Ryan Thomas's series on Clarington ON., continues with a very timely look at two Irish pubs, The Snug in Newcastle and the Village Inn in Bowmanville. In his latest video he interviews J. Walsh co-owner of The Snug and Kyle Faber, co-owner of the Village Inn.
L-R: Dante Berardi Jr. (guitar, synth), Nate Daniels (lead vocals, guitar), Caitlin Grieve (violin), Matt Sullivan (drums)
The song is king in CAIRO, Toronto band plays the Moustache Mar 17
Serene-pop team CAIRO make a stop into the Moustache Club in Oshawa Mar 17, opening for The Balconies. Their debut album "A History of Reasons" came out in 2015 and their expansive clean pop sound, along the lines of Half Moon Run with whom they share a producer, Nygel Asselin, has been airing on radio. They describe their dreamy airy vibes as the cadence of everyday life, which in their case "looks like a kaleidoscope of love, hate, joy, anger, bliss, ups, downs and naps," says Dante Berardi Jr. in an email interview with SlowCity. (The other members sharing the kaleidoscopic life are Nate Daniels, Matt Sullivan and Caitlin Grieve).
"Life is messy, you get a bit of everything," Berardi continues. "The bands we love are the ones that reflect that range of emotions in their music. With our album we tried to reflect the whole spectrum of emotions we feel day to day (and throughout the creation process). That's just our brutal honesty showing, brutal honesty to a fault,"
He is honest enough to say the experience of taking such a wide open songs into the tight space of clubs can be frustrating for a band so fastidious with their music.
"We bring a pretty big sound/set up along with us because matching the record is always our goal," he says. "Everything is highly tuned and we are professionals with our gear, but sometimes people get a little miffed by us not just wanting to plug into a crappy house guitar amp from the 50s and 'see how it goes'. We take our sound seriously but not ourselves so we just roll with it. Luckily we have spent a lot of time getting good at being polite, and being quick to set up, sound check and tear down."
Bernardi Jr. says the name CAIRO wasn't as quick to set up. But it was the first one they could agree on. CAIRO reflects their own chaotic mix of personalities, much like the ancient capital. The chaos however coalesces around the music. The song lights the fire in CAIRO. Its the spark.
"The song comes first. Usually from a skeleton of a song or a single part we build up from," he says. "Lately we have been toying with other forms of writing but either way the song is always king. You can put as many cool instruments in a song as you want, but if it's a shitty song to begin with it doesn't matter. We start with making the song great, then add melodic accompaniment in whatever shape or form that takes."
Much of that shape and form comes from Caitlin Grieve's violin. She adds a classical but also a folk element creating layers of tension for the soaring choruses of lead vox Nate Daniels to spring from. Matt Sullivan holds down the beats and Berardi's synth and guitar slides between. Its an unusual set-up but together CAIRO as silky as 600 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, you just want dive right in with someone.
Douglas Coupland created Group Portrait 1957 for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa.
"The future of art has to be something that will give us bit of slow." - Douglas Coupland
Coupland has collaborated with Artsy for an on-site installation at The Armory Show at MOMA Mar. 3 to 6 2016. He will also participate in the fair’s Open Forum talks series, What’s Next?
Mariposa line-up filling up, festival runs July 8 - 10 in Orillia, ON
Mariposa, The Grand Dame of Folk Festivals, has another fine line-up this year. The festival has a great knack of pairing up-and-coming new artists with more well known established artists. The organisers also challenge the idea of folk music by adding into roots artists from across the globe. Brother Sun, Catherine MacLellan, Colin Linden, Dave Gunning, David Amram, Dirty Dishes, Fortunate Ones, Jeffrey Foucault, Jon Brooks, Josh White Jr., Ken Whiteley and the Beulah Band, Murder Murder, Rita Coolidge, Sheesham and Lotus & ‘Son, Sussex featuring Rob Lutes, Ten Strings & a Goat Skin, The Milk Carton Kids and Vance Gilbert are among the acts already announced. Add in workshops, several stages, intimate showcases, vendors, crafters and a beautiful location on the shores of Lake Couchiching in Orillia and one can understand why its celebrating its 56th anniversary.
