Typo’s set – I was merely trying to salvage what was left of the crowd so that they wouldn’t go anywhere. This tactic sometimes works because usually everyone just ends up wanting to stick around to throw rocks and hurl insults at that obnoxious Asian guy who keeps trying to convince everyone to stay for what’s obviously going to be an almost unbearably-shitty act.

By the time we got set-up and tuned, we were standing in front of what was left of what was left of the crowd. But it didn’t matter, Jade’s friends and Aaron/Gideon’s posse were right up front ready to get down the minute we did. With that kind of enthusiasm being thrown our way, how could we not bring it as hard as we did? And boy, did we ever. I can honestly say that I haven’t had that much fun on stage since the MuchMusic show. Our set went real smoothly – considering we were utterly unprepared for the show to begin with on a musical level (we had rehearsed with the full configuration of our band ONCE before we actually went on stage that night), I was particularly pleased that we were able to add a new song to our summer repertoire. “Fly” made its debut again for the first time since Daniel Paiken’s departure from the band, and it was very well-received by the crowd. By the time “Impossible” came on, most of the crowd recognized it as “the MuchMusic song” and went bananas, and fortunately for us, we were able to maintain that kind of momentum and energy throughout the entire set. We stepped off the stage to deafening applause and felicitations from all fronts. What a great start to the fall season.

Speaking of seasons, Soul Plane has officially booked a gig in Panama City, FL, for Spring Break!! THE BEST PART IS THAT YOU ARE ALL INVITED TO JOIN SOUL PLANE ON THE TOUR BUS WE RENTED OUT FOR NEXT-TO-NOTHING PRICES!! See above flier and/or “UPCOMING EVENTS” section for dates and details!! EVERYBODY COME OUT AND PARTY LIKE ROCK STARS!!

But I digress...

Back to the matter at hand: big thanks to Sophomore for putting on a great show, big thanks to our fans for coming out and supporting us, big thanks to everyone who loved it, especially our groupie entourage trekking all the way down from Richmond Hill and Thornhill to bang with us!! Haters lick a nut.

Much Chronicles Pt. IV

2008-10-26T21:24:00.006-04:00

Day 4 – July 21^st, 2008

Location: Rehearsal Factory

Time: 10 30am

We realized at 10 35am when we got to the rehearsal space that MuchMusic rented out for us (the biggest room in the Rehearsal Factory at Dufferin St. and Dupont St.) that Kevin didn’t bring any patch cables to hook up his and Gideon’s guitars to the professional equipment that was provided. But the party was just starting – Aaron in turn piped up to say that he forgot his bag that held all his drumsticks at home. It wasn’t even five minutes into the beginning of the day yet; we were clearly on a roll.

Hector told us that we could either ask the guy who ran the Rehearsal Factory for replacements or do whatever we had to do to get our hands on some drumsticks and some patch cords. We had to be quick about it, though, because Greig Nori was going to arrive by noon with the rest of the MuchMusic crew and we had to be set up and ready to go right then on the dot. We decided that the best course of action was to make a quick drive to the Long and McQuade just around the corner. Except instead of “just around the corner” it was at least a 10-minute drive, 15 in bad traffic. And when you’re downtown Toronto on a Monday morning you can safely assume the traffic will be bad at least 100% of the time. The best part of the morning was when we had almost gotten back to the Rehearsal Factory after trudging through combative traffic, when Gideon brought up a very valid point: “Yo Aaron, don’t you carry your metronome in your stickbag, too?”

It just keeps getting better.

When we finally got back to the Rehearsal Factory for good by 11 30am, Luke and Mel were already set up and good to go. We had some trouble figuring the PA system out, but in the end it all worked out. We were able to bang out a rendition of “Welcome to T-Dot City” for the cameras before Greig Nori stepped into the building.

The first thing Greig did was make us go around in a circle introducing ourselves and showing off our individual skills that make up Soul Plane. He got Gideon to solo, Kevin to play the verse riff to “Through the Fire and Fame,” Luke to drop bass groove, Aaron to stick him with a drum solo, Mel to sing a verse off “Life is Beautiful,” and me to drop an acapella freestyle. We each took turns ripping it until he told us to stop – at the end he had a pretty good idea of where our individual levels of talent were set at.

He then asked us to play him the song we planned on playing for the panel of music-industry judges for our concert finale. We played “Life is Beautiful” and before Mel was finished singing the first chorus, he cut us short: “Eeegghh, I like it, it’s got a nice groove, a real warm feel to it, but it’s not going to grab the judges by the balls. What else you guys got? No offense, I just don’t want the judges to lose their attention span after the first six bars.” We dropped “Impossible” on him, and this time, he saw potential. This potential could only be realized, however, if we took time to open our minds and pay close attention to his feedback. His reasoning was sound: “Hey, I’ve been through this, guys. I was you guys once – I had people to please. I know how these industry people think, I know what they’ll like, what they won’t… but at the same time, you don’t have to take my opinion – I’m just here to help.” Keep it coming, homie, we’re listening.

He told us there would have to be some serious restructuring involved – the verses were too long, the choruses were too long, and there was too much unnecessary fat on the track. Everything would have to be condensed to hold onto someone’s attention, especially the attention of industry-professional judges who are specifically going to be looking for things about us to hate. He listed several ideas in terms of re-composing the lead guitar line and the chorus (after all, the chorus is the most important part of the song). After he did a cursory re-write of our entire track, he addressed another issue: the issue of copyright infringement should we ever blow up under the name “Soul Plane.” The reasons for considering a name change were two-fold: 1) It’s the title of an absolutely garbagetimes movie… people might assume (accurately) that it’s also the name of an absolutely garbagetimes band. 2) The name “Soul Plane” is more than likely a registered trademark, which means that MGM would more than likely shove a lawsuit up our asses if we ever in our flea-ridden, rabies-infected lives try to make profit off of that name.

Finally, before the shoot for this particular segment ended, Greig handed me a “clue.” He said that the whole point of this show was to help us improve our musical standards as well as push ourselves out of our comfort zone: “So, Yui, that being said, this clue is going to lead you to a challenge, kind of geared towards you and your position in Soul Plane. Your band needs to be there to support you through this event, though. Good luck.” The clue was a Polaroid picture of the front entrance of Orange Lounge (www.theorangelounge.com) with the street address of the studio written under it. He asked me if I thought I was ready, if I was nervous, probably hoping to throw me off, even going so far as to remind me to get lots of sleep the night before (it is now 3 30am). I looked him square in the eye without missing a beat and said, “Greig, baby, I was born ready. Just test me.” Famous last words.

After a lunch break, we had to change into a different set of clothes to fake a different day of filming. We were told to continue practicing as usual, bearing in mind all the revisions that were made by Greig “yesterday.” We actually started jamming after discussing how we were going to start changing up the song, and before long, I saw a manila envelope slide itself under the door. By now, I knew what MuchMusic wanted me to do, and to save time, I jumped through the hoops: “GUYS! Check this out! We got mail!”

