The Coast’s HPX Free Ticket Giveaway
Single tickets will be given to those contributors who have sent in the best quality contributions. Winning entries will be picked daily and you can collect your tickets at our office between 9am-5pm.
Here are the tickets up for Grabs:
Herman Dune with Julie Doiron, October 22 – 2 tickets
Japanther with Devil Eyes, October 23 – 2 tickets
MSTRKRFT, October 23, 2009 – 4 TICKETS FOR A SOLD OUT SHOW
Japandroids with You Say Party, We Say Die!, Zeus and Little Girls, October 24 – 2 tickets
Jenn Grant with Timber Timbre, October 24
Your Job:
What did you see? What did you overhear? Who rocked your world? What was the scene like? Was someone wearing nice pants? Let us know! Send us the best, most creative citizen journalism you can. Post your reviews here, on this blog post, email them to webeditor@thecoast.ca. Or tweet them to us. Contributions can be short, medium or long. You can even take pictures and post them to our Coast Flickr Photopool So don’t worry about the format: We’ll take ’em any old way.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.
OK, so start commenting. Write your reviews, overheards, whatever you have gleaned from the Halifax Pop Explosion here!
Jonny, Cora and Andrew form Crystal Antlers sat next to me in a coffee shop on Tuesday morning and were commenting on how funny it was to see two Tim Horton’s across the street from each other while driving in from the airport the night before.
Since they seemed so friendly, and they were one of the bands I was most excited about, I had a little conversation with them. Eventually I asked them whether they pay attention to Pitchfork reviews. Jonny answered that this time last year he had no idea what Pitchfork was and that he believed that sites like Pitchfork are killing the experience of going into a record store to get a suggestion from a clerk who isn’t interested in building bands up to tear them down. I said cool and told him that I thought it would be better to ask a band that got a great review from Pitchfork than a band who got killed, to which he responded “I guess you didn’t see our second review.”
Very very nice guys and girl in that band. I can’t say enough nice things about them. They put everything they had into their energetic show that night and were all wearing nice pants.
Emailed to me from Jonathan Briggins:
“Halifax Pop Explosion is one of the best things that go down in Halifax. The city looks beautiful with the leaves changing coulours, everyone has busted out their leather and denim jackets, and there are awesome bands playing awesome music all over the city.
This year is my first year volunteering with the festival, and based on last night’s experience I will be doing it for years to come. I started off the night selling tickets, but soon was asked to sell merchandise for the Got To Get Got (Halifax). I ended up working the whole night selling merch for Valleys (Montreal), and Bruce Peninsula (Toronto). This gave me the opportunity to watch the show as well as interact with the artists. The folks in Bruce Peninsula were fantastic and appreciative of my work. A couple members came back and talked to me for quite a while. It was great chatting about music, stuff to do in Halifax, and life. I thinks sometimes its easy to forget that musicians are just people to and enjoy the same things as everybody else. An explosion of music lovers and musicians all over Halifax? Yes please.”
Sprengjuhollin from Iceland were one of the nicest/most energetic bands I’ve ever met. They approached my friends and I are the Paragon last night and after a brief conversation offered us the Icelandic version of Schnapps. Going backstage they gave were pouring a ridiculous amount for everyone, Mates of State included. I can’t pronounce what exactly the alcohol was called, nor can I correctly pronounce their band name, but it was a great night all the same. I love the Pop Explosion!
An all ages show in a historic church is considerably different from a bar show. It looks different, people all sit in rows and listen to music. It smells different as the smell of booze and wine isn’t overpowering. And most importantly, it sounds different. Every note played, every word sung, and every beat drummed is heard by all there to enjoy the music. This puts all eyes on the performer to put on a great show.
Tonight it was Julie Doiron from Moncton, New Brunswick and Herman Dune from Paris, France. Julie opened up nervously, not quite used to the new strings on her guitar. But as she sang through a beautiful set she became more comfortable. She was joined on stage by a drummer as she strummed her electric guitar through a set that featured some soulful slow songs and some other more upbeat and energetic songs.
David Herman Dune then took the stage playing a couple of songs, just him and his electic guitar, before being joined onstage by Nerman Herman Dune playing drums and occasional backing vocals. There set contained a mixture of vocal heavy songs and longer instrumental songs. An event like this can seem too serious with not much chatter between or during songs by the audience. But David was able to break down some of this wall telling a story about a conversation he had earlier in the night about a Simpsons episode about Seinfeld before going into a new song which was about the moment when a superhero has to tell his girlfriend that he is actually a superhero. There were many humorous lyrics spread throughout the set of this excellent singer-songwriter duo.