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There's only one thing BVST host Angelica likes more than rock 'n roll... Is it grilled meat? Maybe. No, it's the other awesome hosts that make up CJLO's Wednesday evening lineup!

Starting at 4pm with Simon and Sucker Blues, Rebecca and Canucks Kick It at 5pm, Nassim keeping it ugly at 6pm on BMFUC, and of course Johnny Suck rounding it out with Turn Down The Suck at 9pm, these five have been holding down Hump Day for years.

On Wednesday, July 6th, in honor of Angelica and BVST's 10th year on the air at CJLO, they will be taking Wednesday night's mayhem to the streets in what can only be called The BVST 10 Year Anniversary Wednesday Night BBQ Invitational! Featuring special guests from across CJLO's lineup and history, and set to the sizzling sound of a backyard BBQ, this is one night of radio you won't want to miss!

This July 6th starting at 4pm, pour yourself a frosty drink and join the party, only on CJLO!

Read by Danny Aubry

Produced by Nikita Smith

Stories by Alina Gotcherian, AJ Cordeiro, Dominique Daoust

Last Friday was the loudest of my life. As part of Suoni Per Il Popolo, noise artists Esprits Frappeurs and Keiji Haino took the stage at La Sala Rossa, with medieval psychedelic Preterite sandwiched in between for good measure. The show began with Esprits Frappeurs, which is a collaboration between Philippe Lambert (of Monstre fame) and Alexandre St-Onge (Shalabi Effect’s bassist). The two donned white face paint, white robes, and large white sun hats strewn with leafy arrangements; they looked like characters from a Ken Russell film, wraithlike and amazingly fearful. They were painted by the disturbingly beautiful projections of Karl Lemieux while they twiddled and screamed. The set was a long improvisation, lasting about forty minutes. For those who know of Monstre, think Monstre. Otherwise, the project could be compared to noise projects coming out of Japan. There was dynamic and splendour in the madness. You could almost make out the lyrics obscured by layers of distortion and effects. A melee of noise art produced by two separate sound boards wired to various electronics supported the contorted voices. It would have been a nice segue into Keiji Haino, except that’s not exactly how the evening ensued.

Following Esprits Frappeurs was Preterite. This duo composed of Genevieve Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and James Hamilton play ethereal drone tunes hearkening back to medieval times. Their set was longer - about an hour - and felt a little misplaced within the noisy atmosphere. At one point an audience member shouted for Haino; the audience was perceivably restless. Still, they were well received. Maybe a little calm before the storm was what was called for.

Keiji Haino is a legendary Japanese noise artist who has collaborated with Coil, John Zorn, Mayo Thompson, Peter Brotzmann, Thurston Moore, Faust, Fred Frith, and many others. During the sound check, even, the audience was going bananas. Apparently, he hasn’t been here for thirteen years, and the fans were thirsty for some Haino insanity. This guy is sixty years old and looks about twenty, save for the long white hair. His set started with a noise explosion and the cacophony never let up. When I thought it would get quieter, it just got louder. If anyone was cheering, it wasn’t audible. With noise like that, feeling is racking the bones, it is hard to not become completely entranced. Haino was alone on stage, just him and his guitar, but it could have been ten jet planes in a bathroom. There were stacks and stacks of amplifiers behind him, making the soundman nearly obsolete. Haino would turn around and slowly inch up the volume of each of his amps at intervals. For anyone who wants to blow out their brains with sound, this is your man. That’s definitely not a criticism.

All in all, I left Sala with ears bleeding and heart thumping out of my chest. Noise shows are not normally so popular, but the audience here were fanatics, and the atmosphere made it bearable.

-Danielle J hosts Runny Noise on Thursday from 10pm-12am

*Editor's Note: This article marks the begining of a weekly travel blog by Natasha P, a CJLO correspondent currently on exchange in Beijing, that will cover her experiences training in Beijing Opera and living in China.*

8 months of training, 4 performances, 6 hours of paperwork, 14 hours in transit and now I find myself sitting in a hotel room on the other side of the world looking out over Beijing.

It's almost by some strange accident that I became involved with Beijing Opera, but it has become my obsession within the past year. After being rejected for the second time from the "Drawing and Painting" studio arts class, I had a big fat space open in my Fall semester that needed to be filled. I settled on the "Chinese Opera" studio course for no other reason than for its use as a movement class this semester. I assumed (very naively, I must add) that I would be good right off the bat considering I had done martial arts as a child. However, during the first class I came to the realization that the training would be extremely challenging as we spent the majority of the session going from one side of the studio to the other doing high kicks that would put even the most robust goose-step to shame. As I continued the class, my fondness for the distinct and dynamic style only increased, and every day that passed I was more and more sure I wanted to spend a summer in China (that was a fun phone-call home). Eventually, after a few fundraising attempts and a dip into the education savings account, I was confirmed as going to the land of the rising sun.