I opened the envelope to find a photo of Much VJ Hannah Simone with stuff written on the back. Hector had to prompt me to actually turn the photograph around because I was spending too much time staring into Hannah’s eyes and sharing a moment with her that she is not yet aware of. When I finally read the stuff, it informed us that we had to find a way to prepare for the “toughest interview of our lives.” Pffft. Poor Hannah Simone has no idea what’s about to hit her. I predict she’ll give her two-weeks’ notice in less than five minutes after we wrap up the interview.

Here’s where MuchMusic tried to create drama within the band, but we were a little smarter than to let them in: the instructions on the back of Hannah Simone’s photo told Mel and me to pick one other band members to represent Soul Plane in the interview. It wasn’t anything they’d give us time off-camera to think over and talk about, either. It was clear that the boys all wanted a piece of the spotlight, but there wasn’t enough to go around, and MuchMusic knew it. Too bad they didn’t count on Mel and I being gangsters: “Well, the decision here is pretty simple – the reason Gideon is the one coming with us is because he’s our lead guitarist; out of the four of you, he gets the most time in the limelight. Maybe people should get to know him.” There was a little bit of debate between whether it would be Aaron or Gideon, but in the end we went with Gideon because of his instrumental role in the band – if anyone is on the same line as Mel and I on stage during performances, it’s Gideon during his solos. I continued to reinforce the idea that any of the boys would have been perfectly adequate to crusade for Soul Plane on any television network, but that because MuchMusic was forcing us to pick, we were going to go with the most reasonable and logical option – the lead guitarist, who usually carries his own voice in a band much like the vocalists do.

MuchMusic clearly did not get the intended effect of cooking up beef within the Soul Plane camp – proof of this could be seen in the way Julie asked the questions during the “confessional” they filmed after we made our decision. She asked me if I felt that Aaron was upset that we picked Gideon out of the two of them, and I answered her referring to Aaron only as “he.” The idea here is to not let them turn us against each other, try as they may. I knew what they were trying to do… Julie was like, “Can you please say Aaron’s actual name… like ‘AARON seemed upset’… but only if you truly think so?” I smiled at her and said, “No, I couldn’t speak on his behalf. You’d have to ask him about it.”

Good try, though, lady.

After the confessional, Soul Plane congregated back inside the Rehearsal Factory and tried to hammer out “Impossible” according to Greig. If there was tension, no one let it show. We were all just exhausted and we wanted to put our last bit of effort into putting Greig’s words to practice. We’re going to be grinding from now until August 9^th, the day we’re going to have to perfect execution the song in front of very important, very critical people.

This could be cataclysmic.

Much Chronicles Pt. III

2008-10-19T10:27:00.001-04:00

Day 3 – July 19^th, 2008

Location: Machinehead Studio
Time: 1pm

Today was going to be different from all the other days. Today MuchMusic was bringing a camera crew as opposed to just forcing Hector to walk around with the hand-held all day – it was to be our first official shoot day for the reality series. Much was going to film us recording “Welcome to T-dot City” with Harrison Hennick, studio owner and head engineer. We made an extra effort to make ourselves look more presentable and less on welfare – Harrison and Mel were at Machinehead by 10am Saturday morning wiping, sweeping, and vacuuming. Harrison even went so far as to make sure there was toilet paper in the bathrooms. He was cute in his French maid outfit.

Hector, Julie and another cameraman, Andre, pulled into Machinehead at around 2pm. When they strolled into the studio and started setting up the lighting, Harrison was still running back and forth between the recording room and the control room, hooking up the mics to Aaron’s drum set and setting up the two guitar amps in the isolation booth. Despite the efficiency we had exercised all morning, things started self-destructing right around here: Harrison came storming out of the recording room, frustrated as diabetic at a dessert buffet, yelling something about an input being completely shot. Best timing ever.

Originally, MuchMusic had wanted to get clips of the entire band jamming at the same time. We were going to try to accommodate this request despite the studio’s obvious space and set-up issues – normally, we record all four of Soul Plane’s instrumentalists live off the floor and then the vocalists overtop. Harrison was going to try to set it up so that instrumentalists and vocalists could run a live set off the floor at the same time, even though it meant that the loudness from the instruments would bleed through everyone else’s mics. With this input situation all up in our shit, however, we couldn’t even pretend properly – MuchMusic made Kevin fake making noise on his guitar for the cameras (they were filming in the recording room and all the music gets fed out to the control room, and because we had a busted input, only Gideon, Aaron, and Luke came through the speakers in the control room and Kevin had to make believe for show purposes), and the rest of us were to pretend we could hear ourselves as well and just play along. I rapped my verses to “Welcome to T-Dot City” to Aaron’s banging drums, the only thing anyone could hear inside the Machinehead recording room. Mel didn’t even bother pretending; she just shook her head when Andre aimed his camera at her.

We are not good actors and MuchMusic found this out the hard way.

They probably didn’t know how bad we really were, though, until they “surprised us” with a celebrity guest. I first noticed him on the other side of the glass pane that separates Machinehead’s recording room from the control room, standing next to Harrison. The next thing I knew, he kicked down the door to the recording room and entered our sanctuary, introducing himself as Greig Nori, and looking around half-expecting us to perk up with some sense of recognition. WRONG – no one even flinched. He continued his self-introduction: he used to be the frontman (lead guitarist and vocalist) for Treble Charger (a band I actually knew and enjoyed listening to in like, grade 7-8). The real reason we hadn’t heard of Greig Nori, though, aside from the fact that none of us follow Canadian music, was because recently Greig had been busy working with some famous acts behind the scenes, such as managing/producing Sum 41, producing Ludacris and Iggy Pop. Other credentials include production for Hedley and managing Broken Social Scene. That’s big things. But up until the very moment when Greig told us who exactly he was, I swear I thought he was one of Harrison’s friends. I was ready to play host in front of the camera when he barged in; I was going to shake his hand and thank him for coming out to the shoot, introduce him to the Much crew and offer him a drink and ask him if it was the first time he’s ever been in a studio. I don’t know who would have been more embarrassed between the two of us if I actually went through with that. It would have made for some good TV, though.

They had to re-shoot the sequence three times to get the scene the way they wanted: the first time no one was surprised (and if we were we didn’t show it), the second time I giggled and said something derogatory, the third time Gideon farted. We don’t deserve the air we breathe.

After his brief introduction, he informed us that he was to be our “guru” for the next couple days. He told us that based on what he heard, the panel of industry professionals that we were to play for “in a week” (that’s as far as our viewers are concerned, but in reality we have a lot more time) would give us the thumbs down and tell us to disband – would we take his advice and use it to our advantage to make our music better? We would. Would we let him use his experience to carve and mould us, and would we open to making radical changes should there need to be any? We would. Would we drop everything right now to head over the rehearsal space MuchMusic rented out for us? Yup.

