At last year's Siren Festival, we filmed Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning performing solo on the beach. If any conclusions could be drawn from that impromptu set, it was that the endearingly redheaded muppet wigs out on the beach. Maybe it was the shirtless dudes behind him or the couples bickering in Brooklynese, or maybe he doesn't like taking off his socks. Whatever the reason, Canning remained inscrutable behind the beguiling half-smile, a couple monosyllables, and a song he made up on the spot out of his notebook. We are not ungrateful, we just wish it wasn't such a "very strange experience" for him. Nice set with Broken Social Scene, though.

Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run intermittently here at Sound of the City.

Broken Social Scene returns to the city this Friday, October 24 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. The show is sold out.

all photos by Rob Trucks

Possibly 4th Street
Number 22 (Part One)
Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning

by Rob Trucks

“It's a very strange experience for me, I must say.”
—Brendan Canning

Us too.

Siren Festival 2008 is hot and crowded. Not only in front of the stages (and behind the stages) but on the boardwalk and the beach.

In a mere matter of hours Brendan Canning and his Broken Social Scene bandmates will close the Stillwell stage in front of a crowd that stretches from just short of the boardwalk out halfway to Surf Avenue. But playing acoustic guitar on a teeming seaside is not his thing.

So Frankie and Annette we’re not. Though this is the first Possibly 4th Street where both the film crew and the performer stood a good chance of taking home that most unwanted of shore souvenirs, sand in the underwear.

And yet we persevere. Through heat, a mass of half-naked humanity (and not always in a good way), and a certain grittiness where you do not want grittiness.

And so just three days before his first solo album, Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning’s Something For All of Us . . . (if you don’t think branding’s important, just ask Lindsey Buckingham), band co-founder Canning plays a song so new that for today, at least, it's called "Song at Coney Island."

Brendan Canning Performs "Song at Coney Island"