Scene and Heard with Will McGuirk

Sudbury Saturday Night

Good reading here for anyone interested in the problems facing cities like Oshawa at the moment. Seems like citizens everywhere are pulling the plug on their municipal representatives while the same reps are "borrowing" ideas from each other...eg: turn decaying downtowns into student villages and entertainment hubs... Read the comments from Man About Town at the bottom... same criticism could be directed at our lot in City Hall.

Here's the article.

Cuff The Duke free skate

Cuff The Duke will play a free show at Harbourfront's outdoor skate rink Saturday night. Its been broadcast live on Sirius. Its a CBCRadio3 gig.... Perhaps they'll play their labelmate Hayden's lovely loner song Skates...

D-Rock represent at C.M.W.

Canadian Music Week, which runs from March 12 through to March 14 (3 day week?), has a schedule up on its site. While you will find me hunkered down at the aptly titled Legendary Horseshoe for most of it and I'll explain why in a moment, first here is a list of our boys and girls who will be rocking the joints. This is not a full list by any means and CMW will probably fill in a few more venues over the next while but for now it will do. I should add too that some promoters down in Hogtown put on alternative "anti" CMW events and many of our D-Rockers usually get pegged for those.
So for now...

The Von Drats play the Cadillac Lounge
USS play the Canadian Room/ Royal York Hotel
Proof Of Ghosts play Clinton's
Cuff The Duke play Lee's Palace
1S2L play the Reverb
Cure Gravity and Hail The Villain play the Rivoli
The Warped 45s play the Silver Dollar

So to the 'Shoe.... here's why y'all should get in early and stay late and then go early again... CHARTattack has its showcase there and the acts called upon are simply the best of indie rock... no bones about it... plus its open way late...extended hours...whoo hoo!
Thursday:
The Lovely Feathers, $100, Delinquints, Women, Gentlemen Reg, Chad VanGaalen. Quest For Fire
Friday:
Dinosaur Bones, Daniel Wesley, The Schomberg Fair, The Bicycles, Human Highway, Handsome Furs, Hot Panda
Saturday:
100s & 1000s, Rebekah Higgs, Vancougar, Young Galaxy, Two Hours Traffic, The Golden Dogs, Hexes and Ohs

However the Saturday lineup at Lee's features Jon Rae Fletcher, Basia Bulat, Elliot Brood and Cuff The Duke so i'm thinking thats a good call.

Gigs This Week

Whats down in Hogtown... Tonight The Free Press play The Horseshoe... Friday Get Bent Records take over the Dakota with Jeff Leech and The Pepperbox Choir plus Bradley Boy... his new record The Farm is a charm and has been getting charted. Saturday Jadea Kelly plays the Cameron House. Dwight Schenk hosts an open mic at the Tranzac Monday and the beautiful Trish Robb (pictured lol) plays there Tuesday. Wednesday Warped 45s play the Cameron House.

Closer to home... Tennfold, 20 Amp Soundchild, ROA and Silvercade play Johnny B's Friday. Doug Hell and Lindsay Blake play the Atria on Saturday and The Stables continue their monthly house gig at Chicago's February 5.

Stables/ Stereomoon cover Eric's Trip

Stereo Moon and The Stables handed on this cover as a... lets say a Groundhog Day present...  as you will be playing it over and over. Its to appear on an upcoming tribute record due out on Gooseberry Records. By the by if you go to Baby Eagle's MySpace he has also uploaded his contribution to the East Coast icons.

Download Blue Sky for Julie

Hot Panda for a cold day

Suck it up people...on the GO this morning I overheard a fellow commuter remark that three quaters of the country was under snow.... ok Lichenstein... like wow...Its Canada...it snows...get over it... And for all you SADdies I give you D'Edmonton's Hot Panda who are uh hot...like pandas...red hot like handwarmers.... with their punked up scattershot pop and a very appropriate song for the day thats in it... Afraid Of The Weather... New album drops on Mint Records February.

The Hylozoists tour The Island of Seven Cities

L'Ile De Sept Villes
Hylozoists
Outside

On a day of political bleetings from the Hill about a dead budget...budget not budgie...oh I give up...Take this Paul Aucoin all instrumental project... and slide into the driver's seat on a yellow prairie day.... the timelessness of space, chase the horizon, race the wind and smile as your companion smiles coyly above her white rimmed sunglasses, loosens her headscarf and releases it to the currents, a red and white cotton bird flying free. The buffalo stand and the land stands too... but in that moment you glimpse infinity...

Rabbit At Rest

March 18 1932 - January 27 2009

Jon Rae Fletcher have Oh, Maria

Oh, Maria
Jon Rae Fletcher
Weewerk

In which Arcade Fire is covered by Hank Snow....

In which Rock Plaza Central and the Weakerthans sing Joy Division's Atmosphere...

In which the Trent carries a riverboat fantasy of Gord Downie singing Bruce Cockburn with the Sadies and their Daddies on backup into the dimming light of a Kawartha sunset.

In which Kathryn Calder (left) takes a break from the Immaculate Machine, the New Pornographers, Neko Case's latest and sits again at a piano and plays... for Jon Rae and his watered down River.

Jon Rae is touring the Golden Horseshoe with the United Steel Workers Of Montreal. USWM stop in to The Atria on March 10. Jon Rae won't be with them. Maybe?

Emma-Lee returns (apologies to Justin Rutledge)