Fall Concert Guide

Well, it's fall in the big city, and as the temperatures drop and the days get shorter, a bunch of great bands are about to descend upon Toronto. Here are a few shows you should try to check out.

Darwin Deez October 30th @ El Mocambo

I heard about Darwin Deez in the spring, the songs 'Bad Day' and 'Radar Detector' are insanely addictive. Give them a listen:

http://www.myspace.com/darwindeez

Elliott Brood October 30th @ Opera House

Elliott Brood was recently nominated for the coveted Polaris Music Prize and I had the opportunity to see them live at the awards gala. They rocked out for their two-song performance, I'm sure a full set would be amazing. Unfortunately, this concert falls on the same day as Darwin Deez. I've got some serious thinking to do. . .

http://www.myspace.com/elliottbrood

Modeselektor November 4th @ Mod Club

Modeselektor is one half of the band Moderat which I have been getting into these last few weeks. They have a very cool sound: electronic, ambient, and hauntingly catchy. I think this show is going to be awesome.

http://www.myspace.com/moderat

Girls November 10th @ El Mocambo

The first time I heard Hellhole Ratrace I felt like I had heard it before. Not because it is unoriginal, but because the song is so perfect that its existence seems like the most natural thing in the world. The album is great, too.

It seems like with a lot of these new bands, the blogs hype them up to a point that no live show could ever live up to the audiences expectations. Girls seems different. I'm confident that this band will restore confidence in the internet hype machine.

http://www.myspace.com/girls

Rural Alberta Advantage November 20th

If you haven't heard Hometowns yet, I suggest you go to your local record store, pick up a copy and throw it on the old car stereo. It's damn good road trip music. 'Drain the Blood' and 'Edmonton' are two of my personal favourites.

http://www.myspace.com/theraa

Hey Rosetta! Dec 4-5 @ Horseshoe Tavern

Hey Rosetta! is another Polaris Prize finalist. These guys killed it at the awards gala, and I'm sure that they will bring the same intensity to the Horseshoe. Definitely worth some permanent hearing loss.

http://www.myspace.com/heyrosetta

That's it for now. Enjoy the shows.

Nomo - Live at El Mocambo

Last night I had the opportunity to see Nomo at the El Mocambo. I went into the show knowing very little about the band, I had heard a few songs on their myspace but that was it. I knew that they played afrobeat music and they were from Chicago and that was good enough. Since I've been getting into the habit of pretending that Thursday night is the start of the weekend, I jumped at the opportunity to go out and party.

I arrived at the El Mocambo around 10:30, and it was pretty empty. I had seen Malajube play there a couple of weeks ago to a packed house, so this was a bit of a change. I walked up to the bar and ordered a Labatt 50 only to find out that they were out.

"No Labbatt 50 at an afrobeat show at the El Mocambo? Am I in some bizarro world or something?" Not to worry, I ordered a Kieth's (not quite hipster-approved but delicious nonetheless) and moved up to the stage, where the band was getting ready.

If you are not familiar with Afrobeat music, I suggest you listen to some Nomo to get a better understanding of what it's all about. http://www.myspace.com/nomomusic Basically it involves a lot of brass instruments, cool beats, and improvised solos. I really think that it's a genre of music that is best experienced live.

The band consisted of two drummers, a saxophone/keyboardist, a trumpeter and a baritone saxophonist. Sometimes the second drummer would pick up a guitar, but as my friend Bryce remarked "You know, the guitar is cool and all, but what this song really needs is two drummers." The keyboardist would also play his homemade electric caramba sometimes.

All in all, the show was tight, eclectic, and made your feet move. Despite the crowd being a bit sparse, the people who were there were ready to have a good time. And for a small show there were a large number of Toronto music scene up-and-comers in attendance: Two members of the now defunct punk outfit Clock Strikes Music http://www.myspace.com/clockstrikes were in attendance as well as two members of the acclaimed Rexdale band Hot Soft Light, now going by the name The Big Aristotle.

