An excellent early 8pm show tonight, Toronto music lovers, and just round the bend from Value Village! Rootsfolkpunk feedbackist Vanessa's Entire Heart is opening for Friendly Rich and the Lollipop People tonight at the newish location of Somewhere There (228 Sterling Road unit #112), the beatnik crash pad venue that refuses to die. It looks just like the sort of show you might like to attend, if you are the sort of person who likes to attend shows. The venue alone is disarming because a pwyc ethic open mind / open programming venue is such an openended question against the wallpaper of the old fashioned bar model that it really makes shows stand out from the ordinary. It's a shame that Friendly Rich couldn't complete his March residency at recently deceased Korova Milk Bar but he has landed in a much more interesting place at Somewhere There.

After Wavelength 516's lovely visit to the old Buddist temple at 918 Bathurst (where I finally got to witness the Deeep!), I have been bigging-up the whole idea of off-venue shows, on one hand they're harder to run, but on the other hand they're so much easier to run, if you follow. (Next to Kurt Swinghammer, The Deeep are the best smelling act in the city by the way.)

Places like Somewhere There are the living descendants of the energy that came out of the speakeasies and salons of the days before the good old days, always worthy of support, and you can contribute to their continued well being by voting with your feet and getting involved with the community, everybody wins.

I am guessing that even if you don't love this bill immediately you will warm to it, and will grow to love it after a few minutes. It has all the ingredients for a show that will stand out in your memory against the backdrop of a forest of other shows, a one-of-a-kind kind of show, an intriguing mix of elements. Then again it might just be a show, sometimes a show is just a show and that is just fine.

Oh and be warned: Feedback is an instrument and a weapon so earplugs might diminish some of the blue notes in Vanessa's songs but in a little venue you might want to bring along a pair of orangies. Alternating between rainshower rainbows and sheet lightening dental drills, Vanessa's Entire Heart is just the sort of palette whetting that lovably unapologetic antagonist Bertholt Brecht laurel-rester-rearranging chronically unretiring bone shaker Friendly Rich, and his note perfect troubadours the Lollipop People, require. Perfect mix of contradictory flavours like 100 year old balsamic vinegar over strawberries and ice cream. Details below.

- Doc

Tuesday, March 22nd 2011

FRIENDLY RICH & THE LOLLIPOP PEOPLE

>>>>>>>>>www.myspace.com/friendlyrich

VANESSA'S ENTIRE HEART

>>>>>>>>>www.myspace.com/vanessahanson

@ Somewhere There (227 Sterling Rd #112)

 8PM Doors, 8:30PM Bands

$5/PWYC, All Ages

SPRING!!!

"The show was really good. Both me and Claire are perpetually getting sick and sometimes it feels like you can't even do it, but then the crowd gives you that extra push. And they were great last night." - Airik Woodhead

Doldrums and Grimes, who both just played the Wavelength ELEVEN Anniversary Festival, are touring together across America (and some Canada) on their way to and from South By, during which they're also making the world's cutest video tour diary. Each video contains a soundtrack by bands that they're playing with on tour, all of which so far fall within a roughly like-minded atmospheric experimental spectrum and are definitely worth checking out.

Here's part one...

Grimes X Doldrums Tour Diary - Part I from Arbutus Records on Vimeo.

Wow the Wavelength "Toronto Show Listings" page is really hitting the spot for me, we have a pretty comprehensive list of shows from people who move me, but I miss Stillepost for potential moments like this: Fans of the Fall frequent THE FALL ONLINE FORUM and as message boards often do, art spontaneously broke out in the form of this fan-released tribute album lovingly cobbled together with submissions from fellow North-Hitters and made available free to the world in a thread on their message board. And Karaoke has made an appearance! It's their first ever downloadable contribution to the omniverse. In case you haven't heard, Toronto's own trainspotter echo to Mark E Smith, Wavelength cofounder Derek Westerholm, he of the Creeping Nobodies (and Parts Unknown!), has joined forces with Michelle Breslin in Karaoke. Michelle is a force in her own right most recently as the mama bear of sadoceanspacebear (and also joined me in Secret Japanese Girlfriend!). Their sound together is otherworldly and I was recently treated to a set by Karaoke at Rancho Relaxo, they incorporate all my favorite things about Derek and Michelle and now I'm a big believer in their incredibeautiful mashed-up tensely loose jingled and jangled and looping bangled aquarium of sound. True story: I helped put together their Rancho Relaxo show and when I sent out the listings I got a very polite but firm reply from one of the weeklies informing me that they don't do karaoke listings! (Full kudos to NOW for having a staffer diligent enough to sort though emails and email me back to sort out the listing in time for print by the way). This story is a listings fable of sorts, nobody recognized the name Karaoke as a name but until they know I mean karaoke, and not karaoke, how could they? It's like having a band name like "Last Show Ever" on a poster! 

• I take music personally, I can't help it, music is a reflexive and emotional medium and I willingly subject my feelings to the sounds coming in through my eardrums, because you can't listen to good music without feeling it. Since music is directly connected to the touchy feely part of my brain I am sometimes dissapointed when a micro-band that I love isn't instantly recognized as the awesome band that I know they truly are, it always bugs me on a personal level when another band, made up of people who I don't know personally, pops out of a ready made box from record label somewhere and is well groomed and named by a focus group and is immediately racked next to mini pops at Wal Mart. Life ain't fair for the other 99 percent of deserving acts.
• But life always has a way of turning out beautifully when you least expect it to. Seeing this first available track from a band I love is like seeing the first daffodill leaf sprouting out of the frozen muck of winter. I prefer seeing those first sprouts of spring in random places, like in the muck of muddy gardens, or scattered across the western slopes of the pit in Trinity Bellwoods park, greening over the browns of last year's grass, I prefer these wilder daffodille to greenhouse bulbs stacked next to the checkout of Dominion any day. Music hunters feel the same, the most beautiful musical introductions usually happen by chance, on college radio in the middle of the night, or on the b-sides of fan message board tribute albums. It's always good news to get something out there whoever you are, be you a florist or a musician. Karaoke covers Who Makes the Nazis and you'll find their debut-to-the-omniverse track on the second disc of this intriguing tribute album.