June, thanks in part to the Suoni per il Popolo month-long experimental+etc music festival, and in part to, oh, life, has been a busy and, I'm not too proud to admit, rough month for me. So yesterday night, as I sat surrounded by stacks of books and photocopied research materials and trying to distill information from pdf files, attempting to fill in the giant blanks in my thesis chapter due today, I decided to make things rougher. I decided to go with my gut and go see Simply Saucer. Damn the consequences, damn the accidental caffeine overload, damn the first all-nighter I've pulled in years! Stuff got done.

And why not have it all? It feels pretty good, but maybe that's the euphoria of sleep deprivation talking. Luckily I mapped out my review of last night's show last night.Though I can't promise there won't be some crazy talk here.

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I got the hippie out of me.

Oh but sure, now I call those hippie tendencies by different names: "yoga," "yogurt," "yo... g..." uh.. i don't know, i think I've exhausted all the "yog" words. And that "joke." But I would never unfairly judge or stereotype the so-called "hippie" - I mean, I grew up on the west coast, and from a very young age I went to peace marches across the Burrard Street bridge and I put feathered roach clips in my hair thinking they were barrettes. I know where all the planets are in my horoscope, I own incense, I even have long hair these days, and apparently play music that suits the ears of the more w33ded among us. I tune in to the universe. But have I ever been inclined to go anywhere near a Phish show? Do devil sticks and hacky sacks annoy me even from a distance? Do I avoid Mt Royal on Sunday afternoons? These are all sentiments I did not choose; they just are.

But things change, sometimes. As when I chose to go to yesterday's show at Sala Rossa (part of the month-long Suoni per il popolo festival), knowing Hamid Drake was great and having very basic Akron/Family knowledge that found me intrigued and hopeful. I was certainly not thinking about hippie sensibilities or anything.

Hauschka (w/Semiconductor), Colleen, Mark Templeton & aAron Munson @ Ex-Centris (with video footage after the jump)

Mutek this year is a little different, somehow. Maybe the main difference is that its headquarters are in the Hotel Godin - the refurbished classic building on the corner of St. Laurent and Sherbrooke. I have long been skeptical of this place for no reason in particular but probably mostly because it doesn't exactly scream "fun", e.g., it is so beige and grey, why is it so beige and grey? But so I thought that maybe with the hosting of a music festival, a super hip niche electronique international festival for that matter, that perhaps this hotel knows a thing or two.

I will tell you that it knows a thing or two about the word "sedate." Though free performances ran all afternoon Wednesday and Thursday, and also today until 7pm, the whole thing felt quiet and tucked away out of site. The positive side: these showcases featured a huge list of Canadian artists and a big stage and pretty decent sound. Maybe the dreary weather is to blame? I couldn't be there to witness every performance though, so my perception is obviously flawed here.

However, I do know that the showcase I saw last night was perception altering.

Montreal's Unofficial Recycling Program Meets Robyn's Old TV Set

Here's an interesting fact about Montreal: If you put household stuff or any stuff really on the street/sidewalk/alley, it will disappear fairly quickly. Old chairs? Yes. Tables? For sure, all kinds. Clothes? Yeah, sometimes even them. Mattresses? Okay, no, those will probably just hang out and wait for that special "large household items" garbage day. I mean, they're probably fine, but that's a risk people don't seem into taking. While this may seem like a rule-less city-wide game of trash or treasure, it does have some standards.

Whoo! Academic Conferences! Get your learn on! But this is more, this is a Symposium. I am into this. I am into Logocities, a research/creation project addressing signage, branding and lettering in public space, with a particular focus on the city of Montréal. Check out the full program.

It is art + culture + academia + multi-media entertainment + intellectualizing the shit outta things. + probably some free booze and food too. Let me stress though that intellectual does not mean boring - thinking is fun! I was doing it the other day and whoo head rush. This is about Making Connections between things that need to be connected so that we can better understand this crazy world.

Conference/Project organizer Matt Soar, of Concordia's Communications Department, explains it all better than I can and uses the exciting new technology of "video"/moving pictures.

Also exciting, and how such a thing got to be "exciting" is interesting in itself, is the Quebec premier of Helvetica on Saturday, May 5 at 7:30pm. Our
Toronto blog friendz already caught that wave with their fancy film fest programming, but this'll be a party, I mean, never underestimate the excitement of Montrealers + free (I mean, BY DONATION) films. Probably best to get there a bit early, if only to soak up the vitamin-rich nerdly buzz that will fill H-110 of Concordia's Hall Building.

Image from Grant Collins' City Stars

CKUT Funding Drive + Dance Party Kick-Off 2007!

You know that joke about having a "face for radio"? Well, I've spent some time in the halls and nooks and cave-like crannies of the CKUT building on the McGill campus and I can attest to witnessing great overloads of cuteness. Maybe I just find community-minded democracy-in-action-not-just-theory hot. Maybe it's because, just like CKUT's programming, there's something for everyone? I am taking this too far. Because yeah, while I dig the sights, CKUT is truly all about the sounds! The hot hot sounds.

