Letters to the Editor
Give The Coast a break. Although I COMPLETELY respect Claire Gallant’s right to be offended last week by the thought of turducken and meat consumption, I don’t feel that she had the right to be offended that The Coast published a story about the turducken. I think she owe’s The Coast an apology by suggesting…
Turn, turn, turn
Scarcely a month has gone by this year when we haven’t found ourselves at our computer in a rage blackout, pounding out an enraged letter to Spin. The music magazine has spent its quite commendable 20th year publishing lots and lots of lists. (It’s possible we’re in the minority here, but we think the “people…
Free education
Believe it or not, the Halifax Pop Explosion is more than just boozing, show-crawling and rocking out to some of your favourite underexposed bands. Saint David’s Church on Brunswick Street will house a number of educational workshops and panels, all free of charge. Saturday kicks off in classroom A at 12:30pm, with a DIY seminar…
In the loop
The Loop, a new knitting and needlework cafe, workshop space and retail store is opening in the former space of the Apollo Sauna Bath Club at 1547 Barrington, next door to The Mud Room. The Loop will sell yarn, embroidery supplies, crochet supplies and knitting supplies. “It’s going to be totally mad with colour,” says…
Give vegan a chance
To the editor, World Farm Animal Day was on October 2, and brought attention to the suffering animals endure so we can eat them. Stats Can reported Canada killed 650 million animals for food in 2004. Nova Scotia executed 200,800 pigs, 25,600 cows, 13,700 sheep and 21,924,000 chickens. The Canadian Coalition for Food…
Food chain letter
Dear editor, So I came up with a business plan. I’ll stuff a dog with a cat with a hamster, call it camsterog, and sell a whole pile of these meaty creations to Haligonians at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone will love me! And I sure won’t be criticized for lacking complexity. I may, however, be…
A light snack
Greetings, Turducken, hah! Here’s an ancient eastern recipe I came across on the internet that puts it to shame. 60 shelled hard-boiled eggs, stuffed into 20 chickens, stuffed into one lamb, stuffed into one camel. Roast until done and enjoy. If a camel is not available, a water buffalo may be substituted, although there will…
TV dinners
It is just like Christmas morning the day the satellite man comes to install the dish at my house and with it, the Food Network. Beside myself with excitement, all channel surfing comes to a screeching halt as I set up camp in front of the tube, watching the FN until my brain is saturated…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
K’Naan: Thank you for coming to my town
This is the one entry I’ve been afraid of writing. I don’t feel capable of expressing how moved I felt on Saturday night/early Sunday morning watching this incredible man perform. His musicians were deadly tight, the music ranged from gentle to fierce to playful to heartbreaking within the space of a song, the lyrics were…
Normal
New Orleans, Louisiana The waiter pours an inch of Blackstone Napa Merlot into a plastic cup and offers it to me. I swish it around. “Very good.” We’ve landed here at Vincent’s, an old-line Italian restaurant where Dean Martin plays on the jukebox. The doors open to the rumble of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar,…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion Blog
I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. I found my last reserve of energy and walked down to Ginger’s to see if I could find Christopher, then back up to The Attic to catch Chixdiggit. I have seen Chixdiggit about a billion times, back when I lived out west. That first…
Wash, rinse, repeat. Always repeat.
It’s all about The Kroeger. Sometimes, when seeing rock stars goes especially well, this is bedtime. Instead, the alarm goes off at 5:45am, a reminder that it’s time to get ready to see rock stars. In this case, it’s Nickelback, who are at the Halifax airport for a promo spot with WestJet. The band is…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller: “You’re still here? It’s over. Go home.”
That’s it. That was the Halifax Pop Explosion 2005, the Tara Lee Wittchen edition. I’m exhausted (still…on Monday night), I’m hungry (who has time to buy groceries when there is rockin’ to do?), and I’m behind on my work (again), but man, I’d do it all again in a second. Welllll…(remembers how sore feet are)…maybe…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Computer Hell
Sorry for leaving things unfinished last night. I truly tried to leave my official “cliffhanger” post, but the blog wouldn’t have it. I think it’s tired of me already. I also meant to leave everyone with this lovely photograph of my cat with his toy mouse, to soothe our very tired eyes, hearts and minds…
Talk of the town
Kirsten Dunst is pissed. As Dunst, in line behind writer-director Cameron Crowe and in front of actor Orlando Bloom, enters a stuffy room in Toronto’s InterContinental Hotel to take her appointed seat, she is bombarded by the flashes and weapon-sized lenses of dozens of wire photographers. “Chris-ten! Chris-ten!” they scream, looking for a photo that…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Saturday Part One – The Zine Fair
When the alarm went off on Saturday morning, I had some serious decisions to make. “Do I actually get up and make breakfast for Christopher and myself, or do I roll over and die?” I asked. I stumbled out into the living room and found Mr. Rees lying in the sofa bed half-awake, giggling to…
Building blocks
One night last week, a construction site on Hollis Street became beautiful. It was after nine o’clock, when the only visible activity came from a welder doing some sort of repair to a backhoe’s scoop. The beautiful part was the white-blue light coming off the welding torch. It cast the welder’s shadow six storeys tall…
Behind the scenes
As I’m going through the hundreds of photographs I shot this weekend, I realize there are quite a few that don’t involve the musicians on stage. For a festival like the Halifax Pop Explosion to be successful, you need a lot of people to come together and play their own important behind the scenes roles.…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Trick or street
