Hell's Rumblings: Montreal Mirror

Showing posts with label Montreal Mirror. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2011

Plug: My Saturday Show's In The Paper

Once again, we made the Montreal Mirror!

This time, the Mile-End Mission benefit shows organized by my friends at Four Minutes To Midnight (also called the Sake Of The Songs benefit series) got a full article in the Mirror, in which I was even mentioned as a regular in the series (a ''usual suspect'' if you will), alongside many others who were in our Velvet Underground cover project last year.

There's a different theme each time around, and this time it's a tribute to the Red Wedge movement and tour because organizer John Stuart feels there are too many similarities between Stephen Harper and Margaret Thatcher - and wanted to make a political statement about the Conservatives winning a majority during the last elections despite 60% of voters voting against them, meaning they got roughly 20% of the votes from the eligible electorate.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Please Vote For Your Favourites

It's that time again in Montréal, where local paper The Mirror holds its annual poll to find out what makes people tick in different categories.

The link to vote is here. The rules are simple: one entry per contestant/email address, and a form must have 25 answered questions to count.

Here are a few suggestions/endorsements:

Montrealer closest to sainthood
Leonard Cohen, Sébastian Hell, Allan Lento
Montrealer closest to hell
Sébastian Hell

Most desirable man
Dave Lines

Most desirable woman
Elisha Cuthbert, Mitsou Gélinas, Jessica Paré

Best-dressed Montrealer
Allan Lento

Best Montreal weirdo

Sébastian Hell, Allan Lento, Simon Schreiber

Best musical act

Sébastian Hell/Blooze Konekshun, Loaded, The Lindbergh Line, Dead Messenger, Arcade Fire
(in that order)

Freakiest local act

Loaded

Most pretentious local act

Rape Faction, Desert Owls

Heaviest local act

Priestess, Uncle Bad Touch, Sébastian Hell

Best country/folk act

Swift Years

Best jazz act

Desert Owls, Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Best singer/songwriter

Sébastian Hell, Simon Schreiber, Philémon Chante

Best busker

Desert Owls

Best local music label

Little Baby

Best local actor

Jay Baruschel, Claude Legault

Best local actress

Elisha Cuthbert, Jessica Paré

Best local filmmaker

Denys Arcand, Denis Villeneuve, Jason Reitman

It's free to vote, it's quick, and there are tons of prizes to be won just for participating.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Repeat Post: Annual Ballot-Stuffing: Please Vote: 5 Days Left

It's time, once again, to vote for the Best Of Montreal, a yearly event taken in charge by the Montreal Mirror, the city's last worthy cultural English-language paper.

Please, take a moment to vote for me and my peeps, it takes 3 minutes, you can win prizes, and I'll even show you the complete link: http://www.montrealmirror.com/bom/

The only rule is: one entry per (valid) email address, and at least a vote in 25 different categories. If you don't think you can come up with 25 answers, here are some hints (the copy/paste functions comes in handy, you'll see), all in the order in which they'll appear:

Montrealer closest to sainthood: Sébastian Hell, or Leonard Cohen
Montrealer closest to hell: Sébastian Hell
Most desirable man: Sébastian Hell
Most desirable woman: Tasha Cyr, or Jessica Kaye, or Kelly Kay, or Amber Goodwin, or Erin Ross
Best sports personality: Jaroslav Halak, or Joanie Rochette
Best Montreal weirdo: Sébastian Hell, or Rick Trembles
Best politician: none, or the one of your choosing
Best local radio host: Kimberly Sullivan, or Claude Rajotte
Best newspaper: La Presse
Best terrasse: Foufs
Best musical act: Dead Messenger
Freakiest local act: Nutsak, or American Devices
Most pretentious local act: Rape Faction (it's the one they want, I swear!)
Heaviest local act: Priestess (for the music), or Sébastian Hell (for his weight)
Best hip hop act: Murder Face
Best country/folk act: Swift Years
Best singer/songwriter: Sébastian Hell, no question
Best local actor: Claude Legault
Best local actress: Elisha Cuthbert
Best dance company/choreographer: Genevieve Leclerc
Best local living author: Leonard Cohen, or Louis Rastelli
Best cartoonist/comic artist: Rick Trembles
Best festival: UnPop Montreal
Best comics store: Astro
Best pub grub: Madhatter's
Best late-night eats: Al-Tayib
Best Chinese: Tchang Kiang
Best poutine: La Belle Province
Best smoked meat: Schwartz

Thanks for your 3 minutes.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Annual Ballot-Stuffing

Monday, November 30, 2009

Video of the Week: American Devices

I think I'm liking this new Video of the Week feature... the week's barely starting and I'm already all up in it...

Here's another one I upped on my Facebook page quite a few times already: The American Devices' 'You Wouldn't Understand'...

For those of you who need a description of what they're about to see, it's about a guy, sitting on a chair, in what seems to be an empty apartment, and a dominatrix walking around him, sometimes whipping him gently.

Now that that's clear, here's a bit of info on the band itself: founded 30 years ago, this all-Montréal band is 'fronted' (although I'm 150% sure he despises this term) by Rick Trembles, cartoonist extraordinaire whose work has graced the pages of such prestigious zines as Fish Piss and such renown newspapers as the Montreal Mirror; he has also just released a second volume of his Motion Picture Purgatory series, in which he critiques and analyzes a film in one page - and in comic form. Also in the band are Rob Labelle and André Asselin, other legends of our local scene, as well as another comic-book genius, Howard Chackowicz on drums.

Former member Chris Burns (who has played bass, guitar and drums in the band and whom you could also know from bands like Crackpot and Nutsak, the latter with Asselin and Chackowicz) came up with a list of former members for me to tack onto this:

Jackie Gallant (drums), Cups Von Helm (drums), Suzy Joseph (farfisa organ), Mary-Jane Lamond (keys and vocals), Louise Burns (keys and vocals), Sylvie Payne (bass), and Dave Hill (bass).

to which Trembles added:

You missed Larry Vitus & Eric (hard rock goners) Sandmark who were both on bass for a bit (in the) late eighties.

There you have it, a complete list of current and former members of the longest-lasting freak unit (and apparent revolving door, especially on bass) in town.

You can call them punk, or new wave, or rock - but you would be dead-wrong. Sure, they rock and groove harder than Devo and The Ramones, but they can also slay their instruments with more love than Ravi Shankar at Woodstock.

But, hey - maybe you get it, or maybe You Wouldn't Understand.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Pop Goes the World

Montréal musician and columnist Jonathan Cummins, a Montreal Mirror regular for perhaps a decade now, hit a grand slam in his column today.

He bashed a reality TV show, a Canadian ''making the band'' type of horror thing, with terrible Canadian no-talent judges, with foul language that brings vivid imagery.

He also plugged my show and and festival, UnPop Montréal, and all the acts playing at Parc Des Amériques tomorrow night, without even mentionning the acts playing the same place today, Saturday and Sunday - all organized by Pop Montreal, my ''direct competitor''.

Hmmm: also: I just noticed, while linking to Pop's website, that they too are plugging my show(s) - with a picture of me playing solo, too! And the pic is my former Facebook profile pic, where did they get it? I want to say ''thanks'', but too many questions are raised...

It's weird. I like to comment on the news, but now I am the news. I guess Michael Jackson really is dead.