AUDIO BLOOD DOES SCENE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2010
This year’s SCENE Music Festival in St. Catharines is happening on June 27th and it’s going to be a blast! Headliners include Shad, Lights, Down With Webster, and more. Now in it’s fifteenth year, SCENE Fest continues to stand out as one of Ontario’s largest and most prominent music events. To find out more about the festival, visit http://www.scenemusicfestival.com.
TEENAGE KICKS
3:30PM @ Merchant Ale House
Formerly known as Ulysses and the Siren, the four young gentlemen that make up Southern Ontario’s Teenage Kicks are anything but new comers to the world of making music and sleeping in vans. “We drove fifteen hours to get here, through a biblical storm of sleet and hail. Van broke down near twenty times, someone in Quebec stole all our gear. I’ve got the touring band blues. We’re the sixth band on a twenty band bill, playing to cows in a farmer’s field. Van caught fire in the parking lot, after all these years we haven’t stopped - I’ve got the touring band blues. Check, Two, Three, Four, is this thing on? Are all ten of you ready for some rock and roll? Five, Six, Seven, Eight, who do kids appreciate these days, anymore? Goodnight, it’s time to Keep On, Keepin’ On.” - Teenage Kicks.
http://www.myspace.com/teenagekicksteenagekicks
http://www.twitter.com/teenagekicksss
MODERNBOYS MODERNGIRLS
6:15PM @ Patrick Sheehans
Modernboys Moderngirls are either punk rockers who play soul music or soul musicians who play punk rock. It’s this dazzling combination of sound, songwriting and swagger - influenced by Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Otis Redding, Bruce Springsteen, and the New York Dolls - that’s got people all across the country singing their praises. MBMG first gained buzz in the summer of 2008 when they were invited to perform at North By Northeast (NXNE) festival and Edgefest all before even releasing an album. After noteworthy appearances at Halifax Pop Explosion and Canadian Music Week, MBMG released their debut album in September 2009, I Might As Well Break It.
http://www.myspace.com/modernboysmoderngirls
http://www.twitter.com/mbmgband
GENTLEMEN HUSBANDS
7:15PM @ Patrick Sheehans
You’ve heard this story before. Best friends grow restless and feel suffocated by the confines of their small town, write music in basements at ungodly hours about leaving home behind and never coming back. Songs fueled by ambition and frustration, echoed by the youth of the city that kindly latch on to the band as hometown heroes. The band plays the local pub monthly and ends three years later due to too much alcohol consumption and giving up on the idea they’re ever going to make it out alive. Well, in the case of Cobourg, Ontario’s Gentlemen Husbands the story is only half true. Instead of rotting away in the suburban wasteland they call home, the four big hearted musicians took their king size anthems to the road, where they quickly learned that their take on Rock n’ Roll was more than welcomed! In their short time as a band, Gentlemen Husbands have played alongside Lucero, Murder by Death, Attack in Black, Saint Alvia and The Arkells.
http://www.myspace.com/gentlemenhusbands
http://twitter.com/gentlemenhusb
THE BALCONIES
8:30PM @ Merchant Ale House
While training in classical music at Ottawa University, future couple Jacquie Neville and Liam Jaeger met in between concert etudes and ensemble practice. Though their passion for post-tonal theory and Brahms is a common thread, something else bound them together, and that something was their need to let loose on stage in the form of an incredibly high-energy pop band, taking their classically-trained backgrounds and throwing it all aside in exchange for soaked t-shirts, frantically dancing fans, and beer-stained van seats. Even worse for Papa Neville, the two lovers roped in kid brother Stephen Neville to play bass and hold his own beside sister Jacquie as co-lead-vocalist. The Balconies released their debut album in September 2009. Formed from the ashes of Ottawa bands Jetplanes of Abraham and For the Mathematics The Balconies soon became the capitol’s favourite export - gracing the cover of Ottawa street weekly VOIR and named a band to watch in 2010 by the National Post!
http://www.myspace.com/thebalconies
http://twitter.com/thebalconies
SANDMAN VIPER COMMAND
9:25PM @ Exclaim.ca Whitehaut Outdoor Stage
In the beginning, the four best friends who make up the ambitiously named outfit locked themselves up for days in their parents’ basements practicing and refining demos, only emerging when they had stumbled upon the most perfect blend of garage pop/guitar fuzz rock this side of the border has heard in a long time. It’s this obsessive compulsiveness in their music that pays off huge on their independently released debut, Everybody See This. In the same way the Strokes released a sonically moving debut album, it is apparent that this is much more than an average first run from a bunch of college dropouts. This is a band with a future. Everybody See This is ripe and bubbling with the type of youthful rage you can’t fake. It’s delicate and fragile in all the right places and thoroughly captivating from start to finish. Having amazed crowds while playing alongside Titus Andronicus, Hollerado, the Arkells, Holy Fuck, and more, one thing is for sure, this band is on to something very exciting.
http://www.myspace.com/sandmanvipercommand
http://twitter.com/sandmanvc
CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN
11PM @ The Mansion House
Clothes Make the Man are masterful songwriters, almost unbeknownst to themselves. In dark bars, parties, or bright festival stages Clothes Make the Man transform into raucous punk rock and rollers, yelling about the economy and its endless digression, schizophrenia, alcohol and of course, girls. Fist pumping in the form of group sing-a-longs so huge and juicy it could make you sick. And yet, in the midst of all this aggression and rage, emerges some of the biggest hearted songs this culturally confused city of Toronto could bear to emit. In between the dripping sweat and guitar heavy choruses, the band opens their collective 8 arms and hugs the audience with their vicious wall of sound. And whether you like it or not, you’re getting a big wet one!
http://www.myspace.com/clothesmaketheman
http://twitter.com/cmtmband
Posted by Shannon Neeley
