S.C.E.N.Efest '08 wrapup

So, yesterday I freelanced for the Hamilton Spectator, covering the S.C.E.N.E festival in St. Catharine's, Ontario. It was an extremely long and trying day, but I got the chance to talk to a lot of bands and get my first real journalism experience. It took about 45 minutes to get from Hamilton to the venue, and even on the way me and my friend Stuart, who was acting as my photographer, could see that the clouds were looking quite ominous for the day. We had hoped this bad weather would be exclusive to Hamilton, but there'll be more on that later.

When we arrived in St. Catharine's, we tried to find some parking with little avail. We ended up occupying a library and a public parking space before we settled down in a funeral home parking lot. The car was kind of our mobile base and shelter from the storms throughout the day. We picked up a pizza around lunch, and kept it in there for lunch and dinner. Hooray for dining cheap.

Anyways, we got checked into the media table and met Kerry, the media liaison and generally nice gal. She helped us a lot with finding interview times with the bands and getting in contact with them, period. There were a lot of people on the festival grounds all day, and it was generally crowded everywhere we went. We got a program and map (seen below).


The bands I got to talk to are underlined/circled in the program. Man, I'm going to try to list my experiences with them, but forgive me if I don't have the complete experience put into words.

illScarlett: I managed to get an interview with Alex (their singer) after a lot of effort and runaround from their manager. It didn't help that we were outdoors when we were talking, but it got worse when people actually realized who he was. Sadly he didn't seem too interested in talking to me, and more interested in the girls that were approaching him for autographs and photos. Also, if any bands are reading this, please don't wear dark sunglasses when you talk to the press. For one, it gives the impression that you're pompous, and for two, I can't tell what the hell you mean in your words. Sure, you can just talk to me, but part of the interview is that it's a conversation. I might as well have done the interview on the phone.

Silverstein: I talked to Shaun, and he seemed very "out of it". Good conversation, though.

The Reason: Both guys I talked to were very enthusiastic and funny. In general all the bands talked to were very good to the press. No such thing as bad publicity, right?

Cancerbats: Jesus Christ these guy were funny, and for a festival headliner, they were surprisingly "natural" and humble. Talked to them for a good long while, and they signed Stuart's stuff.

Circuit for the Blackout: Good times talking to this band from Hamilton. They gave me a free CD and accommodated me for anything I needed. Darren, thanks a lot man.

Gord Lewis from Teenage Head: Wow, I talked to a punk legend. While he had an outward appearance of a drug-addled rocker, Gord was surprisingly articulate and talked with class. Had a great conversation with them.

The rest e day was spent running around, dodging rainstorms and looking through the merch building. Everything was very communal, and bands intermingling made for a cool little event. Pictures can be found on my Facebook albums here and here, so give em a look if you want. Hopefully I'll be doing more of these in the future.

Guru

Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that the problem with writing sports articles is that you inevitably end up hating sports more than anything else in the world. Everyone you meet wants to talk sports with you because they think you're an authority, and it eventually contributes to madness. You also cover a lot of shitty sports, and you realize trends that won't make your feelings of rage go away.

I'm starting to feel the same feelings with music.

Notsomuch that people want to talk to me about music, but the fact that I'm currently reviewing, or writing about a lot of music that I plain don't like, or I'm not interested in. I listen to a CD or a Myspace and I have to keep myself from just plainly stating "I hate this shit. 0 out of 4 stars." There's a lot of bullshit out there, and I guess the trick is to wade through it while trying to remain above the surface, accessible to the sweet air that keeps you alive.

A lot of music is just plain the same at this point in time, and really, sometimes it's hard to differentiate from one band to the next. Somewhere along the line it just becomes a big blur and you stop recognizing one type of screaming from the other. Oh well.

Scene Fest Countdown... the stress begins

So my laptop came back yesterday, keyboard intact and working fine. Still kind of readjusting to the lighter keys, but oh well; I can write. I'm happy.

So, nothing much going on today. I'm going to be getting my first press pass on Sunday, as the Hamilton Spectator accepted my offer to go freelance for them. There'll be pictures posted on here, naturally, and I'll link to the story on the Spectator website when I'm finished.

So, prepare for a large list of musicians! If any of you reading this any of em, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do about getting in touch with them at the SCENE fest. Thanks!

