This is a legacy blog post, originally from my previous website, Mouse House Blog. To see more MHB posts, check out the MHB tag here on my blog.
I’m generally embarrassed to say that I found my favourite band through a goofy kids’ movie. I’ll tell you that “It Had to Be You” was my first Motion City Soundtrack song, no problem. I won’t usually tell you that I found it years ago after falling hard for Hotel for Dogs (in my usual fashion: dorky family-friendly movie, me getting invested beyond any real logic). I don’t remember what year it was, except I’m pretty sure I was in high school, and I’m almost certain it was before Blockbuster closed. Because if I remember correctly, my dad rented Hotel for Dogs for my brothers and me to watch on a night that he and my mom would be out. It was definitely in the era before I really knew how to find music, so when I decided I really liked a bunch of the songs in that movie, I paused the credits so I could copy down the titles and artists and look them up on Youtube – yeah, that’s how I used to do it. “It Had to Be You” isn’t even the only song I discovered through that movie that I still listen to, amazingly.
I’m generally embarrassed to admit any of that, or any of the various things related to it (like how easily I fall in love with corny kids’ movies). But I’m working on confidence in my taste lately, since I feel like I have a right to enjoy things. And considering everything this post is about, it seems only right to admit to this. I found my favourite band on earth through Hotel for Dogs.
“It Had to Be You” was definitely my favourite song out of the ones I discovered through that movie, so I looked into the band. Again, Youtube was my source for music, and I couldn’t find a ton of their stuff (though I think for some reason I was only listening to the ones that there were music videos for, which might have been part of the problem). The only other Motion City Soundtrack song I found at that point that I really liked was “This Is for Real.” I remember using Youtube-to-MP3 to download them. Those files are… probably still on my computer somewhere. Coincidentally, both songs come from what would years later be my favourite MCS album. Those two songs stuck a chord somewhere inside me and just… resonated.
I don’t know why I looked MCS back up in my first year of university. Maybe I was having one of those “I need more music, damnit” kind of moments and figured I’d look into bands I only knew a few songs by. What I do remember, clearly, is listening to them all the time. I was lucky enough to be living at my best friend Susie’s house with her and two other very close friends that year, and I can distinctly remember listening to Motion City Soundtrack from my laptop all over that house. First off of Youtube playlists, then using whatever money I had left after grocery shopping to buy iTunes gift cards and get all the albums. I remember listening to some of the faster songs with the lyrics up on screen so I could get them down pat. (I pick up on and memorize lyrics pretty damn fast, but it DOES require being able to tell what the singer is saying. :P)
I don’t know why it didn’t happen the first time, but in first year MCS became my favourite band so rapidly it was ridiculous. I have to be honest with you – I’ve never been one of those people that feel like they connect on a deep level of some kind with music. I knew a lot of people like that (I guess that’s just what life is when you’re a teenager) but I kind of shook my head and rolled my eyes, assuming I just lacked that connection with music. All the music I loved up to that point was fun to listen to, and a lot of it had been around my whole life, but wow, this was different. The thing about MCS is not only do they make the exact kind of sounds I best like to get in my ears, but every single song gets right at something deep inside me. I don’t think I could ever quite define it, but it’s there. They don’t have a single song without at least a few lines that tug at my heartstrings in a way that nothing else does. Whether it’s about loving someone, or being alone, or being unwell, or hope or fear or the general weirdness of being a person. It’s been three years now and to this day I can’t listen to any of their tracks without feeling that emotional tug. They have music that makes me want to doodle lyrics on scratch paper, except all their lyrics are amazing and I wouldn’t be able to pick just a few lines. I want to put these everywhere because of the way they make me feel. Hell, if I could narrow down to a few favourite lines, I might even put them right on my body, my immense fear of tattoos be damned. (Listen, pain is very scary.)
The one specific instance I really want to mention is from my first exam period in university. Exams are scary enough as it is, but they were my FIRST university exams, and they were in December so it was freezing, and the walk wasn’t too long but it was not at all fun after an evening exam. One night I hadn’t eaten before I went out (I was probably too nervous) so on top of the freezing cold and the vibrating nerves I was starving by the time I left. I remember texting Susie and asking her to have dinner ready when I got home. But I felt like I might collapse trying to get there. I put my headphones on the moment I got out of the exam, got lost trying to get out of the building (it’s been six terms and I still can’t find my way around in there), and eventually propelled myself home by the sheer power of “Even If It Kills Me” on repeat.
