I Kissed Musicians for a Living - Pt.1

Hello readers! The Ick Season 4 is coming soon—with a new theme, new writers, and a PRINT component. I’m so excited to give you the details, but in the meantime, here’s a lil something to chew on. Because many of you are new here, please enjoy this re-post from season 1, essays on personal humiliation. Part two will post next week, and a whole new season starts in June. If you haven’t already, please subscribe here.

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When I tell people I lived in Montréal in the 2010s, I say I was a “music journalist.” 

But that’s not the whole truth.

I was a music journalist with a very controversial gimmick.

My column was named Musiciens que Je Veux Frencher (“Musicians I Want to French”). I wrote for Vesper Magazine, a small art/music journal based in Austin, Texas. It was the time of Grimes and Arcade Fire and Tops. Canada’s indie music was hot as hell, and I decided to find out Gonzo-style just how hot. As an American journalist in French-speaking Montréal, I would interview indie bands and proposition them to French kiss me. 

You see the pun, ok.

On its face, this story sounds like a flex. Wait, you made out with hot musicians? Professionally?? But what seemed like a harmless schtick led to a lot of rejection, mortifying crushes, and—ultimately—a VICE feature that erupted in a slut shaming shit storm. I rarely tell this story, but fuck it, it’s been nearly ten years. Time to air this dirty laundry and process these old humiliated feelings. 

The Concept

I was 25 with an invincibility complex. I styled myself as Thompson-esque, taking vodka shots with the band, building rapport, experiencing the glamor of indie sleaze from behind the velvet rope. No, I wasn’t objective (as if journalism ever is), I was embedded. 

I didn’t have a music theory degree. I’d never played an instrument. I couldn’t talk about the back beat or syncopation. I wasn’t writing for Pitchfork for chrissakes. I wanted the coverage to feel gritty, real. My job was to describe the somatics—how the bass pulsed as a heart beat, how the crowd writhed and convulsed—and put readers in the show, moshing and raving beside me. 

My column asked: Is the lusty euphoria of live music just collective effervescence? Or is it sexual attraction?

Certainly you’ve felt that cocktail of endorphins, cortisol, and tequila in your bloodstream. The thrill of sweat slipping down the nape of your neck, eye contact with the lead singer, stage lights with tracers. You notice the artist’s lips on the mic, hands on the neck of the bass, drum stick twirling between fingers. Is that love drunk infatuation real? If you could actually french the band right then, would sparks fly?

I conducted the interviews professionally, sinking into the sagging couches of basement green rooms in narrow indie venues like the Divan Orange or Casa del Popolo. Venues pressed between highrise buildings, thrown together in concrete warehouses, accessed only through side entrances or squatted storefronts. It was late at night, we were drinking Pabst or whiskey from the handle, stepping over taped wires, trying to find a quiet corner among the discarded furniture and naked bulbs. 

I asked probing questions, inquired about their childhood, held deep eye contact, listened intently, made them laugh. I put them at ease. 

Then, as we wrapped up, I would call in my photographer and admit with a smirk, “There’s one part of the interview I haven’t told you about…” The musician would blink, looking between me and the cameraman. I’d say, “Can I kiss you?”

all photos by the amazing Mohamed Hamad <3

All in all, it was pretty innocent. It was consensual. It was cute. A kiss on camera, and we’re done. I didn’t sleep with anybody (well…that isn’t entirely true, more on that later), and because I didn’t disclose the intent to french until the very end, I wasn’t using the makeout as leverage. 

And let me be clear, many musicians said no. They had girlfriends and boyfriends, and sometimes their partners were in the audience. 

Mac DeMarco chain-smoked on the curb during our interview while his girlfriend hovered nervously on my periphery. Some shied away from the camera. They may have given me a lil smooch, but not if there was evidence. The Growlers’ lead singer seemed very interested until the camera arrived, then shook his head sheepishly and said, “Nah, I gotta girl back home, couldn’t do that to her.”

However, I also got some enthusiastic yeses. Rich Aucoin, Violette Pi, Dry the River, Juveniles. Ugh, this sounds like an old groupie’s body count.

A kiss seems harmless, right? But during my investigations, things got complicated. 

