Field Trip 2014: A Tribe Called Red

I'll be meandering through random bits of Field Trip 2014 in the next few days (or weeks...). This was my most memorable moment - my "apple" of the weekend, as my friend would call it.

It's really hard to find things on your own. I was reading an article the other day that said we're just repeating everything we see on Twitter. It's not easy to be original anymore, is what I'm saying. We're all derivatives of derivatives.

This is why keeping a sense of curiosity, which often leads to new discoveries, is so important. 

And that's why dancing and swaying with the crowd at A Tribe Called Red felt really fucking good. 

Some friends of mine knew of the band, and thought their genre ("Powwow-step") sounded intriguing - so we stayed put. They'd recently played a free show at our school which, I'm sorry to say, I didn't go to but should have.

Admittedly, I almost missed it. They were the last act in a long lineup (which included Kevin Drew, Shad, Austra and a bunch of other Canadian indies). I was about to leave to watch Interpol, something I thought would be good to add to my musical education.

But once the first ATCR song started, we kept watching. This slowly crept to our group of four standing up, and then weaving our way into the crowd where we danced just behind a bunch of bros who brought something resembling Gandalf's wizard staff with them. If you were at Field Trip this weekend, I'm sure you saw them.

My friend Brenna put it best in her tweet.

I don't expose myself to Aboriginal issues all that willingly. I don't have an excuse for it. My time at the Journal allowed me to follow certain aspects of it. And I still find this a bit odd to say, but my experience at this show got me, if anything, a bit more interested in the story of a people so consistently ignored.

Plus, the video montages and hoop dancing were spectacular. It was a welcome relief after a day of five-ish-piece bands with semi-emotional lyrics and guitar strumming. There's only so much Canadian indie folk rock you can take.

I'm still trying to learn new things. I'll have to do some digging around and see what literature I can find on the issues ATCR tackles.