Greig wasted no time – he told us that MuchMusic would cover all the costs of the remainder of our booked studio hours (I didn’t know if they knew that we’re not paying Harrison anything as it is), and that it was time for us to drop all our gear and just head on over to the rehearsal space so that we could start working on our tunes under his guidance. This was news to us. We all looked at each other, puzzled like jigsaw, but we complied with Greig’s orders and started gathering our stuff. When the boys began unplugging shit to pack up their instruments, Greig told us not to worry about any of that, that Much had hired roadies to help us out. I looked around and saw no one, but I assumed they were on their way and I felt excessively official thinking that Much would go through all that trouble and expense for us. So, we listened, left everything alone and just casually strolled out the front door of Machinehead Studio. As Kevin sat in the driver seat of his Passat waiting to turn on the ignition, Julie ran out of the studio flailing her arms like she was directing air traffic: “We were just kidding, guys, don’t go anywhere. The cameras just needed to get you all making that exit there...” How fun! Next time maybe you can have an internationally-established record label pretend to sign us only to renege on their offer just as we’re about to put our pen to paper!

Anyway, after all that, they interviewed us one at a time and asked us questions about the day’s experience. I made sure to seem as impressed with Greig Nori as humanly possible without full-on fellating the dude, telling Hector (the interviewer as Andrew filmed) that an opportunity like this to be able to work with someone with Greig’s credentials doesn’t come by too often for still-local and relatively-unknown bands like Soul Plane. I made it clear that I, for one, was very grateful for this “guru,” and that Greig was definitely well-suited for the job considering the fact that he’s already been through where we’re trying to get as far as the music industry is concerned, and would thus have a lot of light to shed on Soul Plane’s current circumstances and level of competence as a band. I emphasized how fortunate we were to have someone who has been on both the musical side and the business/admin side of the industry help us hone our craft. I rounded off my interview with how much I was looking forward to working with a professional. I didn’t just say all that for a camera – I truly meant it. Maybe we weren’t all that impressed at first glance, but when you do the checklist of what substantiates Greig’s belt, you realize what a heavyweight you’re dealing with.

When MuchMusic finally left around 5 30pm-ish, Soul Plane got back down to business with a heavy session that made smoke clouds in the control room so thick I’m surprised it didn’t rain indoors. I’m not saying I hate my life, but it was, without a doubt, a sigh of relief and a breath of fresh air the minute we no longer had to keep up appearances. With the day-long, hustle-bustle, hurricane of hurry MuchMusic brought with them into Machinehead Studio, it was rather difficult to even remember that we had come here first and foremost to record a song. It felt more like we were the victims of an FBI interrogation caught on tape; they dropped in, beat us up, asked a couple questions and left. By around 7pm, though, everything for “Welcome to T-Dot City” minus Mel G’s vocals had been tracked.

On our way home we discussed some possible aspects of the show we knew still had to be brought out: we had the title figured out – “DISBAND” – because at the end of your episode, during your final concert, these music industry professionals either give you a thumbs up, telling you to keep going with the pursuit of happiness through your music and your band and describing what steps you’d have to take to advance in the industry effectively, or a thumbs down, telling you to please not quit your day job. Fortunately, bracing ourselves for the worst-case scenario and then actually going through it is nothing we’re not already accustomed to – we’ve picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off in the wake of much worse. Then, we realized that in order to make our episode less boring, they needed to create tension and drama (words that are hardly existent as far as the relationships between the members of Soul Plane are concerned) – we went over the strategies we devised to avoid buying into their bullshit (mainly avoiding saying anything that would allow them to cut/edit your quote out of context to give it an entirely different meaning than the intended one). Lastly, we also knew that Greig Nori was going to be our “guru,” our music coach, for the next several weeks of filming, and that this type of opportunity isn’t one that you could just ignore. We just hoped he wouldn’t ignore us for the next several weeks.

To conclude, Greig Nori is gonna make us famous.

Much Chronicles Pt. II

2008-10-13T01:02:00.002-04:00

Day 2 – July 12^th, 2008

Location: Toronto Night Market
Time: 8pm

We greeted Hector and Julie at about 8 30pm when they arrived in their cab – obviously, we were stoked to see them. Tonight, they would be filming Soul Plane live at the Toronto Night Market. Hector stepped out with a camera in hand. I told him that if the turnout was anything like the crowd we played to last year, he would most definitely need a bigger camera. He gave me a sceptical look, lit a cigarette, and started explaining the logistics of the “panoramic vision” feature and something about a wide lens function. Before I could tell him that I was only kidding, Harrison Hennick rolled onto the scene in his Envoy. We were even more stoked to see him – he had merchandise for us to sell tonight. Once he heard that MuchMusic had taken interest in the band, he had gone out of his way and benevolently taken money out of his own pockets to produce copies of our demo, Black Box, and also to manufacture several dozen Soul Plane t-shirts.

As Harrison pulled up against the curb, I excused myself from my conversation with Hector and ran to the Envoy. The rest of Soul Plane was out of the house and on the driveway by now, entertaining our MuchMusic guests as I went to speak to Harrison. Harrison lowered the driver’s side window as I approached and smiled at me like he just got laid: “I got your shit, homie. All your shit. And please tell me that’s MuchMusic right there.” I told him that it was, and that he could go say “hi” the minute I had “all my shit” in my hands. Once I grabbed the box full of t-shirts and demos and started making my way back to where the band and the producers were mingling, excitement quickly became chaos – everyone started reaching everywhere to try and get their hands on everything – I was molested on several occasions. Hector put an abrupt end to the confusion by shouting, “Hey! Guys! I need you to do all that again for the camera. Yui, go back to the car and bring the box back out when I say ‘go,’ and tell your buddy there to come out with you, wearing one of those shirts. Everybody else just be all surprised and excited and run towards Yui when he comes out from behind the truck.”

It was definitely more convincing the second time around. And, unfortunately, I was not molested.

But man, these t-shirts were dope. They came in black or royal purple, with Soul Plane logos printed on in gold or baby blue, each complete with several sets of sizes. The demos were looking real solid, too – shrinkwrapped and thermo-printed. Harrison had included his contact card in each of the copies he pressed – smart move (he’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man…). We decided amongst ourselves that we would sell the t-shirts for $10 each, and the demos at $5 a piece – this was purely for Harrison to make his money back – the man had initially suggested that we toss all the t-shirts out to the crowd. But then we decided that if you’re a fan, you’ll buy our shit. There’s no sense in trying to force merchandise on people and risk the chances of getting it thrown back on stage at us.

Hector then told Kevin, Aaron and Luke to take some the equipment out of Kevin’s Passat and re-pack it all so they could film it. The trio were simply to go back and forth holding equipment while Hector followed them and asked them a series of questions as they walked. Kevin parked pretty far away and I didn’t receive an invitation to the packing party so I can’t really document any of what was said or done over there in those 15 minutes. I can, however, tell you that over here, for 20 of those 15 minutes, Harrison was thanking me non-stop for this monster opportunity, telling me how he was just happy to be along for the ride, and begging me to get Hector to film the giant Machinehead logo on the back windshield of his ride. I told him to relax before he shits himself in public, and that we’d be filming inside Machinehead Studio a week tonight away – MuchMusic had confirmed that they would be coming to film us recording “Welcome to T-Dot City.” He immediately molested me.