Abandon All Ships
Alpha Galates
Along Way Home
Arkells
Art of Convulsion
As Above, So Below
Ash Lee Blade
Baptized In Blood
Bastard Child Death Cult
Black Ships
Bombing Neverland
Bramwell & the Leftovers
Broadcast Zero
Bury The Bully
Cancer Bats
Casey Baker & The Buffalo Sinners
Ceremonial Snips
Chad Hatcher
Chad Michael Stewarts Machete Avenue
Circuit For The Blackout
Cities Between Us
Cody Elloitt
Consumer Alert
Crash Parallel
Crush Luther
Daniel Wesley
Days Fade
Dead and Divine
Dean Lickyer
Dearly Beloved
Del Asher
Dodger
Dorian Gray
Down With Webster
EA
Elements
Everlea
Failing Grade
Farewell To Freeway
Femapco
Firelife
Flatlined
Frankie White and The Dead Idols
From Man In Ghost
From Now Till Forever
Ginger St. James
Grand Analog
Guv’ner Generals
Hail The Villain
Half Ton Knights
Hardcore Warrior
Hell Yeah Fuck Yeah
Hello Beautiful
Hello Operator
High Deafinition
Horizons
Hospitals
Hunter Valentine
Ill Scarlett
In Its Wake
Joe Cleary 5
Journey to Aspen
Kathleen Turner Overdrive
Keepin' 6
Late Night Sanity
Lifestory Monologue
Ligeia
Lights
Magneta Lane
Mandippal Jandu
Mandy K
Means
Michou
Midway State
Mike McNeil
Nick Verona
No Orphans
Ol' Dirty Burger
One Night Band
One Second 2 Late
Only Way Back
Open Book Diaries
Our Father
Passenger Action
Pete Trembley & the Boozy Truth
Playmaker
Policies & Procedures
Rachelle
Rebel Emergency
Revenge of the Egg People (original lineup)
Rocket Reducers
Royal Wood
Rumble Devils
Sarah Blackwood
Scott Normandy Band
Shad
Shotgun Rules
Silverstein
Skullkrusher
Sleep the Season
Spiral Beach
Staylefish
Storyteller
Straight Reads The Line
Street Pharmacy
Subliminal Hate machine
Summer of 92
Summerside
Sun Satellite
Sydney
Syracuse Me
Taurine
Teenage Head
Teeter
The Alco Beat
The Amazing Flyin' Hammer Bros
The Anti-Q's
The Artist Life
The Audio Visuals
The Bella Bombs
The Beautiful Unknown
The Black Lungs
The Broken Lyre
The Carryouts
The Creepshow
The Decay
The Guys
The KAC Himself
The Mission District
The Most Serene Republic
The Overfiend
The Reason
The Rusty Trombones
The Von Ericks
These Silhouettes
This Is An Empire
Threat Signal
Two Knives
USS
Under Artificial Skies
Vatican Chainsaw Massacre
Waterbodies
Wooden Sky
Word People

-Phew-

George Carlin, 1937-2008

George Carlin, foul-mouthed comedian and general badass is dead from a heart failure at 71. I really don't want to go into the general "brief bio" bullshit, because you should already know who he is. For people my age, he played Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station, taking over for Ringo Starr. He was known for his stand-up comedy act, playing Rufus in the Bill and Ted movies, and introducing the "7 words you can't say on television" to the world. So in honour of this awesome man, I salute:

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker and tits.

Thinking Ahead

Behold, me to a T.
But obviously without so much flair.

Consumption

So sadly I had to send my laptop in to get serviced because of a faulty "g" key. Godspeed, Acer service centre, godspeed.

Ugh. I'm having this huge writer's block lately that's keeping me from the productivity I had earlier in the year, but now that I think of it, it was pretty much reposting what Boing Boing did first. Is that all I'm limited to?



I've won tickets for this year's S.C.E.N.E music fest that's happening in St. Catharine's in two weeks. Should be a rousing good time, but admittedly this stuff isn't a part of my usual musical tastes. It'll be interesting to try some new stuff out and hopefully find some gems among the endless stream of cubic zirconium that seems to be flooding the markets these days. A story shall be posted as it happens :).

