The OBGMs bring Toronto punk to The Brooklyn Monarch on Saturday, Nov 14

The Polaris-shortlisted band ends an East Coast swing in Bushwick, in the market they play more than any other.

Some bands treat New York as one stop on the map. For The OBGMs, Brooklyn looks more like a second home.

The OBGMs play The Brooklyn Monarch on Saturday, Nov. 14, with a 7 p.m. start. Tickets are sold through the venue's own site, thebrooklynmonarch.com. The show caps an East Coast run that started in Atlanta on Nov. 6 and moves through Charlotte on Nov. 7, Richmond on Nov. 8, Baltimore on Nov. 11, Philadelphia on Nov. 12 and Boston on Nov. 13 before ending up here. In our records, Brooklyn is the market the band has played more than any other.

That's a little surprising, because The OBGMs are from Toronto. They're a Canadian punk band whose name comes from "Oooh baby gimme more," the compliment, per their Wikipedia entry, that rabid Toronto punk fans scream at their favorite bands. They didn't start out punk, either. The project began in 2007 as a hip-hop production duo, and the music turned harder and more punk-oriented after the members were arrested in a racial profiling incident, an origin the CBC wrote about in a piece on how the band "dialed up the danger."

The name comes from what Toronto punk fans scream at their favorite band: "Oooh baby gimme more."

The record that put them on the wider map was *The Ends*, released in 2020 on Black Box Recordings and shortlisted for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize. Black Box also reissued and remastered the band's debut that year. Louder ran them as a "new band of the week," and they've since signed with Midnight Agency, which pitched the move as "unapologetic punk."

If you haven't heard them, the short version is in the genre tags: indie and punk, loud, fast and confrontational, and built for a room where the crowd moves.

The Brooklyn Monarch is that room. It's at 23 Meadow Street, in the Bushwick and East Williamsburg warehouse stretch, with a 1,000 capacity, and one local writer described it simply as "a huge punk rock venue." That's the right setting for a band whose whole name is a crowd chant.

What to know before going. It's a Saturday with a 7 p.m. start, so this is an early-evening show, not a midnight one; leave room for an opener even though none is listed in our data. Buy through the venue's site, which is the official seller. And since this is the last night of the run, expect a band that's been playing every other night for more than a week, which tends to be when punk bands are at their sharpest and their loosest at the same time.

If you've seen them before, you already have your ticket. If you haven't, a band that keeps choosing Brooklyn is worth one Saturday night in Bushwick.

Sources: The OBGMs (Wikipedia) (en.wikipedia.org); With nothing to lose, the OBGMs dialed up the danger (CBC) (cbc.ca); New band of the week: The OBGMs (Louder) (loudersound.com); The OBGMs Bring Unapologetic Punk to Midnight (Midnight Agency) (midnightagency.com); The Brooklyn Monarch (Tagvenue) (tagvenue.com); Out in Bushwick/Williamsburg at Stud Country and Ray's (Jenny C'est Quoi) (jennycestquoi.substack.com); The Brooklyn Monarch (thebrooklynmonarch.com); The OBGMs at The Brooklyn Monarch (JamBase) (jambase.com)