What a fun night it’s been so far.

As our planned departure time of 9pm approached, we had to figure out who was going in which car. Hector and Julie had hoped to hitch a ride with us in order to film a little bit of the journey as we made our way out to the venue. Julie had a media access parking pass, which meant that she wouldn’t have to burn up half a tank of gas listlessly searching for a parking space at one of the most crowded events of the year. Hector had the camera, so the people in whichever car he went with would get filmed. I decided it was best to let the producers decide. Julie ended up in Kev’s Passat with Gideon, Luke, and Aaron; I drove Mel’s RAV4 with Hector in the passenger seat, and Conor, Harrison, and Mel in the back.

On the way up, Hector turned the camera on and just let it run for most of the drive. The majority of the dialogue in the car was conversational, and even when Hector did throw some questions at us, they were very general, very surface-level questions (ie, “Are you nervous about the show tonight?”) that upheld the consistent flow of our verbal exchange. At one point I turned Hector’s attention towards Harrison so that he could elaborate on the school for recording arts that Soul Plane and Machinehead were starting up together, as well as Soul Plane’s charity foundation for which Machinehead Studio was to be chief sponsor. Harrison handled that bidness nicely; I hadn’t expected any different.

When we arrived at Metro Square, Hector hopped out before I pulled into an empty space and filmed me parking. I hit, like, 6 cars.

As we made our way into the Toronto Night Market, Hector explained the breakdown of how tonight was going to be filmed. I was listening intently – I knew that I would have to make an extra effort to cooperate with the camera and not just a crowd when I rapped on stage tonight, and it wasn’t going to be easy. But it’s not like MuchMusic covering one of your sets is something that just slips your mind when you get distracted, nah I’m sayin’?

Probably not.

Anyway, at this point, Conor took a call from Shain, who had been there for several hours already through several periods of heavy rain that had come down earlier in the evening. Shain told us he had heard through the grapevine (he was standing right beside the stage where the organizers were talking) that there was a chance Night Market staff was going to shut down the show if it rained any heavier than the light drizzle that was hitting us now. To top it off, he said, another act had just been sent home, their set cancelled as a result of the bad weather. Shain later reiterated the conversation he just had with one of the organizers:

Shain: Well if you’re sending that band home, what about Soul Plane? They’re supposed to go on at 11 15pm.
Organizer: I don’t know right now, at this point, they might not be able to play. We might have to cancel the performances for the rest of the night if it rains again.
Shain: No. You fucking can’t. I don’t think you understand. MuchMusic is coming to film these guys, this is like, the most important act of the night. Who cares about everyone else?

I want this guy to be my PR.

Hector filmed us as the panic set in – Conor was already scrambling to come up with contingency plans. Harrison was still running around in his purple Soul Plane t-shirt trying to promote the band to Asian people who either didn’t know what he was saying or didn’t want anything to do with him, or both. I remained silent, shaking my head, walking on my feet, praying in my heart, and cursing under my breath.

Once we approached the fairgrounds, we made a bee-line for the stage. Conor was immediately trying to negotiate with the staff to secure a set for us, wet or dry, obviously using MuchMusic as powerful leverage wherever possible. We left them to their business and Hector stood around filming a whole stack of absolutely nada. After Conor finally managed to get the organizers to swear on their descendants’ souls that we’d be able to play, rain or shine, at 11 15pm on the dot, we adjourned to a pathway nearby so that Hector could film me dropping a freestyle to Aaron’s (this guy actually told Conor off when he tried to strongarm himself in) beatboxing. Conor tried to get a whole bunch of people to come with us so that it would beef up the video, using MuchMusic as leverage, but most people wanted nothing to do with any of us. We’re going to be the most disgusting famous people ever.

The minute I actually started freestyling, though, heads were turning. I did a quick 2 verses on camera, doing my best (but failing miserably) to censor myself – it’s incredibly difficult when it’s an actual freestyle (as supposed to a pre-written verse), if for no other reason than to stay on beat. Soon there were people cheering, loving the attention, and eventually the circle of people around me got bigger. Before long, though, we had to wrap it up and head back up to the stage, where we had a real show to do.

As we prepared to get on, the emcees knew the deal and announced that “the upcoming act [would] be covered by MuchMusic.” The people in the stands, some several thousand of them, roared. As the introduction was wrapped up, we got on stage and wasted 10 minutes setting up the cymbals to the drum kit. MuchMusic almost went home. This whole fiasco resulted in a lengthy delay as well as our set time getting cut short by a song. This sucks.

As we performed, I made as many references as humanly possible to MuchMusic’s presence. Every time I made the audience cheer I made it clear they were cheering for MuchMusic, just so there would be no misconceptions on anybody’s part that they were rooting for say, Soul Plane for instance. This strategy guaranteed deafening noise from the crowd the entire night – the idea of getting their 15 seconds of fame on MuchMusic must have pumped some life into them, because we’re sure not that good.

By the end of “No Worries,” two songs into our set, we were informed that we only had time for one last song. Apparently, another song had to be cut because I spent too much time shouting out MuchMusic. Oh well, time well wasted. We finished our set off with “Life is Beautiful” and took the stage with us when we left. Even the emcee couldn’t help himself: “WOW! That’s going to be a hard act to follow!” I was being congratulated left and right by people I had never met before; I had people shoving Soul Plane merchandise in my face asking for autographs – I ended up having to rob the sound guy of his Sharpie pen to get ‘er done. Harrison and Conor could hardly keep up with the sales they were making. Two pretty girls put me up to celebrity status, asking me to pose for pictures with them, and asked for Conor’s card and our website information to stay up on things. The most beautiful part of it was that MuchMUsic got it all on record.

When we got back to Aaron’s house, Hector wanted to get some Soul Plane feedback of the show on tape, so we huddled up in a semi-circle around the camera and spoke our minds. We were all extremely happy with the outcome of the night, despite our worry earlier that the event would be ruined. It was a show where we truly felt like stars, what with the crowd loving us, buying stuff with our logo on it, and a national television camera being present to cover our set. Before Hector and Julie left, they congratulated us on a successful shoot day, and I was told that Hector had run over two hours of tape.

I can’t wait to see what the next couple shoots with MuchMusic have in store for us; don’t even pretend you can.

Much Chronicles Pt. I

2008-10-05T17:46:00.001-04:00

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 www.muchmusic.com/disband (just click SOUL PLANE and full-screen the window for the optimal in-yo'-face experience). These are my memoirs from our time on set with Much...