The Toronto School of Communication trinity on David Cayley's podcast
In 1987 David Olson and Derrick de Kerckhove hosted a conference, "Orality & Literacy", bringing together the teachings of Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Frye and Eric Havelock in a series of talks and lectures. Havelock attended and fortunately the conference was recorded and broadcast on CBC's Ideas program as "Literacy: The Medium and the Message" in 1988. That three part series has been made available as a podcast by David Cayley, host of Ideas, on his site.
Tour brings Blue Rodeo and The Strumbellas into Oshawa Feb 20
Its a dream team - vintage roots rockers and the new upstarts. The Strumbellas are riding the wave of their single Spirits and a new album due in April. Blue Rodeo continue to be the band that inspires folk of all folkways and the band folk of all folkways aspire to. The two are playing a double at Massey Hall Feb 18 and 19 and the General Motors Centre in Oshawa Feb 20. The bands have connections to the East GTA so expect the GM Centre gig to be a sort of homecoming.
Chilly Gonzales & Kaiser Quartett - credit: Massey Hall/Malcolm Cook
Live At Massey Hall sets the standard with its third season of artists
Sure a JUNO nomination is nothing to be snuffed at but a Live At Massey Hall (the LAMH), I would venture, is a far better indicator of who is doing remarkable work among Canadian music makers. In and around the same time the 2016 JUNO nominations were announced, Chilly Gonzales played the Live At Massey Hall series with the Kaiser Quartet. He played Feb 5, with singer/songwriter Alejandra Ribera and her two-piece band opening the evening.
The Massey Hall showcase, now in its third season, features a wide selection of not-so-mainstream Canadian success stories, artists of an independent bent but with an international audience, artists who swim beyond the streams the JUNO drinks from.
JUNO offered up Drake, Mendes, Bieber, Weeknd, Nickelback and other Billboard topping stories from its pool but the LAMH went to Chilly, the ex-pat pianist who has collaborated with Daft Punk, Peaches and Feist, who is as adept in classical as in electronica, in pop as in disco and a beslippered vaudevillian ham at his core. He entertained period. He played as is his wont selections from Chambers, his most recent release but he utilized the Kaiser Quartett as one would a synthesizer, self-proclaimed. During the two hour performance he moved from the thunder of a Beethoven to the chippiness of a Mozart as he rolled up and down the keys and who but Chilly could have two thousand people stand up in Massey Hall to do the Robot Dance. Bet we looked good. . . Feist arrived to guest during the encore. Chilly is no James Last Hooked on Classics pitchman but it this is Classical Music colour me converted and break out the tails.
The LAMH has gone previously to artists such as Destroyer, Coeur De Pirate, Basia Balat, Zaki Ibrahim, Timber Timbre, Shad, Chad VanGaalen, Hayden, Great Lake Swimmers, Constantines, Lisa LeBlanc, Sloan, Tanya Tagaq and Owen Pallett among others; not exactly household names. But they have performed on the stage of the Old Lady of Shuter Street, their shows filmed, recorded and edited for later broadcast on the Massy Hall YouTube site (most of those mentioned are now available to re-enjoy).
And yes there is overlap between the JUNO and the LAMH; Coeur De Pirate is JUNO nominated this year and Chilly was nominated in 2011 for Ivory Tower in the Electronic Album category. But the difference between the two is as stark as Bach and Black Eyed Peas. JUNO rewards those who have gained a popularity, a notoriety. Success is in terms of business not artistry, not mutually exclusive it must be added but rarely twinned up on an annual basis. How does one reward artistry? Who judges? The Polaris Music Prize endeavours to broach the subject but is left dangling between Arcade Fire and Drake? Can one billion hamburger buyers be wrong about taste? Is popularity the antithesis of art. No. . . but sales is not the only way to weigh value. Someone needs to create a new measurement and Live At Massy Hall is as fine a gauge as one can get.
The room, the stage, the status and the ambience, the history, the space, the ghosts of past and their lingering presence. It is among the finest halls in the world and recognized as such by many artists who have performed, or long to perform, on its worn wooden boards. Combine all of it with a booking policy that is adventurous and dangerous, risky, edgy, one that prioritizes artistry over business acumen and what one gets is a business that is setting the pace, sounding out the parameters, a business model that is as creative and forward thinking as the artists on stage.
