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CJLO 1690 AM’s longest-running hip-hop show, The Limelight, is now celebrating its 17-year anniversary of being on air this February. 

Hosts Amrew Weekes, aka DJ Lady Oracle, and Jason Farrell aka J-Nice created The Limelight back in 2003. “I’m not too sure at the time that we started how many other underground hip-hop shows were happening in Montreal,” said J-Nice. “So it was just like, ‘Okay, nobody’s doing this, let’s have fun with it.” 

Over the years, the show has been promoting the Montreal and Canadian music scene the best way that they can. “We want to support local hip-hop and r&b artists, getting to know all of them and really build a community and be a part of a community,” said DJ Lady Oracle. 

Being deeply entrenched in the hip-hop community allowed The Limelight to grow their show very quickly and organically. DJ Lady Oracle has made contacts both as CJLO’s Hip-Hop Director for the past 4 years and as a DJ at Kalmunity, Canada’s largest and longest-running improv collective. Lady Oracle and J-Nice are also part of Urban Science Le Cypher, Montreal’s weekly hip-hop/soul jam session, happening every Thursday at Bootlegger. 

“Montreal’s small in the sense of the hip-hop community,” said J-Nice. “So when there’s an event happening, you just want to go represent. It shows them love, they show us love. We get to meet other artists through that event that we’ve never heard before, but it turns out that they’ve got some good stuff too. Then we get their music and bring them on the show. It’s just like a big circle.”

And the impact that The Limelight has had in the Montreal hip-hop music scene is unmistakable. “I feel like, if the show wasn’t there anymore, it’s almost like there’d be like a hole in the community, or one less outlet, you know?” said Lady Oracle. 

Since this February is the anniversary month of The Limelight, DJ Lady Oracle and J-Nice are planning on doing something special for their show. They plan on having live-to-air sessions by local artists, with their performances being live-streamed on YouTube. 

The Limelight will also be hosting a special 17-year anniversary party on Saturday, February 8th at The Diving Bell Social Club. “We see [this event] as a celebration, just come celebrate with us,” said DJ Lady Oracle. “We want to have people there who’ve been a part of [the Limelight], and we can all just celebrate it, celebrate the longevity of it.”

The last anniversary show that The Limelight had was for their 5-year anniversary, 12 years ago. “And every year we’ve been saying, “We’ve got to do it again, we’ve got to do it again’,” said J-Nice. “It’s about just coming to represent, and we just want to have fun with the people who we’ve talked to for the past 17 years and who’ve loved the show.”

The Limelight is very appreciative of the support that everyone has shown them throughout the years. “We’re just super grateful and we really appreciate all the love from everybody, from the community, from CJLO. We’ve had different Station Managers, and Program Managers and Hip Hop Directors since 2003; that’s a lot, but it’s always been such an incredible experience. And we have such a great volunteer team, so we’re just really happy to still be a part of that,” said Lady Oracle.

Moving forward, The Limelight also wants to focus on finding new ways of promoting the Montreal scene and collaborating with more artists in the community. 

They want to continue having fun with their show and grow as much as they can. “I think just the continuation of the passion and the love kind of gives us that unique flavour that people enjoy and people want to be a part of,” said J-Nice. “That’s one of the things we can only really hope for is that people love it, and we give that love back, and yeah, the sky’s the limit!” 

Come enjoy The Limelight’s 17 Years & Counting Party at The Diving Bell Social Club on Saturday, February 8, from 7 PM – 11 PM. There will also be special performances by Sereni-T, Shaun Miller, Cat Fernandes, and DJ White Socks. Entry Cost: PWYC.

Quebec’s very own Doors cover band Feast of Friends played a free show last Saturday night at the Club Soda on Saint-Laurent. The four cosplayers, dressed in leather pants and floral shirts, managed to amass a full house - with Jim-Jean-Francois-Morrison’s haunting voice drawing in all the boozers and smoochers from nearby streets.

Tribute bands are never far from controversy. It seems like every weekend another tribute show pops up at either La Petite Grenouille or the Piranha Bar. I don’t necessarily have a problem with four dudes dressing up on a Saturday night and playing Iron Maiden covers, but in my opinion, when there are entry fees and tickets involved, the situation begins to sour.