Day 1 – July 9^th, 2008

Location: Mellet residence
Time: 7:30pm

I really didn’t know what to expect for today’s practice. Yesterday, MuchMusic confirmed that they would be making a guest appearance at Aaron’s house. I was told by [Hector] that it was going to be a low-key, very casual shoot. They just wanted to capture the band in its element, nothing fancy or extraordinary. Essentially we were supposed to ignore the cameras and pretend they didn’t exist, and carry on with business as usual. Okay, that’d have been real easy except for the fact that this is Much-fucking-Music – when MuchMusic has eyes on you, you can’t really ignore that shit. It’s like getting a chance to play at the Superbowl halftime show and being told to act as if the fans weren’t there. Not happening.

Consequently, it wasn’t all that casual. We ripped through a live re-cap of our entire demo (Black Box) in order. It felt different doing it in front of a couple television producers. It definitely makes you more self-aware in the sense that anything you do now could be on national programming by the end of August. Bearing this in mind (I’m sure all of us did), it became inevitable that we’d turn the practice into more a performance. Hector kept his camera running throughout the whole set... it was great. I couldn’t help but look into the camera as I was rapping my parts – I think I even waved into it at one point during our performance of “Life is Beautiful.” I really didn’t know what else to do when dude shoved a camera in my face like that. Luke was especially on point, and the music sounded really tight – everyone was on their best behaviour for the camera. Julie was on the sidelines the entire run-through, talking to Conor and taking notes as we played. Both producers seemed to be enjoying their experience.

After we finished playing “No Worries,” the last song on our demo, Hector and Julie interviewed me in Aaron’s backyard on camera. They asked me a flurry of questions about myself, my position in the band, and my thoughts regarding the politics and administration of Soul Plane. They had me discuss my solo career and whether or not I would ever pursue one alongside my Soul Plane career. They wanted me to open up about what the best and most difficult aspects of being in the band were. They were interested in finding out whether or not there was a clear leader in the group.

You would think that after having been with Soul Plane since its foundation night, these questions would be easy to address. Wrong. But I did my best. Julie had the responsibility of asking the questions, and Hector did the camerawork. Some quotes from our dialogue:

“There are definitely people who do more work in the band than others... but that’s got more to do with who’s got accesses to the band’s resources. It really depends on your definition of ‘leader’, but here at camp Soul Plane, everyone’s a boss. Everyone’s contribution is taken into equal consideration before any major decisions are made.”

“The most demanding part of being in Soul Plane has to be the amount of work involved. Luckily I got a great team with me, and the fact that we share a vision really helps us accomplish the little goals along the way.”

“The best part of being in the band is definitely each and every performance we put on. Just being on stage, being part of the whole music-making experience... you can’t parallel that with too much else. I’m just fortunate to be working with such an incredibly talented group of musicians.”

“Four of us remain from day one... but Luke and Mel are family to me, too. I’d kill or die for any single one of these guys.”

“A lot of the stress comes from having to resort to plan ‘b’ all the time... in the entertainment business, things don’t always go as planned, even when you think you have it locked down. Coordinating schedules between six or seven people at a time when everyone is busy leading their own lives is no small feat either.”

“Solo career? Of course... as a rapper, the possibilities are endless. I don’t get why today’s hip hop industry is so stagnant when there’s so many different ways to make music. As fresh and as creative as the music is, there are aspects of myself I can’t really bring out on a Soul Plane track as well as I’d like, and that’s when I save it for the beats different producers throw at me, or beats I make myself.”

These interview questions were heavy. I really had to be quick on my feet to make sure my answers didn’t make me look good at someone else’s expense. I also had to make sure that I represented the band properly, accurately... that I represented myself properly, accurately. Hopefully I did justice to everyone and everything that matters. I guess we’ll see. Or maybe we won’t. Maybe Hector and Julie are going to go back to the studio, watch some of these clips, go into self-preservation mode and cancel the whole show while they’re only a little bit behind. This is likely much more likely than you would think.

After they interviewed me, they spoke to both Mel and Gideon on film. Before they could do the rest of the band (Kevin, Aaron, Luke), the skies got real dark and Hector decided he didn’t want to film any interviews indoors. Individual interviews with the rhythmic section of Soul Plane would have to wait for another day. No one had any complaints whatsoever – we were just glad that we could relax and put an end to the upkeep of appearances. And what an unwinding it was – right after Hector and Julie left, we all congratulated each other for putting a good show (as opposed to putting on a good practice). Soul Plane, minus Mel, then proceeded to invade Tian Xin Place and stuff our faces with an unethical amount of dumplings. We deserved it. We’re superstars.

It Feels So Good To Be Back

2008-10-01T12:58:00.005-04:00

Hi haters! I’m back off hiatus!

Seriously, I mean it. After a month’s worth of restful vacation time spent away from updating the blog and most things Soul Plane to bask in the fame and glory of being a MuchMusic-featured rockstar (I GOT RECOGNIZED, GUYS!!), your boy is back in the building and ready to do business.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the MuchMusic episode of DisBand featuring Soul Plane. If you haven’t, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing and hit up www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband and then click “SOUL PLANE”. Set aside a good 20-30 minutes to watch the entire episode (and then some, for some reason), and all the bonus clips (including our entire live performance at Much!).

Yes, we got the thumbs up, and yes, it kicks ass. Yes, I got my shit torn apart, but I definitely didn’t do as bad as MuchMusic made me look against Bishop (on the real, though, that boy is dope as hell, don’t let anyone tell you different). Yes, I got caught saying an “f-word that rhymes with ‘maggot’” in that same battle and had MuchMusic VJ Hannah Simone blow that up in my face. Maybe a bit out of context, certainly not my intention to offend, but a lesson learned nonetheless. Yes, I have an ego, but when you ask these Soul Plane kids who they look up to as the leader up in this piece, this ego is the reason my name’s their answer. Yes, Greig Nori said that if we got the "yes” from the judges he would want first crack at producing Soul Plane, and yes, we’ve been in touch with him since the shoot wrapped. Yes, Conor Stief is all over that like flies on shit, including staying in contact with Saukrates’ manager Chase.

It was fun. And now it’s over. What does this mean for us? I’m not entirely sure; ask me when we’re famous. People have been coming up to me randomly in public asking me if I’m “that guy.” Yes, I very much am. They then usually either smile timidly, congratulate me, and hug me. The bolder ones ask for autographs and pictures. The cuter ones (usually female) ask for my phone number. Whether it’s been sitting at my computer replying to an unprecedented amount of fanmail from viewers across Canada, whether it’s been going to a class for the first time in the three weeks since school started being and being recognized by several classmates as “that guy in the band that was on Much,” or whether it’s been the encounters in-person with fans in subway stations and random bars and food joints, I’ve really felt the love from you folks and let me tell you, this is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I thank all of you for the love and support you’ve shown us since we aired on MuchMusic. As for the (messageboard) haters, well, unzip my fly and you’ll find out that we didn’t lie: there really is something for everyone in our music.

