Music Festivals.

I just looked at the ice outside and got this lonely feeling for summer and the joy of music festivals.
i don't know if there is anything better.

a couple of perfect examples are Bumbershoot in Seattle, Washington.
Labor Day Weekend.
or Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.
Sometime at the end of May.
(where these pictures are retrieved from.)
Unfortunately, Canada is not yet on the bandwagon of hosting Big Name music festivals. We have, on the other hand, held festivals like Pop Montreal, which You Say Party We Say Die played at this year. Canada has also pulled off hosting some great folk festivals, like the Mission Folk Fest which is brilliant, and the Winnipeg Folk Fest, which Bonnie tells me is great.

Top Ten Bands/Artists I'd love to see at a music festival:

1. Radiohead
2. Jeff Buckley
3. Arcade Fire
4. Broken Social Scene/Stars
5. Four Tet
6. Bjork
7. Low
8. The Flaming Lips
9. Wilco
10. Queen (i know, not possible. But to see Freddy Mercury live?? That would kill me.)

"I always tell the girls, never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously you never get hurt. If you never get hurt you always have fun. And if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends."

- Penny Lane

Need art be beautiful, or has this become an outdated notion?


Yes. Art must be beautiful. And who could argue?
I'm in the middle of writing a paper on this very topic and I've come to the understanding that art means beauty, and in the same way, beauty means art. We create art to express beauty and emotion, and such words in the context of artful thinking express that of utmost aesthetic pleasure.

We wouldn’t generally attribute something ugly to being a fine piece of art, unless it is something terribly beautiful, or beautiful in such a dark way that it becomes beautiful, almost like the notion of what the sublime pursues. This is what Oscar Wilde is trying to resolve in "the Picture of Dorian Gray," where he eventually concludes, "all art is quite useless." I'm beginning to agree.

Let's all relax. It's just art.

What is it to be Canadian?

a little something to read, if you are interested in hearing Caroline's ramblings on the lack of Canadian nationalism and a poem by Ron Dart, a politics professor from Abbotsford.
read on.

Music of the 'Indie Rock' Persuasion

The music of the "indie" genre has really surprised me.
by it's name, it sounds poorly produced, merely because of the lack of a Big name record company behind it.
but these bands are making great music.
ambient and 'love-infatuated', noisy and continuous.

last night, Bonnie and i went to Les Rendez-Vous.
a great little venue with echoey walls and beautiful lights.
We saw Broken Social Scene and The Most Serene Republic.
two great bands, who have brought themselves upon my list of Top Five Concerts of all time, up there with the Arcade Fire, among others.
With up to a dozen people up on stage at points, the band played a two hour set, including tracks from both albums, a mix of 'dance Indie' tunes, ballads, and gorgeous 'surrealist' rock songs.

These indie bands are going places, big places. Big-Big.
Seeing a concert like this makes "lots of people remember why they love indie rock-- the shambling ecstasy, the pitch-perfect experimentation, the unabashed heart-on-sleeveness of it all." (Pitchfork Media)

Take the time to do some research on these bands.
They have the potential to create some beautiful moments with their listeners.

"All I know is that when I press play, and this disc whirrs to life, it inexplicably sheds its crybaby façade and becomes... sort of infinite.
Rock critic Michael Goldberg recently speculated that what makes music fanatics thirst for the obscure is the desire to discover music that is "uncontaminated by the commerce machine." This, he says, is the reason we cling to the abstract and unmarketable, the outlandish and abrasive.
This record combines outright experimentation and strong hooks, something that engages us mentally while appealing to the instincts that draw us toward pop immediacy. Some of the best records ever have been ones that put these two seemingly disparate elements together.
Broken Social Scene have, and even made it seem effortless. I wish I could convey to you just how perfectly this record pulls off that balancing act, how incredibly catchy and hummable these songs are, despite their refusal to resort to pandering or oversimplicity. "
-Ryan Schreiber (Pitchfork Media)

"What came first?
The music or the misery?


People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss.

Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable?
Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

- Nick Hornby

Here's a question to all the lovers of music:
Try to locate the emotion in a song.
Is the melancholy of a sad song embedded in the song?
Is the sadness in it's lyrical content, or is it found in the rise and fall of the music itself?

just tell John.

green plastic Radiohead

This post is only for avid Radiohead fans

I was recently in conversation with a Radiohead fan, who told me he would give up every and any concert for the rest of his life, if he could only see Radiohad once.
This particular person also told me that his favorite Radiohead album was Pablo Honey.
What?????
I need opinions on this one okay? I mean from everybody.
I really need some pure and justified reasons too. So if you please...


Radiohead albums: in order from best to worst. (in my opinion)

1. Amnesiac
2. Com Lag (Japanese remix album)
3. Kid A
4. OK Computer
5. The Bends
6. Hail to the Thief
7. Pablo Honey

Post On my friends. Post on!