If you’re strictly playing another person’s material note-for-note, then gathering an entry fee in addition to creating your own brand of pseudo band merch (seriously, who’s walking around wearing a Möntreal Crüe t-shirt?), then what’s the point? You might as well come up with a generic name, swap out some riffs and lyrics here and there, and end up playing to about the same crowd of people at the exact same venue. Or just do what Greta Van Fleet is doing and you’ll be fine.

However, this doesn’t mean that tribute bands are necessarily always unethical. There are instances where a band’s music will never be performed by original members again (take the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, for example), and hasn’t been for a good forty years or so. You could argue that all the John Lemons and Billy Hendrixes taking the stage out there are perpetuating beloved artists’ legacies, and if you read your boyfriend’s horoscope every Saturday in the weekend paper, that their spirits are being kept alive in concert form, too.

Regardless of what you think, there is a clear line between people profiting off dead artists’ work and just getting some guys together so barhoppers can hear “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” played with a live guitar.

Anyways, Feast of Friends know how to pull off a damn tribute show. Everyone and anyone were allowed admission to the free gig at Club Soda, which filled to max capacity pretty quick. The group played pretty much every Doors hit you can rattle off in under 10 seconds, from the perpetually-penetrating “Break on Through” to the biker-bop “Roadhouse Blues”. The band also gave concert-goers the opportunity to hear rare concert hits off the L.A. Woman album (Jim Morrison passed away shortly after its release, and thus, songs like “Love Her Madly” and “Riders on the Storm” never got a chance to be played live very much, barring a few early versions played spontaneously in his pre-posthumous years).

Of course, this isn’t the first Doors tribute band out there, and it certainly won’t be the last. However, there are a number of things the band did right which made me more than happy to go see them and support the venue.

Firstly, Jim Morrison is dead. He’s probably the most famous dead person alive. Thus, imitating him is cool, hip, and actually worth your salt because you’re keeping this person’s legacy alive while playing their music to people who would otherwise never get this opportunity. Plus, you’d rather step on someone’s grave than piss off someone who’s still alive, right? Why would you want to impersonate Mick Jagger when the dude is still stutter-stepping somewhere in Europe right now?

Secondly, neither the band nor the venue charged an entry fee. Charging people twenty bucks a head to see a tribute band is silly - that’s just a money grab. Perpetuating an artist’s legacy by keeping their tunes alive in bars and clubs is about recreating that artist’s vibe for those who missed them. Read reviews of Doors concerts from the ‘60s, man. Tell me you can experience that in today’s world of cell phones and drug crackdown. Feast of Friends recreated what those kids who say that they’re “born in the wrong generation” complain about in YouTube comments.

This Club Soda gig was mostly an older crowd - dancing around and having a good time. There was also a good amount of younger people there, but I only saw a handful of cell phones during the entire performance. It was a really refreshing experience and honestly, even though I mostly go to metal concerts which you’d think are always crazy, this tribute show had one of the best crowds I’ve been a part of. People were just having fun, and in the Doors concert kind of way, which doesn’t happen all that much anymore.

I could end off with a cliché, saying that Jim Morrison’s spirit was truly still alive on that fateful night or whatever. But he wasn’t. The frontman, despite his nearly impeccable Morrison impression, clearly had a Francophone accent when talking between songs. I’m still convinced that his entire knowledge of the English language is limited to words used in songs by the Doors. And the guy playing Robby Krieger clearly hasn’t seen the Doors live recordings, because our friend just threw on his grandfather’s Hawaiian travel shirt and called it a day. But the whole thing was loose, fun, and it didn’t feel like they were ripping anyone off. They put on a great recreation with little smart nods to the real band here and there and that’s it.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to see the best popular artist clone there ever was. I don’t want to buy tickets to see four dudes pull off their absolute best impression of some famous band, when my ticket fare could and should have gone to see a band struggling to get paid for performing their own material. Do it for free like Feast of Friends: have fun playing dress-up on a Saturday night, get a crowd going, and make your hundred bucks or whatever it was and call that a success for giving an audience something they can remember.

