Old School Montreal

I'm sorry. For you more delicate types, maybe it's time to get a cup of coffee or some orange juice.

I don't know where you come from. Me, I wasn't raised on the street. Very far from it. I was a privileged boy from a not so tough neighborhood called Calcutta. Yep, that state in East Bengal.

But when I came to Montreal, I was practically newly minted. I had that adolescent sheen of being eighteen years old, and Montreal was as bizarre as the moon.

It was so fucking totally cool that I practically freaked. But what was cool about it was the time -- it was the mid-seventies and Montreal had a slightly seedy side of itself. But that's what made it cool.

That's when I joined the band, I'd looked it up, frankly, in the music section of the Montreal Star (now long defunct) and somehow, I found myself in tow with four young Montreal assholes. Truly, what you can imagine from the 70s . . . young dipshits in a mood to party. Montreal-style.

So, true to form, I became one of them. Ahh, what is it now? Parade down Ste. Catherine on Saturday night in George's Cougar? Yo, babes! Not that they were interested.

With me, at least, they were never interested.

That was, like . . . a lifetime ago.

But guess what: I recently actually finally found old George from our band days. I actually picked up the phone and talked to that maniac who raised me in Montreal in the 70s. He raised me well. He was a hell-raising maniac and I've never met a guy like him since. If you could put Montreal in the 70s in a basket, George would have been the ribbon on the bow at the top.

I'll tell you about George later.