I get a lot of questions as to what’s about to hit for Soul Plane. Well, first off, we HAVE to change our band name. It’s not even a question anymore – for our own sake, we no longer want people to have negative preconceived notions regarding the band right off the bat due to the association they would inevitably make with that shitburger of a movie. The hard part is actually coming up with the name – in order to avoid making the same mistakes we made the first time around trying to give our band an identity, we have to ensure that this new moniker is 100% original, 100% catchy, and 100% representative of our band’s image in the meaning the name projects. So far, we have been ridiculously unsuccessful. So, in efforts to hurry up and move on with our lives with a name that carries a permanent effect as well as to build with our fans, we’re going to be playing “NAME THAT BAND”. Email any and all ideas to fanmail@soulplanemusic.com so that we can steal them. Seriously, though, we’re doing our part: we just met with Carl Nanni, Kevin’s father and the former head of Kraft Canada’s marketing engine and started working towards creating a name for our product in much the same way as Kraft creates names for theirs.

Another question I get asked a lot is: what was it like to be on a reality TV show? Instead of trying to answer it, I’m going to let you read about it. Each week I’m going to be posting a new entry that I wrote up after a particularly interesting shoot session with Much that details almost down to the minute the happenings of the day. I was going to do this real-time as we were shooting, but Much had issues with surprises being ruined. But now that we’ve been aired and everything that could ever be ruined has been ruined, I think we’re good to go with this shit. Stay tuned and read up on what it was like for us to be part of a rockstar reality show experience: introducing… The Much Chronicles! First entry to be posted this Sunday, October 5^th.

Alright, so now that we’re back in business, we’ve got a lot of work to do on a musical level as well. Before we get anyone even remotely important to have a look at our portfolio, we’ve gotta first have a portfolio. The demo has already been rendered obsolete (again) – Soul Plane is back in the lab, taking the time now to go back and re-write, re-structure, re-compose all the music bearing in mind all the tips and pointers we took in from all these industry professionals over the course of the two months we spent working with them. And when we’re done with this, please believe we’re going to hit you with something that’s fresh like whoa, especially because we’ll be taking our game to some very valuable connections we’ve been able to establish through MuchMusic.

In summary, it feels soooo good to be back. It really does. Now that school has started, however, things will be slowing down significantly. We’ll still be playing shows (I think we agreed on one local show a month as well as one out-of-town show in that same month – I’ll keep you posted on those the minute I find out about them), we’ll still be making music, but we’ll be taking advantage of this down-time to pick ourselves up out of this victory glass of champagne we damn near drowned in on August 9^th at Much headquarters when we got the “yes” from the judges. Soul Plane is about to undergo some serious renovation in almost every aspect that has to do with a band trying to make it (and there are many), and when we’re done, you won’t even recognize us.

Hate it or love it, we’re here to stay. Keep the fanmail coming!! Peeeeeeeeeeace!

MUCH Blogging

2008-09-05T03:37:00.004-04:00

Alright, alright, I get it. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us. Well, it’s been a while since I’ve heard from us, so cool your jets please. Finally, the whole “disBand” episode we’re being featured on is coming to light – Soul Plane will be on air September 11^th, 6 30pm, on MuchMusic. Your only option from here is to tune in – don’t even consider any other plan of action. Anyway, Much producers recently got in touch with me and asked me to write a short blog for the series website (http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/) about the whole experience without giving away any of the surprises. Here it is:

This is Yui, emcee from Soul Plane, reporting to you live from the streets of downtown Toronto.

I can’t even begin to articulate how literal I’m being here; since MuchMusic called us early on in July to let us know that they would be invading our lives for a reality series, I’ve taken so many days off work to film for it that my boss fired me the ninth day in a row I played hooky. I asked about severance pay and he threatened to punch me in the mouth. So, I’m currently homeless.

It’s not all bad though; aside from not having to pay taxes, I get to sit here on the corner of Queen St. and Jarvis St. with my hand out and palm up waiting for our episode to air on September 11^th, at 6 30pm on MuchMusic. Maybe when they see me on TV, people will stop spitting on me every time they pass by. If nothing else, this shows serious dedication – who else would willingly, consciously demote themselves from “gainfully employed” to “United Way status” in a matter of days just to look like a rock star on national television?

Answer: not just me. As I write this, Mel (vocals), Gideon (lead guitar), Kevin (rhythm guitar), Luke (bass), and Aaron (drums) are huddled beside me, warming their hands with a fire we made out of Aaron’s sticks; on a related tip, Kevin just beat a pigeon to death with his guitar case – dinner is served. We’ve all made sacrifices – because of this whole MuchMusic fiasco, we’ve lost friends, jobs, money, planned vacations, the odd family member, our dignity, our integrity, and most of our livelihoods. All we have left in this world is each other.

Just kidding, we also have MuchMusic. I speak for everyone in the band when I say that this experience was the time of our lives, and that we truly appreciate the opportunities Much presented to us on the silver platter that is this show. They had different celebrity guests come in everyday to re-vamp our sound, re-invent our style, and give our overall image a facelift, all in order to deliver on a very clear-cut mission statement: to get these judges throwing up their thumbs as opposed to their lunch on the day of reckoning.

On that note, I’m pretty sure Tupac was wrong when he said that “only God can judge me.” Apparently, you guys can, too. Come check us out at www.soulplanemusic.com – all you have to do is click that link and turn up your speakers until the neighbours file noise complaints. If you love it, email fanmail@soulplanemusic.com and tell us why (you could win a free copy of our demo!). If you hate it, email our manager at conorstief@soulplanemusic.com, and tell him why. For now, I’m going to tell Conor to invest in a bigger inbox. Also, please (we beg) join our mailing list to stay up on thangs – you don’t want to miss out on a chance to be the only people in our crowd at our next show!

Out for now,

Yui of Soul Plane

I’m not entirely sure when, but sooner or later the above entry will be posted on the blog portion of MuchMusic’s website, so check back there often (again, http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/) for updates and all that good stuff. Most importantly, however: don’t forget to tune into MuchMusic on Sept. 11^th at 6 30pm to watch us make absolute asses of ourselves on national television!!

Frowning Buddha

2008-08-28T10:30:00.001-04:00

Date: August 20^th, 2008
Venue: Smiling Buddha Bar
Series: “What the Blunt” video release party

The gigging business is very much like dating – the minute you’ve gotten with the hottest girl in your area code, you’re not gonna want to go back to being seen in public with the less-than-average ones. We’ve played in the MuchMusic environment in front of hundreds of screaming fans wearing our shirts and waving signs, not to mention at least a dozen different cameras; one show later, we’re at the Smiling Buddha Bar pretending to care in front of at most a dozen different people.

Granted, at this point in our careers we shouldn’t be complaining about any kind of show, but let’s be honest – you can’t blame us. There are bands that grind away all their lives without ever getting the chance to perform at Much, and based on what I’ve seen, just about anyone with a pulse and a set of vocal cords can get on stage at the Smiling Buddha.

It’s not like we didn’t appreciate the show – au contraire, mon frère – any show is another stage we can work on our visual presentation with. Of course, it helps when there are actually people to visually present to, but at the end of the day, we make music for ourselves, because we love it – we don’t care if anyone is listening.

Okay, maybe we do a bit.

