Friday night was up in the air as far as plans. There was only one band I’d really planned to see, Gypsophilia, so I made sure to get to Rancho Relaxo early enough to ensure I didn’t miss anything. Climbing up the narrow flight of stairs to the restaurant’s upper floor I felt like I was waking into a time-shift. I immediately heard what was the cacophanous sound of a 7 piece sound check, and the venue itself was not as I’d usually seen it. Any time I’ve been to a show at Rancho, it’s been one of those sweaty, curse-the-ceiling-fan kind of gigs. This wasn’t the case. It was about quarter to 9, so I had time before their set to scope things out. What I saw was the crowd was much older than the typical Canadian Music Fest variety: there was more than one set of sons and daughters with mothers and fathers. And there was a coat hanger, not coat check, and there were tables and it was just surreal. Well, not surreal, just atypical. I waited for a friend to arrive and quickly spotted the band members sauntering about. To say they stood out wouldn’t have been a stretch: the trumpetist, who must have been at least 8 feet tall, was wearing a suit with matching pork-pie hat. The bassist came off as Matt Stone in costume: pinstripes, bowtie and moustache were all there. But the image fit the bill, something that took just a few…
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For better or worse, Canadian Music Week is always a cluster fuck. First off, the performances were all crammed into “Canadian Music Fest,” which is exactly the same thing as Canadian Music Week; they’ve just decided to compartmentalize it this time year. Secondly, you’ve probably seen a few non-Canadian names headlining the bill on the festival’s main poster. Now we should get it straight, Canadian Music Week (and therefore Canadian Music Fest) isn’t just about showcasing Canadian music. International acts have always been highlights (as you’ll read later), and there’s always been an element to exposing these cross-national acts to Torontonian ears. But Ke$ha and Daughtry, the two most damning names on the Canadian Music Fest poster, are not Canadian, nor are they in any need of exposure. The thing is their inclusion on the poster is consequential: Ke$ha was playing a “Fan Fest” for Chum FM, the “mom jeans” of Toronto radio stations. So the wristbands, which sold for $60 and gave access to every non-VIP Canadian Music Fest concert, didn’t actually get you into Ke$ha. Colour me heartbroken. Daughtry? Well honestly, I don’t know how that happened, where it happened or even if it happened. If it did, I wasn’t there. Here’s where I was. On Wednesday, otherwise known as the first day of the festival, I was nowhere. I went down to the Royal York Fairmont Hotel to pick up my wristband and that was pretty intimidating. I walked in and was immediately surrounded by guys who…
In three days, I managed to see 26 different artists at countless different venues. Instead of writing a full feature profiling every performance I saw, I decided to forego some of the tediousness of a 26-band review of my experience and simply give some highlights of the festival. Minus the Bear: Starting from the end, Minus the Bear were the very last group I saw, going on just before midnight on Saturday night at Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop. The show had two purposes—a promotion of Dangerbird Records artists and a benefit for the Pablove Foundation, a fundraising organization for children’s cancer research. Clearly, everyone in the crowd that night had been waiting to see Minus the Bear, and the anticipation was high. Audience members told Dangerbird Records CEO and founder of the Pablove Foundation Jeff Castelaz to “shut the fuck up” so Minus the Bear could play. Castelaz made them feel like dicks after he explained how he founded the Pablove Foundation after his child, Pablo, died of cancer at age 6. Minus… Tags: Andrew W.K., Codeine Velvet Club, Maps and Atlases, Minus the Bear, SXSW, The Hood Internet
As I thought about this whole thing for a while, putting the first obvious positives aside – being able to get an “outside view” on China through possibly less filtered and tuned news channels and websites – I wondered: how big will the impact on the music scene in China be? Will this be a chance for artists and new music to pour into the land? Or maybe, pour out of it? I mean, let’s be honest: China is more or less ruled like a totalitarian state, and history shows us that the censorship of those states make quite an impact on the music scene as well. One example I can think of is the government in East Germany/the DDR, where Beat music (think Beatles and Co), Punk and other music genres surfaced, tolerated…
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I’ll admit that I’d never heard of Shaka Ponk when I woke up this morning. I would be as blissfully unaware now had a publicist not dropped an mp3 of ‘Do’ in my inbox, but the Berlin-based French band have made a big impression in that short timeframe. Forced to leave their native France due to restrictive broadcasting laws that limit the opportunities for non-French language songs on the radio, Shaka Ponk decamped to Europe’s art music capital to further develop their heady multi-lingual mix of rock, pop and electronic music. ‘Do’ is taken from the band’s latest record, Bad Porno Movie Trax, and it quite neatly sums up the contrast of styles the group has to offer, setting a metronomic electronic pop verse against a raucous squealing chorus that calls to mind another great German group, Accept. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Tags: Dance, French, pop
Overshadowed. I guess that’s the way Nujabes will always be looked at, not just in his life, but also in his death; the date of his death coming at around the same time as fellow jazz-rap pioneer G.U.R.U.’s heart attack, and the announcement coming on the same day as the death of the more famous Alex Chilton. I can’t help but feel that a man unlucky enough to not be American, and thus finding himself entirely ignored by hip-hop in general, deserved a little bit more luck here. There really is no way to say this without sounding like a collossal prick, but Alex Chilton’s death was just a shame and nothing more – he was a nice man, and it’s sad that he died, but he’d peaked as an artist decades ago. Nujabes, by comparison, probably wasn’t due to peak for another few years – his work had just been getting better and better as time went on (2006’s Modal Soul being one of the best hip-hop records of the last decade). The man was 36, for Christ’s sake. There were plenty of people in the Western world that thought any hopes of the vibrant Japanese hip-hop breaking out internationally rested with him; that he would be the one that followed DJ Krush (no megastar himself) into having a sizeable international following. Who knows how important he might have been? And yet, the likelihood is that he’d always have been a cult figure.… Tags: Hip hop, Japanese
We’ll have an in-depth obituary of the recently-deceased Alex Chilton later in the week, but for the moment we’d like you to enjoy 1969‘s living tribute, ‘Alex Where Are You,’ which was released in 2008. Chilton was at ground zero when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and was briefly feared dead, inspiring, among other things, this heartfelt vignette from the threesome’s sole recording, Maya. After a couple of days where things seemed to be touch and go, an evacuation team was able to reach Chilton in his home, where he was alive and well. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. See also: Sputnikmusic’s review of Maya. Tags: Alex Chilton, Butch Walker, indie
We’re not launching Sputnik 2.0, and no animals have been harmed in the production of this update. However, we’re happy to announce that Sputnik now has its very own staff blog. Over the next few months, we anticipate that this blog will become a major part of the site. The focus here will be casual, frequent updates, as the staff (and perhaps eventually, contributors) continue to brainwash you with our exceptional musical taste. If you ever come back to this page, you can expect:
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