Music Week

NIKE'S PRESTO PUSH

To quote the old hack stand-up comedian crack: who are the marketing geniuses who came up with this? Perhaps sensing the strong, er, foothold that the Converse All-Star has on every self-respecting indie-rock musician, the folks at Nike have come up with a new strategy to get hip: open a rock club.

This Saturday (June 15) marks the opening of Presto, a new all-ages concert space/art gallery at 303 Augusta that plans to showcase a diverse array of local and international indie artists and donate all its door proceeds to the St. Stephen's Community House soup kitchen. It also happens to named after a Nike shoe line. That's more than enough fuel to get the corporations-co-opting-culture debate burning all summer long, but the club's booker -- local 18-year-old indie-punk promoter Eric Warner -- insists Nike's involvement with the club is as a hands-off sponsor, and that Presto will be a swoosh-free zone.

"This is more of a grassroots marketing effort for them, almost like giving back to the community," Warner says. "Compared to all their in-your-face marketing, this is actually pretty minimal. You can look it at both ways: you could see at it as just a Nike thing, or you could see at it as an opportunity to book bands that need exposure."

The club will be open four nights a week through August 17, with Thursdays devoted to electronic/ambient music, Fridays to indie-rock and punk, Saturdays to hip-hop and house, and Sundays to ska, reggae and worldbeat. The venue will be an all-ages, no-smoking, no-alcohol space, with cover charges capped at $5; bands will receive a guarantee... and, of course, a brand-new pair of sneakers. But that's not enough to entice some artists to bend their principles and just do it. Local art-punks Rockets Red Glare are one band that has outright rejected the Presto package.

"Obviously, anything short of playing in basements will involve some amount of complicity in corporate profit," says Rockets guitarist Evan Clarke. "Presto feels a lot more like infiltration, though, in having hijacked the genuinely noble idea of all-ages shows as a means of exploiting the pocketbooks of underage kids. Even if I were to concede that the issue was not totally black and white and that there is indeed a dearth of all-ages venues in Toronto, I doubt that I'd consider playing at Presto, [given] the rather high level of ethical discomfort which the idea causes my bandmates and I."

But despite the indie-underground's intrinsically anti-corporate nature, Warner claims he's faced little resistance from the community.

"There's always people who have a general dislike for this sort of thing," he says, "but out of the 200 or so acts we've approached, only four have pulled out." STUART BERMAN

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