This Thursday, September 4 is your last chance to take in RAMP, the offbeat showcase of Calgary’s thriving independent music scene that’s taken over Broken City on the first Thursday of each month for the last two years.

Arran Fisher, Summerlad bassist, Acoustikitty studio magnate and RAMP curator, initially founded the event as an alternative to the grind of touring and playing dead-end shows to the same crowds of local fans and friends, but has decided to finish the run. “The idea of RAMP was just to put on an interesting evening once a month,” he says. Fisher encouraged local artists to take risks and offer experimental entertainment that defied conventions and expectations. Over the last two years, RAMP enthusiasts have witnessed Woodpigeon perform a mini operetta based on the legend of Redbeard the pirate, seen head Electric Ape Jay Crocker re-create the entirety of The Band’s second album, and heard Aaron Booth and Ryan Bourne resurrect Harry Nilsson’s obscure children’s album, The Point. They’ve heard country bands creating raw noise-scapes, punk bands covering country songs, rock bands dueling with a mighty pipe organ and assorted artists performing everything from blood-soaked songs about violent death to innocent children’s tunes. The only common element seems to be fun.

For their second anniversary and last waltz, RAMP is repeating the Calgary Covers Calgary theme of their first anniversary, once again celebrating the unabashed, incestuous glory of our crowded talent pool. Laura Leif of acoustic pop chorale group The Consonant C has played a couple RAMPs in the past and is presenting a CC side project, A Chalk Board (with drummer Jared Andres). “This particular project is way sillier than anything else,” she says. “The rule is that we never practise more than twice for any show, we play in disguises and we don’t play our normal instruments. We’re not really concerned with quality, just with having fun.”

Though she’s not bringing the full band to this year’s event, Leif has fond memories of last year’s RAMP show. The group took a stab at recreating the synthetic sounds of Azeda Booth.

“Last year we covered two Azeda Booth songs — ‘Landscape’ and ‘Dead Girls,’” she says. “We worked so hard on ‘Landscape’ that we didn’t have enough time to do ‘Dead Girls’ very well, so our solution to that was to get a huge group of our friends — I think there were 12 of us — and we went on to the main floor and we all patty-caked while we sang it, and then we chicken-fighted and then we ended with a dog pile. I’m really enthusiastic about the dog piles!”

While Leif won’t say who she’s covering this year, Raphael Standell Preston (a.k.a. Indiensoci) was a tad more forthcoming: “I was gonna do an Azeda Booth cover, I’m not really sure which one yet, and a cover of Jane Vane’s ‘Come on Baby,’ because I used to be in Jane Vane and we really despised that song. Well, not despised,” she says, “but we disliked it, so I was gonna do a weird ambient cover of that song.”

Marcus Overland, whose bands Gutterawl and Lucid 44 have played four RAMP shows, believes the events have been valuable for local musicians. “It was nice to see a lot of the new bands and performers that I wasn’t aware of prior [to RAMP],” he says. “It also helped encourage musicians and fans to take a different approach, to mash it up a bit, throw your borders out the window and basically, have a little fun and challenge yourself.” Last year, Gutterawl covered The Inquisition. This year, Lucid 44 might play some Beyond Possession.

As a reflection of the cohesiveness and resiliency of the local scene, no one seems overly concerned that the demise of RAMP will leave an unfilled hole. “In a way, it speaks to the success of RAMP that it isn’t really needed anymore,” says Fisher. “More venues and promoters are realizing there is a market for this kind of thing, and it’s gotten easier for people to put together their own events.”

Leif agrees. “When I first heard that it was coming to a close, I was sort of sad. I was talking to Arran and he was like; ‘No, I think it’s time for it to end.’ I think he always knew that it was something he was going to do for awhile and do it really well,” she says. “I think that’s an important part of the life of something like this, is to let it die and let it die well.”