For those of you who can't make our Toronto show on December 27th or the Montreal show on the 30th, you may still want to see Mike. We present to you.
A Christmas Carol
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Mit City has the worst banner ever.
(Put it on your myspace page
3 members, 5 instruments, about a dozen or so switcheroos, an audience clapping and drumming on the tables, a lecture on escalator safety, an improvised song about the previous act, a debate about if dogs can be heros or just save the day, a mellow song ending with a loud piano smash, a loud song suddenly cutting into something mellow for the chorus, a costume change into a Britney Spears shirt, a conversation about how the government of Ontario is praying on our vulnerabilities, a poem entitled "Osama Bin Laden lives next door", a contest to win a Jingle Cats cassette, and an encore sung while inhaling helium balloons. And that in one poorly written run on sentence (which is really more of a list) is a Mit City show.
Their songs are unique, subtly Broadway-inspired, lyrically-driven rock ballads that tell personalized stories, from falling in love with a lesbian, to the recent suicide of an Ontario activist, to an explanation of how the lead singer developed epilepsy.
Although to most Mit City listeners, the band is remembered for their live performance, if the average person has heard of them, it is probably through one of their controversial promotions: in 2003 they covered mid-town Toronto with over 10,000 photocopied posters containing 60 different captions including "Wearing Hello Kitty merchandise doesn't make you look cultured, it makes you look silly," and "When SARS is over and done with, people can all go back to being silently racist." By the time the toner cartridges ran dry, Mit City had landed a couple of segments on Toronto's 680 News and had narrowly averted some potential vandalism law suits with Viacom & OMG Media. Or maybe it was the summer of 2004, when Mit City (with the aid of an enthusiastic street team) created a little educational booklet- a "swearing dictionary"- and handed out over 25,000 all over Ontario. Perhaps you were one of the lucky people stopped on the streets of Ontario by the band and their street team, to take the Mit City Challenge, a parody of the Pepsi Taste Challenge, where strangers were given a taste of Pepsi, then were played 30 seconds of Mit City to see what they liked more.
Mit City entered the studio on Halloween 2004 to record with Jeremy Darby (Lou Reed, Barenaked Ladies, Billy Talent.) The result 8 months later was Whats Wrong With Adlib? a 13-song CD that, beyond all else, challenges the standards of recording with far more volume dynamics than most other CDs to date.
After a sold out CD release party at Clintons Tavern in Toronto, Mit City embarked on a 30-show American tour. The Band left with 2 tour staff and all their instruments crammed into an Impala, with the hope that they might possibly break even. As word about their live performance and college radio play began to circulate around the 25 States on their tour, Mit City found themselves playing for enough people each night to be able to upgrade their rental car to an SUV. Life is good.