It’s difficult to talk about downtown Halifax’s erstwhile Halloween Saturday Mardi Gras party without getting bogged down in details like debating the relative merits of a traditional wine skin versus hiding a pint bottle of lemon gin down your pants. Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult to pin down when Mardi Gras started (sometime in…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Culture club
Sketch comedy, lawyer dramas and trailer parks have all had their day on Canadian television. But for 25 years, there has been Degrassi. “I loved Lucy,” says Michele Byers, editor of the just released anthology Growing Up Degrassi: Television, Identity and Youth Cultures. “Lucy was kind of an ideal for a lot of little girls.…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Moment of youth
It’s been one year. One year since 52-year-old Theresa McEvoy was killed when a stolen Chrysler LeBaron broadsided her silver 1991 Toyota Camry as she drove through the Almon and Connaught intersection in west-end Halifax. One year since a 16-year-old boy was charged with a number of offences, including criminal negligence causing death, related to…
Halifax Pop Explosion Blog
HOLY FRIG!!! It’s just over an hour until the first band hits the stage at the Marquee/Hell’s Kitchen, and I’m so damn excited I think my head’s going to explode… I can’t believe it has been 10 years since I attended my first Halifax Pop Explosion. In late September 1995, I crawled into a smoky…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
War & Beats
Some philosophers judge their worth by the number of degrees behind their name, or the number of textbooks they’ve authored. And then there are the dusty foot philosophers; those whose innate wisdom is drawn from experiences in the real world. On Toronto hip-hopper K’naan’s debut album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, he pays tribute to those…
Day two, part one
You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize you’ve already missed your favourite song at a gig? Maybe the band started early or you arrived late–either way it sucks. At an event like the HPX, you run the risk of not only missing favourite songs, but possibly missing favourite acts altogether, just because…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Hip-hop night at The Marquee and Hell
It was pouring rain when we pulled up to the club at 10pm, and sadly but not surprisingly, both the upstairs and downstairs were feeling pretty cavernous. Too late to catch the excellent Jesse Dangerously’s set–next time, I promise. EMC was still going through his set when I walked into Hell; I’m glad I got…
The (Infini)heart of the matter
“I never intended to be a performer,” says Chad VanGaalen. “I was more interested in keeping an aural journal—it was quite embarrassing to imagine anyone beyond my friends and family hearing it.” The Calgary-based artist is now in a position quite contrary to his original plan. Recently signed to indie-rock beacon label Sub Pop, a…
What day is it anyway?
Um…so Christopher Rees is performing *tomorrow* night at Ginger’s. I don’t have to run between two bars after all. Until tomorrow. I walked downtown around 9pm, thinking I’d catch Special Noise at Stage Nine, and then, duh, realized the show wasn’t starting until after 10. I had time to catch Ted Leo at the Pavilion!!!…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
The Pop shoppe
Ted Leo + Pharmacists Outspoken, poignant and exciting: It’s no wonder Ted Leo is one of the most revered figures in the indie underground. The Washington, DC-based musician and his Pharmacists deal in vibrant indie rock that mixes punk, folk and hardcore with protest lyrics. With several acclaimed records under their belts, including The Tyranny…
Um…what time is it?
I think it’s nearly 10pm on Sunday. I feel like I’ve been asleep for a hundred years. And also like a large mammal has been kicking me in the guts, brain and soles of my feet. I ingested no booze, no illicit substances, and yet I feel WRECKED. I managed to wake myself up today…
Let’s still talk about Friday
I still have an entire day (a very LOOOOONNNNNGGGG day: from 10:30am until 4 the following morning) to report on, and geez, it’s already 2am. Before I get to the good stuff of Saturday, I’m gonna post a few photos from Friday’s music performances. Maybe it’s a good thing I ended up missing so many…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Road to Joyce
Probably more than any other genre of music, the singer-songwriter lays the most on the line. Sift through the annals of music and it becomes apparent how solo artists use their work as a way to make sense of the world around them. Johnny Cash tried to reconcile his own flaws with music that did…
Day two, part two (finally)
Back to Friday night. When last I wrote, I was attempting to race down to Stage Nine to catch Special Noise. I didn’t make it. My first “miss” of the weekend. I tried to console myself by telling myself that I could catch them another time. It’s only half-true. Yes, I can catch them another…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Saturday Night at Ginger’s
I started to climb the stairs up to Ginger’s–believe it or not, this was my first time to the venue ever. I got up to the third stair and the guy at the door yelled “WE’RE FULL!!” over the sounds of someone tuning a guitar and what sounded like 600 people talking at the same…
Domino
Tony Scott’s Domino takes the high contrast visuals, flashy edits, mobile subtitles and seasick camera work of his Man on Fire to the next extreme. It’s a mainstream movie stylized to the point where it’s no longer mainstream. That’s part of its non-conformist kick. The sort of true story of bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Keira…
A photo…at last!
So I’m going to see if I can handle posting photographs on this blog. Lately anything involving technology + me = crash (e.g., computer, camera flash, tape recorder, scanner, buttons on my shirt). HEY, IS THIS THING ON?!?
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Three wishes
Trinity is the third restaurant to occupy the space in the Park Victoria apartment complex on South Park, the first being the legendary le Bistro, the second the short-lived Spice Urban Grill. It’s a great location on the front corner of the building, allowing room for a summer patio and a great view of the…
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
Halifax Pop Explosion 2005
[image-1]
