According to the members themselves, the McGill music scene is admittedly small, and heavily draws on projects from Music students. However, this size only helps create a tight community from which new acts can emerge, with OAP as a great beginning gig for bands looking to move into the Montreal venues that welcome young musicians.

OAP is not only a venue for McGill bands. The pub opens up its stage to bands outside of McGill: dullboy got invited to play because lead singer Ben Cardilli was a high school substitute teacher for an OAP organizer who invited the band to play. So, while it remains a central stage for McGill bands, OAP brings in a taste of Montreal music outside the McGill bubble.

Not just a great way for bands to meet other McGill and Montreal groups, OAP also exposes them to potential production collaborators. McGill Masters students in Sound Recording are always looking for new projects (such as McGill bands) – a win-win scenario for both the recording engineer and the group

OAP is one of the few opportunities for McGill (and Montreal) bands to perform together for a McGill audience, and one of the only events that sheds some light on the McGill music scene. In case you were in line for beer or left when the rain hit on Friday, and didn’t get to see the scene in action, here’s a closer look at three of the groups that played OAP in 2014.

Busty and the Bass

With a nine-member line-up – Scott Bevins (trumpet), Mike McCann (trumpet), Chris Vincent (trombone), Nick Ferraro (alto sax), Louis Stein (guitar), Milo Johnson (bass), Julian Trivers (drums), Eric Haynes (piano and keyboards), Evan Crofton (keyboards, synths, “hype”) – Busty and the Bass is literally one of the largest bands in the McGill music scene. When applied to funky pop covers, their size explains why these guys have no trouble getting a crowd to dance, which the members admit is the goal of most of their songs.

The members, all McGill jazz majors, met three years ago during Music Frosh and quickly began playing together. What started as house party collaborations between jazz musicians quickly expanded to larger shows and more experimental styles, primarily funk. While all the members draw from their appreciation of jazz, guitarist Stein stresses that as Busty they also explore other styles, finding inspiration in groups like Snarky Puppy and Disclosure.

Busty has recently been focusing on expanding their audience in Montreal and beyond, with recent shows as far as New York City and six new videos set for release. Coming up, the band will be releasing an electro-funk EP titled Bustified, and are competing against other university bands in the CBC competition “Rock Your Campus.”

SHYRE

SHYRE formed just last year as a project of McGill jazz student Sarah Rossy, when a McGill recording engineer offered her free studio time. Rossy enlisted the help of some fellow McGill musicians, and the studio time turned into a series of YouTube videos. The videos were well-received, and the band began playing shows last March, leading to a tour up Quebec’s coast over the summer. The tour solidified SHYRE’s core six members of the group, allthough the performance lineup in Montreal venues can include as many as nine.

Rossy describes SHYRE as chamber-pop: a mixture of pop and classical to create what she calls a “cinematic soundscape.” The band will be releasing an EP, Winds, sometime in the next month, and is recording a full-length album this year. With the help of Bekah Wineman, a Masters student at McGill in Sound Engineering, the album will feature a full orchestra on various tracks. This might just be the next cinematic soundtrack you can’t get out of your head.

dullboy

The only band featured here that is not made up of current McGill students (though guitarist and back-up vocalist Chris See Hoye is an alumnus), dullboy began a few years ago as a project of lead singer and guitarist Ben Cardilli, and just this year settled into its current four-man lineup: Cardilli, See Hoye, bassist Kevin Brunelle, and drummer Pascal Beauregard.

Cardilli compares their sound to nineties rock with elements of modern pop and folk, looking back to bands like Incubus and Audioslave for inspiration. As for the name dullboy, Cardilli explained that the band has often found themselves working too hard, and, as the proverb goes: “All work and no play makes jack a dull boy.” The name is a constant call for balance: they have to work hard, but let the band be a source of fun in their lives.

dullboy recently released a new self-titled album, available through iTunes. If you’re feeling nostalgic for the 90s rock of your wee years and are looking for new Montreal bands, give it a listen.

For more info on these bands and all the others that played OAP 2014, head to the OAP Facebook event. TVMcGill will also be posting footage of several of the performances. 

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Asserting that the Bible is a piece of literature, and therefore open to interpretation, Dale B. Martin, the Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University offered new interpretations of famously cited texts. Martin, who specializes in New Testament and Christian Origin studies, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, presented these interpretations in a lecture entitled Sex and the Bible. This lecture, presented on September 19 at Concordia’s Bronfman building, is the first in a series of lectures he’s to give in the next year. Martin explores the Bible from a historical, secular perspective in an effort to show the text’s interpretability, arguing that, “The Christian Bible was composed over numerous centuries, representing cultures and historical periods [that] tried to deal with sex in radically different ways.”