The Complications

I interviewed Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz in March, 2013. We sat in the back of the deserted bar of Le Belmont before the show. He was gorgeous and intense. He told me about growing up as the shy son of Twin Peaks actor Ken Welsh. He avoided the spotlight for most of his life, fearful he couldn’t live up to his father’s big name. It was snowing outside the window, dramatic shadows moved over us as cars passed on Boulevard Saint Laurent. Devon looked broodily into the nightscape. 

“You just have to be so vulnerable on stage…isn’t that scary?” I asked. I was two beers deep, feeling bolder. 

He said, “There’s a lot of power in vulnerability. You can’t be afraid of it.”

“But don’t you need some kind of trust first…in order to offer that to an audience?” I put my elbows on the table, leaned toward him. 

He turned his deep-set eyes on me, “Yeah, trust. Trust in yourself…You just have to commit, that’s crucial.”

Was that an invitation? A challenge? Maybe I should have lunged across the table right then.

Instead, I lost my nerve. His bandmate Matt arrived and hurried Devon away. The show was starting soon, and I was left alone in the empty bar. Here’s how I described the performance in the original article: 

Onstage he was a different man. Unlike the introverted persona I met behind the house plant, Devon was confrontational. He danced in thrusting movements. A vein bulged starkly, running the length of his arm from bicep to index finger. He had total control of the stage, pacing around with a simmering energy … It was a sexual intensity that spilled out of his honesty. It was a vulnerability that wasn’t characterized by fragility, but total abandon.

Obviously, I had fallen totally in love with him. Over the course of the performance, I had been drawn closer and closer to the stage. Before his final song his eyes landed on me. He said, “I was talking to someone earlier about vulnerability. So I'm going to sing this one a cappella…because I've never done it, and it’s pretty scary.”

I blushed hard and receded backwards into the crowd. The room hushed. The clear, bright tones of Devon’s voice enveloped us, unaccompanied. Raw and aching, soft then strained, he filled the room. 

My faithful photographer Mo wasn’t with me that night. So at the end of the show, I crept backstage alone feeling shaky and unsure of myself. I found Devon and Matt in the wings of the stage, wrapping cords and packing keyboards. It was too bright. I was nervous and squinting. After a few congratulations and quick jokes, I took a big gulp of trust. 

Trust in yourself…You just have to commit.

I told him the premise of the article. I babbled about exploring the authenticity of sexual chemistry between audience and musician. Then, in a decelerated cinemagraphic moment, I locked eyes with him. My mouth slowed and slacked. I wet my lips. “So, can I kiss you?”

His face broke into a shy smile, teeth gleaming. “Yes.”

In a lapse of judgment I’ll always regret, I asked Matt to take the photo on his iPhone. 

When Devon and I stepped away from each other, eyes blinking open, I felt dizzy. Matt looked at his phone and said, “Whoa.” He turned the screen towards us. The photos were spectacular. The chemistry was pornographic. I gave Matt my email address and he promised to send them to me. 

And then I left. I was too freaked out by the intensity of the kiss. I’d promised myself not to actually have sex with my interviewees. I wanted a clickbait headline, not a communicable disease. But Devon had looked into my soul! He’d called me out onstage! What we had was real, right? I feared I might break my promise if I attended the afterparty with him. So I went home. 

Reader, I never received those photos. 

Instead, I received a curt email from Majical Cloudz’s PR agent. She accused me of not disclosing the premise of the article and that my behavior would not be tolerated. Also, by some unfortunate circumstance, Matt’s phone was “acting up” and all the files had been “accidentally deleted”. I heard rumors that Majical Cloudz was not allowed to have private interviews with female journalists for the remainder of the tour. Could that have been true? Was I such a dangerous vixen?

In the article I asked myself in conclusion: 

Where do I draw the line when my attraction passes from journalistic interest to sincere compatibility? When do I put down the Frencher shtick and allow myself room to be vulnerable in return? How do I know where the attraction really comes from: do I want the person or the persona? But what’s more—does it fucking matter?

This became the central question as I continued to proposition musicians to makeout. Where was the line between person and persona? And how far was I willing to push myself to find out? 

I had to learn the hard way, through a crushing heartbreak with the lead singer of Breton, and in the end, a VICE article that made me retreat completely from the public eye. But more on that in part two...