But more about Jingju (or Beijing Opera); don't let the name deceive you, the style of theater is more acrobatic that operatic; this past school year my most used phrase must have been, "Ooooh everything hurts." Concordia University's Theater Department has made an alliance with the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts in Beijing, the foremost school in China for the study of Chinese Opera, and in recent years has formed a bi-annual exchange. Two years ago, a group of students from the theater program made the trek to China, and now in 2011 a second group comprised of 10 Concordia students is participating in the exchange.

One of the main reason I really wanted to go to China, aside from the fact that Chinese Opera had become my favorite class... and that I was girlishly mesmerized by the intricate makeup and the entrancingly beautiful costumes, was my acceptance to the newly formed theater company Jingju Canada. The company was formed by Shijia Jiang (our instructor this year) and Nicholas Santillo (a graduate of Concordia's Theatre Performance Program and one of the original students who went to China two years ago). The company has been getting more and more work as the months passed, to the point of now having a show at the Fringe "Crossroads" June 10th-19th at the Mai. Knowing that I was the member with the least training, it became my mission to venture to China and learn as much as I could, to discover how to be an asset to the company, and to boldly go where no Concordia student has gone before! Silliness aside, I wanted to expand my acting vocabulary into something more stylized than the overdone naturalistic approach that I had been learning about in most of my classes. Plus: ITS FREAKING CHINA! Who wouldn't want to go?

During the voyage there I was blessed with the greatest stroke of luck. A week before departing I was in performance week of the Concordia Production "Faerie Musical." One evening after the performance, my flying buddy, who had come to see the show, greeted me. After the customary congratulations, he informed me that he had received a phone call from Air Canada telling him that our flight had been overbooked. Immediately, my heart sank, and my mind began racing trying figure out how I would manage to get a flight this late in the game and the ungodly amount it would probably cost. However, before I could break down completely, he added that because Air Canada had felt so bad, they had put us on a flight that would cut 5 hours off of our total flight time, and for "inconveniencing us" they would bump us to executive class. Well after a few dozen giddy and giggly twirls around, I jumped onto him like a lemur and began profusely thanking him. Looking back, this might not have been the most appropriate of moves, as his very sweet and demure girlfriend, whom I had just met, was standing no more than a foot away.

So a week later, after a 10 hour crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, Greenland and a good portion of Asia with complementary drinks, good food and seats that actually turned beds, the group of us arrived in Beijing. When waiting for our bus with our translators, who graciously greeted us at the airport, I was feeling such a strange mix of elation, jet lag, giddiness and restlessness. I was astounded that I literally could not READ anything... absolutely everything was in Chinese! I marveled at the fact that I couldn't even decipher the label on the bottle of Cola that I had purchased in the airport - much to the annoyance to my exhausted friends, I must add. We all made our way to the hotel and rapidly passed out in our very short Chinese beds. Over the next few days, we toured the school, and before we knew it we were yet again marching across studios doing kicks and putting ourselves into the most uncomfortable positions with the goal of becoming more flexible.

The first week of classes was rigorous. It was filled with many misunderstandings due to the language barrier and witness to the return of the phrase "Ohhhh everything hurts". This can probably be attributed to the work of Professor Yang who teaches “Basic Skills.” Not a very tall man, he will often enter into the class grumbling and ferociously sucking on a cigarette. He will look us all over with his small, shiny eyes and either give us a sinister smile showing off his crooked and discolored teeth or just continue scowling. As the class continues on, we undergo a barrage of, what the group has agreed, are chains of Chinese insults. Between being manhandled and forced into painful stretches, having our hair pulled and being smacked, most of us approach the class with increased focus and effort as to ward off the teacher's angry outbursts. As of yet, we are still unsure if when he strikes us he means to punish us or congratulate us... we suspect it is a strange and undecipherable combination of the two. The group has playfully begun to refer to him as "Slappy Guy." We were told by participants of the last exchange that this teacher actually walked out of class screaming after saying he could not teach them a class, as they had not trained what he had taught them the previous class. So we have been trying to be good and if we train for only one class it's his. Speaking of which... I am due for my daily session of improving my splits (ugh). Off to self inflicted (but apparently useful) pain.

-Natasha P