Early in his lecture, Martin pointed out that many modern ideas of sex and marriage (i.e. love, procreation, and gender equality) do not appear much in the Bible. He argues instead that biblical ethics of sexual relations can be read through the three lenses of purity, patriarchy, and property. Through these lenses, Martin hones in on details such as how sexual acts were thought to pollute the people involved and the ground on which the acts occurred, how men were seen as superior to women (which tied in to the penetrator as superior to the penetrated), and the worst part of sleeping with another man’s wife having been the insult it would send to the husband. The very fact that a focus on purity, patriarchy, and property in marriage has given way to one on love, procreation, and gender equality, all while the same text endures, shows just how the Bible’s interpretations may change over time.

Many Christian conservatives use Bible passages to support arguments against homosexuality and promiscuity, as well as to justify societal roles for males and females. Martin combats this traditional interpretation by turning a secular eye to some of the earliest biblical stories. He mentions that not Abraham, nor Isaac, nor any other biblical men were condemned for offering up their wives for procreation, an act that smacks of promiscuity – although, to be fair, it smacks even more of patriarchy. Martin also argues that the story of Adam and Eve lacks a male/female hierarchy. Concerning homosexuality, Martin posits that much of the language in biblical stories can be read as suggestive of homosexual relationships (e.g., stories of Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, even of Jesus and his disciples). He also returns to that old classic: while Leviticus 18 may say not to “lay with man as with a woman,” it also lists many other demands that are no longer regarded.

Martin also discussed how many ideas that are often thought of as having Biblical roots actually come from other ancient cultural practices. For example, Christianity lifted the concept of celibacy from Greek philosophy.

While Martin doesn’t believe that the authors of biblical stories truly meant to portray Jesus as having homosexual relationships with his disciples, he jokes that “there’s no reason we can’t read it that way.” Throughout history people have repeatedly changed the Bible’s accepted interpretation for the times. “That’s what Christians and Jews have always done,” says Martin.

The lecture itself was geared towards those with previous knowledge of Biblical studies, making it inaccessible at points for the average attendee and harder to accept with confidence, which somewhat weakened its message for less-informed attendants. Still, Martin presents a valid point: that an approach of updated biblical hermeneutics may be just what’s needed to end the hostility between deout Christians and those who adamantly oppose their current interpreted beliefs.

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The kissing went off as planned – anything from the modest peck to the less-modest championship tonsil-hockey game – under waving rainbow flags and in front of a slew of cameras. After the main event – the simultaneous kissing – couples could have a personal kissing picture taken by a hired photographer.

The main reaction towards Russia’s laws by many at the kiss-in was one of disappointment. “It drags the world back,” said Alex Stein-Tremblay, an attendee. “You’d think these rights would be universal by now.”

But McGill student Zane Wolf, who attended the kiss-in, saw some light in the legislation: it showed him that support for LGBTQ rights has grown enough to worry conservative views. “For me, it’s a hoorah that gay rights are winning.”

While most of the kissers came from the LGBTQ community, their heterosexual allies also showed up to protest what they saw as not just a violation of LGBTQ rights, but of human rights in general. The laws have resulted in increased brutality against LGBTQ activists and their allies, as well as those who organize and participate in pride parades or other public displays of solidarity.

Kat Coric, a local artist who has worked as an LGBTQ activist for the last 20 years, organized the event after hearing about the other kiss-ins. “Sometimes, if it’s not affecting you personally, you feel like you don’t have to be involved, but because it’s such a global issue and it is a human rights issue, I believe that everybody should be involved,” said Coric. “I find that in today’s day and age a person should be judged by his mind and his soul, not his bed.”

The kiss-in is just a light-hearted part of a global effort to put pressure on governments and the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to take action against these laws, especially as the Sochi Winter Olympics in February draw closer. If the laws remain in place, it could spell hostility towards LGBTQ athletes and attendees of the games.

Activist Dan Savage, behind the It Gets Better Project, has spearheaded a campaign to boycott Stoli vodka, while several athletes have come out individually against the laws. However, the IOC has refused to move the games or take a political stance, instead only asking Russia that the laws not be applied against foreign athletes.

For Coric, educating people at the grassroots level is one of the most important and immediate measures people can take against the laws. “What I do,” said Coric, “is one by one try and alert people and see if they’ve heard about it. I find, unless you’re LGBTQ, you may not have even heard about this. I find it’s important to get news out to the heterosexual world as well.”

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