Seeing some of your favourite artists recontextualized is always an odd sensation. Take, for example, the curious case of Corey Taylor. Known primarily for being the vocalist for masked anti-heroes Slipknot, he has recently stepped out solo (and sans mask), touring in support of his recently-released book Seven Deadly Sins. He stopped by the recently re-activated Corona Theater on a quiet Thursday night to spend a...
Once in a while, you get the rare opportunity to catch an artist right before they ascend to larger audiences. J. Cole, signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label, is standing at the precipice of that ascension. His album Cole World: The Sideline Story is due out on September 27th and the promotional singles released have already seen healthy chart action on the Billboard 200. The rapper-cum-producer has managed...
Seeing My Morning Jacket live this summer is a tricky proposition. Equal parts folksy rock band and dirty hippie jam band, the Kentucky-based quintet is currently cutting a trail across the continent as part of the mad summer rush to play epic-length sets to dark, sweaty rooms. Watching a 3-hour set by the band isn't nearly a way to pass the evening; it's a huge time commitment, akin to a musical marathon. You must either be enamoured with this band, or starved to see a good show in order to fully commit to the idea. It...
As the old adage goes, in order to survive, one must adapt and change with the times. Papa Roach, the chameleons of nu-metal, have, through the generous application of leather layers and guyliner, managed to transform themselves from a band that wore simple black work shirts and that concerned themselves with Important Issues (note the capitals, folks) like child abuse, suicide and economic discord, into the sort of band that appeals to the Mötley Crüe/...
Odd Future member Frank Ocean is a strange fellar, and I don't mean physically. The man's lyrical approach, as well as musical choices, sets him apart from all of those major label backed crooners you may perchance encounter on a lonely Friday night on MuchMusic. The agony and the ecstacy of being Frank Ocean are fully exposed on this 40-minute romp; the private highs and lows of Ocean's heart are exposed,...
After burning up the CJLO metal charts for a while with their 2009 release Unspoken Words, we invited Montreal metal act Derelict into the CJLO studios one quiet April morning to unleash their brand of death metal upon our listening audience. Being the super nice guys that they are, they loaded in effortlessly as Andrew and I set about putting together mics and figuring out logistics.
Andrew and I had a lot of fun untangling wires and generally just joking around with the band as we set up. After an hour...
When one goes to a Black Label Society show, they are sure to witness a few things. Entire redneck families (including young children) come to represent their set, as well as an army of middle-aged dudes in jean jackets and bad pants. Drunk girls line the venue and there's a 100% chance of getting beer spilled upon you. There will be lots of guitar solos, as well as posturing. The colour black will soon become the only thing you see as you try to mingle with the drunk throng.
Knowing all of these dangers, I still took the assignment. I've seen the BLS...
As vagabond post-punk/indie-frotting act Murder By Death made their way to Montreal on a cold Wednesday night at Petit Campus, the mood amongst the throngs of assembled concert-goers was rather jubilant. The show in question fell under the Pop Montreal banner, and the festival's first night was filled with excitement and wonder. Everyone had donned their favourite plaid shirt and newsboy hat, ready to be wowed by the travelling troubadors, Indiana natives who told of stories of whiskey and zombies.
As the members of the touring...
Being in Toronto right in this moment is an interesting affair: North By North East has caused the city to be infested with tight-jean-wearing, daddy-pays-the-rent-but-we're-still-independent hipster sycophants. The upcoming G20 summit has infested the city with a variety of law enforcement officials from around the country, patrolling the city and generally looking useless... Case in point: Did the Hyatt Hotel really need over 30 police officers in its lobby, standing around and generally looking lost. The upcoming MuchMusic Video Awards has caused the city to be infested with a menagerie of vapid pop stars, cluttering up the seats with a giant unneeded set. It's a...
Meeting your idols is always a tricky proposition. What if they turn out to be dicks? What if they're completely uninterested in their craft, their work that you've invested so much emotional time into? What if...? What if, indeed. Sometimes I think up fantastic scenarios at shows while waiting for bands to start: the abovementionned center of my emotional attention will pull up the urinal next to me and I'll stop and pause, and reflect upon my options. Is there a proper protocol for this? After quickly Googling some key search terms ("heroes", "urinals", "chance encounters") and finding some rather strange adult websites, my somewhat ramshackle research leads me to...
Under the crimson lights of the glowing, ominous CN Tower, I found myself stumbling towards my hotel room just south of 2 am. It had been a long day, starting with an early-morning ride on the Megabus (complete with a Megarainstorm and Megabumps in the road) and through a myriad number of short journeys to get to this spot, here in chilly Toronto.
I stood on Queen Street, watching technicians piece together the giant outdoor stage for Sunday's MuchMusic Video Awards, complete with giant screens, reflective surfaces and smoke machines galore with some amusement. I stood staring at this giant monument to commercialism and...
The Flaming Lips
With Fang Island
Metropolis (59 Ste. Catherine E.)
$40.00 in advance / $45.00 at the door
A Greenland production
Thrice
With The Dig, Bad Veins and Kevin Devine
Le National (1220 Ste. Catherine E.)
$26.50 in advance / $28.00 at the door
A Greenland production
Kitchener, Ont's Cursed Arrows dropped by CJLO to record an in-studio session for Hooked on Sonics while on tour supporting their latest record "Telepathic High Five" out on Noyes Records. Tune in to hear the session, and other new tunes we got planned for tonight.
