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Preserving Life On Earth
The title sounds a bit grandiose and the Globe and Mail even suggests that the task facing the 193 national delegations descending on Nagoya, Japan, ...is one befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth. The Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement signed amid great hope and in the early 1990s is part of what's at stake during the eleven day conference. And it begins with bad news:
The document bound countries to cut mass species loss “significantly” and preserve 10 per cent of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. But this year brought the sobering realization that not one country had met those targets.
Not one! After twenty years of high-level talks and treaties, mass extinction continues apace and three contentious issues issues have the potential to send this off the rails. There are seventeen developing countries bearing the overbearing moniker Group of Like Minded Megadiverse Countries and they've formed to accuse their richer counterparts of biopiracy. This group includes India, China and Brazil and they want regulations in place that would compensate them for pirated resources. With Canada leading the way, Western nations have largely resisted, according to those involved in the negotiations.
These developing countries are demanding that rich countries bankroll their conservation efforts as they cannot afford it. The same is not true of the west and there has been success of a kind: A recent World Wildlife Fund inventory of world biodiversity over the past 40 years found that while extinction rates continue unabated in the developing world, they have levelled off in the West, where expensive conservation projects have a ready place in national budgets.
Lastly, the ambitiousness of the targets undermined by failure and a lack of action means that the future viability of the convention is in doubt.
Interestingly, Canada's Conservative government has increased its support for the Global Environmental Facility, a global fund that invests in biodiversity projects fund by 50 per cent to $238-million over the next four years. And Jim Prentice the Minister for the Environment, who will attend the last four days of the conference has spoken constructively of this get together saying, “It’s an extremely important summit because biodiversity is an area where we all need to improve. This is a real issue for us and our children.”
“This is the one chance governments have to fix the loss of species and loss of biodiversity, said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based group working closely with governments in Nagoya. “In some ecosystems, we only have 10 or 15 years left before they’re gone.”
UPDATE: Here's a wonderful page full of links from the Guardian with 100 tasks for world governments to undertake to tackle the biodiversity crisis. George Monibot emphasizes what's at stake: The outcome is expected to be as tragic and as impotent as the collapse of last year's climate talks in Copenhagen.
We cannot accept this. We cannot stand back and watch while the wonders of this world are sacrificed to crass carelessness and short-termism.
Black Label Society @ Metropolis
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 circus before and didn't mind it. Granted, it was in the middle of the day and Zakk Wylde and his cronies played for 45 whole minutes, but I wanted to get the perspective of a full show and so enthusiastically embarked upon this strange adventure.
The scene is quickly set as soon as I exit St. Laurent metro. There is a rather overweight man in a Black Label Society t-shirt pissing against a nearby wall and yelling obscenities at a friend, who is standing at a safe distance from the pisser. The offender seems to not care about public decency and people keep walking by him and offering up negative comments, which he promptly ignores... But beyond it there's a certain charm to the music of Zakk Wylde and whoever comprises his band these days. It is what it is, there are no pretensions nor lofty ideals, the music and its subject matter are presented as is.
I soon check the adjoining streets near the venue for mobile homes, hoping to glimpse at least one. Meathead metal acts like Black Label Society tends to bring out the masses from far and wide to celebrate all things lowest common denominator, and mobile homes are a sure indicator. After a fruitless 15-minute search, I head into the venue.
After enduring two songs, I quickly dub opening band 2Cents "lolmetal". The singer's second-rate Phil Anselmo stage antics (as well as a haircut stolen from 1996 Phil) quickly grow boring, and the band's mixture of "good ol' boy" groove metal and straight-up thrash feels like a retread of greater things. The band is a huge fan of the middle finger – they use it to wave hello to the crowd, they flip each other off and they also use it to indicate any technical problems to the stage crew.
The paradox inherent in such a band is odd: they chastise the crowd for not moving and make fun of "emo kids" while mock slitting their wrists and make anti-homosexual comments but they dry-hump each other like it's going outta style. Their "we're one of you, fuckers!" approach certainly makes a few converts but their juvenile demeanor leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Mercifully the band ends with a so-so cover of Pantera's "Strength Beyond Strength" and they quickly exit the stage.
Clutch, the second act of the evening, is the odd man out on the bill. Opening with "Pure Rock Fury", the band's southern-tinged rock stylings went over lukewarm in a crowd full of people wearing jean jackets and studs. Stand-outs "The Mob Goes Wild" and "Power Player" bring out some energy, and during "50,000 Unstoppable Watts" I witness an honest-to-God moshpit. Apparently these kids are ready to move to anything. Neil Fallon still wanders the stage like an angry middle-aged father, expelling his strange tales of doom and death with a ferociousness unmatched by many of the other acts of the night. Their 45-minute set seems a tad too short, but by the end of it some of the naysayers actually seemed to enjoy it, uncrossing their arms and clapping in-between songs.
