MEGACITY EXTRAVAGANZA: PUP at Sneaky Dee’s

PUP at Sneaky Dee's during the music video shooting for Paranoid

At 25 years old, I have gone through many eras. Around the age of 7 I remember being enamored with Linkin Park and getting chills watching the ending of Transformers (2007). In my tween years, Monstercat, Skrillex, and EDM were in constant rotation as I edited my Minecraft montage videos. In my early teen years, whatever was playing on GTA V’s Radio Mirror Park, the FIFA soundtracks, or on my walks home after school listening to Raina Douris on Indie 88.1 became my new obsession (I’m going to skip my Imagine Dragons phase because the less said the better). Sometime in my late teens and early university days, Kpop, Jpop, and indie pop put me in a choke hold. And in the early 2020s shoegaze, post-punk, hardcore, jazz, and Talking Heads have become my current interests. Very few bands and artists have managed to keep my attention for almost a decade, and today I would like to talk about a very special one, PUP. 

All summer ‘16. Playing dirty, not clean. I had just finished grade 11, I decided to do English in the summer (the biggest cheat code in high school, went from a peak of 72% in the previous 3 years to a 90%), and the first season of Stranger Things had taken the world by storm. I stumbled upon an Indie 88 article detailing what each of the young cast members had done previously. For Mike, played by Canadian Finn Wolfhard, he was mainly known at the time for being cast as the younger version of PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock in the music video for Guilt Trip. The video had it all: the sea to sky highway, the foggy coastal mountains, coming-of-age story, insane guitar riffs, strained vocals, and shooting a cop. Absolute cinema by directors Chandler Levack and Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux. This led me down a quick rabbit hole of watching all of the band’s other music videos, and me showing all my friends at lunch just how bat shit crazy Reservoir’s music video is.

In the years since I have made several cherished friendships with people simply through having a mutual admiration for PUP. My friend Ethan was also in that summer english course and we reconnected again in our first year at UTSC, soon becoming bros when I saw him watching old PUP acoustic videos during our first year chemistry lecture. A year later I became friends with frequent RadioFWD collaborator Lisha through talking about our favourite PUP songs and the Morbid Stuff album rollout. One day on campus a student stopped me outside of a lecture hall to compliment my green PUP hat. Later that week I was in a RadioFWD meeting where I was formally introduced to this person as the president of RadioFWD, Shawn Gouralnik, who I still work with to this day. Chances are, if they listen to PUP, they’re likely good people. 

Now I’ll be honest, PUP isn’t in constant rotation (it has been a Turnstile summer for me), but every now and then I still find myself throwing on PUP, The Dream is Over, and Morbid Stuff for old times sake. But just because I don’t listen to the newer albums as much doesn’t mean I’m not gonna turn down an opportunity to be in a PUP music video. Around October 2024, I got an email from the band (yes I’m a loyal substack reader) about being in a music video for their upcoming album. As someone who grew up on wishing they could be in the Reservoir music video, there was no way I could turn down this opportunity. I showed up at Sneaky Dee’s for day 2 of filming, got to be in close proximity to the whole band and the legendary director Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux, and was surrounded by dozens of other PUP fans who had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon. Drinking a Bubly sparkling water with Stefan after finishing filming, and getting all of the band members and director to sign the music video’s fictional setlist will be a cherished memory for me. To this day I still have no idea how Jeremy was able to memorize every single person’s name that day. 

And just like that we’re all caught up to the present day. With past tours doing residencies at Danforth Music Hall and History, the band has decided to get a little nostalgic with it by touring venues in the city that they played as a band. Starting with a small house show, the band then goes on to play Sneaky Dee’s, Lee’s Palace, The Concert Hall, Danforth Music Hall, and then finishing with Queen Street East’s History. The MegaCity Madness tour truly lives up to its name. I had already seen PUP play Danforth Music Hall and History, and so Ethan and I were fortunate enough to snag two tickets for none other than the Sneaky Dee’s show. Call that a full-circle pit moment. 

When you’ve been around the Toronto music scene for over a decade like PUP has, you get the luxury of being able to curate all-star lineups made up of some of the best artists in the punk (and adjacent) scene. Each show in the megacity extravaganza featured a young up and coming band and an established mainstay. For Sneaky Dee’s, we were blessed with an opening set by Nu-Metal band Klokwise, and the punk quartet Bad Waitress. With the opener Klokwise, fans were treated to songs that you would find in early 2000s MuchMusic and NHL 04. An opener is doing its job when they have me questioning a venue’s insurance policy because the floor at Sneaky Dee’s was like a trampoline. Closing out the set we were treated to a cover of the Nu-Metal classic, Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit, which will always make a crowd go feral. Up next is Bad Waitress: a kick ass band with more of an old school punk sound and loud vocals. Combined, the openers were the perfect one-two punch to get the crowd warmed up for the final act.

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My friend Ethan in his natural habitat

“Let’s chill to the side so I can record one song and then get silly in the pit.” This was the last thing I heard from my friend Ethan before PUP started playing Guilt Trip. As my friend and I had theorized, with the smaller venues, PUP decided to play more songs from their earlier discography, including Backs Against The Wall which hadn’t been played in at least a decade. In addition to playing the oldies, we also got the chance to hear Bare Hands (a lowkey fan fave from Morbid Stuff) which had never been played live before! I knew it was going to be a sweaty one, so I had the foresight to buy one of the Topanga shirts at the merch stand to keep me dry and hopefully not smelly for my commute home. Throughout the set I was able to spot familiar faces and people wearing their “I was in a PUP music video and all I got was this lousy shirt” shirt. So much for having an original idea. 

The rest of the PUP show was advertised: a sweaty mosh pit, limbs flailing on top of your head, and grown men and women yelling lyrics back at the top of their lungs. Whenever a band gets relatively big I find myself thinking, “man imagine if we had been able to catch them live at insert really small Toronto venue”. And with PUP’s Megacity Extravaganza, many fans like myself were able to fulfill that wish.