UNUSUAL VENUE HAS FESTIVE HISTORY

Mile Ex End Musique Montréal is not the first event to repurpose the Van Horne overpass. The roots of the location’s identity as a site for celebration go back to 2007, to a little party thrown with no permits, no advertising and little-to-no advance warning by Megasoid, a hip-hop/electro duo consisting of DJ Sixtoo, a.k.a. Speakerbruiser, and Hadji Bakara of Wolf Parade.

The pair played music out of a van one night for a few hours, drawing 200 to 300 people.

“They did it on the Mile End side (of the train tracks that run beneath the overpass),” said Montreal producer Poirier, who joined Sixtoo and DJ Khiasma on the north side of the tracks a few weeks later for a stridently alternative St-Jean-Baptiste shakedown dubbed the Bridge Burner.

This writer had the pleasure of being on hand to witness a wildly fun, borderline chaotic, but ultimately exuberant event that even the Montreal police allowed to take its course.

“We gave the rendezvous at midnight,” Poirier recalled. “We told people, ‘Don’t get there before 12.’ By 12:15, there were 500 people, at least. By the end, there were 1,500. We played from midnight to 2 a.m. The police came, but their goal was not to shut down the party, but to see what was happening.”

Not wanting to push their luck, the trio brought in POP Montreal for two subsequent parties at the same location over the next two years. While permits were acquired for those later incarnations, the feeling of DJing in such an unlikely setting remains imprinted on Poirier’s mind.

“It was among the best gigs in my life,” he said. “It was totally unexpected, mega-urban. It was kind of a symbol, for the people who were there, of what Montreal can be.”