Ask Mark Pesci how he found himself so tightly wrapped up in Toronto’s punk and hardcore community, and he responds, “to a certain extent, it’s punk that finds you.” Pesci is an independent concert promoter who has  been putting on events since 2004. He’s now the in-house booker at The Shop, a basement venue underneath Parkdale restaurant Parts and Labour. He’s also the co-founder of Justshows.com, a nationwide website for independent and mainstream concert listings. If there’s a punk show going on in town, you can be confident Pesci either booked it or knows it’s happening. The Varsity sat down with Pesci to talk about his role as a central point in Toronto’s independent music scene.

 

THE VARSITY

How did you come to be a booker and promoter?

 

MARK PESCI

 I got started booking concerts because I was in a band. I’d trade shows with people in other bands in other cities so that when they toured they had a place to stay, and when I went on tour my band had a place to stay and people to show us around. So after my band broke up I still got phone calls and kept doing it because I had a lot of fun. Around the same time, I was co-hosting a radio show called Equalizing Distort on CIUT, and a lot of bands would contact me that way. Back then, it was hard for a lot of bands to get into Canada legally. Working with the radio allowed us to tell little fibs to Immigration, saying that the bands were only coming in to record sessions for broadcast to promote their album — which they did do, but then additionally they were playing shows in the city that authorities weren’t aware of. But you know, somebody would always pitch in and help out. When we toured the States, we were touring illegally as well. So it always came back.

 

THE VARSITY

How did you get into punk and hardcore as a fan?

MARK PESCI

 I grew up liking metal, and then hearing bands like Suicidal Tendencies and DRI, who sort of crossed the bridge. I had friends playing records for me over the phone and sort of opening my eyes to the underground things going on, and then from there it was really just word of mouth and trying to research things the old fashioned way. Back in the ’90s there was this thing called the Hardcore Hotline where they would have this phone number you’d call and it would tell you what shows were happening over the next month. At the end of the message there was a beep, so if you were doing a show you left a message with the information, and when they updated the machine your show would be on there. It seems so archaic now to think of, but really, I called that thing twice a week just to find out if anything was going on.

THE VARSITY

What’s your favourite part of your job?

MARK PESCI

My favourite part is just getting to meet and see friends. The great thing about doing what I do is that when I travel elsewhere, I can call somebody up, find somebody online that I’ve met, and there’s a very good chance (at least in the major cities) that I know people there, so when I travel I get to find people, and then similarly when people come to Toronto I constantly have visitors.

 

THE VARSITY

Can you tell me about Parts and Labour, and how The Shop came to be?

MARK PESCI: Matty Matheson, this chef who’s really built a reputation for himself, was opening this big restaurant, and then somewhere in the conversation suggests we should have a room in the basement where we can have shows. And a stupid idea became a reality [laughs]. And certainly, I’m open to hearing criticism of Parts and Labour, it’s certainly warranted at times, but what people seem to neglect a lot of the time is most businesses do not leave room to build community the way Parts and Labour does. It’s not always about the bottom line.

 

THE VARSITY

So what are the criteria for choosing which events to hold?

MARK PESCI

 We have our Saturday nights where we have DJs and we make enough money to warrant having live music, whether it profits or not the rest of the week. Obviously it’s better if it does profit… So the idea being four or five DJ nights allow for 10–15 live music nights… At the end of the day, I wanna work with bands I like. Even though I do this for a living, I’m not doing this for the money. The ticket money does not pay my bills. For me to work with a band, there has to be something there that I like: They’re friends of mine or I like their record or if it’s something that’s completely out of left field for me, there has to be something about it that appeals to me…

 

THE VARSITY

How have you seen the community change over time? How do you feel about the changes?

 

MARK PESCI

I can’t even remember how long ago now, but one of the first shows I came to in Toronto, a friend and I took the GO bus up from Hamilton to see a show at Plastic Studios, which is a long defunct space at Queen and Ossington … and not being from the city and being slightly overwhelmed … we just went to the club and waited for it to open. So we were sitting by the door and it opens up and Ewan [Exall, now with promotion company Embrace] pops out and was like, “what are you guys doing here?” And we just told him, “we’re from Hamilton, we took the bus up.” So surely enough he chatted with us for a good 45 minutes, and 15, 20 years later he’s someone I work with and speak to just about every day.

[Now] It’s great to see people like Greg Benedetto and Ivan from School Jerks and there’s this girl Erika booking a lot of shows… It’s great to see people picking up the work that I was doing … [there are] niche audiences where everyone has their niche, and when a certain niche isn’t being met … Greg got his start because he really liked sort of more New York style hardcore… New York style hardcore is something that, aside from a couple exceptions, I’m not really into. I got to know him because he was like “Hey, I’m doing these shows, can you help me at all with finding a venue here or there”… And Erika, she does a more crusty style of punk, which nobody has been doing in Toronto for probably five years, if not longer. So it’s great to see people saying, “There’s something missing that I can do myself, and there’s a community here to help me if I need it.” And everybody’s friends, everybody clashes at times, but it’s this idea of passing the baton, and you’re always connected to it. You’re connected through history, you’re connected through community. But it’s also this idea that if you’re 40-years-old and booking diy punk shows … it’s probably not a good thing.