Penultimate act Children Of Bodom take the stage just after 9 p.m. The Finnish act certainly has the chops to impress, and their keyboard-ready brand of technical metal is entertaining, though somewhat over the top in a Overkill-meets-Goblin kinda way. Bandleader Alex Laiho sounds like Power Rangers baddie Rita Repulsa as he thanks the crowd for their enthusiasm in-between songs. Their 8-song set is a pure primer in Bodom: Starting things off with "Silent Night, Bodom Night" (off of 1999's Hatebreeder), the band rolls through a litany of hits, including the title track to 2008's Blooddrunk and "Living Dead Beat" from 2005's Are You Dead Yet?. 2003's Hate Crew Deathroll (perhaps their most well-known work) was represented by "Angels Don't Kill" as well as the set-closing title track. A little too much keyboard and flashy soloing for my taste, but the crowd seemed very amenable to the act.
A few things dawn on me as I watch Zakk Wylde and co. perform their first three songs: the paramount point is that Zakk's limited vocal range is quickly apparent. He sounds like a cross in-between an old man and a bag of angry kittens being punched, a litany of "waaahhhhh"s and "oooooooooh"s flood the Metropolis.
Wylde has also apparently abandoned using steel chains as a guitar strap, as he had done on previous occasions. This is a shame, but it tones down the larger-than-life persona Wylde has accumulated for himself.
I also quickly note that all the jokes about Wylde loving his squealies (or in proper terms, his pinch harmonics) are true. The dude is enamored with the sound that one guitar can make, and inserts them heartily into every song. This trend continues for four more songs before BLS up the ridiculousness to a whole new level.
The circus of absurdity continued as a giant Baldwin piano (complete with a huge BLS sticker on it) gets wheeled out so that Zakk can perform his ode to Dimebag, the overtly sentimental "In This River". The laughably terrible video featuring mini-Zakk and mini-Dimebag is played on the video screen and a huge amount of camera/camera phones go up as Zakk intones his misplaced ode to a departed friend. The expensive piano gets wheeled back out as Zakk kicks into "Fire It Up", and then that gives place to a 7-minute guitar solo.
The solo is the worst part of the workmanlike set as the very tinny sound makes it hard to make out particular notes, it's a flurry of cascading noises that sometimes sound discernible. I make my way around the venue from the balcony to the floor just to make sure it isn't a position problem. Sadly, after this rather informal scientific experiment, I conclude that the soundman noted that most of the audience was drunk and so sound quality isn't of paramount importance.
Thankfully Black Label Society don't believe in encores and so the last four tracks act as a set-closing pleaser. Strangely enough the sound suddenly gets better during "The Blessed Hellride" and the band is firing on all cylinders. Somehow the band managed to pull it together, only unfortunately it was a little late to start bringing their A-game. As the closing "ahhh"s of "Stillborn" faded out and Wylde left his coffin-shaped guitar on-stage to create some feedback as the house music was faded in.
Overall it was an average performance from an unremarkable band that delivered exactly what it promised: heavy metal with anthemic choruses and the occasional ballad in order to switch things up, and the audience asked for no more and no less of the man known legally as Jeffrey Phillip Wieldandt.
Black Label Society setlist:
1. The Beginning... At Last
2. Crazy Horse
3. What's in You
4.The Rose Petalled Garden
5. Funeral Bell
6. Overlord
7. Parade of the Dead
8. In This River
9. Fire It Up
10. Guitar Solo
11. Godspeed Hell Bound
12. The Blessed Hellride
13. Suicide Messiah
14. Concrete Jungle
15. Stillborn
CJLO News October 18th 2010
News read and produced by Drew Pascoe
Storries written by Erica Fisher, Marcin Wisniewski, and Chris Hanna
Tune In To A Jam-Packed Episode Of Sunny Side-Up!
Get ready for a fantastically interesting episode of Sunny Side-Up With Adam A. this week, as the duo welcomes actor Marc Bendavid from Segal Centre's A View from the Bridge, and from the new movie Score! A Hockey Musical, Noah Reid ( who plays the hockey player who makes it to the big leagues, but refuses to fight on ice-- and sings about it!)
All that plus hot topics on Sunny Side Up with Adam A this Sunday morning, from 9 to 10:30 am on CJLO 1690 AM
October 15th 2010
Read and Produced by Gareth Sloan
Stories by Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo, Mike Moore, Erica Fisher
Review Thursday: Madball, Abandon All Ships and Defeater
Defeater
Travels
Topshelf
To say that Defeater is a groundbreaking band is saying little for this Massachusetts five-piece. They combine new, progressive-style hardcore with the old-school punk attitude of using music as a form of political expression. Every song on Travels is a story; the lyrics are poetic and enthralling while the music sets the tone of the tale. Far too often, lyrics are held for nothing in hardcore. So many albums can be chalked up to a few standards including songs about brotherhood, friends are family, respect, and all that other tough guy bullshit. The fact is we need bands like Defeater, a change from the status quo of music as we know it. If you don't like hardcore, you should still consider giving this album a try, it’s a musical poem, a story of man and how we treat each other, a story that needs to be told.