Seriously, they're calling this year's funding drive Good Vibrations. I do not see how one can go wrong here.

oh cripes.

I don't know whether I've just got a short memory re: weather in April in Montreal, or whether I really do have a right to be as miserable/surprised/wet&cold as I am right now.

I tried to go out just now and be social/cultural, I'm telling you. But all the slipping around and ice/snow falling in my EYES and my feet sinking into slush puddles and therefore me running late, well, it all became too much for me. For the first time this winter: I had to turn back.

Though I'm pretty much a 4th-generation Canadian, much of my genetic make-up comes from a small island off the coast of another small island. I have been to the latter, but haven't yet been to the mythical green pastures of the former. When I do make it there, I expect nothing less than rolling hills, warm embraces, rollicking tunes, and a beer in my hand, often. For the time being, I will settle for what Montreal can provide in that regard.

Montreal, thank you for taking my heritage into account and being such a great provider. My own plans tonight include all these things, I mean, as long as you consider the view of the Mountain to cover the "rolling hills" part. So, the St. Patrick's Day in Montreal To Do List 2007:

So, like pretty much all of Montreal, if the density of the crowds was anything to go by, I went to the Montreal All-Nighter last night. Or Nuit Blanche, or Montreal en Lumière. Whatever it was called, I went to it, a lot of it. Way bigger and, yes, better (due to an obvious step up in organization/logistics) than last year's event (which was pretty fun anyway), the Hydro-Quebec-sponsored (yes, them, of the heat and electricity bill we all love) All-Nighter really did keep thousands of people out all night. Could it only happen in Montreal? Well, only in this particular, jovial yet chaotic way in Montreal.

You gotta love a town that for a one-night event manages to set up activities for miles, put out a full-colour program of events, appeal to all ages and creative inclinations, and yet doesn't fill the streets with cops "just looking out for your safety."

(The downside being that certain icy sidewalks on certain main arteries become serious casuality zones.) But I like this edge of chaos, this patrolling of self only if self needs to be patrolled; I don't need my freakin' hand held, I don't need a freakin' fun-filled panopticon. Love this town, never change.

Uh, there's a reason why newspapers are so thin on Mondays. Or, in my case, why website versions of newspapers are so, figuratively, thin on Mondays. I think, purely conjecturaly, that this reason is actually a combination of the following: weekends are for relaxing and being lazy and not making news; whatever newsy things happen on the weekend are looked over in favour of relaxing and being lazy; most journalists spend the weekend either drunk or hungover, cf "relaxing and being lazy."

Or maybe it's just me. Because we all know the world don't stop for Saturdays. People still die in Afganistan and Iraq and everywhere, even here, wtf :(, accidents happen, and reporters working on feature-length stories never sleep. And it snows. It snows and snows and snows.

Score one for the depth of Quebec winter: I went cross-country skiing in the Laurentians on Saturday! The weather was perfect (sunny and cold, no wind) and I was able to laugh at my pathetic first-timer falls down the smallest hills ever. Dude, cross-country skis have no "edge"! I did figure it out. And though I can't deny that I'm in pain today, I feel that I've finally experienced another essential Canadian-winter rite of passage. May winter live on for future generations of Canadians who are into self-inflicted pain, braggadocio, and the wonders of nature.

But when nature as we know it does go away, at least there will be video game simulations of Canada as it was. I mean, is that too much to expect with the expansion of Ubisoft here in Montreal? I think winter's force will somehow work itself into the games and movies and new-tech whatevers of the future. Carnival VR-Party 2057! Holodeck Fetes des Neiges!

Yeah, this is gonna be good. If guitars are "your thing", it's gonna be even better. Minimalist composer Rhys Chatham will be here in Montreal tonight, but he won't be alone.

In every city he's touring this time around, local musicians will join Chatham on stage. To play one song. And one chord. Okay, there's a rhythm section too. And awesome amplifiers, to be sure. And visual projections (created for the piece in 1977 by famed visual artist and feature-film director Robert Longo.) It's all in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Chatham's influential "Guitar Trio". The ensemble tonight will feature members of such Montreal bands as Godspeed You Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, Black Ox Orkestar, Nutsak, Cursed, Set Fire To Flames, Jerusalem In My Heart, and Crackpot, as well as guitar guru Harris Newman. Plus, the night begins around 9:15 with Thames, the mindblowing duo of b. hargreaves (dreamcatcher/cousins of reggae) and a. moskos (unireverse/et sans/drainolith). It will be a treat.

Rhys Chatham + Thames + All Kinds of Local Participants of Note
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at La Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent), 20h30, $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Tickets available at the Casa del Popolo, Cheap Thrills, Oblique, and Atom Heart. Presented by The Suoni Per Il Popolo and CKUT.

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Montreal Mirror; Voir; Panpot; Pitchfork; + check out the Table of the Elements Festival