The JUNOs rarely break an artist, maybe make an artist. But the work is completed long before JUNO gets a sense of the nominee. The LAMH it seems, seeks out the new, the rare, the undiscovered and brings its historic heft to the presentation of the artist. The LAMH lauds the future not the past of its artists.
Alejandra Ribera is one such example. The singer/songwriter is, as they say new to me, although she has been performing globally and released an album, La Boca, in 2014. Ribera sings in French, Spanish and English and lives sometimes in Montreal, sometimes Paris but is from Toronto originally. She is of Scottish and Argentinian heritage. She is visceral on stage, her songs are corporeal, bodies, they carry the weight of hips and the form of lips, they sway and emanate, wrap and curve around Ribera who dances inside them. Ribera was a revelation and a revelation is what one has come to expect from the LAMH; a reward, a rejuvenation, a lust for live, of joy, and ultimately, revelation.
You know the JUNOS, they are the same old tame old. But the LAMH, the LAMH . . . thats for the top shelf.
Kevin Hart hosts celebrity All-Star afterparty at Roy Thompson Hall Feb. 12 2016
Comedian Kevin Hart will be hosting the All-star weekend celebrity basketball game afterparty Feb. 12 2016 in The Roy Thomson Hall lobby which will be transformed into a nightlife destination. Hart is the coach of Team USA with Drake coaching Team Canada. The teams will take each other on at the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game taking place at the Ricoh Colisuem at 7 p.m. The afterparty begins at nine. The NBA All Star game takes place at the Air Canada Centre Feb 14. British singer Sting (ex-Police frontman) will headline the half-time show and Cirque du Soleil will tip-off the evening with basketball inspired performance. More information available here. The Afterparty is a 19+ event with dress code enforced.
Americana Review's Jason Gartshore on the death of Glenn Frey
By Jason Gartshore - Americana Review
A music world already reeling from the recent passing of soul legend Natalie Cole and pop/rock legend David Bowie was hit hard once again by the sudden passing of one of the all-time greats, Mr. Glenn Frey. To say the least, Mr. Frey had an impact on the world of music. How big was that impact? As a founding member and one of the principle songwriters of the Eagles, he was among a group of 1970’s era musicians that influenced rock and country with a sound that could not and will not be replicated. His passing represents the end of an era that began with the establishment of the country-rock sound first pioneered by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, then taken to the masses by Linda Ronstadt, and finally elevated to indescribable commercial heights by the Eagles.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Glenn Frey’s interest in music began early and eventually led him to working with fellow Motor City singer-songwriter, Bob Seger. After working with Mr. Seger and honing his songwriting skills, Mr. Frey relocated to Los Angeles in the 1960’s to capitalize on its burgeoning folk music scene. It was in L.A. that he would meet Don Henley, and the rest is beautiful music history. Surrounding themselves with other notable singer-songwriters as Jackson Browne and J. D. Souther, Glenn Frey and Don Henley would collaborate on some of the most successful and best-selling songs in music history. Eagles Their Greatest Hits – 1971 to 1975 and Hotel California are among the top selling albums of all time, each selling in excess of 30 million copies.
Working initially as a backing band for Linda Ronstadt, fame and fortune came to the Eagles quickly. Like it does with many bands that are young and achieve incredible fame in a short period of time, the workload and pressures of such fame can take its toll. The Eagles were no different as constant touring and recording demands led to infighting among the group. They would disband in 1980 and reunite in celebrated fashion in 1994 with the Hell Freezes Over Tour. I had the great fortune to attend two shows on this tour. In 1994 in Toronto at the old Exhibition Stadium with over 56,000 in attendance, and in 1996 at the Molson Amphitheatre, also in Toronto. The 1994 show remains the best concert I have ever attended.