My only complaint: Jim Jean-Francois Morrison’s leather pants could have been a little tighter, but I’ll let it slide.

Montreal’s popular winterbound techno festival, appropriately titled Igloofest, occurred this past week on January 25th. Contributing writer Clara Gepner tells us a first-hand account of what events transpired and how the performers stacked up against their competition...

From the moment you walked up the stairs from the Champ-de-Mars metro station to Vieux-Montreal, you could feel the energy pulsing from the attending crowd.

It wasn’t that cold, but it had been snowing for a few hours. There was a layer of powder and it was warm enough that it was starting to melt, which made it hard to walk. Regardless, the music streaming up from the Quai Jacques-Cartier was enough to draw a sizeable crowd in.

Once I made it through the line, security, and ticket-check (and the obligatory bathroom stop), I made my way to the main stage, where international techno super-star Nina Kraviz had just started spinning.

The slim Russian DJ was already playing some intense beats, and the crowd was loving it. They were braving the sleet and the sludge just to dance their hearts out. Nina’s music is unpredictable and changes pace every two minutes; this is why her audience loves her.

The ground rapidly became a hard-packed mix of ice and slush, as the crowd stomped on the snow and water in response to Nina’s beats. Everyone was getting soaked, but the tracks were intense and exciting enough to make people stick around. The crowd danced relentlessly, and despite the occasional sloppy transitions and the mixed rain and snow coming down from the sky, everyone was having an amazing time.

It seemed like a large portion of the crowd kept coming and going between the main stage and the smaller stage, which was being hosted by FrontRite, Montreal’s main electronic music community. Not long after Nina Kraviz came on the main stage, Jeremy Olander took over the smaller one just next door.

Seeing the mass migration, I followed some of the crowd to the Olander stage, where the Swedish producer was spinning some melodic techno and trance tracks. The crowd was packed tight in the smaller space, dancing in an unreserved fashion, despite sleet soaking their tuques and snow getting splashed at them by other dancers.

Back at the main stage, Nina was still playing with the crowd, bouncing back and forth between styles and rhythms. Her restless DJ style showed its true colours, making her move constantly to her music, which flowed effortlessly from song to song.

The atmosphere was intense yet playful; her audience loves her and showed so by moving to her beats without reserve. There were smiles on everyone’s faces and it was as if the weather didn’t matter: everyone who comes to Igloofest expects some level of discomfort, yet they come because they love the music and the vibe, which Kraviz and Olander delivered.

Saturday was no exception, and 15 minutes before the end of the show, the site was still full of techno lovers. Like its predecessors, this rendition of Igloofest still offered a lot of snow and rain, and I got soaked. Regardless, I was dancing alongside the crowd, drawn into the excitement of it all.

Finally, I had enough. It was time to go inside and dry my face, wet from the rain and snow being thrown around by those dancing. I followed the mass of people going to after-parties (many of them are on their way to Newspeak, where Jeremy Olander was once again playing later) and slowly made my way back to the metro.

Nina Kraviz’s intense beats followed me all the way up to Place Vauquelin, where I remember turning around one last time and seeing the lights dancing in the night sky. This was Nina’s second Igloofest appearance, and she did not disappoint. In similar fashion, Olander proved himself at his first Igloofest set. Here’s to another stellar lineup!

Who am I? I’m Orin Loft of The Noisy Loft, bringing you the loudest, angriest eclectic sonic mess this side of the Décarie!
What’s my show? Loud quasi-metal & hardcore. I take a look at some nostalgic bangers from the 00’s, contemporary and the local scene as a focal point. If it’s Mosh-able, I’m game. 

Patricia Petit Liang is the host of the surreal comedy talk show Fatal Attraction. She has been a radio host at Concordia University since the age of 16 and is now a Masters student in the department of Communication Studies. Fatal Attraction is Patricia's way of challenging stereotypes about Asian femininity, coping with loss, experimenting with self-care and sharing her favorite memes. Out of all of the characters from the cast of Fatal Attraction, Patricia identifies with Michael Douglas' character Dan Gallagher the most. Her dream is to one day star in a horror B-movie.