For the band's encore, the band came down to floor level and started an impromptu jam amongst the crowd. This was one of the coolest concert experiences I have had in a while. The crowd began chanting and singing along with the music and it really felt like the audience and the band had connected on a whole other level. It was really great. Apparently, this was the last show of their tour, hopefully the next time they're in Toronto we'll get a good crew together and have a great night rocking out to Afrobeat.

The End of blogging?

Faithful readers. I know it has been a while since my last post. For this I apologize. I will try to get back to work and get some new posts up on the site soon.

In the meantime, check out the twitter version of the blog at twitter.com/getdistracted. It is almost as mindless as my regular blog posts, however it is limited to 140 characters so you only need to take it in small doses.

Best regards from everyone here at the Get Distracted head office.

2008 Year in Review

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The Disposability of Rock n' Roll

Is anyone else concerned by how quickly we consume and discard new music these days? I was at a Plants and Animals show a few weeks ago, and during the show I was lamenting the fact that my interest in the band had already peaked after only two weeks of hearing that they even existed. The system that we have allows us to access complete discographies of bands within minutes of hearing about them. We listen to the music fervently when it's still new and fresh. When the band comes to town, we go see them live, buy a t-shirt, go home and forget about it. The next day, we find a new band.

When I was a young lad, growing up in the wilds of the Canadian National Capital region, a rock band was not something that one simply snatched up, used up and threw away. It was something that was savored, cherished, and studied. I think I spent 7 years of my adolescence listening to Pearl Jam before I got to see them live. Now, I know much has changed in the world of music distribution, and the days of going to a record store to buy your music are a thing of the past. All I'm saying is that the music world, like many things in our modern society, seems to be moving too fast.

So my question is this: Has music simply become another consumer good, mass produced, distributed, consumed and then disposed? I would like to think not, but as I stood watching Plants and Animals, I felt a great sadness in the way I perceived the indie rock scene at the moment: An assembly line of new bands, fueled by internet hype machines and buzz blogs. It's like no one's taking time to sit back and really absorb the music, we are simply buying, consuming and disposing it, like your morning Orange Mochafrappacino from Starbucks.

Now, I have a friend, let's call him B. Isopp... (actually that's much too obvious, let's call him Bernty I.) He sees this issue in a much more positive light. He looks at the music industry in its current form as an efficient machine, cranking out constant entertainment for the masses. Thanks to iTunes and Amie Street and a plethora of other legal music download sites, anyone anywhere can access music once reserved for those who live in cities. Which, in itself, is truly a great thing.

We live in a society constantly bombarded with media, and I fear that the human of the future will resemble the fat idiot depicted in that delightful movie Wall-E. Maybe I'm just sick of letting the internet tell me what music to listen to. The problem is that it is always right! Maybe that's what will distinguish the age of the internet. It will be known as the death of Subjectivism. . .or maybe the dawn of neo-Subjectivism?. . . Ok, I'll stop now.

Some final questions for you to ponder:

Is consuming a large amount of media a good thing?
Is appreciating art a self-serving distraction or does it have intrinsic value?

Pitchfork Music Festival

This last weekend I was fortunate enough to go to Chicago to attend the Pitchfork Music Festival. The festival has been going on for several years now, and features performances by many of the elite indie bands of the day, handpicked by Pitchfork Media staff. I thought I'd give you a rundown of the concerts I was able to see, and my thoughts on the festival.

Day 1
The first night of the festival was put on in collaboration with All Tomorrow's Parties, which is a UK based company that puts on concerts around the world. The highlight of the night was Public Enemy, reunited to perform their seminal album "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" in its entirety. What we witnessed was what Britt Daniel would later describe as "insane," which I couldn't agree with more.