Abandon All Ships
Geeving
Universal Canada
Fans of floppy haircuts, rejoice! Canada's answer to the bourgeoning synthcore (yes, little Timmy, unfortunately this is now a real subgenre of hardcore music) scene has released their first album, Geeving, and if this is the shit catches on then I will be shocked, dismayed, and unsurprised. The band's mixture of hardcore breakdowns, clubby keyboard lines as well as Autotuned clean vocals is perfect for every ADHD-addled 16 year-old who strives to be understood. Opening track "Bro My God" (unfortunately, the band seems to love the word "bro") sets the tone for the rest of the album: clean production, growls, electronic stutters and a midsection involving clean vocals and keyboards make the band's M.O. apparent.
Mercifully the album's short (10 songs in a little over a half-hour's worth of time) and so sitting through it is not a Dream Theater-tastic task, although these MuchMusic disBAND sweethearts have one major problem: whole song sections could be easily interchangeable with others, lending an air of disposability to the entire record.
I'm going to go ahead and give it a pity point for trying, and a point for trying to mix different styles of music, but apart from the novelty factor there isn't much here to cheer on.
Madball
Empire
Good Fight Music
The newest album from Madball is a far cry from the 12 year old Freddy singing with his older brothers band (Roger Miret of Agnostic Front, who also does guest vocals on the Empire song "Shatterproof"). Since its inception in the late '80s the band has seen a major line-up change swapping out Agnostic Front members for a dedicated crew. A few members came and went, most noticeably the addition of drummer Jay Weinberg (son of the legendary Max Weinberg) who recorded the album with Madball but was recently “released” from the band. Though the input from Weinberg may have been minimal, the album is a solid effort from the New York Hardcore kings. Crushing rhythms, beating breakdowns and anthemic choruses bring us back to why we love Madball in the first place. On the other hand, this album is not all hardcore; parts of it reminds me of early Pantera, minus Dimebag Darrell.
Environment News Story Links
Hey there and thanks for dropping by. Wanted to make sure I got the news links for today's show posted before midnight.
Canada gets one half-right as BPA Bisphenol A is declared toxic but not banned from use. This in spite of studies that show ...the plastic causes “adverse effects on animals” exposed at low doses, including biochemical changes in the central nervous system, effects on the immune system and enhanced susceptibility to breast cancer.
A new study projects the impact continued global warming will have on Canada in the future -- called the Climate Prosperity Project (Yes, all government initiatives have Orwellian names) and it lays out the possible physical impacts (PDF) to the country at several different levels of warming. Completely fascinating and informative.
And while we're on the subject, it turns out that NASA is reporting January to September 2010 as the hottest year in the NASA dataset on record. The climate science deniers were touting the current Pacific weathermaker known as La Nina to be sure to cool things down but the planet-wide heatwave continues.
On the shores of Lake Huron millions of white plastic pellets have washed ashore. It's the latest installment of an ongoing environmental mystery that has baffled investigators and threatens local wildlife.
Double Dose of Duckdown Artists On This Week's Edition Of The Limelight
Check out The Limelight (6 to 8 pm) this Saturday as Jay Nice and Lady Oracle will be interviewing Duckdown label mates Pharoahe Monch and Skyzoo.
Skyzoo just released Live From The Tape Deck with Illmind and Pharoahe Monch is getting ready to release W.A.R. (We Are Renegades).
To know more about it tune in to listen to the interviews with these Duckdown heavy hitters. Limelight Saturdays from 6pm to 8pm on CJLO 1690AM.
Winter Gloves @ Il Motore
Winter Gloves launched their new CD, All Red, at Il Motore on Friday, Sept. 24th. This Montreal-based synth pop outfit is a newcomer to the indie scene, but have made it big, being named Best New Artist by iTunes Canada after their debut release, About a Girl in 2008. Their curious instrumentation (including a Wurlitzer and a synth bass) have garnered them a spot in the hearts of fans.
Opening for Winter Gloves were The Hoof and the Heel, a band I had not known before this show, but surprised me with a nice combination of electro and folk. The lead vocalist was charming, and was a nice opener for Winter Gloves, building that community vibe and sending a bit of warmth through the crowd from the get go. If you like I Am the Dot of Three Blind Wolves, you will dig this group.
Winter Gloves arrived on stage very soon after The Hoof and the Heel departed, and though I was oblivious to their repertoire prior to this show, they were obviously playing for the crowd. Their relationship with the audience was spectacular and very cozy, it made you feel like just hugging everyone around you. Their folkish/synth-poppish sounds were reminiscent to me of Mother Mother (from Vancouver) and Montreal’s own Cuff the Duke. All in all a very comfy and non-invasive show.
Les Savy Fav @ The Little Burgundy Pop Loft (Pop Montreal)
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