Easy Star All-Stars - Dub Side Of The Moon / Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / Radioread
Eminem - Relapse / Relapse Screwed And Chopped
Jimi Hendrix - Smash Hits (Remastered)
K-Os - Exit / Joyful Rebellion / Atlantis Hymns for Disco / Yes!
Kings Of Leon - Only By The Night
Lil’ Wayne - The Weezy Effect 2 / My Face Can’t Be Felt
Metric - Fantasie
NOFX - The War On Errorism / Coaster
Portishead - Portishead / Dummy / Third
Rare Funk Music 80s Compilation
Rise Against - Appeal To Reason
Stevie Wonder -The Very Best Of
T.I. - Paper Trail
Tenacious D - The Pick Of Destiny
Lady Gaga - The Fame
The Fray - Self Titled
The Killers - Day and Age
The Presets - Apocalypso / Beams / Blow Up / Re-sets / Talk Like That EP / This Boy’s In Love
The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
The Rhythm Messiahs - American Power Projection
Thievery Corporation - Sounds From Thievery Hi Fi / The Mirror Conspiracy / Sounds From the Verve Hi Fi / The Richest Man In Babylon / The Outernational Sound / The Cosmic Game
Top 40 Singles UK, May 5th 2009 - Compilation
Trip Hop Sessions Vol. III - Compilation
Ben Harper - White Lies For Dark Times
Ziggy Marley - Family Time
Yep. I’m in the process of downloading all of Alexisonfire’s and Tricky’s entire discography. I’m also grabbing the 25 best drum and bass albums of 2008. Slow downloads!
Damnit! I love Britney Spears ever since she shaved her head, lost her children and became a certified crackhead. Listen to her new bad ass single! This wakes me up in the mornings. I don’t need coffee. I just need some Britney club singles.
A couple of weeks ago I saw Jay Spectre play at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. They completely blew away the crowd. I was there for their CD release. Check out some photos and be sure to check out their videos below.
Just for the record, nobody in the band is named Jay Spectre. It’s a common misconception. Jay Spectre is just the name of the band. My brother Mike is the trumpet player in the band.
The live performance was really amazing. Be sure to check their site to see them live.
The real question is, how hard should I be on Virgin Festival 2008? Should I really think this through and come up with a well written, composed, reflection on the event and what it stood for? Or, should I just spew the honest thoughts that come out of my brain at the moment.
Spew thoughts?
That’s what I thought.
Keep in mind, I haven’t done a lot of background research on the festival. I just went to the Saturday show.
Virgin Fest was alright.
First of all, have you seen the lineup? I haven’t heard of 85% of the bands that were there. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but with such a high profile event, you’d think there’d be more for you to look at. Nevertheless, hearing new stuff is always awesome, if it’s good.
Now, let’s look at the cost of a ticket. With taxes and everything, you’re looking at just shy of $180 for a weekend pass. Forget that! Luckily one of my awesome friends set me up with a pass. Thanks Erin
Next, lets look at the venue. Toronto, Island. Okay, it’s absolutely beautiful on the island. The problem is, you have to take a ferry to it. And even though the festival is two days long, you aren’t allowed to sleep on the island. You have to leave and come back the next day. If it’s a two day festival, why not throw it at Downsview Park? That place could easily facilitate four stages and a campground.
Next lets look at the stages. The main-stage was awesome. Nice and big, you can see it and hear it from a nice distance. That was called the Virgin Mobile Stage. The TD stage which was across the park was pretty cool too. The thing is, I couldn’t even find the Oh Henry! stage. Where was it? I probably passed it a few times, but I wouldn’t know any better! However, I was really excited to hear that there was some electronic music in the Bacardi B-Live stage. That’s awesome. But it wasn’t a stage, it was a tent. Which is fine. I love jamming down to some awesome electronic music in a tent. It’s so fun. However, because the Bacardi B-Live stage was sponsored by Bicardi, which is an alcoholic drink, there was a lineup to get into the tent, because security were checking proof of age ID. When I say line, I MEAN line. it was several hundred people long and not moving fast enough to justify waiting in it. Wow! Never before has a corporate sponsorship gotten so much in my way. It’s usually just a logo here or there, but this time, they prevented me from listening to music.
Now to get from stage to stage was absurd. There is a river that runs between the TD stage and the Virgin stage, so to get from one stage to another you have to cross one of two bridges. Now, one of those two bridges was one way, unbeknownst to anyone who walked ten minutes towards it in the wrong direction, only to get turned around by security. The other bridge was extremely narrow. This is what it looked like.
So, as you can tell, there a huge lineup just to walk across. This is a huge, huge park, with more than one access route, but they chose to block it off to this little bridge with tens of thousands of people to cross.
The next thing that I’d like to address is security. What a bunch of uptight, unorganized, frazzle brained, twits! I swear to you, I saw a girl who was probably 14 working security, and something tells me she didn’t have a black belt. Then an hour later I saw a geriatric security guard. Fine! Whatever. It’s not like we were rioting, luckily. But that’s irrelevant held up to the fact that most security were unhelpful and rude. Even asking them a directional question, they’d speak to you as if you just killed their goldfish. I have some friends who worked press (as I did two years ago and noticed the same problem), nobody is exempt from walking the wrong direction over the bridge. Why!?!? People, especially professionals, need to be where they have to be in a hurry! Security physically kicked a man out for climbing a tree. I saw nowhere on the ticket any stipulation regarding tree climbing. In fairness, he was being an idiot.
Now let’s look at getting on and off the island. I showed up at V-Fest at about 3:30pm. The lineup to get on the ferry to the island was 3 blocks long. I called my friends who were half an hour ahead of me, in hopes I could cut into their position, they told me to go to the front. So I did, and just ended up cutting about 2000 people. Nobody noticed. Apologies. I saved myself about an hour. On the way back off the island, they cut off that small bridge that I have noted above, and you had to use the other bridge which is a 20 minute detour. I’d rather stand in line for 10 minutes to cross a bridge rather than walk 20 minutes around it. Because I anticipated the problem of having to wait in line getting home from the island, I left the last set 30 minutes early. It was necessary. This is a sad way to end an event.
Anyway, the bands were okay. Nobody blew me away, not even the Foo Fighters. The best thing about the day was my crazy mohawked friend Denham, and the walking bush you see below.
I know my friends from MuchMusic were working the show, so I encourage you to check out their blog.
Did you attend V-Fest? I’d love to see some photos. Also, please let me know your reaction.
This is a reminder that if you’re in Toronto and you dig good music, to come check this out at The Horseshoe Tavern after Virgin Fest. Be there by 11pm. My brother is in the band.
My brother Mike is a jazz musician in Toronto, Canada. He does quite a bit of playing, different styles and genres. Just recently a band by the name of Jay Spectre came out with a new album called ‘Too Little, Too Much’. Mike plays trumpet on several tracks.
