North by Northeast has grown each year, but this year its scope has reached an absurd level. In previous years, if you planned appropriately, you could see up to 20 bands during the regular schedule if you saw show in every time slot, including the few after-hours slots. This year, you could see 28 bands, and that doesn’t include the prequel concerts scattered around the city the weeks leading up to NXNE, the free outdoor concerts during the day, or the documentaries and panels. I almost feel like I missed out because I saw “only” 15 bands this year. This isn’t a complaint — I’m just disappointed by either my stamina or my scheduling skills for not being able to attend an event every hour of every day for three days straight because the events were available.

NXNE 2008 officially began with the customary Wednesday opening party. Either NXNE has grown too popular for the Palais Royale to all the invited guests, or someone read my post from NXNE 2006 — in which I observed that the party’s exclusivity was based on the ability to send an email in time — and took the challenge I didn’t present to impose another level of exclusivity. The attendees were separated into two tiers: the deck crowd and the people-who-arrived-after-the deck-filled crowd, and people actually formed a line for the privilege of crossing from one tier to the other.

On the upside, this time they didn’t run out of free drink tickets before I arrived. As I drank my product placement beer I observed how quickly the queue moved — it didn’t, it only grew. Whereas last year I had to buy my own drinks, I stayed around to chat with random people. This year I got a free drink but there was no reason to stay because I didn’t have the opportunity to wander around and look for someone interesting to accost. I don’t even know if there was anyone interesting on the deck by that point — I never noticed the artists to arrive particularly early in previous years. I’m of the opinion that most people wanted to get to the deck because, well, it was hot inside, but primarily because deck access was limited and everyone wanted what they couldn’t have. Once people got outside I’m sure they discovered there wasn’t anyone special there either but damned if they were going to give up their hard-won spots on the deck. Since there was no reason I could see to stay, I left after I finished my drink. I had a better chance of running into an indie musician wandering around Queen Street than I did inside Palais Royale, and if I wanted to drink on a deck, Queen Street also had plenty of patio-bars that didn’t require I first stand in an unmoving line.

I’ve always considered the opening party the weakest aspect of NXNE. The point of the party, I assume, is to give artists and the media the chance to woo each other, but, from what I observed, most guests just cliqued up and one drink ticket isn’t enough of a catalyst to break clique bonds en masse. Since the focus of NXNE is supposed to be the music, I prefer doing business backstage, or on stage, anyway, and I’ve always had more success interviewing bands after their set (but that might be because I know something about the musicians by then and don’t have to rely on the opening line of "Hey, you look like you might be someone who isn’t famous but wants to be”). If manufactured exclusivity is a continuing trend in NXNE as it grows, in the future I’ll skip the extra events and just stick to discovering the music.

We continued to rely on our time tested strategy for selecting bands: one of the editors would mention a band whose name made him or her giggle; the rest of the editors would argue the band’s merits, based on speculation and rumour, compared to closer, less amusingly monikered bands; we’d eventually make a decisions and head to a club, where we’d stay if the band was particularly talented or particularly entertaining (whether intentionally or otherwise). If not, the process would start all over again, and the previous debate’s winner would be shouted down for having poor taste.

The first band we saw was Mad Staring Eyes, a UK rock band whose members are mummies, which is about the right level of ridiculousness on which you want to begin a festival. I didn’t know the UK had mummies except in museums but NXNE is all about expanding your cultural knowledge.

I’m wary of gimmicks because bands often employ them to distract the audience from how utterly shit they are, but Mad Staring Eyes’ complete lack of shit needed no gimmicks. Between songs, several audience members — OK, it was us — demanded the sound guy turn them up because we saw the keyboardist thrashing on the keys and we wanted to hear what was going on there.

After their set, I asked Jake Hirsch, the keyboardist, whether they were actual mummies or were perhaps inspired by TISM who wear balaclavas to protect their secret identities from supervillianbands. He replied that, in fact, they were all in the same car when their driver accidentally rolled the car off a mountain road into a pit of scorpions. Also, the other band members were trying to bring bandages back in, and it was better to try out new styles far away from home so they only risk embarrassing themselves to strangers. Wise beyond their 5000 years.

Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah, a band whose name answers the question, "should we see them?", with an unequivocal affirmative. Unfortunately, their name lies. Punk is supposed to be some combination of loud, disturbing, and angry, but instead Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah opted for boring and monotonous.

I was glad for their gimmick — a scantily clad young lady who wandered around the stage with a sign, reminiscent of the entertainment between rounds at boxing matches — because it strengthened the conditioning that everything is better when Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah isn’t performing.

Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah isn’t the worst band I’ve seen at NXNE — I bring them up mainly so I can discuss the worst band. That honour goes to a three-piece from 2006 whose name I never knew, but one of their songs still lingers in my brain and occasionally when the wrong neuron fires I’m ambushed with a mental rendition of "I see you looking at the camel toe", followed by images of one band member pausing mid-sentence to vomit off stage, a bandmate attempting a handstand that ended with a backwards tumble into the crowd, and the third, trucker-hat sporting bandmate yanking drinks from audience members’ hands, swigging them and spitting the drinks back at the audience. So Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah are about as bad as they can be without drunkenly vomiting and falling off stage.

Besides quality, Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah and the unknown band share another feature: spitting at their audiences. If you’re considering the stage maneuver of spitting at your audience, here’s a simple quiz you can take to determine whether it’s a good idea. 1. Are you Trent Reznor or David Bowie? If you answered "no" to any of the above questions, then you probably shouldn’t spread your filthy bodily fluids on your audience because your diseases aren’t worth anything on eBay. So don’t do it. It’s not hardcore. It’s asking whether we’re staring at your camel toe.

We saw the Ketch Harbour Wolves perform for a second time at NXNE and they rocked harder than last year, even though they were missing their cellist to an overseas adventure (Ketch Harbour Wolves always seem to be wandering off). The Wolves recently released their second album so most of their set was dedicated to performing new songs, which was fine by me because it’s a worthy, slightly more upbeat successor to their very listenable debut album.

Incidentally, the crowds at Ketch Harbour Wolves shows consist of an exhorbitant ratio of gorgeous twenty-somethings who like to dance near the stage. One more thing to like about the Wolves.

Check back for a comic review of their second album: Dead Calm Horizon.

Watch a 6 foot tall tranny in red hooker boots sing grungy glam rock while getting ridden like a pony by a fan: check. One more item crossed off my list of things to do, thanks to Semi-Precious Weapons. And their music is at least as good as their stage performance.

I’ve seen White Cowbell Oklahoma twice before, but options are limited at 2am, and our first two choices were less than captivating. White Cowbell changed their stage performance from previous NXNE performances. Whereas before they chainsawed a giant stuffed animal in half while they were joined on stage by naked dancing strippers, this year they chainsawed a giant roll of toiler paper while they were joined by a naked dancing clown.

I’m all for variety, but I wasn’t totally sold on the new performance, so I made my concerns known to the band in the most reliable way I know: via drunken clown. Some time after the show, we ran into a friendly fellow on Queen Street. He overheard us discussing White Cowbell and he joined our conversation.

Now that’s communicating with your fans.

If Christopher Rees’s audiences at NXNE are any indication, Squid & Ink editors make up the bulk of his North American fan base, which is a shame because if I hadn’t surreptitiously drawn his blood and sequenced his DNA I’d swear he was a machine designed exclusively to rock — a rockomaton, if you will.

Rees brought his third album, Cautionary Tales, to Toronto so now that we have copies we can stop yelling requests for Mary Lee at him. But we probably won’t. Rees said he plans to do a proper North American tour this year so look out for it.

Due to our streetcar getting swept away by torrential rains, we were late to OK City OK’s show and only caught their last song. But we met them in the crowd afterwards to give them their Japanese inspired squid they requested so long ago — I hope to see him on tour with the rest of the band from now on. Our meeting was captured in comic form so check that out in the next instalment of the blog.

The Golden Hands Before God Conducts Incredible Magic Band & The Spirits and Scorpion Chainsaw Operation Booze Orgy — these two bands made us refine our selection criteria. When it seems like there’s no way a band could live up to its name, there isn’t. These bands don’t suck, they’re just terrifically unremarkable.

The only specific criticism I have is that a band shouldn’t announce, two minutes into their set, that you can find their merchandise by the door — I’m looking at you TGHBGCIMB&TS. You’ve got to get an emotional investment from your audience before you can shamelessly sell them your merchandise. Otherwise, you look like inept hucksters. To obtain that investment, you could start by first playing your set.

While walking between shows, I stumbled onto half of the two piece The Bag Ladies, playing on her porch with special guest guitarist Bas. The Bag Ladies eschew the standard live music accessories, like a stage or amps, preferring instead to interact closely with their audience on porches, in subways, or anywhere else they can go with their guitars — but you can still occasionally find them on a stage. They weren’t part of NXNE, but one of my favourite aspects of NXNE is the random encounters in Toronto because they tend to involve friendly musicians or artists, as opposed to my usual random encounters: Transformers fans getting irate at my t-shirt and yelling, "Decepticons suck. Autobots for life!" (actual quote).

The following bands are also worth a listen but I don’t have any amusing anecdotes about them.