The performance did not get off to a good start. There were two major issues. Firstly, Chuck D's mic was not working properly; his voice was all muddled and quiet. Secondly, Flavor Flav was not present. As you can imagine, this significantly took away from the first song they performed, Bring the Noise. The mic was replaced and Flavor Flav found his way to the stage, and they continued the set. Things first got awkward when, between songs, Chuch D berates Flavor Flav for "leavin' me hangin'" on Bring the Noise. Flavor Flav pleads with Chuck that he was backstage and that they shouldn't have started the set without him. Neither Chuck nor Flav seem like they're too fond of one another.

The next incident made things worse. In between songs, Flavor Flav takes a minute to thank the audience for making him the number one reality show on TV. Why he felt compelled to bring up his reality TV career at what was supposed to be a night honouring one of the greatest rap albums ever made is beyond me, but he crossed that line, and the Pitchfork crowd called him on it with resounding Boos. Flavor Flav did not take it well. I thing his response was something like this:

"You think you can boo me? Fuck You! You think you can fucking boo Flavor Flav? You should be booing your fucking spouse!"

Ugh.

The performance continued, interrupted only by Flavor Flav calling out one of his bandmates for lip-syncing and then clearly lip-syncing himself, among other cringe-inducing antics, like Chuck D leaving the stage, clearly disgusted with Flav's behaviour. Despite all this, there were some high points, when Public Enemy broke into Louder Than a Bomb, people actually starting to rock out, which was surprising.

The whole show seemed a surreal: A rap group that reached their artistic peak nearly twenty years ago performing racially charged songs in front of a bunch of white upper middle-class twenty-somethings who really know nothing of the struggles on which the songs are based seemed wrong. I know I shouldn't assume that a white upper middle-class twenty-something can't appreciate the message of the songs, all I'm saying is that it was a weird vibe, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way. I'll stand by my preconceived notion that it's never a good idea to see artists performing past their prime.

Day 2
Saturday was jam-packed with great performances, so many in fact that it was almost impossible to take in everything you wanted to. The first act I saw was Fleet Foxes, which is a great new band from Seattle that plays a unique brand of harmonious folk-pop that combines early Simon & Garfunkle or Beach Boys vocal harmonies with backwoods instrumentation. The songs are melancholy and catchy crafted with pop sensibility. I really enjoyed their performance. They went on right when I got there, and I'm proud to say I didn't even try to grab a beer before they went on, just in case I got stuck in line and missed a song.

The next performance of note was Vampire Weekend, which is a band we all remember from last fall when they became the biggest band in North America overnight thanks to internet hype. I enjoyed their songs, but wasn't blown away. They did play a few new songs which sounded pretty good.
The next band we watched was definitely one of the highlights of the festival, and that was The Hold Steady. They went on at 7 in the evening, which meant the sun was still up but the crowd had been at the festival sufficiently long enough to be in "party mode". If you've ever heard the Hold Steady, you know that they have a knack for writing party anthems, and the fist pumps were flying. They played a lot of older stuff, which I don't know as well as the new album, but the set was still amazing. At one point the lead singer Craig Finn said to the crowd "I hope you guys are having as much fun as we are!" which sort of summed up their performance.

The final performance of the day was Animal Collective, one of the most original bands out there and also one of the best. Their music was accompanied by a trippy light show which was quite impressive. The only problem with the set is that they had to follow The Hold Steady, after which I was understandably a bit burnt-out. Music festivals are hard work.

After the show we went to a festival after-party at Bottom Lounge on West Lake Street to catch Jay Reatard perform. Their set was good, however, after partying all day it's hard to rally for yet another concert.
Day 3

I'm not going to lie, Sunday morning was a painful one. Despite the collective pleas of our festival-weathered bodies, we headed back to Union Park on the El train, determined to keep having a great time. King Khan and the Shrines, a band which has been receiving a lot of media attention as of late, went on shortly after we arrived. They've got a sort of retro funk/soul sound which is complimented with an amazing/manic stage presence. Although the set sounded great, it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and I was not quite ready to rock out yet.