I don’t know how to explain my relationship to that song in particular. If a person can have an anthem, that’s mine – though recently joined by “It’s A Pleasure To Meet You” off the latest album, which might actually tie for favourite. But “Even If It Kills Me” reaches right in and grabs me at my very core. That song could be about me. I relate so strongly to it, and nothing renews my desire to get better like that song can. It makes me hopeful, it makes me determined. When they started playing it during their encore the other night, I actually teared up immediately. That song resonates through straight to my soul.
I remember reading about the So Long, Farewell tour. I was sitting next to my friend Em in our usual spot at the back corner of the lecture hall when Justin Pierre, the MCS frontman, tweeted the link. It was during the break in the middle of our thrilling Contemporary Critical Theory course this last semester. I wasn’t sure how to process the information. How could MCS be done when I had only been listening for three years? I texted Keynan about it, and he promised me we’d go. “We’ll go to Buffalo or something if we have to,” he told me emphatically.
I want to pause a moment to address this: Keynan knows what this band means to me. I don’t think I’ve ever really had to tell him. Keynan loves a lot of music, I’ve picked up some great new stuff from him, but he added MCS to his rotation just because he knows how much I love them. He learned to play a handful of their songs on bass with Rocksmith just for the fun of playing them for me. Once when I had a bad day he found an MCS concert on Youtube and watched it with me to cheer me up. Last summer MCS was in Toronto during the one week that I would be out of town at a cottage, and we debated going to the show (he’d have to drive out to get me and then into Toronto for the evening), but it was awkward to arrange and we figured they’d be back. (I actually tweeted Justin to ask if they’d be back in Toronto on the next tour and he answered that he was about 70% sure, so I decided to bank on that.)
I hauled my insomniac ass out of bed early the morning the tickets went on sale just so I could buy them right away. If you don’t know me, I want you to know that that was a Herculean effort on my part. The show in Toronto was gonna be three days before our anniversary, so we thought maybe we’d go to dinner and make a fun little thing out of it. We spent a few weeks being excited and tossing around plans.
Then Sheridan College had the audacity to book Keynan’s convocation for the same evening.
I’m still incredulous. And super bummed.
But: I am insanely lucky to be with a guy who strongly considered skipping his own graduation to see my favourite band in concert. Eventually he decided he had to go – the chances are he won’t be going back to school again, and his parents wanted to see it. To be honest, I did too, so I was a bit ripped up about it (though a little less so when I found out he couldn’t have gotten an extra ticket anyway). Even after committing he wavered on his decision a lot. I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I knew my cousin Shauna had been really into MCS at some point, so I invited her. Susie wouldn’t be home yet from school in Vancouver and anyway I didn’t know anyone other than Shauna who had ever listened to MCS without my prompting.
At the last minute it almost didn’t work out. It takes over an hour to get into Toronto and to the Opera House from where we live, and Shauna has a super exhausting job at a nursery this summer that she has to get up early for every day. Eventually she decided she’d come, but she might have to duck out early in order to go home and get enough sleep. I couldn’t blame her, but I was super nervous.
This is where we get to the third thing this post is about: anxiety. I’m diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and OCD, and on top of that I probably have generalized anxiety disorder and separation anxiety disorder too. Maybe some other stuff tossed in there as well! It gets hard to tell when there’s that much. The point is, I’m not a huge fan of crowds or strangers or loud noise or being alone in public or being in unfamiliar places. (By not a huge fan, I mean I cope really poorly with all of those things.) I don’t even have much experience with concerts – I’ve seen a couple, I guess, but not like this. I saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the ACC with my parents once in high school, and LIGHTS and the Arkells at frosh with three good friends keeping me safe, and City and Colour at the ACC with my then-girlfriend and her mom a couple years ago. None of those were acts I was super into; they were all just opportunities that came up. In some ways, this was my first concert. It was the first one that mattered. And I was gonna have to go at least some of it alone.