Reverse Graffiti

So yes! If you've been paying attention to the right column over there, you'll see I've added a Twitter widget! Feel free to follow my microblogging adventures if you're into that sort of thing, as I've been kind of addicted/distracted to it as of late. You can find all of my word count updates as they happen on Twitter.



I enjoy graffiti as an art form, but the above video is something I've never seen before. Art by cleaning: a new "green" revolution? Fuck, when the word "green" or "enviro-friendly" has become a buzzword, you know that anyone is capable of corrupting anything.

More tomorrow. Peace.

Paul Polak on world poverty solutions

I'm listening to Paul Polak on George Strombolopolous' The Hour from the other night. He's a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who founded International Development Enterprises, a company devoted to marketing, manufacturing, and distributing "affordable, scalable micro-irrigation and other low-cost water recovery systems" to the third world. While talking with George, he explains that he went to poor areas and asked the poor what they needed most, and really, it turned out to be a way to sustain themselves.

Paul brings up a good point about getting people out of poverty:

"We're dead against giving anything. One of the reasons that our current approaches to poverty suck, is that we're trying to donate people out of poverty. You can't donate people out of poverty. They have to invest their own time and money. You can help them, you help them with their constraints, you can design affordable irrigation for example, but if you don't design something that they're willing to step up to the bar and buy and invest in, they're not going to benefit."

I like the idea of people becoming part of the solutions to their problem, and this isn't exactly a new idea; I remember a similar philanthropist who loaned (not donated) $100 to a village and expected to be paid back once they started sustaining themselves. Knowing that the money couldn't be squandered, the villagers actually used the money and helped their settlement. This is the type of philanthropy I like to see: accountability, and avoiding throwing money at a problem that isn't going to go away.

Euro 2008, bitches

Kind of pathetic that I've only made 2 posts during the month of June so far, but really, quality over quantity, here people.

Okay, I'll admit further that the last few posts haven't been the top of the "quality" pile either. Oh what the hell, let's just enjoy a picture of the Italian football team getting their drama-queen asses kicked by the Dutch.

3 - 0. Suck on that, Buffon.

Excerpt from what I'm working on right now

Yes, there's been a lull in posting as I'm working on a new project. It's taking up a lot of my time because it's ending up a lot longer than I thought it would be; what started as a news article has now turned out to... well... I don't want to jinx it, so I won't say it.

At the moment it's at 4,500 words, and I'm hoping for a total of 50,000: I'm about 10% done. I think I'll post a little bit of an excerpt, and if you like it, please comment! I'd like some input on this.

I felt a bit nervous entering the Staircase for the first time. I instantly felt a wave of intensity as I entered; I clearly didn't fit in amongst the groups of hipsters and again film gurus spewing trivia to their comrades and anyone who'd listen. There were faces younger than mine huddled in a corner while grizzled (as much as you can call them that in Hamilton) veterans sat front row center, eager for the talking to begin. I had only previously conversed with a faceless "42Liberty@x.com" prior to this meeting, so I was feeling a bit lost; the only familiar face I saw at the time was of Peter Michael Wilson, another film fanatic who I had met previously at a rock show. Coming into this I was under the understanding that he would be partaking in this Justice League of film as well, but as I found he was going to be working on his own project. I chatted with him for awhile until I noticed Long make his entrance; hisYoutube videos had given me another recognizable visage. I introduced myself to him and in turn he introduced me to Charlie, who had been sitting behind the veterans. Out of all the crew members, I would say that Charlie was the most meticulous in the planning. He had yet to pull out the coiled notebook that would be consulted multiple times during the night, but the level of organization he possessed would be an asset to the team. We chatted for awhile and commented on early ideas, but nothing serious had been put together; most decisions hinged on the choice of the dialog, prop, and location. When I asked about early thoughts on the deadline, Charlie responded with a grin:

"We work well under pressure."

Anyways, let me know what you think. Thanks :)

Universal Studios fire damages film archive; results not evident yet

A fire at Universal studios has destroyed the King Kong exhibit and has damaged part of a video archive. We won't know what exactly what we've lost until its been surveyed, but we can only hope classics weren't affected.

I find it funny that CNN decided to inform us that the MTV Movie Awards won't be affected; thank god, right? Never mind that parts of film history are gone and that priceless video and animated archives might be lost to the world... as long as the stars are alright.

Fuck.