REBEL YELL goes to NXNE!

Better music means more drinking means less sleep means more expensive means visa, means F#$%!

North by NorthEast 2010 in Toronto,Ont.. Nothing better than wakin up at 4am to fly to Toronto to play a show later that night at 2am. But what a f#$%*! show! Holy moley. We played right on the cusp of sketchy downtown Toronto at this cool little bar called Harlem. The folks organizing the NXNE showcase originally decided that we didn’t need live instruments and that we could just use turntables like all the other hip hoppers. After I tore my hair out for about 5 hours the issue got resolved and we ended up with some half decent instruments to play...

The nice thing about Toronto is that nobody is actually from Toronto, they are usually from somewhere else less desirable. Which means a band from Winnipeg has the potential to have a few friends in Toronto. (Hey i love Winnipeg, but most people don’t) So we got to play to a good sized crowd of enthusiastic dancers and ex winnipeg scenesters.

On the grant applications i filled out to make this trip out to Toronto, i had an unreal guerilla marketing scheme planned out in which Dustin and i would sneak into industry parties and schmooze with all the big wigs and push our unique brand of punkster hip hop onto the people who could really take our music to new places. Turns out the big wigs dont hang out at Sneaky Dee`s till 4am (11 dollar pitchers, awesome nachos!!) they hang out at the Hyatt Regency executive lounge (100 dollar bottles of Sangiovese, delectable caviar). So we obviously chose the former of those two and made friends with Tony Toothless rather than Donald Trump.

On previous trips to Toronto for NXNE I found myself ingesting alot of shitty bands that put more time into synchronizing their haircuts than their tempos. This year however I can honestly say we saw some pretty frickin great acts.

• Andrew from Comeback Kid/Sights & Sounds led us to see Solitary Sun, ex members of tech metal band The End. They had lots of rhythmic groovy riffs and some awesome singin!
• I’m not usually the biggest fan of these guys but we saw Moneen do an awesome acoustic set. Two guitars and a couple of toms and tambs with tons of reverb. Cooooool!
• A Guns n Roses revival band with a girl in the tiniest shorts ever called Diemond were pretty entertaining.
• The Stanfields from Nova Scotia had a Celtic rock vibe, like The Pogues have beers with Against Me and Social Distortion

Toronto is a pretty great city. I hope it doesn’t get blown away when the G20 happens there this weekend. Spend a billion dollars on helping people in poverty in your own country before you spend a billion on dinner guests., that's what i say.

Yup. Anyway. I hope we get into Pop Montreal!


John



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