Unfortunately, it remains that the label reps told us on June 19^th at the Opera House that we need experience under our band belt. Apparently experience means that we’re on a stage in some obscure-ass venue playing to nobody (and the few who are in the audience are only there because you’ve put your friendship with them on the line over this measly gig) – rinse and repeat at least 50 times if you want attention, or even the worst kind of acknowledgement, from some measly label you’ll sign to and inevitably flop under. This is advice we’re slowly taking less seriously as the number of fans in the stands decrease per show that we play – after all, whatever happened to “quality, not quantity?” Whatever, if all else fails we’ve shown that we know how to take professional advice with utmost seriousness.

Let me just take this time to say that despite my grim, bitter depiction of the vicious cycle that local up-and-coming bands often find themselves in as they try to make a name for themselves, we truly appreciate each and every one of our die-hard fans that come out rain or shine, in health or in sickness, rocking homemade Soul Plane t-shirts and waving Bristol-board signs, travelling any distance from area codes I haven’t even heard of to hear us play live (no matter how epically we blow) in the most run-down, rape-friendly venues... this, my friends, is dedication. Believe me, we have nothing but love for you – I only wish there were more of you, or even some of you. Currently there’s one of you, and her name is Katherine. Get like her.

Anyway, this show was pretty much like every other show we put on over the summer, except that the rest of the acts were from the hip hop scene of Toronto rather than the rock/metal groups we usually get on the bill with. The evening was set up by John Shiltz, a rapper/promoter who put us on the list at a similar event last year, also at the Smiling Buddha. We went through our six-song set like the broken-record routine it has become, and all five people in the audience cheered. Despite that, I can’t help but feel that Soul Plane’s flight for the night never did manage to take off: for the first time in our performance history, we were not able to get our handful of fans off their asses and on their feet by the end of “Impossible.” I was appalled – I immediately lost hope for a surprise happy ending to our show.

I’d be lying if I said that our current re-structuring of each and every one of our songs according to the gospel of Greig Nori didn’t weigh us down; I’m sure it occurred to each and every one of us as we were playing the songs that each and every track in our repertoire (with the exception of the recently re-worked “Impossible”) dragged on for ages before coming to a close. By the fifth minute of “Liquor on the Curb” I was feeling the audience’s pain. It wasn’t so much that it all just kept going on and on though... it was more the fact that we were performing songs we consciously knew we’d have to discard or change up significantly – ie, we were trying to sound fresh playing music that was already stale and obsolete to us. This never helps.

Thankfully, this show closed off our summer tour of ’08. It could have been something we promoted heavily for instead of getting lazy and telling no one about it, but to be honest, we had accepted this (and every other show after August 9^th when we played at MuchMusic) as an anti-climax that we would have to surmount.

Oh well, at least we have getting on MuchMusic to look forward to...

On that note, please stop sending in emails asking about the air date of our episode... it’s not that this is classified information or anything... I just really don’t know what’s happening there just yet. We’re still in the midst of tying up loose ends, but please believe that the minute I know about it, so will you. It’s not like I don’t want you guys watching us, but trust me, I’m waiting on it like you all are.

Peace!

The Show Of Our Lives

2008-08-13T09:51:00.002-04:00

Date: August 9^th, 2008
Series: “DISBAND” episode performance
Venue: MuchMusic

Today was Judgement Day. This show was to be the climax of our summer ever since we were given a spot on MuchMusic’s new upcoming reality series called “DISBAND,” to be aired late August/early September (see “MuchMusic (yes, THE MuchMusic)” blog – July 8^th, 2008). Today, we were going to be under fire from a panel of music industry professionals who were collectively going to determine if we had what it took to make it in this hairy business – based on our performance of a revised version of our lead single “Impossible,” these judges were either going to tell us straight up that we have what it takes to make it, or they were going to advise us not to quit our day jobs and to just disband (hence the name of show... clever, right? Wrong.) because we are absolute balls. All of this – performance and verdict – would be aired on MuchMusic, a Canada-wide, extensively-watched television network. This was about as much as Soul Plane has ever had at stake.

There we were, ready to unload at 10 30am outside the MuchMusic building. We weren’t going to be performing until 1pm, but I guess this was how long they needed to get us sounding good by then. We had everything planned out – right down to who was allowed to take a piss and when they were allowed to take it. We had done so much promoting for this performance it would make your head spin like a b-boy – I swear I have a tumour in my brain from all the calls I made to people I hadn’t spoken to for months and years, begging them to come out and make it look like Soul Plane had a fanbase rooting for us on national television cameras.

Even at soundcheck, the promotion for the show didn’t stop: outside on Queen St., I saw two gorgeous blonde girls coming to a stop together in front of the Much building, and one of them was taking a picture of the MuchMusic sign. I casually leaned over as she was steadying her hand and said, “You know, if you come back at noon the view will be much nicer.” She looked at me quizzically and asked what I meant. I told her Soul Plane would be performing live here at 1pm sharp, and that if her and her pretty friend went to go do some shopping and came back to line up by 12, I’d find a way to get them on MuchMusic as part of the studio audience. I explained most of the show’s premise to them and how Soul Plane got on it and they were unusually happy and excited for us, and promised earnestly that they would return after another hour or so of shopping on Queen. Their over-eagerness made me suspect something was up. They then told me they were from Halifax and that seeing a band play live at MuchMusic (something they only get to see on TV normally) was definitely an experience to look forward to. Suspicions confirmed – I knew it couldn’t have been me.

As noon started to creep up, I was getting reports from Conor and Shain (who were constantly making rounds in and out of the building) that our fans were still non-existent. Shit – I had told most of my friends to be there at around 11 30am in case there was a line-up, and now, almost 12pm, I saw neither friends nor line-ups. This was no good to me. Simply put, we could not afford to have a sparse backdrop; this would make us look unbelievably weak on national television. I started to worry – Mel had warned me that some of her friends bailed out on supporting our cause last-minute. Despite our 130-some-odd confirmations on Facebook, I had little faith that even 60% of the confirmed would show (as is usually the case for things of this nature). I even doubted the support of some of my own friends, not questioning their loyalty but knowing that things always come up, and that circumstances sometimes require urgent attention over a MuchMusic concert. As if this wasn’t enough, it was pouring rain outside – this is enough to make some people flat-out refuse to get out of bed.

Imagine my surprise when the gates finally opened around 1pm and the fans started filtering in through the back door. Throngs of people came oozing into the room in purple and white Soul Plane t-shirts. Apparently Harrison and Shain had been handing them out to everyone in line, along with copies of the demo. I swear Harrison is the best connection I’ve made since I started doing this music thing – he immediately sized up the situation and recognized the big picture – we needed our fans to wear these shirts for the cameras more than Harrison needed to make money off the manufacture of these shirts. So, in a gesture that can only be described as gallantly benevolent, he gave them out for free, out of his pocket, along with several copies of the demo (the manufacture of which he was also responsible for). Thanks, homie, we could never have come this far without you.