What’s the significance of the passing of Glenn Frey? As I mention above, it’s the end of an era. It’s clear the Eagles as a touring band and entity will not continue. You cannot replace Glenn Frey. He was a founding member and one of the lead singers. To me, it wouldn’t be the Eagles without him, and I’m sure the other band members feel similarly. As well, the very sound of the Eagles will never be replicated. The band performed in 5-part harmony, something unheard of at the time and has not been duplicated since.
The passing of Glenn Frey, David Bowie among others represents the turning of a page, a reminder that life has moved on from our younger days. The Eagles were the soundtrack to my high school and early college days, even though the music was 20 years old at the time. It still sounds as fresh today as it did 20 years ago when I first got tuned in to them, and 40 years ago when they first hit the charts. If you are young and love music and don’t know about Glenn Frey and Don Henley, I encourage you to explore and learn about their music as solo artists and as the Eagles. If you’re in a band, explore them to see where you can go when you dedicate yourselves to hard work and perfection. It can lead you to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an institution where the Eagles were inducted in 2002. The video below is a live clip from a 1977 concert where the Eagles perform one of their signature hits “New Kid In Town.” This is what 5 part harmony sounds like. Enjoy Glenn Frey (lead vocal), Don Henley (drums), Joe Walsh (keys), Don Felder (guitar) and Randy Meisner (bass) in this classic clip.
Friday Jan. 22 2016 The Regent Theatre in downtown Oshawa Ont. presents "Hotel California" in their ongoing series Classic Albums Live. The show starts at 8 p.m.
The fragrant fragments of three new albums, HIGHS, Casey Mecija and Avataar
"Like an attempt to make sense of the residue of a dream, I hope that the imposition of a coherent narrative onto them is a necessary act but does not undermine their enigmatic qualities." - Casey Mecija.
All three albums came across the wire today, album art says something to me or is it just an imposition of narrative.
HIGHS - DAZZLE CAMOUFLAGE
Avataar - PETAL
Casey Mecija - PSYCHIC MATERIALS
Slow City 5 for 2015: DRALMS
Dralms (aka Christopher Smith from Vancouver) continues to impress upon every listen. Shook is a tremendous album, marrying the cinematic scope of Timber Timbre and the boundless euphoria of Arcade Fire with some late night deep funk grooves and early morning synth stretches. But still his own, still DRALMS. Its a joy.
"And the rest is rust and stardust" - David Bowie 1947 - 2016
The music has died with the death of David Bowie. He was Alpha and Omega of popular music. Lets dance around Black artists and take a look at the white faces who took up black music for a moment. These faces became iconic, representations, masks. Bowie got that straight away. He understood fame, the name of the game, and he knew masks becomes art. Begin so with art, begin with the mask.
In the beginning when the teens screamed their thunderous storms there was Elvis, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. That was it. Every one else since is a mash-up of any or all or each of The King, the Good Sons and the Bad Sons. Its a pyramid, its biblical, it is western narrative tradition, it is the Great Code of Northrop Frye.
In Marshall McLuhan's tetrad of media effects Elvis popularized Black music. The Beatles came along and replaced him. The Stones brought back the original rhythm and blues Elvis popularized and then Bowie came and pushed everything out until sound became vision and his vision became art.
Bowie had to be Art. The throne was taken and the heirs apparent, either the good sons or the bad sons would take the seat. What was left, what options are available for anyone wanting a walk on role in rock 'n roll? Well, for the answer, one has to go further than the sons, past the king to the outsider, the come-from-away, The Alien, the Messiah, to the man who fell to earth, the sage, the shape-shifter, the shaman, the mixer, the trickster, the joker and the jester. - I heard there was a secret chord and David played it for his lord. the David, the Bowie. He was the word made flesh.
He was never just an icon. He was never just a picture. He was the word worth a thousand pictures, a flurry of photos, all sides, all facets, he was the diamond dog and each of us saw ourselves reflected in him. He contained multitudes. He took the black and white, the clean lines that divided and he drew over them in an explosion of colour, vitality, life, creativity, no boundaries, no limits, no perimeters, just endless edges.
