SoundProof - Live: 777

If you've ever found yourself dancing like a bloody epileptic, wrapped up in the lights and sounds, completely ignorant of when you left the party and waking up hung over and sketched out on some strange couch the next morning, you know that great music can take you outside yourself and to another place altogether. It's a nightly occurrence for some. But never was it more the case than on Saturday July 7th, the night of independent Toronto label Magnificent Sevens' 777 bash.

It was all sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll as M7s' founder Davy Love opened his arms, and people's minds, to Toronto's underground music community. His label's product may be small — 7" singles — but his 777 party was of epic proportions. Located just off Queen West on Lisgar Street, M7s' UFO Club Hall, as his rented warehouse and party space there is called, is only the latest manifestation of Love's near fanatical love of music. It comes on top of his success as the man behind Toronto's influential BLOWUP parties, which, Hoas Hoas singer and guitarist Richard Gibson gushes, "Took place every week for 10 fucking years!" Held at a variety of locations like the El Mocambo and Lee's Palace, for a while it was a staple of the city's underground scene.

"I remember when I first started coming to Toronto, we would always go to BLOWUP on Saturday nights at Lee's Palace," Gibson says. "It was always great tunes, lots of indie and Brit-pop but also lots of '60s stuff, awesome visuals, hot birds and cool cats."

While Love's BLOWUP days may have finished, the party still continues, more freaked out and psychedelic than ever, if his 777 bash is any indication. After all, it's only "once in 100 years all the sevens align, and chances are most of you won't see the next one happen unless they find a cure for death between now and then," says Love. "This party is a big one for us here at Magnificent Sevens."

And what a long, strange trip it was, starting up a little after 10 p.m. and going strong until nearly four the next morning. The music was provided by a list of 10 live bands (Will Carruthers of Spacemen 3, Action Makes, The Disraelis, Easy Targets, Lipstick Machine, The Hoa Hoas, The Visit, Terror Lake, Barons and Lengthy, Obviously Five Believers, plus DJs) and the place they took their audience of several hundred to was plainly somewhere circa 1969 — Warhol's Factory, most likely. M7s' new digs — stern and whitewashed during band set-up when I walked in — were soon drenched in kaleidoscoping, acid-era-coloured oil projections and a storm of fuzzed-out guitars and feedback — and this was only the main room. Further back, 16mm film-footage of Velvet Underground and Brian Jones played against the side wall of a pitch black second room, and behind that was the debauchery of what every good rock 'n' roll party needs, a low-lit backroom. The one at 777 just happened to be sweaty as fuck and sparsely furnished, with a couple dozen 20-somethings laying around on the floor in various states of starry, blissed-out intoxication.

"I just love this place . . . I just love everyone here," sighed reveler Amanda Barber from behind wildly dilated eyes. It was a pretty precise description of the general mood.

In fact, if I was old enough to have experienced anything before 1983, I'd say the whole scene was like one long night straight off the streets of Haight-Ashbury: the tunes, the lights, "the crazy cats and birds." And Love seems to concur, in the most straight-forward of terms: "It's pretty basic rock 'n' roll," he says. "In fact, there's nothing original about it."

But that's just the point, according to party attendee Robert Gibson. "People say these bands sound like the Stones when they first came out, or they sound like some other '60s shit, and it's like, yeah, that's the point. We love this music and we want to build on it, take it forward."

"There's an underground music scene here in Toronto, and it's blooming fast," says his brother Richard. "All these people are into really great music and looking to have a good time and not just do the same old bullshit. This warehouse party is just one example of what can happen here in Toronto concerning art and nightlife. I mean the crazy '60s-style visuals the 100% real rock 'n' roll bands, the amazing DJs, the fantastic style on all the chicks and dudes, the all night party! It was like Warhol's Factory or something — sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll — except everyone's having a great time. Things are getting better. It's hip and it's real and it's our generation. Let's take it all in and let it all out."