And now for Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen, Salle Wilfred-Pelletier (Place-des-Arts), June 23

( Not going to post songs as I do that every other week anyhow, so here is the setlist )

It speaks for itself, honestly. And we lucked out in the ticket purchase server roulette - everyone says the first night was the best, and "Famous Blue Raincoat" is only played occasionally this tour. ♥

( Thoughts in no particular order )

Leonard Cohen tribute concert, Place-des-Arts (outdoors), June 26

Which was broadcast, apparently - on Arte. Lots of clips here, which also give a sense of how immense the crowd was. Was there with Ced and Erin and gave up on getting close enough to see the stage properly; close enough to watch on the screens was adventurous enough.

( videos )

I can't find clips of Steven Page out of The Barenaked Ladies, unfortunately as IMO he was the standout for keen selection - "The Singer Must Die" and "Memories"! ...Two weeks later he got busted for coke, wtf that is getting old. :/

Gig reviews, part three

...Yeah, this is for personal satisfaction really. Although there are mp3s. XD;

Bran Van 3000, Place-des-Arts (outdoors), July 1

Shared specificity with real peers in time and space, which I don't often get in music fandom. Also one of the all-time party bands. ♥ BV3 is of the lineage of great Montreal indie collectives and arrived on the turning point of the city going from not having a scene to - briefly - having the coolest scene worldwide (which is to say they made more money than Me Mom and Morgentaler, and considerably less than the Arcade Fire). Maybe they were the turning point, in some sense: the zeitgeist embodiment who showed up in the aftermath of the second referendum and were like hey dudes let's forget about it, go to the tams and chill out, man, just... chill. It tickles me immensely that they've become a going concern once again, though that means I have to get off my butt and buy the actual new album.

Bran Van 3000 - Rainshine: I wasn't seriously into music until mp3s took off, but looking back there's nothing much about my teenaged taste I'd disavow.** This is perhaps the best song on Glee, insofar as it doesn't cross genre lines but obliterates them three times over in as many minutes - the moment Sara Johnston's voice comes back in still gives me shivers. Magical mystical.

Bran Van 3000 - Afrodiziak: what I can't remember is if I enjoyed smooth R&B grooves that namechecked Marshall McLuhan, or if I had, in fact, no idea what dude was rapping about... Probably the latter.

Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in L.A.: and this, of course. I wrote my first piece of quote music criticism unquote on "Drinking in L.A.", for a CEGEP English assignment (and it was intended as music criticism, not a mere review ahaha... yeah, it's a problem orz). Found the 12" in a used record store the other week, while heading down Mont-Royal to meet ayabai and her friends at the tams, and promptly purchased it. Remixes by a cluster of Ninja Tunes and Turbo artists before they became (relatively) famous - including Tiga - on translucent turquoise vinyl. I didn't even know this song had remixes.

Not sure what it says that when I watch the video I can't tell it was made a decade ago.

There were more people for this than for the Leonard Cohen tribute concert, or maybe it just felt that way because I was stuck further back and spent my time working toward the front until I got right against the barrier. It was a party up there, anyway. XD They did play quite a few songs off their latest full length (good, but unfamiliar), and not enough off their second.

** If you can't see the brilliance of the first Savage Garden album then the more fool you.

Last Fantasia movie (plus some recs)

Should probably have gone for the Midnight Meat Train adaptation but it'll live without me, methinks. XD

The Moss [trailer]: Ced had the impression this was much longer than the 90 minutes it was. The brutality can certainly be gruelling - no clean gunshot deaths in this one, all digging implements to the skull - but for some reason it didn't leave the unpleasant aftertaste these things usually do. Maybe it's the dark fairytale aspect (the trailer makes it look more like a conventional mob thriller and less like the quasi-Carteresque Beauty and the Beast riff it actually is), or the fact that it's beautifully shot and edited, and the actors have faces that hold the gaze.

I have to say, though, and not just about this movie - the recurring "Indian illegals who are psychotic machine-gun wielding rapists" trope is seriously wigging me out. I've been watching, on average, a few HK triad movies every year at Fantasia since the late 90's, and the genre's reflected a shifting palette of anxieties: the handovers of Hong Kong and Macau, the rise of competitive Southeast Asian economies, the influx of cheap and/or illegal labour from the mainland... It's a dark and un-PC glass, but assuming it is still a glass, the zeitgeist right now is a massive upswell of xenophobia (always unfortunately latent in Chinese culture). And frankly I haven't the slightest clue what's going on in reality.

***

petronia muxtape will be revamped pretty soon, as they've upped the file size limit to 24MB - finally, an end to discrimination against fans of 15-minute techno cuts! \o/

Other recs from my favorites list:

soulfonicsource: for people who like to listen to minimal at work, with a bit of melodic indie woven seamlessly in. Soothing and gorgeous.

narie: has gone pink. (Possibly I have never actually heard "Stars Are Blind" before? I didn't know it was ska. Er... >_> Speaking of which, eventually I'll figure out which Pizzicato Five song Lily Allen is pakuri-ing there.)

ricforsale: the other other Brit indie + jpop fan on muxtape.