He travelled to the edges, he came from the edges, he looked back from the edges and saw planet earth in all its blues and greens and reds and sunsets, dawns, lives and times. He was the eye in the sky, the satellite of love, and he made us; the weird seen inside the velvet goldmine. Because he was beyond all of the edges, all of us at the edge, he made us insiders, inside his sphere, inside the world he built. He made architecture of radio and theatre of TV. He was an archeologist of world culture and what he found in the past he brought back as the future. He saw lovers kiss by the wall as if nothing would fall, as if love and only love can save us all, but all falls, all fails, all crumbles, all disintegrates in the media landscape. Character becomes caricature, even love </3.
He floundered some when video killed the radio star. His many images became stills on an endless loop, he couldn't change fast enough but he found his footing by becoming black and white. He removed the colour, the cartoon show on MTV and stepped back from the spotlight. He became quiet while everyone else yelled. He took back his fame. He boxed it and put it in the back of a wardrobe. He put on a suit. He shut down until all was that was left was his fame in the frame. The Starman became the star he wanted to be. He took back himself and left a black star-shaped hole. Bowie, the man of a thousand faces, had the the final word on his life of pictures and the word is void.
"And the rest is rust and stardust" - Lolita, Nabokov
Slow City 5 for 2015: Steven Lambke
With Days of Heaven, Steven Lambke creates a soundtrack for the small sustainable corner, which feeds the stomach and the soul. This is music for the allotment, subtle and dreamy, filled with the romance of the ordinary, of wrapping cedars in burlap, of mounding mulch around roses and slipping your hand in another’s as you warm in the last silent rays of the day. I would venture with this album Lambke, aka Baby Eagle and guitarist for the Constantines, could claim the crown as this generation’s Leonard Cohen. (Tamara Lindeman, aka The Weather Station and regularly compared to Joni Mitchell, guests on the record so there’s that too). However Lambke’s version of Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel unmade bed is one in a garden, untilled, unseeded. Like the Bard of the Boudoir he sings of birds and bees but actual birds and bees. Lets put it this way if you put Lambke and Cohen in front of a Georgia O’Keefe, Steve would see the bloom and Leonard would notice the blush. Days of Heaven is a beautiful slow affair based on the sound of touch.
SlowCity 5 for 2015: Ben Folds
I'm not a fan of the Ben Folds but on this chamber-rock release So There, he teams up with yMusic and the Nashville Orchestra and sweeps into Owen Pallett territory taking no prisoners with a flourish and a fan I now am, yes man. Its an elevation of Euro-styles over Yankee doodle noodling that in its peppier moments such as the titular track and some clunky plunkers, "F10-D-A", "I'm Not The Man", "Long Way To Go", sounds like the New Pornographers if nothing newer. The last three tracks comprise an extended concerto movement for piano and orchestra. Together they are sublime, cinematographic, epic, grandiose and hugely entertaining.
SlowCity 5 for 2015: Chilly Gonzales
Pitchfork describes Gonzales' modern re-imagining of Chamber music as pop as merely dinner music for the indie crowd. With dinner music such as this one may never leave the table. Either/or if life is a moveable feast then Chilly is precisely the companion to ask along. He is one who can happily converse in the musicality of Peaches, Daft Punk, Erik Satie as well as Vivaldi and Haydn. AND. . . he sartorially inclines towards a Baudelaire/ Hugh Hefner mash-up.
Do Synthesiates provide us a map to negotiate the media landscape?
CBC Radio recently re-broadcast this fascinating discussion about Synthesia, a neurological condition thats combines senses. Synthesiates taste sounds and hear colours and see emotions or multiple variations on that theme. Among those who have the condition are musicians, Stevie Wonder, Kanye West and Billy Joel. The original show aired in February 2015 and references a story which appeared in Spacing magazine January 2015. Greg Jarvis of the Canadian Synethesia Association guests on this call-in show. One caller however I found very interesting. A mother phoned in about her child who not only saw colours around her but the component parts. She saw the various colours in a paint swatch for instance; she saw the mix. She sees the world in all its original component parts. It was quite distracting for her as child, in school to be overwhelmed with so much colour information around her, she didn't fare well but her mother did say that she grew up to be quite creative. Anyway listen to the podcast for her details. What I was thinking was perhaps people such as this girl, people who have made sense of multiple sensory overload, could provide us with a map we can use to navigate this modern media sensory overload. Media is distributing information in fragments, we are living among the component parts of communication, it is disorienting and disruptive. The young girl has grown up in a world like the one we are only coming to terms with now. She could teach us I'm sure of it and as usual I'm curious what Marshall McLuhan would think.