I vibrated all day on Tuesday. I almost couldn’t eat. Between the equal parts excitement and anxiety, I was jittery and nauseous and hyperaware. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I went back over the things I’d packed into my bag, the cash I’d taken out for merch, the printed tickets… I couldn’t sit still and I could hardly bear the wait. At least the trip into Toronto (car to train to subway to streetcar!) wasn’t too bad because I had Shauna to talk to. Eventually we reached the Opera House and I bought a gorgeous t-shirt and a set of lapel pins. We got a kick out of the opening acts, Let It Happen and Have Mercy. We had a drink dribbled on us from the balcony. We stood next to the tech booth, and I took pictures of it for Keynan, while forty minutes away in Mississauga he was graduating with high honours from Sheridan’s Technical Production for Theatre and Live Events program. (Later when I traded a couple texts with him and mentioned the booth, he actually asked if I could take a picture for him. I grinned and told him I already had. I know my lighting nerd.)
To get home before midnight and fit in a few hours of sleep, Shauna had to leave the show at 10, so she only got to see Motion City Soundtrack’s first two songs, which I’m really bummed about. But she did text me later to say that she loved what she saw and was inspired to get back into their music, because she hadn’t listened to them much in a few years, so I guess that’s a silver lining.
I was really worried about coping after Shauna left, but that’s probably the part that really changed my life.
I was fine.
I mean, I was better than fine. I was having an incredible time. It was one of the best days of my life. But I was fine. I was in a warm, sweaty, noisy, dimly lit crowd of total strangers, and I was fine. Honestly, I hadn’t realized how amazing it would feel to stand in that room and listen to hundreds of people belt every word to songs by a band that I was so used to people never having heard of. Even though all the logic of my whole slew of high-octane anxieties said that I should be at shutdown levels of terrified, I was through the roof. I felt at home. Every person in that room was a friend. Was safe.
Motion City Soundtrack gave me ways to articulate all the stupid things in my head, all the ways I feel scared or hopeful or alone or not-alone or broken or whole or hurt or happy or in love. They resonated in my heart and evoked emotions in ways that I, as a writer, only dream of being able to do. They gave me all the words I needed for my anxiety when I couldn’t find words of my own. And then, for one evening, they cured it.
That show was the most amazing thing. I always loved the way you can physically feel live music. And there was so much positive energy in that room. People were jumping up and down, singing at the top of their lungs without stopping, waving their arms and dancing, and just smiling so fucking hard. And so was I. And oh man – they played “It Had to Be You,” and at the start the stage was lit purple. As dumb and dorky as it is, my first MCS song was lit my favourite colour, and I loved it. I loved every minute of this experience.
The anxiety cure lasted even after the show. I really didn’t know what I was doing getting home. Like, I had the directions loaded up on my phone, but still. Nonetheless, I was totally fine. Here is a list of some things I’m terrified of:
Toronto.
Unfamiliar public transit routes.
Strangers.
And guess what? I made it through my second streetcar ride ever (the first was on the way to the venue), my first solo subway ride, and only my second solo train ride. Not once but TWICE I had to get directions from strangers – once to make sure I was on the right subway platform to get to Union (I wasn’t), and then in Union to find the damn Go trains, since Union station is the single most confusing place on earth. And I… felt fine. Normally asking for directions would take ten minutes of psyching up and leave me shaky for a good half hour, but I did it just fine!
My train wasn’t leaving for almost an hour, so I bought a McFlurry, sat down to wait, looked back through my pictures, thought about everything I had to write about the night, and cried a bit. Not exactly out of sadness, so much as just how overwhelming all the emotions were. The amazing night, the knowledge that it was probably the only time I’d ever see them live, the total ridiculousness of my absent anxiety… everything.
Keynan and my parents are all super proud of me for handling my solo adventure so well. I’m proud of me too. I’d like to imagine Motion City Soundtrack would be proud of me. I have them to thank. For the night and for so much else, too. They’ve gotten me through a lot of rough days in one of the roughest periods of my life, and even if they’re not making anything new, I’m pretty sure they’re going to get me through a lot more, too.
So thanks, MCS. Thank you Justin Pierre, Joshua Cain, Jesse Johnson, Matthew Taylor, Tony Thaxton, and Claudio Rivera. Thanks for giving me music that gets right into the centre of me and carried me through some of my worst moments, and thanks for a show that changed my life and proved to me that sometimes, I won’t be scared. Thanks for making me feel so amazing for a few hours that my anxiety didn’t come anywhere near me. Thanks for all the healing. Thanks for all the hundreds of emotions you’ve inspired in me for years that make it impossible to write this without crying. Thanks for everything.