Fortunately, Harrison’s efforts and investments were not at all in vain – group after group after group of fans, friends, and family stumbled into the studio adorned in Soul Plane merchandise – the crowd size just kept getting larger by the second. The volume of the riff-raff and the chatter our fans were making became increasingly louder. Some of our most dedicated fans were holding signs with our band’s name and logo on them in huge, shiny lettering. People I had not expected to come through showed up – most notably, the two girls from Halifax were back wearing t-shirts and standing front and center, cheering like they invented it. In fact, I’m fairly certain you’ll be able to identify them when the episode airs, based solely on the amount of noise they were making. Pretty soon there were just over a hundred people (max capacity) packing themselves like sardines into MuchMusic’s environment. MuchMusic staff then had Soul Plane return to the green room so that they could bring the judges out.

These judges were supposed to be music industry professionals – we were filled in on them briefly: one would be an A&R/talent scout from EMI whose claim to fame was signing the band Billy Talent, another would be an established Canadian hip hop artist, a third would be a rep from a big booking agency, still another was going to be the lead singer of well-known Canadian band and the host of MuchMoreMusic, and lastly (but certainly not least), a MuchMusic VJ who had interviewed us once over the course of our month-long shoot with Much. These were some serious people, and we were about to either impress them or make them wish they had never showed up. We hoped to God it would be the former.

In the green room we were interviewed as a band regarding what we would do, how we would react, if we were told that we didn’t have what it takes, what we would do if we were ordered to disband. When the idea that Soul Plane would be featured on MuchMusic came around, we had decided as a band that no matter what the outcome of this performance, we would stick together and keep on making music together simply because we loved what we were doing. However, this wouldn’t stop us from wanting to get feedback as to why they came to their verdict about us, positive or not. It remains that we would still have liked to come away with a learning experience if they hate our guts – we would want to know what we could do to improve. We knew that if we were lacklustre, we were certainly not beyond redemption.

As we came out of the green room and back into the studio my spirits were immediately lifted by the amount of fans screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs in encouragement. Their thunderous roars almost didn’t sound cued. We got right on, picked up our respective instruments, and kicked right into gear. The next three minutes were euphoric – I spent most of it in a trance. There were cameras set up everywhere and the hardest part about the entire performance was deciding which camera to rap into. It was also weird having the loudest audience we’ve ever had... behind us. That’s right – let’s not forget we were play for the judges, all five of them, and for the first time ever, the fans were secondary. The judges were sitting in a row not smiling at us, more than likely waiting for us to flop big time. The only things in our peripherals when facing them were Queen St. behind them and like, 25 cameras all around them. Good thing we’ve had lots of practice playing to nobody.

At the end of our three-minute performance, our crowd exploded. Their cheering was absolutely deafening. We had been instructed by the Much camera crew to just drop our mics (instrumentalists were to un-plug) and walk off the set and back into the green room while the judges conferred and deliberated and formed their verdict on whether or not they thought we had what it takes to make it. As I walked off the environment towards the dressing rooms, I yelled, “WHEN I SAY SOUL...” and both times, the “PLANE” yelled by the audience in response came back at me like a punch in the mouth – I almost fell over the second time around. There was no question about it, our fans thought we had it. Judging based on the crowd reaction alone, Soul Plane definitely blew MuchMusic apart with the best and most solid rendition of “Impossible” we had ever brought to the table as a band, hands down, even by our standards.

But at this point, no one gives a shit about anyone else’s standards other than those of the five people that sat in a line before us. And just what did these music industry professional judges have to say about us? Well, you should’ve been there if you really want to know that badly, you unsupportive bastards. Now you’ll just have to wait until the episode airs, like everyone else across Canada.

Sucks to be you.

TO GET THE FULL VERDICT ON WHETHER OR NOT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY THINKS WE HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO PENETRATE ONE OF ITS ORIFICES WITHOUT CONSENT, PLEASE TUNE IN TO MUCHMUSIC (yes, THE MuchMusic) END OF AUGUST/EARLY SEPTEMBER. AIR DATE TBA!

Boston Pizza Connection

2008-08-02T11:47:00.001-04:00

Date: July 31^st, 2008
Venue: Boston Pizza
Series: n/a

When Luke first told me he had booked us a gig at the Boston Pizza he worked at, I gave him a funny look that could only be described as, “Well, how the hell is that going to work?” The event itself was supposed to celebrate the opening of a new location in Markham, at Major Mackenzie Dr. and Woodbine Ave., and Bud Light had been pulled in to sponsor the party. Luke originally had only needed Aaron to play drums for his jazz band, but probably realized that another show under Soul Plane’s increasingly heavy belt wouldn’t hurt.

After taking almost-unfair advantage of Luke’s employment status at Boston Pizza (we ordered one of everything on the appetizer menu and several pitchers of Bud Light, anticipating huge compensation), we were to go on and just do our thing. I tried to put myself in our soon-to-be audience’s shoes and wondered how I’d feel if someone was yelling rap lyrics in my face while I was trying to enjoy dinner. I’d fight me.

But the funny thing is no matter how big or small the crowd is, the people who are there for our shows always seem to enjoy themselves. This time around, however, it seemed that the customers were just as apprehensive as we were about our set – they seemed more intent on taking in their pasta than taking in our music. Furthermore, customers on the patio seemed to miss the jazz trio that had been playing for the last three hours, and I don’t blame them; they did a damn good job establishing an agreeable dining ambiance for everyone eating. And here came Soul Plane to ruin everything...

It wasn’t all bad, though. A table of affable Italian men toasted to us throughout our performance. I raised my (Bud-Light-provided) beer back to them on each occasion and told the loudest amongst them that he was a very handsome man. I referred to him as George Clooney for the remainder of the evening – he was drunk and happy. Also, my sister, who had never had the chance to come to my shows (she was out of the country for college and most of the summer), came with two of her friends to root for us. The two girls Bud Light had sent to help out for the event were very enthusiastic about our music as well, providing most of the yelling and screaming as they stood within arm’s reach of where we were performing. We truly appreciate the love.

We made chop suey out of the setlist. After each song, the clapping and cheering increased gradually in volume. Finally, by the last song of the set, everyone eating dinner on the Boston Pizza patio, along with pedestrians walking anywhere within audio vicinity of Woodbine Ave. And Major Mackenzie Dr. were vibing with us. Soul Plane was certainly something Markham had yet to get accustomed to. By the end of the night, one of the girls repping Bud Light asked for Conor’s contact card as she was telling us that she did a lot of promotion for clubs and venues all over the GTA. She refused to believe that as a band, we had been playing for less than three months under our current configuration.

I’m going to end this blog right here, because there are much bigger fish to fry at this point in our lives (see bold text below) – to sum the night up, it was a fun show and we rocked the joint like a Rastafarian.

Hopefully Luke still has a job.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO COME OUT TO THE MUCHMUSIC SHOW ON AUGUST 9^th, 2008. SEE “UPCOMING EVENTS” SECTION FOR DETAILS. BRING EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND GET ON TV CHEERING FOR SOUL PLANE!!