Funk up your holidays for a good cause with the Professors
The Professors of Funk and friends are gathering at the Simcoe Street United Church in Oshawa to raise funds for the Back Door Mission. The concert is pay-what-you-can, (suggested $10-20). All monies collected from tickets goes to the Mission, an organization in serves people in need, including distributing over 13,000 free meal tickets per year for St. Vincent's Kitchen in downtown Oshawa. This is the second year for the festive fundraiser organized by musician and social activist Derek Giberson. Last year the event raised over $1500.
Nastiness in politics has been replaced by something nice, Yes Nice.
There is a lot of talk about Canada being back. We are are not so sure Canada left but one thing is for sure, the nastiness of political discourse has been replaced by something nice, Yes Nice.
Yes Nice was founded by Scott McKellar and Nate Wong with roots in Edmonton and Vancouver. They were signed to Sparks in 2014 and White Washed Walls is their latest single. The band also includes drummer Peter Hendrickson, multi-instrumentalist Jillian McKellar and violinist Erin James-Wong. A full-length album is in the works.
Black Friday Record Store Day at Star Records in Oshawa
Over forty years of selling vinyl and still going, even after the recent passing of founder Mike Star, Star Records in Oshawa will be offering many great deals for the annual Black Friday shop-til-you-drop-the-needle event.
Specials include ten per cent discount on new vinyl including Adele "25", Roger Waters "The Wall" and Rolling Stones. Used LPs priced under $15 are 50 per cent off. Used over $15 are 25 per cent off. There are also sizeable markdowns on CDs, cassettes and VHS (yes I said VHS!).
Store hours are Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday noon til 5 p.m. Specials continue right through the weekend but with over 25,000 pieces in stock you may want to visit more often. The store is located at 148 Simcoe St. South in Oshawa.
McLuhan, M.I.A. and the erosion of borders
The Independent has posted a must-read article by Robert Fisk about ISIS. It speaks to how the eradication of borders in the Middle East is leading to new communities, new states and new identities. Marshall McLuhan has said, identity is born of violence.
Borders, all borders, are things of the past. British hiphop star M.I.A. has a new track available, on it she raps "Borders, whats up with that, identity, whats up with that?" Its a question being asked a lot by a young net-savy generation. It is also one answered by McLuhan who said the Book gave birth to Nations and electronic media would create new gatherings and erase those traditional ideas of Nation. We have seen it happen. The Website is makes nations obsolete and replaces them with Communities. We at SlowCity.ca have documented how artists are exploring a world with no borders in their creative endeavours and have been doing so for quite some time. Artists create the future by showing us the present while most of us live in the past.
Newspapers such as the Independent are also dealing with their own version of a borderless world. Their borders were the limits of paper-based circulation. So they choose the borderless world of the online space. But in the online world values define communities not space. What does a newspaper once defined by geography become when it moves online.
The Toronto Star has created a new product StarTouch to define its online space. However what media fail to realize is watching a stream of information pass makes narcissists of us all. Keeping those eyeballs on the stream is the job of newspapers because advertisers can be added to the stream easily enough. As readers we stare into the stream but we have learned to ignore the flotsam and jetsam of ads. We are looking instead for our reflection, in the best case a reflection of our values, in the worst case a reflection of our physical selves. (Selfies anyone?)
We at SlowCity treat the stream of information as what it is, a stream. One will never see all of it but one doesn't visit Niagara Falls to see every drop of water. One visits for the effect, the rush, the experience, and its story, that is the Frame. Old media moving online must endeavour to provide a frame. One that is also artful so one comes back again and again to visit, metaphorically, the Falls, for its story, its values, its frame. Oddly where once we framed our national, cultural stories within the physical realm by borders, in the digital realm we still require borders and we still require framing. That is the purpose of newspapers moving online, to be the frame that reflects the values.