The highlight of the afternoon was Brit-rockers Spiritualized. I've been listening to the new album Songs in A&E quite a lot lately and they even opened with my favourite song You Lie You Cheat. The set seemed almost medicinal, wiping away the crowds hangovers with soothing melodies and soundscapes.
As the day was ending, I was finally feeling normal again and ready to rock out to the grand finale: Spoon. If you haven't heard Spoon's album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga from last summer then you're in for a treat. I had posted up near the front of the stage during Dinosaur Jr.'s set so I was right in the mix. They played alot of older stuff but the new songs they played were accompanied by a full horn section which sounded amazing. A fitting end to an epic festival.

All in all, the festival was pretty fun. I had never been to Chicago before, and it's definitely one of the most interesting cities in North America. It was fascinating learning about the architecture and planning of the city, other cities could learn a lot from the approach they've taken to urban design. As for the festival itself, it was fun being in the hotbed of the indie music scene. Though much of the time I felt like I wasn't cool enough to be there (which was definitely true), I was able to pick up a few of the newest trends that are making waves in the hipster scene:

1. Bike hats: you remember those little hats that competitive cyclists wear? Those are cool now. Pop up the brim for added irony.

2. Cut-offs: Obviously prompted by the trend-setting ways of Tobias Fuenke, cut-offs are back, and not just jean cut-offs, any old pants can be turned into cool shorts. One favourite was cut-off skinny jeans, if you're going for that painted-on look.

3. Sparks Energy Drink: I don't know if people actually liked this stuff or it was just clever marketing. This stuff is a 6% alcohol caffeinated drink that looked like nuclear waste and tasted worse. It's going be huge.

4. Being Rich: Apparently being rich is cool again. Having vast amounts of disposable income to spend on clothes, records, concerts tickets, drinks and sushi from the Whole Foods tent seems to be quite popular again. So, if you were concerned that being rich was going out of fashion, rest assured that its back. Don't be afraid to dip into that trust fund.

Well, I think that's it for now. If you have the chance to go to Chicago for whatever reason I would highly recommend it. And if you're going to a festival soon, remember to stay hydrated, eat vegetables and go easy on the Sparks.

To Blog or Not to Blog

It's a crazy age we live in. The rise of the age of the internet has opened up many doors for humankind. A wealth of information that was previously unavailable to the vast majority is now just a click away. Do you ever have a question, and, instead of actually asking another person you simply google it? I know I do.

Just the other day me and my friends were wondering if you typed in "How do I get away with employing illegal immigrants?" to google would you get a good answer? The fact that we were even contemplating such a ludicrous internet search shows how powerful and ubiquitous it has truly become. Because for the most part, the internet comes through. Whether you're stalking people you hardly know on Facebook or looking for the nearest Wendy's restaurant, the internet has all the answers.

Apart from being the great resource that it is, the internet has also sparked the phenomenon of web-logging, or "blogging" as it colloquially known. The idea of a blog is simple. It's basically an online diary where any idiot with an internet connection can write down whatever they want on their blog and any other idiot can read it. Now I know what you're thinking. You think that I'm about to knock the whole concept of blogging and go into a whole self-deprecating spiel about how blogging is essentially literary diarrhea that serves no other purpose than distracting under-worked office workers with attention deficit disorder. But I'm not going to do that. For one, because I already did, in an earlier blog entry. But more importantly, I'm not going to knock blogging because I think its an important medium with which to document the evolution of human thought, no matter how stupid that thought may be.

Just think, while anthropologists of today studying our ancient relatives base their life's work on mere fossils and cave paintings, the anthropologists of the future will be able to pore over gigabytes of text, video, music and other assorted media created by the humans of the digital age.

Blogs, Message boards, YouTube videos, Word Documents, MP3's, and JPEGS. The list goes on. . . We're constantly creating artifacts of our existence and not even realizing it. What we are doing now is documenting the human experience.

And that's important. If only to let future generations know how completely and utterly moronic we all were. So that's that. GO START A BLOG! The future of epistemology could very well rest on your shoulders. . .