The Last Pogo is a grainy, in-the-moment collection of bands who played Toronto’s famed Horseshoe Tavern for the last time, on December 1, 1978. Filmed in all of their sweaty, gritty glory, Colin Brunton’s film is a watermark in the city’s musical and cultural history.

Although the footage is thirty years old, the remarks and insights of various band members between performances are striking for their prescience. To paraphrase a member of famed Toronto band The Two Garys, “the fifteen-to-forty-five (year old) generation, the new generation, desires to be heard.” Word’s still out on whether forty-five was considered an important musical demographic in 1978, especially since a mere ten years earlier, no one over thirty could apparently be trusted. Still, nary a music lover under seventy could today be found without an mp3 player or I-tunes on their computers. The insight itself might be understood as a kind of battle cry for every generation of music lover, but what with the proliferation of new media in the last ten years, that insight holds particularly deep resonance.

Equally as striking is the contemporary sound of the bands features. Along with the Garys, the film features live performances by Cardboard Brains, Ugly, The Viletones (who are definitely the most “punk” of the night, with a fight in the crowd nearly breaking out during their number), and local legends Teenage Head, who overcome terrible sound quality to give an energetic, rousing performance. “It’s not the end of something”, notes one member, “it’s the beginning of something.” Their raucous, upbeat, guitar-driven, drum-thrashing sounds would be perfectly at home in any of Toronto’s numerous live music venues today, and indeed, prove an ideal addition to the North by Northeast Festival itself.

Another live, but altogether different, sort of live performance is captured in The Side Street Project, billed as the first in a series of one-hour HD specials. This episode features the talents of Canadian musicians combined in new and creative ways. Poetic rapper Buck 65, piano mistress Emm Gryner, and deluxe electro-outfit Holy F*ck come together before a smaller live audience and, with Charles Officer hosting, create music, talk about creating music, and do the sort of sonic doodling that is mostly never seen on film.

The film (actually a TV pilot) is an interesting mélange of styles and sounds; from a visual point of view, it offers a varied and ever-changing point of view, from up-close-and-personal, to wide and sweeping (or, as sweeping as possible, considering the project is shot entirely indoors). In watching Buck 65’s country-styled alt-intelli-hip-hop stylings, one can’t help but be reminded of the last line in The Last Pogo concerning music labels: they just don’t matter.

This point is driven home when, following scenes of the band members eating and talking about pertinent issues like parental disapproval and the constant juggling act between family, money, and passion, they launch into a highly unorthodox version of the Def Leppard hit, Pour Some Sugar On Me. Gryner’s delicate, girlie voice rises above the din of piano, scratching, and thumping percussive accompaniment. The members of Holy F*ck are so intently focused, they don’t even seem to breathe. The viewer moves from being a member of the audience to being a member of the band, thus creating an intimacy that isn’t always available to music fans (no, not even on Myspace). Another benefit to the roving camera technique is the opportunity to observe the fans observing the musicians; it’s a strange sort of position to be put in, because within that moment of slack-jawed wonder, we’re really seeing ourselves. It’s also an reflection of not only the passion and tenacity of the artists, but the same passion reflected back, in a kind of creative energetic exchange.

The connections between the musicians, and with the audience, having been firmly established, Bruce Springsteen’s State Trooper is given a driving, urgent re-working by the group, before their final piece de resistance, Gordon Lightfoot’s classic Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. With Buck 65 maintaining a rough, urbanized, rhythmic twang that demonstrates his feel for the rhythm of Lightfoot’s words, Gryner provides a haunting backdrop of vocals, and Holy F*ck a swirling mass of muddy, moody electronic sound that perfectly evokes the spirit, if not the actual melody, of the Canadian classic.

The Side Street Project is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which artists collectively create, interact, and interpret; it is a logical extension of the punk ethos espoused in The Last Pogo, that music and music fans, are constantly seeking new ways of sharing, connecting, and creating.

The Last Pogo screens on June 15th, at 5.30pm, at the NFB Cinema.
The Side Street Project screens on June 13th, at 11:15am, at the NFB Cinema.

For more information about films screening during the NXNE Festival, go to www.nxne.com.