Cursed Arrows plays Casa del Popolo this Saturday!
http://www.myspace.com/arrowsband
http://www.cjlo.com/onair/hooked-sonics
Fresh off of a co-headlining show with The Last Felony at Underworld the night before, Boston death metal act Revocation rolled into CJLO on Saturday, November 29, 2009, a bright and sunny morning that seriously damaged my sleep-deprived corneas.
Quickly rubbing the sleep away from their eyes and loading in at an alarmingly fast rate, the trio were soon plugged in and ready to be recorded by Dipti and Gabe as I stood and watched band who, despite performing barely 12 hours prior, were still able to muster enough energy to load in, blast...
Omar Goodness is a devoted man. CJLO's music director (and host of "Hooked On Sonics") has spent countless (read: probably thousands of) hours, wasting precious moments of his life listening to a large amount of music spanning differing genres, some of it good, most of it pretty bad. He feels as though he's earned the right to sit in judgement of the bands performing. His mom calls him "nice, humble and caring", a just and righteous man fit for holding the proverbial gavel. Goodness also tends to wear his musical heart on his sleeves: his love of all that...
This could be a trainwreck. These thoughts, first pronounced as I made my way through the crowd through Metropolis before openers Middle Class Rut took to the stage, rested at the top of my head. A sense of dread filled me for a second. Alice In Chains. AiC. The makers of fine records and probably one of the best MTV Unplugged albums ever. A band whose albums I've owned and loved for more than a decade. Together for more than 20 years, though largely dormant for the last decade, the band put out a new album last fall...
The Wu-Tang Clan is a vast army of slang-slinging, an enterprising group of hustlers who have no lost love for each other. But brotherhood is brotherhood and as such, they've managed to put out collective albums that have lasted beyond the ages. Hell, even their last record wasn't that bad. But their vast wealth of solo material available continues to boggle the mind as all 9 members (even Ol' Dirty Bastard, from beyond the grave) continue...
Manley and Hastie go at it hard about a subject that keeps them up at night: Is Black Sabbath awesome, or merely pansies? The question is posed.
Point: Alexander Manley
I got into a bunch of hot water with Hastie a week or so ago. He was extolling the virtues of Black Sabbath (much as he extolled the virtues of DMX yesterday) and I was having none of it. He was all "Sabbath bla bla bla" and "Ozzy bla bla bla" and I was like "Nuh-uhh."
My thinking was, Black Sabbath is a band built around a concept. That concept...
Rob Zombie
Hellbilly Deluxe II
Roadrunner Records
There are worse things in life than receiving a chain letter in the mail. You could, for example, receive Rob Zombie's newest musical abortion through the postal service. You could place it into the CD tray and hit play, and then walk back 5 minutes later and stop it. You could repeat this process over...
Fame can be a tricky and strange thing, especially in the realm of popular music. How can a band know that the follow-up to their first smash-hit also certify them some amount of success? How does one make sure that their sophomore effort allows them to stay in the public spotlight and some charting? It is a tricky endeavour,to say the least. Sometimes, though, fame can be a bitch. Certain bandmembers hop onto the famous train of a band whose dynamics they grow angry with and eventually decide to depart from, only to decide to start up their own outfit and hope to see comparable success. So without further ado, here are a list of people who have left/disbanded successful bands in order to strike it out on their own with a similar-sounding endeavour, only to fail and return to their...
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Countdown To Armageddon: News - Thursday, August 6th, 2009 |
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100 Bands, Two Hours, One Great Time Get ready to get your face ripped off one hundred times as Countdown to Armageddon (or C2A, for those in the know) will be hosting a 100-song grindcore extravaganza on Thursday, August 20th. Featured artists include Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Anal Cunt, Brutal Truth, Graf Orlock, Terrorizer, Trap Them, The Locust, Carcass and dozens more show up and kick ass. Consider yourself adequately warned. Tune in on Thursday from 4 to 6 pm for... |
Come visit CJLO and party
CJLO's finally compiled our year end chart for 2009! This year was packed full of some pretty sweet records but the one that stood out the most amungst many of our DJs and hit the coveted number one spot was none other than Face Control, the second album from Montreal's own Handsome Furs.
With that said our shows are as diverse as diverse can be. We've asked our DJs to come up with their own favorites of 2009, or even the decade! Highlights of the decade have included Radiohead's Kid A, Sonic Youth's Rather...
If there's one thing that The Swell Season's Glen Hansard can be applauded for, it's his willingness to wear his emotions on his sleeve. Watching the Irish songsmith slowly seduce a crowd over a lovely evening using both his hard-luck, tough-love theatrics and witty, heartfelt stage banter was a rare sight to behold.
Hansard has an innate ability to be able to take an entire room and reduce the atmosphere to something akin to a...
A preface: This is why I love this city: after an hour of driving up and down unpopulated roads in the downtown core trying to find parking, I came to the conclusion that every road in Montreal I needed to use was blocked. It may have been an hour, it may have been half, all I knew is that I was late for The Creepshow. I mumbled to myself that I must’ve missed the first two opening bands: The Hypnophonics from Montreal and The Dreadnoughts from Vancouver as I slammed the door to my ’92 minivan and hiked up two blocks to the venue.
I finally got to...
• An inability to see anyone's playlist except one's own
• Why is there a "Blog This" button at the bottom right of the playlist creator? Chances are people will accidentally click it a lot given how close it is to the Submit radio button. Can this be relocated?
• Can we attach filesizes to filetypes? Because right now someone can upload a giant png/gif/jpg/jpeg file and that wouldn't be pretty.
• Where's the message board at?
Oh you are a real piece of work.
